Just the 'Fax, man

Outside in the village square, the tree trimmer has been replaced by another lone worker. A woman in a jean jacket operating a gas-powered leaf blower walks slowly in front of the locked stores. She herds a cloud of dust down the empty street. -- Dexheimer

A wedding cake sits in the window of the panadería next door to Dulcería El Pachangón, and it looks like it's been sitting there for a while. The three white layers are sloped and sagging, and the little plastic bride and groom teeter precariously on their frosted tower. A similar benign neglect marks many of the small businesses that line this block: a used-furniture store, a restaurant-supply house, a convenience store selling cheap porcelain knickknacks imported from Taiwan and Hong Kong. A vaquero strolls the sidewalk in green boots, eating tacos from a bag, passing a woman who's pushing a shopping cart full of clothes to nowhere in particular. There's a line for the pay phone on the corner, but no one seems in much of a hurry to use it. It's a languid afternoon.

Inside Dulcería El Pachangón, owner Ricardo Costa is getting ready for a party. He is always getting ready for a party. Quinceañeras, weddings, children's birthdays, baptisms -- if it's worth celebrating, Ricardo is there to make it sweeter. He stocks enough candy to make a niño's mouth water for a full year, from one birthday to the next. His shelves are crammed with Mexican confections: cucumber/chili lollipops, whole tamarind pods, small plastic bottles full of sugary mango-, apple- and orange-flavored goo, rose and peanut cookies. The shop smells like marshmallows and hums with mariachi.

Ricardo sells some goods by the pound -- $1.99 for an assortment of hard candies, for example. But his major business staple is the piñata. Every nook and cranny and corner shelf is stuffed with these crepe-paper sculptures, in every size, shaped like donkeys, cats, vampires, fire trucks. Bart Simpson, Ernie and Bert, and colorful stars with ribbons and aluminum trails hang from the ceiling, dangling over the heads of customers like bats in a cave.

And Ricardo doesn't mind that these creations are all fated to be beaten to death by sugar-crazed kids.

"You don't see what you want? I'll get it for you," he says, making a swinging gesture with his arms, like he's hitting a piñata with a bat. "Give me one week. I can get anything made. Your husband, your boyfriend -- anything you want." -- Bond

2:36 p.m.: East High School,
Colfax and Detroit

Two teenagers, a boy and a girl, are lowering the flag, a sign that the end of the school day is near. It's oddly comforting to know that high school kids in all the mountain states are performing this very ritual at this very time.

Sitting on a bench in front of the flagpole are seniors Joy Reynolds and Danielle Vialpando, students at the Denver School of the Arts who come here for classes they can't get there. Today was to be their first day in "social problems," but a substitute teacher, seeing lots of kids leave after they realized their regular teacher wasn't in, signed a bunch of them out. So now they're sitting here on this bench, on this improbably warm afternoon, waiting for their friends to get out of class. A security guard dressed in a green DPS jacket walks by but doesn't question why the girls are out early. In fact, he says what they're thinking: "Damn it. I'm glad it's over. Almost."

They laugh. And when the massive school clock strikes 2:45, the doors bust open and the still, quiet air is punctured by noise. So many of the kids look so young and tiny. Others look like they're in their twenties. The girls appear confident in their chunky high-heeled boots, cute skirts and jeans. The boys are all low-slung pants and attitude.

Once Joy and Danielle leave, Dwon Buskey takes their place on the bench. The senior plans to go home, do some schoolwork, then go to his construction job. Two guys and a girl come up to him, wondering who his benchmate is. A reporter? "Don't you have to have permission to talk to students?" one asks. Responsible, these kids. Me, not so much. I just shrug. "She's smooth," Dwon says. "Looks like one of us just sitting here."