were responding to her signal.
Mingolla framed another question, but before he could ask it, Amalia began to speak. ‘… And the light of the Beast that had been loosed was the light of reason for the Madradonas and the Sotomayors, and they met in the city of Cartagena to contrive a peace, and when they went forth from the city unified in purpose and over the years insinuated themselves into the seats of the mighty, preparing for the consolidation of the world into a single nation. But not all were of this accord. Passions still ran high among the youth of the families, and they continued to murder and rape, to swindle and defraud, as had the countless generations that preceded them, and so it was determined that… that they, too… they, too, should…’
Amalia slumped in the hammock, the patterns of her mind in utter disarray, beyond Mingolla’s capacity to restore. For a moment the only sound was the creaking of the hammock ropes, and to Mingolla, feeling desolate, realizing that he and Debora were trapped in a circumstance beyond their control or comprehension… to Mingolla the creaking of the ropes opened into a vision of a room with softly glowing walls, the light issuing from almost imperceptible cells embedded in pattern of magenta swirls on the wallpaper, and he was lying on a bed in a motel, furnished with a chrome desk beneath a wide mirror, and matching chairs of chrome and mauve upholstery, the decor achieving an effect both sterile and gaudy. Water running in the bathroom. A click, the bathroom door opening, and Debora came in drying her hands on a towel. Wearing a T-shirt and panties. He’d never gotten used to the changes plastic surgery had made in her face, and each time she reappeared after an absence—no matter how brief—he would fail to recognize her for a second, would have to seek out the old planes and lines, blur the new regularity of her features and find the exotic asymmetry that had first attracted him. Only her subdued manner was familiar, the way she moved around the room, keeping close to the walls like a cat exploring, eyes down, withdrawn. She fingered a dial beside the door, dimming the lights, and lay next to him.
‘How you doing?’ he asked.
‘I’m still not used to it here,’ she said. ‘There’s so much…’
‘So much what?’
‘Everything. Food, light, coolness. Anything you want.’
‘It’s the land of silk and money. We do not want for the luxuries.’
‘I don’t like it,’ she said.
Years before, he would have made a joke of her asceticism, but they had gone beyond jokes, beyond any sort of lightness.
‘Won’t be much longer,’ he said. ‘After tomorrow…’ He left the rest unspoken; they both knew about tomorrow.
They made love in the cool dry room, and yes, there was heat, and yes, there was joy, and there was that electric fusion of minds, yet it was no longer love they made, it was something less and something more, a ratification of their commitment and an exercise in power, an erotic calisthenics that bred in them a core dispassion that—like love—was its own reason for being. After they had done, their power was as palpable and bristly as ozone in the room, and with only a slight effort, Mingolla reached beyond the walls to engage the mind of a harried businessman on his way to shuffle papers over a drink at the motel bar, to worry about sales techniques, to ponder the morals of the waitresses… and the minds of passing motorists, dazed by the lights of Love City in the distance, scattered across a tawny strip of desert like stars whose constellate figure has abdicated to a better sky, and Mingolla plucked the thoughts from their heads, his own thought ranging over them, as strong as God in contrast to their firefly frailty, tuning in the trillion-watt wastage of the American West…
Not within range, anyway.
In the pale glow that came through the drapes, Debora looked worried, and he asked if she was thinking about the next day.
‘No… about the day after. About what we’ll do then.’
‘We’ll be okay.’
‘I know,’ she said, and turned away from him.
They awakened before dawn and ate breakfast in the diner next to the motel, a place called—according to its three-tiered neon sign—EAT VERNA’S TEX-MEX DELICIOUS. They had eggs-over-easy and bacon and toast and coffee, and sat in a booth of red vinyl sparkles, staring out through their reflections at the highway, the torrent of headlights and sleek dream machines westering, whispering toward the false dawn of Love City, piloted by men and women who wanted a good time then salvation and still believed this was possible, and thought maybe an immersion in the lingerie department of life would silver their hopes and streamline their wishes and send them home to boredom all chromed and supercharged with the horsepower of sexy experience. They lingered over their empty plates. No reason to hurry. Izaguirre wasn’t going anywhere, secure with his guards and his walls. There were no other customers, and when the waitress brought the check, she leaned on the booth and said, You folks goin’ or comin’?’
‘Coming,’ said Mingolla.
‘This your first time to Love City?’
‘Uh-huh.’
She nodded, a skinny fortyish woman with lines of sad wisdom on her face and rainbow stripes in her frizzy baby-chick-colored hair, an aging hillbilly punkette who had come late to a regretful morality, her disguise completed by a starched green uniform. ‘Ain’t nothin’ there you two couldn’t work out by yourself… if you take my meanin’,’ she said. ‘Don’t get me wrong, now. I ain’t preachin’ ’gainst L.C. God knows, I let it all wallow there a time or two. It’s just it don’t make nobody happy. Don’t make ’em sad, neither. It just sorta
Debora murmured agreement; her response seemed casual, but Mingolla sensed between her and the waitress a woman-to-woman exchange to which he wasn’t attuned.
‘Where you folks comin’ from?’ the waitress asked, affecting deep interest.
‘Mexico,’ said Mingolla. ‘And Honduras before that.’ Made paranoid by the question, he checked her mind for signs of tampering and found her to be a mundane original.
‘Mexico!’ The way she said it, Mexico might have been something at the end of the boulevard of dreams, the distant glow of paradise. ‘Y’know, I sell Mex jewelry here’—she hooked her thumb toward the display case beneath the cash register; it was filled with cheap onyx and silver—‘and Mex food. Hell, I even had me a Mex boyfriend. That was ’fore the war, y’understand. But I never been down there. Always wanted to go. See the pretty boys and the lizards on the beaches and all. The ruins, too. Always wanted to see them ruins.’
Perky, feeling intimate with them now that she’d disclosed her heartfelt wish, she asked if they wanted more coffee… on the house. She brought the pot, poured, and plunked herself down beside Debora. She inquired about their backgrounds, said ‘uh-huh, uh-huh,’ in response to their minimal answers, impatient, eager to tell
‘This ol’ place probably looks pretty nothin’ to you folks,’ she said. ‘But believe me, you can see a thing or two here. The idea of gettin’ their Charlie doctored in Love City brings some strange ’uns thisaway.’
‘Oh?’ said Debora with polite interest. She glanced guiltily at Mingolla, and he checked his watch. They had time, and it would be okay to sit and listen and pretend for a little while that they weren’t going anywhere special, to have that much normalcy.
‘You wouldn’t believe some of ’em,’ said the waitress. And she told them about a man and a most unusual dog, and then about two women who’d looked as alike as two beans, pretty ol’ girls, y’know, like starlets, blondes, they was blondes, and it was surgery made them so alike, they’d told her about it, how they was eye-dentical down to their moles, and they’d had their voices altered so they could harmonize even when they just talkin’, not singin’ or nothin’, they sounded buzzy and high-pitched together like a coupla birds who’d learned to speak English. It had been a real treat hearin’ them order the same thing simultaneous, waffles and cream and bacon, that’s what they’d had, and they’d done all this surgery just to make a big splash in Love City.
