And the girl, John thinks, what’s her name…
Kim?
… can cool out in juvie.
Nice.
90
Kim walks toward the border check like any number of American teenagers who go to Tijuana for a day of drinking and then come back to San Diego over the pedestrian bridge at the San Ysidro crossing.
Medical tape is wrapped around her rib cage, holding the bags of cocaine firmly under her breasts. Slimmer, smaller packets-still valuable-are taped to the insides of her thighs.
She had stood, humiliated, in her bra and panties inside a house while the Mexican abuelas taped the packets to her body. Mentally, she removed herself from the scene, trying not to feel their hands on her, or the eyes of the drug trafficker who stared at her with undisguised lust.
I am a princess, she told herself, being prepared for a ball
No
I’m a high-fashion model and they are fussing over last-minute details before I go out on the runway, and the man is
A photographer, studying how he can best capture my beauty, my essence for his camera, and finally they were done and she pulled the loose-fitting peasant blouse over her head and slipped back into the jeans and the women stroked and patted her until they were satisfied that the packets could not be seen or even easily felt, and then she put on her tennis shoes and hefted the cheap canvas bag over her shoulder.
Doc told her that most kids might slip a couple of joints or a bag of cheap ditch weed into the bottom of their bags, and that’s what the customs guys will be looking for.
“If they search anything, they’ll search the bag,” Doc said. “When they see that it’s clean, they won’t do a body search.”
Say what you will about Doc, he makes the kids go to school.
The leering drug trafficker drove her out near the border crossing, and now she walks toward the checkpoint and tries to control her fear.
The truth is she’s terrified.
Despite Doc’s reassurances.
“You won’t get caught,” he said, “but if you do, you’ll spend a few weeks-maybe-in juvenile hall.”
Now in the pedestrian line at the checkpoint she balances a few weeks in juvenile hall against the pair of Charles Jourdans and tells herself that she made the right choice, but she’s still frightened and knows that’s a bad thing.
“They look for signs of nerves,” Doc told her. “Sweating, fidgeting. Whatever you do, don’t touch yourself, like, to make sure the packets are still in place. They will be. Keep your hands away from your body. Just act natural.”
(Doc doesn’t know
Kim doesn’t know that she’s spent her entire life so far trying not to act natural.
Nature is a cave
Nature is dirty.)
Now there are only two people in front of her. She shifts her weight onto one hip, posturing a teenager’s impatience.
“If you get caught,” Doc said, “which you won’t, they’ll ask you who gave you the drugs. Just say that some Mexican guys approached you on the street and offered you money and you couldn’t resist the temptation.”
“How much money?” Kim, always pragmatic, asked.
“Five hundred dollars,” Doc said.
They were going to meet you at the trolley stop at the main train station in San Diego. You were going to go into the ladies’ room stall, give the dope to a woman there, and get paid.
Now she rehearses the story in her head.
Some Mexican men came up to me on Avenida Revolucion. One of them was named Miguel. He offered me five hundred dollars. That’s so much money-I’m a waitress. I went into the bathroom of a restaurant with his girlfriend-I think she said her name was Rita-and she taped the drugs to me. I’m sorry, I’m so sorry. I’ve never done anything like this. I’ll never do it again, I swear. Ever.
Only one person ahead of her now.
She feels her heart race.
She thinks about turning around, going back.
Then the customs agent waves her forward.
91
Doc hangs up the receiver of the pay phone on Ocean Avenue and walks back into the Marine Room.
John sits at the bar, nursing a beer and idly watching the baseball game on television.
“She’s in line,” Doc says.
His tone is cool, but John can tell that Doc is nervous.
Stan and Diane sit in their small living room.
Reading.
He Updike, she Cheever.
She looks up from her book and says,
“I fucked John McAlister.”
The customs officer tells Kim to set her bag on the table and open it.
He watches her, not the bag, as she does.
And sees
Nothing.
The girl is totally calm unconcerned.
Aloof, detached.
He looks into the bag and sees the strand of Kotex that Doc provided her with, told her to put on top.
Kim looks at the customs officer coolly, as if to say
Hey, you told me to open it.
He hands her the bag and welcomes her back to the United States.
She crosses the bridge.
94
Kim walks into the shop and asks to try on the Charles Jourdans.
The clerk looks at her in her pink waitress uniform with that “You’re wasting my time” look, but something in Kim’s eyes makes her go find a pair of 5 ^1 / 2 s and bring them out.
Kim makes her bring out 5s and 6s, too, just to be sure, but the 5 ^1 / 2 s fit perfectly and Kim says she’ll take them.
The clerk takes the shoes to the counter and asks for a credit card.
Kim pays cash.
God as my witness, I’ll never be hungry again.
95
Tia Ana dresses her.
For she knows not what
But the girl is beautiful.
No, not beautiful Exquisite.
96
For a week, Stan says nothing about Diane’s announcement.
He’s sly enough to know that this seeming indifference is the best revenge, the harshest way to punish her, to inflict retaliatory pain, to pretend that her infidelity isn’t important enough to merit discussion, and besides, he doesn’t know what to say, having already confessed that her kissing John turned him on, and also, the truth of it is he’s afraid to talk about it
Afraid of the confrontation igniting a conflagration that might end in his having to demand a divorce
(What if she doesn’t apologize? What if she says she’s going to do it again? With John? With other men? What if she demands an “open marriage”?) which he doesn’t want.
So Stan pretends that his silence is a punishment and Diane pretends to believe the same, although she’s pretty sure that He’s actually afraid, and it deepens her
Contempt, which tempers her shame
Not so much that she cheated on her husband, but the fact that she bestowed herself on John, who didn’t seem to think it was such a
Big deal.
They did it, and it was nice, it was good, but it was nothing special, and afterward he got up and got a beer and offered her one (she declined) and he didn’t ask “What now” or “What next” and she just went home and washed him out of herself and couldn’t avoid the truth that she betrayed Stan for nothing and then Stan decided to punish her with silence, which was so stupid because couldn’t he see that she’d done it largely to give them something to talk about?
But they settled into silence an unspoken agreement to pretend and
Diane begins to think that maybe it’s the necessity of marriage to let scar tissue form over the wounds so that you both become, literally, callous.
They settled into silence until tonight
Stan sets his Updike down, gets up, and says that he’s going to the store to take inventory.