INTRODUCTIONS 1

MARI CARMEN’s first appearance (MARI CARMEN’s voice: verbal diarrhea)

Well, the storefront was a lot more kept up than people’d expect since she’d painted it all nice – a fresh green border about three feet high from the sidewalk and fresh gray walls and really great details around the window and doorway. She’d sweep and soap scrub the front walk every morning too, usually about 7:30, after which time she’d always stand in the doorway, on the best days in her favorite knee-length red skirt, tight around her full figure, in her gauzy flowered blouse, buttons pulling enough to show her cleavage, and with her thick eyeliner and lashes properly curled using an old kitchen spoon, and wait for the tamale seller on his bicycle cart to stop up at the corner. On the days when she’d fix breakfast for the neighbor’s kids, ‘cause one hand always washes the other, she’d pass on the tamale but still ask for the sweet rice drink, atole, served steaming hot. The seller was just a punk kid, probably no more than twenty, but his eyes watered when he looked at her and she noticed that he sure salivated more when she came near. It was part of the daily game that Mari Carmen pretended she didn’t notice how his voice got higher and how he shifted funnily on the bicycle seat, but she always walked back to the store front with her ass swaying and smiling at having twisted the poor brat’s adolescent heart.

Sometimes she imagined the neighbor’s kids turning into the tamale boy. The idea wasn’t exactly impossible, but it was probably too soon to tell as the boys were still learning how to do long multiplication, so they still had a few good years left in ‘em to be the irresponsible rascals their age demanded. Thank Mary God, those days of kid watching were becoming less frequent as Mari’s neighbor had finally met a new guy and quit that smelly dump of an accountant’s office. The two kids for breakfast were supposed to have been temporary anyway, but she couldn’t just say no to her friend because it wasn’t Rosa’s fault the kid’s dad had jumped ship five years back, and it certainly wasn’t the kids’ fault, even if they had been whinny lil’ snots at the time. One day Rosa had asked Mari Carmen, as a favor, to get ‘em fed and off to school, and then again the following week, for the entire week, just until the job situation panned out, and then one day led to the next, and before she realized, for nearly five years, three mornings a week, Mari’d been getting ‘em dressed, fed and in the right direction. Truth be told, though, Mari never checked to make sure the kids ever actually entered the school because kids, she figured, should decide for themselves if school is necessary. Hell, she’d done just fine having finished junior high and then calling it quits, and when she needed to prove that she’d studied more so she could get the license to open the shop, she just asked around and found out who knew someone who knew someone who could sell her a genuine high school diploma.

It was all show anyway. Getting that diploma was just so it could be stuffed into a dirty, cardboard file inside a dull squeaky, metal filing cabinet in a hard-to-find government office, some formality for the real work in getting to where she was now: proprietor and manager of two milk distribution shops, with her niece working the one in the other neighborhood. First she’d muscled her way to find out who was the real power man who granted new concessions; then she soft talked her way to him, some Mr. Contreras; then, with sweeter words yet and just the right way, she whispered her way to the top of the application pile. Only a greenhorn would think there was some deep secret to the art of using forms, resumes and so-called professional as dull decorations for one or another scene in the never-ending government show.

INTRODUCTIONS 2

SOCHI’s first appearance (SOCHI’s voice: big round words, no contractions, deep descriptions)

Sochi stared at the empty drawing pad resting on her knees and tucked her pencil inside forcefully, choosing instead to focus on the surety of the wind whipping her hair against her plump cheeks. When she closed her eyes, and breathed the strange heat in slowly, it all seemed so clear to her. Everything fit and made sense: the muffled red sands and the tufts of desert brush; the enigmatic cactus fruit she had been carrying in her backpack since morning; her new army pants and the mind-numbing airport novel she had bought on a whim; the fantastic seven-page poem she had birthed a few weeks earlier; the penurious artisan haggling just as she had stepped of the bus and who cheapened his own art by having to sell his wares in a tattered white shirt and dusty sandals with broken straps; the last phone conversation she had ever had with her father four years ago when she told had him to shove his corporate justifications up his greedy multinational backside; the day she had broken her big toe and had spent a riotous afternoon in a public hospital in San Luis Potosí; her oil paints, her watercolors and her stubbed charcoal pencils. Just at that moment, with the wind pushing her hair in intricate patterns across her face, everything that happened, or that was imagined, that existed or that floated in and out of any part of Sochi’s or anyone’s brain was in perfect alignment with perfection. For a moment, everything transcended everything.

As soon as Sochi became conscious of the lightness of her insight, it vanished. Every interconnected emotion disappeared, fluttered visually away in the form of a winged marble, an intangible optical illusion that she could nonetheless see. She judged her own thoughts as trite, and laughed at her fully somber mind’s acting as if it had just performed a scripted acid trip. She knew there was no way she was going to be able to create anything in her drawing pad; her experiences right now were too broad for the paper before her, and her judgments were too jarring to permit even a limited penciled reenactment. She sighed and proceeded to observe the toy humans scurrying on the once-sacred lands below, imagining how exactly their lives had brought each of them to that exact physical spot on a hot July afternoon.

INTRODUCTIONS 3

PETER AUGUSTUS’ first appearance (PETER AUGUSTUS’ voice: to the point, influenced by business phrases)

The wind began to kick up, and a few papers rustled. Peter Augustus pushed his chair back, stood up, walked around the desk and shut the windows. His watch beeped 9:55. He flexed his fingers into animal claws, then straightened them flat. Flex. Flat. Flex. Flat. He picked up his jacket from the hangar tucked behind the door, returned to the desk for the report, marked the lower left margin with concise self-code, and surveyed the room. The desk was tidy, he had pruned the potted plants earlier that day, and the morning sunlight was creating a halo around his beloved rhododendron and Diana the Hunter statuette. He walked out, leaving the door ajar. He told Jackie the secretary to tell callers he’d be unavailable until 3:00. They both knew that was not true; the meeting would not exceed lunch, yet business communication of any sort after lunch interfered with digestion and planning. He did not have to remind her but he preferred to reinforce the arrangement, ensure they were in agreeance. And he knew she did not mind. It was conversation, at least – friendly conversation that helps build positive repore.

He passed the executive secretaries’ organized mahogany desks and reached the elevator, which he forwent for the unlit stairs. Seven years back, in a frank conversation with his cardiologist, he had concluded stairs were always better. Smokers can quit cold turkey. Elevator riders, he figured, could do the same. The legal meetings were always three flights down, across the road, up four flights, 84 vertical steps and 15 horizontal steps. He used every second step to go through the points he would discuss. When he reached the end of the list, he would begin again, until he reached the meeting room.

He arrived as his watch alerted him to the meeting, and proceeded to shake hands, offering pats on the back where appropriate. Someone wisely had opened the windows in anticipation of a typical windy afternoon. When Peter Augustus presided, meetings were efficient. Ideas flowed smoothly. He took his seat, pulled his reading glasses from his breast pocket, and looked hawkishly at the typographical beguilements he had read a dozen times. Once he had collected his thoughts, he sucked air in deeply between his teeth and lips. It formed the sound of a fire being smothered. It was a cue. Everyone straightened up in their seats. Peter Augustus called attention not to the first paragraph, but to the report’s very title. The legal staff was going to have a field day with this legal scrub.

INTRODUCTIONS 4

EL TOPO’s first appearance: (EL TOPO’S voice: occasional edginess, think smooth criminal)

Things were tight, all right. If he didn’t have the goods out in time, it was only a question of time before the cops would be all over him, and it would be impudent to offer money now, mid-… He left a fourth message on his boy’s cell phone, and cursed him mildly only after hanging up. Keeping his cool was the most important element of successfully completing every job that crossed his path. He hailed a cab and headed over to the bodega.