Another voice whistles from farther off.
“Careful, niña. Men like that cost money.”
A few laughs follow.
Your grip tightens. People in the dump laugh at the edge of violence the way other people laugh at television jokes. Not because it is funny. Because if you do not make small sounds around danger, it grows too large to stand.
The stranger stumbles again. This time he nearly pulls you down.
“Sorry,” he mutters.
His voice is softer now, less confused than before and more ashamed. That surprises you. Poor men in pain usually curse. Drunks spit. Sick old men apologize only to God and nurses. Rich men, as far as you know, do not apologize to little girls in dumps.
“It’s okay,” you say, though it isn’t. “Just don’t die yet.”
That earns the faintest ghost of a laugh from him, which then twists into pain.
You finally reach the edge of the settlement just as the sun begins lowering behind the far concrete and smog. The dump gives way to patched shacks, cinderblock walls, rusted roofs, and laundry hanging between poles bent by too many seasons. Dogs bark. A baby cries somewhere behind a blue tarp. A radio plays ranchera music badly through static. The air still smells like garbage, but now there is also frying oil, wood smoke, and the exhausted smell of people who have worked all day and have not earned enough.
