Seven Ways to Kill a Cat

BLUFFING

MAMINA’S VOICE WAKES me. She’s talking to someone, but it takes me a while to work out who it is because they’re crying. It’s Ernestina. I try and eavesdrop while I’m getting dressed but I can’t work out what they’re on about. The conversation drops to whispers and one or other of them sighing. It must be late, though I can’t work out what time it is. The sky is overcast.

I come out of my room to find Quique sitting on a chair in the kitchen with a sports bag at his feet. It looks empty, but I’m betting there’s a change of clothes inside — probably the only change of clothes he’s got. He’s going to be staying here. Don’t need anyone to tell me to work that out.

Ernestina is leaning in the doorway, sobbing silently. Her nose is red, her eyes puffy. She’s a mess. She looks whiter than a freshly sheared lamb and all crumpled up inside like a piece of paper. Mamina has her hands on her shoulders to hold her up.

‘Morning …’ I say.

Mamina says good morning, but Ernestina doesn’t even react. Quique barely looks at me. Walking behind his chair to get to the hotplate, I tweak his ear.

‘Hey, viejo! What you up to?’

‘How’s it going?’ I say. ‘You had breakfast?’

Quique nods, doesn’t say anything. There’s not much to offer him anyway. I put the kettle on the hotplate.

‘He’s staying here for a couple of days,’ Mamina confirms, ‘so I want you to keep an eye on the kid.’

‘No problem, abuela,’ I say.

But she’s not listening. She’s stroking Ernestina’s shoulder, whispering to her, trying to comfort her.

‘What’s going on?’

‘Her daughter, the little one, she was taken to the children’s hospital yesterday,’ Mamina says, looking over her shoulder at me. This is all she needs to tell me.

‘Your kid sister?’ I say to Quique. ‘What’s her name again …?’

‘Julieta.’

‘What happened.’

‘Dunno … Her eyes went all white and she was jerking around …’ As he tells me, Quique starts twitching his head and his body to show me what it was like.

Convulsions, I think as lightning flares outside on the street, lighting up the kitchen like a flashbulb.

‘What’s wrong with her?’ I ask loudly so Mamina will have to answer.

And she does. A single word, as the roll of thunder finally comes. I don’t so much hear the word as guess it. Meningitis.

I feel it like a blow to the back of my head. There’s another flash of lightning, but this one seems to burst behind my eyes, and the white snapshot it burns on to my brain is of the worm-ridden doll.

The tiny kitchen window slams open and a gust of wind blows in. Cold and damp. I latch the window closed, listen to the random clatter of rain on the corrugated-iron shacks. Raindrops big as stones. I stare out, breathe evenly, the rain starts and stops, can’t seem to make up its mind. Doesn’t matter, summer’s over now.

‘Gringo, we’re going to go before it starts bucketing down,’ Mamina says. ‘I’m going with Ernestina to the hospital.’

‘That’s fine, abuela, I’ll take care of Quique.’

‘Where’s the umbrella?’ she asks, Ernestina clinging to her arm.

‘What umbrella?’

‘The big black one, m’hijo, what else would I mean …?’

I don’t know what she’s talking about. It worries me to think about Mamina getting senile, but I can’t rule it out. She’s getting old.

‘I’ve never had an umbrella, Mamina. If it rains, I get wet …’ I say without malice.

She stands, staring at me strangely, then finally says, ‘Never mind, forget it. We’re heading off …’

Quique doesn’t say a word. Nor do I. I brew up a couple of mates and stare out at the rain. It’s falling hard now. Quique sighs, eyes fixed on the parallel streams gushing from the gutters around the eaves. I make him a sweet mate and he takes it. The wind whips at the ribbons of the strip curtain. It’s cold, but I don’t want to close the door. With only the milky light from the tiny kitchen window, we’d be standing in the dark. And there’s nothing more depressing than having to turn the lights on in the middle of the day.

‘Can we put the TV on?’ Quique asks, handing the empty mate cup back to me.

‘We haven’t got a TV, champ. Hadn’t you noticed?’

He opens his eyes wide in surprise. He doesn’t believe me, but it’s the truth. I can’t be bothered explaining that Mamina pawned it at the first possible opportunity when she needed cash. That was a couple of years ago. She never redeemed the pledge. She said what with the rubbish on TV, we didn’t need it, that we’d been better off selling it. I guess she was right.

‘But we’ve got a radio,’ I say to cheer him up. ‘Want me to put it on?’

‘Naw … Leave it. There’s never any good tunes this time of day. It’s just random shit.’

‘Your call, viejo! But you’re pretty random yourself.’

He doesn’t reply. We sit in silence for a bit. I make some more mate. Sweet for him, bitter for me. Quique gets up and goes to the door, still clutching the mate, pushes aside the strip curtain and stands staring out at the rain.

‘Hey, loco, that thing’s not a baby’s bottle.’

He hands me back the mate and starts nosing round the place. I don’t know what he’s looking for. Hardly matters, there’s not much here he’d be interested in.

‘Got a pack of cards?’

‘On the mantelpiece next to the cockerel.’

The glass figurine of a cockerel has been sitting on the mantelpiece covered in dust for a thousand years. Someone — I don’t remember who — brought it back from a holiday on the coast. It’s a bit tacky but at least it’s useful. Its tail feathers change colour with the weather. I’m not sure whether it’s the humidity or the pressure but the cockerel is never wrong. A blue tail means clear skies. Purple means changeable, so even if the sun is peeking over the horizon, I know it’ll be drizzling by the end of the day. Right now it’s pink.

Quique reaches up and takes down the pack of cards. He gets the deck out of the box and checks it carefully. Looking for marked cards, I suppose. He doesn’t find any. He gives me a wink, sits down again and starts shuffling. He’s certainly not clumsy.

‘Cut,’ he says to me, slapping the pack down in the middle of the table.

I cut.

‘What do you want to play?’ I ask. ‘Casita robada?’

‘That’s for little kids,’ he says.

‘We can’t play truco. With only two people it’s more boring than sucking a nail,’ I say as he deals the second card.

Quique gives me a smile and keeps dealing. Five, six, seven cards. He puts the pack in the middle of the table and turns over the top card. This is the last thing I need. I hate chinchón. It’s a wanker’s game. I spent a whole fucking summer playing it while I was trying to get into La Negra Fabiana’s knickers. Chinchón was the only way I could think to spend time with her. She was obsessed with it. We spent whole afternoons playing never-ending games and I never got anywhere with her. Afterwards I’d jerk off furiously under the bridge by the river.

‘Bluff, Gringo. Don’t you know how to play Bluff?’ Quique says, seeing I’m confused.

‘I think so, let’s see if I remember …’

‘You have to discard sets of trumps or cards of the same value,’ he explains, ‘and if you think the other player’s lying you shout Bluff! The first person to get rid of all their cards wins.’

I call trumps: cups. Quique puts down three cards and picks up a card from the pack. He doesn’t look like he’s bluffing. Me, I’m lying like a politician. And he’s letting me. I’m down to only two cards when Quique shouts Bluff. He turns over my last card and I have to pick up the whole discard pile. We start again. Swords are trumps. I use a four to change suit to coins. It seems like a good idea since I picked up the discard pile, but it doesn’t turn out that way. Quique discards two, as if the trumps he didn’t have earlier have magically multiplied. He has only one card left. I call Bluff and Quique gives me a devious smile. He wasn’t lying. He had to be bluffing earlier, even when he picked a card up from the pile and looked disappointed. Otherwise it doesn’t make sense. We keep playing and he keeps picking up cards and then on the fourth discard he wins the hand.

I’m annoyed now, so I start really playing, but it’s useless. Quique wins three hands in a row and just as I’m about to win the fourth, he snatches victory from the jaws of defeat. I’ve never been good at lying, which means when I do lie there’s a sort of logic to it. Quique’s lies are random and there’s no tic, no sign he’s doing it. It’s impossible to catch him at it because he always keeps a scrap of truth up his sleeve in case he’s challenged.

He’s more devious than I thought. The kid’s giving me lessons now, and that really does bust my balls. Then something occurs to me. Half an hour later the water for the mate is cold and I use that as an excuse to throw in the towel. It’s still overcast, but it’s stopped raining.

‘You hungry?’ I ask, putting the kettle on the hotplate again.

‘Bit.’

‘Why don’t you go and get yourself a choripán at Fat Farías’s place? I’ll give you a couple of pesos. Hang around with the other kids for a bit, keep your eyes peeled and your ears open, then come back later and tell me everything.’

‘Is this some kind of deal, Gringo?’

‘Some kind, yeah,’ I say and give him a five-peso note.

‘Done deal,’ he says, waving the money.

‘And I want to know everything. Who’s there, who goes in, who comes out … what they’re doing …’

‘You smoke, don’t you?’ he says just as I’m about to spark up my first cigarette of the day.

I give him a cigarette and Quique heads off.

I go outside and watch him walk down the street. The wet ground gleams like it’s wrapped in plastic. Quique moves slowly, avoiding the puddles so he doesn’t slip. The wind is still blowing hard. It’s cold.