The bright, yellow egg yolk sat perfectly unbroken at the bottom of
the water-filled glass, the murky water magnifying its size and
color. The sight of the yolk always reminded Juan of the story his
mother read to him about the goose who laid golden eggs. All around
the egg yolk were long, milky strands resembling spider webbing, the
fiber stretching from the yolk itself and up to the surface of the
water, where a thin layer of white foam had form.
“You
were right to call me Señor Parker,” Juan said in Spanish. “See
all this?” he pointed to the strands, his finger following one of
the strands to the surface, “this is all the bad energy which I
pulled from your body. Someone wishes you ill.”
He
stopped and waited for Adolfo to translate the speech to Mr. Parker,
who sat on the bed and stretched. Juan stayed quiet, watching Mr.
Parker’s well-toned body ripple and shift as he stretched his arms
to the ceiling and arched his back until it produced a satisfying and
small cracking sound. Adolfo had told him that Mr. Parker was in his
forties, but with his full blond hair, trim body, and wrinkle-free
face, it was hard to believe. He’d be handsome if it wasn’t for
the splotches of red which covered his neck, shoulders, and chest
like irregularly shaped pools.
After Adolfo finished translating, Mr. Parker got up and walked over
toward Juan.
“I
knew it,” Edward Parker muttered, his eyes moving up and down the
glass. He turned to Adolfo and said, “I had a deal go bad at work
this week and haven’t been able to meet my daily steps goal all
week. Not to mention this,” he said, motioning to one of the red
spots.
Juan
gripped the glass tighter and tried not to look at Adolfo, only for
Adolfo to cough and remind Juan he almost missed his cue.
Adolfo,
a man who, until a month ago, Juan assumed he would never see again.
He was as thin as a bad lie, with shiny, slicked black hair frozen in
place thanks to a hefty use of hair gel. He’d shaved his stubble,
trimming it down to an angular goatee, but his eyebrows were still
too bushy and big for his face, like dark clouds hovering over
almond-colored eyes.
Clearing
his throat, Juan said, “You will need weekly limpias. This…” he
motioned to the glass, “is too much to wipe away all at once.”
It
had been Adolfo’s idea to play the role of the translator for
Juan’s Spanish-speaking only healer. “The guy is will be
expecting a certain…ambiente, you know? He has certain
expectations, and the fact you’re not a little old, hunchback woman
is going to throw him off already. The least we can do is have you
speak only Spanish.”
“Should
I wear a sombrero too?” Juan had asked.
While
Adolfo translated, Juan looked at the strands connected to the yolk.
He’d added a bit of salt to the water beforehand, just like his
mother taught him, so that when he cracked the egg and dropped the
yolk in, he’d be guaranteed some strands. But Juan’d never seen
so many appear so quickly.
“And
how much do you say he charges for each session?” Edward asked, his
eyes on Juan, who tried to look wise and mystical. Juan wasn’t
wearing a sombrero, but he wore a pair of loose, white pants and a
flowy white shirt, along with a large silver cross he’d gotten off
a pawn shop a day ago.
“Well,
Mr. Parker, it all depends on a variety of factors. As you can
imagine, pulling away the bad shi—” Adolfo paused and corrected
himself, “energy, out of a person, that takes a lot out of Don
Alvarado.. It can even prevent him from booking more jobs.”
“But
he guarantees he can make me better? And get rid of all the bad
energy?”
Juan
nodded when Adolfo asked him the question in Spanish.
Edward
again looked at Juan. The man’s gaze stirred things in Juan’s gut
and drips of condensation caressed the fingers holding the glass.
Walking
over to Juan, Edward took the glass without asking. When he did so,
his fingers grazed Juan’s, and maybe it was just Juan’s
imagination, but he thought they stayed there longer than necessary.
Edward brought the glass up and studied the egg.
Adolfo
and Juan waited, neither daring to move.
Setting
the glass down on a nearby counter, Edward said, “¿Qué dices,
Curandero, de veras me puedes ayudar?”
It
was a good thing Edward had taken the glass from him, because hearing
him speak Spanish, good Spanish, mind you, Juan might have
dropped the glass himself.
#
“I
told you, Juan,” he said, “I told you this was going to work,”
Adolfo said and reached for his drink, a giant frozen margarita with
a small beer bottle embedded into it. When the waitress placed the
drink on the table, Juan thought of another story his mom read to him
once, of a sword stuck in some stone and the one person in all the
kingdom who could pull it out.
Juan
stared at Adolfo and thought of the last time he’d seen him before
he reappeared a month ago. They’d been living together in an
apartment, both working as curanderos. Juan had always been the one
with the deft hands and knowledge gleaned from his mother’s
lessons. At the same time, Adolfo was better at talking with the
customers, convincing them to either book another appointment or buy
some of the herbs and candles. Things had been good, or at least Juan
thought they were good. Until the day Adolfo told him he was
leaving.
“Nada
personal, Juan,” Adolfo told him as he packed up his stuff. “But
I don’t want to spend my life running eggs over abuelitas
complaining about their arthritis and getting paid in tamales. I’m
better than that.”
Sometimes,
in the middle of the night, or after he had too many drinks and left
the bar alone, Juan wondered what he would have done if Adolfo had
asked him to go with him. If he’d said Juan was also better than
this life he’d been living.
“I’ll
never understand why you love these types of places,” he muttered
and took a sip of his beer.
They
were seated in a local Tex-Mex restaurant corner booth, miles away
from Edward’s neighborhood and hours from the meeting they had with
him. The restaurant was empty when they’d first arrived but was now
full of people done with work and celebrating the weekend. Bright
decor and loud Mariachi music surrounded them, giving Juan the start
of a headache.
“What’s
not to love? Adolfo said as the waitress appeared with a large tray
of tortilla chips and a bowl of thick, nuclear yellow cheese.
“Are
you two hombres ready to order?”
Adolfo
went with something called a smothered, bothered, covered, border
burrito, while Juan chose a plate of fajitas and asked for the
kickin’ ranchero sauce on the side. Once the waitress left, Adolfo
plunged his hand into the tortillas and reached for the queso.
“Two
men came looking for you,” Juan blurted out.
Adolfo
stopped mid-queso dip. “¿Quién?”
Who,
Adolfo wanted to know. He tried to keep his tone casual, but Juan
noticed the edge of his word, the way it could have cut through
flesh.
“Dos
tipos,” said Juan, “About a week before you showed up. Said they
were old friends of yours.”
They’d
been waiting at Juan’s door one day after he came back from a job.
One of them, a fat and bald guy with a bent nose, leaned against the
stair’s railing, and the way the structure whined as he shifted his
foot, Juan wonder if it would support him. The other one, big and
muscular, and bien bien moreno, stepped forward and introduced
himself as Santiago. Juan didn’t fail to notice they were now
blocking his way inside. They were looking for Adolfo, Santiago told
him, were old friends of his and heard he was back in town.
“I
could tell they weren’t your friends,” Juan said just as the
waitress returned with their plates.
“What
you tell them?” Adolfo asked.
“The truth. That I hadn’t seen you in almost three years, but if
they did find you, to give you an ass-kicking for me.”
Adolfo stared at Juan. “They bought it?”
“They
haven’t come back around since,” Juan said.
“Good,”
Adolfo said, reaching for the bottle of Cholula hot sauce. “Good.”
Who
were they?”
“Just some guys, nothing you gotta worry about,” Adolfo said,
uncapping the bottle and covering his already-covered burrito with
bright red sauce.
Juan
grunted. “Bullshit. Those two looked like they would have skinned
you alive if they’d found you. Let me guess—you owe them money?”
"Nothing
like that,” Adolfo said, unwrapping his utensils. Glancing at Juan,
he sighed and said, “They weren’t happy with a limpia I did,
okay?”
Juan
blinked, not sure he heard correctly. “I thought you gave that up?”
“I’d
do it every so often when either the opportunity came up, or I was
desperate. Mostly just me swatting some vieja complaining about
headaches or their bad love live with whatever branch I found
beforehand.”
“Why
were those guys looking for you?” Juan asked
“They’re
brothers. They’d hired me to help out their sister and weren’t
happy when I told them there wasn’t much I could do and that they
should take her to a real doctor.”
“Did
you give them back the money they paid you?”
Adolfo
grunted. “¡Ni a putas! Why would I? I did my part. Plus, I
always set expectations. Gave them a whole speech about how I
wasn’t guaranteeing anything.”
“What
was wrong with the person?” Juan asked.
Shrugging,
Adolfo dipped a chip into the queso. “Cancer of some sort.”
“God
damn it, Adolfo,” Juan said. While Juan might not have followed all
of the lessons his mother imparted on him, one he’d managed to
adhere to was never giving people false hope. In his mother’s view,
there was a large divide between the people she saw and their
everyday maladies, and other curanderos who promised they could heal
anything and everything.
“It
was a dumb mistake,” Adolfo said. “But don’t worry, I‘m going
to fix it with those guys. That’s part of the reason why I returned
here.”
For
a second, Juan wanted to ask if he was the other part of the reason
Adolfo came back. But he knew better. Adolfo returned because of his
new business idea.
“You
should see this guy, Chino,” Adolfo had said pulling out the
nickname he used to call him, Chino—on account of Juan’s curly
hair. “El tipo es bien extraño,” he continued. “He’s
a...what do you call them, the weirdos who always think they’re
sick or about to get sick? Hypocrites?”
Juan
didn’t know the word either, but he was pretty sure it wasn’t
that. “And he wants a limpia?” he asked.
“He
will after I sell him on it.”
It
turned out Adolfo worked for Edward Parker as a driver. This despite
the fact Juan knew Adolfo didn’t have a valid driver’s license.
He could have asked how he got around that fact, but instead decided
to stick to Adolfo’s plan, which sounded less and less thought out.
“When
I say the guy is weird, I mean it. The stuff he spends money on! Card
readings, psychics, objects that supposedly will bring him luck.
He’s one big walking mark, and I’m surprised no one has tried to
milk him for all he’s worth already. “
“Until
you.”
Adolfo
shook his head. “You’re not listening. I don’t want to milk him
dry. He’s our way in. All we need is to impress him, and he’ll
start recommending us. You know how the richies are. They jump from
trend to trend.”
Adolfo
cut into his oversized burrito, spilling its meat, rice, and beans
contents into the plate, reminding Juan of the summers he spent in
Veracruz, where his grandma ran a farm and kept pigs. Juan couldn’t
have been more than seven years old when he saw his grandma slice
open a pig’s throat, the blood spilling into the concrete pen and
coating his grandma’s rough, brown skin.
“You’re
still good to follow through with the next step?” Adolfo asked
without looking up from his plate.
Tearing
a piece of the flour tortilla, Juan piled it with meat and bell
peppers. “You sure he’ll be okay afterward?” he asked. The meat
was flavorless and stringy, nothing like the fajitas Juan would make
at home.
“You
saw him today. He looks fine, doesn’t he?”
An
image of Edward sitting on the edge of the bed, the top button of his
shirt undone, puffs of blond chest hair peeking through slipped into
Juan’s mind, silencing the brightness of the restaurant. Blinking
the image away, he found Adolfo staring intently at him. “Relax,”
he said, “I’m only put a bit into his morning coffee, just like
we talked about.”
The
discussion to poison Edward came up far more naturally than Juan
would have ever thought.
“We’re
going to have to keep him on the hook, somehow,” Adolfo had been
musing one day, shortly after Edward agreed to meet Juan. “The guy
likes to jump from treatment to cure—toda la pinche gente adinerada
son igual. They throw the money away without thinking about it. I’ve
seen this guy jump from acupuncture to steam baths to vegan diets all
in the same week.”
“I
thought the goal was to get him to recommend us to his other rich
friends?” Juan had asked.
“That’s
not going to happen if we don’t leave an impression on him. He’s
not like one of your regular clients, the ones who come to you just
out of sheer belief and tradition. He’s going to want to see
results.”
“Even
though there’s nothing wrong with him,” Juan said.
“Pretty
much.”
Sitting
across from him now, Juan wondered if Adolfo knew exactly what he was
doing with the conversation, leading Juan to the same solution he had
in mind.
“Your
tío get us more of the stuff if we need it?” Adolfo asked,
finishing his margarita and setting the glass by the edge of the
table for the waitress to pick up.
Juan
leaned forward, glancing around to make sure no one was listening to
them. “What do you mean ‘if we need it?’” he asked. “You
just said you’re barely putting any into the guy’s coffee. You
know how dangerous that stuff is?”
The
truth was, even Juan didn’t know how dangerous the substance they’d
been giving Edward really was. He was repeating what his uncle always
told him about thallium poisoning. His uncle, who’d worked in an
ore smelting plant over in El Paso for most of his life and used to
tell Juan stories about his co-workers suffering diarrhea, hair loss,
nausea, vomiting and “la piel bien bien roja, como el kool-aid qué
te gusta.”
The
skin as red as the kool-aid you like to drink.
“Cálmate,
wuey,” Adolfo said, “There’s plenty left in that bottle he sent
us. I’m just thinking for the future. For the next clients.”
Leaning
back in his seat, Juan picked at his meal and tried to ignore the
migraine building in his head. “Estás loco,” he told Adolfo. “We
got lucky with Edward. You have a way of giving him the stuff without
him noticing. How would we do it with anyone else?”
Adolfo
grinned and said, “Way ahead of you.” Raising a queso-stained
hand, Juan thought he was motioning the waitress over, but a
different woman reached their table, Adolfo already pulling his chair
back to stand.
“You’re
late,” he told the woman.
“Hay
no empiences,” she said, tugging the strap of her exposed bra. “I
told you I didn’t get off till five thirty.”
The
woman was short, and curvy, wearing tight, bedazzled jeans and a
white t-shirt that drew the attention of most males in the nearby
area. She had long, black hair and big breasts, and when she leaned
and kissed Adolfo on the cheek, it sparked a bolt of jealousy across
Juan’s mind.
“Juan,
this is Sofía. Sofía, this is Juan.”
Taking
a seat, Sofía wasted no time reaching for a tortilla chip and
dipping it into the queso, somehow managing to do so without getting
a single drop of yellow on her polished nails. “Nice meeting you,
Juan,” she said.
“Uh,
hi,” Juan muttered, glancing at Adolfo and trying to figure out
what was happening.
“Sofía
here is a cleaning lady. She—”
“I’m
a house cleaner, pendejo,” she said and, in the same breath,
flagged down a waitress and ordered a beer.
Rolling
his eyes, Adolfo continued. “Sofía is a house cleaner. I
met her the other day while she was house cleaning Edward’s
house.”
“Has
Adolfo told you how much of a weirdo he is? Requires I wear different
gloves for each part of the house and that I wear these dumb little
bags on my feet so ‘I don’t track dirt and other things from room
to room,’” Sofía said.
“We
got to talking, and she mentioned how she services most of the
neighborhood.”
Juan’s
heart raced, and his chest tightened as if he was trapped in a
rollercoaster ride and had no control over where it was taking him.
“It’s
true. Every house in a three-block span is one of my clients.”
“Tell
her what you told me about the guy who lives across from Edward.”
“Mr.
Garth? Oh, he’s a freak too, but on a whole other level. Guy has a
whole room dedicated to this weird collection of, like, cartoon toys
and stuff. You should see the tetas on some of the toys he has up and
around, bigger than mine.”
“The
other thing Sofía.”
“Oh
yeah. He believes in ghosts. Thinks he’s been haunted his whole
life by his mom, who died giving birth to him or something.”
“Sounds
to me like he could use a limpia,” Adolfo said, running his finger
around the bowl of queso, collecting the last bit. “Maybe a session
to see if we can invoke el espiritu.”
“Yeah,
I can get you guys dirt on all my clients,” Sofía said. “And if
I can’t find anything, I can help you poison them, like you’re
doing with Mr. Parker.”
Even
though he’d been expecting it, the words still made Juan’s
stomach drop. “You told her?”
“I
figured it out,” Sofía said, tapping on the table to get Juan’s
attention. Ever since this guy showed up, Mr. Parker hadn’t been
acting normal for the last few weeks. Then I heard him talking about
you coming in to try to heal him and figured something was up.”
“One
morning she caught me putting the stuff in his drink. I had to tell
her.”
“Lucky
for you both, I decided to join you rather than turn you all in.
Lucky also because I’m going to help you expand,” Sofía said.
“Expand?”
Juan asked. “You want to poison every single client? I think
that’s going to be noticed eventually.”
“First
of all,” Adolfo said, nodding to the waitress who picked up their
plates, “If you’re shitting blood, are you going to tell your
neighbor? But more importantly, how often do you think they notice
people like us? You think they would ever realize if a cook started
to include ingredients they’re allergic to into their food? Or the
gardener directing pollen toward their side of the bedroom? We make
their lives just a little bit miserable for a while, and then bam,
we show up and make everything better.”
Think
about it, all these assholes hire people like us,” Sofía said,
motioning to the three of them sitting around the table, “to keep
their house in order, cook for them, fix their cars, and keep their
yard neat, but I bet you we’re invisible to them.”
“Come
on, Juan. Don’t you want to stop taking the bus everywhere? Don’t
you want to make something of yourself with what your mom taught you.
I’m not saying we’re going to end up using the stuff, but it’s
better to be prepared, right?”
The
grin Adolfo threw at Juan was one he’d seen countless times before.
It was the one he gave him when they were both just getting hair on
their lips and elsewhere when he dared him to follow him into the
empty lot a few blocks from their house, where no one ever went. The
same grin he gave him when he convinced Juan to dip into his mother’s
purse and take twenty dollars.
“I’ll
reach out to my uncle,” Juan said, just as the waitress placed a
five-layer tres leches cake between them.
#
While
there were still a couple of spots of red on Edward’s body, mostly
cluttered among his left arm and shoulders, the rest had disappeared.
Bare-chested, Edward marveled at this fact, staring at himself in the
full-length mirror while Juan collected his stuff from the counter.
“Increíble,”
Edward said, turning around and craning his neck to inspect his back
on the mirror. “Incredible,” he said again.
Glancing
at Edward, Juan’s eyes slid from Edward’s trim waist to his broad
shoulders. He was browner than he would have expected, and he had a
sudden image of Edward in a tanning bed wearing nothing but a speedo
and those strange little goggles. Blinking away the image, he made
some non-committal noise and returned to packing his tools.
Juan
has been treating Edward weekly for a little over six weeks now. The
sessions usually consisted of an egg limpia or a barrida, which
involved Juan bundling some herbs together, dipping the bundle into a
bowl of water and then running the soaking bundle all over Edward,
who was ordered to remain perfectly still with eyes closed. Juan
enjoyed these moments, when he was close to their client, so close he
could smell the cologne—some subtle, French thing, Juan guessed—and
take his time inspecting Edward’s body. During the last session, as
Juan was doing just that, he thought he saw one of Edward’s eyes
flutter open and catch him staring, but he couldn’t be sure.
“Incredible,”
Edward repeated in Spanish and, to Juan’s disappointment, reached
for his shirt lying on a chair. “And it’s not just the redness
that has gone away. So has my migraines. I feel like I’d been
living underwater for a few months, moving in slow motion and
drowning, and I finally got pulled out.”
Juan
smiled and continued packing. If his uncle were right, Edward would
still be feeling some of the effects from the thallium for a couple
more months, but Adolfo had been tapering off on the doses for a
while now, as well as introducing some Mexican pharmacy-bought
antidote to counterattack it.
“I’m
sure Adolfo already told you I had some doubts about this whole thing
in the beginning,” Edward said, sitting on the bed and buttoning up
his shirt. “I hope you didn’t take it personally. I’ve just
been searching and visiting so many places and people, trying to find
something to…” he paused and frowned, running his hand through
his hair as he grasped for an elusive word. Finally, he just shrugged
and let it drop.
This
was the most Edward had spoken directly to Juan. Even though he’d
shown he could speak Spanish, and spoke it well, he usually stuck
with English and relied on Adolfo to “translate” for Juan. But
Adolfo hadn’t been able to make this session, so it’d been only
Juan and Edward this whole time.
“Qué
bueno que lo pudiomos ayudar,” Juan muttered.
“I
imagine you’re going to be helping a lot of new people soon,”
Edward mused, still sitting on his bed, watching Juan. “Adolfo told
me he couldn’t be here today because he’s meeting Mrs. Dolson.”
Adolfo
had been busy this week, setting up meetings with many of the clients
Edward referred them to, and figuring out who from their rosters of
underpaid, overworked employees he could bring into their plan. For
Mrs. Dolson, they were using Sofía, who cleaned the old woman’s
house twice a week.
“The
old bitch always makes me do the bathrooms all over again,” she’d
told Adolfo and Juan when they met for dinner at yet another tacky
Tex-Mex restaurant.
“Word
of warning,” Edward said as he rose from the bed. “Be careful
around her.”
Juan
thought he was talking about Sofía but realized Edward was referring
to Mrs. Dolson. “She’s known to have roaming hands,” he said,
closing the distance between himself and Juan with three strides of
his long legs. Reaching into his pocket, he took out a wad of folded
bills and presented them to Juan.
“Adolfo
handles the payments,” Juan said, looking at Edwards’s face and
fighting the sudden desire to run a finger across the angle of his
chin and feel his stubble.
“This
is for you. Think of it as a bonus for the work you’ve done,”
Edward said. His lips thin but somehow fitting his face twitched into
a smile as his eyes focused on Juan. “Take it.”
The
two words prickled against Juan’s skin, and he reached for the
money. He thought he saw the smallest of nods from Edward when he
took hold of the bills, and he almost let out a gasp as Edward’s
finger skimmed across the palm of his hand.
“When
can I see you again?” Edward asked.
“Adolfo
handles the scheduling. I know he’s scheduling a lot of sessions,
but I’m sure we can get —”
“No,”
Edward said shaking his head. “When can I see you.”
#
Juan
was pretty sure they’d forgotten his eggrolls.
He
checked the bag as he climbed the steps up to his third-story
apartment, the Houston heat pressing against his back even as the sun
dipped into the horizon. He rummaged through the chopsticks,
multitude of soy sauce packets, and cartons filled with General Tso’s
Chicken and Lo Mein. The eggrolls were the best thing the restaurant
made, so good they were worth putting up with the place’s long wait
time, overpriced menu, and dirty tables.
He'd
left Edward’s place without giving him an answer, stammering
something about being late for his next scheduled session and racing
out of there like a teenager fleeing a classroom after someone
pointed out the tent in his pants. He replayed the conversation as he
climbed the last set of stairs to reach his apartment. His stomach
tingled with a mix of nervousness and excitement as he thought of the
way Edward’s fingers lingered on his palm, the brazen look he gave
him as he said he wanted to see him again, the emphasis of the word
you. The single word stayed in his mind, the salt on the a rim
of a margarita, and just like when he drank too many of those drinks,
it made Juan’s stomach flutter.
Thinking
back to the moment lifted his mood to the point he almost forgot
about the missing eggrolls. It also prevented him from noticing the
man waiting at the top of the stairs until he almost bumped into him.
Just
like before, Santiago was blocking the entrance to his house.
“Señor
Alvarado,” the big man said as a way of greeting.
“I
already told you I hadn’t seen him,” Juan said, stopping five
stairs away from the apartment landing. Hearing creaking from behind
him, he glanced back and found the other one, the bald one, climbing
up the steps. He was on the second floor already, and the way he was
huffing and puffing, Juan thought there might be a chance he’d
dropped dead before he reached him.
“Y
te creímos,” Salvador said. “But that was almost three
months ago. A lot can change in that time. Isn’t that right,
Heriberto?”
“Yea….a….lot…change,”
Heriberto said, the man trying to catch his breath and sound
intimidating at the same time. Juan would have found it funny if he
still wasn’t wedged between two men, one who was nearly double in
size of him.
“We’ve
been hearing some interesting things about you Señor Alvarado. That
you’re working for the gringos and fresas. Is that why you can take
an Uber now? Wasn’t he taking the bus last time we saw him?”
Santiago asked his brother.
“Yeah,”
Heriberto said. “Not anymore though. It’s like he came into
money.”
“You’ve
been watching me,” Juan said.
“We’ve
been watching for your….” Santiago paused and climbed down a
step, the stairs groaning under his weight. “You know, what is
Adolfo to you? They used to say you were primos.”
“He’s
my friend,” Juan said before correcting himself. “Was.”
If
Santiago caught the error, he didn’t show it, just took another
step down. “Lousy friend. The rumor is he left you high and dry a
few years back. Someone did that to me, I wouldn’t want him back in
my life anymore.”
“And
especially not someone like Adolfo,” Heriberto chimed in, having
finally caught his breath. He also took a step toward Juan. “Es un
ratero, and a liar.”
“I
haven’t seen him,” Juan said, and this much was true.
Technically, Adolfo was still crashing in his place, but he saw less
and less of the man. He was either arranging new clients for Juan or
scoping out the people who would help make the clients’ lives
miserable before Juan swooped in and magically cured them.
“Is
he that busy with his new girl?” Santiago asked.
“You
know, the one with the big tetas?” Heriberto, only two steps below
him, added. “Spends almost every night at her place seems like.”
“What do you two have planned with that old woman?”
Juan’s
knee shook, and he almost dropped the bag of Chinese food he was
holding. He wasn’t sure what to focus on first; the fact the two
brothers seemed to know so much about Adolfo and his life, or that
Adolfo had been lying to him.
“Adolfo
said he was going to return your money,” Juan whispered, a loud dim
in his ears.
“¿Qué
dijo?” Heriberto asked. “I couldn’t hear him over the
whimpering.”
“I
think he said Adolfo was going to return our money,” Santiago
answered.
“How
much does he owe you?” Juan said and reached into his pocket,
grabbing the money Edward had given him. “I can give you what I
have right now. Maybe that’s en—”
His
words were cut short by Santiago slamming a fist into his stomach,
yanking away his breath and instantly blurring his vision. The
Chinese food fell on the floor, Lo Mei splashing against his tennis
shoes as Juan fell to one knee and gasped for breath.
“How
pathetic are you,” he asked, gripping Juan by the hair and pulling
him to his feet. “Guy goes and leaves you, and not only do you take
him back—and don’t pretend you haven’t—but now you’re even
offering to pay his debts.”
Heriberto
grabbed Juan’s left wrist, slamming it on the railing. “Hey, if
the vato wants to pay Adolfo’s debt, maybe we should let him,
Santiago.” He said and snickered. “Didn’t you always say you’d
break each of his fingers if you caught up to him?”
“Sabes
que, I think you’re right,” Santiago said releasing Juan’s
hair. Reaching down, he picked up a small loose concrete slab and
held it in his hand like a baseball. “Hold him tight,” he told
Heriberto.
“No,
please, wait,” Juan said, struggling against Heriberto’s grip.
“We can pay you, I promise.”
“You
don’t get it, do you?” Santiago said, slapping him lightly on the
cheek. “I want to hear this from him. I want to take
everything out of him.” Santiago raised the hand holding the
piece of concrete. “You? You’re just what I have to make do with
till then,” he said and brought the concrete down.
In
order to prepare for the pain of having his fingers broken, Juan
inhaled deeply and closed his eyes. He was so focused on being
prepared for the wracking pain he almost missed the clanging sound
and the way the rail he was being leaned against shook.
“I
think he peed his pants,” Heriberto said with a laugh, releasing
Juan’s grip.
Juan
opened his eyes and cast a quick glimpse at the portion of the rail
that his palm had been resting against just moments earlier. Even
though the logical part of him already Santiago hadn’t gone through
with his threat, a part of him still expected to see his fingers
mangled and crushed. He stared at his uninjured hand and watched his
fingers move under his command to be sure.
“Tell
him we’ll be back,” Santiago said as Heriberto reached into
Juan’s pocket and took out the folded bills. “Make sure he knows
that for what he did to us, we expect more than just a refund.”
Patting Juan on the cheek one more time, Santiago let the slab fall
to the floor.
They
descended the stairs without another word, the clanging of their
steps attacking Juan’s ear as he slumped down on the floor among
spilled soy sauce packets and General Tso chicken.
#
The
queso was a brighter yellow in this restaurant than at the last one,
Juan noted. There were also chunks of brown meat and diced tomatoes
trapped within the thick, congealed cheese. The appetizer had been
the first thing Adolfo had ordered, but surprisingly, it’d gone
untouched so far.
“Four
thousand dollars,” Adolfo said, his attention alternating from his
phone and a small notepad on his side of the table next to the
tortilla chips. “Just for this month alone. Mrs. Dolson has you
booked two times next week—she says she really likes when you wear
those tight shirts by the way—and the Garth guy has you every other
Wednesday.”
Juan
only half listened, his attention on Adolfo himself. He’d made a
couple of changes to himself in the last few months, starting with
his new phone. “We need to present a certain look to everyone,”
he’d told Juan at the strip mall store they went to pick it up.
“Most of these people schedule everything electronically, and I
can’t be pulling out an old phone that takes five minutes to load
up the email app.” Juan cosigned for the phone contract because his
credit was a lighter shade of red than Adolfo. His phone remained
cracked and three generations behind.
His
clothes looked more expensive, something he’d been able to verify
by looking through his section of their closest and fingering some of
the price tags still left on the jackets and shirts. At least he did
look good with them, though that might have to do with the new
haircut and shave.
“¿Oyes,
Juan, me escuchas?” Adolfo asked, snapping his fingers in front of
Juan’s face. “Did you hear what I asked you?”
Blinking,
Juan had to admit he didn’t.
Adolfo
grunted, “I wanted to know if you still thought Mr. Parker was
worth doing? Guy still has you booked every week, but the asshole let
go of Sofía, and it’s not like I’m driving him anymore, so we
got no one to help us out with him. I know he’s the one who
originally hooked us up with a lot of our clients, but it’s not
like we need that from him anymore, and if we free up that day, I bet
we can get Mrs. Dolson in for another session at double the pay.”
The
mention of Edward caused a burning sensation in his stomach, like
heartburn, except he’d yet to eat anything. Squeezing his hands,
Juan shook his head. “Yeah, I was going to talk to you about that.
He mentioned he was pretty sure he wouldn’t need us anymore.”
“Shit,
really? Why didn’t you tell me? That works out perfectly then.”
Adolfo’s thumbs flew across his phone for a few seconds and
afterward flipped some pages on his notebook and crossed out a couple
of lines. Glancing up at Juan, he asked, “You okay? You’ve been
acting weird and moppy these last few days.”
Before
Juan could answer, the waitress came over to see if they were ready
to order. Adolfo told her they weren’t, as they were still waiting
for their third, but did ask for a Margarita—with top-shelf
tequila, please. Juan asked for a water.
“I’m
okay, just tired, I guess. It’s been almost back-to-back sessions.”
“Yeah,
I know,” Adolfo said and picked up a tortilla chip, “but look at
how much we made this month. And it’s not like we have a lot of
expenses. This is almost all for us.”
“And
Sofía, right?” Juan asked.
The
tip of the chip broke against the stiff surface of the queso. Adolfo
picked up a spoon and swirled the dip before saying, “She’s the
reason you’ve been so pissy lately, isn’t it? You know she earns
her share. You think la vieja Dolson would keep scheduling sessions
if it weren’t for Sofía mixing her medication? Or Mr. Garth and
how he keeps thinking it’s ghosts who keeps moving his shit
around.”
“It
was supposed to just be us two,” Juan said. The words were
muttered, yet to his ears, they felt like the loudest thing he’d
ever said. His hands held the edge of the table as if afraid his
words would shake the entire restaurant. “Three years ago, you
left, and I was fine with it. I kinda understood. You would never be
happy until you were…” Juan motioned to him, “here. But then
you came back, we figured out how we could both get there, and then
you brought her in.”
Adolfo
stared at him without saying anything. The silence grew, taking over
the entire table so that when the waitress came with their drinks,
she set them down and, without prompting, said she would give them
more time and come back.
“Maldita
sea, Juan,” Adolfo muttered, reaching for his drink and taking a
long drink out of it. “Why are you trying to ruin this thing? What
we have is good.”
“Sofía
told me you’re moving in with her.”
Setting
the drink down, Adolfo nodded. “Shit, I told her to let me tell
you, first.”
“Just
like you were going to tell me about the two brothers you still
haven’t paid, I bet.”
Adolfo’s
stiffened in his chair. “What the fuck are you talking about.”
“A
week ago, they paid me a visit, Adolfo,” Juan said, his fingers
tearing up a napkin, bits of white fluttering down to the table.
“They told me you hadn’t paid them anything. Didn’t you say
that’s why you came back, to make it right with them?”
“Why
didn’t you tell me, Juan?” Adolfo asked. His voice was calm,
almost casual, but Juan could see his eyes, and the thoughts behind
them. He looked like the stray cat his mom used to take in during the
hot summers, the way the animal would be comfortable and kneading the
carpet one moment and then desperate to flee the house the next.
That’s how Adolfo looked, like he was waiting for someone to open
the door so he could flee.
Juan
had meant to tell Adolfo about the meeting with the brothers on the
stairs; he had even called him from the apartment landing, his pants
stained with Chinese and his wrist pulsing in pain. His phone had
gone straight to voicemail. And then he’d waited for him in the
apartment, sat on the sofa after taking a long, hot shower and waited
for him to come home. Except Adolfo didn’t come home that night,
arriving at noon the next day and telling him how he and Sofía drove
out for some tacos, got lost, but found a great little bar he would
take Juan to the next weekend.
With
every bit of detail Juan heard about Adolfo and Sofía’s evening,
the need to talk about the brothers compressed down a little further,
squeezed until it became pocket size, and then he placed it in the
deepest part of his brain.
“I
did make it right, I mean, I am going to make it right. I just needed
to get a bit more money before I reached out to them. Fuck, Juan, you
should have told me this. You don’t know those two. They’re
dangerous. They could mess everything we’re working so hard on
here.”
“All
because you won’t give them a refund,” Juan said. His voice
cracked because he’d never been like Adolfo.
Adolfo
had nothing to say this time, which was all the confirmation Juan
needed.
“You
didn’t tell them to find a doctor, did you? When you found out the
sister had cancer.”
Adolfo
took another longer sip of his drink and said, “Not right away. ¡No
sabía! I just assumed she was normal sick, and then later, they’d
already paid me so much that for me to suddenly say no would have
just angered them.”
“So
you kept taking their money while telling them you could make her
better. Christ, Adolfo. That’s something we were taught never to
do.”
“Oh
please,” Adolfo said, “Don’t bring you’re her into this. And
don’t you pretend you’re any different. We’re all using their
beliefs and taking their money, aren’t we?”
“I’d
never do what you did.”
“No,
you would just come up with the idea to poison someone.”
The
jab hurt, and for a moment neither spoke, only stared at the other.
Then Adolfo took a deep breath and said, “This is why I left the
first time. I like you, Juan. I really do. But whatever thing you
think we have, it’s not like that. You were driving me nuts by the
end. That’s why I think it’s better if I move out now before
things get even more tense. We wouldn’t want to ruin what we have
right?”
If
Adolfo had stopped right then and there, Juan might have had regrets.
But he plowed through, adding, “After all, we got our business to
think about.”
Our
business. Not us to think about. Juan would have even
settled for our friendship. But looking at Adolfo, he realized
it would always be like this. Too one-sided.
“I
wonder where Sofía is,” Adolfo said, glancing at his phone before
he started to cough. The coughs were deep and long, sending Adolfo
into short spasms as his chest heaved in and out.
“She’s
not coming,” Juan said.
“What
are you talking about,” Adolfo asked. The question was asked in
between coughs, his face growing bright red. Redder than Edward’s
skin had ever been.
“She
didn’t even think twice about it, Adolfo,” Juan said, lining up
his fork and knife in front of him, so they pointed at Adolfo, who
kept coughing, the sounds being lost by the cumbia playing over the
restaurant’s speakers. “When I told her there might be a chance
it might just be me and her from now on, and she said that would be
okay.”
She
actually said, ‘Honestly, I always regretted not going for you,
though I guess that would have been a waste,’ but Juan didn’t
want to be mean and rub salt on the wound.
“¿Qué
me hicistes?” Adolfo asked, clutching his sides and groaning.
In
response, Juan set the empty thallium bottle between them. “You
were right,” he told Adolfo, “we never consider those who serve
us. Like the waitress who’s been helping us all night—I bet you
didn’t even catch the family resemblance.”
“Fa…family?”
Adolfo muttered, his head dropping a bit.
“To
her younger sister. The one you gave months of false hope and left
when it was too late for anyone to help her.”
“¡Pinche
culero!” Adolfo tried to lunge at Juan but instead tumbled and
almost fell to the floor, caught at the last minute by Santiago,
who’d appeared out of nowhere, still wearing his white cook apron.
“Calmado,
calmado,” Santiago muttered into Adolfo’s ear and helped him back
up to his chair, where he propped him up and kept him in place by
resting his two large hands on his shoulder.
To
Juan, he asked. “You finished here?”
Juan
looked at Adolfo. His eyes were already glazing over, and a small bit
of drool slowly dripped from the side of his mouth. Juan had the
waitress pour a full bottle of thallium into Juan’s drink, not
having been sure how quickly it would react nor its full effect. He
wondered if he used too much.
“Yeah,
I am,” Juan said, keeping his eyes on the queso and trying to
ignore the whimpering sounds coming from Adolfo. “And we’re done,
right?”
“Yeah,
buddy, absolutely,” Santiago said, in a tone that Juan figured
would keep him up at night.
Pushing
his chair back, he thought about taking one last look at Adolfo but
decided against it. He didn’t want to remember him this way.
Walking
outside the restaurant, the humidity assaulted Juan, his shirt
immediately sticking to his skin. Glancing around, he spotted the
Silver Lexus idling by a parking space and moved towards it.
“Everything
went okay?” Edward asked him when Juan slipped into the back seat.
“He
took it better than I thought he would. Actually wished me luck and
said he was thinking of moving out of the city anyways.”
“Really,”
Edward asked in Spanish. “I’m surprised. I thought he would be
upset about you deciding it was time to break off the business part.
No offense, I liked him at all, but there’s nothing he was doing
that you couldn’t do.” He patted Juan on the leg and let his hand
rest on his thigh.
“Yeah,”
Juan said, closing his eyes and leaning against the leather seat.
The car’s engine turned on, vibrations moving across his ass and
back.
“I
have to drop you off at home. Have work to deal with, but hopefully,
I won’t be long.”
“It’s
fine,” Juan said, trying to will away the image of drooling Adolfo
that sat center in his mind. And it was fine. He trusted Edward. He
knew they would work out.
And
if not. Well, he could always reach out to his tió.
Hector
Acosta is an Edgar nominated author who lives in Houston with his
wife and cats. His stories have been features in Vautrin, BAMS 2022,
and more. He has been told he watches too much wrestling.