Gideon

Illustration by Vincent Di Fate

Flaco had known that it would be I bad, but he had no idea how bad it would be until Serafina called him by every name he had.

“José Eduardo Gonsalves y Mercado! You cannot be serious!”

Flaco leaned against the frame of the open window and stared at the snarling traffic on Fort Washington Avenue, four stories below. At the grimy sidewalks, at the tight-packed throng of people passing one another in rigid isolation. At the dealers and the hookers and the hustlers hanging on the street corner—the corner of “Powder and Pussy”—waiting for the cars from the burbs to come and deal. He would give anything to leave this place; to find Serafina a home somewhere bright and green, where flowers grew The Sun was still high and the breeze that rippled the dingy white curtains of the apartment brought no relief from the July heat.

Flaco shrugged and stepped into the kitchenette of their two-room flat. He pulled a six pack of El Presidente from the refrigerator, snapped one can out of its ring and tossed it to Serafina. He took another one for himself and rubbed it across his forehead and the side of his face. The icy condensation on the can let him forget for the moment how hot it was in the city. Even the sleeveless undershirt he wore did not help. “It is a wonderful opportunity,” he said.

“An opportunity to kill yourself!” Serafina shook her fist at Flaco. The fist holding the can. It would be a bad thing, Flaco thought, to be near that can when it finally opened. He popped his tab one-handed with his thumb, and poured half the contents down his throat. Then he put the can to his forehead again and rolled it back and forth. Serafina could not understand how important this opportunity was for them…

“The company will take good care of us,” he told her.

“The company cares only about the money!” she said.

“Righteous beans,” he said, switching to English. It was not so grand a language as Spanish, but it did have its own peculiar charms. “They spend all that money training us,” he continued in the same tongue, “they gonna take real good care of us when we’re upstairs.” He ought to speak English more often. It would be important when they made the final selections. They wouldn’t take along anyone who couldn’t talk to his crewmates.

“You’re crazy, Flaco. My mother always told me never marry a Dominican. They’re all crazy.”

Flaco reached out and grabbed Serafina by the waist and held her tight against him. “That’s why we come after you Boriqua girls. You drive us crazy.”

“Flaco…” She pushed against his embrace, but not too hard. He was a skinny man, but wiry, with arms as strong as cable. You work as a rigger, you had to be strong. And there were worse places for Serafina to be than in her husband’s arms.

“I told you all about the hazard pay and the bonus. No place to spend money in orbit, so you and me, we have a good pile when I come back. Enough maybe to buy us a nice house.” Telling her about the hazard pay, that had been his mistake. Hazard pay meant hazard. Well, rigging was always dangerous, if you didn’t know what you were doing. Be some special dangers up in space, Tucker had told him. Yeah. So, they wouldn’t need people like Flaco, otherwise. “Be plenty money,” he told her as he insinuated his free hand between them, rubbing it over the hard, flat surface of her belly—not yet swelling with his son. “Set little ‘Memo’ up in style!”

“Mmm,” she said, pressing against him. “You’re still crazy.” But she said that while she kissed him.

His fingertips found the waist of her jeans and he pushed them inside. Serafina squeaked… and pulled the tab on her beer can.

The spray spattered them both with the ice-cold liquid. It drenched the white undershirt he wore. Serafina laughed and danced away and Flaco chased after her. She ran behind the sofa and they faked left and faked right, and then Flaco leaped over the back of the sofa. She whooped and dodged him.

He cornered her finally in the bedroom; but they had both known when they started that he would.

Ossa and Pelion Heavy Construction held its qualifying trials at Pegasus Field, several miles south of Phoenix, Arizona. The company shuttle bus from Sky Harbor rolled through a different country than the one Flaco knew. He had never seen so much empty space, or so few people. It gave him the shivers. A dull-colored bird burst from the roadside brush and darted across the highway in front of the bus. The driver said it was a roadrunner and one of the other men on board said, “Beep-beep!” The way the driver laughed, Flaco figured he’d heard that one already.

The Pegasus complex was a half dozen low-profile adobe-tech buildings set in an arch around a broad landing field. The airport shuttle dropped Flaco and two other men at the administration building in the center. They stood with their duffel bags in the hot, desert wind, wondering where to go next. A large bronze of a winged horse reared above the main doors directly in front of them. Through the gap between the admin building and the next one to the left, Flaco could see spaceships squatting on the field. Three of them were the small ballistic ships that flew Earth-to-Earth; but the big one with the scorch marks was an Orbiter.

Flaco stopped a man in brown coveralls who seemed to know where he was going, and asked him where the riggers who wanted to work on the space station were supposed to meet. The man gave them directions and Flaco thanked him. As they set off, one of Flaco’s companions spoke.

“Do you know who that was, ’mano?” Tonio Portales was a thickset Miami Cuban who had joined Flaco s flight in St. Louis.

“Who?”

“That dude you stopped for directions. His name tag… that was Ned DuBois.”

Flaco shifted his duffel bag to his shoulder for an easier grip. “DuBois? Wasn’t he the man who—”

“Yeah,” said Tonio. “He was ‘The Man Who.’ First dude ever took one of those Plank ships into space.”

Flaco grunted. “He still flying? I was just a kid back then.”

“You chust ein kid now.” Sepp Bauer, Flaco’s other companion, had joined them at the Pegasus shuttle stop in Phoenix Sky Harbor. He had come from some place called Karlsruhe by way of JFK, and spoke an English so badly accented that Flaco could barely understand him.

“I mean that was, what, nine years ago, right? I was only thirteen. In middle school. They showed it on a big screen in assembly. Remember how they thought his co-pilot was lost in space, but DuBois found him anyway?”

They found the check-in table just inside the entrance to the second building. Flaco showed the first woman his driver’s license and she gave him a name badge with his O&P company photograph already on it. The others had to look into a vidcam and have their images scanned onto cards. The “pix-pics” looked as bad as anything ever captured on film. The second woman checked his plane ticket against a computer screen and gave him a chit that he could use for reimbursement later. The third woman gave him a folder stuffed with all sorts of documents.

“There are forms in here for you to fill out,” the third woman explained. “O&P employment form. Government tax forms. This…” she pulled one out and showed it to him, “…is an application for a green card. Because this phase of the construction is being managed out of Phoenix, an American work permit will be required.”

Flaco grunted. “No necesito una tarjeta verde.” His parents had brought him to the States from the Republic when he was eight, but he didn’t see why he had to explain himself to anyone, least of all to a down-your-nose Chicana. Boriquas and Cubans were enough to put up with.

The woman looked doubtful, but shrugged. “Your packet also includes today’s agenda, ’mano,” she continued, “plus a map of that part of the facility you are allowed into.”

“And tomorrow’s agenda?” he asked.

A wintry smile, all the colder for the desert heat he had just been in. “You will be given that if you are invited back.”

Flaco saw what she meant when he entered the auditorium where the opening meeting was to be held. It was laid out like a movie theater, with a stage and a screen up front and rows of seats on risers. There were easily two hundred men in the room. Some pasty-faced Anglos, but mostly a mixture of bronze and ebony. Young, strong, and immortal. Thin, burly, bearded, clean-shaven. A handful of women, each one the target of a dozen men. Flaco was surprised that so many men had volunteered their personal time just for the chance to be picked for one of the fifty slots.

Eh, ¿por qué no? The pay was generous, and later you could point to the sky and tell your grandchildren that you had built a star. It would be a thing to be proud of.

The men sat scattered around the auditorium, some chatting in groups, twisting around in their seats and leaning over the backs, or standing in the aisles, or lounging against the wall under the projection booth—chattering in a hodgepodge of languages that blended into an unintelligible buzz. Most of them sat alone, slouched in the padded seats with their arms folded, waiting for something to happen. A few were sleeping.

There was a group of ten men—mostly chunky, mostly blond and paleeyed—who sat together and talked among themselves in a gargling language. Russians, Flaco guessed. He knew the “consortium” that was building the station included Russians—and Brazilians, Germans and Japanese, as well—and he wondered if there were some sort of quota system in place: so many welders or pipe fitters from each nationality. Flaco wouldn’t mind losing his slot to a better rigger—well, not too much—but it would not be right to lose it to a lesser man just because the lesser man held the right passport.

Tonio caught up with him and, a few moments later, Sepp. The German was frowning over his packet of forms. Tonio pointed. “I see three seats,” he said and started down the aisle. Flaco and Sepp followed him. Funny, thought Flaco, how three men who have just met can become partners. He wondered how many of the other chatting groups were like his own: friends who were also strangers.

The first speaker was a suit, so Flaco gave him a special sort of attention. The suits would not make the decisions that mattered (unless there really were quotas to be juggled) but the suits usually knew all about “purpose and scope.” Some guys didn’t care about that. As long as you did what the crew boss told you and you got paid on time, what did it matter? But a man who knew what he was building and why did a better job building it, and that might matter when they picked the crew.

The video they showed on the pixwall was beautiful, backed by lively, inspiring music and narrated by a voice underlaid with lots of authoritative bass. Flaco would have sworn the space station was the real thing, if he hadn’t known the “real thing” was still unfinished. And maybe parts of the video were real. Who knew? That movie last year where the star had OD’d in the middle of filming—you could hardly tell which scenes had the live actor and which the morphed reconstructions.

The video started with a view of a Space Shuttle launch while the Voice explained how the external tanks were once jettisoned to burn up over the Indian Ocean. “…But Ourkind soon found a use for these enormous containers. A frugal sense of recycling, plus a dream…”

Animation, Flaco decided as the camera “followed” the Shuttle all the way into orbit itself. Space launches were cheaper than they used to be, but they still wouldn’t have had a “camera ship” flying side-by-side with the Shuttle, would they? Flaco held his breath when the background faded to the black of space. The pixwall was a maxscreen wraparound, so it was almost like wearing a virtchhat, which was almost, like, for real.

“Now, when the Shuttle is finished with the external tank, NASA drops it off in orbit for pick-up.” The video showed a smiling Shuttle pilot waving through his front viewport to a crew of spacesuited figures wearing the LEO “Roaring Lion” icon.

“Our guys,” the Voice continued in a folksy tone, “attach the booster rockets, just as the great Forrest Calhoun and Ned DuBois did when they salvaged the very first external tank in 2007—after a programming error accidentally put it into orbit.”

Flaco flexed his hands and studied the action intently. Animation or actual film, that was a rigging job. He nudged Tonio with his elbow and jerked his head at the screen. Tonio grinned and nodded. Yeah, they teach us the proper method, you bet, but it couldn’t be too hard if a couple of amateurs had done it first.

“LEO brings these tanks up to the construction site at orbit 250-E, where they are now being configured into a new space station…” Now Flaco was certain the video was morphed. He watched men stringing cables and nudging the huge tanks into line, head-to-tail to form the hub shaft, fitting the others in pairs around it to form the pinwheel, ready now for the welders, pipe fitters, and other trades. Construction wasn’t anywhere near that stage yet. “…Each tank provides over two-and-a-half kilosteres of living space. That’s ninety thousand cubic feet. Enough cubic for a hundred people to live and work comfortably. More, if they’re friendly.”

People living in cast-off containers sounded a lot like a shantytown to Flaco, and some of the newsnets were calling it just that. But none of those newsers were hiring riggers, and something cheap-but-real beat a deluxe daydream any day.

When the rah-rah and the flag-waving were done—and they really did wave flags: full of stars, stripes, double-headed eagles, and all sorts of stuff to celebrate the international nature of the job—the suits handed things over to the hard hats, who gave a series of briefings a whole lot more practical and a whole lot less inspiring. The morgue shot of the Brazilian welder whose hardsuit had ruptured sent a dozen of the men out of the auditorium. One of the external tank modules would be named Anselmo Takeuchi in his honor, they announced. Cold comfort to his family, but a grander monument than most construction workers ever got. Flaco hoped they wouldn’t have to name all twelve tanks, but figured there’d be more than one placard welded in place before completion.

A good thing indeed that Serafina was not here…

One of the men they introduced was Morris Tucker, who would boss one of the rigging crews. Tucker stood and nodded to the assembly, but didn’t speak; but then he never had been a man of words. Flaco had worked with Tucker on a couple of O&P jobs. He figured “Meat” would be a tough boss, but fair; and hoped he would draw the man’s crew after he was picked.

After the introductions, O&P marched them through a battery of medical and psychological examinations. Flaco’s original application had included a complete physical exam, but LEO was taking nothing for granted. Doctors and nurses in white coats poked him and prodded him and extracted fluids by a variety of means, and they looked into places that he wouldn’t even let Serafina look.

In one room they put him in a virtch helmet and all of a sudden he was standing on a girder a long ways up in the air. He had to “walk” to the other end. When he glanced “down,” people and cars were so small they looked like pepper on a table cloth. When they told him to walk back again, the ground was so far down that airplanes flew below him.

He hated the pencil and paper tests most of all. A lot of the questions didn’t make any sense. Which would you rather be: a ballet dancer or a hockey player? What did that have to do with rigging a job? Ballet dancers were all swish, but hockey players were dumber than a stone. So, which was the right answer for getting the job? I’d rather be dumb, or swish? Psycho-testing. See if you’re a psycho. He wondered if the tests were really any good.

“They don’t want the best welders,” a burly, copper-skinned man told him while they both waited on a cold, wooden bench to be called into still another examining room. “They want the toughest welders.”

“No importa,” Flaco told him. “I’m a rigger.”

The other man laughed. “Riggers, too,” he said. “You can be the god-damnedest rigger on the face of the Earth. But you won’t be on the face of the Earth. They’d rather have a second rater who doesn’t get seasick than a top-notch guy who pukes in his spacesuit. Hope you’re not scared of heights!” He laughed again. “They’d rather have a guy who can think cool when it hits the fan than one who follows the practice to the letter—and then cites the paragraph number that proves he did everything right, after everything turned out wrong.”

Flaco grunted. “Sounds like they want me, then.”

The man chuckled and stuck out his hand. “Henry Littlebear, upstate New York.”

“Eddie Mercado, Washington Heights, Manhattan. Folks call me ‘Flaco’ ’cause I’m skinny.” They shook hands. Littlebear was bigger than any man he’d care to argue with, and nearly bigger than any two. “What brought you here?”

“Same thing as most, I expect. Pay. Adventure. The chance to drop a gob of spit a real long ways. I hope you don’t enjoy the weed too much, Flaco.”

It wasn’t anyone’s business what he ate, drank, or smoked, so he made no comment. Littlebear tilted his hand up to his mouth, with his thumb mimicking a spout. “And you better not love the firewater too much. See, my wife, she’s a med tech, so I know what some of these tests they’re running are for. ‘Weeding out the weed,’ so to speak.”

Flaco scowled at him. “What are you talking about, tonto?”

Littlebear grunted. “Unh! Keemo sabe. They no want-um potheads or alkies.” Then, dropping the act. “Or folks with vacuum cleaners for noses.”

Now Flaco grunted. He hadn’t meant tonto in that way, but explaining would not have improved things, and Littlebear seemed to have taken it good-naturedly. Flaco was silent for a moment. Made sense, what Littlebear said. It would cost O&P a bundle to lift a man to orbit and keep him there. They wouldn’t want drugs or alcohol to screw up his judgment. “Your wife ever tell you how long afterwards they can tell? I mean, if it was just a little bit?”

Littlebear grinned. “Nerve-wracking, ain’t it?” He leaned against the plaster wall behind the bench and rubbed his hands together “Wish I had me. a drink to get me through this.”

Flaco gave him a suspicious look, but the man was just grinning.

At five o’clock, the shuttle buses lined up in front of the building to take them to the hotels Pegasus had booked. Flaco stood in line with the rest and waited his turn to board. His hand stole to his breast pocket once or twice and patted the folded-up receipt that nestled there. Good for one more day, so either he had passed the tests or it took time to get all the results back. Not all the men in line wore the same grin he had. Some looked dejected; some, relieved. A few had an uncertain look, as if wondering what they had gotten themselves into.

A group of Pegasus employees had gathered in front of the administration building to watch. Civilian dress for the most part, though a handful were wearing colored coveralls. The pilot, DuBois, lounged against the cement column at the foot of the building’s entrance ramp, talking to a younger man with red coveralls and punk hair. Morris Tucker joined them and traded fives with the slacker. Noticing Flaco at the bus stop, Tucker waved. “Hey, Flaco!”

Flaco returned the greeting, and the man in line behind him said, “Looks like you got yourself some grease.”

Flaco shrugged. “Seen Tucker around. It don’ mean nothing, ’cause he don’ make the pick.”

“Yeah, well, having friends never hurts. Be a shame if someone got a slot outta special favors.”

Flaco turned and looked the man in the eye. “You know, ’mano, is a good thing you are already so ugly.”

The other man was heavyset and wore a big, curly beard. Intricate tattoos of eagles and hawks twisted up both his arms. His eyes narrowed, and he twined his fingers through his beard. “How come?”

“ ’Cause then when I rearrange your face, it won’ make much difference.”

A couple of the men in line laughed. Sepp Bauer slipped back in line a few spaces and stood next to Flaco with his arms folded. The bearded man grunted and his lips broke into a grin. “Well, Pancho, like the poet says, ‘A man’s reach should exceed his grasp.’ ” He offered his hand. “Name’s Bird. Bird Winfrey.”

Flaco almost asked if the bird in question was a buzzard, but there was no point in pushing things any further. Besides, they were about to board the bus and it would be a long ride into town. “Flaco,” he said. “I’m a rigger. What’s your game?”

“NDT technician. You guys put it all together; then I find all your screw-ups and make you do it over.”

“Not me, ’mano. You go talk to the welders, like Sepp here, or ‘Tiny’ Littlebear.”

“Takes all kinds,” the man agreed, now all amiability. “Takes all kinds.”

Flaco had never expected Ossa and Pelion to put up them at a Hyatt, so he was not surprised when the bus turned down Van Buren Street instead, and drove between rows of broken, flickering neon signs advertising hourly rates. Some of the men—the foreigners, mostly—muttered comments about saving money at their expense; but Flaco lived in Washington Heights, so this part of Phoenix actually looked a little upscale to him. Still, nothing prepared him for The New Kon Tiki. With its facade of bamboo and rattan and the tiki masks flanking the doorways, it was about as unlikely a sight to find in the southwestern desert as he could imagine. Still, it had a bar; so, after dumping his gear in his room, he headed there.

The Aku-Aku Room was dark, with spotlights flashing off a faceted globe in the ceiling. In the back corner, a fountain dribbled into a pool in front of a plaster Easter Island statue and a pixwall of swaying palm trees and waves breaking on a lazy beach. The color was a little dull and some of the pixels had gone dark, so the effect was like looking through a dirty window. Booths separated by wicker partitions lined the left wall and a bar with tall, bamboo-and-canvas stools stood on the right. The floor space between was packed with tables, just barely enough room between them for a skinny man like Flaco to squeeze through.

The waitresses wore grass skirts, halter tops and sandals, and did the hula when they walked through the room. Navel maneuvers. The barman wore a grass skirt, too, but he was big enough that it didn’t look like anyone was going to mention it. The decor was all Pacific Islands, except the CD-juke, which was wailing a capella “goofball” music with a Mexican beat.

A half-dozen women in spike heels and heavy makeup were making the rounds, wearing skirts so short it was hard to see why they’d bothered. They cruised from table to table, chatting up the guys, touching them, sometimes letting themselves be touched. Bird had cornered one by the waterfall and negotiations were in process. A blond with short-cropped hair draped one arm around the shoulders of one of the Russians and leaned over the table so the man’s companions could get a good look at her wares.

“Like flies around honey,” said one of the grass-skirted waitresses near Flaco. She held a tray of drinks balanced on her hand. Flaco stepped out of her way.

“Which is which?” he asked.

She looked at him and brushed a dark curl off her forehead with her free hand. She hadn’t spoken to him in particular. She had just voiced her thoughts. “Could work it either way, I guess.” She jerked her head at the prostitute leaving with Bird Winfrey. “Never seen so many in here. Word musta got around that you guys were coming.” She moved off with the drink tray, her grass skirt rustling as she rolled her hips.

Flaco didn’t know if the disapproval he had heard in her voice was for the immorality or the competition. The waitress was plain-featured, with black shoulder-length hair and a face that had put on a lot of miles in a very few years; but who knew? She might be selling more than drinks, herself; and, as for quality, in that line of work the customers seldom dickered past price and delivery.

The bar was beginning to fill up with construction workers, so Flaco searched for a seat. He saw Henry Littlebear sitting on a bar stool that didn’t look strong enough to support one of his legs. He was hitting on one of the waitresses. Littlebear had a schooner in front of him and he raised it to Flaco in salute as he passed.

Flaco found Tonio and a woman holding down a booth near the back and slid in across from them. “¡Hola! How’d you beat me down here? All I did was go in my room and toss my bag on the bed. Here you have a beer already.”

“There you go, you dumb Dominican. Wasting time on nonessentials.” He kicked his duffel bag, which was sitting under the table. “The room isn’t going anywhere. I came here first. This here’s Lucia.” Tonio wiggled a thumb at the woman with him. Dusky, with a white, uneven smile; a blouse so tight and cut so low that if she hiccuped she would pop out onto the table.

“I’m Eddie,” he said.

“Hi, Eddie,” she answered in a throaty, professional voice. “I have a friend, if you want…”

“I’m married,” Flaco said. The woman gave him a look that Went, like, “so what?” But Flaco didn’t feel like explaining himself to a stranger.

“Just more for the rest of us,” Tonio said, squeezing Lucia on the thigh. The woman laughed and wriggled provocatively, but her smile stopped at the eyes, which were devoid of anything but patience. Flaco looked away. Years ago, when he and Chino and Diego had decided it was time for them to be men, they had gone to one of the women on St. Nicholas. He had seen that look then, in the back of Chino’s old Pontiac, and vowed that he would never again be with a woman who was not with him.

The waitress who served them was the same one who had spoken to him earlier. Flaco figured the odds were against the Aku-Aku room carrying El Presidente, so he settled for Tecate. The waitress took his order and Tonio’s reorder, but pointedly ignored Tonio’s companion. If either Tonio or Lucia noticed, they didn’t care.

Sepp found them an hour and several drinks later. Tonio was in the middle of a long and improbable tale of immy smuggling in south Florida. If half what Tonio said was true, there wasn’t a Haitian left anywhere on Hispaniola. Thanks to him, they were all in Miami or New York. Lucia pretended to listen and looked at her watch from time to time. When you worked piece rate, you didn’t have a lot of time to spare for social chit chat. Sepp was a sudden blond presence by their booth.

“Dare you are!” he said, as if they had been hiding from him. Flaco slid over to make room and Sepp squeezed in beside him. Sepp looked around the lounge and put two fingers in his mouth and whistled. He made a bottle of his fist and poked his thumb at the table in front of him. Then he settled into the seat and grinned. “Now ve see vat disguises for beer in deese place.” His gaze cruised over Lucia, moored on her breasts. “Hellow, schatz,” he said, using the same smile.

Lucia batted her eyes. “Hello, Dutch.” She moistened her lipstick with her tongue and shifted her posture to display herself better. Tonio scowled and pushed her.

“You’re with me,” he said.

She shrugged him off. “Whenever you’re ready, hermano.”

Tonio lifted his schooner. “Momento. I’m drinking with my compadres.”

“What took you so long?” Flaco asked Sepp as the waitress dropped a bottle of Budweiser on the table without even pausing to see if that was what he wanted. Sepp twisted the cap off the bottle and took a swallow. He put the bottle down again with a shake of his head.

“In Bavaria, it vould be illegal to label diss ‘beer.’ ” He threw one arm across the back of the padded bench where they sat. “It did not take zo long. I unpack, hang my clothes in proper order, arrange the drawers, stow my traffling pack…”

Flaco and Tonio looked at each other and laughed. Sepp listened to them for a moment, then shrugged. “On de space station zuch neatness vill matter.”

Flaco stopped laughing.

Who knew when the testing really stopped?

Flaco could not sleep. During the night, it was said, the Arizona desert grew bitter cold; but here in Phoenix the empty night sky served only to release the heat pent up in the concrete and asphalt, so that the sweltering warmth that surrounded him seemed to ooze from the ground rather than from the scorching sky. The air conditioning at the New Kon Tiki labored in vain.

He sat up in bed and stared at the glowing digital display of his travel alarm. Two o’clock? He would be in fine shape for tomorrow’s—today’s—competition! He did not have to be better than everyone to win a slot on this crew, but he did have to be better than a great many someones. He sighed and laid his head down on his pillow.

Only to be snatched upright by a metallic crash outside his window, followed by a shouted curse. Flaco rolled out of bed and strode to the window, where he stood to the side and lifted a gentle edge of the curtain. That was a move that Diego never had learned. When there are noises in the night, you do not go and stand directly in front of a window.

Funny. He hadn’t thought of Diego—or Chino and the others—in a great many years. Some things were best not thought of. The nighttime streets. The women and the product and the thick blocks of cash that bought both. The trembling eager high that was half adrenaline, half product. The sound of a lone car racing by, the sight of a dark alley mouth, the distant, toy pop-pop sound of a deal gone bad. The wary, live feeling on the edge.

In the alleyway three stories below, he saw the shape of a woman slowly rise to her feet beside the hotel kitchen loading dock. The streetlights at the end of the block created knives of light and shadow from the angles of the buildings; and the woman, partly in and partly out of the shadows, seemed unreal. A ghost of pale, disconnected legs and arms.

She brushed herself—futilely, considering the kitchen waste and the pools of fetid water that spattered the pavement. She whipped an arm up in a gesture of contempt, but whether at a particular person or window, or just at the building itself, Flaco could not tell. She turned on her heel—and nearly tumbled to her hands and knees again. She bent and held both hands against her thigh.

Flaco wondered if he should call someone, or go down to her. Her long thighs seemed to run up forever, ducking only at the last minute behind the cover of her meager skirt. Watching her, he felt his desire swell. In this heat, skimpy dress only made sense, and he could not tell in this light or from this angle if the woman was one of the waitresses, one of the hookers, or even an ordinary citizen out walking in nighttime alleys for reasons of her own. Undoubtedly one of the women who had gone off with Bird or the Russians or the others, and who had found things a little rougher than expected. Reluctantly, he watched her limp out of sight before letting the curtain fall and slipping back into his own bed. He thought of the woman’s thigh as he lay there and how it had seemed to glow from the distant streetlight.

On the third day, Flaco and the other riggers were taken to Pegasus Hangar Number Two for their practical. The hangar, twenty stories tall, loomed over the rest of the complex just off the far right end of the horseshoe. Massive, square, and metallic, it was the only structure on the grounds that made no concession to adobe or the southwest.

The orbital ship that Flaco had noticed on Monday had been brought inside. The ship’s dingy, scorched-gray fuselage had been partly disassembled. One panel still in place near the nose bore the large block numbers “RS64” and the name Harriet Quimby. The orbiter—they were called Planks for some reason—was two hundred feet tall, with a shell made largely of titanium-sheathed smoke. “Solid smoke” was light—“structural aerogel,” they called it—but it could be difficult to handle because of its very lightness. The size of smoked structural pieces could fool you into thinking they were heavier than they were, and you wound up moving them a little too fast and a little too hard. Not that that would damage the smoke. By volume, it was mostly air, but it was strong, like honeycomb, and could withstand extreme loads and stresses. But it would sure as hell damage anyone in the way of it. Flaco had handled the material occasionally in construction work. The Wilson Tower in St. Louis had smoked its upper stories to gain height without putting too much weight on the load-bearing beams.

A crew of men and women in grease-stained red coveralls stood by and watched the riggers. “You dudes are crazy,” one of the Pegasus mechanics shouted. “Me, I’m keeping both my feet on the dirt.”

“Never said I wasn’t crazy,” Flaco told him. The man laughed and shook his head.

Three other men, olive-skinned with trim mustaches, stood a little apart from the mechanics, drinking thick coffee out of Styrofoam cups and talking to one another. The Pegasus people seemed to ignore them. These men wore brown coveralls, and their shoulder patches bore a winged sun rather than a winged stallion.

A third group, dressed in O&P blue with two stacked triangles on their badges, watched from a walkway a hundred feet overhead. Flaco recognized Meat Tucker, and figured the men with him were the other rigging crew bosses and their superintendent. Flaco rubbed the palms of his hands against his own denim coveralls and hitched his tool belt and harness a little higher. He’d had people watch him work before, but never so many and never with so much depending on it.

“Wonder how many of us will be left after today,” Tonio whispered to him. “Figure they want to cut as many as they can before spending money on weightless and orbital training.”

“Don’t forget to cup the water in your hand,” Flaco advised him.

“What?”

“Judge Gideon, in the bible,” he said absently while he scanned the setup. “He tested thirty thousand volunteers and picked three hundred of them.” Tonio grunted, but made no reply.

Two overhead cranes on traverse beams with blocks and tackle dangling from them. No, three, and the third one way up there was a pivot crane with an operator’s booth. Did O&P expect them to be operatives as well as riggers? Probably. LEO would never lift featherbed. There’d be multi-tasking, for sure, on this contract.

A fiftyish man wearing a white hard hat and a long dust-coat was waiting for them. He had a cliputer tucked under one arm. “Gentlemen,” he said (and inevitably some wit in the back of the group said, “Who came in?” White Hat ignored the comment). “I am your examiner. I have your work orders right here.” He flourished the cliputer. “The O&P crew chiefs up there on the balcony will observe and judge your work and will advise me, but I will have the final downcheck. There are no appeals from my decision.” He turned and pointed toward the partly disassembled Plank with the cliputer. “Your assignments are to prepare this equipment for its regularly scheduled preventive maintenance check. The Pegasus crew is on hand to assist you in tasks outside the rigging craft boundaries.”

Flaco pursed his lips in a silent whistle. Van Huyten Industries was famous for its never-waste-a-mission frugality, so why not use the practicals to get some real work done? But that meant there was more riding on this test than just his own performance. The Harriet Quimby’s performance on its next flight could also depend on him. He wondered if that extra pressure was deliberate. LEO’s multinational investment was in the billions and the consortium meant to regain those expenses. There would be conflicting priorities for flawless work and for cutting costs and maintaining the schedule—with the workers caught in between, as usual. So, this trial might be more than to test their rigging skills. It might be to see how they would react to stress.

They tested in groups of five, with the others escorted to the maintenance conference room to wait. Those who went out did not come back, and Flaco pondered that thought while he waited.

Flaco went out with the fourth group late in the morning. The examiner printed a work order from his cliputer and gave it to Flaco, and Flaco read it carefully. His task was to remove module 477JJK(3) from the forward superstructure and move it to the electrical bay. The CAD print that came with the work order highlighted the module and showed the anchors where he could hook on with the overhead tackle. It didn’t look like a hard job; not one that would separate the real men from the wannabes.

He had taken two steps toward the crane elevator when he noticed the date on the drawing. Revision D. December 20, 2005. Three and a half years old… He glanced at the Harriet Quimby. Could be the gal was that old. He didn’t know one model from another, and Planks of one sort or another had been lifting for nine years, now. But who was to say that there hadn’t been retrofits? Flaco turned and faced the examiner.

“Hey, ’mano,” he called waving the print. “This the current rev?”

White Hat looked up from his cliputer and, without a change of expression, held out his hand. Flaco gave him the drawing and he looked at the drawing control block, then checked something in his database. “No,” he said, wadding the print into a ball. “Quimby’s to Rev F.” He touched a button on his cliputer and a new drawing emerged, which he handed to Flaco.

Three other men in Flaco’s test group looked at their drawings, and two said, “Shit,” and brought their sheets back to the examiner, too. That was when Flaco knew this would be a different sort of test, and that he could take nothing for granted.

Harriet Quimby was tall enough that the five examinees could work independently at different tasks. Three of them, including Flaco, were on the upper levels. The other two, including the sole woman among the rigger-candidates, drew ground-level assignments.

Flaco and the two other men entered the bright orange elevator cage. Flaco pulled the gate shut and latched it, and a short, black man engaged the lift motors. As the cage rose, the short man stuck his hand out to Flaco.

“Thanks, dude,” he said. “Never thought they’d give us bad prints for a test. Name’s King Boudreaux, from Nawlins.” He shook Flaco’s hand like a pump handle.

“Eddie Mercado, Washington Heights. People call me Flaco.” He studied the young man. Light tan. Only five-four, but with the shoulders of a weight lifter. Flaco lifted an eyebrow. “King?”

“Pa thought ‘Martin’ was a sissy name, and Ma was a Methodist and didn’t care for ‘Luther.’ ” He shook his head. “Thanks again. About the rev, I mean.”

After King got off on 3-Level, the third man, who had remained silent, spoke. “Yer barmy, mate,” he said. He possessed a fine, curly red beard, a respectable beer belly, and the shiniest head Flaco had ever seen. “If you’d kept yer fool yap shut, we’d have two less competitors to worry about now.”

Flaco shrugged. “What if you’d had an obsolete drawing, too?”

The bearded man snorted. “Think I’m stupid? I checked mine, just like you did. Here’s your stop, mate.” He pulled the cage door open. “See you ’round.”

“Yeah. You, too?…” He let the sentence lift into a question.

“Red Hawkins. New South Wales.” Hawkins’s handshake was a single, hard squeeze.

A Pegasus electrician and a pipe fitter were waiting for Flaco when he crossed the catwalk from the crane tower to the ship. The pipe fitter shook his hand and said, “Good luck.” They had their own drawings—wiring schematics and piping drawings, respectively—and the first thing Flaco did was check his drawings against theirs. Subassembly numbers and rev levels matched. “OK,” Flaco said. “Let’s find this sucker.” The two Pegasus mechanics knew where the module was located, but they were following his lead. They would not permit him to screw up the maintenance, though. Test or no test, the ship was signed over to their care.

But Flaco also knew that if they did intervene, he would have failed the test.

“Goddamn!” The voice came from floor level and the pipe fitter smiled.

“Guess someone down there just matched his mechanicals against the P-and-W’s.”

“You talk too much, Bob,” the electrician said.

“Ah, no harm done, Bob. Eddie here already got past that one.” Flaco looked at them.

“You both named Bob?”

Bob-the-pipe-fitter grinned. “Life’s a bitch, ain’t it?”

Flaco located a module that looked like 477JJK(3). The drawing said the module ought to have an asset tag, but when Flaco finally located it—in a different position than the drawing had indicated—the asset number failed to match. He looked at Bob-the-pipe-fitter.

“This puppy have a mate?”

“Could be,” the pipe fitter allowed. “Now, who’s being cute,” said Bob-the-electrician. “Port side,” he told Flaco. “These are regulator valves for the oxidizer tanks. Each tank got a main and a spare. Sometimes they get switched. like you rotate your tires.”

Flaco dusted his hands off and rose to his feet. “Let’s go find it.”

“Who cares?” said Pipe fitter Bob. “They both look the same, and they both gotta come out for PM. What difference does it make which comes out first?”

What difference, indeed? Yet, Flaco could not shake the feeling that he was still being tested. The devil did tempt me, and I did eat…

“Get behind me, Satan,” he said. But he said it with a grin to take any sting out.

“Hunh, fussy, are we?”

“No,” said Flaco, “but I am thinking that the last thing you ever want to do in space construction is disconnect the wrong module.”

The actual rigging was straightforward. A third man waiting for them on the port side was introduced as the regular rigger on that job. Flaco asked him if his name was Bob, too, and he winced. “Jesus, no. Call me Jimmy, eh?”

The two Bobs disconnected the piping and electricity and signed off on Flaco’s work order; then Flaco unbolted the module from the superstructure, pulling in a guy wire from the number two traverse crane to hold the unit in place until he was ready to lift. Then he checked out the structural integrity of the module. The drawing showed the support points but Flaco was taking little for granted. Be a hell of a thing if the module fell into two halves when he lifted, with only one half fastened into the tackle. Even after he had ratcheted the chains and lifted the module out of place, he called the crane operator over the two-way and told him to hold while he checked the balance and the security of the rigging. When he was satisfied, he signaled the operator and gave the thumbs-to-the-ground signal.

“Not too bad,” allowed Jimmy. “So far. You still gotta move it to the bay and unrig it.”

Flaco stretched his arms back as far as he could and arched his back. “You gonna teach me to kiss girls, too?”

Jimmy shrugged. “You could find worse teachers.”

“Watch it, down below! Crane coming.” Red Hawkins, on the ship’s 1-Level, was bringing across the number one traverse. The two cranes moved on parallel tracks, number one being somewhat higher than the one Flaco was using. “Hold up a few minutes, Chico. I need the crane operator for a while.”

“Name’s Flaco,” Flaco told him.

“Whatever.”

Flaco grinned and slid to the deck with his back against a bulkhead and his right leg dangling out the open side of the ship. “This is the part I like best,” he told Jimmy and the two Bobs. “Goofin’.”

Jimmy leaned out the side and looked down, holding onto the cross brace over his head. “You know,” Flaco told him, “that as soon as we get outside, we can clue in the afternoon group to these little tricks of yours.”

Bob-the-electrician smiled. “So, who uses the same tricks all the time?”

Flaco ran his hand along the inner skin of the vessel, by his head. “How come you guys aren’t trying out for this job?”

Bob-the-electrician shrugged. Bob-the-pipe-fitter said, “I don’t like the commute.” Jimmy-the-rigger said, “Been there. Done that.” Flaco looked at him.

“You been up?”

“I’m on the Gold crew. We lifted the first couple of ETs into 250-E. But the law says no more than six months up and then you get six months down, minimum, between stints. So O&P and the other contractors rotate crews. Blue crew is up there now. Red crew goes up next. You’re Green—if you make the cut. You’ll double up with Red crew for a while, until you learn the ropes.”

“Crane coming through!” Red bellowed from above.

Jimmy looked up. “Nose lock,” he said.

“Real bitch,” said Bob-the-pipe-fitter.

The nose lock shifted in its tackle and Flaco pressed the red button on his two-way. “Crane,” he said. “Load’s come loose!”

Jimmy cupped his hands around his mouth and hollered to the workers on the floor below to clear away. The nose lock swayed back and forth under the now motionless crane. Red’s face appeared from the next level up. “What the hell you playing at, Chico? You trying to screw me over?”

“The load’s loose,” Jimmy told him. Red tossed his head in annoyance. “Shit.” He spoke into his own two-way and the crane tracked back toward the ship. The nose lock turned and fell a few inches. Flaco made throat-cutting motions and Red stopped the crane.

“I can see underneath. A stay-bolt is working loose. Every time you move the load, it swings a little and pulls it out more.”

“Double-shit gum. I leave it hanging and it will by-Our-Lady drop sooner or later.” Red tugged at his beard. “How about I lower it real fast? I might get it to ground level before it comes loose.”

Or you might not… But it was Red’s call. “Try it,” he said. “I’ll watch from down here and tell Crane to stop if anything happens. Did you hear that, Crane?”

“Gotcha.” Flaco was glad to see the crane operator was taking things so well. But then, why shouldn’t he? It wasn’t him being tested. Flaco ran a hand across his brow It was one hell of a test.

The nose lock began to drop and almost immediately twisted out of true. “Stop the drop!” Flaco told the operator.

The entire rig was now level with where Flaco stood on the decking. He couldn’t see the loose bolt any more. “King!” he called. “How does it look?”

“Bad,” the Louisianan hollered back from the next level down. “The one stay is out entirely. Putting a bad strain on the others. You got three lines and God holding it up.”

God, he felt, could be relied on, but he wasn’t so sure of the other stays. “OK.” Flaco put the two-way to his face. “Crane, what do you have on the pivot arm up in the ceiling?”

“Hook and ball, why?”

“Run some tackle out there and swing it over. We can run a basket rig under the nose lock and lower it using both cranes.”

“I don’t know…”

“Do it!” Flaco had no authority to give the orders. But someone had to do something, fast. He looked to Jimmy, who scowled and nodded and leaned out of the ship to make a thumbs-up gesture to the control booth.

The echo of the motors tripping in the ceiling emphasized how silent the maintenance hangar had become. Flaco watched as several cables of chain tackle ran out the pivot arm, which then swung across the room until it could drop the line between the nose lock and the ship. Flaco guided the operator using the two-way until the ball-and-hook dangled just outside the ship.

Flaco swallowed and gave a nod to the three men with him. Then he clipped his safety line to a cross bar and, before he could remember what a fool he was, stepped across and into the curve of the hook.

It was a big hook, strong enough to hold more than a mere human—and a skinny one at that; but Flaco could not stand comfortably except on one foot. He clipped his second line to the lanyard on the hook cable. Jimmy unclipped the first line and it rolled up into its reel on Flaco’s belt. Flaco wrapped his arm around the crane cable and gave him a nod, trying to look unconcerned. Jimmy gave him a salute. “See you in heaven.”

The cable danced and swayed. Flaco looked up to see Red Hawkins clipping himself to the line farther up. “We don’t have to both be out here,” Flaco said.

“Fuck you, Chico. This is my job. They unhooked your load down below and brought number two crane over to the other side of my load. I’m going to transfer over. You bring the fly end of the tackle underneath and I’ll run it up the other side. Then we’ll do the same thing with the second strap. You got a problem with that, Chico?”

“No problem. Like you said, gringo. Your job.”

“And don’t you forget it.”

Flaco waited until Red had secured himself on the other side of the nose lock, then gave the crane operator the go-ahead to lower them both. When they met underneath, Flaco handed Red the free end of one of the chains. He was acutely aware of the massive structure dangling over him. He could feel its weight curling the hairs on the back of his neck. He said, “It would be tragic if the rigging gave way now.”

Red grunted and looked up. “Yeah, it’d be the end of a beautiful fucking friendship. But look again, Chico. It ain’t the rigging giving way, it’s the nose lock. Fucking corrosion is what it is.” He fixed the end of the chain to his crane. “And damn me if I’ll let you look good at my expense.”

They finished the job without speaking. When the basket rig was secure—and they checked that six ways from Sunday—Red gave the signal to the crane operator to lower away on both cranes. The nose lock swung as the new lines took off some of the weight and its center of gravity shifted, but it reached the ground without incident. The other candidates and the Pegasus people burst into applause as Flaco dropped off the hook onto the floor. Meat, up on the catwalk, gave him a thumbs-up. Red slid down a free chain from the traverse beam. He glowered at the nose lock while he tugged his heavy canvas gloves off. Flaco tucked his own gloves in his tool belt and offered his hand.

“Good work, man.”

Red slapped his gloves against his left palm. He looked like he wanted to punch out the mechanism. “I always do good work, mate.” He turned away without shaking hands and faced White Hat, who had come over and was squatting by the nose lock. One of the men in the brown coveralls was kneeling by his side, and they were conversing in low tones. “So, what’s the verdict?” Red demanded.

The brown-coveralled man held up fingertips covered with rust. “It appears to be salt water corrosion, but we cannot be sure yet.”

“No, blimey. I meant the goddamned test!”

White Hat looked up. “The results will be posted this evening,” he said.

Flaco grabbed the examiner’s sleeve and tugged him around. “You crazy, ’mano,” he shouted. “What kind of test was that? People could have been hurt; killed, maybe!” He threw his work order, his exam paper, to the ground. Red stepped away from him, as if to dissociate himself from the outburst. Tomorrow Flaco would curse himself for yelling at the examiner and blowing his chances for the job, but right now he didn’t care.

White Hat flushed, and his ears grew a prominent red. He stood up and yanked his sleeve from Flaco’s grasp. “Get a grip, kid,” he said. “We don’t play things that way. You may not be worth jack shit, but that nose lock is sure as hell valuable hardware.”

Flaco stood back and his arms fell to his side. “It wasn’t?…”

“A test?” White Hat snorted. “Of course it was. It just wasn’t planned.”

Flaco flew into JFK on US West. Serafina was waiting for him at the end of the concourse and nearly knocked him over when she jumped into his arms. They were standing in the middle of the flow of traffic, but Flaco didn’t care. For every glower they got from an outta-my-way businessman they got five smiles from people who remembered what love had been like.

“Oh, Flaco, I missed you,” she said between rapid-fire kisses.

“And I missed you,” he said, lowering her to the floor.

“Ha,” she tucked her arm through his and they made their way through the crowds toward the shuttle bus. “You out there in the sunny desert with all those Mexicana women to tease you…”

“I did not see one ’Chicana half so beautiful as you.” And it was true. Others might argue that Serafina’s nose was a little too big, or that her breasts were not, or that her legs were too short, but not Flaco. He could remember the women in the New Kon Tiki, their golden brown and tan skin, their easy availability; but worn, and old before their years, and none so fine on the eyes as Serafina. Serafina’s love was free, and he had paid for it the ultimate price: the rest of his life.

For dinner that evening, Flaco took Serafina to Mambi on Broadway. It was a warm night. A night that wanted walking. They strolled cross-town arm in arm, letting silence do for words. August 16 was only a week and a half off, and a festive mood was beginning to build in the neighborhood. There had been Dominicans on Manhattan since the late seventeen hundreds. Upper Broadway—here at the northern tip of Manhattan—was a Dominican Broadway and the clubs and theaters that lined the street pulsed to the merengue. The breeze carried the rich odors of sofrito and mangu and thick guisados. The panas and their bombias, the young men and their women, were laughing and dancing in the street, holding impromptu parties on the corners, or eating their mondongo with beans and wet rice. Not that the anniversary of Trujillo’s capture meant anything to them. It meant little enough to Flaco, despite the long, impassioned stories he had heard at his grandfather’s knee. Mostly third and fourth generation in America, the brightly dressed young men and women bubbling on the street knew the day only as an excuse for alegría.

Flaco exchanged greetings with a dozen friends in the few short blocks. Half of them did not even know that Flaco had been gone. A carefree bunch, even when care was called for. Here and there in the crowd Flaco marked older men in their thirties with hooded, predatory eyes, and he hugged Serafina closer to him. Danger wore an older face than it once did. There was safety in crowds, but it was never entirely safe.

Serafina had been expecting some mamitas with the greasy pollo frito piled in baskets, so when he led her to Mambi, she gasped and said, “Flaco! Can we afford this?”

Flaco grinned at the successful surprise. By midtown and downtown standards, Mambi was not terribly expensive; but they were so far up the island that you had to go a long way downtown just to reach Uptown, and by the standards of the Gonsalves-Mercado savings account, dining out was not a thing to be done lightly. “O&P paid us for the week of testing,” he told her. “So now we can celebrate.”

“Your coming home.”

“That, too.”

Serafina fell silent. She stared at the restaurant window. In her reflection, a small frown creased her brow and her fingers briefly caressed her stomach.

They both ordered the costilla de cerdo con berenjena that Mambi was famous for. Flaco ordered a wine. It was not so proud a wine as to have a year on it, but it did not come in a returnable bottle, either. He lifted his glass to Serafina and said, “To us. You an’ me an’ little Memo.” Serafina smiled and touched her glass to his.

“The trials went very well, I think,” he said after he had swallowed and set his wine down. “Met some good men. And a few assholes, too. They told me helping out your crewmates, regardless, counted for a lot of points.” He grinned. Serafina took a bite of her eggplant.

“This is very good,” she said, and developed an interest in her meal. “Mama came over while you were away. We bought a crib for Memo. And some clothes. Oh, Flaco! They were so tiny, I just wanted to cry.”

There was no telling with women how they would react. Flaco smiled and tried to look confident. “Everything will be all right. You’ll see.” Sometimes, the thought of being a father terrified him. A helpless child, trusting him utterly, following after him… He would have to provide for the little one. He didn’t know if he was ready for the responsibility. He didn’t know if he could lead the boy anywhere it would be worth his while to follow. Grow up, be a rigger like your Papita? Or a waiter, like your Abuelito? But ready or not, here it came. His hands trembled and he cut firmly into his pork rib with his knife. Did Serafina feel the same doubts as he did, or was it all chemicals raging through her body? It would never do to show his uncertainty to her. She depended on him to be the strong one. “The money I make on this job,” he told her, “we set Memo up right.”

Serafina’s fork clattered on her plate. Flaco looked up. “What’s wrong?”

“You are not going back, are you?”

“Of course I am. I passed the trials. I told you, didn’t I?” Or had the subject never come up in the joy of reunion? Had he known somehow to avoid it?

“Flaco, you will die up there!” A few heads turned in the restaurant, then just as quickly looked away. Young people spoke of dying too often. The reason was well known, and a reason best not known. Flaco wanted to leap up and tell them they were wrong; that Diego’s death had turned him from that forever. He was a man of the construction now, a rigger. A life that was not so exciting and paid not so well, but which might last long enough to see your sons and your grandsons. No one shot you through your window at night because you were rigging on the wrong street comer.

But his quarrel was not with these strangers, but with his love. Flaco’s grip tightened on his fork and he stabbed his pork rib hard enough to send it off the plate. He had dreamed this weekend as a happy one of laughter and lovemaking, never giving a thought to Sunday afternoon and the long flight back to Phoenix. “I will not die,” he said. Death was something that happened—to quiet old men or to flamboyant young ones, but those who might have wanted to see Flaco dead were themselves no longer quick.

“Hundreds of men have worked up there,” he assured her. “Very few have been hurt, even in small things.” He did not mention Anselmo Takeuchi and how the blood had flowed from the eyes and mouth of his exploding body. His was not an error Flaco would ever make.

“What if you are not here for little Memo? How will your son and I survive without you?” Serafina twisted the napkin in her hands. Her eyes brimmed with tears. Pregnancy always made women more emotional.

“You will be provided for. The benefits are generous.”

She pushed away from the table and jumped to her feet. “You are cruel, Flaco! What will I do for comfort in the night with nothing but money for your bones?” She fled without waiting for his reply. Another woman in the restaurant raised her voice.

“You tell him, sister! They can t treat us that way no more.” She favored Flaco with a glare. Some of the men laughed and made motions with their hands or arms. “Show her who the boss is.” “Stick it to her; that’s what she wants.” An elderly couple by the window, their lips pressed tight in distaste, bent over their guisado. Flaco pulled a couple of presidents from his wallet and threw them on the table without waiting to see what the bill was.

At the door, a solitary old man with his napkin tucked in at his neck stopped Flaco with a hand on his sleeve. “It will be all right, young man,” he croaked in a voice harsh with cigarettes. “It is love that makes them mad. She would not hurt so much if she did not love you.”

Flaco was not such a fool as to chase after Serafina. She had not run from him in order for him to catch her. Not this time. The thought of her alone on the nighttime streets worried him, but it was not as though Boriqua girls grew up any less savvy than Dominicans. She would go either to their apartment, or to her mamita. He would find her. They would “rendezvous,” “match orbits,” like the news people on TV were saying about the spaceship and the asteroid, a little more than two weeks from now. He looked up at the sky, but the city lights were too bright, and there was nothing up there but a gray, pale shroud.

The merengue was pounding in Ysidro’s bar off Dyckman Street, but with more than a little of that Milwaukee “goofball” in the mix that the older panas found so irritating. Not the pure sound, at all. Not Cibao; not even the southern style, with its log drums. But Flaco had come here for the drinks, not the music.

“Is it wrong of me to want to provide for her?” he asked Clotario, his best friend among those still living. He stared into his tall, thin glass of El Presidente. “Is it wrong of me to want to afford things for her?” His voice was slurred from the drinking. He could hear the soft, slushing sound of it, but he didn’t care.

“No,” Clotario said. “Of course not. It is only that she will be lonely for you.”

Flaco drank his beer, set the glass down hard on the table. “Seven months training,” he said. “Ground-side and spaceside. But I will be back before the child comes.”

“A long time,” said Clotario, “for a woman to be without a man inside her.”

“She will not be the only one lonely,” Flaco said with a twist to his lips.

Clotario nudged him. “Ah, but there will be women on the crew, no? Even in space they have the secretaries. And you yourself mentioned a few welders and technicians.”

Flaco stiffened. “Serafina is the only one for me. I have given her my pledge.”

Clotario laughed. “Oh, you are the righteous one, Flaco.” He made a mock sign of the cross and kissed his fingers. “Your lady welders may be as attractive as their own welding tanks, but you will see. They will grow more beautiful as the months go by. Never will they be as lovely as your Serafina, who is the most desirable woman in all the Heights, but…” leaning closer to Flaco, “…they will be so much closer.”

Flaco turned his attention back to his beer. “One voice inside me says, ‘Flaco, stay with your woman and take care of her during her months.’ But another says, ‘Earn the money you will need to care for her forever.’ How often do such opportunities come for men in the trades?”

“There are other trades,” Clotario said casually. Flaco gave him a dead look, and he shrugged. “Then, if you wish, I can look after Serafina while you are gone.”

Flaco stared at him through the gauze of alcohol. Saw the easy smile on his lips; heard the smooth assurance in his voice. Before he was quite aware that he was doing so, Flaco had sunk his fist in the pit of his friend’s stomach.

Clotario fell gasping for breath. Flaco found himself suddenly in the center of an open space, as the others in the bar made room. Ysidro reached under the bar and said, “Flaco, you and ’Tario take it outside.” He made no other moves. Everyone stood very still. Flaco bent over the gasping Clotario.

“You do not touch my wife while I am gone.”

Clotario lay with his knees tucked up, clenching his belly. “Flaco. I didn’t… mean…”

“You will not allow anyone else to touch my wife when I am gone. If anyone does, I will kill him. I give my word on that. Do you understand?” Clotario nodded dumbly and Flaco bent lower, putting himself in the man’s face. “I do not give my word lightly. I have done so only twice. Once when Diego died in my arms, and once when Serafina and I stood together before God. And you, Clotario, know how well I kept my word on that first occasion.”

The voice whispered to him from the alleyway on Dyckman. “Flaco,” it said. “Hey. Flaco.”

It was the street talking to him, he thought. When he turned, he saw a woman standing there, looking tired, feigning interest. “Long time, Flaco,” she said.

Flaco made to pass by. She stepped out, took him by the sleeve, and pulled him into the alley. Flaco staggered after her, too woozy to resist. The alley was rank. The ancient bricks of the buildings were sweaty with runoff from the clogged rainspouts on their roofs. “What do you want, bomba?” he asked. But it was a stupid question, because he knew what she wanted. Her fingers told him.

“I need you, Flaco,” she whispered in his ear. Her tongue licked him there, sending a thrill down his spine. “They tell me you were good. Fast and clever. You can help me.” She wrapped her arms around his neck and pressed herself against him, but the notion gradually soaked through the alcoholic mist that it was all a ruse so she could whisper to him.

“Jaime, he beats me alia time if I don’ make enough tricks.”

“Leave him,” Flaco said shortly, and she laughed.

“Then who gives me powder? You could do that. You’d be nice to me. Nicer’n Jaime.” She was drunk, too, Flaco realized, or high. He could have her here and in the morning she wouldn’t even remember, and that would be like it never happened.

“I can be nice,” he admitted.

“Jaime, he’s getting a load tonight, from downtown. I know where he’s gonna be. You’re smart, they always said. You could nine Jaime and sell the shit and then you ’n me, we’d be fat.”

“How much shit?” he asked, because his tongue, awakened by alcohol, was living its own, dangerous life.

“Ten keys, at least,” she told him. “Mexican pearls.”

Flaco pursed his lips. He didn’t know street for pearls these days, but five years ago ten keys would mean thirty kilobucks, as much as a six-month tour on LEO.

Thirty kilobucks of Mexican pearl could also get you nined, but death was on the station, too. A nasty, lonely death, either way. And if all he wanted was a place for Serafina and himself, here was a way that was faster and only a little riskier. He could use this woman—he didn’t know her name, though she obviously remembered him. He could use this woman to take “Jaime”—a nobody, but somebody enough to cast pearls—and then cut her or keep her, as seemed best.

Serafina was in bed when Flaco finally returned home. She pretended to be asleep, but Flaco knew it was pretense from the stillness with which she lay. He stood in the bedroom doorway, bracing himself with one arm on the jamb against the swaying of the floor. The August night was too hot for sheets, too hot for nightgowns. Serafina lay beautifully uncovered, wearing only her white lace underwear. Flaco’s breath came shorter.

He could take her. She probably wanted him to take her; or else why was she lying just so? He had never forced himself upon her. But he had never struck and threatened his pana before tonight. And if tonight was the time to rediscover the old Flaco, the Flaco of the careless streets, then perhaps it should be the whole man that was found.

But he turned away without disturbing her. The old Flaco was best left buried. He closed the bedroom door gently and found his way to the couch in the outer room, where he lay down carefully. A two-room, walk-up flat in upper Manhattan. It was little enough, but it was theirs. Their names were on the lease. But how he dreamed of escaping! A house, with trees, and a yard where Memo could run and play and grow tall and strong.

Sleep would not come. After a time, he rose from the sofa and walked softly to the open window He sat on the sill, looking down at the nighttime. The crackling neon signs of the twenty-four-hour cafes; the blinking traffic lights at the corner; the furtive men and women conducting their business in shadowed doorways, in parked cars, among the children’s playthings in the little park where the streets all came together. A black car rolled up Fort Washington Avenue, slowed at the intersection and turned right. No one paid it any mind. Not the hustlers; not the hookers. Not the couple standing in the doorway to the transient hotel, whose rhythmic movements never missed a beat. Not the whiskered old man with the strap still around his arm, staring where the stars ought to have been, pulse thumping to a rhythm no one else could hear.

He wondered if the woman had been setting him up; if this Jaime was someone who had reason to remember old scores. Most likely, she had been tempting each man as he came and would continue to do so until either Jaime heard of it and nined her or someone took her up and got both of them killed. By turning her down, Flaco had undoubtedly condemned the next man along the street to a nasty death.

And yet, every man thought he had the cojones and the brains to carry off such a play.

Flaco turned away from the window. It was not Serafina he had to save. It was not Serafina he had to pull away from these streets. As long as he could hear their siren call, the old Flaco would never stay entirely dead.

Saturday was strained, and he and Serafina spent their time not in love-making, but in making arrangements to sublet the apartment. It made no sense for her to stay there alone all those months. She would move back with her mamita; he would put his things into storage. Flaco’s parents would take care of the lease and keep an eye on things. When Flaco spoke to his father over the phone, papita gave no hint whether he thought Flaco wise or foolish, but that had been papa’s way, as far back as Flaco could remember.

After that—after he had helped Serafina move back to her mother’s place in Spanish Harlem—it made no sense to wait for Sunday evening. So, after one last night in their apartment, he turned the keys over to papita and caught an early-morning flight back to Phoenix. For the first Sunday in the five long years since Diego went down, he missed Mass.