The peace of Carthage.
The peace of baby María Angela.
The peace of a frozen grave.
4 SLAVE SOUK
The warehouse bakes. Outside, snow. Snow I have never seen. I looked for it in Mexico City on top of Popocatépetl. Saw nothing but ozonic haze.
“The fuck is this?” the man asks, folding his hands behind his back, looking at us skeptically.
He points his finger at Paco.
“What the fuck are you supposed to be?” he asks.
Paco shrugs. The man towers over him, could pulverize him, but somehow Paco’s slouch and silence is all insolence, as if he has the power, not the tall American.
The man turns to Pedro. “I mean, seriously. Two boys, two women, and a fucking old man. This is gotta be a joke. Where’s the real merchandise?”
Merchandise. That’s what we are.
“I just bring them in,” Pedro says.
“Yeah, that’s right, you just fucking bring ’em in.”
“At considerable risk,” Pedro adds, and he can’t help but give me half a glance.
“How old are you?” the man asks Paco.
Pedro translates the question. “Twenty-eight,” Paco says.
“Like hell, and the other one’s even younger. Hold out your hands, both of you,” he says.
Pedro translates again.
Paco and the Guatemalan kid hold out their hands. He examines them for scar tissue and blisters and shakes his head.
“These are town boys. Juárez trash. Neither’s done a hard day’s work in their fucking lives. Christ… This is really pathetic. I need strong guys for construction. Not fucking children, women, and old-timers.”
He takes off his hat, a peaked cap that says DON’T TREAD ON ME, whatever that’s supposed to mean.
Without the hat he seems even taller. Six foot six. Two hundred and fifty pounds. About forty-five. I give him a cop’s look and memorize the details. Lines on his face, scar below his ear. He dyes his crew-cut hair a chestnut brown, but lets his goatee keep the flecks of gray. His voice is harsh but not strained. He’s used to having authority, to being in command. Likes it. His back is straight and his belly fat is contained. Not like the Americans of The Simpsons or the Yuma flicks. Athletic. Strong. Jaw like an axe head. He’s the type that landed on the moon when Jefe was boasting about a 10 percent increase in sugarcane production.
“You. What’s your name?”
“María.”
“María. Course it is. You know what the problem with your fucking culture is? No fucking originality. Indian blood. Fucking ten thousand years and no one invents the wheel. Shee-it.”
“María, Elizabeth,” I improvise.
“Where are you from?” he asks.
“Yucatán.”
“The Yucatán. I know it. Ever been to Chicxulub?”
I shake my head.
“Fuck no. Why would you? That’s where the comet hit the Earth that wiped out the dinosaurs. Why would you want to go there? Jesus, no fucking curiosity either.”
I nod and our eyes meet and I look down at the concrete floor.
“And what do you do María, Elizabeth?” he says, coming close, his sternum an inch from my nose.
He’s wearing cowboy boots, boot-cut black jeans, and a long wool overcoat. On another man it would be a costume in lieu of a personality, but not him. This is his attire. And you couldn’t see it unless you were looking, but I am looking, and the bulge is a gun in his coat pocket.
He puts his finger under my chin and tilts my head.
His eyes are blue-gray, distant, like ash.
“I was a maid,” I say. “I worked in many of the Western hotels in Cancún.”
“This ain’t Cancún,” he says.
Pedro senses trouble. The others think I’m lucky, but Pedro knows I’m good. He’s never seen moves like that before. I’m not a cop or a federale otherwise I’d have called it in. But I am something. And the sooner he’s shut of me, the better.
“She has worked also as a nurse and she is strong and she is good with children,” Pedro says.
The man sniffs me like a bear. “Whored before?” he asks in Spanish.
I shake my head.
“Well, if you’re gonna start, you better start now. Getting too old as it is.”
He turns to Pedro. “Is she a breeder or what?”
Pedro shrugs.
“You got kids?” the man asks me.
“No.”
“A hundred a week, domestic. Hard fucking labor. But five times that giving working guys a little R-and-R. Think about it. Esteban will give you the lowdown,” he says.
He touches my cheek with his forefinger. Paco flinches, but I look at him to show that it’s all right. The man smiles and strokes my hair. I decide that-despite the plan-if he touches my breasts I’m going to kick him in the ballsack and when he’s down I’ll attempt to break his nose with the bottom of my shoe.
He looks at me for a long ten seconds.
What do you see there, friend?
Do you see the future? Or the past? The dead men in the desert, one with his head blown off, bodies black with egg-laying flies.
And what do I see when I look at you?
A hint.
A glimpse.
Before New Mexico I hadn’t so much as killed a fish. But now I know there will be more.
I’m shaking.
Maybe it should be you, Ricky. I don’t think I can do this either.
The man parts my hair to look for lice.
No, if this gets worse I won’t kick him. I’ll just go home. I’ll quit the game and go.
“She ain’t lousy,” he says.
“They are all clean,” Pedro insists.
He opens my mouth with two fingers. The smell of tobacco, leather. He nods to himself.
“You could make a lot of money… Yeah, I like this one. She could pass for white if she weren’t so dumb. Ok, you’ll do, step over here.”
I walk behind him. Away from the others. The gap between me and them no longer merely metaphorical, but now delineated in geography. Paco twitches, looks at me, looks away. He wants to be on my side of the invisible line.
The American lights a cigarette.
Silence.
Smoke.
Snow.
The air in the warehouse perfumed with diesel and Marlboros.
“You are taking one?” Pedro asks, outraged.
The American nods.
“Now you are making the joke,” Pedro says.
“I don’t see anybody laughing,” the man replies.
“This is, uh, madness,” Pedro insists. “Do you know the risks that we run?”
“I don’t like what you brought me. Whatcha gonna do about it? Tell me, little man, whatcha gonna do?”
Pedro spits on the concrete. “You are right,” Pedro says. “I am nothing. You must not have to worry about me. But the people I work for-”
The American cuts him off. “Before you say something you’ll regret, let me stop you right there, friend. The people you work for would never try to fuck with me in my town. Now that bullshit might play in fucking El Paso or Juárez but it don’t work here. This is Fairview, Colorado. This is my city. I’ll give you five hundred bucks for the girl. Take it or leave it.”
“Five hundred dollars!” Pedro says.
The man nods, throws down the cigarette, clenches and unclenches a fist. His hands are huge. Bigger than my whole head. Meat axes. Hold a basketball upside down with his fingertips. And they say a lot. Tan line where a ring used to be, but no wedding band. Divorced. Knuckle scars. Hint of a tattoo running up his wrist. The bottom of an anchor. Navy. Marines. Something like that. A bruiser whose wife left him when he blew his last chance and beat the shit out of her.
“Take it or leave it. Take ’em all back, for all I care,” he says.
“I take them all to Denver. I take them to Kansas City!” Pedro protests.
“Do that,” the American snaps.
“This would not happen in L.A.,” Pedro seethes.
“We’re not in L.A.,” the American says.