simple handshake, and met his gaze. Long enough to let me know I wanted to go back.
I’d gone back by almost every weekday since, either morning or afternoon. Since I wasn’t painting anyway it didn’t make any sense to spend all day stuck in front of my easel. Seeing José again did make sense.
Mornings were when the children dropped by the in-market school — they actually worked at the market, some of them as young as four — whenever they had some free time or wanted a break. That was when José, who had been hired by the city to start up such a school, had the use of a space donated by the merchants, which he’d filled with secondhand desks and books and blackboards. Afternoons, he took them wherever he could, usually the park. The children or their parents, if they had any, couldn’t afford the books and supplies to go to the public school so that was why the city had subsidized José to school the children where they worked.
That afternoon last week at the marketplace, it was José’s suggestion that we get together afterwards. That was how the evening started, too — just the two of us getting together for a drink. Discovering we lived not far apart, he a few metro stops before mine. Each of us going home to change and grab a bite to eat, meeting at a bar halfway between our two places at ten o’clock. In the bar, it was harder to keep up the flow of conversation, both of us used to the constant interruptions from the market kids. I felt us move into that awkward space where spoken words falter and body language hasn’t yet picked up the slack. That’s when I always start to drink too much. During one of the longer pauses, as we avoided each other’s eyes, José said, “Do you like to dance?”
I drained my mug. “Uh, I guess so.”
“The discoteca is just down the street.”
Somehow this felt like an admission of failure, but I nodded and tried to smile.
José was a gifted dancer, thanks, as he told me, to weekly trips as a teen from his village to neighbouring town dances. A dedicated dancer, too. In his eyes, dancing and drinking just didn’t mix. He might have been right. Sometimes I couldn’t tell whether the spinning in my head and the churning in my stomach came from the dancing or the beer. Eventually, like José, I switched to orange juice, afraid that otherwise I wouldn’t be able to keep up.
At first, the awkwardness of conversation carried on into the dance. I didn’t know what messages his hand was meant to convey on my back while we jived or just how to find the beat. But José smiled encouragement and kept guiding me in, out, round, back. We were both sweating, the crowd around us pulsing, my breath ragged from exertion when the tempo changed, slowed to a waltz.
Enveloped in music, black light, and body heat, pelvis against pelvis, hands creeping from waist to hips to flanks, our dialogue took off. A discoteca was no longer the place for us. Thankfully, José’s apartment was nice and close.
The eyes of the woman-of-the-sprouting-crotch followed me. My very first paintings when I majored in art in college — CEGEP — were images of sleds, severed limbs and hearts, broken, bleeding, beating still in the coldest oils I could find. I tired of their garishness though and slowly began to favour watercolours and charcoal drawings of empty chairs, doors ajar, half-eaten meals, and abandoned closets of clothes, trying to convey the violence of the quotidian through the act of watering down. Or at least, that’s how the review committee phrased it when they awarded me my grant.
This last woman I’d created in warm oils was present like none other. Her eyes spoke of the here and now.
I dressed in one minute flat, a specialty of mine, then stepped outside, shut the door, and took the two flights down.
I was glad José’s apartment was within walking distance. This early in the morning, there was no one on my street. A city of 22 million, and no one in sight. This was the time of day, the only one, when I felt Mexico City was a living being that could some day be a friend.
I stopped in front of the panadería and hesitated. Maybe I should bring something along. The sweet smell of bread drew me inside. I wandered up and down each aisle, six in all, finding the staggering selection of breads, cakes, and desserts at this early hour almost too much. I picked out three panques and three buns with my metal tongs, and carried the tray to the cash register to be rung in. I had the girl put one of the buns and one of the panques in a bag. For Faith later, after José.
Past the panadería, I turned right, so busy communing with the heart of the city that I just about crushed a dead sparrow lying at my feet.
It wasn’t the only one. There were four of them in a circle on the sidewalk. I bent and touched the sparrow I’d almost crushed. Its body was plump, its feathers sleek. No teeth marks, no prowling cat. It almost looked asleep.
I looked up through the tree branches to the grey-washed sky above. Was this a sign? At home, the thought wouldn’t have crossed my mind, but here signs existed. An Aztec curse, a father’s ghost.
In Mexico I was ready to believe that people really did commune with the spirits or sprout bougainvillea inside body folds.
The scrape of metal against concrete announced a street sweeper shuffling toward me — shirttails hanging, pants ripped at the knee, dragging a twig broom behind him, a long-handled dust pan in his hand, and a garbage bag looped at his side. He stopped and looked down at the sparrows.
“Otros!” he grumbled. “Qué bárbaro! Qué noche aquella!”
He eased in front of me and started sweeping the birds up with his broom. I walked away, not wanting to see sparrows turned to waste. Two blocks farther down I found the address that matched the one on the metro ticket. I didn’t recognize the building in the daylight.
José must have been sound asleep. He looked rumpled and warm. His eyes were as much a dark welcome in near-sleep as awake. His chest was bare, and his jeans hung low on his hips without the woven belt to hold them up.
I forgot my excuse for being there. I just held out the buns, wrapped in tissue folded like a scarf.
“Qué onda!” he said.
The first time I heard that greeting was in the park. I thought he said Qué honda, meaning how’s my Honda doing. I looked around for a motorbike lying nearby. But I learned it meant how’s it going. Now, here, though, it meant, Isn’t this great. In the little time I’d known him, José had already taught me the expressions of a younger generation, words Papi never knew.
“Hi,” I finally said, remembering. “I’m sorry. It really is early, isn’t it? It’s just... I wanted to catch you before you left to tell you I can’t help out... not today, but...”
“What’s this?” José seemed more interested in my package than any explanation I could stammer out.
“Oh these, I thought you might like some...”
“You thought right.”
He stepped closer to take the package from my outstreched hands and shut the door behind me.
“I’m sorry if I woke you up. I wasn’t thinking. I should have come later. It’s just, my sister’s shown up, and I’ll probably have to spend the day with her today, maybe even tomorrow too, which is why I thought I’d better come by, to tell you that I can’t...”
José set the package down. “I’m not that
