A Handbook to Luck (19 page)

Despite the evidence, rumors continued to rage regarding the manner and timing of Fernando Florit's death. Had one of his lovers tried to murder him in a jealous rage? (He was known, still, as an incorrigible ladies' man.) Had he arranged his own suicide to escape his debt? (Close to a hundred thousand dollars, according to reliable sources.) Or had a competitor, in a fit of professional envy, done in the Great Court Conjurer? Certainly no one could say that Fernando Florit hadn't lived robustly.

One by one, the men and women who knew and loved him best took their turns at the podium. Violeta Salas, dramatic in a black caftan, declared to her dead lover, “I'll forget everything about you, except you!” Enrique watched the Texans scratch their heads over that one. The old waitress from the Flamingo coffee shop showed up in a wheelchair. Doreen was suffering from Parkinson's disease and boasted to everyone that she'd just had her nipples pierced.

Even the bartender from the Flamingo was there, bolstering himself with an occasional swig from a silver flask. Jorge de Reyes mopped his face with a handkerchief, looking paralyzed by misery, and read from a battered leather book: “It has been said that it is fortunate that we do not have two right hands, for in that case we would become lost among the pure subtleties and complexities of virtuosity.”

Camille and Sirenita behaved themselves but Delia held tight to Fernandito, who was squirming in her lap. The children had been having a lot more fun outside the chapel with the magicians, who competed fiercely to entertain them. These world-class performers weren't about to let anyone, much less a dead man at his own funeral, upstage them. Enrique wasn't sure how to explain death to his children. Nobody they knew had ever died, except for their rabbit and two guppies at preschool.

What bothered Enrique most was that his children would grow up without their grandfather. For Camille and Sirenita, his funeral was largely a grand and boring spectacle. And Fernandito, who finally fell asleep on his mother's shoulder, would have no memory of it at all, or of the man he was named after. Enrique's eyes watered to think of how his son had stolen his father's heart.

The last time Papi had visited, Enrique had found the two of them in the kitchen making scrambled eggs for breakfast. Papi had every condiment known to man on the table—ketchup, relish, hot sauce, jalapeños—and he was teaching Fernandito to pile them high on his plate. “You must maximize every bite,
hijo
! More is always better! Don't let anyone tell you otherwise!” Maybe there was a reason why Enrique ate everything plain.

Soon it was his turn to deliver a eulogy. Enrique hadn't prepared anything formal. His throat was parched and his tongue felt thick and useless in his mouth. He thought of his father's chronic optimism, his refusal to give up, his loyalty to Mamá in spite of his love affairs, his unceasing generosity. There weren't many people like him left. Enrique coughed into his fist and began to speak: “My father used to say that when a man fell, he was also flying, that to fail spectacularly was better than never trying at all—”

Before Enrique could continue, a man in knee-high boots and a brocaded cape strode down the center aisle of the chapel. He announced that he was the deposed Prince of Samarkand and was there to pay his respects to the Great Court Conjurer, a distant cousin by marriage. Then he removed a pistol from his holster, dramatically pressed it to his temple, and let out an archaic howl.

Delia covered the girls' faces but Enrique was transfixed by the sight of him (the tip of his tongue was, oddly, blue). Whoever this intruder was, he certainly had a rapt audience, the greatest names in magic and poker all under one roof. The prince pushed the pistol harder against his temple and recited part of a poem that Enrique recognized as Martí's: “And love, without splendor or mystery, dies when newly born, of glut. The city is a cage of dead doves and avid hunters! If men's bosoms were to open and their torn flesh fall to the earth, inside would be nothing but a scatter of small, crushed fruit!”

Enrique closed his eyes. He heard the rhythm of dried seeds and the thunder of a thousand wings and pictured the deranged prince slowly floating to heaven. When he dared look again, the intruder had disappeared and a dozen fluttering doves had taken his place in the chapel. Then a storm of orange blossoms trembled down upon them, divinely, like rain.

Marta Claros

W
hat had come over her husband lately? No matter how tired he was, Frankie mounted her with the regularity of that metronome La Señora had on her upright piano. Tick-tock, back and forth, for what seemed an eternity, until he shuddered with relief. Then after he finished his business, he would settle on her breasts and suckle them for another hour. This made her sore, too, but Marta didn't mind as much. It was what she liked best about making love with Frankie—closing her eyes, pretending he was an infant, the gentle stirring inside her.

Frankie credited his zest in bed to his new heart medicine. Dr. Meyerstein had him participating in a study for a drug that was supposed to combat angina and increase blood flow to the heart. Marta guessed that somewhere along the way, the blood was making a wrong turn and heading for Frankie's thing instead. How many other women in Los Angeles were suffering like her?

At six in the morning, Marta went into José Antonio's room.
Mi hijo, mi hijo, mi hijo.
She loved saying this, had dreamed of saying it for so long that she could hardly believe it was true. Marta tried to wake him up, but José Antonio only shut his eyes tighter. At breakfast he refused to eat anything. How could he reject his scrambled eggs and tortillas? Two whole fresh eggs just for him, not thinned out with water to share with anybody.

“I'm not hungry,” he whined. When Marta was a girl, she'd gone hungry every day. She and her brother used to pretend to order steaks at La Mariposa restaurant. “Rare, medium, or well-done?” Evaristo would ask in his best imitation of a first-class waiter. Now José Antonio ate meat at least twice a week.

Across the street, a flock of seagulls gathered on Mr. Haley's roof. What were they doing so far from shore? In El Salvador, people used to predict the weather by the appearance of birds, especially ones they didn't ordinarily see. But Marta couldn't figure out what these seagulls meant.

On the way to her son's day care, Marta turned on the radio.
Pregunta a la psicóloga
was on the air, with its usual parade of lovesick women. One caller complained that her husband had run off with the plumber who'd come to unclog their drain. Another had a crush on her teenaged nephew. The drama never stopped. Marta suspected that she must be missing some essential element of femininity. Maybe sex was like cooking. You needed a touch of spice for the dish to turn out. Dinora envied Marta all the sex she was getting from Frankie—“He stays hard for how long?!”—and jokingly offered to relieve her burden. Marta didn't find this the least bit funny.

José Antonio asked her why the women on the radio were crying but Marta only said that they'd burned their tortillas. What could her son learn from these women? She didn't want him picking up any philandering tips either. As they exited the freeway, a well-spoken gentleman telephoned in. Marta turned up the volume. It wasn't often that a man called the show for advice. He said that his name was Jorge de Reyes and that he was in love with a Las Vegas showgirl who couldn't keep secrets.

“She talks to her friends about everything, even our lovemaking,” he lamented.

“You mean she tells everyone your business?” Dr. Fuertes de Barriga asked. “And you don't like that?”

“Of course he doesn't like that,” Marta sniffed.

“Why do you feel you need to control what she says about you?”

“For heaven's sake,” Marta shouted at the radio. “What man wants his business spread around town?” She couldn't hear the rest of the conversation because they pulled up to Little Dolphins Day Care. It was only six minutes after eight but the monitor gave them a late slip. Marta didn't understand this gringo fixation with time. She consulted clocks only out of necessity. To have a watch on her wrist like a pretty time bomb ticking away toward eternity—why, it made her nervous to think about it.

Marta stopped by the park before heading to the Florits'. None of the other babysitters were there yet. Not even that single father who'd asked her to dinner was around. Dinora had urged Marta to go out with him at least once. What could it hurt? “The candles say he's a wonderful lover
and
loaded.” But Marta declined the invitation. Who had time for romantic capers? Frankie might be a handful but he loved her. Hadn't he proved it by marrying her?

It'd happened so unexpectedly. One morning Dinora had called from a pay phone and told her that Frankie's Korean wife was in town snooping around. The next day, Marta took off work and waited outside the dress factory. Just as Dinora predicted, Mrs. Soon arrived at noon in a chauffeured black sedan. She was petite and very elegant. She wore a jacket with gold chains connecting the buttons. A part of Marta wanted to introduce herself, to pay Mrs. Soon the respect she deserved. After all, how could they be enemies? Didn't they both love the same man? But she was too ashamed to say anything.

Inside the factory, Marta slipped onto the sewing line next to Dinora and pretended to work. The other women greeted her with their eyes but said nothing. They knew what was going on. Marta noticed Mrs. Soon scrutinizing her from afar. Had she recognized her from a photograph? Then
la coreana
walked over to her and with great dignity announced in Spanish: “I return to Seoul this evening and will not come back to Los Angeles. You are free to marry my husband, if you wish.”

The women on the line cheered but Marta was speechless. She managed to cross herself before taking Mrs. Soon's hand and bowing deeply.
“Gracias, Señora.”
Now she would have Frankie to herself. That same afternoon he took her to City Hall and they got married, just like that. (Frankie surprised her with a new dishwasher from Sears as a wedding present, too.) Afterward they went out for Korean barbecue, to the same restaurant where they'd had their first date. Maybe married life should have begun with a fancier dinner, but Marta didn't care.

Camille and Sirenita were waiting at the front door when Marta arrived. “Marta!” they shouted in unison. “Marta's here!” Señora Delia was in the family room exercising to an aerobics video. The instructor was an actress Marta had seen in movies when she was a child. She must be in her seventies by now, Marta thought. She suspected that it was plastic surgery, not exercise, that kept the actress looking so good.

In the playroom, Marta helped the girls build a castle with expensive wooden blocks. In the toy district, she could've picked up a set for one-tenth the price. Last week she'd bought the children a book that cost ninety-nine cents and made animal sounds when you pressed its buttons. Señora Delia's books cost fifteen dollars each and did nothing at all. Everything at the Florits' was like that, including a steel refrigerator that cost the same as Frankie's down payment on their house. Marta couldn't imagine wasting so much money even if she had a million dollars.

She earned a good salary, ten dollars an hour, and with that she was able to do what she wanted and still send money back to El Salvador. If only she could secure her son's citizenship papers, she would sleep better at night. Her next appointment at the immigration office wasn't for months. On Marta's last visit, two officials had tried every which way to catch her lying. They'd brought up her brother's deportation, too, but Marta maintained that his case had nothing to do with hers. The man was understanding but the woman, Officer Stacey Rodríguez, accused Marta of wasting the government's time.

Marta stuck to her story: that she'd been eight months pregnant when her godmother was hit by a watermelon truck on the corner of Calle Arce; that she'd flown to El Salvador to see her; that in the days of anguish that followed, Marta had given birth prematurely to her son. If she'd waited the time necessary to get his papers in order, she would've lost her job. This was why she'd crossed the border illegally. Marta had a notarized letter from her employers, Mr. and Mrs. Enrique Florit, attesting to these facts.

The truth was that José Antonio had been born the day after Christmas, weighing barely four pounds. When Marta first held her tiny brown bundle of a son, it was as if someone had said:
Marta Claros, we have decided to give you the Pacific Ocean.
That was how big it felt.

Tía Matilde had almost changed her mind about giving Marta the baby, but La Virgen intervened. In her final moments of labor, Tía Matilde prayed loud enough for the midwife to hear: “
Virgencita,
forgive me for breaking my promise to Marta but I can't give her this child.” After a long silence, the midwife whispered, “I'm very sorry but he didn't make it. He stopped breathing.” Tía Matilde quickly crossed herself and took back her words. Then the boy miraculously opened his mouth, swallowed a gulp of air, and howled to high heaven.

What other proof did Marta need that José Antonio was meant for her?

For five weeks, she and her son traveled through Guatemala and Mexico, taking one bus after another, bribing inspectors, buying diapers and formula along the way. A friend from church had given birth to a baby boy in December, too. Marta convinced the woman, Lety Sánchez, to meet her in Tijuana with the birth certificate. The border guards wouldn't be able to tell their boys apart, Marta urged her, especially
morenitos
like them. The plan worked perfectly: Lety ended up taking José Antonio across the border as her own child.

Camille and Sirenita had colds and couldn't go to swimming practice. Their favorite stroke was called the butterfly, though there was nothing light or graceful about it. The girls churned up so much water doing it that they nearly emptied the pool. Marta was relieved that they were skipping practice today. Watching them made her feel guilty. After many expensive lessons with Mr. Karpov, she'd never learned to swim. Señora Delia hadn't fired her, though, despite the Russian's complaints.

Her
patrona
was in a bad mood again. Lately, she fought with her husband over inconsequential things—the temperature of the house, the amount of television the children watched. If only a fraction of what Marta heard on the radio was true, then it was likely that one of them was having an affair.

“I could shoot him sometimes,” Señora Delia complained over a cup of herbal tea. She was still perspiring from her aerobics workout.

“I did,” Marta said.

“Did what?”

“Shoot my husband.”

“You killed Frankie?” Señora Delia nervously set her cup in its saucer.

“Of course not.” Marta straightened up. “I meant my first husband, in El Salvador.” She saw the fear growing on Señora Delia's face. “But I didn't aim to kill. I only shot him in the foot so he'd leave me alone.”

“Did it work?”

“Actually, it did.” Marta laughed, and her
patrona
joined her.

It was dark by the time Marta picked up José Antonio from day care. The shadows from the trees patterned the sidewalks in lace. How the days flew by when she spent them with children. At La Doctora's house in Beverly Hills, this had been her loneliest hour. Marta wanted to stop and pick up some fried chicken at the take-out place on Olympic but it had become too dangerous, a gang hangout. Last time Frankie was there, one of the
cholos
had tried to break a bottle over his head.

José Antonio was asleep in the backseat and snoring comically, one long snort followed by a couple of short ones. Marta hoped her son wasn't coming down with the twins' cold. Marta couldn't bear it when he endured the slightest discomfort. One day they would visit El Salvador together and bring twenty suitcases filled with presents for everyone, especially Evaristo and Tía Matilde. She wanted to track down her father, too. How surprised Papá would be to meet his grandson. Wasn't José Antonio proof that she hadn't forgotten him, that she loved him still?

Marta found it difficult to keep her eyes on the road. She kept glancing in the rearview mirror at her son, who had one hand draped over his forehead like a TV starlet. His limbs were relaxed and easy, his dreams sweetly peaceful. To have a child, Marta thought, was to hope all over again.
Mi hijo, mi hijo, mi hijo.
She rolled down her window and let the words drift into the breeze.