The first trip made me so nervous I had to vomit into the swamp on the way there, and again on the way back. It was just me and him, so he spared me the jeers he might have made if others had been present. He knew that I hardly got nervous about anything. I knew what it was to meet a kingpin, and I had at one point been the enemy. He had waited patiently, drumming on the steering wheel to a Led Zeppelin song.
Maria had argued that it was too soon to take me. She tried to spare me from the responsibility, but events had played anyway that left only the two of us to make the essential run. Charlie couldn't roll out of civilization without someone to cover his back, it was against our business ethics, even if it was to visit family.
He had been all too eager to introduce me to his grandmother, which I understood when Maria explained that the old woman rarely liked, trusted, or accepted anyone. If she had disliked me enough, she could say the word and I'd be off the job and probably dead for what I had seen. Maria had readied me as best she could, but the fact remained that Abuela would dispose of anyone who failed her, even her grandchildren.
Charlie had hoped his kin would affirm his indecision about me. Instead she took to me almost immediately when I addressed her in extremely proper and polite Spanish. It was so abrupt that I could see his surprise when she gently touched my cheek. He later said he'd never seen that reaction from her to an outsider, especially a white boy. My theory had been that she recognized the same hardness in me that the game requires from successful players. She had inherently felt my history, realized that I had come out of a real and deadly gutter.
It was the same sentiment that motivated Charlie with me that kept Joshua away for the year and a half that he's been around. Charlie was fond of Josh from the moment he met him. Maria, however, will not show such mercy, even to the golden boy Joshua, especially now that she has fully conquered his heart. She needs a solid, infallible team.
I wanly wonder if she gave him the same guidance she granted to me. I almost feel bad for the fool. He'll probably never realize that her heart won't be captured or bridled. She can't settle down, settle for just him. It's in her blood to run too hard. She's like me.
The thought makes me glance at him again. He's like bewildered and fallen royalty, a lucky kid who found compassion in a world of malice. He's a romantic at heart, and that's not good when you work at the bottom. It's too bad, really, he's a damn fine diplomat - when he's not thinking with his dick. And he's going into this encounter at a disadvantage.
Abuela is grieving the loss of her favorite grandchild.
Chapter 16 Sharks
Maria
The yard around my grandmother's old plantation house is filled with an eerie sort of tranquility, like an alternate reality that's buffered by the crush of swamp vegetation. Even the flow of muted workers, mostly illegal Mexicans, in the midst of their labor feels peaceful.
I watch them file through the tall grass with boxes of product on its way to be sorted. I watch them sweat, even in the falling dark. If you live in the deep south long enough, you start to believe you've earned immunity to the heavy humidity. But really, that's just a parlor trick of the mind. This far into the heart of Louisiana, there is no relief. Everything comes down to whether or not you can withstand the oppression. Most people break.
We wait for Abuela on the back side of the wraparound porch, sipping water from which the ice melted almost instantly. My gaze drifts lazily to the condensation on my glass as it seeps toward the tabletop to join the pool forming on the surface.
No one but me has spoken since we arrived, and that was in Spanish and to the guards. Maybe the magic of the setting compels my little army to silence. Maybe it's fear. For Joshua, I know it is.
I can feel it radiating from him as the sleeve of his cotton t-shirt brushes my bare arm. My body reacts despite the false calm I've projected. Thrill bumps string along my skin and I wonder if he can feel the jolt within me. I swear he glances at me, but I won't meet his eyes, so I can't say for sure.
His hair has become a mass of crazy curls, reacting to the sticky sweet atmosphere, and his lightly tanned skin is damp and glowing in the fading light. Rampant memories crawl over me, thoughts of my destruction of his resolve and the conviction in his adoration. Since then I've banished those thoughts, but his tense proximity brings everything about that morning screaming back to reality.
The probability that Abuela will hate him drives home the fact that his touch comforted me in the bleakest of moments, a fact that I despise. Suddenly I'm sure I can smell him, a mixture of some light cologne and his pheromones.
For all the credit I never give Joshua, I know better. I know he can feel my eyes creeping over him and I know he's not quite the happy-go-lucky little boy he acts like. His experience feels tame and almost minuscule to the rest of us. Maybe he didn't grow up fighting to eat, or come
