first step, the first of eighteen dry, wooden steps that will bring a watcher, a toucher, a torturer. The fan overhead turns slowly, barely molesting the air so thick with sour smells. There are soiled black silk sheets on the bed; gold- veined mirrors above.
Suddenly, the step cries out again, its aching back wondering how many more.
Yet I know that, outside, the hot Tijuana sun still sears the sidewalks, the streets, the very minds of the reprobates who come here. It is just afternoon. Hours to go.
So they come. Eighteen steps, turn to the left, one or two more steps. Push. There is no lock on the door to the room above Malo’s. One is not needed. The door opens and the noise intrudes quickly after, crashing inside me like a black gale; followed, always, by the hideous touching, by the fantasy of skulls caving in, razors carving flesh, throats, gurgling with contrition.
All the men who climb the stairs are big-fisted, like my dad.
All the women, rich and violent.
Because I am the grail. Fourteen years old, unlined, shoulders and hands like a man. I am the prize that Cedrica Malo offers in her lottery, the one it costs five hundred dollars to play, the one that will make us both rich.
Sometimes the lottery winners ask me to trade in pain. Sometimes, in sacrifice. But always I am bound to deal in pleasure, and to collect its many debts.
The black room swoons.
El brujo esta aqui.
The witch is here.
And I will look you in the eye and tell you I am an itinerant farm-worker from Culiacan, and you will believe me. I will tell you I operate a hot air balloon over Napa Valley, and you will believe me. I will tell you I am a baker from New Orleans, and you will believe me.
I will fuck you in your marriage bed, my workman’s fatigues around my ankles, while your husband fetches the mail.
The blood will flow, sweet and plenteous.
I will tell you that I love you.
The world will fall silent.
And you will believe me.
17
She scans the newspaper for details, but this day, there is no mention of the Willis Walker murder in the Plain Dealer. It had made the second section for one day, a small item that said a man named Willis James Walker, forty-eight, had been found dead in a room at the Dream-A-Dream Motel, and that cause of death had not been determined. Nor were there any suspects in custody.
She is sitting at a window table at a restaurant on the west bank of the Flats, watching the river flow, sunglasses down, an untouched plate of al pomodoro with angel hair pasta growing old in front of her.
She had managed to sleep through the night, which frightened her a little. Somehow, the image of Willis Walker on the floor of that filthy bathroom had not invaded her dreams. She had thought she would be haunted by the image for years to come-probably as she sat in a jail cell at the ORW-but, so far, it isn’t happening. And that is a little unnerving.
Perhaps it’s because she knows that she has a job to do. To get this money into a trust. To raise her daughter. Willis Walker was a big, violent man standing between her and that goal. Fuck him, she thinks. He took his chances and lost.
He hit on the wrong damn girl.
She pays the check, bundles up, and steps outside. She walks down Main Avenue for a few blocks, to Center Street, where her car is illegally parked. She turns onto the nearly deserted street and is happy not to see a bright orange ticket on her windshield, her mind already a deadfall of numbers, apprehension, sorrow, promise, fear.
And that’s when she notices the man breaking into her car.
“Hey!” she screams, before she can stop herself. She looks up and down the street. No one to hear her. Or help.
The man looks up, around, but not at her. He is fortyish, white, dressed shabbily in a hooded green sweatshirt and stained chinos. He has something that looks like a crowbar in his right hand. He looks a little too old to be doing what he was doing, but there he was, trying to jimmy the passenger door of her not-even-close-to- being-paid-off lemon-yellow Honda.
Her fear folds into anger. “Hey! Are you deaf? Get the fuck away from my car!”
At this, the man staggers back a few feet, finds her in the twisted landscape of his vision. He is clearly drunk. The f-word seemed to register something with him. As did her volume. “Wuss your prollem, bitch?” he says.
Bitch? She is incredulous. “That’s my car, bitch. You’re my problem.” What the hell had come over her? What was she doing? She should be keeping as low a profile as possible, and here she was threatening a car thief. On the other hand, she isn’t all that anxious to call a cop. She shoves her right hand into her coat pocket and takes a nervous step forward. “Now take a friggin’ hike. We’ll pretend this never happened.”
The man glares at her, obviously weighing the possibility that she might be some kind of militant career woman feminist type with a Mauser. 380 in her pocket, just waiting for some fuckup to cross her path.
The ploy works. Without a word, the man slowly drops his hands to his sides and begins to back his way up the sidewalk, not taking his eyes from her. When he nears the corner, he shakes the crowbar at her in a final, pathetic attempt at caveman bravado, before disappearing down an alley.
That is it, she thinks. One hundred percent friggin’ it. Doesn’t matter what it takes, how it happens. Even if she does it with less than fifty thousand dollars. Even if she has to disobey a court order and live with Isabella on the run for the rest of their lives. She was outta here.
Fuck this place.
She walks over to the passenger door. No damage. Well, no damage that wasn’t already there. All she can think about now is sinking into a hot bubble bath, a glass of herbal tea at her side, Andre Previn on the stereo, something in the oven on slow. Nearly heaven. Only Isabella frolicking amid the bubbles, her laughter echoing off the old fixtures, would make it so.
She brushes the snow off the door key, inserts it into the lock, turns it, and The first thing she smells, as the man’s hand closes around her mouth, is DL Hand Cleaner. Her father had been a tinkerer when she was very small, fixing the family cars himself, rebuilding lawn mower engines, and when he would hoist her upon his lap before dinner she would smell the rich, petroleum-based cleaner mixed in with his cigar smoke.
But this time, the smell does not make her feel warm and protected.
This time it is making her sick.
“Who the fuck you think you’re talking to, bitch?”
It is her car thief, back to assert himself for real.
She tries to scream but the sound is muffled by his grimy half-glove. She struggles, and, for her trouble, she is clubbed to the ground with a heavy forearm. The earth reaches up to her-icy and hard and unforgiving. She lands on her left shoulder, rolls to her right; dazed and disbelieving, thoroughly demeaned.
Then, she hears shouting.
Hey, someone yells.
Hey!
Footsteps approaching. She sees a pair of brown hiking boots, the cuffs of denim jeans. She hears more shouting, but the words are unintelligible, considering the steam shovel that had just begun work inside her brain.
Then, footsteps crunching the snow, staggering away.
Then, silence. God her head hurt. Am I alone? she wonders.
No.
Strong hands grab her by the arms; strong arms lift her to her feet.
