“Like flies around honey,” said one of the grass-skirted waitresses near Flaco. She held a tray of drinks balanced on her hand. Flaco stepped out of her way.
“Which is which?” he asked.
She looked at him and brushed a dark curl off her forehead with her free hand. She hadn’t spoken to him in particular. She had just voiced her thoughts. “Could work it either way, I guess.” She jerked her head at the prostitute leaving with Bird Winfrey. “Never seen so many in here. Word musta got around that you guys were coming.” She moved off with the drink tray, her grass skirt rustling as she rolled her hips.
Flaco didn’t know if the disapproval he had heard in her voice was for the immorality or the competition. The waitress was plain-featured, with black shoulder-length hair and a face that had put on a lot of miles in a very few years; but who knew? She might be selling more than drinks, herself; and, as for quality, in that line of work the customers seldom dickered past price and delivery.
The bar was beginning to fill up with construction workers, so Flaco searched for a seat. He saw Henry Littlebear sitting on a bar stool that didn’t look strong enough to support one of his legs. He was hitting on one of the waitresses. Littlebear had a schooner in front of him and he raised it to Flaco in salute as he passed.
Flaco found Tonio and a woman holding down a booth near the back and slid in across from them. “¡Hola! How’d you beat me down here? All I did was go in my room and toss my bag on the bed. Here you have a beer already.”
“There you go, you dumb Dominican. Wasting time on nonessentials.” He kicked his duffel bag, which was sitting under the table. “The room isn’t going anywhere. I came here first. This here’s Lucia.” Tonio wiggled a thumb at the woman with him. Dusky, with a white, uneven smile; a blouse so tight and cut so low that if she hiccuped she would pop out onto the table.
“I’m Eddie,” he said.
“Hi, Eddie,” she answered in a throaty, professional voice. “I have a friend, if you want…”
“I’m married,” Flaco said. The woman gave him a look that Went, like, “so what?” But Flaco didn’t feel like explaining himself to a stranger.
“Just more for the rest of us,” Tonio said, squeezing Lucia on the thigh. The woman laughed and wriggled provocatively, but her smile stopped at the eyes, which were devoid of anything but patience. Flaco looked away. Years ago, when he and Chino and Diego had decided it was time for them to be men, they had gone to one of the women on St. Nicholas. He had seen that look then, in the back of Chino’s old Pontiac, and vowed that he would never again be with a woman who was not with him.
The waitress who served them was the same one who had spoken to him earlier. Flaco figured the odds were against the Aku-Aku room carrying El Presidente, so he settled for Tecate. The waitress took his order and Tonio’s reorder, but pointedly ignored Tonio’s companion. If either Tonio or Lucia noticed, they didn’t care.
Sepp found them an hour and several drinks later. Tonio was in the middle of a long and improbable tale of immy smuggling in south Florida. If half what Tonio said was true, there wasn’t a Haitian left anywhere on Hispaniola. Thanks to him, they were all in Miami or New York. Lucia pretended to listen and looked at her watch from time to time. When you worked piece rate, you didn’t have a lot of time to spare for social chit chat. Sepp was a sudden blond presence by their booth.
“Dare you are!” he said, as if they had been hiding from him. Flaco slid over to make room and Sepp squeezed in beside him. Sepp looked around the lounge and put two fingers in his mouth and whistled. He made a bottle of his fist and poked his thumb at the table in front of him. Then he settled into the seat and grinned. “Now ve see vat disguises for beer in deese place.” His gaze cruised over Lucia, moored on her breasts. “Hellow, schatz,” he said, using the same smile.
Lucia batted her eyes. “Hello, Dutch.” She moistened her lipstick with her tongue and shifted her posture to display herself better. Tonio scowled and pushed her.
“You’re with me,” he said.
She shrugged him off. “Whenever you’re ready, hermano.”
Tonio lifted his schooner. “Momento. I’m drinking with my compadres.”
“What took you so long?” Flaco asked Sepp as the waitress dropped a bottle of Budweiser on the table without even pausing to see if that was what he wanted. Sepp twisted the cap off the bottle and took a swallow. He put the bottle down again with a shake of his head.
“In Bavaria, it vould be illegal to label diss ‘beer.’ ” He threw one arm across the back of the padded bench where they sat. “It did not take zo long. I unpack, hang my clothes in proper order, arrange the drawers, stow my traffling pack…”
Flaco and Tonio looked at each other and laughed. Sepp listened to them for a moment, then shrugged. “On de space station zuch neatness vill matter.”
Flaco stopped laughing.
Who knew when the testing really stopped?
Flaco could not sleep. During the night, it was said, the Arizona desert grew bitter cold; but here in Phoenix the empty night sky served only to release the heat pent up in the concrete and asphalt, so that the sweltering warmth that surrounded him seemed to ooze from the ground rather than from the scorching sky. The air conditioning at the New Kon Tiki labored in vain.
He sat up in bed and stared at the glowing digital display of his travel alarm. Two o’clock? He would be in fine shape for tomorrow’s—today’s—competition! He did not have to be better than everyone to win a slot on this crew, but he did have to be better than a great many someones. He sighed and laid his head down on his pillow.
Only to be snatched upright by a metallic crash outside his window, followed by a shouted curse. Flaco rolled out of bed and strode to the window, where he stood to the side and lifted a gentle edge of the curtain. That was a move that Diego never had learned. When there are noises in the night, you do not go and stand directly in front of a window.
Funny. He hadn’t thought of Diego—or Chino and the others—in a great many years. Some things were best not thought of. The nighttime streets. The women and the product and the thick blocks of cash that bought both. The trembling eager high that was half adrenaline, half product. The sound of a lone car racing by, the sight of a dark alley mouth, the distant, toy pop-pop sound of a deal gone bad. The wary, live feeling on the edge.
In the alleyway three stories below, he saw the shape of a woman slowly rise to her feet beside the hotel kitchen loading dock. The streetlights at the end of the block created knives of light and shadow from the angles of the buildings; and the woman, partly in and partly out of the shadows, seemed unreal. A ghost of pale, disconnected legs and arms.
She brushed herself—futilely, considering the kitchen waste and the pools of fetid water that spattered the pavement. She whipped an arm up in a gesture of contempt, but whether at a particular person or window, or just at the building itself, Flaco could not tell. She turned on her heel—and nearly tumbled to her hands and knees again. She bent and held both hands against her thigh.
Flaco wondered if he should call someone, or go down to her. Her long thighs seemed to run up forever, ducking only at the last minute behind the cover of her meager skirt. Watching her, he felt his desire swell. In this heat, skimpy dress only made sense, and he could not tell in this light or from this angle if the woman was one of the waitresses, one of the hookers, or even an ordinary citizen out walking in nighttime alleys for reasons of her own. Undoubtedly one of the women who had gone off with Bird or the Russians or the others, and who had found things a little rougher than expected. Reluctantly, he watched her limp out of sight before letting the curtain fall and slipping back into his own bed. He thought of the woman’s thigh as he lay there and how it had seemed to glow from the distant streetlight.