As was his practice, Bob carried the two cups back into the bedroom and put one down on the bedside table next to Maura. She stirred.
“Thanks.”
Bob sipped his coffee and cleared his throat. He didn’t say, “You’re welcome,” and he didn’t say, “Good morning.” He thought about the woman in the Polaroid and a life filled with sweet pleasures. He turned toward her.
“I think you should move out.”
That got her attention. She rolled over and gave him a nasty look.
“What?”
“I think you should move out.”
“Why?”
“Well, come on, Maura, if you find my penis repulsive and don’t want to have sex with me…”
“I don’t find you repulsive.”
“Just my penis?”
Maura turned away from him.
“Yeah.”
“Can you tell me why?”
“I don’t know why.”
“Have you gone gay or something?”
“No.”
Maura sat up. Bob watched sadly as her beautiful breasts heaved under her nightgown.
“If it’s any consolation, it’s not your penis, it’s all penises.”
“Maybe you’re just burned out from your job.”
“I don’t think that’s it.”
“Then you should move out.”
It was funny, in a way, but Bob didn’t feel that bad. He felt slightly numb. But not too bad. No urge to cry or go get drunk. Maybe, he thought… maybe I don’t love her.
Bob went into the bathroom to shave. Maura sighed and sipped her coffee. Then she said, “Maybe you should move out.”
Bob closed the door. He ran the tap, waiting for the water to get hot, and thought about the apartment where they lived. It wasn’t anything special. Just cinder blocks covered in stucco and paint. Really nothing to look at. A giant horseshoe-shaped thing with a gate at the open end and a pool in the middle. Now that he thought about it, Bob realized that the apartment building might seem ugly to some people. But, like most things in Los Angeles, if you looked at it from another angle, say floating on an inflatable raft in the middle of the pool, you wouldn’t see the cinder blocks or the trash cans, you’d see several large and graceful palm trees swaying in the breeze against a pure blue sky. If you looked at if from that angle you might think you were in paradise.
Perspective. Bob was trying to put it all in perspective. He opened the door a crack.
“Maybe I will.”
On an average day in Los Angeles the weather is clear, the temperature around seventy-five degrees. It rarely rains and it never snows. Modern streets and freeways, with traffic signals designed to provide efficiency of transport, crisscross the great basin, wind up over the hills, and spread out across the valley.
Despite what can only be called ideal driving conditions, there are, on an average day, approximately two hundred traffic accidents. It’s unexplainable.
Martin woke up to screeching tires and crumpling metal. The screech was a blinding pain behind his left eye, the crumpling metal was the taste in his mouth. A fender-bender in his brain. A sig-alert in his body. A bong-hit hangover in full bloom. This could be explained.
He looked over at the woman sleeping next to him. Good God, her tits were standing straight up. Virtually antigravity. Martin mused that he must be upside down, in outer space, or in Australia, something that would account for these tits. Then he remembered what those breasts felt like. Hard as fucking stones. He looked at her and shook his head in dismay. Fake tits, dyed blond hair, skin artificially bronzed the color of strained carrots. Maybe she was an illusion. Maybe she was not real at all.
Martin stretched, got out of bed, and slouched toward the shower. He liked to take a shower in the morning. Otherwise he never felt fully awake. He let the hot water caress his body, the scented soap reinvigorating his mind, the steam cutting through last night’s reefer fog.
When Martin, fresh from the shower, his soul patch neatly trimmed, walked into the kitchen, Esteban was already at the table forking mouthfuls of nopalito cactus and scrambled eggs into his mouth. The Latina with the natural breasts who, Martin was to learn, was named Lupe, stood in front of the stove. In the daylight he could see how lovely she was. More Mexican Indian than Mexican Mexican. Black hair to match her black eyes, her skin a luminous terra-cotta. She looked at Martin.
“Buenos días.”
Martin nodded.
“Good morning.”
Esteban looked up.
“Eat. We got a lot of shit to do.”
Lupe handed Martin a plate and a fork.
“Thanks.”
Martin sat down and sipped his coffee. He waited for the acidic brew to hit his tequila-tenderized stomach. It did, and the feeling he got can best be described as queasy. He watched as Esteban dumped vast splotches of hot sauce on his eggs. The same hot sauce that Martin felt hit his tongue like battery acid and gave his lips a raw and unpleasant sensation for most of the day. Esteban spoke with his mouth full.
“I talked to some people down at Parker Center.”
“Yeah?”
“The arm’s getting delivered later today.”
Martin couldn’t believe it.
“They don’t have it?”
Esteban shook his head.
“They had a lab treat it or preserve it or prepare it or something. Whatever they do with arms. What do I know about it?”
Martin’s appetite returned. The coffee settling in and warming his guts like a hot water bottle. He ate his eggs. Maybe they wouldn’t have to flee the country after all.
“You know where it is?”
Esteban nodded.
“So… we’re cool.”
Esteban scowled.
Martin realized he’d said the wrong thing when he saw the expression on Esteban’s face. He felt his bowels spasm and his testicles retract.
Esteban finally growled.
“It’s never that easy.”
Don stood in the shower. He let the hot water scald his pink body. He’d had a good workout. Free weights. Machines. A half hour on the StairMaster. Derrick, the muscle-freak patrolman who was like a personal trainer in the police gym, had spotted Don on the bench press and pushed him to lift more weight more times than he ever had before. Heavy iron thrust upward until his arms shook, his back warped, his legs kicked and then… then Derrick had him do it again and again until “failure.”
He felt his muscles. They were tight, pumped full of blood and more articulated than Don had ever noticed before. The overall effect made him feel powerful, indestructible. Don was ready to kick some ass. In fact, he was champing at the bit. He gave himself an affirmation. Told himself that today would mark the beginning of the end for the Mexican mob from Juarez. They had finally fucked up. He could feel it. He didn’t know whose arm it was, or why it was left there, but it just screamed of fuckup. And that’s all Don needed. A chink in the armor. A crack in the wall. Two years of watching and waiting, sitting in crappy vans in crappy neighborhoods gathering “intelligence”; spending hours in small smelly rooms interviewing punks, losers, and scumbags, as boxes of evidence and information stacked up around his cubicle. For two solid years he’d tracked down one bad lead after another. Every alibi Esteban had was sphincter-pinching tight. But now the day had come. Something had happened. All Don needed was to figure out what, and it was adios, scumbag, vaya con Dios.
Tonight, Don decided, after I break this case wide open, I’m going to splurge and get a bottle of Opus One. Drink it all by myself. A fat steak and a fat cabernet. Don smiled at the thought.