Loteria by Mario Alberto Zambrano Read Free Book Online

was quiet, but sometimes I wasn’t because I wanted attention. And if no one gave me attention I’d keep bothering them until they’d listen. Muy cabezona , she’d say, like your father. Stubborn as a mule.
    But whatever.

EL BANDOLÓN

    M om used to say Pancho Silva had a good ear but I remember them the size of waffle fries. His voice sounded rough and broken, and if he started telling us a story it would take him forever to shut up. Like when he’d tell us about Pedro Infante or how someone discovered him as an actor in Mexico City. He was drinking at a bar in the middle of the day taking a break from a job at a creamery. A woman in a red suit with a bun over her head the size of a pomegranate noticed him. She told him he looked like Pedro Infante, that the similarity was remarkable. Even the build was the same.
    From then on Pancho started working as Pedro Infante’s double.
    But then Pedro died. He was in a plane crash, somewhere in the mountains, and it took them a long time to find the pieces of the plane because they were lost under trees. The search patrol never found the metal plate that was inside Pedro’s head from a previous surgery. So of course, people think he’s still alive, hiding in a cave somewhere. Life as a movie star was too much for him. The story of the plane crash was a way to be left alone.
    Pancho said Pedro would visit him in Magnolia Park in the middle of the night, and he’d tell him that he was living in a small town outside of Puerto Vallarta. They’d sit on the porch and talk in the dark and strum the strings of a guitar until morning, then Pedro would say good-bye and tiptoe out through the front gate.
    None of us believed him.
    Gastón would ask, “Really, Pancho? Pedro Infante was here last night and you didn’t take a picture?” He explained why taking a picture would’ve been a bad idea. If someone found out Pedro was alive and in Magnolia Park his cover would’ve been blown. It’d be on the cover of a magazine like National Enquirer .
    “Cállate ya, Papa,” Tío Daniel would say, and Pancho would storm out waving his hands in the air. He’d go to the back patio where his barbecue pit was, because that’s where he went to calm himself. Tío Daniel would say he was losing his mind, already at sixty-eight years old, and he felt sorry for him.

LA CALAVERA

    E strella was in the kitchen with Mom:
    “I could have two tiers on both sides, all white with stairs and the tiara on top, but not on the cake. I want it next to the music box.” “You want the music to be playing the whole time?” “Yeah, the whole time.” “And if no one can hear it?” “Maybe we could put a small microphone somewhere?”
    I was in the living room with Papi, watching, but not really watching, the news. We weren’t talking to each other. I can’t remember why, but I think it was because we had gone hunting the day before and my wrist was sore from pulling the trigger. When I complained about my wrist and fingers he always thought I was throwing it in his face, because of the accident. But I wasn’t throwing it in his face. It was true, sometimes it was hard to move my fingers, especially my thumb, because it felt stuck.
    From nowhere a smell came inside the house, a horrible smell, like something had died. Papi and I turned our heads and looked out the window because it was coming from there.
    Estrella and Mom came into the living room with their faces all twisted.
    Papi said a pinche perro must’ve died. He got up and walked to the window.
    “It’s true. It smells like something died,” I said.
    All four of us went to the windowsill, shoulder to shoulder, and looked out, like if the bad smell was riding a horse and we wanted to see it pass. Like if we wanted to point to it and say, “Look! ¡Allí esta! ” Then it would make sense. Because it’d be something we could see.
    But then, ¡Bofos! It was gone.
    Our heads were out the window and all we could smell was the ordinary air.