the bus Leopoldo does not yet think of calling his grandmother from the busted phone at the Calderón. He does think of her though. Not as she is now, he wouldn’t know how she is now, three weeks after fleeing to Pensacola because of the last Paquetazo, but as she remains in his memory, on her farm in the outskirts of Manabí, where he’s still ten years old and she’s teaching him how to drive her green John Deere, a one seater, sliding forward on her lap and holding on to the giant steering wheel while her rubber boots ram the pedals and she says that’s my Leo, drive it over those Jesuits if they give you trouble at San Javier, you hear, drive it over your pansy classmates if they heckle you for being smarter than them, which of course he proves to be, seven years later he’s up at the podium of San Javier’s coliseum delivering his valedictorian speech, the one he’d endlessly rehearsed in Antonio’s living room, we are the future of Ecuador, debating with his friend the meditative pauses, the stormy passages, the unrestrained warnings they’d learned from the sermons of Father Villalba, how are we to be Christians in a world of destitution and injustice, although Father Villalba wouldn’t have cared if they’d learned anything from him because while he was still alive he’d spurned them and cursed them and told them he knew they were going to sow misery like their fathers had sown misery, and while Leopoldo delivers his valedictorian speech he sees his grandmother among the crowd of senators and diplomats and of course León Martín Cordero, former president of Ecuador and current mayor of Guayaquil and the greatest oligarch of them all, carajo, and Leopoldo knows his grandmother has said to them or will say to them that’s my Leo, always the brightest one of them all, and he’ll go far, they’ll lie to her, he’ll go far.
Leopoldo asks the bus driver to slow down. He’s getting out. The driver doesn’t hear him so everyone in the bus relays the message that one’s coming down, chofer, mount the brakes, chofer, free the hangar, chofer, and when at last Leopoldo reaches the exit he jumps out of the moving bus and lands, at a gallop to avoid plunking forward, between the Salado and the Calderón.
By the busted phone there’s a long line, thirty people at least, he should’ve anticipated a line before jumping out, who knows how long before the bus drives by again at this late hour. Leopoldo proceeds to the front of the line, not hearing the voices saying I haven’t talked to my father in more than two weeks, I haven’t talked to my sister in four, strangers sharing with each other stories about those family members who had to flee after the most recent Paquetazo because the price of gas shot up, the price of butter, the price of rice, ladrones de mierda, because for the good of the economy the interim president tripled their bus fares, doubled their phone bills, because the Progreso Bank shut its doors after its owners absconded with the accumulated savings of those of us without any government friends to warn us ahead of time, qué hijueputas, outside the Progreso Bank my cousin Marta and hundreds of others screamed at the guards, hanging from the metal bars of the bank’s entrance, not knowing the bank was empty, not knowing the bank had already been sacked, and as Leopoldo advances to the front of the line, fast enough to parry what he already knows they’re saying, someone says hey, where do you think you’re going, oye, where to compañero, hey.
Leopoldo Arístides Hurtado, raising his wallet like a badge, addresses the crowd. My name is Leopoldo Arístides Hurtado and I’m with the office of León Martín Cordero. This telephone is in violation of code 4738 of the telephony guidelines established by the city council in 1979. This telephone is therefore deemed inoperative until it is compliant. Those who continue to operate it can and will be prosecuted.
What he say?
Can’t use the phone.
Kidding?
Someone walks up to Leopoldo and squints at his raised wallet as if it were a plaque next to a sculpture.
He’s not kidding.
Doesn’t look like he’s from León’s office to me.
A young woman in line decides to intervene. She unruffles the hemline of her polka dot dress, rubs the mud from her high tops, curving her left one atop her right one, a swift canvas peck, and then tittups to León’s envoy, whose name she recognizes because her brother Pascacio has mentioned him before, yet she doesn’t want to implicate her brother so instead of mentioning his name she smiles at Leopoldo, a smile that her brother says is almost as comforting as the yapingachos of Grandpa Lucho, a smile that the shintacklers who soccer on her street like to whistle at, Malenita, mi amor, where are you going with that sassy smile. She offers Leopoldo the scribbled numbers on her lilac notepad. We’re all calling our families, she says. You know how impossible it is for us to afford these calls. Couldn’t you wait to issue your order just a tiny little bit?
Leopoldo tries not to flinch. He pockets his wallet. No.
He’s not kidding, Malena informs the people in line, recklessly raising her voice so that Leopoldo can hear her saying that her brother Pascacio works nights at the municipality and has heaped praise on that piece of lastre for whatever reason.
Slip him a twenty, someone says. A man takes off his cap and hands it to his son, who begins to collect change from the people in line. Leopoldo did not expect this. In his mind this little caprice of his ended without resistance, with the crowd quickly vanishing from the Calderón. The boy shambles toward Leopoldo and tries to hand him the coinfilled cap.
Please. Please don’t. No.
The boy runs back to his father after leaving the cap, asprawl, at Leopoldo’s feet. He could concede. All right, he could say, just this one time, go on and call your families. Later Leopoldo will convince himself that he’d arrived at his decision not by impulse but by deduction, because Pascacio’s sister is here, Leopoldo will think, and Pascacio likes to gossip, and gossip spreads fast at the municipality so León, who does not tolerate corruption in his subordinates, could eventually hear of this, which is unlikely, but perhaps not so unlikely, either way the country’s too unstable for him to allow even for the prospect of León hearing about it so he will have to cover himself and follow through by reporting the busted telephone first thing tomorrow morning.
I don’t take bribes. Please vacate the premises.
After securing enough witnesses that she was already at the front of the line, an old woman approaches him, bowing to him as she sets down her pineapple by the coinfilled cap, showing him she has nothing left in her grocery bag except lettuce and a bag of rice, shuffling back to her place at the front of the line.
Everyone tallies what else they are willing to part with. Should they send the boy again? No. One by one for greater impact? Who should go first? Who will account for their place in line? Malena rips a page from her notepad, hands numbers to everyone in line. The boy claims he and his father should receive a better number because of their cap collection idea. But it didn’t work, someone says. One by one they deposit their belongings in front of Leopoldo. Green mangos, ripe bananas, photographs of their loved ones, plastic rosaries, a bag of lentils.
If Leopoldo were Antonio he would cry of embarrassment and hurl their belongings back at them and leave them to their ridiculous phone calls. Why don’t they just assault him? Wouldn’t that exonerate him from deciding anything?
I don’t take bribes. Please vacate the premises before I summon the squadrons.
No one moves. In line someone shushes someone until everyone’s shushed. The crowd seems to be waiting for something to happen. For someone to appear before them and rectify this.
Let’s get out of here, Malena says. We’ll find some other way to call our families.
A collective groan. Whistling. As they collect their belongings some are muttering desgraciado, others holler descarado, malparidos like him are what’s sinking
