Moises jitters through the dusk like a patinador de agua, belly hanging low and full with the mouthfuls of a scavenged kill, wearing his customary look of petinence, a face fit for a gibbeting, the expression of a martyr who knows not what he is being martyred for.

It is not so much that he is drawn towards the familiar Lanza as he is terrified of the unfamiliar, having been the type of child who cried endlessly when his parents weren't within eyeshot of him, which was often.

He knew that others didn't enjoy being around him, leaving at the first chance, but the why of it escaped his comprehension.

Que tiene ahí?

His voice splinters, an arrow shot into another arrow.

He has never seen Lanza once make an unnecessary movement. His economy makes Moises and his tics look like a debaucher.

Solo los hu-hu-huesos. His face seizes with the effort. Another irony: it is only the softest sounds, the most formless syllables he struggles with. The fricatives, the plosives---he can manage these with just as much grace as anyone else. Something about the embouchure of huella, huerta, humillo makes it impossible to get them right without great concentration. They fill his mouth, great bolls of cotton.

Le agradas, Lanza. El jefe, digo.

The answer winks and fizzles out in the last of the sunlight.

Que sí lo hacen, ojo por ojo.

As far as Moisés can understand, el jefe is a businessman, an inventor, a capitalist.

He runs a machine, only what the machine permits as lubricant is more liberal than most others: oil, blood, and the shadowed bodies of couriers casting slanting shadows, echoing the micro-trajectories of their freight, through capillaries, towards chemical bliss. All of these things that made their world turn.

Moisés wants to meet the spear's eyes, but he cannot. Instead his gaze flickers to his cheek, then the puckered corner of his harsh mouth.

Y al morder a alguien, mantén tu lengu-u-u—lengua en el techo de su boca.

así que no la mu—

He screws up his eyes; sometimes this helps.

Mu-er-des.

This is established: el jefe likes Lanza, and Moisés wants nothing more than to be liked by el jefe, the only father figure he has ever had in his life.

So he listens, rapt, hanging onto the spear's every word, chewing on them like a cow does to its cud, the plodding movement of the jaws almost petulant. For a time it seems like Moisés has gone catatonic; his mouth, which purses and then goes slack, is the only thing that moves.

Lanza, he finally breaks the thick silence, before hunkering down to the dirt, as if he is going to kiss the ground like a priest. But in the last moment, he plucks something small and smooth out of the grass, a piece of a rat's skull, maybe, long since desiccated and bleached, falling apart as he holds it, though it can't be said that Moisés has a gentle touch.

Then he flings it into the air with a sharp turn of his jaw.

Atrápalo! he yells, almost smiling.