He closed his eyes and imagined himself caressing that woman’s long hair, sinking his massive, clumsy hands into that flesh dressed in leaves and spices. He imagined La Pastora looking at him in the same way, savoring him. But in his imagination, he caught sight of a strange light in her gaze. It was a cold light, like that of a deranged animal. He wanted to look away. He kept imagining how his hands would slide along her soft belly; how he’d push them down to find the mound between her legs. Then he saw himself bending over and lifting La Pastora’s skirt, burying his face between her thick legs, licking them, opening them. Koala bit La Pastora, chewed on her slowly, drank her down in an instant, and for all eternity. At last, he opened his eyes.
“You can kill me now,” he said.
Two shots sounded.
Part II
Crazy Love
Dog Killer
by Luis Negrón
Trastalleres
Charo gives me a strange look when I tell her I’ll be right back. “It’s Monday,” she says.
We never go out on Mondays. Sometimes Tuesday comes and we don’t go out either.
“I’ll be back quick, baby.”
I’m wearing shorts and sandals so she doesn’t say anything. Charo doesn’t look at me. She looks at the telenovela. I’m about to say something, but she grabs the remote and turns up the volume.
Outside there is no one to be seen. All the streetlights are broken. I stop at the corner and see the light in the guardhouse at La Corona, two blocks down. That guy never comes out, not even when he hears gunshots. Three times people have gone in to rob the place and he stays inside. Later, he says he didn’t see anything or anyone. I don’t blame him.
Last night I left the bag near Bomberos, in an empty lot where Matatán says there used to be a racetrack for horses, but they demolished it. What Matatán doesn’t know he invents. Charo calls him Wikipedia. I enter as if to take a piss and I grab the bag. The bitch is heavy. I’m afraid it will drip blood, but I throw it over my shoulders. I hope it doesn’t move.
Last night I dreamed about that fucking dog. I was little, and Mami was hanging up clothes behind a house that wasn’t our actual house, but in the dream it seemed to be. At some point, Mami lets out a shout and speaks to me in English, and I don’t understand but I answer her in English too, and she says: Look. When I look, Lazaro’s dog is above the septic tank and he’s big, the fucker. Like a house. Mami tries to cover him with a sheet that she’s hanging out, but the dog dodges, and she throws it over me without meaning to. It’s me, Mami, I say. And I feel the dog on top of me, and Mami stops talking, but I don’t remove the sheet so that the dog won’t see me — so I won’t see.
Charo hadn’t shown up. Ever since she came up with the Ecuador thing, she’s been spending more time on the street. Sometimes at 15th, in front of Levy’s, sometimes at Fernández Juncos. At eight she was already there. If I dropped by while making the rounds, she lost her shit.
“What?” she’d say. “What’s up?”
I’d say nothing and leave. The cars don’t stop if they see me. She’s going to kill herself. She’s going to fuck herself over.
I turned on the TV so I’d forget the dream. I was pissing myself but was afraid to get up. Fucking dog, fucking Lázaro. I told myself that it’d be better to come clean to Charo. Look, Charo, I thought, listen to me, I was the one who took out your brother, the fucker. He had it coming. Because of the thing with Landi. But I knew better. Every time Lázaro did something, or stopped paying, or let something slip, and I told her about it, Charo would say: “My brother is sick. Only a piece of shit messes with a junkie.”
That’s what she called him, My brother.
But Landi had given him too many chances. When he found out about the most recent thing, he didn’t say anything. Charo went to square things with him, but he said, “Forget it.” I knew what was coming, but I didn’t think he’d send me.
“Your turn,” Landi said to me.
Shit, shit, I thought. Fucking shit. I shit on Lázaro’s mother, that fucker. I tried to say something to Landi, but he looked at me the way he looks at you when he’s had it up to here and it’s better to just shut up.
That was last Wednesday.
It was easy to find Lázaro. I saw the dog on the corner first, on Calle Las Palmas. Mami always said that dogs smell fear. If you’re passing by a stray, don’t get scared because they’ll know and that’s when they bite.
“Cuñi, come here,” I said to Lázaro. “Get in, Charo wants to see you, she’s about to leave for Ecuador. Come find her with me, she wants to say goodbye to you. Get in.”
“Give me something first, I’m jonesing, pai.”
I had brought what Landi had given me and a Whopper. So he’d be happy.
“I’ll be right there,” he said.
“Here, here,” I said to the dog, giving it the Whopper. Lázaro went behind the aqueduct so I wouldn’t see him doing his thing.
Right away, the dog sunk its teeth into the hamburger and fries. It raised its head and stared at me, like it knew something.
Charo said her brother was respectful. That he never fixed in front of anybody. Whenever he came home he wore long sleeves, for the marks.
“He’s good like that, always so humble.” But the thing with Papi fucked him up. She never told me what the thing with Papi was. I asked her once and she just shrugged. Charo looked like a real woman, but people made fun of her shoulders. I didn’t like it when she wore a tube top to come out with me. People looked at us. They looked at her, because of her shoulders.
Lázaro wanted to put the dog in the truck and I said, “No way, loco. Just no.”
“But they’ll take him. And besides, what’s the big deal? This truck is a junker.”
“Who the hell is going to take that bag of bones?” I asked, signaling with my hand for him to get in right away.
“The city people, Cuñi. Or someone.”
I said no dog, and told him to hurry up, that Charo was waiting, that we had to go find her on the docks. That she was with the trick from Puertos. He got in and kept looking back to where the dog was until we turned the corner.
“He’ll wait for me. One time, when Charo put me in a program, he waited a month for me. Since I give him food and stuff.”
I didn’t say anything.
“Ecuador... that’s down farther. Down below Colombia. Is that where Lake Titicaca is?... I’m happy for her, man. God willing, everything will come out fine. Get her out of all this, loco. Once she has the operation you won’t need to stay. Hey, that stuff you gave me is good,” he said, leaning back in the seat.
He looked out the window. He had something of Charo, that mania she had for biting her lips when she smiled, of moving her knees when she sat down, nervously. They never looked anyone in the eyes; he looked down and she looked every which way.
Something smelled bad. I didn’t know if it was him, the dump, or the mangrove. The Kennedy always stinks. His hands looked like gloves full of water.
I regreted that it was such a short drive. We entered the same dock as always. I’d been there many times, doing things for Landi. I turned off the lights.
When I got to Landi’s place, they were setting up one of those bouncy houses for neighborhood kids. When he saw me he said something to Domi, who ran off and grabbed something from the freezer. He came up to me, but I didn’t want to take the payment. I didn’t say anything, I just gestured to Landi, as if to say that I’d see him later, and he understood.