Tocayos

	End of Part One	I’m going to put Part One into book form and self-publish. I’ll post the link to the book here once it’s available. Then I’ll start on Part Two.
	24 Hitting The Wall	Charly woke up before the rest of us woke up. Light was entering from the crack under the garage door. He elbowed me. I mumbled something and stirred, but did not wake up.
	23 Papa, I Think Los Comunistas Are Hiding in Our Garage	The garage was half underground, with only one opening: the garage door. This was not strategically advantageous, but it was typical for that part of Lima. Peruvians did not store anything in the garage except a car, which was lucky for us, since it gave the homeowner only one reason to open his garage door. As long as he did not come home before curfew, we were safe.
	22 Hunting Che Guevarra	Charly the American, he was angry with me. Whether he was staring at the dashboard of Zoila’s Cadillac or hitting it with his head over and over again with the same rhythm as the big drum in a marching band, I do not know.
	21 Sending Secret Messages to the Communists	To pee. Did not the famous English writer William Shakespeare begin a play with those words? No? He should have.
	20 Wrestling in the Plaza	As the girls had promised, the roads were deserted. My Tocayo made it to the Plaza two hours before sunrise and found an empty parking spot facing the central fountain, on the opposite side of the presidential palace.
	19 Waltzing Milagros	Not far from the principal residence of the hacienda was a small mound of dirt surrounded by flaming lanterns.
	18 Deuling Condors	I began my walk to the bus station in earnest. Incas tended to say “just over the hill” when they meant just over the Andes.
	17 A Pig In a Hole	In the yard on the side of the barn a chicken, it senses a threat and screeches. The other chickens, they stop pecking at the ground and they listen, too. A moment later a cackle of chickens rips around the corner, running for their lives from nothing. They scatter through the yard until the dust drifts away, looking around with indignation, and slowly get back to the business of pecking at the ground and clucking at each other.
	16 Bouncing Along at Fifteen Thousand Feet	The only light that I could still see from the bottom of the valley was a skinny band the color of violet behind the top edge of the mountains. Just a tiny, skinny sliver of light. Not even light. More like the memory of light. Those mountains, they rose 7,000 meters to the West. Do you realize how high that is?
	15 A Perfect Basketball Day	You have heard of this, no? A Perfect Basketball Day? The hope of having such a day, the memory of having had even one such day, is the reason why every player of basketball endures the agony and the misery and the failure and indignity that mastering this diabolical sport demands of a man.
	14 Ping Pong Politics	“America is not a country,” Armando said, making Charly’s rice become stuck  in his throat.  “America is a disease.”
	13 Lola La Salvaje	The intersection where my Tocayo and I had stopped was crammed with autos, taxis, minivans, microbuses, trucks, normal-size buses, tricycles, and bicycles, all jumbled together and having a very difficult time getting anywhere.
	12 A Little Socrates on the Way to the Trocadero	We were in Papito’s Volkswagen, idling at the intersection of two very big avenues, waiting for the policeman in the illuminated gazebo with advertisements for Inca Cola, Head and Shoulders shampoo, and Todos Supermarket to tell us it was our turn to advance.
	11 Regarding Putas	I have given you some indication of the romance you cannot possibly avoid feeling when you live in the beautiful city of Lima. Now I will give to you some indication of another aspect of living in Lima. It is not romantic. It is putas.
	10 The Girls of Miraflores	“A junior at Santa Maria does not behave like a 2-year old throwing his toys around the room,” Brother Bernard said to Charly, in a tone of voice that made everybody listening think he was very bored.
	9 Del Pinar’s Cheap Trick	In the locker room Coach explained his strategy for the second half. I would move from the high post to the low post. That’s close to the basket, where the tall skinny boy from Del Pinar plays. From there, I would have a better chance of getting a rebound on offense. Coco Palotes would move to the wing, where the guards are, and Charly would take the high post.
	8 - Facing La Virgen Del Pinar	La Virgen del Pinar had an old basketball gymnasium with thick beams of heavy wood to hold up the roof. The beams, they were connected with fat metal bolts, like the ceiling of a castle. The bleachers, they were like stairs that you pulled out from the wall. The floor was made of wood, as Coco promised, not cement like the floor of our gymnasium, and it was painted with bright red and yellow lines.
	7 - Los Shorts de Bob Cousy	Our season of basketball began in July, the deepest month of winter for the city of my birth. Lima, my beautiful colonial city, lay under a wet carpet of clouds. It does not ever rain in Lima. It drips. Peru’s criollos call the drips garua and write romantic songs about them. But unless you are in love, Lima’s winter weather makes you want to bury your head in a toilet.
	6 - Armando the Communist	Claudita took a flying leap straight into my arms. Claudita was my smallest sister and the last one in my family. Apparently, she had been running around making shrieks with a terrible fright.
	5 - Zoila’s Cadillac	Charly the American had a Cadillac. I do not know the years of American Cadillacs, but this Cadillac had those elegant tails that look like they were shaped by somebody’s hand waving without a worry in the world through the air.
	4 – Coach Phil Rink	My body, it had been beaten with a club and filled with cement. This is how I felt. I put my palm on the wooden bench so that I would not fall straight through it. Then I lowered my aching butt onto its hard surface and leaned my wet back against the wall.
	3 – A Catholic Education	Professor Pezespada stood on the teacher’s platform at the front of the class with his hands clasped behind his hunched back. His eyes were shut, and the only thing that moved was his head, from side to side.
	2 – Charly the American	On what would be the first day of what in America you call your Junior year of high school, I walked into my homeroom recalling every detail of my evening with Blanquita.
	1 – Playa Norte	I was 16 the year I met Charly the American. My body was a bag of bones. I could have fit two people inside my pants. I waved them in the face of my mother and complained that my arms were suspenders first, limbs second.
	Prologue	I am Carlos. I sit under the red umbrella on top of the white tower, searching the waves with my binoculars. The waves arrive in many shades of blue. When the light from the sun is just right and the water is clear, the color can be so beautiful it breaks your heart.