Fernando’s body creaked like the cot as he dragged himself out of it. His grandmother harried him, imploring him not to get up, telling him he needed to lie still and rest. Fernando brushed her off. He knew that if he lay here any longer in this bed he might never get out of it.

Fernando lost track of the days in his convalescence. In the gloom of the hut day and night seemed to meld together, shadow for eclipsing shadow. Eventually, Chico and the others came to visit him. Whether they had spent the intervening time mustering up the nerve to cross the witch’s threshold, or bracing themselves for

IV Fernando watched the shadows play over the clapboard walls, chinked with cracked clay, packed with moss and palm floss. In the flicker of the oil lamp, the shadows bent and twisted, undulating salacious and sinister over the racks of dried herbs, the grubby tallow candles, the rough-hewn shelves of bones and beads and carved

Fernando didn’t have long to wait. He was out smoking on the crumbling, graffitied overlook, surveying the motley sprawl of Cortez old and new, when Pedro’s crew-cab truck drew up beside him. Pablo sat in the backseat. Their looks were sober, grim. “Primo,” Pedro said. Fernando nodded to him. Crushing out his cigarette beneath his

It was one of Lalo’s guys who first alerted him to the trouble. Fernando followed him downstairs, weaving after him along the broad path he cut through the seething torrent of the crowd. Fernando went out back to find himself pitched headlong into a scene of scandalous turmoil. In addition to Lalo, Fernando saw that

Fernando would have to begin again, distancing himself from her. There were many ways he could accomplish this. The goal was to wean Felicia off him without provoking her to hysterics. Fernando enjoyed playing with women. He even enjoyed tormenting them a little—but to cause them real pain was never his intent. Women’s tears of

Felicia craved direction. Whether this was her nature or simply the result of her circumstances was difficult to say, but Fernando suspected the latter. This made her uninteresting to him fairly quickly. There was always excitement with a new woman, the novelty of seeing them exposed for the first time. To Fernando this wasn’t necessarily

Fernando returned several times to the Hollywood house in Antigua. As Felicia had said, Mondragón was never there. With its grandiose stylings and furnishings, its garage of sportscars and motorcycles, its pools and palms and flamingos, its silent maids and sleek silver hounds, the place had the look and feel of a poor boy’s playground

Felicia flushed from cheek to chest. The points of her nipples peaked through the silk of her robe. She put down her glass with a clatter and stood, turning toward the house. Fernando followed after her, back inside and up the grand staircase. His eyes bore into her from behind. When she snuck a glance

Felicia fidgeted with her cigarette, flicking ash onto the marble floor. “Would you like something to drink?” Fernando inclined his head. She led him from the room, putting out her cigarette on the silk arm of a settee as she went. They walked across a cool foyer, then out onto a clay-tiled patio, bedecked with