"They killed the priest right there!” George insisted, his pale arm jutting behind him. “In my dishroom! There was a well for the old mission and that’s where the curse started!”

Carlos could hear him over the fans, the drone of the fridges, the splashing of his own hands in the sink, every time George told the tale. The old Swede always found time to tell his tale of the Cursed Old Mission to any customer who would look up from their meal long enough to listen.

Carlos had not brought his family back to Albuquerque for an old curse so popular with the turistas blancos. His grandparents had worked in the old mission, curled their backs and gnarled their fingers against the crops, burnt their faces by the sun. They never mentioned a curse or murdered priest. When George told the story to his Mexican staff in horribly fractured Spanish, Franco kept his snickering tightly contained and Carlos adopted a leisurely nod and watched the man’s graying bangs bob as the sentences fumbled from between his lips.

Carlos usually hoped George would just let him clean up and go home. The clock cranked towards nine o’clock; if he was home by ten Anita might still be awake and Eduardo might be working on his homework.

The café felt cursed, slouching in its pueblo design, crumbling at its adobe corners. George filled the dining room with candles and still it seemed dark and cold. In the hottest of summer days the café shuddered with an immobile chill. Late at night the building groaned and whispered, and often, when everything else had ended, George would stay late and listen to its murmurs. Carlos never knew why.

Carlos was not a superstitious man. The neighborhood around the old Spanish mission fell into disrepair and the old streets wound around the stacked buildings to defy city planners. Carlos loved the old mission neighborhood where his grandfather had worshiped, his grandmother had tended garden, and his father had played. The old mission whispered to him in his dreams, even as his wife begged him to quit his job. George was not a tyrannical boss, but he expected much from his staff and he wore them thin.

Carlos missed his son’s football games, but he was proud of Eduardo and never failed to tell him so. Carlos missed the family day at Eduardo’s school; he missed Eduardo’s cousin’s confirmation ceremony. The money paid for living, but Carlos was hounded by the fact that he was not living the life of a happy man.

After work, when every dish was washed, floors mopped, lights off, doors locked, Carlos stood before the old mission gates and thought of his grandparents. All their work had come to crumbling. His eyes always fell upon the tower and the old rusted bell. No one cared for this old mission; there were so many. Which ones were to be saved? This one was so small, so dark, cursed by only time. Prosperity kept its fingers free from entanglement in the bricks and adobe of the old mission. The mission and its neighbors carried a pall of unearthly soul, out of place from the city, painted the eyes of the people black so they could not see the strangeness, or place their fingers on it. It eluded Carlos every time he searched for it.

When Carlos got home the only light in the upstairs apartment was the living room lamp. Anita worked as a seamstress at early hours, with only Sundays off. It was the day he spent with his family, until he had to go wash dishes. George forbade Sundays off for Carlos, gave him Monday instead. Carlos relented and woke alone every Monday morning with a heavy heart. His friends asked when he and Anita would have more niños. Anita thought she was too old, too tired, to have another baby. Too much work. He knew it made Anita sad, and less and less she looked at him with kindness in her eyes. Never enough time.

When Carlos entered the dish room Sunday afternoon, he flung a sigh at the dishes piled in the sinks. He turned on the radio, slid the dial to the Mexican station, and drew hot water from the faucet.

“Carlos!” George dropped a bus tub filled with sauté pans and ladles by the vegetable sink. “Hola! Necissitas satornes!”

“Okay, George,” Carlos nodded and started in. He snuck a peek at the dining room just outside the door. Only three tables had customers, and they were transfixed to George’s tale of the cursed priest and the well under the dishroom.

If the old mission didn’t whisper to him, Carlos would have found another place to keep him wet to the elbows. George had become fierce in his motions, demanding in voice, and easy to irritate.

At the end of the night, George told Carlos to lock up. George left him the spare key. Carlos knew the routine and nodded compliantly. He unplugged the sinks and dug out bits of food that stopped the water. Red pepper chunks, zucchini slices, soft and squishy, noodles, slips of onion that defied him. He glanced at the clock and thought he might weep. It was nearly midnight. With a long sigh he plunged his hand into the middle sink and dug.

Something firm and cold and round, like a marble, touched him back. Thinking it a bent spoon he tried to find the rest of it. He pressed his thumb against it; it resisted him like an egg too long boiled. With some effort he finally worked it loose. His hand came out of the swirling muck with a greasy arc.

It was no spoon, no egg, no marble. The sphere was the diameter of a quarter, opalescent and gleaming in the fluorescent light. He stared at it. It seemed to stare back at him, clean and smooth in his palm, as though it had never touched the gunk he’d dug it from. The iridescent surface shifted and swirled as though considering him as deeply. Carlos’s mind searched for what it could possibly be. He set it on the prep table. The orb dimmed. He stepped away from it languidly. It rolled towards him. He reached for it so that it wouldn’t fall from the table. It brightened, swirled. He gasped and stepped back. It followed him.

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