Ivan and I were despondent about the weather. We’d worked too hard—or we thought we had—planning, putting up posters, and worrying about entertainment, to cancel. But yards were muddy, branches dripped, and the spiderwebs that still hung over the neighborhood were strung with raindrops. A thick, sunless haze made it seem hard to breathe. Steam rose off our mossy walk and clouds of gnats were already bothering us. Max tried to be optimistic, saying, “Don’t worry. It’ll dry up by Fiesta time.”
Ivan said, “How do you know it won’t rain more?” He pointed at some heavy clouds in the distance, no doubt packed with black lightning. He was bleary-eyed and pale, but seemed to have recovered from the Heist.
“Because I know—I heard the Joy Boys say it on the radio last night.”
“Yeah, but I asked my Magic 8-Ball if it was going to be a nice day, and it said, ‘My sources say no,’ ” I complained. I was also disappointed, and so was Max, because Slutcheon hadn’t come by for his just deserts the day after the Heist, but Ivan just seemed glad to have the vinegaroon.
We’d spent the day before sleeping late, resting on our hard-earned laurels, and waiting not only for Slutcheon but for Gary, the paperboy, to come around in his noisy red-and-white Nash Rambler and deliver the Star. When it arrived, we unfolded it nervously, scanning the front page for news of the Heist. There, at the bottom, we saw: RARE SCORPION STOLEN FROM MUSEUM. Clustered together, we read that authorities were very concerned and had no real leads, museum employees who’d been working late that night said they hadn’t noticed anything amiss, and local hospitals had no reports of anyone being treated for vinegaroon exposure. Naturally, there was speculation that Russians might have been involved. Max had said, “Why would the Russians steal it back?” Reading on, we took exception to the part about “chocolate cake used as an amateurish baiting method” by the thief, and that the exhibit case had been “inexpertly cut and patched.” But we loved the detail that there was also speculation that a woman may have committed the crime, but it didn’t say why.
“If Slutcheon comes to the Fiesta today,” I asked, “could we do it then?”
“No!” Ivan cried. “I mean, then everybody would know it was somebody at the Fiesta who broke into the museum. And we’re the most likely suspects.”
“That’s true,” Max agreed.
Ivan was adamant. “We just need to wait till the right time!”
At that moment Brickie stepped out onto our steps and said, “Jesus Christ, the mug out here is thicker than drisheen,” which was some Irish crap his mother had forced him to eat as a child. “I guess I can expect a major efflorescence of fungus on the last of my bee balm and zinnias.” The morning Post was tucked under his arm. “The paper says it’ll be clear tonight. Shouldn’t you boys be busy getting ready?”
I ignored the question and asked, “Why do you have to work today? It’s Labor Day.”
“That’s right—it’s Labor Day. I have to go labor. That’s your government—always at work so Americans have the freedom to lounge around on holidays. Right, guys?”
“Right,” we answered.
“By the way, did you boys hear about that whip-scorpion creature that was stolen from the National Museum the other night?”
“Yeah,” I said casually. “That’s pretty cool. Did they find any fingerprints?”
“Today’s Post says they found some, but they were small—maybe teenagers. If I didn’t know you boys better, I’d think you stole it!” Brickie laughed. “See you this afternoon. Please don’t give your grandmother too much trouble.” He went off in his black government Dodge Coronet.
We looked at each other, bug-eyed. “See?” said Ivan. Max gave a low whistle of relief.
“I guess we should start doing stuff,” I said.
Max said, “All we really have to do is fix up the cake, mix up the Kool-Aid, and put up some decorations—I don’t know what.”
“We need tables for food and stuff,” I said. “And chairs. It might be too wet for people to sit on blankets.”
We took a few minutes for some scratching. A mourning cloak flitted by—they were flying so slowly at this time of year—and rested on a nearby azalea bush. I caught it gently in my hands. I didn’t have a mourning cloak in my butterfly collection, and its amazing gold and blue colors and deckled wings put me in mind of a skirt of my mother’s, and this made me a little sad. For Ivan’s sake, I let it go. Beautiful butterfly dust was all over my hands, so I stroked it onto my cheeks. What I really wanted to do was put it on my eyelids, like Elena. “War paint!” said Ivan.
“Let’s go see the vinegaroon,” Max said.
“This morning he ate a cucaracha,” Ivan said proudly.
We hustled across the street to the Goncharoffs’, sneaking stealthily up to Ivan’s room, where he carefully took the shoe box containing the vinegaroon down from his closet shelf. He’d fixed the top with a viewing hole covered with plastic wrap, and furnished the box with sand and rocks. The vinegaroon rested peacefully in his green bottle hidey-hole. Max quickly threw in one of Tallulah’s beetles, and he scuttled out, grabbed it, and started gobbling it with his black fangs. “So cool!” I said.
Max added, “You’re gonna love the taste of Slutcheon, old buddy!”
“Ivan, you gotta be sure to keep him hidden.” The other night’s inkling of fear still crept around in my head like a poison-ivy vine. Then I asked a question I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear the answer to. “How’s Elena?”
“She’s okay…I guess.” Changing the subject, he said, “Let’s go downstairs to see if Maria has the cake ready.”
In the stifling kitchen, a sweaty Maria was just taking a big yellow rectangle of cake out of the oven. “Caliente!” she warned. “Cuando está frío, you make pretty.” Rudo and Linda and the toddler twins ran in, Katya and Alexander babbling in Spanish. Maria gave the four of them fresh tortillas and they scrabbled back to the yard, dog toenails clicking on the floor, tortillas flapping.
Ivan spoke to Maria in Spanish and she answered, wiping her face with her apron. Ivan translated, “We gotta wait two hours till the cake cools, then we can ice it. Let’s go collect chairs and things.” He grabbed up two small Mexican chairs painted brightly with flowers, and we dumped them in my yard.
“We need to check on Beatriz,” I said. We hadn’t seen her since the Heist. We were hesitant to knock on the door, fearing the Senhor and Senhora, so Max just called out, “Be-a-trizzz!” She appeared at the back door, and it was something of a shock. There was an angry scab on her knee, and her hair was now trimmed in a short Darla-esque bob. “Everything is okay,” she whispered. “I told my parents what you and Max said, and they believed it. I had to go get my hair fixed yesterday. At first they were mad, but I think they like my new look, and Zariya got hers cut, too!” She struck a movie star pose, poofing up her bob.
“It looks great!” I said, and Max agreed, saying, a little wistfully, “You sure don’t look like Little White Dove anymore.” We’d all miss those shiny black braids.
“Are you guys okay? What about the you-know-what?”