ugo has short, black hair and toffee skin made chalky in the dry Peruvian air. Crust rings the inside of his nostrils. He wears the same sweater everyday. The sweater looks like a Christmas sweater -- red and green with little reindeer -- but it has a hole, which gets wider whenever he sticks his finger inside and pulls, like he's doing right now.
"Guess how old I am?" he asks. It's always difficult to tell with the kids here. Your frame of reference is all screwy. Teenage boys are short and scrawny, like children. Teenage girls are wrinkled by sun and babies.
"Ten," I guess, and Hugo shakes his head. "11? 12, 13, 14?"
The children in the square gather around us, smother their grinning mouths with their hands.
"Nine? Eightsevensixfive," I guess.
Hugo shakes his head again. "Give up?" he asks.
I nod.
"Ten-and-a-half. Ha!" With this, he does a little victory dance. "Like Michael Jackson," he says, dropping to the ground and spinning around on his bottom. "Miss," he says later, "what does 'I love you' mean in Spanish?"
"Te amo," I say, and his eyes go wide. Hugo says it to all the tourists. He said it to me on the first day I came to Cusco: "I love you. Want to buy a postcard?"
"And how do you say 'hasta luego' in English?" he asks. "You say 'fucky-fucky?'"
"No!" I say, jumping in my seat. "Nonono."
The children around us giggle, delighted by my shock.
"No, that's terrible!" I say.
"What does 'fucky-fucky' mean?" asks another girl. She is frail, 16, and talks as if she has some brain damage. In a blanket slung around her neck, a fat, red-cheeked baby is sleeping.
"It's terrible," I say.
"It's like shit?" she asks.
"It's worse," I say, and then turning to Hugo, "Please. Don't say that."
"Fucky-fucky?" he asks, knowing I'll gasp again.
I gasp again. "Don't say that!"
Soon it's 1pm, time for them to go to school.
"Hasta luego," I say, getting up from the bench.
"Fucky-fucky!" they all scream, and squeal once more as they scatter, all the tourists and policemen staring as they run.