Seven Ways to Kill a Cat by Matias Nespolo

six feet under. That must be what happened with Toni, but I can’t think what shit he could have got himself mixed up in that meant having to vanish without trace. And is whatever it is the same shit that Mamina can’t forgive him for?
    I can’t seem to square the two. For Toni to disappear like that means a vendetta, a
mejicaneada
, score-settling for some scam that went wrong – but all those things are about honour, about the code of the barrio. And Mamina’s not the kind to turn her back on one of her own for something like that. She has her own personal code, and it’s very different. So, what then? She can’t forgive him for abandoning her, leaving her in the lurch and not showing his face for years? I can’t believe that either. It’s not like her. It’s a luxury she can’t afford. The luxury of a middle-class mother more interested in her own pain than the fate of her ungrateful child.
    Too many questions. I hate people asking me questions. I hate it even more when it’s me doing the asking and I don’t have any answers. I lie on my bed and try to take my mind off things by reading the whale book, but I can’t focus. I keep turning it all over and over in my mind. I keep turning the book over and over, until the money and the scrap of paper with Toni’s address fall out. I count the money again, and read the note again: they’re my ticket out of here, but now I’m not sure I want to leave. At least not until I find out what the fuck went down between Toni and Mamina.
    The sun’s sinking. There’s not much light left. It’s too early to head over to Farías’s bar, but I’ve nowhere else to go. I’m drowning here.
    ‘I’m heading out, Mamina,’ I tell her. ‘I won’t be back for dinner.’
    She answers with a wave, flicking the back of her hand without even looking at me.
    Instead of taking the alley up towards the station, I wander along one of the dirt tracks leading off it. The one that runs past the house of Oliviera, the Portuguese guy. This way, I have to take the bridge across the train tracks. It’s the long way round. I’m killing time.
    It’s pretty quiet for a Saturday. There’s almost no sound from the row of shacks. I can hear muffled music from one of them, a burst of laughter from another, but nothing else. The buildings round here aren’t so much bricks and mortar as corrugated iron and bits of timber. In the evening light, they look derelict.
    Two little kids are throwing stones at a mangy, pitiful dog. The dog shambles away – hasn’t got the energy to run. Not that he needs to, given the kids’ aim. They couldn’t hit a cow at ten feet. They’re only snotty-nosed little tykes with no shoes.
    At the end of the lane, just before the tracks, I turn and, after about thirty metres, find myself in front of Ernestina’s place. Without even thinking, I’ve come to fetch Quique. I’ve obviously got used to having the kid around. When he’s not, I kind of miss him.
    I cup my hands like an ocarina, put my lips to my thumbs and whistle, the call of a non-existent bird. Quique knows it. He’s been trying to get the hang of it for months but either he’s got his hands clasped wrong, or he’s not blowing at the right angle. He keeps asking me to tell him how to do it, but I don’t know how to explain. So I show him again, but instead of watching, he closes his eyes and listens, like if he can just get the sound right, the rest will come by itself.
    I give another bird call and Sultán barks at me. He’s tied up round the back. Quique doesn’t show. He can’t not have heard me. I blow hard. I pop my head over the bamboo fence. No one about. The door is padlocked. His kid sister’s doll is lying in the yard, wearing the fur from the cat that me and Chueco ate the other day. I laugh because the pelt looks like it was made-to-measure. It’s turned right side out now – with the fur on the outside – and wearing it, the doll looks like some crazy old woman with a shock