From La Ribera

Campoamor and Santiago de la Ribera lie an hour’s bicycle ride from each other. On Antonio’s mental map each town is enclosed by a red circle, and a line of the same color weaves in and out of dirt roads and bramble patches and cornfields to connect both places. The sea spreads a mile or two in the east, its blue edge unmixing with the coast. Near La Ribera, Antonio’s red line straightens along the banks of a small paved canal whose water does not move, but merely creases with the breeze, and shimmers burningly, like cooking oil. On hot days this section of map smells like the insides of a dead toad. Entering into either town, a black road swallows up the track and becomes smooth and efficient, only to lose its geometrical mind after a few miles and despair into a maze of one-way streets and end at a whitewashed house.

At first glance, the house in Campoamor and the house in La Ribera look the same: each is a white box with a red roof, several windows, and a wooden door.

Yet, if one looks closely — as one should with any map — one sees the door to the house in Campoamor is tightly locked, and the curtains are pulled shut; while in La Ribera the same door stands ajar, letting out breakfast sounds and a dog’s demented barking, and the windows reveal friendly suntanned figures, one of whom, perhaps hearing someone enter, tucks a strand of blond hair behind her ear and turns her head.

Antonio opens his eyes at precisely eight a.m. to a white ceiling. The room is as he left it last night, both curtains drawn back to let in the harsh summer sunlight, surfaces dusted, and every object lined up with the wall or floor or adjacent piece of furniture. Antonio’s bathing suit and sandals are already on, each hand palm-down and at the ready. Atop his dresser, under a grimacing crucifix, lie several objects: a bicycle lock key, a golden cross necklace, a chocolate bar, three one-hundred-peseta coins, and an elastic hair band. Avoiding a patch of squeaky springs, Antonio rolls out of bed and pockets all of these items except for the green hair band, which he sniffs and then carefully secretes beneath his underwear in the dresser’s top drawer.

In the darkened hallway, his parents’ door is open a vigilant crack, from which come the stale smell of adult sleep and a raspy laboring of lungs. Antonio tiptoes past it and then down the carpeted stairs, through the living room and into the kitchen, where he pulls open the fridge and, in the coolly suspicious light, grabs a Coca-Cola. As he drinks, blurry scraps of dreams flow through his mind. His breakfast done, Antonio places the can deep in the garbage under the remains of yesterday’s dinner, and then, before closing the fridge, rotates the six-pack against the Leche Pascual to conceal the empty plastic ring.

Back in the living room, Antonio pauses to glance at the shapes that crouch everywhere like dark dwarfs given a night’s rest until their master’s waking. Suddenly, at the top of the stairs, Antonio sees his father in his robe, examining him gravely. His glasses are opaque, his lips like gashes. Antonio’s stomach cramps — but it’s just a shadow, they’re both still asleep in their room, the house is silent, it’s safe to leave.

At the front door, Antonio double-checks his pocket’s contents, making sure the necklace and chocolate bar are there. Then, holding his breath, he turns the handle as gingerly as if it were fused to a dynamite pile underneath the house, and goes.

Campoamor is empty and still this morning, the grass stiff as plastic. The sun is a hundred-watt bulb trained on Antonio as he wheels up its deserted streets, past its one bar and discotheque, past the three-star hotel. Soon he is skirting the highway — ahead, a car dwindles toward San Pedro...