Magic Day

The next morning you find the lot behind a church, under live oaks. Folding tables fill the shade, and a radio is on. People sit at them with cereal boxes, pizza boxes, the backs of calendars. A cooler of agua fresca stands at the end with a ladle in it.

You sit where there is room. At the end of your table a spiral-bound book lies open to a page of circles, its cover gone soft with hands. Beside it a man has his sleeves rolled and a strip of masking tape around each thumb. Cali, a woman says, pass the scissors, and he passes them. A kid asks if this is Magic Day. It's Saturday, Cali says.

You set the card with the three dots by your elbow. Cali looks at it, and then at you, and goes on folding. He does not ask where you got it, or where you've been. Nobody does. A woman hands you a flat box, and your hands find out what to do with it.

By evening the tables are stacked against the church wall, and someone has swept. Cali caps the cooler. I have water upstairs, he says.