'Mistake, Jefe, to let me keep my gun. You think because there are five of you and two of us…'
'Baptiste,' Santiago said. 'You and Tomas take Julio out until he stops choking.'
The other two loungers came forward, watching Chollo out of the corner of their eyes, and got Julio on his feet and helped him from the room. Chollo didn't put the gun away, but he let the gun hand drop to his side, the barrel pointing at the floor.
'You are quick to take offense,' Santiago said.
'We will get along better if you remember that,' Chollo said.
Santiago smiled.
'I try to get along as well as I can,' he said. He looked back at me. 'And, you, Spenser, are you also quick to take offense?'
'Not me,' I said. 'I am a pussy cat.'
'That may be,' Santiago said, 'though you do not look like a pussy cat.'
I smiled like I had a mouthful of canary and let it pass.
'I will think about your situation,' Santiago said. 'And, truthfully, will consider if there is anything there for me. If there is, I will be in touch.'
I took my card from my shirt pocket and put it on Santiago's green leather table top.
'Call me,' I said.
Santiago nodded.
'And you, my Mexican friend, are you moving here from Los Angeles?'
'Just here to visit my friend,' Chollo said, 'the pussy cat.'
'And what do you do in Los Angeles? When you are there?'
'I work with a man named del Rio,' Chollo said.
'Ahh!' Santiago said, and smiled as if this explained much.
Chollo smiled back, and as he was smiling the gun disappeared back under his coat.
'Ahh!' Chollo said.
He was on his feet now, pacing. She watched him struggle for calm, twirling the cigar slowly between his fingers. He had delicate hands, as she always imagined a surgeon's would be, and when he talked he used them expressively. He used everything expressively. His face was very alive, no matter how much he tried to keep it smooth. His eyes were big and they moved continuously, looking at everything, shifting endlessly. He had a big video camera in his hand, though he wasn't using it and appeared to have forgotten it. As he paced, he moved in and out of the small circle of light by the table.
'You cannot,' he said. 'You cannot keep saying these things to me, Angel. I love you too much. I cannot hear it.'
'Then let me go,' she said.
He had paced out of the light circle and she couldn't see him in the dark room. She had no idea what time of day it was and already was beginning to lose track of how long she'd been there.
'That is like asking me to die,' he said.
He came back into the light, his narrow, beautiful, boyish face lit by the lamp on one side, still in darkness on the other. A half face, volatile and compelling… and crazy, she thought.
'Keeping me here is asking me to die,' she said.
'To be with me, to live in wealth and excitement forever with me, is to die? Do you know who I am? Do you remember? Do you know what I have become? I have money, more than you can imagine. I control everything here. You can have anything you want.'
'I want to be free,' she said.
'Of me?'
'Everything isn't about you, for crissake, Luis. I want to be free, period. I want to choose what I'll do, and where I'll go, and who I'll love. Can't you understand that?'
'I too will choose, and I choose you,' he said. 'What has happened to you, Angel? The Anglo princess that used to make love to me, shamelessly? Are you now tired of the foolish Latino boy? Have you now decided to be an Anglo again and marry a stiff Anglo man and wear white panties and go to church?'
She could feel how shallow her breathing was. 'If I'm going to make love, Luis, I'm going to do it shamelessly, you know? There's nothing going on to be ashamed of.'
'We will make love again,' he said. He was back out of the lamplight circle again and his voice came seemingly disembodied from the darkness.
'No,' she said and her voice was steady, although her breath came more rapidly as she was saying it. 'We won't. Maybe you can force me to fuck you, but we won't make love.'
He was silent in the darkness. Then the bright camera light came on, and the camera began to whir. Behind the light she heard him say, 'I have learned, chiquita, to take what I can get.'
