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“It could be dangerous.”
“I know.”
“If you stay, my focus will be split between protecting you and the thing I have to do.”
“Well, you’re just gonna have to figure a way around that.”
Olo had a lot of friends in the barrio. One of these was a man who called himself Primo Valasquez. When I told her what I needed, she gave me this name along with an address.
Set behind a lavish flower garden, Primo’s house was three stories high and as wide as any other three houses on the block put together.
The front door of the house was open wide. For a minute or so, I stood in the shade of the front porch, watching. Inside there was a TV tuned to some steamy telenovela and a radio playing Mexican rap music, but the little kids playing in the front room saw and heard only each other. There were seven or eight of them from five to nine years old. The oldest was a raven-haired girl who held in her arms a bouquet of roses, plucked from bushes in the front yard. Most of the other kids were taking turns trying to walk between the TV and the couch, maybe six child steps, while keeping a partially deflated soccer ball balanced on the top of their heads, without using their hands, of course. One little boy succeeded and was rewarded with a large yellow rose.
He danced around and stuck out his tongue at all the losers, the whole time managing to keep the soccer ball steady on his head.
“Hello,” I said at a volume loud enough to rise above the radio, the TV, and the children’s laughter.
The whole nursery of faces turned toward me, frozen in stunned silence.
“Hi,” I said. “I’m looking for—”
“Felix! Felix!” a chorus of child voices called out.
A moment later a young Latin man in tan painter’s pants and a red T-shirt came out from a doorless doorway that led further into the house. He was maybe five foot eight, with close-cut black hair and a face that seemed a little longer than it wanted to be. There was a hint of a mustache on his upper lip and maybe a touch of confusion at seeing me.
“¿Qué quieres, vato?” he asked, something like that.
“I’m lookin’ for…” I began. But I stopped because he turned away and yelled something else in Spanish to someone somewhere else in the house.
The children were still staring at me.
The young man picked up one of the smallest kids and sat down on the sofa with her on his lap. From there he and she watched me as if maybe I was an inanimate object or, at least, something different than they ever expected.
“Yes?” a young woman said.
Looking up I saw her. I tried and hopefully succeeded at not smiling.
It’s not that she was pretty or sexy or handsome the way some women are. No, she wasn’t anything so mundane. She wore a light blue shift that was definitely homemade and cut to fit her figure perfectly. This young woman, who seemed to me flawless, was five three, with a youthful figure that might also have been called maternal. Her skin was burnished orange-brown and her hair was thrown back over her shoulders, so I couldn’t tell how long it was. Her almond-shaped eyes contained a question rather than confusion.
“Can I help you?” she asked.
“Um, yes, I’m looking for Primo.”
The contemplative crease of her brows and the time she took to decipher things that I had not spoken only deepened my appreciation of this woman.
“Come,” she said.
I followed her past the doorway that she and the young man had come through. We went down a long hall to a very large kitchen. There we came upon three older women. They had been chatting in Spanish while cooking and cleaning until they noticed us. Then they stopped what they were doing to watch us pass through to the other side of the galley to a door that was only a few steps away from the back door of the house. But instead of going out, my guide turned to the left, bringing me to a stairwell of left and right alternating stages.
“Are you friends with Señor Valasquez?” she asked when we got to the first landing.
“No. A friend of mine asked me to come see him.”
“He is a very nice man.”
We made three more turns before she asked, “You live around here?”
“No. I live in New York.”
