by Richard Ford
“Just so long. I gotta get the fuck out of here, you understand that. You don’t hide in here.”
“We got the document,” he said quickly. “It’s in the alcaide’s office. A day now, all right? The money’s here. Everything’s here. You just have to stay still, you understand me?” The look of betrayal measured a state of shock, and that was all right if it didn’t get worse. Sonny could suck it in if he wanted to. He just had to want to. “Kiss your brother,” he said to Rae.
She looked surprised. “What?” she said.
“Kiss him, God damn it, let’s go,” he said, standing.
Rae put out her arms and tried to bury her face in Sonny’s shoulder, leaning over the table awkwardly to do it. One of her tinted lenses fell out on the table, and Sonny let his arms hang. He hadn’t said hello to Rae. It seemed like he wasn’t sure what was happening.
“I’m sorry,” Rae said. “Jesus, I’m so sorry.”
“So fucking do something,” Sonny said. He looked at Quinn and smiled strangely, as though somebody had said something complimentary to him. “You’re not in here, fucker,” he said, and the smile disappeared. “I am. You know? I’m the one that’s fucking in here.”
“Just be cool,” Quinn said. He touched Rae’s arm. “Go now.”
“We’ll get you out of here, hon,” Rae said.
Sonny gazed at her vaguely.
Quinn pushed across the two copies of the Sporting News. “Don’t do anything stupid,” he said, and led Rae down the row of tables.
The sky outside was pale, as if a dead ocean lay hidden behind the mountains. Bernhardt stood beside the Mercedes in the gravel lot wearing a white cotton shirt in the breezy sunlight. “No troubles, correct,” he said. He opened the car door to get in.
“Somebody stabbed him,” Quinn said, when he got close.
Bernhardt stood up, squinting in the bright light. He looked as if he hadn’t heard just right. “Who did?” he said.
“Deats,” Quinn said. He looked at Rae, then came closer to Bernhardt. “This is getting real dicey, Carlos. You were supposed to see about this asshole, you know?” He didn’t like having Rae hear this, but she was in it now, and there was nothing he could do.
“Is he all right?” Bernhardt said.
“He won’t be very fucking all right long.” Quinn lowered his voice. Some women vendors began to drift toward the car from around the prison gate. They had huaraches and pottery beads and stopped at a polite distance to hold up what they had. “I don’t like the outlook,” Quinn said. He looked at the vendors quickly. Rae was staring at them as if they had called her name. “I can get somebody else, but it’s too late for that. You see that, don’t you, Carlos?”
“Other people are involved now,” Bernhardt said apologetically. “It has gotten complicated.”
“Are you bailing out? Is that how complicated it is?”
“No,” Bernhardt said gravely. His eyes snapped at the vendors, who were trying to strike up a conversation with Rae. They all said “trinkets” over and over and rattled their merchandise. “It will be settled tonight.”
“That’s what you said last night,” Quinn said.
“You need patience,” Bernhardt said and tried to smile.
“The man doesn’t have time for patience,” he said emphatically and pointed at the prison fence. “Somebody’s cutting on him, see?”
Bernhardt’s eyes flickered toward the prison. “At three today arrangements will be made.”
“Not now?” Quinn said.
“It is not certain. But it will be.”
“He didn’t do it, you know that. He didn’t skim anybody’s shit.” That seemed important to say. He wasn’t sure why that mattered, but it seemed to.
“It’s possible,” Bernhardt said. He moved toward the car now.
“No. It’s not possible.” He took Bernhardt’s bare arm. “He didn’t do it, and I don’t want him sliced like that kid you trotted out last night.”
“I understand,” Bernhardt said softly. “It will be done right.”
“I need that, Carlos. I really fucking need that now.”
Bernhardt looked away, out beyond Animas Trujano, where a circle of light illuminated the scorched valley floor as if somewhere someone was holding a magnifying glass to the sun. The light was almost pure white. He seemed embarrassed at being touched.
The vendors were smiling and holding out their Japanese crap as if they couldn’t stand to have it near them another minute. “Let’s just get out of here,” Rae said. “They give me the bads.”
“I’m not sure he understands it,” Quinn said.
“He understands,” Rae said. “You made it real clear.”
Bernhardt began getting back in the car.
15
BERNHARDT TURNED WEST toward the airport instead of entering the Centro off the American Highway, and followed the periférico toward the east edge of the city where he had taken Quinn the night before. “I will show you a thing,” he said self-assuredly.
The boulevard began to crowd with motorbikes and Zapotecs on foot as it approached the immediate plain of the Atoyac. There was a displeasing feel of rapid activity without a center to make it knowable, like a disaster area being evacuated. Where the periférico drifted north, returning to the American Highway, the foot traffic thickened and he saw out on the dry flats a wide unspecified expanse of earthworks like a garbage plain, only larger. There was a teeming of bodies in the empty expanse. Smokes were strung out vaguely against the noon light. The Indians on the boulevard were crossing and making out onto the flats with bundles of cardboard and car remnants held over their heads. People were digging and others were simply standing half-dressed among the heaps of dirt and cardboard, staring at the city as if it was something they wanted and were deciding how to get.
“Are those the people who eat garbage?” Rae said, staring interested into the sea of boxes and rubble.
“Marginales,” Bernhardt said officiously, emphasizing the g in a way meant to impress. “Marginal people.”
Bernhardt made a U-turn on the boulevard and stopped at the opposite curb. The camp had a wide public quality that made it seem knowable and unmemorable, like the faces in the buses waiting out on the highway. Humanity without secrets. An army jeep was moving slowly among the earthworks and cardboard hovels, its long antenna with a red pennant wagging listlessly in the sunshine. “They come one time, maybe for Cinco de Mayo, and then don’t leave,” Bernhardt said as if the sight was an understatement of a much more illuminating truth. He sniffed significantly. “I have clients here,” he said. “They climb poles, take electricity, become a nuisance. Some are electrocuted. Sometimes the army comes with clubs and beats them at night. They have no rights, only needs, and so suddenly they are guerrillas.”
“Am I supposed to sympathize?” Quinn said.
Bernhardt pulled the Mercedes down into gear and eased back into traffic. “It is possible to work here without sympathizing. Maybe I don’t like your existence. But.…”
“What’s that designed to do for me?” Quinn said.
“Your business is complicated,” Bernhardt answered. “But it is not the only business. Everyone is marginal.”
“Is that supposed to mean something?”
“The boy you see last night was a boy who lived there”—he motioned at the sea of hovels—“maybe a year ago, maybe less than a year.”
“Maybe not at all,” Quinn said. “Are you running for office, or working for me?”
Bernhardt wheeled the car back up into the narrow streets that led to the Centro. “You see in a tunnel. Outside what you see, things are not one way, but other ways at once. You need to be tolerant.”
“It doesn’t help me,” Quinn said.
“Why don’t you just shut up, Harry,” Rae said wearily from the back seat. “Being an asshole isn’t helping anything either.”
He concentrated on the big Corona Cerveza sign he could see at night from the bungalow, blue-lit against
the dark matter, a flat globe shining without motion, the continents shuffled to one side. At night he felt appealed to when he saw it, as if there were endless places to be, every one better than here, though he never believed it in the daylight, and didn’t believe it now.
16
THE CENTRO FELT to him like Vietnam again, a crystallized stillness above the rooftops and a swarming, full-bore eeriness in the street.
Café tables in the Portal were jammed with tour-bus passengers drinking Cuba libres, and campesinos down out of the second-class camións milling in the sun, crowding the tabloid stalls. Bernhardt had left them in the middle of Las Casas Colón behind the Juárez Market, and Quinn had pulled Rae through the corridors of swaying meats out into the Avenue Ruyano between the banquettes of country flowers and Zapotec nostrums that cluttered the business end of the mercado. She hadn’t mentioned Sonny. He understood she was storing that to deal with in private, and that that was the right way. She was giving him time to think of what to say.
He walked her up the busy perimeter of the zócalo opposite the Portal, toward the cathedral, and he realized suddenly he had no destination except to keep moving until three o’clock when he had to see Bernhardt. The zócalo felt weird. There were too many soldiers, as if the entire place knew something he didn’t. He felt like they were on the run now. It was a new feeling, and he wasn’t sure what moment it had come about, but it seemed for real.
“Where’re we going?” Rae said and stopped in the street.
He looked around the Centro for a place to go. Nothing seemed very charming.
“The Victoria,” he said. “You can have a sandwhich and watch the view.”
Rae pulled a piece of her red hair nervously. The park photographers were mounting tourist children on white horses and taking their pictures while the buses waited. He remembered the lavaliere for the first time under the seat of the car. He wanted to give it to her, but the car was at the bungalow, and there wasn’t time for it.
“Where’re the whores?” Rae said. “That’s all I know about Mexico. There’re a lot of whores.”
“Out in the soledad,” he said. “You wouldn’t like it.”
“That’s all I know to do, then,” she said earnestly. “I don’t want a sandwich.” She paused a moment. “Who’s Deats?”
“He’s Sonny’s pay master. He thinks Sonny stole what he was asked to pick up.”
She stared into the zócalo. “Did he?”
“They think so. That’s what seems to matter,” Quinn said. He guessed this was as straightforward as it would get.
“Are they just trying to scare him?”
“We can’t wait around to find that out. Carlos has to see about Deats,” he said.
“I want to worry about that, but I’m losing it just a little now,” she said. “I wish I was stoned. Wouldn’t that be nice?”
They sat at the edge of the zócalo where the tourists wandered out of the park. It was market day and the band kiosk had soldiers in it, three boys with submachine guns, watching the promenades, while vendors in the basement stalls sold ices to the campesinos. A lot of blanket sellers were in the cafés and the sky had become waxy and hot. It made him feel as if bad things were catching up with him.
“Can you tell which ones are the French women?” Rae said and began fitting her lens back in her glasses frame. He watched two slender women walk arm in arm across Hidalgo Street and disappear into the arcade of the Portal. “They all have pretty ankles and little asses,” Rae said speculatively, gazing at where the women had been. “They were on my plane yesterday. The blond one said that women whose chief asset was their looks only get praised in terms of age. They talked about that the whole time, in French, ‘à les expressions de l’age.’ ”
“Were they talking about you?” Quinn said.
“I imagine so,” she said. “They’re just cunts.” She gazed up toward the government palacio. A contingent of police loitered beside the gate, M-2s slung over their shoulders. The army made the police nervous, and they stayed in the loggia, whispering. “Do you know why the Mexicans stare at us?” she said.
“They hate the fucking sight of us,” Quinn said. She was doing it right, holding herself in, making conversation to make things all right. She never felt sorry for herself. It was admirable.
“That’s not right,” she said matter-of-factly. “It’s because we have blue eyes.” She snapped the lens into the frame neatly and began polishing it on her sleeve.
“You don’t have blue eyes,” he said.
“It doesn’t matter,” she said. “It’s my discovery. I knew about whores, and I discovered that. I’m trying to be good.” She looked at him prettily.
“It’s because they can’t believe anything they hate so much can look like you,” he said to please her.
She sighed and leaned her face back into a rectangle of sunlight that had split through the jacarandas. “That’s wrong, Harry,” she said. “It’s sweet. But you always make things seem worse than they are.”
“Can you spot the narco agents?” he said, watching the stone plaza. There were more hometowners than usual now, big pale Midwesterners standing hoping to see something that would make them feel justified about leaving. They noticed all the wrong clues, and they made you feel abandoned. It was why he didn’t like downtown at noon.
“No,” Rae said, without raising her head to look, keeping her face toward the sun. “I don’t look at things that way. I just see things as paintings.”
A man was getting his shoes shined in the row of open chairs facing the taxi queue. He was a large handsome Mexican in a white camisa, with wavy hair and a bull head. He was lording over the boy below his knees, pointing to where the boy had missed a place. “Watches,” Quinn said. “They coerce French tourists for their digitals. They can all say ‘Give me your watch or I’ll can you for drugs’ in French.”
“Did you ever do that?” Rae said. “Did you ever coerce anybody when you were a warden?” It didn’t matter to her. It was just conversation.
He watched the agent step down off the chair and walk away without paying, the boy waiting in the sun, shielding his eyes. “Sometimes I’d hide south of Charlevoix and stop waitresses going south and make a deer check.”
“Did that work?” she asked.
“About half the time,” he said.
“Did you ever get a watch?”
“Never did,” he said.
“That’s too bad,” she said. “Is that why you quit?” She raised her head an inch and looked at him. “Because you didn’t get a watch?”
“I quit to come down here.”
“Of course. Sweet man,” she said and put her head back in the sun. “You’re a sweet man, Harry. I thought this would be easy for you.”
“It should’ve been,” he said. “Nobody forced me to come. I’m a natural volunteer.”
Across the plaza he saw a face he thought he knew, a face with a flat boxer’s nose and wide, deep-setting eyes. The man was big-bellied with hairy forearms and wearing rubber-soled huaraches and a white T-shirt he’d sweated through. He was with a woman who was large and had on blue bermudas and a sleeveless blouse that showed fat arms. She looked shy and pale-skinned as though she might be getting sick. A teenage girl trailed behind them. She had on pink terrycloth short-shorts that bound in her crotch. The girl looked like she wanted to be doing something else. The man was pointing out fretwork along the mirador of the palacio de gobierno that he wanted them to look at specially. He was exuberant, but neither his wife nor his daughter was looking, and the man kept pointing, then looking back at them. The daughter was eyeing the soldiers in the band kiosk who were looking at her and smiling and whispering. The wife seemed not to want to think about anything, and her husband kept putting his hand on her arm.
He had thought for just a moment that the man was Frank Davito, a gunny from Minnesota who had had two wives at once. Davito used to say neither wife knew about the other one, though they lived two hundred mil
es apart, one in the desert near Hemet and one on the beach in National City, and each one loved him faithfully. Davito had said once, crouching in the rain and mist by the waffle iron at Khe Sahn waiting for chute drops off the C-130s, that he had figured out the happiest he ever was in his life was when he was locked up or in the war. He didn’t have to think about the women then, he said. He loved to see them, but it never lasted long, and he couldn’t stand worrying about them when he wasn’t with them. It made him too empty, and being in the war gave him something else to think about.
“Take your business somewhere else,” Quinn had said. The answer seemed obvious.
“Oh shit no,” Davito had said loudly and smiled. “I wouldn’t do that.” He smiled even broader so Quinn could see his teeth behind a stubble of beard and mud. “I couldn’t live without them.”
“Then get rid of one,” Quinn said. “Just pull her plug.”
“That’s too raw, Jack,” Davito said, shaking his head. The draft off the big planes stung their faces. “That’d be like living in Minnesota again. I use one against the other. You can’t fly solo.” Davito laughed. “You need your little cushion,” he said, and jumped out of the bunker and began running through the mud onto the open runway. Rounds were falling in, and Quinn squeezed deeper into the dirt, waiting for the next bird to bank out of the swirling clouds.
It made him think about the dead kid in his communion suit and half his ear whipped off. He seemed to have lost the cushion for it, the escape hatch to make that death not seem like his own death. And that was a cushion he needed if he was going to take this to the end.
The man who looked like Davito had strolled across the plaza and stopped in the sun at the edge of Hidalgo Street, hands in his pockets, looking longingly into the Portal, as if he wished he could get a table there where all the tables were full. The man looked like somebody you’d like, Quinn thought. His family was straggling behind looking inconvenienced. The girl in the pink shorts was still thinking about the soldiers and pulling her shorts down behind. The wife looked disappointed by how she felt and where she was. They seemed to be from Minnesota, and out of place on the zócalo in Oaxaca, and needed to be someplace where they could be happier. The man turned and looked at his family in a heartsick way, and when he did Quinn caught his eye for a long moment, as if there was something he wanted to say, though there wasn’t. The man’s family caught up with him at once and his wife began talking seriously, staring into his chest. His daughter had noticed Rae and was looking at her curiously, twitching her hip from side to side as if they were sharing something evil. The wife quit talking suddenly and extended her hands to prove they were empty and started walking away angrily, and the man looked back at Quinn and smiled and shook his head and stared down a moment, then stepped into Hidalgo Street to follow his wife. The girl waited a moment longer, entranced with Rae, until her father called and she turned away, her yellow hair catching a moment of pure sunlight.
