It was a moment. Sad. Touching. Here was this guy staring at his arm like it was a long-lost child. Bob studied the mean guy’s face and saw his eyes well up with tears. Then the older scary guy finally said something.
“Joder, that must’ve hurt.”
The mean dude looked at the scary guy, but didn’t say anything. He just reached down and touched his arm. He first felt his fingers; then, turning the arm over, he stroked the forearm. Softly, like he could still feel it.
“Get me a drink.”
The guy with the ponytail looked at the scary guy, who nodded. Then he went to the cupboard and took out a bottle of tequila. The one-armed dude sat down and knocked back a shot.
Bob pointed to the tattoo of the beautiful woman getting eaten.
“She’s beautiful.”
The mean dude nodded.
“Felicia.”
Bob lit up. It all came out in an excited blurt.
“You mean she’s real? This is a real woman? Do you know where she lives? Can I meet her? Do you have her number?”
The white guy, the scary guy, the ponytail guy, and the mean dude all turned and looked at Bob like he’d lost his mind. But Bob didn’t care, this might be his only chance, so he kept talking.
“I mean look at her. Just look. Have you ever seen a more beautiful woman in your life? She’s… she’s… she’s just the bomb, man.”
The mean dude burst out laughing. It was a loud, deep, joyous laugh. He laughed until tears sprang from his eyes and he almost choked. Bob watched and, as the laughter continued on and on, he started to get nervous. Maybe he’d put his foot in it this time. Finally the mean dude got control of himself.
“The gringo’s in love with Felicia.”
The mean dude took his glass and poured some tequila into it. He slid the glass over to Bob.
“Drink.”
Bob knocked back the tequila. It burned, in a soothing kind of a way. Bob looked at the mean dude.
“So you know her?”
The mean dude gave Bob a serious once-over, laughed again, then extended his hand.
“Amado.”
This was how Bob became introduced to everyone. Amado, Norberto, Esteban, and Martin. Bob felt better knowing their names, but he wasn’t sure if they’d given him their real names or some kind of fake names so that if he went to the police he would pass on misinformation. But then, on reflection, Bob felt worse because if those were their real names, that meant they were probably going to kill him so he couldn’t give their names to the police.
Morris was desperately spinning shapes into place, clicking the keyboard in a trance. He didn’t even look up when a delivery arrived from the Cedar-Sinai Medical Center. The delivery man, a teenage Latino in elaborately baggy jeans and a Che Guevara T-shirt, looked at the screen and snorted derisively.
“Tetris?”
Morris didn’t even look up.
“I know, I know, it’s old school. But it’s a rad game, man.”
The teenager wasn’t buying it.
“My dad likes it.”
“Dude, Tetris challenges your brain. It’s like a spatial-relationship road-race disaster movie.”
“Yeah, right. Sign this. Then you can go play Pong.”
Morris didn’t look up from the screen.
“I can’t.”
“I got places to go.”
“One more minute.”
“Nope.”
“Dude, cut me some.”
“Nope.”
The delivery man waved his clipboard in front of Morris, almost obscuring the computer screen. Morris grabbed a pen off the desk and tried to sign the clipboard with his left hand without looking.
“This it?”
“Down two inches.”
“Here?”
“Close enough.”
Morris scribbled his name.
“Thanks, man.”
“No sweat.”
The delivery man left. Morris continued to play. He didn’t notice that what he’d just signed for was a well-developed human fetus in a jar. The fetus floated in solution. Morris concentrated on his game.
Bob was now pretty toasted. He and Amado had killed the bottle of tequila and were sipping beers. Amado had his shirt off and was giving Bob vivid descriptions of each and every tattoo on his body. There must’ve been a hundred of them. When Bob expressed his admiration, Amado told him that he hadn’t even started commemorating women in ink until he’d notched his first hundred on a leather belt. Bob looked at Amado as if he were some kind of rare athlete, someone who had accomplished what few could ever achieve.
Bob thought about his own slight string of conquests. A paltry six or seven. Never torrid one-night stands, always those first tentative meetings, the courtship, and then the relationship. Sure, there had been passion, but nothing worthy of a permanent place on his body, nothing worth the pain of needles and ink, nothing he could call art. Bob longed for something like that. He wanted to abandon himself to animal passions. He wanted to thrust wildly with a voluptuous woman who felt the same way he felt. Bob didn’t want to worry about orgasms or foreplay or any of that. He wanted to be inspired to fuck wildly and to inspire someone else to do the same.
Bob watched as Amado drunkenly tried to reattach his arm. The arm dropped to the kitchen floor with a sickening thud. Juice, Bob didn’t know what else to call it, oozed out and smeared Amado’s shirt. Amado picked up his arm from the floor and looked at it.
“I miss my arm, Bob.”
“I bet you do.”
“Never lose your arm, Bob, nunca.”
Bob nodded.
“I know you didn’t lose yours on purpose, and I bet your arm knows it too.”
Amado considered that.
“You think so?”
“Absolutely.”
Amado’s voice caught; it looked like he might cry.
“I never thought about how my arm might feel. I never thought I’d see it again.”
Amado was now letting the severed limb sit nonchalantly in his lap. He looked down at it.
“I didn’t mean to hurt you.”
Amado picked up his arm and cradled it like a newborn. Bob was quiet. He didn’t know what to say so he just let Amado make his peace with his arm. Bob could see the Godfather, Esteban, sitting on the couch in the living room talking with Martin, the white guy. Norberto, or Norbert as Bob had called him, had drunk a few shots with them and then retired to a back bedroom to catch up on his sleep.
Bob stood up and patted Amado on the shoulder.
“I’m going to the bathroom. When I come back, let’s remember the good things you did with your arm. Let’s celebrate that.”
Amado looked up at Bob with big wet eyes.
“You’re a good man, Bob.”
Bob went to pee.
Esteban watched Amado and the gringo drinking and laughing like it was Cinco de Mayo. Let them laugh. They’d both be dead soon enough. Martin was still arguing with him, wanting him to spare the gringo. ¿Por qué? Was it because they were both white? Martin never said anything when Esteban had some fucking cholo whacked. Now he’s got some white guy to deal with and Martin is begging, putting everything at risk.