Read Online Pescador's Wake by Katherine Johnson - Free Book Online Page B

stereotypes that her father was trying to impose. He’d wanted to give the boy a gun, but Paula said no. She couldn’t understand why her father, having lived through the years of military dictatorship and having survived an attack by the Tupamaros, Uruguay’s urban terrorists, hadn’t rejected guns for life. Her son had possession of the Barbie for less than a second before he bent the doll backwards, pointed her toes towards his audience, and proceeded to shoot the entire family with his politically correct ‘gun’.
    Bus number sixty-four grinds to a halt along the coastal highway, and Julia and María step onto the palm-lined esplanade. The sea air whips off María’s hat and Julia treads on it, pinning it to the grass.
    â€˜That was close,’ she says, handing over the hat and fitting it firmly back onto her daughter’s head. ‘You’ll need that today. It’s nice and sunny.’
    There’s no shelter from the wind on the beach, but Julia lays out her towel, anyway, quickly lying on it to keep it from blowing away. Even with the wind, her body relishes the first of the warmer weather, absorbing its touch as if it is a lover’s caress. She surveys the families dotted along the sand while María, holding her hat on her head, struggles to make a sand castle one-handed. Julia watches as a man of about her own age massages sunscreen onto a young woman’s back. He unlaces her red string bikini and Julia can imagine the sensation of his fingers on her skin. She wonders how much longer Carlos will be away. She thinks too of Eduardo, and how, at first glance, he could be Carlos’s brother. It has occurred to her before. Both are dark-featured, large men, although Eduardo is broader in frame than her husband. And Eduardo’s face is set more squarely. His hair is short, but his eyelashes, Julia thinks, would be the envy of many a South American beauty. She is still staring at the couple on the beach when the woman looks up at her. Julia turns away, focusing instead on the rhythmic beat of the waves against the shore. She shivers as she imagines how different the seas must be where Carlos and Eduardo are, on a different ocean, on what must surely seem a different planet. She says a prayer for Carlos. And another for Eduardo.Cecilia arrives late at Julia’s apartment, all set for a tennis match. She is a flurry of white shoes, fake-tanned legs and heaving bosom, which bounds under her tight lemon-coloured singlet long after she has stopped running up the front path. Julia can’t imagine how Cecilia sees the ball coming beyond that voluminous bust, or how she bends or stretches as she plays without embarrassing herself wearing a skirt that only just covers her backside.
    â€˜ Hola, Julia. The match is about to start. Did I mention we might stay for dinner afterwards? I hope that’s all right with you.’
    Julia is overcome by a cloud of nauseatingly sweet, but no doubt expensive, perfume. ‘Fine.’ She forces a smile, adding Cecilia’s lack of an apology for her lateness to the growing list of irritations about this woman. ‘I’m sure we can scrape together something for Sofía to eat.’
    Cecilia scrunches her heavily made-up face, as if momentarily revolted at the thought of Julia resorting to scraping up leftovers out of an almost-bare fridge. Sofia, too, seems nervous.
    â€˜Just joking!’ Julia laughs. ‘There’s a lovely fresh apple cake for you girls. But maybe we’ll have some tostados first. What do you think?’ She is annoyed by Cecilia’s assumption that she’ll always have enough food in the house to feed Sofia, whoeats twice as much as María. Cecilia can afford whatever food she likes, placing the shopping order with a live-in nanny who also prepares the Moltenis’ meals.
    Julia waves a goodbye and is just about to close the door when Cecilia takes a step towards her. The