“A la madre! I left my tando at the bule,” Flaco said out loud to himself when he got home.
“My good luck tando,” he went on.
“What?” said Boy, who’d been asleep in bed when his brother came into their bedroom talking to himself.
“Oh, nothing,” Flaco responded.
It was too late to go back to the ballroom where he’d left his tando, distracted by the sight of a girlfriend who’d dumped him the previous weekend.
But the loss of the hat hurt.
He’d been wearing it when he danced with all the girls he asked to go out on the dance floor— a first in his life. Normally more than half turned him down.
Of course, he wasn’t wearing it when his girlfriend walked away from him in the middle of a rola the past weekend.
“Now what?” he asked himself.
The next day was Sunday. The bule wouldn’t be open until the afternoon. Nothing more to do until then.
He went to bed and passed the night away in a state of muino and hardly slept at all.
The next day, he got up and anxiously awaited the hour when the bule would open.
When that time came, he dashed off but was delayed behind a long line of lowriders doing the vuelta on the main drag.
By the time he arrived at the bule, there were already a number of cars in the parking lot, including that of his ex-ruca.
“Eeee! She’s here,” he thought.
He waited outside a short while in the hope somebody he knew would come by and be willing to fetch his tando for him.
But nobody came.
There was no way out of it. He was going to have to go in and face the music.
After a long while, Flaco went in.
He snuck in and went to the shadows in the hope nobody’d notice him. There wasn’t much of a crowd and they were all at the cantina at the far end, the only area lit up by the spotlights. His girlfriend was nowhere in sight.
Moving furtively through the empty ballroom between him and the bar, he approached the table he sat at the night before.
“You looking for your tando, mamón?” he heard a deep woman’s voice say.
Flaco froze in place. He couldn’t see her, but he knew it was his ruca.
“No, it’s your lucky charm?” she said.
Flaco didn’t respond.
“Come here, ese. Been waiting,” she said.
Flaco approached and sat down. He still couldn’t see her.
“I’ll give it back but you can’t go to the dances anymore without out me,” she said.
“Órale,” Flaco said.
“Here then. Been wearing it since last night. It’s luck is now mine,” she said.
