“Let’s get you some ice,” she said.
Her guilt made him wince.
“You don’t have to do that,” he said.
But she waved him into the liquor store, slid quarters into the ice machine, and filled a plastic sack. The light from the refrigerator case shined through the soda bottles, casting bands of color on the linoleum. Stewart’s Lime, Cheerwine, Blue Vanilla Frostie, all bright with dyes his grandfather said were no better than the chemicals the plant mixed up a hundred thousand gallons at a time.
The girl pulled the scarf off her hair. Her messy bun came undone, her hair falling down her back. She plunged her hand into the ice and wrapped a fistful in the sheer fabric. The water darkened the flower pattern, turning the white space between the roses gray.
She held it to his temple. “That’s gonna be blue by tomorrow morning.”
Cold water dripped down his cheek. “Don’t worry. They look good on me.”
She switched hands and shook out her fingers. “This happens a lot?”
“Must be my sparkling personality.”
She put his hand on the scarf. “Could be the way you’re dressed.”
“Eye-catching, isn’t it?” Cluck had the same thing on he wore most days. Collared shirt, sleeves rolled up from working on the wings. Vest and trousers. “Fetching, you might say?”
The girl filled her arms on the way to the counter. Soda bottles, caramel corn, praline cashews from a farm one county over.
The man at the counter jerked his newspaper to straighten it. “More popcorn, eh?”
The girl flicked him off. The man chuckled, an almost-friend laugh. Almendro was so small nobody bothered to renumber the town sign after the census a few years ago. The man probably knew the girl’s mother and all her sisters if she had any. She’d probably been coming in to buy sour worms and neon sodas since she was in grade school.
They probably did this every week, the man’s teasing, her middle finger, his laugh.
“You want anything?” the girl asked Cluck.
Cluck wondered how someone her size ate all that. “You don’t mess around, do you?”
Her hand paused halfway to a bag of peach rings. “Excuse me?”
He braced to talk himself out. He forgot girls didn’t need to be heavy to feel heavy. Last summer, half his cousins lived on honey and chili powder, a diet they read about in a magazine. Eugenie planned on doing it again this year before they got to Stanislaus County, where she had a park ranger who thought he was her boyfriend.
“I didn’t mean it that way,” he said. “Here.” He tried to take the bags and bottles. “Let me buy. Least I can do.”
She dropped everything on the counter, bag of ice and all, and walked out. The bell on the door jingled and knocked the glass.
Cluck followed her out. “I can do this all night.”
She stopped and turned around, arms crossed tight. The wind fluffed up her skirt, like the bottom half of her was underwater. “Do what?”
“You say something and feel bad about it,” Cluck said. “I say something and feel bad about it. Just warning you though, I say a lot of stupid things, and I’m good at feeling bad. You’ll get tired before I do.”
She walked off, the thin film of her dress lapping at the backs of her knees.
He still had to get the milk. The man at the counter grunted to his newspaper, huffed at the mess of packages Cluck had made the girl leave on the counter.
“Sorry.” Cluck paid for a quart of milk, and put everything else back. Soda bottles in the refrigerator case, dried mango and a whole jicama with the other fruit.
The man looked over at him like he might shoplift. He should’ve combed his hair. His grandfather said wearing it as long as he did, down over the collar, wasn’t doing him any favors. But his grandfather knew why he never cut it shorter. He knew what it was hiding, why Cluck never pulled it back in public. It would’ve been as bad as turning his head over, showing strangers the red.
Cold water dripped off the sides of Cluck’s palm. He still had the girl’s scarf, full of ice.
He ran outside after her, but she was already gone.
A mal nudo, mal cuño.
Meet roughness with roughness.
Oscar and Rey saw Lace holding the bucket of motel ice and knew they were in for a show. But she hitched her thumb toward the door to order them out. They grumbled and took their soda bottles and chicharrones down the hall to Matías’ room.
Justin lay sprawled on the other bed, the motel’s patterned spread crumpled under him. He snored the low drone of june bugs, one hand shielding his eyes from the TV.
He and Matías could get away with anything. They were Abuela’s perfect little soldados. Matías was ready for a fight whenever a Corbeau looked at one of them. Justin always had some plan to sabotage the Corbeaus’ generator or spread vegetable oil on the tree branches.
They were Abuela’s good boys, sus ninõs buenos, and las sirenas were clumsy fish. Abuela always pointed out when one mermaid was looking a little soft, another too bony. One of them had put on too much cream blush, another hadn’t speckled enough paillettes over her body, so the ones covering her escamas were too obvious.
Abuela saw only their screwups, while Matías riled up the Corbeaus, and Justin beat up locals when no Corbeau showed.
But even Matías wouldn’t have pulled what Justin did tonight. The only locals Matías ever beat up were a couple of guys throwing corn nuts and M&Ms at Emilia and Martha, trying to feed the mermaids like animals. Matías might have been one made-for-TV movie away from slapping a Corbeau in the face with a glove and challenging him to a duel, but he took pride in a fair fight, even with the Corbeaus. When Justin stole the Corbeaus’ extension cords, he did it behind Matías’ back. Matías never would’ve let him do something that pulled in the Corbeau women. His caballerosidad was as firm as his fists.
Lace upended the ice bucket. The flat cubes spilled onto Justin’s chest and scattered out, hitting his chin and arms.
He startled awake and jumped up. “What the…” He shook off his body.
“What is wrong with you?” Lace asked. “Do you want your mother getting the call to bail your ass out of the county lockup?”
“You think I’m stupid?” He ripped the spread off the bed and shook it out. “We were never gonna get caught.”
“You don’t know that.” She tore the bedspread out of his hands. “What was that?”
He snatched it back, forehead creasing. He and his brothers looked so much like his father, with that hard brow bone and lips as full as any woman’s. The girls liked him as much as the women liked his father. But now his father was gone, taking his mother’s Chevy and leaving nothing but three sons who had his last name instead of Paloma.
“Why’d you do it?” Lace asked.
“What are you, my mother?”
“Worse. Your mother’s too nice to do this.” She smacked the side of his head.
He flopped down on the plain sheet and bunched both pillows under his neck. “Get out of the way, will you?” he said to Lace’s body cutting through the TV’s light.
She put her hands on her hips, blocking it worse. He was gonna listen. He was gonna know that if he broke his mother’s heart, she’d break him.
Justin stared at Lace’s rib cage, trying to see through her.
“That guy was what?” she asked. “Fun?”
“I didn’t like how he looked at me.”
“Bullshit.” She slammed her hand into the side of the TV. It went dark. She’d stayed in this room last season, and knew the right spot to turn it off.
Justin still stared at her stomach. “Oscar and Rey, if nobody teaches ’em how to fight, they won’t know.”