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

in uniform—were responsible. A car swerved around the corner and its driver shouted:
“¡Chucho hijo de puta, el día te va a llegar!”
    â€œDo you know him?” Marta asked.
    â€œOf course not,” the
guardia
snapped. “It’s just more of the garbage we have to put up with every day.”
    Marta wasn’t sure what he was talking about.
    â€œDon’t you read the newspaper?”
    â€œNot so much.” Who had twenty centavos leftover in a day? The newspapers didn’t print anything that concerned the poor either. Expensive toilet paper was what those newspapers were, but Marta didn’t dare say this aloud.
    â€œThey’re our worst enemy, Communists every last one.” He spat when he said this, launching into a one-sided argument that meant nothing to her.
    Finally, the
guardia
pulled a mirror from his shirt pocket and brought it close to his upper lip. Then he trimmed his mustache with a tiny scissors. It was the neatest mustache Marta had ever seen, an impeccable rectangle.
    â€œMy name’s Fabián Ramírez,” he said.
    â€œYes, I remember.”
    â€œI’ve been keeping my eye on you.”
    â€œI haven’t done anything,” Marta shot back. Who did he think she was?
    â€œ
Tranquila.
I don’t mean under surveillance. I meant that I’ve been trying to find out what kind of girl you are.”
    â€œI’ve done nothing wrong!” Marta felt the fear energizing her.
    â€œListen to me. I’ve seen how hard you work. I want to make life easier for you. I hate to see you wasting your beauty like this.” Fabián had small white teeth, neat and even, like his mustache. Marta noticed that his eyebrows were identical and his nostrils precisely the same size. There was something unnatural about him, like the flawless dummies in department store windows.
    â€œYou’re not from around here?” Marta asked.
    â€œI’m from Apastepeque, north of the lagoon. My father plants annatto trees and beans on a parcel there.”
    â€œAnd your mother?”
    â€œHer family made grinding stones. But the stones lasted forever and after a while everybody had one. So they took up making
conserva de leche
instead.” Fabián’s voice dropped. “May I invite you to dinner?”
    If she said no, would he shoot her? “There’s no point in going out with me,” Marta said. “I mainly eat tortillas with salt.”
    â€œThat doesn’t mean we can’t have a steak now and then.”
    â€œSteak?” Marta felt a stream of cool air tickling the back of her neck.
Bueno,
maybe she could go out with this Fabián just once, slip a nice piece of meat into her purse for her brother. When would Evaristo ever taste steak? Marta thought of the paper flowers her mother kept in a rusty can, how much nicer real roses would be. Yes, the possibility of steak definitely appealed to her. Perhaps the
guardia
might even invite her to see Little Flea.
    â€œLet me think about it,” she said, nervously twirling a pinwheel.
    â€œI’ll take them all,” Fabián said.
    â€œÂ¿Qué mande?”
Marta heard a
clarinero
in the tamarind tree, noisy and insistent. What was it doing up at this time of night?
    â€œYour toys.” Fabián pointed at Marta’s basket. “I’ll buy them all.”

(1976)

Enrique Florit
    E nrique looked across the kitchen table at his father, who was scraping the last bit of pulp from his half grapefruit. Papi was dressed as the reincarnation of Ching Ling Foo, the Great Court Conjurer to the Empress of China. He wore a bald wig and pigtail, embroidered pajamas with a Mandarin collar, and silk slippers that curled at the tips. A month ago Papi had set their clocks to Shanghai time, switching day and night, and begun sleeping with an enormous Chinese dictionary on his chest. He hoped that the characters would seep into him and gradually change his