The Argentina Rhodochrosite (13 page)

25

A thin teenage boy in t-shirt
and jeans entered the house. His eyes were intelligent and found the visitor immediately.

“
Bombón
,” said the woman. “Were you at the rally?”

“Yes,” he said.

“What happened?”

“
Una cagada. Ya fue
.” He nodded at Ainsley. “Who is this?”

“I forgot her name,” said the mother. “Chiche went for a walk again, and she found him.”

“Chiche, Chiche,” the teenager said, picking up his little brother. “You are such a traveller.”

Ainsley was surprised by the boy’s maturity. Back in the United States, most kids his age were figuring out ways to cheat on math tests. But this kid was acting like a father, like the head of the household.

“Ainsley,” she said, extending her hand. The teen kissed her cheek instead. “
Mucho gusto
,” he replied, in the formal way. “I am called Hugo. Where are you from?”

“The moon.” She was tired of answering that question.

Hugo laughed. “I’m guessing America.”

She wasn’t surprised that he’d seen the invisible
yanqui
sign hanging around her neck. “And you might be right. Were you at Ovidio’s speech?”

Hugo shook his head. “He’s a fine
fútbol
player, but he won’t get to the Casa Rosada like that.”

That was the nation’s capitol building. Ainsley started to think about her mission again. She was here to find a rhodochrosite necklace that had been stolen. And one possible thief, the maid, was apparently living somewhere in this community.

And to Ainsley, Hugo seemed like the type of person who might be hooked into the inner workings of Villa 27. She tipped her chin higher. “Do you have any idea why he won’t play?”

“I have heard rumors.”

“Me too.”

Hugo accepted the
mate
from his mother and sipped. “You go first.”

Ainsley nodded. “Someone told me that his favorite necklace was stolen.”

“Then we heard the same rumor,” Hugo said.

It was laughable, Ainsley thought, the way Nadia and Ovidio had demanded that she keep the theft of the necklace secret. Two-thirds of metropolitan Buenos Aires seemed to already know.

The teenager was smiling now. So was his mother. There was a jovial feeling in the room. Ainsley decided to reveal one of her cards. “I also heard that the woman who might have stolen it lives in this villa.”

“Really?”

“Yes.”

His mother cut in. “How do you know that?”

“I’m a journalist. I talk to people.”

Hugo handed the
mate
back to his mother. “You know, I think I might’ve heard that too.”

Ainsley’s heart skipped a beat. This could be the access she’d been hoping for. “The woman is a maid. At El Hotel Perdido.”

Hugo stood in the middle of the room, his eyes scanning the wall. He was someone whom you could actually
see
thinking.

“I don’t know her,” he said.

“Yes you do,” said the mother.

He turned around. “I do?”

His mother sat back with confidence in her kitchen chair. “Think. You have a good brain. It’s going to get us out of this shit hole.”

Hugo shook his head. “Mama, I don’t know who this woman is.”

“It’s Pedro’s mother.”

Hugo’s eyes grew wide. “Pedro?”

“Yes.”

“So that’s why he stopped coming to the games.” The teenager turned to Ainsley. “Yes, I know her son.”

Ainsley pushed harder. “Can I meet her?”

The family exchanged glances. They seemed to be waffling. Ainsley recognized that there was a lot she didn’t know. Maybe it was too dangerous. Maybe they didn’t want to bring a journalist into the innermost parts of the
villa
. Maybe the families weren’t getting along.

Nonetheless, Ainsley needed to at least try. She knew what to do next. From inside her purse, she unrolled a hundred pesos and laid it on the kitchen table. “I
really
want to meet this woman.”

Hugo looked at the money but stayed calm. “One hundred? That gets you the family name.”

The air had grown tense. Off-the-books negotiations always did that. And Hugo had accurately guessed that there was more bread where that had come from. So Ainsley dutifully unrolled another hundred peso bill, and laid that down too.

“That’s all I have,” she said.

The
bombilla
clattered from the mother’s lips. Two hundred pesos was, for her, a weekly wage.

Hugo nodded. “Sure, why not.” He took the bills and stuffed them into his pocket.

“No,” his mother commanded. “Here. Give it to me.”

“But
mama
—”

She stood up and punched her hands on her hips. A stern look spread across her face. Even Ainsley was intimidated.

Hugo lowered his head and gave his mother the money.

“Now,” she said, “you take this woman to find Pedro. I’ll buy you something later.”

“Yes
, mama
.”

The mother took Ainsley’s hand. “
Es un placer
. Please come back any time. Not just for the money either.” She lifted her little boy by the hand. “Say goodbye, Chiche.”

“Bye,” the boy said, then hid his face.

As she ducked under the doorway and went out into the street again, Ainsley felt a wave of happy camaraderie surge through her body. As poor as this family was, she felt a little more at ease here. And her own paycheck-to-paycheck existence back in the United States didn’t look half bad by comparison.

She was also discovering that living in shantytowns didn’t necessarily lead to an immoral or dissolute life. Ainsley felt happy to have helped the family out.

And now Hugo was going to return the favor.

26

The sun had risen to the
top of the sky. Shacks cast short shadows onto the ground. Ainsley followed the Argentine teenager, still avoiding the green liquid trickling down the middle of the lane.

Hugo moved easily and lightly, nodding at passersby, whistling a simple tune. It was an accident of birth that he was here. In another life, in the United States, he would be finishing his senior year at an expensive private high school, sailing through his classes, trying to figure out whether an undergraduate degree from Duke or Georgetown would hold more cachet in the world of corporate law.

But instead he was here, in the midst of a broken-down
barrio
in Buenos Aires, merely trying to find a way out of the shantytown.

Still, the snotty comments his mother had made about their superiority to the other people in this
villa
seemed to have a ring of truth. While Hugo’s family did at least have a house of cinder blocks, Ainsley noticed several structures whose walls were made of scrapped plywood, or even simple cardboard. She watched a dirty woman rooting through a pushcart loaded with recyclables, sorting the useful from the useless.

Then there was a loud clattering ahead of them, and Ainsley instantly clasped her purse closer. The racket came from a group of residents who had surrounded a trailer and were striking on its metal sides with sticks. Some sort of official insignia had been stamped on its side.

Hugo stopped walking. “Oh, that’s not good.”

“What is that?”

“The government trailer. They keep promising us better housing but never come through.”

Ainsley watched the people beating the sides of the trailer, over and over, in sheer anger. Now she understood the frustration that Ovidio had been alluding to onstage earlier that morning.

“We’ll go this way instead,” said Hugo, nodding to the right. “It’s longer but safer.”

Ainsley followed him into a very narrow lane, seven feet wide, puddles of stagnant brown water on the ground. A woman was giving a child a bath in a free-standing tub.

“Where exactly are you taking me?” she said.

“To lunch,” he replied. “Are you hungry?”

“Yes, but—”

“Good, you can buy for both of us.”

She had no problem doing that. “But what about your friend Pedro? I need to meet his mother.”

“Oh, he eats there too. It’s the best place to find him.”

“Can’t we just go to his house?”

“I only play soccer with him. I don’t know where his house is.”

They emerged from the narrow lane into another dirt street, this one quite a bit wider. It seemed to be the main shopping avenue of Villa 27. Ainsley spotted a bicycle repair shop. A woman sat under a tent selling premixed herbal remedies. There were a couple of
empanada
stands. None of the businesses seemed to be on-the-books. It was a shadow economy, a shadow community.

Hugo gestured towards a wide piece of hanging vinyl. It was blue, on which there was a rough image of St. Sebastian being pierced with arrows. “That’s the
comedor
.”

“Where we eat?”

“Yes. Don’t say anything. Let me talk to them.”

She followed Hugo around the vinyl hanging and found herself in a small outdoor dining area. There were eight picnic tables lined up in two neat rows of four each. An open door in a shack at one end of the area indicated the kitchen.

Ainsley felt like she’d just entered somebody’s illegal backyard operation. Which it, in fact, was.

About twenty children were at the tables finishing a meal. Each one was scraping clean a metal pan with her fingers. It seemed that nobody could afford utensils here.

They sat down at one of the picnic tables. A woman came out from the kitchen scratching her belly. “
Que paso
, Hugo,” she said.

“
Señora
,” he said formally, “what is good today?”

“I don’t know. That goddamned
mono
stirred up all the shit.”

“So what do you have?”

“I can give you the kiddie menu,” she said.

Ainsley looked over at the kids’ plates. They were leaving the eating area now. She could see a grayish porridge of rice, potatoes, and carrots left in a couple of plates.

“No, we want the adult one,” said Hugo. “We have money.”

She thought about it. “I’m making a beautiful lamb’s head stew. It will be nice and gelatiny in an hour, if you can wait.”

“No thank you,” replied Ainsley. “Do you have anything else?”

The woman thought for a moment. “Maybe some
choripan
.”

“That’s all?” said Hugo.

She looked annoyed. “You want steak? Go and make a million pesos and go to a
parrilla
. Then save a seat for me.”

“I’m sorry,
señora
—”

“What about your
marida
? What does she want?”

Hugo blushed. The woman had just called Ainsley his wife. The
comedor
owner glanced at her visitor. “It’s an honest question! She’s so skinny, I don’t know if she even eats.”

“I am really hungry,” Ainsley said.

“Of course you are,” the owner said. “It’s been years since a piece of bread touched your tongue. Two
choripan
coming up. Give me a couple minutes.”

The woman turned towards the kitchen. Hugo called after her. “Oh, did Pedro eat lunch yet?”

“Pedro?” she said. “That little bastard hasn’t come here for a week.”

Hugo turned back to his visitor. “I guess we wait and hope for Pedro.”

She nodded. They were alone in the
comedor
now. Ainsley’s stomach gurgled with hunger. She was trying to avoid the crankiness that comes with low blood sugar.

A few minutes later, the owner returned to the table with two plates. An enormous sausage sandwich lopped over the edges of each one. These sandwiches were easily a foot long. No condiments, no vegetables—just meat and bread. Food was easy in this country.

She set the plates down. “
Choripan…
and
choripan
.” Then she plunked down two cans of Coca-Cola. “And to drink.”

Then she looked at Ainsley. “Where are you from?”

The question couldn’t have been timed more poorly. Ainsley had just torn off a giant bite of the
choripan
. She had a mouthful of delicious, juicy pork sausage.

“She’s from the moon,” said Hugo. “That’s what she told me.”

“Let me know if you like it, moongirl.” She paused. “Or even if you don’t. I know it’s good anyways.”

When she left, Hugo and Ainsley tucked into their sausage sandwiches. Ainsley chewed, she tasted the fatty sausage, listened to the sounds of passing trucks in the lane, people welcoming one another in the street. The sky was a perfect blue.

This may have been one of the “villages of misery”, but life felt comfortable to her at this moment.

Meanwhile, between bites, Hugo kept her entertained with a running commentary on life in Villa 27. How the entire settlement pirated electricity from the electrical cables near the freeway. How this
comedor
was run exclusively by women, how those women fed the children in shifts every day, at specific times, how the better food—the meat—was saved for adults or people with money. How the very existence of this
villa
was, in fact, illegal.

Ainsley made it halfway through her sandwich before she pushed it away and mopped her mouth with a napkin. They were still alone on the patio of the
comedor
. She started to wonder if she’d been used again.

“So where’s Pedro?” she said.

“You heard her,” said Hugo. “She said he hasn’t been coming.”

“Maybe you can look for him.”

Suddenly Hugo’s eyes lit up. He was staring over Ainsley’s right shoulder. “There he is.”

Ainsley twisted her head. A group of eight little boys had entered the
comedor
, with an adult woman as chaperone. This was the next shift of children to be fed.

“I don’t see him.”

“In that group. The one on the far left.”

Ainsley looked again. Pedro, apparently, was a child.