The Dead Women of Juarez

boxeadores.”

The woman paused. She looked Kelly over again. Seeing her up close and without a film of exhaustion, Kelly realized she was older than he thought before. Maybe she was close to fifty, the extra weight she carried pushing out the deep lines that formed on the faces of lean, worked-raw mothers in the city. He still didn’t find her attractive.

“Why don’t you say you were that white boy?” the woman asked finally.

“How many white boys you see in here?”

The woman shrugged and settled back into her seat. She smiled her denture smile again. “You want to get more hierba? You don’t look so beat today.”

“I’m not fightin’ today,” Kelly said.

“Maybe you come around for something else?”

“What else you got?” Kelly asked.

“Come back and see.”

She took him to the ladies’ room and got on her knees. Kelly let her take his cock out. She jerked it and sucked it and though it took a while to get hard, she still managed to make it happen. Kelly turned her around and took down her pants. The woman grabbed the sides of the sink and Kelly fucked her without looking at her flabby ass, the flesh stitched with dark spiderweb veins. She didn’t ask for a condom and he didn’t use one. He came inside her and when he backed off she dripped on the dingy floor.

“Again,” the woman said. “You can put it my ass if you want.”

“No, thanks.”

Kelly was the first one out of the restroom. He went to the bar and drank two beers in a row. The bartender gave Kelly a look he couldn’t read, but whatever the man was thinking it couldn’t be any worse than what swirled around the drain in Kelly’s mind. He heard the ladies’ room door creak, but he didn’t look over; he felt the woman watching him. It seemed like forever before Kelly could go to her.

“You want some hard-on medicine?” the woman asked Kelly when he sat down again. “A young boxeador like you should be able to fuck longer than that.”

“I got pain,” Kelly said.

“Okay. I’ll fix you up.”

She gave Kelly something wrapped tightly in plastic film. Kelly put it in his pocket without looking at it. The thing weighed almost nothing; in the back of his mind Kelly could calculate a packet like that down to the milligram, or damned close. He felt hot and he was sticky under his arms.

He offered the woman money. She waved it away. “Not today,” she said.

“I’m gonna go,” Kelly replied.

“Next time I give you something to keep your aparato working,” the woman told Kelly. “You don’t last long enough, white boy.”

“Maybe it’s your fat ass I don’t like.”

“?Bolillo!”

“Like I ain’t never heard that before.” Kelly turned his back on the woman. She said something else, something about how he had a little white prick, but Kelly wasn’t listening. The woman was still yelling when he hit the street. By then Kelly’s mind was somewhere else completely.

TWO

HE SMOKED THE FIRST BATCH OF the stuff because it was low-grade heroin that wasn’t worth fucking up a syringe to shoot. The whole time he argued with himself about it, but he knew his conscience was just going through the motions; after a while even the best herb couldn’t do what the cheapest brown could.

Smoking motivosa outside was one thing, but Kelly knew to keep this indoors. He closed the windows and put down the blinds and in the still air the smoke was like acid fumes in his eyes. When the heaviness came and all the nerves went out of his body and all he could do was lie on his back in the bedroom and stare at the insides of his eyelids, Kelly realized that it was impossible to remember this kind of high; every time it was all new and just as wonderful.

Going back to the woman in the norteno bar wasn’t an option, but there were other places to get what he wanted. He stayed clear of anyone he recognized, any of the faces that surrounded Esteban, because even though he was on the other side now and falling away, he still had some pride.

The phone rang, but he didn’t answer it. No one came to the door, which was just as well because after a while if Kelly didn’t have to leave the house for anything he chose to walk around in a pair of underpants. The same underpants every day, and nothing else. The itching didn’t bother him because it was gone the moment he tapped a vein.

The farmacias gave him what he needed for his works and Mexican strangers provided the rest. Kelly knew he didn’t have the money to go on like this forever, or even for very long, but it was all temporary, anyway; he needed to get over Ortiz and the palenque and when that happened he would get back to doing what he was doing before. All the good things were still there… just delayed.

Kelly slept a lot and when he was awake he was tired. A dose of chinaloa put him into a limbo where there was no time or place and no need for worry. Once Kelly woke up in a puddle of cold urine. The sheets and the mattress were soaked through. He stripped off the sheets, piled them in the corner, and put a towel over the wet patch. It didn’t occur to him to take off his soiled underpants, and by the time he remembered he was already headed back down the rabbit hole and it didn’t matter anymore.

His refrigerator emptied out, though he was barely aware of eating. He lived with a stranger who was only home when he was out. Things would move or get broken or just disappear and Kelly had no memory of how or why. This would bother him when he was straight again, but not right now. Just a few days more and he would be ready to start fresh. How many days it had already been, he wasn’t sure.

Kelly wandered into the living room. He knew it was morning because the sun was coming up behind the GM maquiladora. Something beeped at him. He was bleary and the room was unfocused. He smelled musk and rot and his mouth tasted foul. A red light blinked on his answering machine. Kelly watched it and the machine beeped and he put things together.

Messages reeled off, but they were less interesting than the beep and the blinking light. Kelly rummaged in the refrigerator for something to eat. He found only half a stick of butter, so he sucked it like an ice pop. Paloma talked to him through the little speaker. Hearing her voice made him feel angry, but whether at her or at himself, Kelly didn’t know, and not knowing made him angrier.

“Bullshit fuck,” Kelly told his empty apartment. He had a mouthful of butter. His stomach rolled over.

Walking from room to room was a trial. Kelly was exhausted already. He slumped onto the couch, the last of the butter softening in his hand while Paloma kept talking and talking and wouldn’t shut up. This wasn’t forever and Kelly didn’t need her riding his ass to quit. Anyway, there was using and there was addicted and he knew the difference between them. Was he talking out loud?

Kelly threw the butter away. It splattered on the glass of the back door. “Shut up!” he yelled, and Paloma’s voice went silent.

He curled up on the couch. Down in the pit of his stomach where the sickness curdled, Kelly felt lonely. The quiet was too quiet for him now, and his mind was too clear. His works were in the bedroom, but getting there was a marathon Kelly wasn’t prepared to run. He would sleep here for a little while and then he would go there. And this would be the last of it before he stopped, because he was too close to the line.

“Paloma, just shut up,” Kelly said. “I’m okay.”

THREE

ESTEBAN CALLED WHILE KELLY SLEPT: