Del maguay, Samantha Roque'10

drivers who are supposed to pick them up, but one by one the rides come and soon Gonzalo is there alone. He's resigned to a long wait—Quillota's little microbuses are unreliable even during the day, and after sundown the one to Limache, which is forty-five minutes away, runs every second hour at best. The only other people in the plaza are a group of teenagers roughhousing and eating and occasionally breaking into pairs to kiss aggressively.

They all have the same tight jeans and pierced lips and angry hair slanting into their eyes, and

Gonzalo can barely tell which ones are boys and which girls; he wonders what he would do if his little daughters turned into kids like these. He can't believe that they will, though. He can barely believe that they're going to grow up at all, but it seems like Violeta, his six-year-old, is another centimeter taller every weekend, and three-yearold Paula can say more every time he talks to her on the phone. When he called home yesterday evening, she said, "Today I saw a purple flower and Mami said it has the same name as Violeta, but what about the Paula flower? It's more pretty, right? and he almost cried. There's no way, he tells himself, that she could ever look like this. He feels like an old man, watching them and disapproving, but he can't help wanting to walk across w the plaza and say: Fix your hair, take all that ridicuO lous metal out of your faces, and learn how to act. ^ You're going to be adults soon, you know. As if he could read Gonzalo's mind, a boy with blue-tipped hair and a ring through the midO die of his nose takes a final bite of the chicken leg he's been gnawing and flings it towards him, making the entire group burst out laughing. The bone skids greasily to a stop in front of Gonzalo's bench, and within seconds two stray dogs bound out of the darkness, claws scrabbling on the concrete, and pounce on it. For a second they play tug-of-war, but the smaller dog, a rangy black animal with a pointed nose and only one ear, quickly wins the drumstick, and the other, which is so big and shaggy it has to be part wolf, clamps its teeth around the black dog's neck instead. They roll in front of Gonzalo, snapping and snarling, and he pulls his feet onto the bench protectively

and looks for a branch or rock to throw at them. There's nothing around, though, and so he watches as the wolf-dog flips the black dog onto its head, sending the bone flying out of its jaws. Both dogs leap for it, but this time the wolf-dog is faster by an instant: it grabs the drumstick and the other dog latches onto its throat instead. They're under a streetlight, and Gonzalo can see blood glistening around the black dog's teeth and in its matted neck fur; it's a tie, he decides, they should share the bone. Instead, though, the wolf-dog clubs the

other with its heavy front paw and the black dog falls away. It twists in the shadow, trying to lick the cuts between its shoulder blades as the wolfdog gulps the bone down in two huge snapping bites. When the wolf-dog has finished eating, they both shake themselves and lope, almost together, down the street. Gonzalo twists to watch them and to look for the micro, which of course isn't coming, and when he turns back there's a woman standing in front of him. "Can I help you?" he asks politely, and she purrs, "I don't know, m'ijo, can you?" and he knows immediately that she's a whore. He's a little surprised—Quillota's a quiet town, and a conservative one even by Chilean standards, and so the putas generally stay inside and let men come to them. Gonzalo went to a brothel once, the night he graduated from high school, and he remembers the girl he was with that time looking a lot like this one: same glossy black hair, same heart-shaped mouth, same hungry eyes, and same huge chest. He knows it's been thirteen years and she must be saggy and worn out by now, but something in him insists that this is the same woman, and so he asks, "What's your name?" "Yesica." It's not her, of course, and his chest tightens sadly. "What's yours?" "I'm Gonzalo." "Well, Gonzalo,"—she stretches his name out, breathing through the vowels—"what are you doing out here all alone?" "Waiting for the micro to Limache." "All the way to Limache? That could be hours, and you'll get so cold! Aren't you cold already?" she asks, and leans over to rub his arms, giving Gonzalo a perfect view down her shirt to her tetas spilling out of her white lace bra. He doesn't want to look, and he doesn't want to compare her body to Maqueta's, to imagine how different and new her breasts would feel in his hands, but he does, and even as the blood rushes between his legs he feels a knot settling in the hollow of his throat. "I don't mind the cold much," he says. "Well, I just hate it. Look, why don't we go somewhere warm, just for a little while?" She cocks a thinly plucked eyebrow at Gonzalo, and he raises one back at her and realizes with a sudden rush of adrenaline that he wants to say yes. It's been a long day and he's annoyed with the teenagers across the plaza and waiting for the micro and the bus breakdown and traveling, and he wants to go with Yesica, if that's even her real name, and clear his head for two or three lucas. Still, he's a married man, and so he says, "I'm sorry, but I'm waiting for the micro, remember? I have to stay in the plaza." "Oh, my room's just above the empanaderia," she says, pointing across the street at a brightly lit shop with a blackboard in the window listing the twenty different kinds of empanada they have that day. "You'd be able to see the micro out the w window easily." J "Well, all right," Gonzalo says slowly, still look- ^ ing at the empanaderia instead of into Yesica's ^ face. She puts her long-nailed thumb under his o chin delicately and tips his face towards hers; he o expects her to kiss him and isn't sure whether he'd like her to or not, but instead, she says, "Are 7