Fernando had never cared much for girls, it was true. Almost without exception, he’d found girls his own age silly and uninteresting. Shallow, predictable and dull. Too lacking in worldly experience to have any savor to them. Once you got them out of their clothes, you’d seen the extent of all they had to offer.

But he did like women. He had always liked them—mature, older women with depth and complexity to them. Ones who’d been around the block a time or two. Ones who’d been bitchslapped

III

Work conditions improved markedly in the days that followed. Both for Fernando personally and for the job site in general.

“Finally getting things in again,” Chico said, checking over the latest shipment of construction materials delivered. “I don’t know what lit a fire under the jefe’s ass all of a sudden, but now that he’s got his shit together, we might just get this job done after all.” His glance turned shrewd as he looked to Fernando. “Seems

Fernando shook his head. He turned aside.

More even than anger, Fernando felt disgust for the man. For any so-called man who conducted himself in such a fashion as this. Who’d dug himself in so deep with his gross missteps that he could no longer crawl back out on his own strength. Who instead must look to others to save him like some repugnant damsel in distress.

It was shameful and deplorable. Better suited to Alfonso than a cowboy hat and boots were a wig and a dress. As Fernando contemplated

Collecting his paycheck from the jefe was a prospect Fernando distinctly dreaded. It necessitated venturing into Alfonso’s sweltering hot trailer of a lair to be hopelessly ensnared in long-winded tales of false bravado. If not outright lies, these were at best no tales of his own. The jefe had a highly romantic opinion of himself, built entirely on delusion.

Braving the infernal trailer early one day to collect his wages, Fernando was surprised to see the jefe sitting slumped in his chair

For the most part, Fernando liked his job at the construction site. He got to work with his hands, which was a refreshing change to him, and his work crew was his crew of friends. The only drawback to the gig was his employer.

Alfonso the jefe liked Fernando, it was true. Fernando found himself wishing—as with Juan Francisco and others whose company he’d been compelled to tolerate in the past—that the jefe liked him a little less.

Fernando kept his distance as best he could from the man,

Fernando and the others spent the rest of the day herding goats. This was both easier and more difficult than Fernando had anticipated. He’d constructed the pen in what he considered to be the optimal location based on the geography of the landscape and his observation of the goats’ grazing habits. It was a place he felt the animals would naturally gravitate toward.

He was right on this count. The old nanny goat and her latest batch of kids, who were always hanging about close to the shack

With the five of them working together on it, Fernando and his friends got the goat pen built in what seemed like no time—fencing, lean-to, water troughs and all. Fernando hadn’t recruited Chico and the others to the task, just as he hadn’t recruited them to scrounge materials for him. When he’d said what he was doing, they’d just followed along.

Fernando didn’t doubt his friends’ curiosity about his old witch of a grandmother had something to do with it. As their work wound down

Fernando spent his summer days working at the construction site. He spent his summer nights roving about town with Chico and his mongrel crew. Smoking hand-rolled cigarettes and drinking cheap booze. Playing soccer under the flickering lamplights. Getting themselves into and out of scrapes.

It was a bit surreal, if Fernando paused to reflect on it, just how swiftly and seamlessly he’d folded himself into the grungy mix of Cortez. It was almost as if, like Chico had said, Fernando had always been

A sudden hush fell over the clamoring crowd. Like a tide they receded before the advance of a man whom Fernando would have readily believed was half Neanderthal. His crude features sloped downward into a blunt, trollish scowl. The chair opposite Fernando groaned like it was dying as the man sat himself down on it. He plunked his elbow onto the table, hinging up his arm. It was like watching a thick, gnarled tree-trunk being winched into shape.

The seething crowd closed back around them, no longer