The Revolutionaries Try Again by Mauro Javier Cardenas

sorted out.
    My father noticed me first. He tried to discern whether I had heard what my uncle had just said. He must have concluded that I did because he closed his eyes and crossed his arms further, as if trying to wake himself up by squeezing his chest. These motions did not last. He opened his eyes and said what were to be his last words for the rest of the night: What the hell do you want? What is it, Antonio José?
    They’re waiting for you.
    Come, my uncle said in a conciliatory tone. Let’s join them. We’ll chat more after the gift exchange.

VII / ANTONIO & LEOPOLDO AT DON ALBAN’S
    If Leopoldo were a woman I would know what to expect, Antonio thinks, how to dress for our first meeting in twelve years, what to omit about my life in the United States, because if Leopoldo were an attractive woman, for instance, Antonio would know his objective was to impress her with a carefree disposition so on their first meeting he would pick a casual outfit and free associate for her about everything except of course death and desolation and Father Villalba saying how are we to be Christians in a world of destitution and injustice, and if Leopoldo were a former girlfriend Antonio would know his objective was to pretend he hadn’t missed her and that life had gone on without her so on their first meeting after years or months of not seeing each other he would wear new clothes she hadn’t seen before and listen attentively to her but avoid any references to their time together, and if Leopoldo were his mother he wouldn’t know his objective but he would at least know to adopt a confused detachment toward her, and yet in his entire life in the United States he did not have to prepare for a meeting with anyone like Leopoldo, in other words no one with whom to argue about the future of Ecuador, no one to remind him of their time together handing bread and milk to the old and the infirm at the hospice Luis Plaza Dañín, of their time together catechizing the poor in Mapasingue — you and I by the stairs atop Mapasingue, remember? — of their time together at San Javier playing Who’s Most Pedantic by Don Alban’s cafeteria, and as Antonio rushes along Rumichaca Street to meet with Leopoldo for the first time in twelve years, he wonders if their brand of bantering, which they both defaulted to when Leopoldo called him and said come back to Ecuador, Drool, is perhaps the only option allowed for men to show affection for one another, a performance of how television sidekicks interact with one another (Starsky and Hutch or the Dukes of Hazzard, for instance — I got your back, man — don’t touch my back, homo —), except he and Leopoldo haven’t been sidekicks in twelve years, and it occurs to Antonio that perhaps their game of Who’sMost Pedantic had been a ritualization of their brand of bantering, and although Antonio doesn’t remember the exact content of their Who’s Most Pedantic exchanges by Don Alban’s cafeteria, he does remember that their game consisted of refuting each other about everything, spoofing the pompous language of demagogues, priests, themselves, digressing manically about the reforms they would enact to transform Ecuador — external debt, what is? — Leopoldo shaking Antonio’s hand whenever he won and declaring Always Above You, my friend, and if Leopoldo were a woman Leopoldo would have been at ease in Antonio’s life in San Francisco because all of his friends in San Francisco had been women, as opposed to his former life at San Javier, where all of his friends had been teenage boys who expressed their affection by taunting each other with homophobic insults or misogynist interpretations of the language between husband and wife — where’s your husband, Drool? — Microphone’s at home ironing my shirts, where else? — and if Leopoldo were a woman Antonio would be able to say I’ve missed