3
The old man opened the #3 shoe box for his cigarettes and lighter and stuffed these into his pocket. Then he pulled out the pack so he could count how many were left. The over-bed lamp reflected off the darkened blinds and onto the ruffled sheets across the mattress. He staggered back to the closet, leaning against the edge of the bed for support, and retrieved the #1 box and placed it on the overbed table with the other box. He did the same with the #2, #4, and #5 boxes. It was part of his morning routine now to do an inventory count at the start of every day. How else was he going to know when these people were dipping into his shoe boxes for another piece of chocolate or to take one of his pens or simply to move things around in an effort to make him think he couldn’t keep track of his things? The One Who’s Losing His Mind.
He suspected they were helping themselves whenever he was on the pot or out of the room for longer stretches of time and there was little chance of catching them in the act. Just the other day he had remembered to get up in the middle of his meal and head back to the room, but they must have known or been watching him because the room was empty except for The One With The Hole In His Back, who had fallen asleep eating his meal. Worse still was that by the time he pushed the walker back into the mess hall the attendants had already picked up his tray.
The thieves must have been busy with the other residents last night because all the boxes seemed to be in order. He clicked his government-issue pen so he could record today’s inventory in one of his old pocket-size address books, the leather exterior as worn and cracked as the hands that were holding it. There were only a few blank pages left in this particular book and soon he would need to find more space for his notations. He thumbed through the rest of the pages, but they all seemed to be taken up with one name or another that he couldn’t place. It wasn’t until he turned the R–S tab and saw his own family name that the entries began to correspond some with his faded memory. Vicente had died from a bad heart, still in his fifties. Baltazar they shot in Reynosa, something having to do with a woman he was seeing after somebody else had seen her first. He couldn’t remember how Enrique had died anymore, only that it was sad. Luisa was from the cancer, but what kind he couldn’t say. When he turned to the next page he saw Celestino’s name. Of eight brothers and four sisters, only the two of them were left. At least he thought it was still the two of them. The youngest and the oldest, almost twenty years separating them. That the youngest was alive would make sense, he supposed, but what good reason could there be for the oldest to be alive and for the rest of his brothers and sisters to be gone? What sense did it make for him to be still walking around? For what? For him to be stuck here, waiting to die? At least if Celestino was alive he was probably out there living his life like a free man. If… They hadn’t actually spoken in years. Why, though?
He sat down to wait for the hour that they would let him go outside for his first smoke. After that it would be only a few minutes until they served him breakfast. He opened the address book again. If he wasn’t mistaken, Celestino was the one who used to cut hair. Either he or Martín, but he thought it was more likely Celestino. And whatever it was, why they hadn’t talked in so many years, had something to do with cutting hair. He raised his cap and smoothed down his hair. Of all the things in this world to have an argument about. You call this a haircut? I told you not to touch the sideburns! It seemed ridiculous to him now, whatever started it. For only the two of them to be still alive and not talking.
He had to dial twice, since the first time he misread the number and had to listen to a recording of some woman telling him he didn’t know what he was doing and that he needed to hang up and try his call again. The second time, he concentrated, keeping his thumb under each number next to his brother’s name and then using his other index finger to stab at the tiny digits on his phone.
It rang. He was happy to not hear the woman’s voice. It rang again. She acted like he was the first man on earth to call the wrong phone number. Just wait till she turns ninety-one and see if she doesn’t dial a number wrong now and then. It was a common enough mistake. Nothing to criticize. Nothing to scold him about. They didn’t even have phones down here when he was born, that’s how old he was. No phones! None! Not even one! At least, not his people. Who knows what they had on the other side of town? But where he was, if you wanted to talk to so-and-so, you had to walk to wherever so-and-so was and do your talking. Not like now. The other day some young man, all dressed up in a suit with a tie, came to visit his grandmother, one of The Turtles, but he spent most of his time pacing up and down the hall talking to himself, like maybe he should be living in the part of the building where they locked up The Ones Who Like To Wander Off. Then Don Fidencio noticed the young man had an earpiece with a long white cord that connected to a tiny phone attached to his belt. Who would have imagined such things? A man talking to another man somewhere else and neither one of the two actually holding a phone in his hand. Not like he was doing now with the receiver pressed up to his ear. Only God knew how many times it had rung when he heard something click and a woman’s voice come on the line. She was different from the first, but still. It wasn’t seven a.m. and already he was about to get scolded, yelled at for the second time that morning. No sir, not Fidencio Rosales. He refused to listen to whatever she had to say and hung up. Yell at the next guy who marks the wrong number. He didn’t know why he’d picked up the phone in the first place, what was so damn important. Then he looked back at his thumb stuck inside the little address book.