“Sure, hermano.”
Max, downing a triple martini, got her in a clinch on the floor, let his hands fondle her ass. Over his shoulder, she could see Juan, his face like a corpse. It got her hot. She whispered in Max’s ear,
“Bet you make all the girls want more.”
Max, the poor schmuck, had enough brew in him to call her puta, making it like a term of reckless endearment. There is never enough booze in your guts to call a woman like Sherry a whore, in any language, and the endearment hasn’t been coined to sugarcoat it. To her, it would always be a lash in the face and required blood — yours. Max was about to add,
“The mamacitas, they like to eat the meat, they get some Max, ain’t no other hombre gonna do.”
He never got to utter this sweet nothing as his face was stinging and his head felt like he’d been walloped. He had. Sherry had stepped back, her Jimmy Choos near slipping from her feet, and she swung with her right fist, knocking, if not sense, at least a whole new focus into him. Then she was stomping back to the table, she saw a tiny smile reach Juan’s mouth. She had scored on two fronts, made Juan happy and got to fuck with Max.
Any other bitch, Max would have cut her right then, reached for the knife in his boot, but he caught himself, she was the woman of his patron. He slouched, like the beast towards Bethlehem, to his boss’s table, expecting Armageddon. Juan was laughing, asked,
“Mi amigo, you upset my mariposa, qué?”
Qué... the question posed in Spanish, the echoes of Khe San were what reverberated in the tone. Max launched into a litany of profuse apologies, calling on the Madonna, Her Son, and any other saint that came to mind. Juan waved it off, went,
“No biggie, mi amigo, we drink, we fool around, no problema, is true?”
Max hoped to fuck it was. Sherry gave him a wicked smile and he got his hopes up all over again that maybe he might be putting the meat to her. More drinks came and an air of festivity resumed, Juan paid particular attention to Max, recalling all their past glories. Then, Juan said they’d move on, he needed to collect some merchandise from his warehouse.
It was a basement off Bleeker Street. Apart from Max, Sherry, Juan, they were accompanied by Ramon, the designated driver, and two new guys from Rosario, lowlifes who crossed the border and were recent additions to the Juan posse, they were supposedly distant relations of his mother’s. In the limo, Juan had Max in the back and shared some lines of coke with him, all the time cheering him as his main hombre. Sherry, on the other side of Juan, felt her blood sing as she knew there was going to be something medieval. When Juan was this elated, it always ended in gore.
Laughing, and high-fiving, the crew piled into the basement. It was packed with designer gear from the five boroughs. Juan was an equal opportunity thief, taking from every direction. Centre piece was a long, wooden table, old and gnarled. Cases of booze lined the floor. Juan said,
“Yo bro, mix up a batch of margaritas, we gonna get down.”
Max was looking for the tequila when Juan blindsided him with a baseball bat. He regained consciousness, his head on fire, and found himself tied to a chair, his hands extended on the table, fastened tight. A loud blast of salsa was roaring in his ears. Seated across from him was Sherry, sipping a margarita. She winked. Juan was flexing a mean-looking cleaver, saying,
“Piece of Taiwan shit, ees no sharp.”
He’d lapsed into Mex-speak, a sure sign he had lost it in more ways than in speech pattern. He sunk the cleaver into the table, close to Max’s arm, asked,
“What you think, mi compadre, ees gonna do the trabajo?”
Max tried to speak but sheer terror seemed to have frozen his throat. Juan pulled the cleaver out, asked,
“You like to use your manos to pat my mariposa’s butt? That what you like, you call her puta... eh, maricón?”
Max stared at Sherry, his eyes, wild in his head, imploring her for intercession, she smiled demurely, raised her glass. Juan moved in close, asked,
“Which mano you want to lose, which one you use to wipe your asshole, you choose, left or right?”
Then brought the cleaver down, half severing the right arm, shouted,
“Ah, caramba.”
The guys from Rosario took a few swings and though it took a good twenty minutes, they finally removed both arms. Juan, sweat rolling down his face, took the limbs, tossed them on the table, said,
“You a hands-on kind of guy, eh, muchacho?”
The hands they threw in a Dumpster, get a rise out of the sanitation guys, and Max, Max went into the East River. Ramon, who’d been silent all evening, finally asked,
“How he going to swim, no arms.”
That cracked them all up.
Sherry kept that blunt cleaver at the forefront of her mind. The same evening, Juan actually went to bed with her, not that it took long, tops three minutes and she’d learnt all she needed in New Orleans about groaning and urging... go, you stallion. It never ceased to amaze her the crap that men believed, you made orgasmic noises and they truly accepted they were the hottest lover this side of the Rockies. Juan, well into the junk, barely got thirty seconds of effort into the act, she faked the other two minutes, thirty seconds. Sure, she timed him, she’d little else to do while he grunted like a hog in stew.
One of her fantasies was to hold a mirror up to a guy as he heaved and blew, let him see what she had to see, it might put them off the fierce bullshit they peddled.
Juan had fallen back, exhausted, she lit a Camel, unfiltered, ’cos he was so macho, put it in his mean mouth, cooed,
“You make me so wet.”
She knew he was already thinking of his next hit of horse, then he looked at her, asked,
“You ever think, you like to do it with some other hombre?”
She made all the right noises, he was the best, the mega, satisfied her like no other could, and other dreary garbage. She kept a blade on her side of the mattress, for the day he turned, as turn he surely would. Then she’d gut him like the reptile he was.
Meantime, she fantasized about some dream lover who’d take her the hell away from all this shit.
On a junket to Vegas, she’d persuaded Juan to bring her along, he wasn’t hot on the idea, had his crew and obviously had planned on a guys’ tour of Vegas. She loaded him up on ludes, got those margaritas into him, and dragged his sorry ass to the Little White Chapel, got hitched.
Juan wasn’t real happy about it the next day but shrugged, he had a method of divorce that was indeed final if push came to shove, so he thought, Let it ride... for now.
“Get away from her, you bitch!”
Sherry’s head was lying on my chest, her hand on my balls; she said,