Father Chuy of the Sagrada Familia

A new young man in fatigues patted them down in the driveway. Two others ushered them into the house through a side door, one in front of them and one behind. They all wore the same dark glasses and carried the same weapons, as alike and anonymous as the knock-off brand G.I. Joes the boy and Mario had played with as children. After passing through a hallway–dark after the bright sunlight outside–they emerged into one of the expansive, sun-drenched rooms of the middle section of the house. The first guard extended an open hand toward three richly upholstered leather sofas that formed a rectangle bordered on the fourth side by a wide fireplace and stone hearth. They sat down on the closest one. The mahogany-colored leather felt cool against their skin even through their pants. The first guard took up a place by the door, standing at attention as the other one disappeared up a spiral staircase at the back of the room. His footfalls rang out on the marble, as efficient and evenly-spaced as the clicks of a metronome. Neither Don Victor nor the boy spoke.

The boy did, however, look around the room with interest. On every side of them a menagerie of animals stared sightlessly out of glassy eyes: the somber heads of deer from the walls; a jaguar poised on the table before them, its mouth open mid-hiss; ducks rising in motionless flight, their lifeless wings outstretched; a small alligator–or was it a crocodile?–its lacquered scales gleaming in the sunlight. Three magnificent deer antler chandeliers hung at intervals from the vaulted ceiling.

After several minutes, two sets of muted footsteps announced the guard’s return. He and the Scientist stopped at the landing and the latter called out heartily, “Don Victor!”

The older man, already standing in anticipation, now squeezed the boy’s shoulder, and together they crossed the room.

“Good to see you, amigo. How’ve you been?” The Scientist’s voice was low, his words clipped, as though he were expending the least possible energy to communicate. He extended his hand to each of them. “Is this your boy?”

“Yes. This is Chuy.”

“A pleasure.”

The Scientist was dressed in jeans, an American brand t-shirt, and a pair of Converse tennis shoes. He had an intelligent face–he was really a scientist, they said, and had studied in el norte–with penetrating black eyes under thick brows. There was an ageless quality about him that made it hard to determine how old he might be, but the dusting of gray in his hair put him, the boy thought, somewhere between forty and fifty. He was taller than average, but otherwise so unremarkable that the boy was reminded of something he’d once heard Father Chuy say, how Christ Himself was so like other men that Judas Iscariot had to identify Him with a kiss.

They crossed the room then sat back down on two of the sofas. A girl was summoned, a lithe, long-legged creature with hair to her waist, wearing a maroon skirt so short that the boy quickly looked down at the patch of sunlight at his feet. She returned with a silver tray upon which sat a Buchanan’s Scotch bottle, a bottle of Coca-Cola, tumblers with ice, and a stack of glass plates. Another girl followed, this one shorter and wider with the round, ruddy face of the campesino. She was dressed in the same dried blood-colored attire. As the first girl poured the drinks, the second one set a tray of food on the thick marble table before them–cueritos, ceviche, tostadas, tacos dorados–then both left the room as soundlessly as they’d come in.

The two men talked business, but in a kind of elaborate code that prevented the boy’s making out the meaning of their words. As he couldn’t follow the conversation, he renewed his attention instead to the room around him. Figures of deer frolicked on leather lampshades. A billiards table stood in one corner, its base of ornately carved wood. Then the boy noticed something he hadn’t seen before: a large, round orb, almost as big as a soccer ball, on a small table on at the other end of the room. The milky glass sphere–it must be a lamp, the boy thought–was resting on a base of what looked like human hands. The boy squinted into the corner, determined to see the object more clearly. Yes, they were hands, four pairs of them, from what he could tell, the fingers outward and cupped slightly to hold the globe. The differing tones of the flesh–from light tan to a dark, sun-baked brown, left no doubt as to their authenticity. The boy laid his plate on the table so hard it clanged. Don Victor turned and raised his eyebrows, but the Scientist seemed not to notice.

“Got a couple men on the Sagrada Familia job,” he continued briskly. “It’ll be tonight. That padrecito just doesn’t seem to understand.”

“Be hard to catch that one alone, I’d think,” Don Victor observed, turning back to the Scientist and taking a bite of ceviche. “They’re out the doors at every Mass there.”

“At the parish? No, it won’t be anywhere near there. At the rectory, afterward. The other priest’s away. He doesn’t go around sticking his nose where it doesn’t belong, that other one. No reason to include him.”

The boy now stood abruptly. There was a faint layer of sweat on his upper lip, Don Victor noticed. The old man looked at him fixedly, but the boy avoided his gaze.

“Sir, can I– I need to go to the bathroom.”

“Tadeo, take Chuy to the bathroom.” The Scientist spoke without turning around.

When the boy had lain for several minutes with his face against the cool floor tile of the palatial bathroom and felt that he could move again without vomiting, he slowly stood and leaned toward the mirror. His eyes were watery, his face yellowish, under the fluorescent lights. He turned on the tap and splashed water onto his face, catching sight as he did so of his two cupped hands, so like the hands on the table outside. He closed his eyes with a shudder.

When the boy emerged from the bathroom, the men were gone. Tadeo led him back through the house and out a back door, where at a distance he could see the figures of Don Victor and the Scientist standing near a big dog on a chain. The animal pulled wildly at its tether, black fur bristling. As he approached, the boy saw that the creature was much larger than it ought to have been, with overlong legs and an incongruously huge head. It looked surreal, a yellow-eyed monster from a horror movie or nightmare.

“Look, Chuy, half wolf. Isn’t that something?” Don Victor looked questioningly at the boy, but again he averted his eyes from the old man’s face.

“Can’t get near it. No one can. The guy who takes care of it throws the meat over there, within its reach. Raised it from a pup, but it’s too wild now, even for him.” The Scientist’s staccato words now had a new sound. The boy recognized it as the tone of parents about their children, coaches about their winning teams; he was proud of this aberration of nature.

Together they walked back around the house toward the Suburban, the two men still deep in conversation, the boy distracted by his own thoughts. He took a last look back at the house, still brilliant in the somewhat diminished sunlight, then turned definitively away. Before they left, the Scientist pressed a handful of silver coins into the boy’s hand with a wink, “for a Coca-Cola.”