The Argentina Rhodochrosite (12 page)

22

Ainsley saw the bottle immediately. Lit
by the morning sunlight, the glass object pinwheeled over the heads of the crowd, flinging sticky drips of alcohol everywhere. Everybody could see it.

Except Ovidio. He had turned his head to glance at his security people. His tiger reflexes, ordinarily so quick, were off-guard.

The bottle struck him directly in the side of the face.

It clattered to the floor of the stage, still intact. Ovidio stumbled backwards, stunned. His hand went up to his cheek. It came down with blood.

Then Ovidio turned belligerent. “Try to assassinate me,
barra brava
. I dare you. I’ll catch the bullet in my
teeth
and spit it back at your
mother
.”

The crowd were nearly out of control. Flags waving, people linked arm-in-arm and jumping.

“But I don’t think you have the
huevos
,” said Ovidio. “None of you can
touch
me.”

The security leapt onstage, surrounded the celebrity, and hustled him quickly down the steps and back towards the waiting Rolls Royce.

The crowd began to boo. Never mind that he’d just been injured. The crowd was booing everything and nothing—their frustrated lives, the society that kept them at the bottom of the ladder.

“He’ll come back,” said Sebastian.

“No way,” said Ainsley.

“You’ve obviously never seen him on the field. He’s going to be angry. Watch.”

The angry jeering continued, growing louder now. The people weren’t finished with him. And Ovidio wasn’t finished with them.

A minute later, he bounded back onstage, holding a bloody towel up to the left side of his face. He strode directly to the center of the stage and took the microphone one more time.

“Whoever did that to me,” he said, stabbing a finger towards the crowd, “is a son of a whore.”

Some applause, but more boos.

“Why do you hurt the one person who wants to help you? The one who scores goals for you? The one who represented this
pais
in La Copa Mundial?”

The people’s distaste grew more palpable. Ainsley saw hands pushing away the air, slumped backs turning to the stage. The people didn’t like being lectured on their behavior. She remembered, in school, enduring the teachers who scolded an entire class after a single person had misbehaved.

Ovidio wound up for the final punchline. “Nobody cares about you, sons of whores! Not one stinking person in this country!” He punched the air. “All of you,
sons of whores!
”

That opened the floodgates. Despite their initial sympathy for his injury, the crowd had now completely turned on Ovidio. An angry surge of people pushed forward towards the stage. The security guards who lined the front of the stage pulled out their truncheons and began clubbing people with abandon. More pop-pop-pops sounded from the rear of the crowd.

Ovidio was hustled offstage again. This time, she could see him being shoved back into his Rolls-Royce, which then roared off the way it had arrived.

Ainsley stood there, shocked. She’d never before experienced a full-on riot, certainly never at nine-thirty in the morning.

But that’s exactly what was starting to happen.

She heard the sharp crack of gunshots being fired into the air. The people closest to the sound tried to flee. Others, nearer the stage, were collapsing in clumps of tangled limbs. She saw a woman stumbling, one hand at her heart, the other up in the air, wailing.

Chaos had gripped the rally by the throat.

Ainsley felt herself being jostled and shoved. She glanced over at Sebastian, just three feet away. He wasn’t there. She spotted him, already ten meters away. She tried to swim towards him, through the melee, but he was being carried further off.

They were caught in a riptide of humanity.

Soon Ainsley lost all sight of her guide, and the crowd thinned enough for her to push her way back to the road, and down towards his car.

When she found the parking spot, his vehicle was already gone. After warning her to stay close to him, Sebastian had abandoned her.

In the
villa miseria
.

23

Ainsley Walker felt anger, rage, and
panic flooding her body.

If she were the type of girl to spit in disgust, she would have done exactly that. Instead she swore loudly, letting loose a string of silky expletives.

Not a single person in Argentina could be relied upon, she felt, not one. Granted, it was only Ainsley’s second day, but she was already sick of the flakiness, the broken promises, the weird push and pull of cognitive dissonance.

The sound of several sharp cracks brought her back into the moment. Those weren’t firecrackers. Those were more gunshots.

She watched the flood of humanity come rushing down the street, away from the violence. The flesh flowed around Ainsley, a rush of blurred faces and guilty smiles of ecstasy, as though these residents relished the chaos.

Ainsley didn’t share the feelings. She just stood there like a rock in a rushing stream, spinning around uselessly. She couldn’t go back towards the stage. But she didn’t dare enter the shantytown either.

Something very short stumbled onto her feet and made her forget the dilemma. The thing was about a meter high. It was wearing a baseball cap.

It was a little boy. His clothes looked stiff and well-cared for, but he was clearly alone, and starting to cry.

Ainsley glanced around for a parent. Nobody was looking for him. Nobody was frantically shouting a name. In other words, this kid hadn’t just wandered a few feet too far. This child was
really
lost.

Ainsley crouched down in front of him, took his hand.

“Where’s your mother?”

The boy just looked at her in that inscrutable way that children sometimes have. Ainsley hadn’t ever felt too maternal—it wasn’t in her personality—but at this moment she experienced a wave of motherly pity engulf her heart. She picked up the boy in her arms.

“Can you show me where you live?”

The boy shook his head sadly.

“You don’t know?”

That was a problem. However, Ainsley realized that holding this little boy would also be an advantage. It conferred a protective shield upon her. Nobody would mess with a woman holding a crying child.

But neither, she discovered, would they assist her. The flood of humanity continued pouring around her, into the long, towering alleys of the
villa
. Ainsley felt like a rubber stopper uncorked from the bottom of a rapidly draining bathtub.

“Chiche!” a girl’s voice shouted.

Ainsley turned. A young girl, maybe eleven or twelve, was standing in the opening of the villa. She was pointing at the boy.

The boy was pointing back at her. He recognized the girl.

“Is this your brother?” Ainsley asked.

The girl nodded. Then another series of sharp cracks erupted in the air, much louder this time. The violence from the rally was drawing closer.

The little girl spun her hand towards herself:
Follow me
.

Ainsley hesitated. The villas were the most dangerous places in Argentina. But that girl was old enough to know where home was. Maybe she could lead Ainsley to temporary safety.

It was her best choice. Clutching the boy, Ainsley took a deep breath and entered the gate… and into the heart of Villa 27.

Ainsley found herself running down a narrow alley, which was perfectly straight, about fifteen feet wide, and lined on either side by the crooked shacks. They looked like piles of leftover material from construction sites.

She clutched the boy to her chest. As her feet kicked up clouds of dust, Ainsley craned her head to look at the upper stories of the tenements. The mouths of dry pipes opened directly onto the alley. Yellowed bedsheets were hung inside open windows.

A line of bright green liquid trickled down the middle of the road. Ainsley made sure not to let it touch her shoes.

The boy’s sister was running about ten meters ahead. She had the long legs and coltish gallop of a girl on the brink of puberty. Others were running with them, hollering at neighbors, slapping hands stretched out from the shanty windows. Ainsley sensed that these residents were used to danger, had dealt with it all their lives.

There was another series of sharp cracks. Ainsley heard ricochets off the walls of the alleyways. She swore under her breath. It felt like these criminals were just shooting for the fun of it, for the power trip, because Ovidio had somehow signalled that pandemonium was okay. Or maybe they just enjoyed terrorizing people.

Whoever had the weapons, they were gaining ground quickly.

The boy’s sister suddenly twisted left and dodged into a small doorway. Ainsley slowed down and followed her. The doorway was low enough that Ainsley had to duck her head. She screeched to a stop inside.

Ainsley found herself inside a family’s home. A heavy woman was in a rickety kitchen chair, knitting at the table. She looked up.

“
Ay mi dios, Chiche
!”

The woman heaved herself up from the chair and ran over. Ainsley handed her the boy. The mother cleaned the dirt off the boy’s face, kissed his forehead. Ainsley admired the way his little legs were splayed around his mother’s torso.

Her daughter had already dropped to the floor and begun brushing the hair of a doll. “Who is this?” the mother said, pointing at Ainsley.

The girl shrugged.

The mother looked at her visitor. Ainsley stuck her hand out. “Ainsley Walker,” she said. “From the United States.”

“What are you doing in my house? With my boy?”

Ainsley explained the situation, and the woman softened up. “I should’ve known they would start shooting at that damned rally,” she said.

“Of course.” Ainsley thought about asking why she let her five-year-old boy wander with his sister unattended in such a neighborhood, but kept her mouth shut.

The woman continued. “What did that bastard say?”

“Who?”

“
El Mono
.”

“Many things,” Ainsley said. “It was very emotional.”

The mother frowned. “I’m glad it ended badly. Everything he touches turns to shit.”

The gunshots were growing even louder now. The woman gathered her children and slid them under the kitchen table. “Down, down, stay down,” she said. “Don’t get up.”

Then she looked at Ainsley. She pointed under the table. “You too.”

24

The mother quickly shuffled over to
the front door and flipped the deadbolt. Then she propped her chair underneath the doorknob. Ainsley could hear the loud voices passing in the alley outside, only a few meters away.

Ainsley peered out the window with a tentative eye. She could see a gang of eight or nine young guys, barely teenagers, swaggering down the lane. Their guns were brazenly hanging from their waistbands. She had been right: they were young bucks on a tear.

She watched one kick over a rickety piece of fencing. Another took aim at a corrugated metal shed and blasted a hole through it. The others laughed. Ovidio had ignited the worst element of the crowd.

“Get down!” whispered the mother again.

Ainsley quickly crouched on the floor and willed herself to stay quiet. She shuddered to think what might have happened if she, the
yanqui
dressed in morning-after clubwear, were to be discovered by those guys. It would be game over.

Chiche was looking at her through the legs of the table and remaining chairs. The boy waved at her. She waved back at him.

The boys’ loud conversation was directly outside the window. One made a big hocking sound from his throat, followed by the sound of an enormous spit. Something landed on the floor next to Ainsley.

It was a loogey. They’d spit through an open window.

The quartet waited on the concrete floor, not moving, until the voices died away, and the occasional gunshot sounded further on. Then the mother said, “Okay, it’s good. They’re gone.”

The two kids went scooting into the small living room, giggling, as though nothing had just happened. Ainsley looked at them. They’d grown up with experiences that she had never known.

Ainsley pulled herself to her feet and looked around. The walls were made of cinder blocks. The kitchen had only a refrigerator and a hotplate. She couldn’t see running water anywhere within sight. A rickety staircase led upstairs, probably a homejob.

The mother slid the chair out from the door with practiced ease. Ainsley realized that she’d rehearsed this a hundred times.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“This is life,” replied the mother. “For now.”

“How many children do you have?”

“Just three. I wanted more but God didn’t bless me.”

“Is your husband home?”

“No,” she said, “he hasn’t come home in a long while.”

Ainsley guessed that that meant weeks or months. This woman seemed comfortable with a stranger in her home. “Do you mind if I wait here for a few minutes?” she asked. “Until the chaos dies down?”

The woman nodded and grew formal. “It’s a pleasure. Let me put on the
mate
. Sweet or bitter?”

“Whatever you want,” said Ainsley.

She poured water from a bottle into a kettle and placed the kettle on the hotplate. While waiting for the water to boil, Ainsley strolled through the main room. A simple green couch had been shoved against one wall. Above the cushions hung a picture of Che Guevara.

The floor was unfinished concrete except for one small patch, near the staircase. This area had been painstakingly covered with green ceramic tiles. Ainsley touched the edge of one tile with the tip of her shoe. It was at least an inch high. She imagined how many toes had been stubbed on it.

“We are going to finish the floor when we save enough money,” the mother said.

“Have you been living here a long time?”

“No,” she said, “only nine years. We’re not staying much longer either. We’ll leave when my husband comes back from Mendoza. He’s working on a construction project.”

“You’ve done well with what you could,” Ainsley said.

“We never planned to stay here long,” the woman repeated. “It’s only temporary.” She glanced around and said it again. “It’s only temporary.”

The woman said these words with a practiced air. As though she’d been telling herself this for a very long time.

Then she rose, opened a plastic container, and spooned some yerba leaves into the gourd. She shook it upside down, then opened the top and poured in the water. She waited a few seconds, inserted the silver
bombilla
, or straw, and sucked deeply.

She rolled the liquid around her mouth, then spit it out. “
Mate del zonza
. The second one will be better.”

She refilled the gourd, waited a few seconds, then sucked on the straw again. A smile spread across her face. “In Argentina, no matter how bad the problem,
mate
will solve it. Or at least make you forget.”

She smacked her lips. Then she filled the gourd a third time, waited a few seconds, then passed it to Ainsley. “Please.”

Ainsley accepted the gourd and drank. A hot, bitter tea streamed down her throat. She tried not to make a face, but this was an acquired taste, to say the least.

“Yes,” she said again, “this is only temporary. When the government gives out the housing, we’ll be first in line.” She waved her hand in a circle. “Unlike all these immigrants.”

“These people are immigrants?”

“Of course,” the woman said, as if it were common knowledge. “These assholes living here are from Bolivia, Paraguay, Chile. They have no education. But my husband and I are Argentine.” A proud yet wistful expression came across her face. “We used to have a house. And a yard.”

Ainsley herself had neither. She guessed that this family had lost nearly everything after the economic crash.

Then the woman jerked back to the present. She looked at Ainsley holding the gourd. “It’s not a microphone.”

“What do you mean?”

“Finish it and pass it back.”

Ainsley took another gulp from the
mate
. It tasted a little better this time. With some sugar, she might get used to it.

There was a swift knock at the door. Ainsley grew alarmed and stood up again.

The woman motioned for her to stay down. “There’s no need,” she said. “I know the knock. It’s just my son.”