The Dead Women of Juarez

The marijuana took the edge off. He didn’t even feel his heartbeat in his nose anymore. Kelly kicked his shoes off and let his bare feet rest on the cement. The car-seat maquiladora was lit up like a parade float at Disney World and was pure entertainment.

Once upon a lifetime ago, Kelly got mixed up with heavier stuff and learned to love the needle. He kept it up until he couldn’t even think straight anymore and ended up sweating and puking and shaking in a Juarez hospital for four weeks. On the outside and broke all over again, he swore he wouldn’t touch that shit for the rest of his life, and he hadn’t. Now he stuck with the mota.

The smoke wanted to put him to sleep, but Kelly was a soldier; he finished the joint before he went to bed. Without bothering to change out of his street clothes, he sprawled across the mattress, pulled the sheet over his chest and slept.

THREE

OVERNIGHT THE SWELLING CAME up on his face and his nose was more bent than usual. Under a lukewarm shower, Kelly straightened it out as best he could and let fresh blood swirl down the drain. He ate a monster breakfast to make up for lost calories. The sliding glass door to the balcony was open and he heard the whistle for the morning shift. Working Juarez had places to go and things to do, but Kelly Courter had some free time.

For a fighter it was better to run, but Kelly walked because he didn’t have stamina for anything else anymore. He put on his sneakers and locked up the apartment and headed out. He saw no one because everybody was at work. The only people without jobs in Ciudad Juarez were the very old and very young and sometimes they worked, too, if there was money to be had.

Deeper into Mexico the people got poorer and living conditions rotted away with them. Juarez was a little better because since 1964 it had the maquiladoras: factories turning out everything from tote bags to engine parts, mostly for American companies. Like most fighters on the Mexico side, Kelly used Reyes boxing gear, and all that was made in the maquiladoras, too.

Wages in the factories were criminal and the cost of living in a city like Juarez was higher than the interior, but for the most part it evened out. Ciudad Juarez had its shantytowns and hellholes in the colonias populares, but the maquiladoras kept them from taking over. A family could live here. The air was dirty and the city was crowded. There was crime and death, too — more now than ever before — but there were parks and schools and paved roads. Even though many maquiladoras were losing business and their production heading to China because even Mexican goods weren’t cheap enough for Wal-Mart.

Kelly had been to Tijuana and didn’t like the filthy streets and circus atmosphere. Over in Nuevo Laredo it was nothing but whorehouses and bars and places to buy worthless tourist bullshit. He settled in Ciudad Juarez because it seemed enough like home, but wasn’t, and partly because it worked out that way. Things were changing with all the bloodthirsty traficantes moving their business farther and farther north and east, but Kelly wasn’t going anywhere.

He walked a mile and then two. He sweated under his shirt, took off his jacket and tied the sleeves around his waist. His face was hidden under a cap and sunglasses, but anyone looking closely would see the beating he took. Fresh tape on his nose was a dead giveaway.

Kelly walked all the way to El Centro, skipping the buses in favor of roadwork, though they roared by at regular intervals and blasted him with hot exhaust. Kelly hadn’t been behind the wheel of any kind of vehicle since he sold that Buick. Driving was no good anyway, especially when the streets were so thick with traffic that he passed block after block of cars and trucks baking in the sun and sweating out the people inside. On foot he could move. On foot he was free. He didn’t want to be trapped or singled out, and pedestrians seemed to be invisible to everyone with wheels.

El Club Kentucky was his stop. He dashed across the street and got a horn and a curse for it. It was cool under the bar’s green awning and milder still inside. The ceiling was high and lined with heavy wooden beams. A few chandeliers with yellow lights, fake candles, dangled overhead, but most of the light came by way of the street glare.

Only a few men were there at this hour in the middle of the week. Kelly took a stool at a dark-varnished oak bar that stretched all the way to the back. A TV showed futbol, but the screen was over Kelly’s head so he couldn’t watch even if he wanted to.

The Kentucky was almost a hundred years old, but it was in good shape because customers and money kept coming in. They said Bob Dylan drank there and Marilyn Monroe, too. The bar fixtures were as old as the place: big, serious-looking wood and glass and age-foggy mirrors. The bartender was an old man wearing an apron. He gave Kelly a Tecate in the bottle with a little bowl of lime slices.

“?Donde esta Esteban?” Kelly asked the bartender.

“?Quien sabe?” the bartender replied.

Kelly had beer and lime and waited. If it were later in the year, he’d see what tickets to the bullfights were available and lay out for cheap seats he could hustle to drunken turistas who didn’t know they could just walk in and get better views for less money.

Esteban didn’t show for over an hour and two beers later. He passed Kelly without seeing him but when Kelly called his name, Esteban turned around like he wasn’t surprised at all. “Hey, carnal. ?Que onda? ” Esteban asked. “Where you been, man?”

Esteban took the stool next to Kelly. He was lighter than Kelly and shorter, but his skin was blasted deep brown by genes and time in prison work crews on the American side. He wore sunglasses, but took them off inside. Kelly kept his on.

“I been around,” Kelly said. “Lookin’ for you.”

“Hey, I ain’t hard to find. What happened to your face? You been at el boxeo again? When you going to learn, man?”

“I guess never,” Kelly said. “What you drinking?”

“Gonna spend big today, huh? I’ll have a cerveza if you’re buyin’.”

Kelly ordered a Tecate for Esteban and another for himself. The bartender brought fresh limes.

“It’s that puto Ortiz,” Esteban complained to Kelly. “People he knows… you don’t want to be no part of that world.”

“I just want to lace up my gloves,” Kelly said. He wished Esteban would stop talking about it. “I don’t want to fuck the guy.”

“Everybody he fucks, you fuck,” Esteban returned.

“That doesn’t make any goddamned sense.”

“To you, maybe not.”

They drank. Finally Kelly asked, “You got someone else carrying for you?”

Esteban put his hand over his heart. “What you thinking, man? I been on vacation for a few days, you think I forgot all about you? I ain’t some asshole; I know about loyalty.”

“Well, I took that fight because I couldn’t find you. Rent don’t pay itself,” Kelly said.

“I was down in Mazatlan for a while to see my cousin get hitched. Me and Paloma both. You offending me, man.”

Kelly finished his beer. “I don’t want to argue; I want to get some work.”

“What, like Ortiz gets you work?”

“Shut up about him.”

“Hey, all right,” Esteban said. He clapped Kelly on the shoulder. “Listen: I’m back in town and I gots plenty of stuff for you. In fact, I was goin’ to call you today and see if you wanted to carry some shit for me.”

“What kind of shit?”

“The usual kind of shit. Don’t bust my balls, okay?”

Kelly signaled the bartender for another beer. He put some money on the rail and the old man made it disappear. A fresh bottle of Tecate came, still sweating water from the cooler. “Okay,” he told Esteban. “Tell me when and where.”