Chapter 1

Playa Norte

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TOCAYO
Part 1
Prologue
Playa Norte
Charly the American
A Catholic Education
Cold Showers
A Peruvian Name...
Tossing Armando...
Bob Cousey's Shorts
Inside Immaculada
Warming the Bench...
A Little Socrates...
Running From Lola
Ping Pong Politics
A Perfect Basketball Day
A Man Needs His Friends
A Pig In a Hole
Condors Over Ticlio
Wrestling in the Plaza
Handcuffs and Curfews
Rochabus
A Hero Hiding
Hitting A Brick Wall
Part 2

I glanced once more at the ocean, then walked back inside, closed the door, and gave Alessandra my most caustic look. I flopped into my hard wooden chair and glared at her. Alessandra flipped casually to another page in her magazine. For all outward appearances she was ignoring me, but in that mysterious form of sister communication she was letting me know that she had won yet again.

I thumped my fingers on the wide wooden armrests. My fingers were large. They made a soft but irritating noise in the quiet room. Like drops of water falling one by one on her smug nose, I hoped.

I would have to wear down my fingers to bloody stumps before Alessandra would acknowledge that the sound was irritating her, so I abandoned my efforts and bent forward to inspect my toes, which poked out through my sandals like rodents. I called out to my younger brother Tato, who was rocking peacefully in the best seat in the house, the hammock hanging in front of the picture window with a panoramic view of the ocean.

Tato, with an instinct born of hard experience, did not reply.

"Is Pico Alto breaking yet?” I asked him.

Tato was one year younger than me and quite a bit smaller. He also had a much gentler soul. If he had a mean bone in his body, I had probably been the one who stuck it in. "What do you think I am,” he growled, “your servant? Find out for yourself."

I pet each rodent individually and spoke to the floor. "I would, but if I lift a finger our dear sister, the Nation's Radar Station of First Defense, would be overcome by a patriotic duty to inform the President of the Republic."

Alessandra sighed a weighty sigh and turned another page. Tato groaned and turned around to look at the ocean, my ocean, hanging on to the hammock with one hand and using the other to steady himself against the windowsill. The waves had been getting bigger every day, and the tumbling ocean was covered with streaks of foam. Among the swarming, shifting waves, Tato could not locate the giant waves of Pico Alto. "I can’t tell," he said.

"But I can!" I shouted into his horrified face, the thick, fringed border of the hammock gripped tightly in my fists. Before he could react, I yanked. Tato spun violently and crashed onto the tile floor. I clutched the hammock to my chest and snarled at him. "Pico Alto is breaking right here, inside this house, and you have been its first victim!"

I hopped deep into the folds of the hammock. Tato got to his feet and stood over me. I raised my fists in a threat to any retaliation that he might be considering, but Tato only cursed me under his breath and checked the kitchen to make sure Mamina had not heard. He rounded the hammock to take my old seat in the green wooden chair, but Fernando had occupied it and was now smirking at him. Fernando was my youngest brother and, being ten years old, cared less about the seat than about the opportunity to get the upper hand on his older brother. Tato considered raining blows on his impudent face, but unlike me, who would have seized the opportunity with religious zeal, he decided against it. Salvaging his dignity by adopting an accepting demeanor, he sat down on the sofa between our oldest brother Armando, who at nineteen was interested only in the political scandals dredged up by the newspaper, and Alessandra, who was shaking her head while continuing to flip through her stupid magazine. They moved to make room for him. He picked up my little sister Carmencita, the sixth and last child in the family, and put her on his lap, where she began to play with his glasses, smudging the thick lenses with her fingers.