I whispered, “Like that?” She said, “Yeah, like that. But do it harder like the men on TV.” So I did. But then the bed creaked and Estrella started giggling and Luisa said, “Shhh!”
“¿Qué hacen?” Pancho said. He was still alive then.
All of a sudden it was like if some light had been turned on. And we stopped moving. That’s when I noticed how bad Luisa’s breath was.
I didn’t want the bed to creak again so I just relaxed over her. I felt like I was flattening her. But she didn’t tell me to get off, and we fell asleep that way.
Croooc, crooooc!
“What’s that?” I whispered. Gastón heard me and said, “It’s a toad, stupid.” “No it’s not. Toads live in ponds, stupid.” “No, you’re stupid.” “It’s a frog.” “Then why did you ask?” “Because I was asking where it came from, not what it was.” “Well, that’s what you asked.” “Shut up and go to sleep,” I said. And he did, and so did Estrella, and Luisa, and me. We went asleep to the sounds outside, then waited for the sounds to wake us.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
My deepest gratitude to the Riggio Program at The New School, the Iowa Arts Fellowship at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and the scholarship committee at the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference. Without your support and encouragement this book would not exist.
My love and thanks to:
All of my professors who have shaped and nurtured me: Andrew Sean Greer, Julie Orringer, Charles Baxter, Kevin Brockmeier, Marilynne Robinson, Zia Jaffrey, Sigrid Nuñez, Sharon Mesmer, Helena Maria Viramontes, Josh Weil, and especially Lan Samanatha Chang and Rene Steinke, who worked specifically on this project.
My peers who read with such generous and thoughtful minds: Dina Nayeri, Stephen Narain, James Molloy, Carlos QueirÓs, Devika Rege, Chanda Grubbs, Greg Brown, Christa Fraser, Ashley Davidson, Jessica Dwelle, Scott Smith, and Luke Sirinides—thank you so much; I will always remember that workshop and carry it close.
My agent, Chris Parris-Lamb, who has been nothing less than a literary prince and hero throughout this entire process. Also, Andy Kifer, an incredible right-hand man and wonderful reader—thank you.
My editor, Claire Wachtel, who embraced this book, believed in it, and protected it in a way I could only have wished for—thank you.
Jarrod Taylor: this book would not exist without you.
My family and friends, near and far: you know who you are and you have my heart.
And to the absurd and audacious hope of wanting to become a writer—thank you.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Mario Alberto Zambrano was a contemporary ballet dancer for seventeen years, dancing in the Netherlands, Germany, Israel, Spain, and Japan before returning to school to pursue a career in writing. He received a BA from the New School, where he was a Riggio Honors Fellow, and completed his MFA at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop as an Iowa Arts Fellow. He is a recipient of the John C. Schupes Fellowship for Excellence in Fiction. Lotería is his first novel.
www.marioalbertozambrano.com
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Advance Acclaim for LOTERÍA
“A taut, fraught look at tragedy, its aftermath, and the stories we tell ourselves to survive. With suspense, dread, and always the possibility for redemption, we watch as Zambrano flips the cards of chance and fate.”
—Justin Torres, author of We the Animals
“This novel seems simple and straightforward at first; in fact, Lotería is anything but that: Mario Alberto Zambrano’s wonderful book is constructed as a beautiful, gripping, and lyrical set of riddles (asked and solved) about life-and-death matters in one family. Like the novels of Cortázar, its form is intricate and beautiful.”
—Charles Baxter, author of Gryphon: New and Selected Stories and The Feast of Love
“In Lotería, Zambrano performs a lyrical and formal sleight of hand conjuring a spiritually profound and deeply moving story of one young girl’s struggle to reconcile her losses and leave nothing to chance. . . . This gorgeous, one-of-a-kind debut marks the emergence of a singular and powerful new literary voice.”
—Amber Dermont, New York Times bestselling author of The Starboard Sea and Damage Control: Stories
“In a bold, deeply felt debut, Zambrano brings us tragedy made powerful. . . . These are people who hold on to each other so hard it hurts. And this moving novel will hug you too, every bit as tight.”
—Josh Weil, author of The New Valley
“Take the architecture of Italo Calvino’s The Castle of Crossed Destinies and marry it to the wide-open childhood receptivity of Carson McCullers’s The Member of the Wedding, and you might achieve something like the effect of Lotería, but the tone Zambrano strikes here is entirely his own.”
—Kevin Brockmeier, author of The Brief History of the Dead
“If a book can be a spirit, this one is lithe, beautiful, and true. Mario Alberto Zambrano brings the heart of an artist immersed in movement and music to his prose, and the result is dazzling.”
—Ru Freeman, author of A Disobedient Girl
“Lotería charms on every page, despite heartache, love, and loss, not only through its clever structure but through his invention of Luz, our eleven-year-old fortune-teller and storyteller. The beauty and joy of her voice overcomes the hardships of her life, and by the end we have fallen in love. Bravo to a marvelous debut!”
—Andrew Sean Greer, New York Times bestselling author of The Confessions of Max Tivoli
“Mario Alberto Zambrano’s Lotería is a tender, beautifully written story. In every line, Zambrano finds the happy and sad music of childhood. It is an entrancing work.”
—Lynne Tillman, author of Someday This Will Be Funny
CREDITS
Cover illustration and design by Jarrod Taylor
COPYRIGHT
LOTERÍA. Copyright © 2013 by Mario Alberto Zambrano. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
FIRST EDITION
All illustrations by Jarrod Taylor
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data has been applied for.
ISBN: 978-0-06-226854-9
EPUB Edition JULY 2013 ISBN 9780062268563
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