I’d once heard from a couple of giddy prostitutes ending their night and sharing a cab with me that Gabriela had a thing for men in uniform. I filed that alongside the tidbit I’d gain from a drunk who’d ran across Pedro’s wrath and told me that he had a thing for men in dresses,
In reality, I had never actually seen the two of them together, least of all have recording of them, but all I needed was for it to have happened at least once and I had Pedro.
“You’re lying.”
That wasn’t a denial.
“I’m not,” I said. “I’ve been holding on to it for a while, and don’t mind continuing to do so. Long as you walk away from here.”
“You’re making a mistake, you know that right?” Pedro took a step back, which I took as a good sign.
“Probably,” I acknowledged, ‘But I don’t like you. Never have.”
Considering this was my whole plan, it was hard not to breathe a sigh of relief when Pedro turned his attention to the crowd and yelled at them to put away their cameras and disperse. Or as he so eloquently put it, ‘get the fuck out of here before I send you all to jail’. He then glanced back at me and the kid and shook his head. “Pinche gringo,” he said.
Wondering which of the two of us he meant, I helped the kid up from the floor. “Come on, you look like you could use a drink,” I said.
• • •
You couldn’t find a better margarita than the one served in Club Kentucky. Deceptively simple to make, it only required a couple of ingredients—kosher salt, silver tequila, controy and most importantly of all, fresh lime juice. Oh, and the experienced hands of a bartender that had shaken margaritas for Steve McQueen, Ernest Hemingway, and Marilyn Monroe, who was said to have famously bought drinks for the entire bar to celebrate her divorce from Arthur Miller.
The kid and I sat on an oak table at the back of the bar, me enjoying my margarita and him leaning his head back against the cushion of the sofa seat. He’d been pretty talky on the way to the bar, though most of it had been an incoherent mess of words that littered the sidewalk behind us. He’d stopped talking once we got inside, which suited me just fine. I sipped the drink and enjoyed the way the tartness of it made the insides of my cheek tingle, all the while keeping an eye on the front door of the bar.
I’d embarrassed Pedro. Before, he’d been annoyed at my presence but other than two run-ins with him, which had predictably resulted in a lighter wallet for me, he hadn’t really gone out of the way to bother me. More than likely, he just saw me as another white guy happy to take advantage of the still strong dollar here in Juarez and then mosey his way back across the border to his home and life in El Paso. Now I’d made an enemy out of him.
Which explained why I chosen this place to hunker down in. Club Kentucky was as much of an institution in Juarez as... well, now that I thought about it, this might be Juarez’s ONLY institution. Point being, Club Kentucky was famous, and famous places rarely got shot at by angry cops.
“Hey, is your name really Thursday? Like in the day of the week?”
First time the kid had spoken since getting here and it had to be a question about my name.
“Yeah.”
“Huh.”
I waited for the eventual follow up, but nothing came. Normally people aren’t so quick to let go when it comes to the subject of my name. I’ve heard everything from ‘What the fuck were your parents thinking’, to ‘Could be worse, you could have been named Friday’.
“How are you feeling?” I asked, motioning to the waiter. “You want anything to drink or eat?”
“Water,” he said with a swallow, “lots and lots of water.”
When the waiter, dressed in a neatly iron white shirt and tie came to our table, I ordered another margarita and two glasses of water.
What’s your name anyways?” I asked
“Toby,” the kid answered.
“First time in Juarez, Toby?”
He nodded.
Figured. “You here alone?”
Our waiter came back with the drinks, and Toby immediately reached out for his glass of water.
“I was with some friends,” Toby said, setting the glass down on the table after drinking half of it in one gulp. “Hey, can I borrow your phone to call them? They’re probably out looking for me.”
“You came into Juarez without a phone?”
Toby patted his pockets and said, “I lost it.”
“Knock yourself out,” I said, tossing him my phone.
“Wow, I didn’t think they still made those,” he said, looking down at the phone I bought from the mercado for ten bucks.
“At least I got a phone.”
“Touché,” he said and dialed.
I looked around the bar. Black and white pictures of their famous clienteles hung along all the walls, keeping company to the soccer, I mean, futbol memorabilia that plastered the walls. The many bottles lining the back of the bar never had a chance to shine thanks to the low lighting of the room. I swear that every bar followed the guidelines that if you could see the drink in front of you, they had the lights on too bright.
There used to be a time this place would have been packed, even in the middle of the afternoon. Now though? Apart from us, the waiter, and the bartender, I counted three other people, all sitting at the bar and nursing drinks. Shit, no wonder the waiter had charged so much.
People just didn’t go out as often as they used to, not with the idea of all-out war between the cartels and the Mexican army hovering in the air like a fart filled balloon. With its close proximity to the U.S, the drug cartels had always seen Juarez as a prize worth killing for, just as the Mexican government viewed the city as too important of a victory to lose. So war broke out between the Army and two main cartels; The Juarez cartel, which had control of the drug trade since the early eighties, and the Sinaloa cartel. All three factions battled it out on the streets and b put the civilians in the middle of the conflict. People moved out of the city if they could afford to, and if not, pulled their kids out of school and hunkered inside their home.
All that still hadn’t stopped the death count from rising month after month. Last month alone over fifty murders were reported. This understandably put a damper on most of the tourist trade that Club Kentucky and the surrounding bars relied on.
“Cool, we’re at that old bar, you know the one with the crappy looking sign that has a big beer can on it?” I heard Toby say, “Yeah, that’s the one.”
Thinking about the current state of things in Juarez, I wondered what a fifteen year old white kid was doing drunk in the middle of the day. When he hung up and handed me back the phone, I asked.
“Oh,” he said with some hesitation, “Well, my friends wanted to come and check out the place. Go look around the city and stuff. We agreed that it would be safer if we did it during the afternoon instead of night, when it really got dangerous.”
‘Didn’t work out quite as you expected huh?”
“Man, what an asshole that cop was. He wanted a hundred dollars or he said that he would cart me off to jail. I hadn’t even done anything wrong.”
“How about underage drinking,” I pointed out.
“Dude, everyone does that. It’s like, totally expected.”
“Cop tells you to pay, you pay. Or you go to jail. That’s what’s expected here.”
Toby stayed quiet for a moment and then blurted out, “It’s a hundred bucks!”
“Still cheaper than a hospital bill.”
He opened his mouth to argue when a loud car horn cut through the bar’s conversations and shoved aside the norteña tune playing from the jukebox. I almost jumped out of my seat and when I managed to calm my racing heart to look out the bar’s window, I saw a bright yellow Volkswagen parked in the middle of the street. The driver honked again, and a blond girl in ponytails and a short top leaned out of the back side window and yelled, “Toby, you dork, come on, hurry up, we need to get going.”
Toby sprung from his seat too fast an
d immediately doubled over in pain. Shaking my head, I got up and helped him to the door. I wanted to get a closer look at his friends anyway.
Four in all, crammed inside the small car. Their laughing and conversation stopped when they saw me walking Toby out.
The driver, a tall, black kid jumped out of the car and asked, “What the hell happened to him?”
“I’ll tell you about it later, Miles,” Toby said through gritted teeth.
Miles glanced at me. If he expected an explanation out of me, he wasn’t getting it. Instead I looked at the other three kids in the car. All white kids wearing expensive clothes and glassy stares of drunks.
“Damn it Toby, dad and mom are going to freak,” the girl that had yelled for him a moment ago said. Same blond hair as Toby.
She caught me looking at her and flashed me a smile. “Who’s the old guy?”
Ouch. “I’m in my thirties. Early thirties.”
“Exactly.” She looked back a Toby. “Mom and dad are going to freak.”
“Oh shit,” Toby said, stopping to lean against the trunk of the car and turning towards me, “I didn’t even fucking thank you.” He explained to his friends, “It would have been worse if he hadn’t been there.”
“You did. Thank me I mean.”
“But like, I didn’t thank you thank you.” Limping his way back to me, he reached for his wallet and took out five twenties. “What I should have paid the cop,” he said.
I took the money.
Putting the wallet back in his pocket, Toby stared at me for a second and said, “You live in El Paso.”
A statement, not a question.
“Yep.”
“Cool. Maybe I’ll see you around.”
“Doubt it. Hey, you want a piece of advice?”
Toby nodded and leaned forward, maybe thinking I was about to divulge a great drinking spot or a way to avoid the cops. Instead I slapped him in the face. Hard, but not as hard as Pedro would have.
“Don’t come back. At least not until you’re eighteen or can hold your liquor. Whichever comes first.”
Miles had gotten out of the car already, and the other kid had to hold on to screaming sister back from coming at me.
“What the fuck, asshole,” Miles said, “Who the fuck you think you are?”
He would have taken a swing for me if it wasn’t for Toby, who got between us. “It’s cool, Miles. Let’s get in the car.” He kept his gaze on me.
“Let me go, no one hits my little brother. I’ll fucking kill him.”
I looked over Toby and pointed at his sister, “You guys better calm her down, otherwise there’s no way you cross the bridge without getting some attention from the border patrol. What bridge you taking?”
“Bridge of the Americas,” Toby muttered.
I checked my watch and said, “Take Ysleta. If you head over there right now, you’ll get there just as they switch shifts. If you can keep her quiet and pay the five bucks, you’ll pass with no problem.”
Toby got back in the car without thanking me, and with the sister slinging obscenities at me, I watched them go. If they were heading towards the Ysleta bridge, they needed to take the next left. Instead, they took a right. I wondered to what bar they were now heading to before counting the money I’d taken from Toby’s wallet when he wasn’t looking and adding it to the hundred he gave me.
Two hundred and fifty dollars. I’ve done more for less.
I stuck around Club Kentucky for a couple of more hours and even though I wasn’t celebrating a divorce, ended up buying the patrons a round or two. Considering it was just me and two old men over by the end of the bar, my generosity didn’t even cost me much. After a while, I stuffed the remaining of Tobey’s money down the inside of my left sock and decided to call it a night.
The alcohol muddled my head just enough that I didn’t mind the walk over to the Santa Fe Bridge. If this had been the weekend, the bars along the Juarez strip would have been playing the latest hip hop songs or whatever reggaeton got the drunken girls shaking their asses the hardest. But since it was a Monday night, most of the bars stuck to playing the corridas their regulars wanted to hear.
I’d almost reached the bridge when I spotted the flashing red and blue lights streaking across the buildings that and washing over a crowd of onlookers. The sounds of a girl screaming pushed way all the pleasant after effects of the margaritas and brought things back into an ugly focus. My mind and body were divided in two, with all the thoughts in my head urging to turn around or slip into the nearest bar, but my body did not listening. My legs kept me walking along the sidewalk towards the lights and my arms pushed the crowd out of the way, edging me closer to the sirens, the lights, and the crowd.
And the yellow Volkswagen.
Whoever had draped the white cloth over the body had done a lousy job it. I could see a shock of blond, almost white hair lying flatly against the gray, concrete of the streets.
“He shot him! He shot him point blank and then laughed!”
Like before, someone held Toby’s sister, who screamed, kicked, and pointed to the office standing in the middle of the scene.
“Esta loca,” I heard Pedro tell the officer next to him. “Stupid gringo came at me for no reason. Tubo muchas copas.” Then he scanned the crowd until he found me. Pedro would have kept the body lying on the street for hours, I think, waiting for me to show up. “You know how they all are,” he added, “think they can take us all on.”
He kept the eyes on me, smiled as my hands shook and my vision blurred. All the alcohol I’d paid for became lodged in my throat. I pushed my way out from the crowd I released the drinks into the street, hearing people laughing and making disgusted sounds. Breathing through my nose I stayed hunched over until I was sure I wouldn’t throw up again.
The Santa Fe Bridge loomed large ahead of me, a hunchbacked creation that chained El Paso and Juarez together. From this distance I could make out the tiny strobes of lights that flickered as the line of cars inched up the bridge and towards the El Paso border
My eyes stayed fixed on those lights, dancing orbs that flickered in and out of existence. I focused on them and only them, knowing that if my eyes strayed, so would my mind.
Reaching the foot of the bridge, where Mexican soldiers stood with Ak-47s slung on their shoulders, where drivers patiently waited to declare ‘American, sir’, and where countless of staggering teenagers made the walk back to their homes, I found the lights no longer helped.
So I hailed and cab and asked it to take me back to Club Kentucky. Where I would drink sit at the bar and drink their Margaritas like countless better men and women before me had and try not to think of Toby. Of Pedro. Of the city I found myself in.
Yellow car punch
Nigel Bird
Y’ever play Yellow Car Punch, Colin?” The rolled-up cuffs of Giles Yokobo’s white shirt flapped as he casually shuffled a deck of cards and asked the question. “When you were little I mean?”
Colin couldn’t speak to give his answer, the old snot-rag filling his mouth and the circles of duct tape that were keeping it there making sure no words were going to pass his lips. Instead he nodded hard, figuring that the more enthusiastically he joined in with the conversation the kinder they’d be.
“I used to love it,” Giles went on, placing the deck on a bar stool that stood between them. In the dim light of the basement, his dark skin seemed to shine more than it did in the daylight. The muscles in his forearms bulged inside his skin like an obese woman’s arse inside a pair of size twelve jeans. “Probably because I could hit the hardest. And I was taller than my brothers so I got to see the cars first. You like cars, don’t you Colin?”
He did. It’s what had led him to this pit in the first place.
He nodded again, harder this time. Felt warm beads of sweat falling from his face like he was out in the monsoon rain.
“So I thought we’d have a little game ourselves. Just you and me.” Giles rolled up his sleeves until they
wouldn’t go any further, picked up the cards and passed them over to the other man in the room. “Course we can’t see the cars going by from down here, us not having any windows and all, so I’m going to do it a different way. My friend Danny here is going to turn the cards over. See a yellow car and you know what to do. Ready Danny?”
Colin found himself wondering about the pair of men who had dragged him out of the pub. Who was harder? If you were given a choice between taking a beating from Danny or Giles, it wouldn’t be an easy decision to make.
Giles was enormous. Could crush a skull with his grip and knock a hole through a wall with just the one punch according to his rep. And, if the stories were to be believed, he was also a mean son-of-a-bitch. Thing about him was, he wasn’t a natural. It was all gym work that had his body in shape. He was muscle bound and his arms were short, so Colin thought he might not have quite the zing that he might need in a fight. Sure, he was great if you needed someone to put on a show, but might not be so hot if it came down to fast action or tight spaces.
Danny was from another mould altogether. He was a giant, but everything about him seemed natural. His body swung loose and free when he moved, like a basketball pro mid-court. He had the ease of a real fighter and the experience of life on the street on his side.
In the end, Colin decided that he was about to take the beating from the lesser man.
“Ready?” Giles asked.
There was a nod in response and Danny turned over the card nice and slowly.
When Colin saw it was a pack of Top Trumps they were playing with, he felt a strange glow of comfort. It took him back to when he was a boy and knew all the answers in every category of the packs he owned. Even better, it was a blue car. Or a maybe it was black. Whichever it was, there was nothing doing.
The next was red. The third green. Surely it was going to be amber next.
It wasn’t.
There was a yellow Ford Mondeo in the picture. It made Giles happy and his smile revealed a set of the whitest teeth Colin had ever seen.
Colin tried to shout, but his tongue was too dry and his mouth too cramped to produce anything other than a muddled grunt.
Shotgun Honey Presents: Locked and Loaded (Both Barrels Book 3) Page 12