Anise slumped down, leaning against Chapo. “You see?” she said. “He did help us. I knew he did.”
Chapo watched the slope, wanting to make sure the riders had gone. “The brujo?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Maybe, maybe not.”
The brujo’s red knife lay on the ground. Chapo wiped the blade clean on his trousers, folded it, and slipped it into his pocket.
“How can you say that?” asked Anise.
“I told you…you can’t trust brujos. The drug he gave me, the dream you had. All this might still be part of that. Could be none of it happened, or just a little of it happened, and this”—he tapped his forehead—“this did the rest.”
“Why would you think that?” She stroked his hair, concern on her face.
“You believe a blind man can see? Shit! That coulda been what’cha call a hallucination.”
“No it wasn’t!”
“You believe in magic?”
“I don’t know if I do or not. But that wasn’t magic.”
“What was it, then?”
“Little cameras in his eyes, wired to the optic nerves. Didn’t you see his scar?” She touched Chapo’s cheek beneath his left ear. “That’s where they put the power source. I’ve seen the same thing a hundred times.”
“You sure?”
“Of course.” She took him by the shoulders. “Don’t you start thinking none of this is real, Chapo.” She kissed him, and like a slow magic, the kiss gradually brought him all the way back to life. Gold flecks seemed to have surfaced in her eyes, and everything about her seemed to have been refined. “There,” she said, smiling. “Is that what you call a hallucination?”
“No,” said Chapo, dazzled.
“It’s all been real,” she said. “That’s how I know we’re supposed to be together…because it’s been so strong.”
Chapo went along with her, but in his heart he wasn’t so sure. Blind men with cameras in their eyes…That didn’t sound real to him.
From a hilltop above the Pacific, Huayacuatla looked like Paradise. White sand fringed by a tame jungle of orchids and sapodilla, aguacate and sabal palms. The trunks of the palms were bowed toward the sea, and a westerly breeze blew their fronds back from it. Half-hidden among the vegetation were villas and hotels of all colors. Pastel blues and yellows and pinks. Late afternoon sun kindled diamond fires out on the sea. As they drove into the town, music came to their ears. Soft, sweet music that seemed to be part of the wind and not issuing from a mechanical source. Laughter came from behind the high walls of the hotels, and even the policemen smiled.
They drove onto the grounds of the biggest hotel beneath a blue stucco arch with ironwork letters that spelled CASA DE MILAGROS. The young man who parked their jeep wore a white jacket and creased blue trousers and shiny shoes, and looked a lot like Chapo. He gave Chapo a suspicious glance, smiled at Anise, and told them they could find the manager’s office beyond the swimming pool. They walked leisurely along a flagstone path past bungalows with macaws tethered to perches beside the door. Bright things darted high in the branches of fig and mango trees. Chapo thought they were birds, but then one swooped close, circling him, and he saw it was a bright blue ball with stylized yellow wings and no head. Alarmed, he swatted at it. The thing let out a warbling squeal and broke into dozens of cartoon music notes that played a melody as they faded. Not wanting to appear unsophisticated, Chapo didn’t ask what it was. The things kept swooping at him, giving him starts. He smiled and pretended he’d seen them many times before.
The pool was an Olympic-sized emerald lozenge filled with swimmers, and people were sitting beneath striped umbrellas around it. One woman whose face looked about sixty years old had the body of a teenager; her hair changed color as she talked, shifting from vivid green to crimson to a striped design of black and yellow. Something silver and saucer-shaped sailed through the air and landed at Chapo’s feet; tiny silver animals swarmed off it, leaped into the pool, and vanished. Two kids ran over. One snatched the saucer up and sailed it across the pool toward another kid. A withered white-haired man was talking rapidly to three women, his words materializing in pale smoke above his head; when he stopped for breath, the smoke strung out into little dots, giving visible expression to his pause. Chapo felt lost. There were a hundred things going on that he didn’t understand. He remembered Don Augustín’s world of drunkards, and had the idea that he had stumbled into a sillier version of it.
In the manager’s office, Anise placed a call to her father in the States. But he was on the border, and would be out of touch until late that night. No problem, said the manager. He’d arrange a couple of rooms and…
“One room will do,” said Anise. “And if you could pick up some clean clothes…for both of us.”
The manager had difficulty repressing a look of disapproval, but said it would be his pleasure.
Two hours later, dressed in fine clothes, they ate dinner in the hotel restaurant: a dimly lit room with heavy silver and candelabras and linen tablecloths. White birds of pure light winged silently above their heads. Music seemed to be everywhere, even in the conversations of the people dining nearby. In the center of the room was a pit from which a sculpture made of fire leaped and crackled, shaping itself into image after image. Jaguar, swan, serpent, and a hundred more. The waiters went about their work as silently as the birds of light, depositing new dishes and bottles of wine. Chapo was astonished, delighted. He had never seen such beauty, never tasted such food. Though he had been nervous upon entering the restaurant, he soon felt at home. They drank and laughed, laughed and drank, talking of the things they would do in LA. With their dessert, the waiter brought a note for Anise; it said her father would arrive the next morning.
“You’ll like him,” she told Chapo. “He’s different from these people. Strong like you.”
Dizzy with the wine, Chapo believed her. Disbelief was not in him. Through the silver branches of the candelabra, she seemed to sparkle. Even the things she said seemed to leave a sparkle in the air, and he was coming to think that this sparkle was emblematic of the real world.
They finished eating, and as he stood Chapo knocked over a bottle of wine. A rich red stain spread over the tablecloth. Their waiter mopped at the stain, assuring him that it was no trouble, his tone apologetic. But the other diners stared and laughed behind their hands. Chapo was frozen by those stares, feeling as if he had been caught at something.
“Don’t pay any attention to them,” Anise said, pulling him away.
In the central pit a fiery eagle appeared to be looking straight at Chapo, regarding him with disfavor.
Making love that night was not as good for Chapo as it had been on the desert. The room was so large, so incomprehensible in its luxury. Everything vanished into the walls at the push of a button. Punch room service, and the image of a beautiful woman sprang out of nowhere to take your order. If you touched an ordinary surface, music would play or walls would turn into windows or video screens. And as he made love to Anise, he couldn’t escape the feeling that any moment the wrong surface would be touched and the room would fold in upon them and he, too, would vanish or be transformed.
He waked around three o’clock, needing to go to the bathroom. But he couldn’t find the button that made the toilet appear. Finally, not wanting to wake Anise and show what an idiot he was, he went out into the hall and urinated in a potted plant. A couple walked past the instant he had done zipping up, and he pretended to be examining the leaves. He returned to the room and lay down beside Anise. She was beautiful in the half-light, with the silken coverlet slipped down to her waist. Her breasts had the same glistening smoothness as the material, and her face had the serenity of a goddess. She would help him, he thought. She would teach him how to move in her brilliant world. But the thought did not comfort him, and he was unable to get back to sleep.
The next morning, waiting for her father, Chapo sat on the edge of a chair, his hands clasped in his lap. He sat very still
as if posing for a photograph. No thoughts occurred to him. The inside of his head might have been poured full of cement. Anise was busy telephoning friends in the States, and didn’t notice his silence.
Suddenly the door burst open, and a lean sunburned man with blond hair strode in. He didn’t seem old enough to be Anise’s father, but she ran to him and hugged him, talking a mile a minute. Chapo sat without moving. Anise pulled back from her father, and said, “Daddy, I want you to meet someone.”
The man looked at Chapo and smiled thinly. “Oh, yeah.” Keeping an arm around Anise, he reached into his jacket pocket and extracted a banded stack of bills. Held them out. “Here y’are, boy. Twenty-five thousand…just like advertised.” His stare locked onto Chapo’s, and in that exchange, in his pose, was a world of information. This is mine, said the arm around Anise. This is yours, said the hand holding the bills. And that’s all you’re getting, said the stare. Chapo wasn’t afraid of him. But he understood something else from the man’s attitude. He couldn’t have put that sense of ultimate distance and difference into words, and maybe the man couldn’t have done so, either. Yet they both were aware of it.
“No, Daddy,” said Anise. “That’s not how it is. He and I…”
Chapo could barely hear her. She was already receding from him, crossing the border into her own land. He got up and walked over to them and took the money. It had a good weight.
“Chapo!” Amazement, shock.
He eased past them into the hall. She cried out again, but then the door slammed shut, shearing off her voice.
The young man who brought the jeep from the parking lot extended his hand for a tip. Chapo cursed him and sped out beneath the blue arch. He sat for a moment beyond the arch, letting the engine idle, letting the warm sun soak into him. He felt empty, but the feeling was clean. A freedom from wanting, from dreams too sweet to digest. He had a final look around at Paradise. It wasn’t so goddamn much! It was frail. One lapse in security, and the monkeys would come swinging back to retake the jungle, and the Devil would bask by the emerald pool, his laughter echoing through the ruins. One shot of heavy weather, and you wouldn’t be able to tell it from the Crust. That was the Crust’s strength: it was already down to the bone. Chapo blew out a long sighing breath, wishing he could get rid of memories as easily as bad air. Then he threw the jeep into gear and headed north along the coast, taking the legal roads home.
Back in the Crust, back in the cellar among the candles and shadows. Chapo hid the money a dozen places, two thousand dollars in each. He held back the last thousand. He’d take it and have himself a night. Spend it at La Manzanita. They had the best girls there. Young girls fresh from in the villages, still full of life, still believing the Crust was everything you could hope for. Maybe he’d have twenty-five such nights. What else could he do with the money? A bar, a business? He couldn’t picture himself growing old and fat behind a counter. No, he’d have twenty-five nights to remind him of Anise. To light a thought like a blond candle, set it burning in the blackness of his skull. He wondered what had been between them. Love? Yeah, a little. But he thought it had more to do with innocence. Hers and his. Paring hers down, shoring his up. There was even more to it, though. You could never figure anything out, never say anything. The second you did, it became a lie, the truth shrunk to fit your words. He ran his thumb across the bills. They felt cool and slick, like strange skins. Twenty-four thousand. What if some opportunity came up, some big score?
Well, he’d have the one night, anyway.
Find a slim brown girl who’d fuck him mean and burn out the last sugars of Huayacuatla.
He swallowed one upper, then did another.
Out in the blood-red light, the wild laughter and crazy music, he walked briskly down Avenida Juárez toward the border. Every rut brimmed with shadow. In a house with black curtains a baby was screaming. Even with those curtains, crimson light penetrated and made it hard to sleep, and even when you slept, the light brought dreams that scared you awake. But the dreams made you strong, and it would be a strong baby, strong enough to dream about crossing that light.
The side wall of La Manzanita was six feet from the border. Before going in, Chapo stood an arm’s length away, facing the shimmering redness. He’d seen guys jump into it, others just stroll on through. Drunks, suicides, men who believed the border was the door to a kind of afterlife. He’d had the urge himself to take that stroll. But no more. He felt satisfaction in being able to face it and not know that urge. Its hum and sizzle no longer an allure, no longer a humiliation, a weakness. Borders were everywhere, and once you recognized that, you could be strong in spite of them…or because of them. This unreal fire might be the least of borders. That much he’d learned on the trip to Huayacuatla, that much was true enough to say and not diminish. And having this one powerful truth was more important than having the money or Anise. It gave him a new purchase, a new perspective. He thought if he kept staring into the red glow, he would see the evolution of that truth.
He took out the brujo’s knife, its enamel the same color as the border. Considered tossing it through. Magic, huh? Would it penetrate, would its flight curve around buildings and find a secret target? After a moment, he decided to hang on to it.
Save it for some special bad heart.
“Chapo!”
Rafael was coming toward him, knife in hand. His jaw still bruised from where Chapo had nailed him with the shopping bag. He dropped into a crouch, cut lazy crescents in the air.
No easy way out this time.
Chapo tried to flick the red knife open, but the blade stuck.
Brujos! Chapo silently cursed Don Augustín.
They circled each other, shoes hissing in the dirt, breath ragged. All the other sounds went away.
In the first thirty seconds Chapo took a slice on his left arm. It wasn’t serious, it focused him. He sucked up the pain and studied Rafael’s moves. Rafael grinned to see the blood.
Keep grinnin’, asshole, Chapo said to himself.
He shook his guard arm, pretending it was bothering him.
Rafael went for the opening.
Chapo sidestepped the lunge, tripped Rafael, and sent him slamming into the wall of La Manzanita. As he slumped down, the knife slipping from his fingers, Chapo grabbed him in a choke hold. Lugged him toward the border. Held him up inches away. He hadn’t been angry during the fight, but now he was almost sick with anger.
Rafael was too close to the red glow to want to struggle. He twisted his head, trying to see Chapo. Even the sweat beading his forehead shone red. Dull chubby face clenched in fear. But he wasn’t going to beg. Code of the Crust. He’d die stupid and macho.
That was what drained off Chapo’s anger, the recognition of his own stupidity, of a poverty that left you only with a fool’s pride and a talent for dying. He dragged Rafael away from the border and let him fall. Rafael couldn’t believe it. He stared at Chapo, uncomprehending.
To use strength wisely—that’s the only happiness you can know.
Chapo could have sworn that he heard Don Augustín’s voice speaking those words, and realized that if the knife had opened, he would never have come to this moment. The brujo might have done him a favor. He studied Rafael. “Wanna go to La Manzanita?” he asked.
“La Manzanita?” Rafael blinked, confused.
“Yeah, I did some business last week. Gonna celebrate.”
“You want me to go with you?” Rafael was incredulous.
“Yeah, sure.”
“Why?” Rafael said after a pause, suspicious. “Why you doin’ this?”
“’Cause this”—Chapo flourished his knife—“it’s stupid. Why we gotta do it? What’s the point?”
“You slugged me, man!”
Chapo displayed his bleeding arm. “We’re even, okay?”
Rafael wasn’t satisfied. “What kinda business give you the coin for La Manzanita?”
“Maybe I’ll tell you sometime, maybe we’ll do some business.”
&
nbsp; That appeared to stun Rafael. Nobody did business with him. He was too slow-witted to be slick. But, Chapo thought, maybe he could be loyal. Maybe he was born to be loyal, and no one had ever offered him a chance. It rang true. And loyalty could make up for a lot. He kicked Rafael’s knife over to him. “Let’s do it,” he said.
Rafael picked up the knife. There was a moment. It showed in his eyes, glowing red like a little border. But the moment passed. “Okay,” he said, pocketing the knife. He came to his feet, smiling. The smile was genuine, a signal as open and honest as a dog wagging its tail. Chapo wasn’t ready to buy it…not all the way. But he did buy the concept that had produced it, and he was beginning to enjoy the feeling of control.
“La Manzanita!” said Rafael, looking at the building. “Man, I hear they got women in there can tie a knot in it, y’know. Man!”
“Let’s find out,” said Chapo.
“You go there a lot?” Rafael asked.
“Naw, man. Too much make you crazy…be bad for doin’ business.”
Rafael nodded sagely, like, Oh, yeah, he knew all about that.
Chapo clapped him on the back, tried to steer him toward the door; but Rafael balked, suspicion visible in his face.
“What’s wrong?” Chapo asked.
“This don’t make no sense, man,” said Rafael.
“What you think…I’m gonna pay somebody to screw you to death?”
Rafael didn’t respond to the joke, engaging Chapo’s eyes soberly.
“Look,” said Chapo. “Just ’cause we ain’t killin’ each other don’t mean it don’t make sense. You got anything better goin’? I mean, don’t tell me you ain’t taken chances for a lot less reward.”
Rafael’s hand snaked into the pocket where he kept his knife.
All Chapo’s instincts cried out for him to open Rafael up for the flies; but he realized he had come to the end of those tactics. They brought you temporary survival, and that had always been enough for him. But now he wanted…he wasn’t sure exactly what. Power for a start, and then something more. This hassle with Rafael was a test he had to pass.
The Ends of the Earth Page 48