You're right, Will, Diego thought. Bad shit happens.
***
Diego and Raul exited the stucco building fifteen minutes later. Raul went back inside the gatehouse and Diego returned to the motor home. Shaking with rage and shame, he took his seat next to Adriana. She was alone at the galley table. Sissy and Emily were on the sofa with Yong and Sam. They were playing “I Spy.”
“What happened?” Adriana asked softly. “Are you all right?”
“Yeah, fine,” Diego said in a low voice, his eyes barely meeting hers.
The crossing gate was raised and the Winnebago continued its journey.
“Did he hurt you?” Adriana took his hand in both of hers and held it.
“Let’s not talk about it,” Diego said quietly.
“Maybe if you talked about—”
“I can’t talk about it…ever.” He looked at her for an instant, and then turned away.
“Ever is three months,” Adriana reminded.
“You don’t want to know. It’s sick…very sick.” He could feel everyone’s eyes on him. Yong and Sam seemed to be staring. Diego looked at them with a sudden dislike.
From the sofa Emily said, “Thank you, Mr. Sanchez, for making that man let go of my wrist.”
“Yes, thank you,” Sissy said.
He glanced at them. “No problem.” Diego wondered if, given the chance go back in time, he would do it again. He decided he would not.
Diego recalled a psychology course he’d taken in his last year at UCLA: Sigmund Freud and Sexuality. Diego came away from the course with the belief that all people are born bisexual. Freud was so wrong, Diego thought. So fucking wrong.
Diego got up and went into the bathroom. He closed the door and vomited into the toilet. He stripped off his clothes and took a long, hot shower. He hoped no one could hear his sobs.
***
An hour later, Cutbirth pulled into a roadside rest area outside Kingman, Arizona. Cutbirth told Diego he needed to talk to him in private, and they got out and stepped into the spotty shadows at the rear of the Winnebago. Although the arid desert rest stop was smudged with the long shadows of night, it was still blow-torch hot.
The Toyota pickup pulled in and parked near the restrooms.
“That little drama back there cost me an additional thousand dollars,” Cutbirth said. “I need to be reimbursed.”
“And you expect me to fork it over?” Diego asked, his head still spinning with the sick memory of Raul Perez. He wondered if his mind would ever quit spinning.
“That thousand was set aside for another Port of Entry official,” Cutbirth said. “You gave me $5,000. I had budgeted a thousand for officials at each of the five Ports of Entry. I have three thousand left for the remaining four Ports of Entry.” He paused and looked into Diego’s eyes. “Was it rough back there?”
Diego nodded. “Yeah.”
“You must love your wife one hell of a lot to go through…that.”
“Ya think?” Diego sneered.
“Don’t be a wise ass.”
“And don’t patronize me,” Diego warned. He gave a long, resolved sigh. “It was a sacrifice I was willing to make…for both of us, but mostly for Adriana.” Diego thought he might vomit again.
“For the non-patronizing record, I’m sorry you had to do what you did. I don’t know the specifics, nor do I want to know, but I can guess. But I’ll still need the extra thousand.”
“You are one cold son of a bitch.”
“Like I said, it’s about the money, not the—”
“—morality,” Diego said. “You’re starting to sound like a broken record, Cutbirth. What’d you tell Yong about his mother being killed in the abortion riots? You said: ‘That’s a damn shame.’ I’m telling you the same thing, Cutbirth: That’s a damn shame.”
“You don’t get it,” Cutbirth growled, shaking his eel-like finger in Diego’s face. “If I don’t grease the skids at every Port of Entry, your wife will be yanked off the Winnebago and bused directly to the nearest detention center. Officer Perez painted an accurate picture of those detention centers.”
“I heard,” Diego said, some of the grit rubbed off his voice.
“So fork it over.”
“Damnit, Cutbirth, that’s all the cash I have. Adriana and I will need some walking-around money after we cross the border…if we cross the border. It will take me several days to open a bank account, make a deposit. Blah, blah, blah. We’ve got to eat, man.”
Cutbirth grinned. “That’s a damn shame.”
“You have $320,000 in that gym bag of yours. Are you telling me you can’t donate a thousand measly dollars to the cause?”
“That’s what I’m telling you.”
“Where is your compassion?”
“It got lost in the wash.”
Diego uttered a frustrated sigh. “The money’s in my backpack.”
“Let’s get it.”
Cutbirth followed Diego into the motor home. The Winnebago was empty; Adriana was napping in the smaller bedroom, and everyone else was outside stretching their legs. Diego removed his backpack from an overhead compartment in the galley. He unzipped a side pocket, fished out his last thousand dollars, and then handed it to Cutbirth.
“Stick it up your ass,” Diego said.
Cutbirth threw back his head and laughed. “I believe the Ad Man has found his voice.”
11
Adriana nuzzled closer to Diego and spoke to him a hushed voice. “Can you talk about it yet?”
“Not really.”
“I probably don’t want to know.”
The sick image came back to Diego. “You don’t.”
They had retired to the smaller bedroom a few minutes earlier. Sissy, Emily, and Rosie had been assigned the master bedroom in the rear of the motor home. Yong and Sam had the big sofa bed; Henry had the smaller. The drone of the Cummins diesel muffled their voices. It was a little after 11:00.
“Did he…?” A tear rolled down her cheek.
“I can’t talk about it, Adriana.”
“If you change your mind, sweetie, and want to talk….”
The thing was, Diego did want to talk about it. He wanted to share every nauseous detail with his wife. But he couldn’t. Not now. Maybe later.
She brushed the tear from her cheek, kissed him on the mouth, and then said, “I love you so much, Diego Sanchez. You are my Sir Lancelot.”
They lay quietly, listening to the monotonous throb of the diesel engine.
Diego said, “He altered my court hearing. He accessed my file on his computer and entered a ‘Postponed Indefinitely’ notice.”
“Does that mean you won’t be scrutinized again…at any Ports of Entry?”
“Right,” Diego said. He hoped the image would someday fade from his memory. Not likely, he thought. “Did you apply another Z patch?”
“Yes. The pain’s not so bad now.”
“You have five more, right?”
“Yes, five more.”
The math didn’t work for Diego and he felt like screaming again.
Adrianna said, “I regret we didn’t have a chance to say our good-byes. I would loved to have said au revoir to my students, my colleagues.” Lying on her side, Adriana raised her arm and draped it over Diego’s bare chest. He was in his walking shorts; she was wearing shorts and an oversized T-shirt that read: I Dig Dead People. “And I’m sure you wish you could have bid a final farewell to your co-workers at the agency.”
“That would have been very risky,” Diego said. “Christ, who can you trust these days?”He looked at his wife in the faint light. The whites of her eyes had an odd gray tinge to them. He wondered if it was caused by the Z patches.
They lay still for several more long moments.
“I found the gun.” Her voice suddenly sounded hoarser.
“The revolver?”
“Yes, the revolver. I found it shoved to the back of the nightstand drawer. I took the gun out, but I couldn’t do it. I though
t about it, but I simply couldn’t do it. I thought about how messy... Well, I couldn’t do it to myself or to you. I could see it was loaded. It had bullets in that...that round thingamajig.”
“The cylinder.”
“And since when does my husband know anything about guns?”
“The salesman at the store showed me how to load it,” Diego said, guilt tugging at him. “I’m sorry now for ever buying it. I don’t know what the hell I was thinking.”
“Had you planned on killing me in my sleep?”
Diego’s breath got caught in his throat. His answer was slow in coming. “I don’t know what I had planned.”
“I think you were planning to kill me in my sleep.” Adriana had made the statement in a straightforward manner. “Why didn’t you?”
Diego sighed. “I didn’t have the guts.”
“Don’t you think this was something we should have talked about?” She uttered a tense little laugh. “I mean, having my brains blown out might be, just might be, something we should have talked about. I assume you would have shot me in the head, yes?”
“I was planning on killing us both. Yes, in the head.” Diego sighed noisily. “Oh, hell, Adriana, I don’t know what I had planned or what I was thinking.”
The Winnebago hit a rough stretch of highway, and Diego and his wife bounced slightly in their bed. The chug holes rattled every old nut and bolt in the motor home.
“I barged into Sam today in the bathroom,” Diego said. “He was doctoring a horrible F that had been carved into his stomach.”
“What?”
“His queer-hating neighbors jumped him.”
“My God,” Adriana gasped.
“I suppose he’s lucky they didn’t kill him,” Diego said. “Welcome to the world of homophobia.”
“It’s the hate gene.” Her voice definitely sounded hoarser.
They lay quiet again for awhile. Finally, Adriana said, “Diego, will you make me a promise?”
“Of course.” He rolled over onto his side and looked at her in the dim light.
“I don’t expect you to remarry. I mean, how could you ever hope to replace me, right?” She traced his nose with her finger. “But it would be nice if you could find someone to...well, to help you with things.”
“What things?”
“The basics. Cooking. Laundry. Cleaning. Those sorts of things. Boarding that bus to heaven will be much easier for me if I know you’ll be okay.” She was quiet for a few moments. “Maybe a maid. She could come in a couple of times a week.”
“Let’s not talk about it.” Diego tried to clear his mind—to push away the gruesome notion of life without Adriana—but couldn’t. “I’ll do fine.” He felt dangerously close to bursting into tears, but he knew that wouldn’t do Adriana any good.
“No, Diego, you won’t ‘do fine,’” she insisted. “You can’t boil water, wash clothes or balance a checkbook. I’m surprised you can even tie your own shoes.” She blew out a tired breath. “I think that’s why I love you so much, Diego Sanchez. You are so, so needy.”
Diego pulled his wife close, finding her face in the dim light. He stroked her cheek, and then kissed her tenderly on the lips. Her lips were moist and warm, which made him kiss her again. “No promises, Adriana. I’ll manage.”
“There is, however, something you are very good at.”
He saw the grin on her face. “Oh, and what might that be?”
“You are, were, and will forever be a very good lover. No, allow me to rephrase that. You are a great, grandiose, spectacular lover. Indeed, you are the last of the red-hot Latin lovers.”
“Do tell, Mrs. Sanchez.”
“I still remember the first time.”
“How could I forget? The kitchen table in my third-floor walk-up.”
“You were a wild man, Mr. Sanchez.”
“You made me a wild man, Adriana. I couldn’t climb out of my clothes fast enough.”
“You lost your balance and fell”—she placed her hand over a croaky giggle that slipped from her lips—“against the wall and knocked your Norman Rockwell print onto the floor. The glass didn’t break. Remember? We were both surprised that it didn’t.”
“I never looked at Saying Grace the same after that day.”
He held her face between his hands and kissed her again.
Adriana said, “Have I told you today how much I love you?”
“No, and I’ve missed hearing it,” Diego whimpered.
“I do, you know. Wildly, crazily, madly in love.”
“You wouldn’t kid a guy, would you?”
“Not a chance.”
“Then prove it.”
Adriana sighed. “Could we just sleep tonight, sweetie?”
“Of course.”
“I’m tired. Very tired.”
Diego rolled over and stared up at the ceiling. “Yeah, me too.”
***
Diego was still awake when Cutbirth made a midnight fuel stop at the Laiwu farm near Seligman, Arizona. The corporate farm was located a half-mile north of Interstate 40. Unable to shake the myriad of disturbing images from his restless mind—his nightmarish experience with Raul Perez continued to fuck with his brain—once the motor home had come to a complete stop Diego raised up in bed, pulled back the curtain, and peered out the bedroom window.
Enclosed by a tall cyclone fence capped with a halo of razor wire, the Laiwu farm consisted of a six-pump, all-night fuel depot. To the west, beyond the fuel terminal, was a huge equipment barn the size of an airplane hangar. The barn’s sliding doors were open and an assortment of tractors and combines were parked inside. The main compound, located a short distance to the east, included several nondescript one-story buildings, an around-the-clock cafeteria—workers in khaki jumpsuits were inside at tables eating or waiting in line to eat—a half-dozen two-story barracks, and a large tin-roof warehouse. A Chinese flag hung from a pole in the center of the farm compound. Even at this time of night, Chinese soldiers in olive-green uniforms were everywhere.
An 18-wheeler was parked in front of Cutbirth’s motor home. The words Hatfield & Sons Trucking were emblazoned on the side of the long, white trailer. The big-rig driver, a pot-bellied man wearing a Confederate flag T-shirt, stood beside his red Kenworth diesel tractor filling the fuel tank. The Winnebago was next in line.
In a small adjacent building, beyond an open door, a group of Chinese soldiers watched television or played cards. All of them were smoking. Diego noted that the soldiers had a curiously feminine way of pinching their cigarettes between thumb and forefinger. One of the soldiers was absently slapping a swagger stick against his leg. He glanced casually at the Winnebago, and then went back to watching TV.
Two hundred yards to the east—beyond the tin-roof warehouse—hundreds of workers dressed in khaki jumpsuits worked the fields, which were lit by massive stadium lights. Music was being piped into the many parcels of land from loudspeakers attached to the lights. The lyrical singsong melody drifted softly across the landscape. A glory of stars glimmered beyond a sickle moon. It reminded Diego of a scene from a pleasant dream.
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