Honored Guest

FORTUNE

IT WAS THE PARENTS! When would the parents stop coming? They’d been coming for months, since Christmas, since before Christmas, since the burning of the Devil festivities on the seventh. June’s mother and her second husband had arrived, missing Howard’s parents by only a few days, for they had come down specifically for his twenty-second birthday. Caroline’s father had come down for Valentine’s Day with his new wife and their fairly new infant to show her to Caroline, as though she cared. Abby’s parents were still in town, having arrived for Semana Santa — Holy Week, which was now just past — and James’s parents would be showing up any day now from Roatón, off Honduras, where they had been diving. And each set of parents had a new child with them. There was Emily and Morgan and Parker and Bailey and Henry, not one of them over the age of six. It was a phenomenon.

The parents were generous when they visited. June’s mother’s new husband chartered a plane and flew them all to Tikal. They climbed Pyramid IV and watched the sunrise, even baby Morgan in her tiny safari ensemble. And even though June’s mother’s new husband had rented rooms for them at the Jungle Lodge, one night they’d slept out among the ruins in hammocks. Everyone knew this was the desired, anecdotal thing to do, sleeping out among the ruins beneath the bats during a full moon, which it happened to be that night. Then they flew back to Antigua for the parade of the heads, for this is what they had really come for, to see the huge papier-mâché heads, the gigantes and cabezudos, running and weaving down the streets beneath the fireworks and whistling rockets. June’s mother and her new husband had expensive cameras and they took pictures of everything, they were delighted with everything.

When Howard’s parents came, the father, a prominent throat specialist, rented horses for everyone and they had ridden to one of the lakes for a picnic. Even baby Bailey made the trip, wrapped in his mother’s arms with one tiny hand clinging to the pommel. The whole group of them, eight in all, trotting like a cavalry through the poor little towns on these big-assed horses, leaving behind piles of green-flecked dung. Where had they gotten such healthy horses? It was embarrassing. Buenos días! Howard’s parents said to anything that moved. It was amazing they hadn’t been stoned.

Caroline’s father appeared with darling Emily, a redhead, and his lively new redheaded wife, who wore a ring in her navel and was only two years older than Caroline. There had actually been something of an incident when everyone had been invited for lunch in the garden of the Hotel Antigua. There were some hummingbirds in the hibiscus bush near them, green and purple ones, the size of mice. One veered toward Emily in her high chair, no doubt encouraged by the feathery brilliance of her hair, and her attentive mother smacked it sharply with a guidebook she was holding. The bird spun to the ground in a buzzing heap.

They all shrank back from it a little.

“Gee, Penny,” Caroline said.

“It was coming right at the baby,” Penny said. “It almost struck her.”

“Hummers can be exceptionally aggressive,” Howard said, smirking.

“Maybe it’s just stunned,” June said. “Maybe if we put it under a bush.”

James took a linen napkin from the table and placed it over the bird, which was still whirring like a windup toy. Darling Emily bounced in the high chair and clapped her hands. She wore a sweet little dress embroidered with ducks. James walked a ways beyond the table and was about to lay the hummingbird down.

“Farther,” June said. “A farther bush.”

He came back with the napkin and put it on the table.

“James,” Abby said, “is that blood?”

He picked it up again and refolded it.

“Maybe we should have eaten it,” Howard said. “You know, so as not to waste it. We should find its nest and eat that too. The Chinese eat nests.”

Penny frowned at him. “I am sorry,” she said. She dabbed at the plate of fruit she had been feeding Emily. “What is this, guava? Or papaya? One of them upsets her tummy.”

Another pitcher of margaritas appeared from somewhere. It was a very well-run place. Gardeners swept the walks quietly with palm fronds tied to sticks. One of the swimming pools had the heads of a hundred ivory-colored roses floating in the deep end.

“You’re great kids,” Caroline’s father said. “Really, you’re terrific kids.” Clearly, his spirits had taken more of a beating from the hummingbird incident than his wife’s. “You’re fine kids. Caroline, you have fine friends,” he said.

All the visiting parents liked to pretend that the young people were charming. It was funny seeing this, all of them pretending this in their own way. The children were exhausted by the parents’ vigor, they felt wearied by their presence. They were repelled by the parents’ dedicated interest in them, they were astonished. Will we ever be this blind, do you think? they’d say. No, they agreed, they could not imagine themselves being this blind …

They were all starting off in their twenties. Each had come separately to this colonial town in the bowl-shaped valley beneath the three volcanoes and found one another here. Each of them remembered their first solitary days in town and then the speed with which they became involved in a life with the others, their friends. And they still wondered how this had been accomplished, and how much of it they had each been responsible for. They felt that here their lives were now beginning.

At the same time, they felt it was possible that their actual lives were still waiting for them, and that it involved different people. This was something they found themselves thinking about more and more, usually with unhappiness, as the parents kept coming.

Holy Week and its enormous, numbing spectacle was over for another year. The great obligation was over. The great anda borne by the penitents had been stored. The dyed sawdust and fresh flowers that had covered the streets in elaborate designs before being mangled by the penitents’ feet had been swept away. Everyone loved Good Friday — betrayal and trial and cruelty still having the power to captivate — but Easter was a letdown. The promise of Easter was the same old promise. The town was hot and quiet, and everyone was still a little drunk.

Abby and June were having breakfast at one of the cafes that faced the park. The fountain was not operative this morning. Usually water plashed from the stone nipples of a trio of heroically sculpted women, but today they stood inactive, though still with their mysteriously withdrawn expressions as they held their lovely breasts. Workmen in boots rooted around in the water beneath them.

“I think your parents are cute,” June said. “They’re not like Howard’s. Poor Howard.”

“I spent ten to two with them yesterday,” Abby said. “Then I took them to the market and my mother would say about anything, ‘Is this the best price you can give me? Is this the best you can do?’ In English, of course, slowly, in English. Candles, bananas, those tiny bags of confetti, everything … She bought me lightbulbs, she insisted. ‘You have all these dead lightbulbs,’ she said, and I said, ‘Mom, we can buy these in the store, we don’t have to be bargaining for them in the market.’ Then I had to spend six to nine with them too, back at the hotel. And that Parker! He had to run across the cobblestones, and of course he falls down and practically tears off his kneecap. Finally, I cracked. I said, ‘I’ve got to have a day off. I can’t have another meal with you for a while, I just can’t,’ and my father said, ‘We aren’t taking out taxes.’”

June laughed, but then she said, “What did he mean?”

“Maybe he said withholding,” Abby said. “It was a joke. Like I thought it was a job, my being with them.”

“Oh, that’s funny,” June said. “That’s what I mean. They’re not that bad.”

“I can’t believe they adopted that child and then named him Parker,” Abby said. “Where did that name come from? My mother reminded me that I had promised to take him tonight so they could go out to dinner by themselves.”

“When my mother was here and I was with her at the bank?” June said earnestly. “And I was sitting there looking at my mother in line to get money? I had an epiphany.”

“Really,” Abby said.

“It was … my mother will always love me.”

“That’s an epiphany?” Abby said.

“It wasn’t a thought. It was like …” June trailed off. “Your mother will always love you too, forever, no matter what.”

“Isn’t that amazing,” Abby said. “Really, it’s amazing, if it’s true.”

A young Guatemalan boy wearing filthy green shorts with a broken zipper and a Chicago Bulls T-shirt came into the cafe holding three glass Shangri-La bottles by the neck. Then they saw Caroline walking by with her brown long-legged dog on a rope leash.

“Caroline!” they cried together.

She joined them, dragging the dog in with her. He had been neutered not long before, and he had a plastic basket on his head so he wouldn’t rip his stitches out. The stitches should have been taken out by now and the basket removed, but Caroline was putting it off even though the Indians laughed rudely at the sight of them. Neither Abby nor June would have been capable of walking a dog around town with a basket on its head.

“Can’t we take that off the poor thing?” Abby said.

“I know, I know, but then he bites his fleas,” Caroline said. “I’ve got to give him a bath first.”

The dog smacked the basket against the table leg and lay down with a thump. He was an odd little dog with large dewclaws and a strangely malformed mouth. Caroline had bought him in the market for two quetzales, about thirty-five cents. She took excellent care of him in a somewhat unbalanced way and was always trying to improve him. Caroline was an artist, she had always been an artist, things just came to her sometimes. She was thin, almost ascetic-looking, and had a temper.

Abby continued to look at the dog, at its long fawncolored legs that seemed so breakable. Pets made Abby feel discouraged. In the run-down motel where they all rented rooms by the month, the guardian had an aged, arthritic parrot who was brought out on a stick every morning and left to hobble around on a broken bench beneath some banana trees until dusk. Sometimes June would gently spray him with water from the hose, which seemed to neither distress nor delight him, Abby didn’t know why she bothered. The motel also housed some members of a street band, who were seldom there, and a morose man with a bulging vein in his forehead which appeared to beat incessantly. He made a living from his fortune birds — three yellow canaries in a bamboo cage that would tell your future by selecting a small rolled piece of paper from a pinewood box. The tiny prophets’ names were Profeta, Planeta and Justicio, and they seemed happy and untroubled. The motel was not far from the parque central and was next to one of the town’s many ruined cathedrals, the rubble from one of the cathedral’s walls making up part of the courtyard. The rooms were small, dark and cold, but each had a perfect view of Agua, the most beautiful of the volcanoes.

The Guatemalan child, having been paid for the bottles, was threading his way back through the tables. He paused and gazed beseechingly at June’s pancake, which she had barely touched. Abby had not eaten hers either and was using the plate more or less as an ashtray.

“June,” Caroline said.

June looked at the boy. “Sure, sure,” she said. He plucked up the pancake with slender fingers and hurried outside. He crossed the street and stared at June as he ate.

“Is he scowling at us?” June said. “I mean, what is it exactly one is supposed to do?”

The others would often tease June for being so grave about everything. She wore oversized American clothes, a plaid shirt and brown shorts, and a woven necklace that her mother had bought her during her visit. June had wanted the necklace badly and had led her mother to the store, which was frequently closed, more than once. She affected ragged black and blond hair which she made sticky with shaving cream.

“Imagine him and Parker as playmates,” Caroline said. “Little playmates.”

“That is so radical,” Abby said.

The boy finished the pancake, then turned modestly away from them to urinate.

“Oh, gaaa,” June said.

“My mother is finally beginning to notice the public urination,” Abby said. “‘You know, honey,’ she said, ‘this is a lovely town, but so much public urination goes on. I don’t think I’ve ever seen so much public urination. You walk through the park and men are urinating behind pieces of cardboard. Boys are urinating on flowers. We went to look at some churches and we were picking our way around the courtyard and an old man was urinating on a pile of sand. When he finished he flapped his hands at us. He scolded us! He said we were not supposed to be in the courtyard, we could only be in the church. He was the ostiary or something, or thought he was …’” Abby was mimicking her mother’s nasal, bemused way of speaking.

“They’re still here, your parents?” Caroline said.

“Oh god, yes,” Abby said. “I have to watch Parker tonight so they can go out. It’s their anniversary.”

“We’ll all watch him,” Caroline said. “We’ll sit around in a circle and blow smoke at him or something. Howard will ask him his opinion of death.”

“That is getting so old,” Abby said. “It’s like an old bar trick or something.”

“Morgan’s been the darlingest,” Caroline said to June. “Don’t you just love her?”

June blushed. “Do you know what my mother told me?” June said. “She told me she had always been emotionally indifferent to my father, from the very first, but now she had found happiness and she hoped that I would find such happiness and never have to spend long years with someone I was emotionally indifferent to.”

“Oh,” Caroline said. “It’s like a little blessing she gave you, isn’t it? That’s so nice.”

“I love watching June blush,” Abby said. “Really, June, you are so funny.”

Then she and Caroline talked about how they wished they had a car they could share. Then they began talking about how James claimed to have stolen a car in Texas and driven it through Mexico into Guatemala, where he’d sold it for a great deal of money in the capital. This was a difficult, virtually impossible feat and the story had always elicited considerable admiration. James also claimed that once, prior to stealing the car, he had been arrested in California for underage drinking, and that as part of his sentencing he was forced to attend the autopsy of a drunk driver. He described the way they had sawed off the top of the dead man’s head and lifted it like “a lid on a basket.”

“I think he made up that stuff about the cadaver,” Abby said.

“I didn’t believe that for one minute,” Caroline said.

“I don’t know about that car from Texas either,” Abby said. “He’s so enthusiastic about that experience, he probably didn’t have it.”

“What are you thinking, June?” Abby asked.

“I was thinking I have no sense of direction,” June said. “I can’t remember the names of flowers or ruins or saints. And I can’t keep a journal. Any journal I keep sucks.” She was thinking of Edith Holden’s precious Edwardian journal with all the lovely drawings. The one she had in prep school. Edith Holden had died tragically young, drowning in the Thames while collecting horse chestnut buds, the twit.

The bill arrived and June began to go over it painstakingly. “Excuse me, pardon me. Perdóneme?” she called to the waitress, “but no one here ordered the huevos revueltos.”

“Oh, just pay for it,” Abby said. “All that stuff is fifty cents or something, isn’t it? I’ll pay for it.”

“No, it’s my turn,” June said, counting out some coins. They then got up with a great scraping of chairs on the ugly tiles.

On the street, the dog strained toward a mound of burnt plastic in the gutter and managed to acquire something repellent before Caroline hauled him away.

“He is so dim,” she said. “I thought fixing him would make him smarter.”

“That is so funny,” Abby said.

They reached the heavy scarred wooden doors of their compound. They pushed them open and Caroline unknotted the rope from the dog’s collar. He leapt into the air and ran around the courtyard three times at remarkable speed before a bougainvillea stump snagged the basket and sent him sprawling. The parrot dropped the piece of mango he’d been toying with and crouched against the gnawed slats of his bench. The parrot’s name was Nevertheless as far as anyone could translate it. The dog didn’t have a name.

The fortune birds were not up yet. Customarily they rested until noon in their cage, beneath a clean dish towel. For them Easter week was one of the biggest weeks of the year. They had told a thousand fortunes. Their director, the man with the staggeringly large vein, was sitting at a card table in a corner of the courtyard writing new fortunes in an elegant script on blue pieces of paper. He wrote swiftly, without reflection or emotion. James and Howard were playing Hacky Sack on the grass with a tiny stitched ball that said I Jesus on it. They had bought it from some evangelicals who did massage. The boys had been so dumped the night before, clutching their glasses of aguardiente, that they could hardly^™ find their mouths. Now here they were, sleek and quick.

June blushed when she saw James, for she had drunk a great deal of aguardiente last night as well and recalled asking him, “Do you think I have a personality?”

“No,” he had said.

“A personality,” she persisted.

“Why would you want one? You’re fine.”

“But I should,” June said.

“Look at my wallet,” he said. It was a long leather wallet clipped by a chain to his belt. “There was a whole bin of these at the airport on sale and the merchant said that each wallet had its own personality because it was natural material and the lines and colors and imperfections made each one unique.”

“That’s sick,” June had said.

“Personality is secondary to predicament,” James had said.

She was attracted to James, to his deep-set eyes and perfect skin, but none of them were lovers. That would have spoiled everything. Love was a compromise, they felt. They were not like their parents, who were always in love and who just went on and on with life, changing partners, acquiring new children, abandoning past interests and assuming new ones, always in love with someone or something.

It was almost noon. The boys continued to play Hacky Sack, thrusting out their long feet.

“I’m going to wash the dog,” Caroline announced. “After which we shall remove the basket.” She produced some special soap she had bought at the market. It came in a small box that had the drawing of an insect on it.

“It doesn’t really look like a flea, though,” Abby noted.

“They intended it to look like a flea,” Caroline said confidently.

They captured the dog and poured a bucket of water over his wiry coat. The soap made a quick brown lather and almost instantly, motionless black fleas appeared.

“Look at those fleas,” Abby said. “They’re enormous.”

“This soap must be lethal,” June said.

The guardian and his family came out to watch the dog being bathed. The parrot watched, too, swaying excitedly. The dog stood passively, his head bent, the basket touching the ground.

They rinsed and scrubbed, then rinsed again. There were fewer fleas at the end but there were never no fleas at all.

“Shouldn’t we have gloves?” June asked.

“The fortune dog,” Caroline said. “Divination by fleas.” She picked them off. “This is not good,” she said. “This is not good. This is not good either.”

Then there was the ceremony of removing the basket, which was attached to the dog’s collar with thick, dirty tape. Finally the basket was wrenched off. The dog’s head looked somewhat smaller than anyone remembered.

“He really is unsatisfactory, isn’t he?” Caroline said. “Maybe if I straightened his tail. He needs something. What do you think, June?”

“Maybe a bandanna,” June said.

“Oh, I hate bandannas on dogs,” Caroline said. “The vet said he had too many teeth in his mouth. A couple of them should be pulled. And see all those warts on his head? They keep growing back.”

The dog squatted on his haunches and stared at them. He had probably never been meant for this life. He was just not consubstantial with this life.

One of the reasons Caroline had acquired the dog was to practice concern. They all felt that sometimes it was necessary to practice the more subtle emotions.

The dog suddenly widened his eyes as though in delighted recall, shot up and sideways and danced away to his favorite spot in the compound, the smoldering refuse pile in one of the stalls that once stabled horses, rooting about for only an instant before finding something ragged and foul which he settled down to eat. At the same time, the owner of the fortune birds capped his pen, rose from his chair, rolled his shoulders, crouched slightly to fart and removed the cloth from the little birds’ cage. Immediately the birds began to sing.

It was a lovely day. White clouds streamed past Agua, but low, so that its dark cone was visible against the bright blue sky.

“I want to do something today,” Abby said. “Don’t you?”

From a distance Agua was magnificent, but they had all climbed it once and found it disappointing.

Abby looked at her watch. She said, “If I got this wet, I’d die.”

“Let’s climb Fuego,” Howard said, giving the Hacky Sack a final, unraveling kick.

“It’s too late,” Abby said. “We’d have to start earlier than this.” Fuego, the live volcano, was no higher than Agua but the ascent was more difficult. The third volcano, Acatenango, commanded little interest though surely it had its dignity, its dangers and charms.

“Never too late to climb Fuego,” James said. “The hot one, the mean one.”

“Oh, that damn Fuego,” Caroline said.

They had never climbed it, although they had set out to do so more than once. They would stay up all night and dawn would bring with it the desire to climb Fuego. They would take a taxi to Alotenango, a poor town surrounded by dark coffee trees, from which the ascent began. They would climb for a while, floundering through the greasy ash. Rocky furrows ran alongside the trail like empty rivers and sometimes became the trail. The furrow would deepen and vanish and a faint path through the ash would begin again above them. Some paths were marked by rocks painted No! for though these paths looked reasonable they were not at all reasonable. The rocks bore the name of a hiking club, the members of which they had never seen. They’d never seen anyone climbing, although once they saw a dead colt with a braided mane.

They had always turned back after a few hours, because what was the point really of climbing Fuego.

“I think nature’s kind of senseless, actually,” Caroline said. “I mean real nature. I don’t get it.”

The hours passed. It was midafternoon when the cage holding the fortune birds was strapped to the motorbike for the trip to the plaza.

“We should do those birds sometime,” Abby said. “I can’t believe they’re right here with us and we’ve never had them tell our fortune.”

“I’d want Planeta to tell mine,” June said. “The one with the black eyes.”

“They all have black eyes,” Caroline said.

“I mean black rings around the eyes,” June said.

“This earth is my home for life,” James said. “Do you ever think that?”

“That is unacceptable,” Howard said.

“I don’t think Profeta looks that well,” Caroline said. “She doesn’t look as yellow. Her beak looks like it’s peeling.”

Caroline’s dog had danced over to the motorcycle and was nosing the cage.

“Get that cur away from here or I’ll break its goddamn back,” the man with the remarkable vein said in startlingly clear English. The birds chirped on, hopping about in their tiny, airy rooms, the bars of which were woven with pale, wilted flowers, the floors of which were covered with the shredded faces of movie stars from shiny magazines.

Caroline hurried over and hauled the dog away. No one remarked on the outburst, recalling that it had happened before.

Shortly after the birds’ departure on the black motorbike, Abby’s parents arrived at the gate with young Parker and two string bags filled with food.

“Oh, I can’t believe it,” Abby murmured to Caroline. “So soon?”

“I’m sorry we’re early,” Abby’s mother said, “but we went on a ruin run. We managed eight ruins today, which must be some sort of record, and when we got back to the room we discovered that we’d been robbed. Isn’t that something!”

The three of them, even Parker, seemed almost enchanted that they’d been robbed, as if this were just another aspect of an exciting life. “They took nothing of real value,” Abby’s mother said. And that, too, added to the enjoyment of it all.

There was a little something on the side of Abby’s mother’s nose that perhaps had been in her nose and somehow gotten out and around onto the side of it. All of them looked at it politely. With a small adjustment in her gaze, June looked at Parker and the large white bandage he wore insouciantly on one knee. She narrowed her eyes and the child receded into some blurry future, permitting the present to be inhabited by herself and her friends, which was proper.

Abby’s mother set down the bags. “There’s all kinds of stuff in here,” she said. “I thought you could have a picnic supper.”

“That is so sweet!” Caroline said.

“What did they take?” Abby asked.

“It was so stupid of me,” her mother said. “I have so much trouble locking that door. I think it’s locked but it’s just stuck, so the room wasn’t even locked. They took this jade necklace I’d just bought. It was still wrapped in tissue. It wasn’t that expensive, but the thing was I’d bought it for you. Then I thought I’d keep it, because I didn’t think it was really you, and then it was stolen. It serves me right, doesn’t it?”

“That’s really ironic, Mom,” Abby said.

June asked Abby’s mother which of the ruins had been her favorite.

“I loved the convent Las Capuchinas,” Abby’s mother said.

“Oh, I love Las Capuchinas too!” June exclaimed, as though everyone didn’t say their favorite ruin was Las Capuchinas.

“What do you think actually went on there, on that sub-floor?” Abby’s mother wondered. “I have three guidebooks and they all suggest something different. It was either a pantry, or for laundry, or for torture.”

“You have four guidebooks,” Abby’s father said.

“I think it’s all a matter of wild conjecture.” Abby’s mother raised her hand and brushed the inconsequential thing off her face. “There were twenty-five nuns, right? Twenty-four? And they were never allowed to leave except when there was an earthquake.”

“I like those creepy mannequins at prayer in their cells,” Caroline said.

“Don’t you just want to know everything?” Abby’s mother exclaimed suddenly. “Just think of all the information children Parker’s age will have access to, and so quickly!”

“What’s your favorite ruin?” June asked Abby’s father.

“I don’t have one,” he said. “My favorite meal was the steak at Las Antorchas.”

“I can’t believe we’re going back to Las Antorchas,” Abby’s mother said. “Honey,” she said to Abby, “I’m sorry we’re so early but we’ll be back early. I just want to get this anniversary dinner over with.”

“I don’t want to stay here,” Parker announced. “I want to stay with you.” His hair was firmly combed. He wore madras shorts and a short-sleeved button-down shirt, dressed in a manner that small children often are for an event they are not really going to attend.

“Parker, look at that parrot!” Abby’s mother said.

He studied the parrot, which was staggering across the grass to retrieve a bit of melon. “I don’t like it, there’s something wrong with it,” he said. “I don’t like that dog, either.” The dog had been straining toward them soundlessly on its rope all the while, panting wildly.

“Well, just stay away from the dog,” Abby’s mother said. “Play with your trucks.” She whispered to Abby, “We’re just going to slip away now.” They left and Parker sat down on the grass, dropping his head rather dramatically into his hands.

Howard went into his room and brought out an almost full bottle of Jägermeister. There was still the possibility, which they all embraced, that the liquor was made with opium. This had not been utterly discounted. “Hey, Parker,” he said. “Would you like a drink?”

Parker raised his head. “I like iced tea,” he said. “The kind you get at home, at the store, in a bottle. My favorite is Best Health’s All Natural Gourmet Iced Tea with Lemon, and you wouldn’t have that in a million years.”

“He’s into iced teas,” Caroline said. “Isn’t that scandalous.”

“There’s one that tastes kind of like fish,” Parker said. “Sort of like rusty fish. But not right away. Just a little afterwards.”

“They actually make an iced tea like that?” Howard said. “Cool.”

“That is so radical,” Abby said.

They drank the Jägermeister, ignoring Parker. The mosquitoes arrived. The parrot was coaxed onto a broom handle by the guardian’s wife and taken in. Howard lit the paper trash and scraps of wood in the fire pit, a short, shallow trench he tended every evening. He was a big, meticulous young man. Each day he would set off with a burlap bag and scavenge for his fire pit. He kept the fire calm, he was very particular about it.

“What are you thinking, June?” James asked.

“Do the Chinese really eat nests?” she said.

“Just those of a certain bird, a kind of swift,” Howard said. “The swift builds the nests out of its own saliva and the stuff hardens.”

“You’re kidding!” Caroline said. “Those damn Chinese.”

June blushed.

“Oh, what are you thinking now, June?” Abby said. “You’re so funny.”

June had had a dream where a boy was kissing her by spitting in her mouth. He just didn’t know, she thought. It was awful, but in the dream she was unalarmed as though this was the way it had to be done. “I was thinking about picnics. Didn’t you used to have the best picnics when you were little?”

“You’re too nostalgic, June,” Caroline said. “Nostalgia nauseates me. I lack the nostalgic gene, thank god.”

“Why do you ask her what she’s thinking,” Parker demanded.

“Why, because it’s a game,” James said. “Because she’ll tell us and nobody else ever does.”

“I wouldn’t tell my thoughts,” Parker said. “They’re mine.”

“But you don’t have any thoughts,” James said. “You’re too little.”

“I do too,” Parker said. He was angry. He had broken one of his trucks. It was not by accident that he’d broken it, but even so.

“Well, what’s one of them?” James said.

After a moment Parker said, “I like ants.”

“Ants! Ants are great,” Howard said. “Ants live for a long time. I read about this guy, this ant specialist who kept this queen ant and watched her for twenty-nine years. She laid eggs until she died.”

“Eggs?” Parker said.

“Occasionally she allowed herself the luxury of eating one of them,” Howard said. “This guy just watched his ant. What do you think? You want to do stuff like that?”

The sky was full of stars and they were beneath them, contained as if in a well.

“I’m sleepy,” Parker said.

“We should have the picnic,” June said. “What about the picnic?”

“What’s it feel like to be adopted, Parker?” Howard asked. “You can hear me way over there, can’t you?” He sprinkled out the last of the Jägermeister into their glasses. The bottle’s arcane label had a stag’s head, over which there was a cross.

“I was chosen by Mommy and Ralph,” Parker said.

“Ralph!” Abby laughed. “Why don’t you call him ‘Daddy’?”

“Daddy,” Parker said reluctantly.

“Why don’t you call Mommy ‘Joanne’?” Abby said.

“They got to choose me,” Parker insisted.

“When you take a dump, do you save it in the bowl for Ralph to see before you flush it down?” Howard asked. “That’s what I remember. The prominent throat specialist had to see mine and tell me it was good or it didn’t go away. It stayed until the prominent throat specialist came home.”

“Poor Howard,” Caroline said. “That’s what you remember?”

“Fondly,” Howard said.

The guardian and his family were hammering away in the corrugated shed attached to their kitchen. Each night there was the sound of grinding and hammering. They made door knockers, June thought. But no one knew for certain. Those pretty door knockers in the shape of a lady’s hand.

They began discussing, mostly for Parker’s benefit, the rumors of a gringo ring that trafficked in the organs of Guatemalan children. This rumor had been around for years.

“There’s a factory where the organs are processed,” James said. “It’s behind the video bar in Panajachel. It’s just that everyone’s too stoned to see it.”

The gringo entrepreneurs didn’t take the whole kid, they recounted loudly. Except in the beginning, of course. They took just a kidney or some tissue or an eye, which left the rest of the kid to get along as best he could, which usually wasn’t very well.

“Parker,” Howard said, “I hope Mommy and Ralph were sincere tonight as to their whereabouts. I hope they’re not, in fact, kidnapping little Guatemalan children so they can have parts on hand for you, should any of your own parts fail. They could land in big trouble, Parker.”

“I think he’s asleep,” James said.

“Wake up!” Howard roared. But Parker slept. Howard moodily raked his fire and then announced he was leaving to get some beer.

“I’ll go with you,” Abby said.

June would never have gone off alone with Howard. There was something cold and clandestine about him.

“What are you thinking, June?” James said after what seemed like a long while with Abby not yet back with Howard.

“I was thinking about that great, swaying float and how quiet everyone was when it passed.”

“The anda,” Caroline said. “The anda de la merced.”

“That thing weighs three and a half tons,” James said.

“It really was impressive, wasn’t it?” June said.

“Well, duh,” Caroline said. But she smiled at June as she said this.

“The drumrolls are still in my head,” James said. “They provide the necessary cadences. The men probably couldn’t bear it forward without those cadences being maintained.”

“I can still hear the drumrolls too,” June said gratefully.

“What’s the word for the men who carry it?” James wondered. “I should keep a glossary.”

“Cucuruchos,” Caroline said. “One of them looked just like that cute dishwasher at the pizza place. I’m sure it was him.”

“Look who we found!” Howard called from the gates.

It was the bottle boy from that morning, the one who’d eaten June’s pancake.

“He was just outside,” Abby said, “the beggar boy. Howard wanted him to share our picnic.”

“He is not a beggar,” Howard said. “His eyes lack the proper cringe. He is my brother, come to visit. That Bailey brat you met before was the false son and brother. A substitute substituted. Soul and body alike are often substituted.” He was very drunk.

The boy was shivering. His shirt was torn and he wore a small silver cross around his neck. The shirt had not been torn that morning, June didn’t think.

“Where’s Parker’s sweater?” Abby demanded. “I’m giving it to this one, that’s what I’m going to do.” She dug a red cable-knit sweater from Parker’s bag and pulled it over the bottle boy’s dark head, then pushed his arms through the sleeves. “I hope I don’t get fleas now,” she said.

Parker was sitting up and rubbing his eyes.

“Give him a sandwich,” Caroline demanded.

Abby gave the bottle boy a sandwich thick with ham and cheese. He ate it slowly, watching them. Howard smoothed his fire with a stick. They drank beer.

“This is good,” June said.

“It’s the same kind we always drink,” James said. “It’s from Cuba.”

They stood or sat drinking beer while the boy slowly ate the sandwich and watched them.

“I’ve been thinking about this for a while,” Howard said. He threw his empty bottle down and pushed the sandals from his feet. “I have.” He made fists of his hands, rolled his eyes upward and quickly walked the length of the fire pit.

“I don’t believe it,” Caroline said.

He turned and walked the fire again. “Cool moss,” he screamed. “You think cool moss.” He sank to the ground laughing, unharmed.

“You’re loco,” James said.

“Feel my feet, feel them,” Howard said. “I ask you, are they hot?”

Caroline boldly touched the soles of his feet and pronounced them not warm at all. They were clammy, in fact.

“It doesn’t have anything to do with belief,” Howard said. “But if you have doubts, you burn. It’s an evolutionary stimulant. I am now evolutionarily advanced.”

“That is a fire that should so be put out right now,” Abby said.

“I want to walk,” Parker said. “I’m gonna walk.” He stood and made small fists.

Abby yanked him toward her and slapped his bottom. “You are going to bed!” Abby said.

The fire winked radiantly at them all. Howard was laughing. He was deeply, coldly happy, and the revulsion June felt for him shocked her. She looked at Caroline uneasily.

“I do not believe this,” Caroline said.

The Guatemalan boy had been collecting the empty bottles strewn about. He held them against his chest, against the bright red sweater. Then he put them down and, smiling furtively at Howard, stepped onto the fire. He screamed at once. Howard pulled him back, the boy screaming thinly. “You’re all right, man, you’re all right,” he said, pouring beer over the boy’s feet. “You were distracted and doubtful, man, and when you’re D and D, you burn. No tenga miedo. No es nada.” He held the boy’s feet and crooned No es nada to him in a mournful way, but he looked pleased.

Whimpering, the boy reached blindly for his bottles and clutched them once more to his chest.

“Get him out of here,” Caroline said. “Give him the rest of the food. Give him the whole damn basket.” She ran to the gates and opened them. “Váyase! Váyase!” she yelled at him.

As the boy stumbled out, he almost collided with the fortune birds being escorted home on their motorbike. The man of the remarkable vein steadied him with a snarl and then, regarding them all grimly, pushed the motorbike across the courtyard.

June ran up to him, digging coins from her pocket. “My fortune,” she said, “por favor.”

“In the morning,” he said distinctly.

June looked closely at the tiny prophets clinging wearily to the bars of their cage, at their tiny egg-shaped breasts and dull feathers. Only a few rolled papers tied with rough string on the bottom of the cage.

“More in the morning,” he said. “Better for you.”

“No,” June said. “I need it now. Morning no good. No está bien,” she said cautiously. “That one, Planeta, I want her to do it.”

“Importa poco.”

“What?” June said.

“It makes little difference.”

“Planeta,” she insisted. She pointed to the little one with the peeling bill and dark, opaque eyes that looked as though they’d been ringed in crayon.

“That is Justicio,” he said. “Justicio,” he sang softly, “Justicio …”

The bird dropped to the soiled floor of the cage and seized a tiny scroll as if it were a seed of much importance, a seed which could nourish it throughout the night. June pressed her fingers to the crookedly woven bars, almost expecting to receive a slight shock. The bird knocked the paper against her fingers. Once. Twice. She took it and the bird fluttered upwards to its perch, where it crouched like a clump of earth.

“Oh, June,” Abby called. “What does it say?”

She turned toward her friends and walked slowly toward them, unrolling the paper. The writing was florid and crowded. There were many unfamiliar words. Caroline knew the language best, then Howard. What a mistake this had been! She would need time to study it and there was no time. Everyone was looking at her.

“Oh, it’s just silly,” she said, and threw it in the fire, where it burned sluggishly. No one attempted to retrieve it.

“God, isn’t it late, where are my parents?” Abby said, yawning. “I want to go to bed.”

June sat with them all a little while longer before going to her room. She lay on her bed discouraged, uncomfortably, listlessly awake. She heard a wailing from far away, but when she listened closely she could not hear it. She listened avidly now. Nothing. She could not recall the cadence of the drums. She had lied to James about that. But she could picture the anda being borne down the streets. That she would remember. It was fascinating to have seen the designs so meticulously created and then the anda passing, being borne on, swaying, and in its wake the designs smeared, crushed, a scattered wonder. And that part, after, had been fascinating too.

But she didn’t really believe it was fascinating. It wasn’t good to deceive yourself. She thought about Howard, hating him, and his cold grin. He was fleshy, did he not know that? Fleshier than most. He was not attractive. That was a lie, what Howard had done. It could hardly be anything else. She thought of the mannequins praying in their cell. A lie, too, but one that was funny. Things had to be funny.

In the morning, Caroline’s dog was gone again. The rope had been knotted any number of times; it was always breaking. And when it broke, the dog would escape from the courtyard and, barking with joy, run through the streets. Caroline said that when it disappeared for good, it would be time to go. She had heard somewhere that angels tell you when it’s time to leave a place by leaving just before you. June thought she had heard that too. Something like that.