by Richard Ford
He read the American paper in the cab and tried to sit still so the Lomotil could work. Altitude had effects. One disease could imitate another. He pressed below his right floating rib. A swelling would mean hepatitis, but there was no swelling.
All the stories in the American news were published in the wrong syntax, U.S. TEAM WINS ISRAELI RIFLE SILVER. Below it was a photo of some American marksmen holding rifles and smiling in yarmulkes and nylon jackets. Another said ASSOCIATION OF TWINS INTERNATIONAL MEETS, and above it was a photo of some fat twins. There was a story about a grandmother in South Dakota stabbing a lion to death with a button hook inside her travel camper. The story didn’t say how the lion had come inside the camper or why there was a lion around at all. Mexicans would understand it. Americans lived in an ocean-to-ocean freak show, and there was a good reason to be here where things were simple instead of up there where things were bent wrong. He checked for baseball scores in the back but there was only fútbol from the Federal District. He put his head back and closed his eyes and tried to let the pills work. Only assholes got sick. He couldn’t be sick now.
The bungalow didn’t smell good. The moza was supposed to come in the morning to scrub the floor and launder the sheets, but it was clear she hadn’t been there. The Italian girl’s blue paisley underpants were lying in the doorway to the bedroom. The bed, in the shadows, was still torn up, the sheets half on the floor. He picked up the underwear and walked through the entry to the living room to open the mirador. Someone was in the living room.
“I can’t see how you rate this nice place,” the Negro said. He was standing at the picture window, and when he spoke he half turned and glanced out the window as if the best part of the bungalow was outside. Quinn got completely still. He wanted to be between the man and the bedroom, which led to the bathroom where the pistol was. He estimated eleven steps, no locks. “They’ve got me in some kind of bad shit bag.” The Negro smiled and let his eyes come to Quinn. The television was on, but the sound was off. The room felt too small.
“I think you got the wrong address,” Quinn said. He felt prepared to move. He knew who the man was. He didn’t know if the man would know that.
“I want you to tell your boy to start doing me right,” the Negro said, and sat down in the swivel chair. He looked at his fingernails as he talked.
Quinn thought four seconds to get under the tiles and have some competence with the pistol. A cramp fluttered at the bottom of his stomach. Not an urgent sign, but an urgent sign wasn’t far back. A second man stepped out of the bedroom pointing a revolver at him. A Mexican, an older man in a pink rayon shirt and rheumy eyes who was taller than the Negro and was wearing a straw porkpie hat. Quinn looked back around at the Negro. “ ’Fraid I don’t get it,” Quinn said. “Maybe you could just tell me who in the fuck you fellows are?”
The Negro took a joint from his shirt pocket, lit it, and watched Quinn through the smoke while he downed the toke.
“I know you,” the Negro said in a constricted voice and smiled. “You been to Big Nam, got all kinds of good sense. You’re down here getting your man out of the J.” Deats held his hit as long as he could, his smile widening all the time. His face was khaki colored and smooth. He was thin and in his twenties and had on an expensive beige sweater and creased pants. He didn’t look like anybody Sonny would get to know real well.
“Look.” Quinn looked back at the Mexican holding the pistol. The Mexican hadn’t made any noise. He was standing impassively in the bedroom door pointing the revolver. Quinn looked back at Deats hopefully. “I picked up a little dys,” he said, “and I’m not in fighting shape right now.”
Deats let his hit seep all the way out, delicately pinched off the red tip with his fingers, and put the joint back under his sweater. Deats had a piece, but you couldn’t know where it was or how close to his hand, though the Mexican presented the first problem.
“Their water’s got shit in it.” Deats wiped his fingers together neatly and sniffed, then waited a moment. “Your man played bold down here,” he said calmly, flicking ashes off his trouser crease. He didn’t seem completely interested. “You know that?” He looked up smiling.
“He said he didn’t,” Quinn said.
Deats touched his nose again. “Uh-huh.” He nodded patiently. “But he did. It don’t matter what he said.”
The dope made the room swampy and changed the light. Quinn was sweating again, and his toes felt slick. “I can’t work with that,” Quinn said. He balled the Italian girl’s underpants in his fist. “That’s not what I’m good at.”
Deats smiled. “I know that,” he said. He was a handsome boy with long, delicate fingers that he took nice care of.
“Look.” He turned halfway toward the Mexican so he could keep them both in sight. “Maybe you could come back some other time.” The Mexican stared at him as if he were a long way away from what was happening.
“We won’t be too long,” Deats said. He glanced at the TV. A small fat man with a painted-on mustache was standing beside a fat woman who was grinning and wringing her hands. The man was about to spin a big number wheel, and the fat woman appeared to have a lot of pain riding on the spin. The camera kept closing on her face, and her eyebrows twitched as if she could feel the pressure of the tiny screen.
The Mexican was behind him unexpectedly. He grabbed the hand with the Italian girl’s underpants, pulled back swiftly, and tied it to the other one with a length of metal wire. Quinn let the underpants go. No resistance. He thought about the Italian girl having been in the room this morning. It seemed ridiculous.
Deats fidgeted with the armrest, his other hand holding a small silver pistol that looked like a cigarette lighter. “You can do your man a big favor,” he said, calmly watching Quinn be tied up. The Mexican took his belt, looped his ankles, and knotted it back tight. The Mexican was breathing hard. “You can tell him for me,” Deats said, “that I’m not in this fuckin’ business to let assholes take me off like I was selling brooms. You understand that?” His mouth twitched and he suddenly seemed mad. It was just weirdness. Deats’ eyes seemed to get much smaller and more finely focused.
Quinn wanted to keep his mind off his stomach. “Sure, I understand. Everything’s great now,” he said. He was having trouble keeping his balance. He thought he might fall backward.
“Speak to your man,” Deats said calmly, and nodded at the Mexican. The Mexican whispered close to Quinn’s ear, “Please kneel.” Quinn bent over and the Mexican let him to the floor gently, face on the tiles. The floor began pushing the cramps back.
“And say what the fuck?” he asked, face down. He couldn’t see Deats anymore, only his high-dollar alligator shoes, but he wanted to keep contact. “I told him if he had something you wanted, to turn it loose. He doesn’t have the nuts to take you off.”
The Mexican turned him over carefully so that he was lying on his tied hands looking at the corrugated fiber glass ceiling. It was a shitty place, a shittier place than he’d ever been in. The Mexican unbuttoned his shirt and pulled it open.
“Tell him he’s a greedy boy,” Deats said, staring down smiling. The little silver automatic was gone.
The Mexican began tampering with something in his own shirt pocket, not getting it out easily. “Maybe somebody else’s taking you off,” Quinn said. “Did you ever think of that?” You didn’t look at the Mexican now. You kept your eyes on the green corrugation and talked to the ceiling.
“No,” Deats said. His eyes had gone as swampy as the air. It was good dope. “My business just don’t run that track, you understand?”
Quinn thought he could talk forever now. It was like the moment before anesthesia. “But Sonny can have you off. Right?”
Deats stood up out of the chair. The Mexican in the porkpie hat was ready with whatever he wanted to get, and waiting for Deats to give a sign. He could just see the Mexican’s nose. Deats peered down at him. “Tell him what I tell you,” Deats said. He walked across the room and turned the vol
ume up on the TV. The Mexican had a small square plastic box, the kind trout flies came in. Deats stood in front of the TV and watched the Mexican oddly. He had his porkpie pushed back and he squeezed the lid off the box with this thumbnail, knelt, and delicately turned the contents out onto Quinn’s chest. The Mexican had extremely thick fingernails, industrial fingernails, nails for turning screws. The man on the TV with the mustache was talking very fast in Spanish. He kept pointing to something off the screen and saying “grande.” He kept reaching for the wheel as if he was going to spin it, then stopping and saying something to the fat woman that made her wring her hands harder and grin and flick her eyebrows and rise up on her toes in anticipation. The camera showed her toes. Quinn’s heart began to whip up fast. “You don’t look so hot,” Deats said.
He thought he was going to have a cramp. The muscles up and down his stomach began organizing themselves into a unit, waiting for the scorpion to hit him. Quinn heard the door close and footsteps on the patio, and he was alone on the floor. The rapid voices on the TV built up a wall of sound that was too run-on to get, and he couldn’t put a thought together, and for a moment he was terrified. He wanted to think a thought, but one wasn’t extractable. The scorpion was small and translucent, the color of nicotine. He couldn’t feel its weight, could only see it rise with his breath over his chest contour. Some of them would kill you and some of them were like wasp stings. He couldn’t get the markings you were supposed to remember. The ones in Arizona killed you. He thought about Arizona. It didn’t seem far away. There had once been a communication. Some were green, some were brown, he couldn’t quite distinguish. Some were green and some were brown. You were not to be stung by the wrong one, but he couldn’t remember which was wrong. His face was wet. The scorpion was rising and falling with his breath but hadn’t moved of its own will. Quinn was bridged on the heel of his hand and could tip one way or the other by turning his head and breathing, but that might be enough to make it sting, and he didn’t want it to sting. The TV was loud and the fat man still hadn’t spun the wheel and the fat woman was all the way on her toes as if she wanted to fly and not come down until the wheel hit her number. He wanted to see the screen, couldn’t keep his eyes off the emcee smiling and soaking up the situation, getting the studio audience involved. It seemed to involve him more than it involved the woman who might win something, more than anybody else. The scorpion suddenly seemed to wake up. It moved an inch on his chest then stopped, its tail uncurled. The Mexican suddenly dealt the wheel a huge, knee-bending haul, and the wheel chattered, becoming a whir like a mirage on the tiny aqua screen showing numbers and chances in a vortex, and then slowing as the balance on the heel of his hand gradually sagged to the side so that his chest tipped toward the TV and the scorpion slid off onto the tiles before the wheel had even completely stopped.
He bucked the floor and jerked off from the scorpion, which he couldn’t see now, but knew would come after him once it hit the tiles. He slid on his stomach and kicked his knees so he could achieve a sit. The scorpion hadn’t moved. It was almost invisible against the pale green tiles and gave no sign of intention. He pushed back to the wall and jigged his feet until the belt began to lariat around his ankles and he could get one foot free and force out the loop. The scorpion hadn’t moved. The television was louder than before. The woman had caught her number. Peso signs were flashing on the screen, and the mustachioed man was talking as fast as he could and pointing at the woman accusingly, the woman was looking out through the peso signs in a fur coat, hugging herself and turning around and around in the commotion. Quinn advanced on the scorpion, his hands still wired. He came at it from the side, curling his foot, and slid it onto the space where he’d been lying, into the sweat circle on the floor. The scorpion sat on its stomach with its tail laid behind it inert. He suddenly brought his heel down and ground it on the tile. It made him mad for the scorpion to be still. The television was screaming and the woman was swaying in a daze, the coat hugged to her chest. The word ganadora had begun flashing below the woman’s feet as if that was her name. It pissed him off. The scorpion had been dead, it was a nigger gimmick. It made you an asshole by making you be afraid of something that turned out to be nothing. Though that wasn’t precisely it. It was just all in behalf of what didn’t matter. The thing that scared you was the thing that didn’t matter.
He twisted his hands free, turned off the television, and picked up the Italian girl’s underpants. His heart was hitting at the sides of his ribs, and his stomach felt turned over, beginning to cramp. Sonny was supposed to be the routine part of this. Rae was supposed to be the hard. Things were beginning to go off the track all of a sudden, and he didn’t know exactly what it would take to get them on again. It was going to have to be Bernhardt’s business, that was certain. Because his own progress meant to go in another direction.
7
THE ITALIAN GIRL’S perfume smelled in the bed. He had no recollection from the night before, but it was all over the sheets and on the pillows and the blankets. It had been on the underwear he had flushed in the toilet. A sweet, lemony smell with sweat. It gave the filthy little bedroom a floating, locationless feeling.
He took a drink of whisky and lay out on the bed in a nausea, waiting for the pills to buckle onto the cramps. The cramps were like animal pains, great slow fissures in his gut that were almost too dramatic to be real pain, and you could suffer them out to the point of amusement, the way a horse would when it got a pain but couldn’t recognize it for what a pain was, and liked it.
He had had his picture made two days ago in the park. He could see it if he moved toward the bed table, himself in a white sombrero and a red serape beside the posing pony. He wanted to give it to Rae, but it seemed to fix time in a way he didn’t appreciate, put stress on his features he might not like in twenty years, if whatever was happening turned out bad. There was a picture taken nearly that long ago that showed him standing alone on the sand beach on Mackinac Island, staring gloomily into the camera as though into a dark thundercloud that threatened to ruin his day. Rae said he looked saturnine and didn’t like the pose. But the truth was that he had just fucked a big Finnish girl from Ludington, whom he’d met on the boat from St. Ignace, and who had wide Finnish blue eyes and dusty skin and was older than he was. And he was, he thought, in the best spirits of his life, and had gone back in fact, the very next moment, and found the girl and fucked her again. But in his mind, over time, he had defeated the facts, become convinced that he was sour and out of sorts, and he didn’t like to look at the picture and kept it in his footlocker where he never saw it.
Time changed things, he thought, lying on the cool sheets with the Italian girl’s cheap scent on him, and nothing more than the truth. He hoped in twenty years it would change the way he felt about this very moment, and that if he wasn’t dead, he wanted to be able to think a good thought about it, and the picture, straining at the camera beside the pony, made him sure he wouldn’t, as though the picture could trick you in some way you’d be sorry about. Being happy, he thought, and a pain flowered inside his gut, then subsided in a haywire spiral that the whisky controlled, being happy created problems, and not the least of them was being able to stand being happy.
8
IT HAD BEGUN raining in the Centro. Above floors, the air in the government palacio sat still and dense. Electric lights were off for siesta, and a sweet fodderish rain fragrance hung in the deputy’s office. Outside it could’ve been refreshing, but inside made it oppressive.
Bernhardt looked uncomfortable. The set of his mouth was off some way, as if he had been asleep and couldn’t quite get his features straight. It was a look that wouldn’t sell tickets.
The deputy of penitentiaries sat behind a wide French desk. He wore a white silk camisola with expensive orange scrollery on the chest, and he was writing on a printed document that had carbons under it that required him to bear down hard. Each move was a precise move. Occasionally he would stop, turn, and look out the d
ouble window at the treetops and rain on the zócalo, then start writing again without speaking. The office had scalloped flutings on the cornices, and on the wall in the shadows was a large imperial portrait of Juárez in a red ermine cape and a gold filigreed crown he couldn’t have lifted. The portrait had once been painted for someone else and Juárez’s little rodent face added, so that he looked like a sideshow freak staring out from a body that was too large for him and that had him worried.
He was impatient to talk to Bernhardt. Deats was somebody you could handle, but Bernhardt had to do the handling. In the street big monsoon drops had begun smacking the cobblestones, and Bernhardt had looked preoccupied and hustled him into the palacio saying nothing except “It is important to be on time.” But that wasn’t enough. He wanted Deats seen to before Rae knew about him.
Bernhardt had on a clean suit, a white twill with European lapels that made him look larger than he was. His glasses shone in the deep shadows, and he was impatient.
The deputy suddenly quit writing. He looked up and smiled, lifted the document off the carbons and blew it. He rose slowly, carried the paper by its corner to the door, handed it to someone outside, then returned to his chair. “Momentito,” he said amiably and pressed his lips together. He was a small, gold-toothed man and got smaller behind his desk. He put both his hands in front of him and smiled patiently so that the gold in his mouth leeched a tiny flicker of light from the room. “A seal,” he said, nodding at Bernhardt.