“It’s for a quinceanera,” Javier said, and left.
Now he was standing in line outside the arena, wishing he could at least sweat some of his nervousness out. Maybe he should wait. Maybe he should come back later, when they were done with their work. He didn’t want to get them in trouble. Shit, he had nothing for Xavier. That wasn’t good. He wished there was some way for him to have kept Holberton’s bike. The boy might have liked that. Maybe. If he could forgive him. But no present he could give them was going to make up for what he’d done. No matter how carefully he tied the ribbon.
“?Parete!”
His head picked up. He looked around. No. Maybe he’d just misheard some Japanese. It happened. The vowel sounds were basically the same, there were just more of them.
A leaf fell across his nose, and right into the flowers he was holding. Of course. He should have looked up, not around.
She was there, wearing some sort of ninja costume, jumping from tree to tree. She paused atop one bough, and bounced on it so that it groaned a little. Then she was gone.
Javier decided to skip the line. He took to the trees. The bough dipped beneath his weight and almost twanged as he left it. In the cold, their voices seemed to carry longer distances.
“It's not my fault,,” she said, in Spanish. He had no idea how she could both talk and jump so quickly at the same time. She was fast. And light. She barely disturbed the snow as she jumped. Keeping up with her took more effort than he’d expected. Maybe he was finally getting old. "There are all kinds of magnetic fields around this city. They screw with our brains. Of course I can't remember everywhere I go at night. But I always bring you food, so you should stop complaining!"
"I'm not complaining!” a voice called, from the trees. Xavier. “I just wish you would wake me up before you left!”
“Aww…”
“You're the one who always says we have to stick together,” Xavier said. "But I wake up and you're gone."
"Not so loud! The humans already have really weird ideas about us!"
Beneath him, a dry branch snapped. Javier instantly hung back, and jumped a little higher into the nearest tree. It was a huge old pine, prickly as hell, but it hid him effectively once he hugged it right. Below, his daughter walked along the outstretched bough of a willow.
“Is that you, Xavier?” she asked.
Nothing. The boy was hiding. Maybe this was game they played a lot. Maybe it had made her the confident leaper she was.
“Come on, this isn’t funny.” She jumped a little higher. “Xavier! I don’t like not knowing where you are!”
“They’re coming to get you, Anza…”
Anza. That was her name. As Javier watched, she jumped right into the tree beside him. Christ, but she was so little. So small. Such a perfect blend of himself and Amy. Looking at her felt like watching a film of himself played backward. Like him, but also unlike him. Like Amy, but also unlike her.
“I’ll be coming to get you, if you’re not careful!” The look of irritation that crossed her face was so similar to Amy’s that he almost laughed. He hoped it was Amy’s expressions that had taken root, and not his. He wanted something more of her, here, with him. And he saw it there in the way she pressed her fists to her hips and the way she carefully planted her feet on the wood. “You know it’s dangerous, Xavier. You know we’re not supposed to be separated.”
She jumped right into his tree. Right on the other side of him. “Xavier, just quit hiding and come on out.”
“I’m not him,” Javier said.
She peeked around the trunk of the tree. Little needles nested in her curls. Her eyelashes were full of snowflakes. And he understood, now, why had always left his boys behind. As they grew, they reminded him more strongly of himself and Arcadio. In abandoning them, he had been trying to abandon the parts of himself that he most despised. But seeing his eyes in her face, his curls on her head, he could forgive himself. For the first time in Javier’s life, he understood why the Tin-Man had wanted a heart. It would be better, if he knew what exactly it was inside him that was breaking.
“Are you my brother?” She winced. “I mean, one of my brothers? One of the other ones?”
He shook his head. “No, baby. I’m your daddy.” He held out his mess of flowers.
Xavier chose this moment to crash into the tree above them.
“Esperanza, come on! No fair! Just because you can…” The boy trailed off. The tree rocked with their combined weight and competing pressure. The wind sounded in it. It carried the sounds of tourists and barkers and botflies singing through the air. “Dad?”
He thought of Arcadio. “Guilty.”
“Xavier?” Anza brought out a shark knife. It reeked of bile. “Run. Tell Mitch. Now.”
Damn, but his little girl was fast. If she weren’t currently trying to kill him, he’d have been pretty damn proud. “Can’t we talk about this?” he asked, as he jumped into the willow Anza had just occupied.