by TG Wolff
These days, the warehouse, the car, her business affairs—everything she had besides her body—she’d acquired by taking from somebody else.
Miguel towered a foot taller than five-two Cara. His partner, Raul Puig, wasn’t much taller than Cara, though he was thick as a garbage can. Beyond all his technical skills, his greatest attribute was his arms. Cara used to fantasize about grabbing onto them as he talked and holding on until he stopped talking. He stood off to the side with his arms folded, looking pissed off, turning to look back toward the battered heap strapped to one of the beams holding up the roof.
She nodded. “This is good. Not as good as a quick buck on a boat, but we will get something out of him to make this worth our time and trouble.”
Miguel had been her personal bodyguard for the past year, and her private play toy for the past six months. Anything she said received his immediate compliance. The two of them often had to push Raul onboard. Not this time. He held a crochet hook in his left hand.
The sight of him holding one of those bent metal sticks her grandmother used to whip up blankets and ponchos to sell forced a laugh from deep in her stomach. She would’ve had the same reaction to a unicorn with a driver’s license or a redneck with a Nobel Prize.
Instead, it was a tool and Raul held it as if it was any other and kept a smile on his face.
Cara didn’t blame Raul for the hard feelings toward her. His sister was married to Miguel, until Cara claimed him as her own. Raul never got over it. But fine with her. Life was hard all over. Cara knew so better than most.
She’d been raped as a girl, repeatedly, by various men who treated her nice and gave her trinkets and tokens and money and jewelry, and she loved every minute of materialistic attention more than she hated the pain. The humiliation. She knew at a young age her looks were her bread and butter. In between such encounters, she worked to improve her mind. She knew she’d need a strong mind to manage her affairs as well as their rewards.
These men came to her house when her mother and little brother were at the market. Some of them gentle, some of them not.
She’d been ironing on the day she forgot her place in the world. Her newest gentleman caller walked around the ironing board, snuggled up behind her, and lifted her skirt. She set the iron down, but didn’t shut it off. When she turned, the man dropped his pants to his ankles and she laughed out loud upon seeing he was no better developed than her little brother.
He swung his left hand hard enough to feel the crack of his ring on her temple. She stumbled back into the ironing board and regained her balance in time to keep anything from being knocked over. That wasn’t enough vengeance for this guy. He grabbed her by the hair and pushed her face onto the ironing board, ripped her cotton panties, and did his thing in all of thirty seconds. She remained hugging the ironing board as he zipped up. She didn’t want to stand or turn around or ever see the guy again, but life was never easy. The man didn’t walk away.
Instead, he pushed one hand into the side of her head to keep her down as his other hand found the electric iron. She felt the slime of his seed oozing out of her as she struggled to get free. With the left side of her face pushed flat onto the ironing board, the guy lifted the iron until she felt the heat radiating off the bridge of her nose. She couldn’t see the guy, but she heard his sinister giggle in the instant before he pressed the scalding iron onto the right side of her face. The smell of burning flesh hit her nose before the pain registered in her brain. It was so hot she feared her back teeth would explode. She rocked the ironing board in her struggle. He kept her clamped in place. She grunted wildly, but was unable to make a decipherable word. She didn’t know if she ever would again.
As a way to defend herself socially, she mounted a strong offense by introducing herself as Cara Quemada, which meant Burnt Face, just to get it out in the open the minute she met anyone. She had no way of knowing it at the time, but the attack wasn’t merely her forgetting her place—it was the beginning of her new role in life. She swore from that moment she’d never again let a man hurt her. That’s why she chose the men she wanted to be with. And once she had them, she kept them in their place. The same with this boat thief strapped to a beam.
“He hasn’t given up anything?”
“He cries poor. After the second hand he told us about some jobs he’d either done or knew about—nothing recent or coming up. I think he might be tapped out.”
Cara slapped Miguel’s face with the back of her hand. “I will make that decision. Not you. Not him. And certainly not Mr. Personality over there.”
Raul crossed his arms tighter, but did not blink.
Cara turned back to face Miguel. He wiggled his jaw and blood dripped from the welt on his face left by the lady’s version of the same diamond and gold ring he wore. She laughed and pulled his face close to hers as she licked the trail of blood. The salty sweetness on her tongue made her emit a sound from her throat she’d made only once before with him.
Raul’s exhale redirected Cara’s attention. She turned in time to see him uncross his arms and wield the crochet hook as he stepped toward the boat thief. Even in his half-conscious state, the boat thief struggled against his restraints, sweat slinging off his forehead and face, his nappy hair. “No,” he hollered. “No.” Raul kept advancing until he grabbed the boat thief’s head into the crook of one of his thick arms and inserted the crochet hook into the boat thief’s right eye. She turned away and shielded her face. If it made a sound, she didn’t hear it.
Dougie thrashed against his restraints and moaned unintelligible sounds Cara had heard last echoing in the streets of Havana when men were being made to pay for crimes against the country. It was gruesome then, yet somehow natural now. Cara was simultaneously sickened by the act and impressed by Raul’s vengeance and initiative. He never seemed to miss an opportunity to overreact.
Shock and pain pushed Dougie into unconsciousness, where Cara imagined merciful moments passed without his having to think about his painful new reality.
Raul pulled a small vial of something from his pocket and cracked it in front of the boat thief’s nose. Cara knew of smelling salts but had never seen them used.
The guy woke with a series of grunts and whimpers.
“Ready to talk now?” Raul asked.
The eyeball dangled. The pain obviously so severe he could barely talk. “You’ve got to get me to a hospital!”
Cara couldn’t explain why Raul’s dedication to her moistened her between the legs. She locked eye contact with hm. He hadn’t talked to her since she’d seduced Miguel and made him hers. Cara never felt a moment of guilt over it. If he’d ever tried to hide that he wanted her for himself, he never succeeded. Even with the overt anger. No matter how pissed he might get at Cara, he still wanted her for himself. Cara loved the display.
She smacked Miguel on the ass and bit her lip.
“You best tell him what he want to hear,” Miguel said, concern on his face, “before he do same to other eye.”
“No! All right,” Dougie cried out, anxious for the pain to stop or at least not worsen.
Cara had no pity for the man. She had no pity for any man.
She’d once had dreams of becoming a pianist who played for Hollywood stars and royalty. Some of those glamorous women visited Havana while she was a girl, but she never got to see one in the flesh. And she didn’t become a pianist. Instead, she became a cleaning woman who worked night and day and never said no to new work. She farmed out a portion of the work below her and walked around supervising when not stopped in the halls talking to one of her bosses. Nobody seemed to know her exact role, yet they all recognized her power as she walked around with her clipboard hugged to her chest and disapproval spread across her lips. She paid her employees regularly and they never questioned her. Executives made comments which they paid for with stepped-on toes or valued items that showed up missing if she wanted them or broken if she did not. She expanded her influence on the street and employed a dozen me
n. And now she was watching a boat thief’s eye being ripped out of his skull.
“My father will give you money,” Dougie said. “Tell him you have me and he’ll pay to get me back.”
“Less chance for cops if we kill you,” Miguel said. “Just kill you now.”
Dougie swallowed and cleared his throat as if the vibration hurt his eyeball. “It’s like this,” he said, as if still trying to think of some other way. “I’ll give you something. Just please stop. It’s big money.”
The eyeball dangled at the end of a clump of what looked like wet yarn, but must’ve been tendons and muscles not meant to see the light of day. He winced every time his eyelid closed onto those raw nerve endings. She thought he’d pass out.
The sight of the dangling eyeball clearly nauseated Miguel, but he tried to hide it from Cara. She couldn’t imagine him pleased if Raul saw him being grossed out either. That’s the way Miguel had always been—a big talker who always knew what to say, while Raul had always been the one to take action. He’d one-up anyone any chance he got if there was money, or at least a good laugh, in it. Cara stared at the ring on Miguel’s middle finger. He had such slender fingers she had to tell him the gold ring, with that diamond centered in gold nugget inlay atop the thick shiny band, was made for the middle finger. Prominent on the hand and useful if he had to throw a punch. She’d gotten it off a cardiologist who was in the wrong place at the wrong time. She’d given Miguel the ring the first year they all began working together. At times like this, she wished Raul was taller and better looking. She could have given the ring to him.
“How big?” Raul asked Dougie about the money.
Cara crossed her arms and leaned on a pole holding up the roof.
“Ten, maybe fifteen thousand,” Dougie said. “You can jimmy the lock with a butter knife.”
“Where is this?” Raul asked, grabbing Dougie by the collar.
“It’s a floor safe in the office at Gator Doug’s Tavern off of San Carlos Parkway, not far from where that crazy woman has the boarding house where three people killed themselves.”
“Vero? How you know this?”
“It was on the fucking news.”
“No. This tavern money?”
“It’s my father’s place. If you won’t ask him for the money you can just take it, just please get me to a hospital!”
Cara nodded at Raul with a smile sly enough to piss off Miguel pretty good, if she had to guess. She dismissed it as a matter for another day. “Give him a handful of pills. Then go see about this tavern safe.”
Click here to learn more about Tushhog by Jeffery Hess.
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