Following Chico’s lead again, Fernando and his friends crossed over to the buckling garage. For all that it was open at both ends, the garage was a big, dim, musty space, cluttered up wall-to-wall and floor-to-ceiling with almost as much junk as the yard outside. Rap music pounded from huge speakers at the far end,

Fernando regarded this kindly matron as she regarded him in turn—Chico’s mother, his own mother’s cousin. Looking at Emmanuella, Fernando saw no resemblance whatsoever between her and Carmencita, except perhaps for an utter absence of pretension, which would have endeared her to him even were she no relation of his own. Fernando curved a smile

* * * Fernando and the others followed Chico back to his home on the outskirts of town. The home was little more than a hovel, built from the rusted bones of what looked to be an old farmhouse slatted up with mismatched boards and sheeting, crippled under the weight of the years and its

Fernando had been chasing after women all his life. Long before he’d understood what compelled him, he had chased them. Stalking them, shadowing them. Studying them from afar. He’d sensed his natural affinity for the chase, and he’d enjoyed it. But as he’d entered into his teenage years, this passion for the chase had gone

The salacious image of the bathing woman from the barrio persisted, taking on a life of its own. In a sense Fernando was forever striving to recreate this experience, to recast it in some form or fashion with every woman who strayed across his path. He sought for it with fiendish single-mindedness, all while keeping

Fernando’s neglectful mother may have planted the seed of his attraction. But it was another from his early youth who’d shaped his proclivities. His first erotic experience had occurred to him in hindsight, when he was still living in the barrio. He had been eight years old, the same age he’d been when his mother

Fernando had never cared much for girls, it was true. Almost without exception, he’d found girls his own age silly and uninteresting. Shallow, predictable and dull. Too lacking in worldly experience to have any savor to them. Once you got them out of their clothes, you’d seen the extent of all they had to offer.

III Work conditions improved markedly in the days that followed. Both for Fernando personally and for the job site in general. “Finally getting things in again,” Chico said, checking over the latest shipment of construction materials delivered. “I don’t know what lit a fire under the jefe’s ass all of a sudden, but now that

Fernando shook his head. He turned aside. More even than anger, Fernando felt disgust for the man. For any so-called man who conducted himself in such a fashion as this. Who’d dug himself in so deep with his gross missteps that he could no longer crawl back out on his own strength. Who instead must

Collecting his paycheck from the jefe was a prospect Fernando distinctly dreaded. It necessitated venturing into Alfonso’s sweltering hot trailer of a lair to be hopelessly ensnared in long-winded tales of false bravado. If not outright lies, these were at best no tales of his own. The jefe had a highly romantic opinion of himself,