Cousin Carlos was in the auto parts business. He had a long low tin-roofed building that was one-sixth shop and five-sixths garage doors. Two of the garage doors were open when we arrived, with trucks and truck parts scattered inside and out and half a dozen grease monkeys — and never had that phrase seemed more appropriate — roaming over the mess as though trying to remember what the trucks had looked like when they were all in one piece.
Rancio, being the smallest and poorest part of a three-nation border with Colombia and Venezuela, mostly supports itself by smuggling, and I had no doubt that Cousin Carlos’s auto parts business was more or less a front, but it did look like an active and prosperous one.
Once Arturo had introduced us and we’d admired each other’s form, Cousin Carlos squinted at the huge sun high in the sky and said, “Let’s go eat.”
“Good,” I said.
He turned to yell what sounded like dire threats at his crew, who blinked at him and scratched their behinds with their screwdrivers. Then he walked off down the dusty street, and Arturo and I followed.
The chief characteristic of most Guerreran towns, it seems to me, is dogs, but the chief characteristic of Rancio is motorcycles. Also mopeds and motorbikes. Everywhere in Rancio you can hear them, a block away, on the other side of the house, zipping past, or just idling in front of a bodega. And the ones that aren’t in motion are usually upside down in the roadway, being worked on by the owner and half his family.
Cousin Carlos walked us through about five blocks of this, during which I began to believe I’d never be able to hear again. But then he stopped at a whitewashed board wall, ten feet high, with razor wire along the top, a full block wide. He had a key for the whitewashed door in the middle of this wall, which he unlocked; he stepped inside and looked back for us to follow. So we did.
Quite a contrast. Here we had a low plain white stucco house of the style you see in the better Florida developments, with a redbrick patio between it and the wall, flanked on both sides by tall lush tropical plantings: many bright flowers, many huge leaves. The inside of the wall was painted a light brown, and abstract metal sculptures had been fastened to it here and there.
“Very nice,” I said, and I meant it.
“Better around back,” he said, and led the way to the left, where a path went around the house, flanked by more wall.
The back was an even bigger surprise, because here was a green lawn, and there was the river. It wasn’t a swimming river, so where the wall ended in the shallows on each side, razor wire had been strung, in several coiled lines, just beneath the surface of the water. This was a viewing river. Seated here, you could view it without the slightest worry that anything out there would come ashore to view you back.
In addition to well-tended green lawn, the rear of the house also featured a small and sparkly swimming pool, all light blue interior and pink stone surround, and another patio, this one shaded by a large blue-and-white canvas awning. A white plastic table and six white plastic chairs stood on the patio.
Cousin Carlos waved toward the patio. “Sit,” he said, and went on into the house.
Arturo and I sat. “This is a hell of a great place,” I said. “Is this where I’ll stay?”
“Oh, sure,” he said, and grinned and pointed a finger at me. “Mi casa...”
“... Es his casa,” I finished, jabbing a thumb toward the house.
“Very good, hermano,” he said, and he smiled, approving of me.
I said, “Do I talk money with him?”
“No no no, I did that,” he said. “Mostly, he isn’t doing it for the money anyway, he’s doing it for family. I told him, you’re working a little scam; when it’s done you’re gonna get a whole shitload of money, and he gets forty million.”
“Siapas,” I said.
“Well, yeah, sure. Two hundred bucks, right? That’s around forty million.”
“It’s easy to be a millionaire in Guerrera,” I said, and Arturo laughed.
An older woman came out of the house then, clearly a servant, heavyset and waddling, dressed in a white apron over an ankle-length black dress. In thick gnarled hands she carried plates and snowy napkins and silverware. She set the table for three, then said, to both of us, “¿Cerveza?”
“Si,” we both said, and she nodded and went away.
Arturo grinned at me. “You learned that word pretty good.”
I knew what he meant, but I said, “Si?”
“Cerveza,” he said. “Gimme another cerveza.”
“Here it comes now.”
Heineken; very nice. Cousin Carlos didn’t pay for all this stuff from his auto parts business.
Arturo and I sat in companionable silence for a few minutes, drinking our Heineken from the bottle, watching the lazy river, and then Cousin Carlos came out in better pants and a guayabera shirt that on him looked like a balloon just starting to lose its air. He was carrying his own Heineken bottle. Plopping heavily down into another chair at the table, he said, “I ain’t goin’ back there today. Fuck ’em. I hate the fuckin’ place, Arturo, but when I don’t go there I get bored. And those assholes I got workin’ there...” He shook his head.
Sounding mildly interested, Arturo said, “Yeah? Who’s that? I didn’t see anybody working there.”
“Yeah yeah,” Cousin Carlos said, and to me he added, “You like guacamole?”
“I love guacamole.”
“Good, ’cause that’s what we’re havin’.”
Arturo said, “Where’s Maria?” To me he explained, “Carlos’s wife.”
“Up in Caracas,” Cousin Carlos said. “She’ll come back the weekend. She’s got her dealer up there.”
“I’m sorry I’m gonna miss her,” Arturo said. “Maybe next time.”
“Maybe so.”
Dealer, I thought. Drug dealer? Arms dealer? Who are these people? Is Arturo certain I can trust them? Am I certain I can trust Arturo? Maybe Lola and I should have one more discussion about this.
The servant woman came out again, with one big bowl nested among three little bowls. She put the little bowls around on our plates and ladled guacamole for us from the big bowl, then left the big bowl in the middle of the table and waddled away again.
We didn’t stand on ceremony here. Cousin Carlos leaned his head over the table, tilted the bowl up with one hand, grabbed his tablespoon with the other hand, and started shoveling. Arturo did a modified version of the same thing — that is, a bit more civilized — and I did a modified version of what Arturo was doing.
The servant woman came back with a plate of tortillas; we ate them. She came back with more beer; we drank it. She came back with a big platter of fried chicken legs; we ate them. Meanwhile, she was taking away the empties, and now she brought more beer; we all sat back and belched and considered the river. Life seemed good. I wasn’t even very much worried about the missing Maria’s dealer.
After a few minutes, Cousin Carlos roused himself a little, like a cloud changing shape, and I saw that he was thinking about his responsibilities as a host. He frowned at me and said, “You want coffee?”
I looked at him. “For what?”
He considered that. “Clean your teeth,” he decided.
I pondered that concept: coffee as a tooth-cleaning agent. It almost seemed to make sense. “Nah,” I said. “But thanks anyway.”