And she did more than that, the filthy whore…
Alejandro seemed invisible to his employers. That was unless something went wrong; then he would instantly feel the eyes of accusation upon him. One woman went as far as to blame him for the theft of an artifact that she was subsequently found to have mislaid. No apology was issued to him, despite the police being called and aggressively questioning him. But mostly they ignored him as he watered and tended their gardens in order to stop the desert reclaiming them, under a hot and merciless sun.
What did these people respect? Those gringos? When you saw them on the television, they always said it was hard work, but they let their women lie around by the pool all day. Sent their children to school and more school and trips and vacations. They themselves spent all their time on planes and in hotels and in cars. Where was the work?
They respected nothing but money, Alejandro had considered. Money and the gun. After the Chevy, his second major purchase had been a Smith & Wesson .38 revolver. When he had it in his pocket, he felt stronger. More worthy of respect. It changed him; his face, his walk, but in such a subtle way.
Because now they seemed to see him. Even if he was feared rather than respected, he sensed that he was no longer invisible to them.
Alejandro drove through the storm in his old Chevy pickup truck, irked at his teenage brother trying to work out those pointless puzzles by his side.
Noe was weak, Alejandro considered. He was becoming a norteamericano. Would he end up a cowardly murderer like their father? Perhaps not. There was a certain niceness about the kid. But Alejandro recalled that it was his mother who had said that about their father, when he’d once asked her what she had seen in his papa. He was the sweetest man, his mother told him. But Alejandro had seen how alcohol could debase and corrupt that decency and charm. Felt it in himself. When he’d gotten drunk, punched, then hit with the pool cue, and then attempted to strangle, the hombre in the bar who had insulted him. He looked at Noe again. Was it not his father who had taught Alejandro the old saying: La puerca más flaca es la primera que rompe el chiquero.
The weakest ones are the first to rebel.
He could see his idiot father now, his pained face and sad, shifty eyes, the glint of his bald pate behind the glass screens of the prison. Despite Carmelita’s promptings, Alejandro had only gone to see him once; to abuse and curse this pathetic, wretched creature, to witness him cowering in his gray prison issue tunic, his shiny rat’s eyes filling with tears.
And then there was Carmelita. Let her have children of her own to boss and baby. He, Alejandro Rodriquez, had had enough.
Alejandro again regarded his puny little brother, who looked at him in such a strange way since they’d taken the bitch’s money, the money she had gotten from whoring herself to the wealthy gringo.
Her nonsense. Her delusion that she and this rich, married norteamericano were in love. When, then, would he move his wife and children out of the house she stayed in? When would they walk hand in hand down a street? When would their sad, furtive, animal trysts be replaced by something less deceitful? When would she share his bed at night?
The job she had gotten Alejandro doing the rich man’s garden. The gratitude he was meant to feel for having his brains fry in the heat every day. Then, that day last week when the norteamericano was supposed to be at work and Alejandro had walked in on them in his sister’s room. The blood from her bad time that he’d seen in her discarded panties, which lay on the floor by the bed; it hadn’t stopped their depraved lust.
We have done her a favor in taking her stinking whore’s bounty. Now we shall see how much the cynical norteamericano really loves her!
Eugene was thinking about Madeline. A sequence of images, between thought and dream, started to play through his head. They seemed to gain a three-dimensional clarity he would never have thought possible. Then he heard a rustling sound, and he could see it through his closed eyes. Madeline was unselfconsciously naked in the tent, ready to climb back into her sleeping bag after getting up to pee outside. Yes, he could see her, even through the membrane of his eyelids. But Eugene needed to get closer still to her opaque figure, as her nakedness would contain surprises, secrets, like every girl’s did. You always thought you’d be able to envision them perfectly with their clothes off — curves, flesh tones, proportions — but they always held mystery. The nipples, the color, the moles, the texture and extent of the pubic hair: they were always different to what you imagined. Like Lana, whom he’d masturbated about so many times at Long Beach Poly before he got her naked in their high-school grad year; his mind becoming a data bank of intricately constructed pornographic narratives in which she starred, or co-starred, with him. The first time that he saw her nude in his bedroom at his parents’ house he almost felt like asking her in his shock: What have you done to your tits? But Madeline; he had always seen her in a certain way. Perhaps if he just opened his eyes now… they would meet with hers, and then… no. She wouldn’t be there, surely: not like that. She was in her sleeping bag. Far better to sustain the delicious virtual reality of it in his substance-enhanced headspace.
But.
But now she was crouching over him, almost touching him. Eugene felt his breath draw into his lungs and his heart pound. Then it happened. Her hand slipped down into his bag and touched his leg. Then it was caressing his thigh in slow, twisting movements. Her fingers seemed so cool and his cock stiffened. He should open his eyes. It was her. She was really doing this to him. Open them.
No.
Keep this going a little bit longer because his cock was so hard and…
…and her cool finger was tweaking its head…
…and…
AAAAGGGHHHHH!
A terrible jab.
She’d stabbed him.
Eugene was up and he was screaming, — WHAT THE FUCK, MAN!
It wasn’t Madeline. It was a rattlesnake: a long, green, twisting rattlesnake. It was sliding across his stomach, out of his sleeping bag, onto the plastic floor of the tent.
Scott and Madeline were immediately woken up by his cry. — Damn! What is it! Madeline hissed as Scott blinked into a furtive consciousness.
Eugene pointed at the slithering creature as it headed across the groundsheet. — A rattlesnake… a rattlesnake bit my cack!
Scott groped around, laying his hand on the torch by his back. As he clicked it on and directed the beam, they watched the snake moving away from them. — Looks like a Mojave rattler, Scott ventured, — those dark stripes on his head…
Grasping his heavy-heeled brown shoe, his features cut in a vengeful tenacity, Eugene started to climb out of his sleeping bag. — Sonofabitch…
— Don’t kill it! Scott shouted.
— What!
— You never heard of conservation, man?
— Conservation? What the fuck! You expect me to conserve some fucker that just bit my fucking dick!?
— Listen, man, you’d better sit down… these guys are pretty damn toxic.
At those words, Eugene felt shaky for the first time, sinking back onto the floor, pulling the bag to him. The rattlesnake slithered underneath the tent flap, into the freedom of the desert. Eugene touched his crotch. Although his genitals were as flaccid as they had ever been, he could feel his pulse in them, pounding on his fingertips. — Oh my God… it bit me… my goddamn pecker…