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"Really, Kate, it's not. It's just all the stuff about Dio - it's getting to
me. But if whoever it is starts up again, I promise I'll ask Mom to change the
number." Jules reached for the doorbell again, and this time Kate let her ring
it.
The matriarch of the Hidalgo clan did not quite match the short, squat,
big-bosomed surrogate-grandmother-to-the-neighborhood image Kate had formed.
True, her skin was the color of an old penny, and true, the smell of something
magnificent on the stove filled the stairwell; there was even the clear
indication that half the children on the block had moved in. However, the good
señiora had a waist slimmer than Kate's, and the jeans and scoop-necked pink
T-shirt she wore covered a body taut with aerobic muscles. She also wore a
small microphone clipped to the front of her shirt, like a newscaster's mike,
only pointing down. She looked at her two visitors with concern.
"Julia, you are home early. Was there a problem at the school?" She gave the
name a Spanish pronunciation, but her accent was mild.
"Buenos dias, Señora," said Jules carefully. "No hay problema. Este es mi
amiga Kate Martinelli. Yo tengo& tiene& yo tenía una problema, y ella va a
ayudarme con, er . . ."
"That was very good, Julia; you're coming along rapidly. I'm pleased to meet
you, Ms Martinelli. Rosa Hidalgo." She put out her hand, which was as firm as
the rest of her. "Come in. I was just finishing here. Fieldwork for my thesis
in child psychology," she added, looking over her shoulder.
The room was awash with children, along with a number of maternal types
planted around the edges like boulders. Rosa Hidalgo moved surely through the
small multicolored heads, avoiding the clutter of blocks and toys that covered
the floor like debris from a shrapnel bomb.
"That's great for today. Thank you all. How about lunch now? Eh, amigos," she
said in higher tones, "you hungry? Burritos, peanut butter, tuna fish, and
tell Angélica what you want to drink." She began folding away tape recorder
and mike while various boulders moved forward to scoop the abandoned toys into
containers and the children, all of them small, marginally verbal, but
astonishingly noisy, washed off to the next room, where her daughter, a tall
girl of perhaps seventeen, presided with an immense dignity over sandwiches
and pitchers of drink.
"Have you eaten, Kate? Jules? There're vegetarian burritos; I hope that is all
right. I use adzuki beans. Jennifer, this is Kate. Show her where things are,
would you? Tami, I know you need to leave, but I must clarify something. When
Tom junior was talking about the dog, was he saying "
Although Kate was no more hungry than she had been thirsty when offered the
Coke upstairs, she ate two of the superb fat burritos, which were everything
their fragrance had advertised, and refused a third only at the thought of the
already-straining waistband of her trousers.
"Do you have a child here, Kate?" asked the woman whom Rosa had addressed as
Jennifer.
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"Sorry? Oh, no. No, I don't have any children. I'm a friend of Jules, the girl
over there. She lives upstairs. Do you know how much longer  "
She was interrupted by a rapid escalation of shrieks from the next room, at
which point Jennifer was suddenly just not there, only her plate teetering on
the edge of the sink. Kate rescued it, and was relieved when she saw that the
furious quarrel at the children's table was the signal for a mass departure.
Twenty minutes of potty visiting and prying toys from clenched fists later,
Kate was finally alone with Rosa Hidalgo.
"Whew! Madre, I need a cup of coffee. How about you?"
Kate thought a slug of bourbon more like it, but she accepted the lesser drug
with thanks. It was real coffee, from a press-filter machine, thick and gritty
and exactly right.
"I thought at first you were running a nursery in here."
"Twenty three-and-a-half-year-olds, it sounds more like the monkey house in
the zoo. Every six months, they come here in the mornings for a week." She [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]