“Dessert? Sure, why not?” Hector agreed when the waiter returned with a dessert menu. He threw down his starched napkin, smeared with plum sauce and beef Wellington, and patted his taut stomach. He gazed smiling at his uncle, who shot a stern look at his nephew. Hector then recalled that his uncle had only sixty dollars, and the restaurant that Vicky suggested came with two chandeliers, three waiters per table, a tier of candles, real china and silver, a string quartet, row upon row of French wines, and—despite the embarrassment of their rattling Ford—valet parking. The attendant parked it behind a Dumpster.
“On second thought,” Hector said, calling back the waiter. “I’m pretty full. I have some popcorn balls at home. Me and Mando will just snack on them later.”
The waiter left with the dessert menu under his arm. The conversation continued where it had left off: soccer. Seeing that everyone was interested—or at least was not yawning—Hector bragged mildly about how many goals he’d made.
“Yeah, everything is true,” Mando said, backing up his friend. “He’s the best player at school.”
Hector beamed and bit back a smile.
“Enough of soccer,” Uncle said, now turning on his silky voice. “Vicky doesn’t want to hear about soccer.” He gazed longingly at Vicky, who was warming up to Uncle. “Why don’t you chamacos take a walk in the mall?”
All evening he had complimented Vicky with such comments as “your article in the newspaper was swell,” “fish is my favorite food,” “I like the buttons on your dress,” and “You’re a tidy woman”—small talk that made Hector wonder how his uncle ever got girlfriends.
“But I didn’t tell Vicky about when we played Hollenbeck Junior High,” Hector said. He lowered his head and saw that he had plum sauce spotted on the front of his shirt. He thought of scraping away the stain, but that would be poor form.
Uncle shot him another hard look.
“All right, we’ll take a walk,” Hector said. But before he scooted out of their booth, Hector reached discreetly into his pocket and slipped his uncle a twenty-dollar bill. His uncle would need the money for the dinner, he figured, money and a lot of luck if he wanted to catch Vicky.
Uncle winked at Hector and whispered, “You’re a great nephew. We’ll meet you out front in ten minutes.”
“Simón,” Hector exclaimed and wheeled away with Mando shrugging into his coat.
They left the restaurant, toothpicks in their mouths, and crossed the parking lot in a hurry because the night had grown cold. A puddle was stiff with ice and mud. A wind stirred a broken kite hanging from a telephone wire. Even the pigeons, clustered near a steamy grate, hunkered together like a gang, warbling. Hector and Mando walked into the mall, rubbing their hands and complaining of the cold. But soon they shook off the cold and sauntered aimlessly through the mall, window shopping.
“My uncle seems pretty silly,” Hector said at the Wherehouse Record Store. Two girls had caught their eyes, and they watched them float by, packages under their arms.
“He’s in love, ese.”
“Yeah, I know,” Hector agreed, “but Mando, he kept telling Vicky how he liked her dress. Even the buttons. It was embarrassing.”
They entered a Footlocker that was blaring a song. Hector tried on a pair of Reeboks with an air pump and walked around the store, shoelaces dragging. The shoes fit comfortably, and he would have bought them except that his pockets held only a comb, a pencil, and a pinch of sunflower seeds—nothing worth bartering.
They left the Footlocker. Hector asked Mando, “Do you think those guys will really get us?”
“Quién sabes, Hector. If my older brother wasn’t in the service, he’d help us out. He’d get his army friends.”
“I thought his friends were in prison.”
“Some of ’em. Some are in the army or at City College.”
They walked from store window to store window in silence. The girls they had seen earlier were in view. They were sharing a cotton candy, pulling at the feathery hairdo of pinkish candy.
“It was weird,” Hector said vaguely. “He was right there, in the doctor’s house.”
“I wonder why he didn’t grab us then? I would have if I had been him.”
Hector touched his throat. He still remembered the mean stare and the words, “It’s your turn to have your neck broken.” He touched the back of his neck, the softest bone in his lean body, and shivered at the thought. “I’m glad that he didn’t tear into us right there. We would have missed a good dinner.”
They left the mall and were starting back to the restaurant when they heard a honk. For a second, Hector thought it was them. But he looked past the shining headlights and saw that it was Uncle’s Ford, a belch of steam rising from under the hood. Uncle got out of the car and ran up to Hector and Mando.
“Listen, I need your help,” he whispered, looking back at the Ford where Vicky sat dabbing lipstick on her mouth. His face was flushed and his eyes were wild with excitement. It had been months since he had had a date, and the first with two boys looking on. “Vicky digs me. She says I look like Carlos Santana.”
“You don’t look like Santana.”
“That’s not the point,” Uncle said. “I’m gonna drop you guys off at the apartment and go back to her place for coffee.”
“Come on, Unc, we weren’t born yesterday—or the day before,” Hector said.
“All right, I’m going for a glass of wine. Be mellow.” He paused for a second and waited for the boys to show a little sympathy. Surely, he thought, they understood something about love.
Hector and Mando looked at each other. They shrugged their shoulders and said, “Okay with us.”
“I won’t be long,” he said. “And Hector, thanks for dropping that ten on me.”
“It was a twenty, Unc.”
“Oh, yeah, that’s right—the twenty.” He looked back at the car. Vicky was now playing with her hair. “She’s really cute and smart.”
They piled into the rattling Ford and started back to the apartment listening to country-western music on the car radio. The song was about a tumbleweed that blew from New Mexico to Oregon. All of them laughed and ridiculed the song.
“I remember a dog that walked from Sacramento to his home in Merced,” Vicky told Hector and Mando. “I wrote an article about him.”
“¿De veras?” Hector asked, his head propped between Vicky’s and Uncle’s shoulders.
Vicky told them the story. She said the owners thought that the dog was asleep in the back seat of their car and pulled out of a McDonald’s with burgers and fries but no dog. Instead while the owners were inside McDonald’s the dog had jumped out the window and taken up with a boy on the slide. The boy then sneaked the dog into his own car, where he was passed from one child to the next and squeezed like a toy. They brought the dog to Sacramento. He escaped there from the family and ventured back to Merced, through pastures and fields, subdivisions, business parks, busy streets, and freeways.
“Didn’t they make a movie about that dog?” Hector asked.
“Could be,” Vicky said and then turned to Uncle and, touching his sleeve, said, “I hope you’re not upset about the article running in the newspaper.” She was referring to the column, “Today’s Youth.”
“No, not at all,” Uncle lied. “It made the boys celebrities.”
Hector and Mando looked at each other and mouthed the word “Celebrities?”
They rounded the corner where the rear window had fallen out. The glass glistened like spilled treasure. Hector pointed at the glass and Uncle said vaguely, “I wonder why it fell out.”
Uncle pulled into the driveway of his apartment. The boys got out, and Uncle Julio walked between them to the door, his hands squeezing their shoulders and instructing them, “Don’t open the door for anyone. ¿Entienden?”
“Don’t worry, Unc,” Hector said. “I know self-defense. I’m invincible.”
“I’m gonna break that ugly one’s face,” Mando growled, jabbing at the night air. “I’ll make him so ugly that when his mom sees him, she’s gonna jump from a building.”
Uncle sighed and said, “Maybe I shouldn’t go.” He looked back at the idling car, where Vicky sat waiting. But the yin and yang of desire pulled on his heart.
“Nah, Unc—go! Don’t worry about us.”
Uncle sighed even deeper and let out a ghost of breath that hung in the cold air. He shook his head. He opened the front door and then he wagged his finger at them. He warned them, “Okay, but don’t answer the door. You got it?”
They gave Uncle a thumbs-up sign. Uncle patted them on their backs and hurried back to the car, his bum leg giving him no problem.
Hector and Mando walked up the stairwell, feeling the walls because the apartment lights were off. At the top of the stairs, Hector felt around for a light switch. He flicked it on, and for a second he thought that maybe the robbers would be standing there grinning. Instead, he was staring at Uncle’s pants on a coat hanger, the pants that he’d spilled coffee on and had washed in the kitchen sink.
Hector turned on the floor furnace and then checked the message machine. He poked a finger at the replay button and listened to, “Is Rick there! I wanna talk to Rick! I’m gettin’ tired of him not calling!”
Hector and Mando dropped to their knees and rolled on the ground with laughter. The woman seemed desperate. The second beep sounded and a voice said “Hi, mi’jo.” It took Hector a moment to recognize his mother’s voice. “I hope you and Mando are having fun. I’m okay. Chorizo got in another fight with the neighbor’s cat. He lost…” The message droned on like a bee and ended with a warning for them to be nice or else. They waited for the third message and when the beep sounded there was a series of heh, heh, heh, heh laughs, which spooked Hector. There was just that eerie laughter and nothing more. Full of anger, Hector punched the message machine and snapped, “Okay, clown face. Come and get us!”