"Last night Rolo had an o'd and he died."
Was this Mayra's voice over the phone? Catalina collapsed onto her knees. "What? What? No, no, no, no, no."
Maximo ran into the exercise room from the farmacia. "Que paso?" He knelt beside her and held her.
She handed him the phone. She lay on the exercise mat, curled into herself and sobbed and shook.
Maximo listened then shut off the phone and set int on a weight bench. He bent to her, raised her onto his lap, held her like a pieta. In his arms Catalina's sobs and shaking burst. She screamed into his chest.
"Mi hermanito. Me lo dieron a cuidar y no lo cuide.'
"How do we save the children?" Maximo's voice was very soft. Tears coursed down his face.
Catalina dug her fingers into the muscles of his back. "And now, how am I going to live?"
She made fists and punched his back. "Once second, maybe two seconds, it took for Mayra to say those worlds. So fast. She said Rolo had an o'd and there was one secon when rolo was still alive. He'd had an o'd and he had lived, or he was still in the act of dying, the moment of dying while he was still living. He was in the moment in which it could have been reversed, undone. He had and o'd and he didn't die. But it will never be undone." She was silent for a breath. "No, no, no, no." Her wail began again.
Robertico and Eugenio ran into the exercise room and stood beside the sobbing adults.
"Quien se murio?" Robertico stood with his legs spread and his hands in fists. "Who died?"
Eugenio the youngest of the nephes ran to Catalina and thres himsel into her arms. Robertico didn't move.
"Le paso algo a mi Mama? Tell me, Tia, did something happen to my mother?"
Catalina looked at Maximo. She held out her arms to Robertico. He walked to her and stared into her eyes.
"Tu Tio Rolo." Maximo's words could barely be heard.
"Los grandes siempre se van." Robertico said.
Robertico put his hands on Catalina's cheeks and looked softly into her eyes. It was strange how her eyes gushed tears.
"But last night I was with Rolo on the tejados." Catalina held her nephew tight. She stoked his soft brown curls.
"What did you do on the rooftops?"
"He was teaching me how to crawl. How to balance. How not to stand up too fast. He said he would always be with me. Pero los grandes siempre se van.
"He told me to remember to cry for him and I didn't know why.
"Then I felt a sensation in my fingers and I thought he was sucking on them and I realized he had just disappeared.
"I didn't know wherehe went.
"Now I know I wasn't dreaming.
"Robertico clutched a pendant of a tiny nugget of gold. "Me lo dio."

Mayra finished wrapping the last tamal. "Like a little gift." She was tired. In her mind she heard Rolo say, "Un success, un verdadero success." He had been very lovable. Every woman who met him fell a little bit in love with him. She'd gotten very tired of that. She'd been always competing. She played on his guilt and he said he was honest. She didn't believe him All those women after him were occasions of sin. El Padre had said so. She thought about everything except the one true thing: what the tamales were for. She made her hands into fists so tight she felt her acrylic fingernails digging into her palms.
"No, no, no. I'm not going to think about it."
Rudy came in and she handed him the cooler full of tamales she'd just boiled. He picked up the cooler and set it into the back seat of the van, the very same that Rolo did his shipping in. They drove in silence along the carretera naval as far as the lookout. Who'd even known that Rolo took pills, but with all his many falls from rooftops, all his pain, it hadn't been a big surprise. The lookout was already jammed with cars. Mayra guessed they were all here for Rolo's funeral. She saw Catalina and Maximo with the two little boys. What were their names? One of them had a name you couldn't imagine a little boy having...Yes. Eugenio. The round one was Eugenio, and the wiry dark one was Robertico. The four of them were already halfway down the narrow path that wove through the beehive of blue tarp lean-tos of the Palenque encampment by the beach.
She felt her stomach sink inside her. She could see the blue, blue ocean beyond the tarps and the high chain link fence of the Base Naval.
Rolo wanted to have his ashes scattered on the beach off Palenque, Catalina had said. Mayra couldn't imagine Rolo thinking about his own death. He lived as if he was immortal. Maybe Catalina was lying. Catalina was the sister she had rights. Mayra was the lover. She was the unconsummated lover. She thought of that and she began to cry. She was nobody to Rolo, nobody anybody knew about. Just his boss at Rudy's Almacen de Quincalleria.
Rudy set the cooler with the tamales on his shoulder and they set down the hill. It didn't matter what Rolo might have said or not said to Catalina about his ashes, Mayra knew he would have wanted them thrown from the very top of el Pico. One time, joking, he had told her he wanted them scattered from e' techo de tu casa.
They reached the gathering by the water just as Maximo and El Padre Elpidio were rowing off into the sea with the cardboard box with Rolo's ashes between them. The singing vibrated Mayra's soul and bones. Tanama sang el Grito, the music she composed to the poem by Flor Beltran. She sang it through once and they all sang it together. Even after the rain began, they sang.
Mayra stared at them from the shore. Catalina stood beside her and Mayra let her put an arm around her shoulders. Rudy took her hand and clasped it hard. A gust picked up a smoke of ashes. She watched the ashes fade into the wind. She spoke under her breath. "In the end Rolo's dead. Who cares where his ashes go."