Under the Skin

from the corner panaderia. They sit at a long table under a row of windows open to the late-November coolness and the croonings of Inca doves in the patio trees. The gunfire across the river has abated to faint sporadic fusillades, each volley prompting Concha to a quick sign of the cross.

As usual at the breakfast table most of the girls are closemouthed and drawn into themselves, absorbed in the ruminations that come with the light of each newrisen day. Only Kate the Schoolgirl, reading a newspaper, and Irish Red and Juliet—called Lovergirl—who are engaged in antic whisperings about Megan’s night with Pancho Villa, seem unaffected by the rueful mood that daily haunts this hour of the whore life.

Now the Lovergirl’s giggles rise keenly and Betty the Mule, longfaced and bucktoothed, says, “Why don’t you two take your snickering somewhere else? You sound like a couple of moron kids, for shit’s sake.”

“Why don’t you mind your own business?” the Lovergirl says. “Nobody’s anyway talking to you.”

“She’s just jealous,” Irish Red says.

“Jealous?” the Mule says. “Of what? Some greaser who probably left you a case of clap and a furpatch full of crabs?”

Lightfoot Gwen chuckles without looking up from her coffee, but the Pony says, “Hey,” and gives Betty a look of reprimand and nods toward Concha standing at the stove with her back to them. The Mule glances at the maid and makes a face of indifference.

“Not much you aint jealous,” Irish Red says.

“Jesus,” the Schoolgirl says, gawking into her newspaper. She will sometimes share with the table an item she finds of particular interest, sometimes even read it aloud in spite of their inattention and feigned yawns. But now the timbre of her voice is such that few of them can ignore it. She glances from one item on the page to another and then back again, as if confirming some correspondence between them. “Sweet Jesus.”

“What now?” says Jenny the Joker.

“He killed three hundred men,” the Schoolgirl says. “Prisoners. Just yesterday.”

“Who did?” the Pony says.

“Hell, they’re always shooting them by the trainload over there,” the Mule says. “They’re shooting them right now, just listen.”

“It’s not the same,” the Schoolgirl says. She looks down at the paper and puts a finger to it. “They were in a corral and there was this wall and he said any man who could get over it could go free. He let them try it ten at a time. And he killed them all. He shot men for three hours.” She looks up from the paper. “And then he came here.”

“Pancho?” Irish Red says. “He shot—”

“No, the other. There’s a picture.”

Some of them gather around the Schoolgirl to look over her shoulder at the newspaper photograph. It shows Villa and a white-haired American general standing together on a bridge between Juarez and El Paso, smiling at the camera and flanked by their aides. The man directly next to Villa is the one who came with him to the house last night. The Schoolgirl puts her finger on the caption, on the name identifying him, then moves her finger to the small report about the three hundred federal prisoners and taps her nail on the name of their executioner.

“Be goddamn,” the Lovergirl says.

They turn their attention to the Spook, who was with this man last night. She sits at the far end of the table where she has been drinking coffee and staring out the window toward the sounds of the firing squads. None of them can read her face.

“It says here his name’s…” The Schoolgirl looks down at the paper again and in Anglicized fashion enunciates: “Fierro.”

“Padre, hijo, espiritu santo,” Concha says as she blesses herself.

The Spook turns to them and scans their faces, their big-eyed show of shock mingled with wet-lipped curiosity.

“I know,” she says.

And leaves the room.

She had been with other men of seemingly insatiable desire but their lust had no object beyond her naked flesh. This one’s hunger was of a different breed. He took obvious pleasure in her body, but it seemed to her that his urgent effort was toward something more than sexual release, toward something beyond the pulse and throb of their carnal flexions, as if what he sought after lay in some unreachably distant region of the soul itself. But whether the soul he strove toward was hers or his own she could not say. She could not have given words to any of this, she could but sense it, know it only by way of her skin.

On completion of their first coupling he sat with his back to the headboard and drank from a bottle he’d brought with him. She recognized the uncorked smell as the same one she’d tasted with their first kiss and it occurred to her that he might be a little drunk. He lit a cigarillo and offered her both the packet of smokes and the bottle and she accepted only the cigarillo. He lit it for her and she said, “Thank you,” the first words between them. In the dim light from the lantern turned down low on the dresser he looked to be carved of copper.

“Como te llamas?” he said.

The query was among the rudimentary Spanish locutions she had thus far learned from Concha. “Ava,” she said.

He chuckled low and repeated the name in its Spanish pronunciation, watching her eyes in the low light. Then said, “Es una mentira. Dime la verdad.”

“I don’t hablo espanol too very…bueno. Sorry.”

“No te llamas Ava. No es…is no true.”

She wondered how he’d known she was lying, and why she was not surprised that he’d known. His eyes on her were as black as the night of rain at the window and utterly unfathomable, but she felt as if they saw directly to the truth of her, whatever that might be.

“Ella,” she said. “Ella Marlene Malone.”

“El-la-marleeen-malooone,” he said in singsong. “Como una cancionita.”

“You’re making fun,” she said, and put her fingers to his mouth. He held her hand there and kissed each fingertip in turn. And then he was on her again.

This time he afterward got out of bed and paced about the small room, stretching, flexing, rolling his head like a pugilist, briefly massaging one hand and then the other. He drained the last of the bottle and set it on the dresser. The light was behind him and she could not see his face.

“Hoy mismo mate trescientos pinches Colorados.” He turned his gaze to the dark window. “Pues, puede ser que los mate ayer. Los dias pasan.” He looked at her again. “Pasan a la memoria y la historia, los mas enormes museos de mentiras.”

She stared at him in utter incomprehension. He stepped to the chair where his clothes were draped and from them extracted a pair of revolvers. She’d had no notion of their presence.

“Los mate con estas.” He twirled the pistols on his fingers like a shooter in a Wild West show, then put one of them back into the coat. He held up three fingers of his free hand. “Trescientos. Los mate todos.” He struck his chest. “Yo, Fierro!”

She understood of this only the number three and what might be his name and that whatever he was telling her was attached to a ferocious pride.

“Your name…tu…llama…is Fierro?”

He laughed low in his throat and made a slight bow. “Rodolfo Fierro, a su servicio, mi angelita.”

“Rodolfo,” she said, testing the name on her tongue.

“Para algunos mi nombre es una cancion tambien, como tuyo. Pero el mio es una cancion de muerte.”

“Muerte,” she said. “I know that one. Death.”

“Si—death.” He laughed low. “Tienes miedo de la muerte? Tienes…como se dice?…fear? ”

He stepped up beside the bed and raised the revolver so that the muzzle was within inches of her face. He slowly cocked the hammer and she heard the ratchet action as the cylinder rotated and even in the weak light she could see the bluntly indifferent bulletheads riding in their chambers.

Her breath caught. Her nipples tightened. Her blood sped.

She reached up and gingerly fingered the barrel. Then drew it closer, breathing its masculine smells of oiled