SILENCIO watches Raton and Playboy follow the man toward Treasure Island.
They are in the bridge’s lower level now, and Silencio keeps looking 28 ‘~!!1 up to see the bottom of the upper deck, its paint peeling. It reminds him of a wall in los projectos. There are only a few bridge people here. Only a few lights. The man walks easily. He does not hurry. Silencio feels the man is only walking; he has nowhere to go. Silencio feels the man needs nothing: he is not looking for money, to eat or to use. This must be because he already has the money he needs to eat or to use, and this is why Raton and Playboy have chosen him, because they see he has the money they need.
Raton and Playboy keep pace with the man, but they hang back. They do not walk together. Playboy has his hands in the pockets of his big coat. He has taken off his yellow glasses and his eyes are dark-circled with the look of those who have used the black. He looks sad when he is going to get the money to use. He looks like he is paying very close attention.
Silencio follows them, looking back sometimes. Now it is his job to tell them if someone comes.
The man stops, looking into the window of a shop. Silencio steps behind a cart piled with rolls of plastic, as he sees Raton and Playboy
step behind other things, in case the man looks back. The man doesn’t, but Silencio wonders if the man is watching the street in the glass. Silencio has done this himself.
The man does not look back. He stands with his hands in the pockets of his long coat, looking into the glass.
Silencio unbuttons his jeans and quietly waters the rolls of plastic, careful that it makes no sound. As he buttons his jeans, he sees the man step away from the window, still moving toward Treasure, where Playboy says there are people who live like animals. Silencio, who knows only dogs and pigeons and gulls, has a picture in his head of dog-toothed men with wings. When Silencio has a picture in his head, the picture doesn’t go away.
Stepping from behind the cart, as Raton and Playboy step out to follow the man, Sjlencio sees the man turn right. Gone. The man is gone. Silencio blinks, rubs his knuckles against his eyes, looks again. Raton and Playboy are walking faster now. They are not trying to hide. Silencio walks faster too not to be lost and amves at the place where the man
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turned. Baton’s narrow back goes around that corner, after Playboy, and is gone.
Silencio stops. Feels his heart beating. Steps forward and looks around the corner.
It is a space where a shop is meant to be, but there is no shop. Sheets of plastic hang down from above. Pieces of wood, more rolls of plastic. He sees the man.
The man stands at the back of the space and looks from Playboy to Raton to Silencio. Looks through the round pieces of glass. Silencio feels how still the man is.
Playboy is walking toward the man, his boots stepping over the wood, the plastic. Playboy says nothing. His hands are still in the pockets of his coat. Raton is not moving but is ready to, and then he takes the knife from where he keeps it and opens it, flicking his wrist that way he practices, letting the man see it.
The man’s face does not change when he sees it, and Silencio remembers other faces, how they changed when they saw Raton’s knife.
Now Playboy steps down from the last of the wood, his hands coming out to take the man by the arms and spin him. That is how it is done.
Silencio sees the man move but only, it seems, a little.
Everything stops.
Silencio knows that he has seen the man’s left hand reach into the long coat, which was buttoned before but now is not. But somehow he has not seen that hand return, and still it has. The man stands with his fist against Playboy’s chest, just at the center. Pressing the thumb of his closed fist against Playboy’s coat. And Playboy is not moving. His hands have stopped, almost touching the man, fingers spread, but he is not moving.