Maura shifted, keeping one hand on his pistol and the other on his cock. She dropped to her knees and began sucking him.
It was Don’s lucky day.
Bob opened his eyes. Frida Kahlo stared back at him. What was bothering her? Bob realized that he had his shoes on and his pants were crumpled around his ankles. He could hear Felicia in the kitchen cracking ice trays and dropping cubes into tumblers. He pulled up his pants and smiled. He couldn’t believe how far he’d come in such a short time. It seemed like only yesterday he was bickering with Maura, working at a stupid job, spending all his time playing games on the computer. He had been a nerd. Even proud to be a nerd. Listening to nerd music, wearing nerd clothes, surfing the Internet, reading comic books from Japan.
He had been under the impression that he was cool. But when he thought about it… what had he been thinking?
If anyone had told him he’d find himself mixed up with dangerous gangsters, being interrogated by the cops, and making love to a smokin’ hot Latina, well… honestly, who’d believe that?
But Bob now believed that there was a rhyme and a reason to the universe. He had been transformed. He was a new man. There was a purpose to life. He just didn’t know what it was. Yet.
Felicia came in carrying a couple of cocktails.
“¿Y ahora?”
“What?”
Felicia nodded toward the icon of Frida Kahlo.
“What do you think of my patron saint now?”
Bob sipped his cocktail and thought about it.
“She’s only got one eyebrow.”
Felicia looked at the picture.
“So?”
Bob put his cocktail down and leaned forward. He kissed Felicia tenderly on the cheek.
“She may be a saint, but you’re a goddess.”
The TV was still yammering when Amado woke up from his dreams. He couldn’t tell if it was an American western dubbed into Spanish or an Italian western dubbed into Spanish. For all he knew it could be a Spanish western dubbed into Mexican. He was just glad it wasn’t the telenovela. It was getting weird. The telenovela was beginning to haunt his dreams. But then the telenovela itself was like a dream. It had a fractured reality. People didn’t really scheme and betray and seduce like that. Or did they?
Chingao. It was getting confusing. He pulled himself upright and clicked off the TV. He was thirsty. Dehydrated. He stood up and walked into the kitchen. He reached for the refrigerator and experienced a strange, floating pain. It didn’t hurt. It was more of a pang, really. The ache of reaching with something that wasn’t there anymore. Reaching and not reaching. Phantom sensations of touch. It was like his dreams. He had dreamed that he was the padre in the telenovela and that he’d fucked Gloria on the altar of the church. He could still smell her, still feel her warm body as it bucked and spasmed and knocked over the chalice, spilling wine and communion wafers all over the floor. It had seemed so real.
He opened the fridge and reached in for a chela. It took him a second before he realized that his arm was gone. The arm wrapped in plastic on a cookie sheet. The cookie sheet was still there. But the arm… se fue. He knew right away the who, what, where of the situation.
That pendejo Martin had taken his arm.
Martin sat in his car. He was parked on Santa Monica Boulevard, across the street from the West Hollywood police station, right smack in the middle of boys’ town. He watched as muscular gay men in tight T-shirts walked their dogs, chatted, held hands, or went in and out of bars. Martin fired up the last bit of his joint and sucked in the smoke. It was just another layer. There was a gay community, a gay economy, a network of gays who all supported each other in their gayness. The gay layer. He saw a couple holding hands as they walked into a bookstore. Dressed in leather, with big motorcycle boots, and heavy chains hanging off their pants, they represented a layer within the layer. The gay S&M layer. Martin realized that there were hundreds of millions of layers to the city. He smiled to himself. How come no one else ever noticed this?
Martin finished the last speck of the joint and flicked what remained out the window. He looked across the street at the police station.
And then it hit him.
He couldn’t just walk into the police station with the severed arm of a murderer. They’d arrest him.
Fuck.
He thought about running over and just, you know, tossing it in through the front door, but then he realized they’d have security cameras filming him. They’d eventually track him down, drag him in for questioning. And how do you explain that you just found a severed arm that was supposed to be in police custody?
Fuck.
Martin sat back in defeat. He was out of weed, out of ideas, out of luck. He thought that he should probably just put the arm back in the fridge and go back to business as usual. Taking orders from illiterates. Trying to explain the simplest possible business strategies to violent thugs who only knew how to rob, cheat, steal, and kill.
Fuck.
That was the last thing he wanted. He closed his eyes.
And then, like what happens many times in our lives, just when he felt completely defeated, just as the obstacles to his success appeared insurmountable, inspiration came in the form of a gay man walking his immaculately groomed schnauzer. Martin saw the man walk up to a blue mailbox on the corner and drop in a large envelope.
Fuck, yeah.
Martin quickly wrapped the arm up in the plastic, sealing a few french fries in with it, jumped out of his car, and jammed the arm into the mailbox.
Seventeen
NORBERTO, FRESHLY SHOWERED and dressed in newly pressed clothes, sat in his comfortable chair watching television. He had his shoes off, his feet up on an old cardboard box which once held a stolen computer, and sipped a cold beer. He realized he hadn’t relaxed, hadn’t had any sense of his normal life since Amado had showed up at his door without his arm. It had all gone totally loco. But now that everything was resuelto, he could get back to the simple pleasures he enjoyed. Driving over to Van Nuys or out to Venice to collect money for Esteban. Maybe going with Amado to drop a trunkload of narcotics at some storage unit in Glendale. Sometimes going to the East Side to sell some guns and eat some carnitas.
It was easy, undemanding. As long as you kept your cool and dealt with professionals like yourself, not a whole lot could fuck it up. And then there were the perks. Free drinks at numerous bars. No waiting in line at the clubs. And the women… caramba, man, the women were all over him. ¿Y por qué no? He was a sharp dresser, young, guapo, skilled at the salsa, the samba, and the cumbia. He drove a nice car and always carried the cash and the drugs to keep the party rolling all night long.
On the one hand, Amado’s getting into trouble like that had helped Norberto. He had proven his cojones with El Jefe. That was muy importante. But on the other hand, it had been a dangerous run. Any number of things could’ve fucked it all up and ruined everything. But, for the most part, it seemed to have worked out.
Norberto realized he needed to distance himself from Martin. That gringo was peligroso. Norberto considered telling Amado and Esteban about Martin’s plan. Although he knew it was bad to be a rat, this was an exception, and could help him get in good with El Jefe even more. Besides, Martin annoyed him. If they had to have a gringo around, Norberto preferred Roberto. Roberto was simpático.