hard sand toward the water.
“Where’re you going?” he called.
“To the water. I want a moon bath.”
This girl she once knew, Rosalind, had told her that the rays of the moon were healthy for women, that they strengthened the subtle energies and prevented menstrual cramps. Jenny recalled a tiny little straw-haired girl with lots of face piercings and dark bracelet tattoos, into crystals and astrology, too. She had done a horoscope for Jenny on a piece of notebook paper, sun and moon in Cancer, Scorpio rising, and Rosalind had explained what it all meant, you are probably attracted to the sea. Your home environment is very important to you, and you like to make it cozy. You may be very touchy emotionally, and need to hide in your shell sometimes. You are a strong defender of family and tradition. Although your temperament is changeable, people will come to you readily for nurturing and care. You look to your mother for protection and nurturing. That last part was a little off, also the touchy emotionally, but maybe what she was feeling now was some of that kicking in. Or maybe it was all bullshit, like Kevin said.
She slid out of her sandals and waded into the water. It was warmer than the air and had the feel of light oil. The creamy moon rode high, silvering every wavelet. She stood immersed to her knees and let the rays sink into her skin, and wished greatly that it was not all bullshit. She heard the squeak of steps in the sand. Kevin, coming for a little of her famous and astrally correct nurturing and care. “Hey…,” he said.
Without thinking, Jenny stepped back on the sand and in an instant was free of her T-shirt and shorts; then she dived into the reflected moon. The water was shallow here, less than five feet. She shot down to the sand and coasted just above the bottom. It was perfectly black, disappointing because she wanted it to be moonlit under the water, magical and strange, and she wondered briefly why it was not. She would ask Cooksey. She could hold her breath for a long time now because of all her practice in the fish pool, and she did, suspended in the utter dark.
There was a splash, heard faintly, and a disturbance in the water, a pressure of something moving. Did sharks come at night? she wondered, and felt a little tug of fear and self-contempt. Yet another thing she didn’t know. She kicked off from the sand and shot to the surface. But it was only Kevin, sputtering and thrashing a dozen yards away.
“God, Jenny, I thought something happened to you!”
“I’m fine. Were you going to rescue me?”
“Yeah, right,” he said, laughing, “my action-hero phase.” He drifted over and embraced her, squeezing her breasts against his chest, kissing her neck. This was a little new, she thought, it wasn’t only that he wanted sex. He almost always wanted sex, and just now, as a matter of fact, so did she. But even when they had first hooked up, it hadn’t had this feel to it, like he was afraid she was going away and wanted to be extra loving. If true, if she wasn’t just imagining it, then why did he act so shitty when they were going to make her leave the property? He had his hand inside the waistband of her panties now, the longest finger searching downward like a killifish after a crumb. She thrust away from him and paddled away on her back.
On the dry sand she stripped her clinging panties off and pulled shorts and T-shirt on, and found her sandals. She trotted to the blanket and used it to dry her face and hair. Kevin came trailing along, with a confused look on his face, which he was trying to hide behind his usual lopsided smile. She folded the blanket. “Let’s go in the van,” she said.
In the mangrove thicket, Santiago Iglesias put down his eight-by-ten night glasses and said to his companion, Dario Rascon, “Looks like the show is over. Let’s go back to the van.”
Rascon said, “That’s some piece of ass. I’d like to fuck that bitch. I’d like to fuck that bitch right up her white ass. You know something? I never fucked a redhead pussy before. How about that? I just thought of that when I was watching her flash her cunt at us. Not a real one, anyway. You want to know what I think? We should toss the little maricon in the woods and fuck her into the ground.” Here he made a sucking noise with his mouth and manipulated his genitals, indicating a high level of sexual interest.
“He told us to see where they go,” said Iglesias. “You want to explain to him why you thought a piece of ass was more important than doing what the man said, go ahead. I wish you the best of luck.”
“?No me friegues, pendejo!Give me ten minutes with that cunt and we’ll know not only where she comes from but what she had for breakfast last Tuesday.”
“That’s a good plan, and I can see you understand the situation a lot better than Prudencio does.”
“He just wants the information, man. I bring it in, he won’t do shit to me.”
“If not, could I have your boots?” Instinctively Rascon looked down at his boots, which were crocodile, elaborately tooled, and tipped with silver caps. Then he snarled,“?Chingate!” and stomped away, followed by the softly giggling Iglesias.
They sat in their van. Rascon wanted to turn the radio on and roll up the windows against the occasional mosquito, but Iglesias said no, partly to annoy the other man and show who was in charge, and partly because he wanted to see what the Americans were going to do. He had a good idea of what, but he wanted to observe it. The two Americans entered the van via the side door. Iglesias saw the van settle on its springs. After a few minutes the body of the VW began to rock rhythmically. Its windows were all open, and shortly thereafter the slight breeze brought to the two watchers the sound of heavy breathing and then a series of short cries, like that of a small bird, rising in register, and then a distinctively male groan.
“She’s getting it now, the little whore,” said Rascon sourly. “I’m getting sore balls listening to that shit.” He massaged these.
“If you’re going to jerk off, go outside,” said Iglesias.
“?Pela las nalgas!”
“When we get back, you can ask Torres for a piece of his fine white ass.”
“?Callate, cabron!”snapped Rascon. “You’ll see, I’m going to fuck that girl before we’re done here.”
“Again I wish you the best of luck, my friend,” said Iglesias. “In the meanwhile…?Ay, cono! Listen, they’re going at it again!”
Prudencio Martinez thinks for a moment and then reaches into the backseat and shoves the man sleeping there into wakefulness.
“What’s up?” says the man in the backseat. His name is Rafael Alonzo Torres. He is slim and young, the youngest of the men Martinez has brought with him, a hungry and aggressive kid from the Cali slaughterhouse district, blessed with a mild-looking angel face. He reminds Martinez of himself twenty years ago. Martinez says, “You slept enough. Go into the house. Sit in the chair I showed you. And stay awake.”
The youth yawns and stretches. He says, “What about Garcia and Ochoa?”
“Garcia’s in the kitchen and Ochoa’s watching the back. I want you on the bedroom floor.”
“Did something happen?”
“No, it’s quiet, but we had a car drive by I didn’t like.”
“A car?”
Martinez gives him a look. “Hey, cabron, just go! And Raphael: make sure your phone is on.”
Torres leaves the van and goes to the back of the house. He taps on the door, and Benigno Garcia lets him in. They exchange a few words. Garcia goes back to watching the maid’s television in the kitchen. Torres walks through the hallway to the main foyer and up the stairs to the second floor. There are four bedrooms on this floor, each with a bath, and there is also the room at the rear of the house that Mr. Calderon uses as a study or home office. Torres sits in a chair between the door to this room and the one to the master bedroom. The chair is uncomfortable, and he curses softly as he sits in it, but he doesn’t really mind. This is a very easy job compared to some he has been on. And he can sleep anywhere.
Unlike his client. Yoiyo Calderon is sleepless tonight, as he has been for more nights than he can remember. Weeks at least, maybe months. No, he thinks, it started around the time Fuentes died, or maybe a little after, when the Puxto deal began to go sour. He attributes this insomnia to stress, although he is scrupulous about following all the stress-reduction hints in the business and fitness magazines he reads. These helpful sources do not discuss nightmares, however. Successful take-charge American businessmen do not mention their dreams, or even acknowledge that they have dreams, except in the figurative sense of projecting a scheme for increasing material wealth.
