Read Online A Handbook to Luck by Cristina Garcia - Free Book Online

crowd.
    It was Alfonso. His words quickly caught fire and everyone began repeating them—
se murió, se murió
—until they rose like smoke, higher and higher, mingling with the sounds of the cicadas,
chiquirín, chiquirín,
and reaching the mouth of the volcano itself. When the doctor arrived, he confirmed what everybody already knew. Marta studied her mother’s face as she heard the news.

    A month after her stepfather’s funeral, Marta was working a second shift outside the fairgrounds downtown. The vendors were gossiping about the trapeze star of the traveling Mexican circus, a dwarf named Little Flea. Marta desperately wanted to catch a glimpse of Little Flea in his spangled costume, watch him do his triple and quadruple somersaults. People said that Little Flea flew from one end of the tent to the other, tucked tight like a baby in its mother’s womb. Rumor had it that Little Flea, who was no taller than a grown person’s knees, was quite the ladies’ man, that not every part of him was pint-sized. They said that he’d sired sons, and normal ones at that, from Texas to Tierra del Fuego.
    The circus tickets were expensive and only the wealthiest people in town could afford them. Marta heard that the price would go down fifty percent on the last night of the show. But that was still two days’ work. Was it worth it to see Little Flea? Despite her efforts, Marta made barely enough money to keep working. She thought it unfair that the circus sold its merchandise at three times the outside price, including stale potato chips and flashlights that broke after an hour.
    A cluster of vendors waited for the circus to end, eager to sell the last of their toys and chili-spiced corn on the cob. Marta worked a second shift when there was a special event at the fairgrounds—the Argentine opera troupe, a Peruvian folklore band, even the sparsely attended book fair. After selling used clothes all day, Marta switched to her evening supplies: pinwheels, whistles, clown marionettes, whatever was popular. She’d stopped selling candy because the rain made her lollipops stick together.
    Life had gotten more difficult since her stepfather’s death. Mamá refused to leave her mourning bed except to boil water for coffee. All the cooking and cleaning and money-earning work fell to Marta.
Ái, que vea cómo hace.
See what you can do to manage. That was what Mamá said to her every morning. Was it any wonder that she was fantasizing about running off with a circus dwarf?
    A full moon lit up the puddles from the afternoon rain. The smell of roasted peanuts and cotton candy mingled with the stench of mud. Marta wondered how her brother was faring in his new home, a banyan located three blocks from the charred remains of his old coral tree, which had been struck by lightning. Poor Evaristo was burned over most of his neck and chest. If it weren’t for the
guardia
who’d rushed him to the hospital, her brother would likely be dead.
    â€œWhat are you doing out so late?”
    Marta was startled. It was the
guardia
who’d saved Evaristo’s life. Could she have conjured him with her thoughts? Marta waved at him weakly, embarrassed by her frayed dress and poorly patched sandals. His uniform and boots were spotless.
    â€œHow’s your brother?”
    â€œMuch better.” Marta glanced at the pistol on the
guardia
’s belt. Did he ever use it? Maybe it was true what people said—that you could judge a man by the degree of danger he courted. But what was the difference between danger and evil?
    â€œIs he still living like a monkey in a tree?” the
guardia
asked.
    â€œHe’s found better living quarters.”
    â€œOh?”
    â€œA banyan tree.”
    â€œLess flammable?”
    â€œSo he says.”
    Marta had heard terrible stories about the
guardias.
People said that dead bodies were appearing in the rivers, that the
guardias
—assassins