THUGLIT Issue Eleven

by Matthew McBride

  "We've gotten old. I'm the last one to admit it but you know it's true. We're not the bullies we used to be. And Miami is not Cuba. Never has been. You may think it is, but it's not. Not even close. Victor knows how to keep the trouble out of our hair. He keeps us in business. And in turn, we keep trouble out of his hair. Listen to me, Dulce. Everything we have, here, in this country, is because of Victor. We have protection from rivals and from cops and we've made a fortune, the both of us. But Dago broke the covenant. And you know what that means." Milagro stubs out her cigarette and immediately lights another one, the last one in her pack.

  "Those things are going to kill you one day," says Dulce.

  "If not this, then something else," says Milagro. "Now tell me, where's Dago?"

  Dulce folds her hands in her lap and bows her head. "I don't know where Dago is," she says. "But I know what they're saying. About the shooting. And that's not how it happened."

  "Don't be difficult," says Milagro.

  "Dago was down big. That I believe. He's always been a terrible gambler. He got obstinate. Refused to lose. He went all in, and threw his father's bracelet into the pot."

  "It's always the little things," says Milagro.

  "It was his father's bracelet," says Dulce, "the only thing that son of a bitch ever gave Dago. And El Manco won it. Now you tell me, what does a man with one arm want with a bracelet?"

  "To show off the good arm he does have," says Milagro. "The fuck does it matter what he wants with that bracelet. He won. If Dago wasn't willing to lose the bracelet, he shouldn't have wagered it. Cards are cruel, Dulce. It's in their nature."

  "El Manco cheated," says Dulce.

  "And you know this because?"

  "Because there were three shots fired. Two bullets are in El Manco. Where is the third?"

  "Where does it matter where the third is?"

  "It matters because El Manco was cheating and Dago caught him."

  "Takes some skill to cheat with one arm," says Milagro.

  "How do you think he lost the other one?"

  "And if El Manco did cheat?" says Milagro. "What of it? Dago could've gone to Victor and had him straighten this out."

  "You expect Dago to just let El Manco walk out with his bracelet, his father's bracelet, and trust that he'll get it back? No. El Manco knew he'd been caught. He acted indignant and he shot Dago first. That's where the missing bullet is. In my son. Dago killed El Manco in self-defense. It's not his fault El Manco has terrible aim."

  "So you have spoken to Dago," says Milagro, leaning closer to the fence.

  "I have as many eyes inside the One-Eyed-Cat as you do, mi'jita." Dulce stands and stretches and looks something like a scarecrow in her coat. "Now if we're done here, I'd like to go back to bed. These meetings of ours take so much out of me."

  "For the last time, Dulce. Please. Where is he?"

  "That's the thing with Dago. He has so many connections. Between girlfriends and socios from back in Cuba, he could be anywhere. Have you tried the twin's chapisteria, the body shop? There's also that veterinarian in La Souwesera, by the bowling alley, you might want to look there. I think he does bullet jobs. I hear there may even be a new guy in the Gables. His son studies dentistry. The old man doesn't do the work. The kid does. And I've been told he keeps interesting hours."

  Milagro tosses her final cigarette to the ground and grinds it into nothing. "I want to believe you," says Milagro. "I want to believe that what you're telling me is the truth."

  "I haven't spoken to Dago," says Dulce.

  "This is going to be bad," says Milagro. "Bad for the both of us."

  "Like I said," says Dulce, "I've been thinking of moving."

  Dulce enters the kitchen and deposits the saucepan into the sink, fills it with tap water and leaves it to soak. The pot of soapwater still isn't boiling, so Dulce turns the heat up higher. She hears the door to her bedroom open. She shuffles into the hall and sees Dago standing there, leaning on wooden crutches, his pant leg soaked in blood.

  "Did she buy it?" asks Dago. His head is big and bald with a face like a collapsed tenement. He wears a gold incisor, a green tracksuit and a pair of white sneakers. In his right hand, he holds a glass of water with a set of teeth in it.

  Dulce slides her way towards her son. She runs her tongue over her gums and smacks her lips together. She takes the dentures from the glass and fits them in her mouth. Her jaw is fixed and box-like now. Her teeth, enormous.

  "Sit," she says.

  Dago lurches towards the dining table. He grimaces with every step. Even in the dark of her apartment, Dulce can see he's losing color—from mulatto to ghost-like. He sits on a chair with his leg stretched out, the bullet wedged in his thigh. Dago looks at the table. "What's this about?" he says.

  "You know," says Dulce. She pulls a chair from the table and sits upright, watching her son squirm from the pain. "You look so much like your father," she says. "Doomed from the beginning."

  "Tell me there's something to drink in this house," says Dago. "Beer. Whiskey. Anything," he says.

  Dulce leaves her seat and returns with an unlabeled bottle. She pours two shots and hands one to Dago. Before he drinks she places her hand over the glass. "Una bendición," she says. She closes her eyes and incants a prayer.

  Dago tries to read her lips but has trouble focusing.

  Dulce removes her hand and Dago swallows the drink. She hands him the second one and he chases down the first.

  "When are you going to take the bullet out," he says. "When is someone going to show up and take this goddamn bullet out?" His breathing is labored.

  "Do you realize what you've done," says Dulce.

  "I know what I did," says Dago. "I shot El Manco. Twice. In the fucking chest. Put an end to his cheating ass."

  "El Manco wasn't cheating. You can lie to yourself but don't lie to your mother."

  "The fuck would he want with Papi's bracelet?" says Dago. "It belongs to me. What right does he have to steal from me, to take what's mine?"

  "Victor—"

  "Fuck Victor!" shouts Dago. "I only wish he would've been there so I could've shot him too." Dago laughs. "It's so obvious now. It's what we should've done from the beginning. We should've killed Victor and taken the One-Eyed Cat for ourselves. What would have been the harm in trying? We had nothing to lose but our lives. Where's the risk in that?" Dago coughs and doesn't stop. Sweat pours off him like he's standing in a rainstorm. He rattles something loose from his chest and spits it on the floor, a bloody globule looking like a squashed toad. "If I'm going to die," says Dago, "I'll curse that piece of shit all the way to the grave."

  Dulce clucks her teeth at her son. Her tears glisten in the dark. "You have no soul," she says.

  "Fucking Christ, vieja," he says. "Spare me the heaven and hell."

  Dulce walks over to her son and grabs him by the face. "You've always been a shit," she says. "I'm not talking about salvation. I'm talking about you, your body, here and now." She slaps him across his chest, squeezes his shoulder. "Your soul isn't inside of you," she says. "It's outside. Your soul protects you against any harm that comes your way. You get injured, your soul heals you. Someone attacks you, spiritually, con un trabajo, your soul defends you. But when you do something like this, when you break covenant with the laws set by those who provide for you, you lose your soul. And when you lose your soul there is nothing left to protect you from evil. This is what you've never understood. No one who goes it alone survives."

  Dago sneers, slips into a deep slouch. "And what of your soul?" he says. "After I die, who'll protect you?"

  Dulce points to the table. "This is my ofrenda," she says. "My offering."

  Dago laughs, rejects the notion. "It's not going to be enough," he says. "It'll never be enough." He grimaces and groans. Closes his eyes, then opens them. "If there's a hell," he says, "I'll be there waiting." He closes his eyes, opens them as if startled. "I'll be there waiting," he says, then slumps his head into his chest.


  Dulce walks over to her son and feels for a pulse knowing it's useless, the bullet having pierced something critical. The roosters in the neighborhood begin to crow. It's only a matter of time, thinks Dulce.

  She takes the duck from the table, holds it by its feet and dunks it in the pot of boiling water until the feathers have lost their sheen. She dries the bird, plucks its wings and stuffs the feathers into a small bag. She runs her hand against the grain and rubs the rest of the feathers loose, plucks them away in clumps, and shoves them into the bag as well.

  Dulce then places the duck on a large cutting board, takes a knife and removes its feet. Dagoberto was never strong, smart, handsome, or athletic, thinks Dulce, as though he was born to be good for nothing. She locates the oil gland near the top of the tail, removes it in one go, then cuts a two-inch slit near the ass, reaches in and feels for the stomach, smooth and round like a river rock. Did I fail him? thinks Dulce. His father had used the revolution as an excuse to plunder the wealthy, the 'petit bourgeois' as El Comandante referred to them—but when the revolution soured, Dago's father was jailed as an insurgent and stabbed thirty-seven times by prisoners who arrived that very day and were never seen since. It was then that Dulce did what she had to. She took her son, her neighbor, and her reputation as one of the most trusted bookmakers on the island, and loaded up a raft bound for anywhere but here. It will only be for a couple of years, Dulce had said.

  She pulls the duck's gizzard out and it drags the intestines along with it. She separates the liver and the gall bladder, removes the lungs and the kidneys. She reaches deep in the bird and removes the heart with her fingers. She flips the bird over, makes an incision below the neck and removes the grain sack, the voice box, and the windpipe. I never taught him respect, thinks Dulce, never taught him discipline, never taught him to pray to the gods that listen to the poor and to the cursed. She takes the hollowed out bird and dumps it in the trash. The heart, the liver, the gizzards, the windpipe, and the feet she fries in cooking oil.

  Dulce takes the herbs from the bowl and binds them together with twine. She lights the bundle on fire and blows out the flame. With the smoke, dark and pungent, she brushes Dago's body, his head and neck, his shoulders, his chest and arms, his stomach, his groin, his legs, his toes, then to his head, back to his toes, back to his head. Dulce mumbles a prayer, asks for help purifying her son. She leaves the kitchen, heads into the toolshed and returns with a large plastic bucket. She fills it with the feathers from the duck, tosses in the remains of the purification herbs and positions the bucket beneath Dago's legs. She knows that blood pools in dead bodies, that it gathers at the lowest point on the corpse. Dulce takes her knife and inserts it beneath Dago's calf. The blood is sticky and thick as it leaves his body, and Dulce collects it. She kisses Dago on the forehead, and prays for appeasement. "I did what I had to do," she says, referring to everything.

  The sun is shining and her son's body has stiffened in the chair. Dulce cleans the kitchen of any remaining gore from the duck and tosses it in the trash. She dumps the cooking oil in a metal container, seals it and throws it in the trash as well. She performs the ofrenda with the cooked duck parts, and when she finishes, she discards the offering. None of this can stay in her house, so she takes out the trash and places it on the curb. The bucket, with the feathers and the mint and the blood, she keeps. She burns a combination of sage and tobacco and purifies the kitchen, the dining room, and the bedroom. Finally, she sits beside her son's body. And waits.

  The doorbell rings and Dulce stands to look through the peephole. She opens the door and allows Victor and two men she's never seen to come inside her home. Victor wears a suit and a mustache, the hair on his head thinning. He's built like an armoire and fills up a room in much the same way. Of the other two men, one is Americano with wiry red hair. The other is a dark-skinned mulatto, his face, his entire head, covered in burn scars.

  "It's a surprise to see you, Victor," says Dulce.

  "You haven't been answering my phone calls."

  "These ears of mine. I guess they're finally done for."

  "No one said growing old would be easy."

  "And who are your friends?" says Dulce. "Care to introduce them?"

  "No," says Victor. Then, after a moment. "Show me Dago."

  "Of course," says Dulce. "This way." She leads the men into the dining room. The men look at the corpse, then at her.

  "He wasn't a good man," says Dulce, "but he didn't pretend to be either. That's commendable, isn't it?"

  "In its own way," says Victor. He reaches into his coat and removes a blank envelope. "This is for you," he says. "These are your earnings from last week."

  Dulce opens the envelope and counts fifteen hundred dollars. "This is kind of you, Victor. Thank you."

  "You're a terrific earner," says Victor. "You always have been. Now I believe you have something for me."

  Dulce leaves the dining room and returns with the bucket of blood. "My son's sins were unforgivable. Allow this as compensation."

  "Dulce," says Victor, "we have known each other a long time. You've always believed in our rules, abided by them. There are few who understand the old ways like you. But what Dago did, murdering a man in one of my homes—because, make no mistake, the One-Eyed-Cat is like a home to me," says Victor, "is unacceptable."

  "He paid for it with his life. There's no greater cost."

  "I'm sorry, Dulce, but there is," says Victor.

  The gringo with the wiry hair removes a pistol from his pocket and hands it to Victor.

  "Victor," she says, "please, no, I have so much life to live. I want to teach a parrot to tell jokes. I want to live in a building with a doorman. I want to see Havana again one last time," she says. "I did everything you asked."

  "This is true, vieja. You did do everything I asked. But you forgot one thing," says Victor.

  "What's that?" asked Dulce.

  "I'm not your god," says Victor, and shoots Dulce straight through her teeth.

  Victor hands the gun back to the gringo and the man wipes the pistol free of prints. The gringo places the gun in Dago's lap, picks up the envelope from the floor and returns it to Victor.

  The mulatto with the burnt face picks up the bucket.

  "Are we done here?" asks Victor.

  The men leave the house and Victor shuts the door behind them.

  192 Over 110

  by Max Sheridan

  When I say it all started with a woman, understand that it was my wife who started it. She brought the girl into the house when we couldn't afford the extra help and she made sure I noticed. I know my wife well so I know this is what she had in mind—because if all she'd wanted was a clean house, she could have hired any of the other chunky, pigeon-toed domestics we had a history of giving vacuum cleaners to. Menopausal Guatemalans. Jamaicans. Dominicans with grey in their moustaches. Instead, she brought Linda.

  Funny how you think the slide to the bottom is like an alcoholic sinking into his sickness. Gradual. Pathetic. It wasn't like that for me. Days before Linda showed up with a duster and we started fucking to high hell in the broom closet, I found out that compostable party ribbon numbers weren't looking good. The boss tells me this. Add biodegradable party balloons and accordion banners to that list, fair trade wrapping paper, hempen party hats. They were wholesaling out of China no matter how hard we beat the facts of lead and melamine poisoning into the their heads. You can't plan for that.

  Before the People's Republic of China put three billion grubby, slave-wage fingers into every pie on this earth, what you saw in your well-stocked party supply store, all of it, got there by virtue of men like me. We traveled to the stores with clipboards and samples briefcases and convinced them to trust us. It didn't take brains per se, but I like to think it was empathy that moved units, not just the shiny colors or the greed. They felt good about themselves if you felt good about yourself. And why wouldn't you feel good if every order you signed off on you were saving a toddler somewhere in
the Greater Bethesda Area from a poison party hat courtesy of the PRC?

  I guess I'd been expecting something like it for a long time, but when my salary was finally overhauled by the boss and his bosses and then repurposed into a floating commission scheme, I wanted to puke. What this meant was that if I didn't meet my monthly quota, I got paid per item moved. Like a door-to-door knife salesman. That's what you call ten years of exemplary service raped by a bull dick. And that's the day I show up at home after a martini or two at Clyde's, looking like a broom-conditioned alley cat in a flood, to find Linda on her knees vacuuming under the couch.

  Love at first sight it wasn't. I was pushing forty with sour breath and hair that needed volumizing, Linda was a year out of college. A pert rack and a waist I knew would be warm to the touch. I also knew that when you touched Linda down there she would moan just from the touching. And she was on her knees. When she turned to catch me staring—I might have stopped breathing because I wasn't making a sound—she looked at me for a long moment but didn't say anything. I knew then that something was wrong.

  I found Carla in the kitchen moving her elbows over bills. Carla hadn't gone to seed, I think I'd just stopped caring what she looked like. She was a well-conditioned thirty-eight. When I thought of my wife at all, I thought of her warm wine breath and the crease in her brow when she frowned, like a fat man's knuckle.

  I was a mixed bag of emotions that afternoon. I'd been given an ultimatum at work which was the equivalent of warm dog piss in my face—and yet I knew I had to crawl back there. Then there was this girl in our living room who, if she'd said the word, waved her finger even, I would have killed to lie down with. The two of them together was the problem. I didn't deserve it, couldn't pay for it. But how could I ask to get rid of what I'd just seen?