Fifty Grand

I walk behind him. Away from the others. The gap between me and them no longer merely metaphorical, but now delineated in geography. Paco twitches, looks at me, looks away. He wants to be on my side of the invisible line.

The American lights a cigarette.

Silence.

Smoke.

Snow.

The air in the warehouse perfumed with diesel and Marlboros.

“You are taking one?” Pedro asks, outraged.

The American nods.

“Now you are making the joke,” Pedro says.

“I don’t see anybody laughing,” the man replies.

“This is, uh, madness,” Pedro insists. “Do you know the risks that we run?”

“I don’t like what you brought me. Whatcha gonna do about it? Tell me, little man, whatcha gonna do?”

Pedro spits on the concrete. “You are right,” Pedro says. “I am nothing. You must not have to worry about me. But the people I work for-”

The American cuts him off. “Before you say something you’ll regret, let me stop you right there, friend. The people you work for would never try to fuck with me in my town. Now that bullshit might play in fucking El Paso or Juárez but it don’t work here. This is Fairview, Colorado. This is my city. I’ll give you five hundred bucks for the girl. Take it or leave it.”

“Five hundred dollars!” Pedro says.

The man nods, throws down the cigarette, clenches and unclenches a fist. His hands are huge. Bigger than my whole head. Meat axes. Hold a basketball upside down with his fingertips. And they say a lot. Tan line where a ring used to be, but no wedding band. Divorced. Knuckle scars. Hint of a tattoo running up his wrist. The bottom of an anchor. Navy. Marines. Something like that. A bruiser whose wife left him when he blew his last chance and beat the shit out of her.

“Take it or leave it. Take ’em all back, for all I care,” he says.

“I take them all to Denver. I take them to Kansas City!” Pedro protests.

“Do that,” the American snaps.

“This would not happen in L.A.,” Pedro seethes.

“We’re not in L.A.,” the American says.

Pedro plays the angles, dreaming cartels and professional icemen who’ll deal with this Yankee fuckface.

“Where is Esteban? I want to talk to Esteban,” Pedro says.

Esteban, one of the guys on Ricky’s secondary list-the guy with the dent in his Range Rover.

“Esteban’s busy, but it doesn’t matter, you ain’t been listening, this is my town. I say who stays here and who goes.” His voice a rasp. Metal grinding on metal-grinding on us. He’s the vise and the plane and we’re the thing in the jaws to be scraped clean.

“I do not do fieldwork, but I do construction. I lay down bricks. I am skills, my hands are, uh, mis manos… no son asperas, uh, because, bricks are skilled. I am waiter in restaurant, I am clean sewers. In Managua I work as house painter in morning and in laundry at night. Eighteen-hour day. I work hard,” Paco says.

“And you speak English,” the man replies.

“I speak English, good,” Paco agrees.

“Yeah, ok. You sold me. You come over here too.”

Paco crosses to our side of the invisible line.

When he’s beside me he touches me on the small of the back. It’s comforting, not irritating. I smile at him. Nicaraguan bullshit artist, I want to whisper in his ear but I don’t.

“For him?” Pedro asks.

The man walks behind us and this I don’t like. Him behind me. Hairs on my neck. He stands there for a beat. Comes around the front. He looks at me and Paco. He reaches into his pocket and feels the money in the billfold.

“You know how to work a nail gun?” he asks Paco in Spanish.

“Of course, señor,” Paco says.

“Sure you do. What’s your name, boy?”

“Francisco.”

“Ok, good, I’ll take Miss America here,” he says, putting his big right hand on my head. He claps his left on Paco. “And if for any reason Miss America is unable to fulfill her duties, you, Francisco, the first runner-up, will step into her shoes.”

Paco doesn’t seem to catch any of it but smiles uncomfortably.

He turns to Pedro. “Seven-fifty for him. Twelve-fifty for both.”

Pedro nods. That figure is a bit more reasonable. “Seventeen hundred and fifty and you will have a deal,” he says.

The American yawns. “I’ll tell you what, I’m feeling generous. Let’s call it fourteen hundred even.”

“Fifteen hundred and we will shake on it.”

“Fifteen it is,” the American says.

“And the others?” Pedro asks.

“You can take the others to Denver.”

Pedro shakes his head, but you can tell he’s going to take the deal. Fifteen hundred dollars in all those big bills. And there’s something about the American. I can’t quite put my finger on it but it’s something to do with his height and the way he carries himself. His authority is absolute. Once he’s decided, the conversation, the negotiation, the interaction are all over.

“I do not know,” Pedro says.

“Take a second to think on it.”

The American goes to the warehouse door, trundles it open. He sucks in air as if he’s getting more than just oxygen from it. As if nature’s rejuvenating him like one of my mother’s voodoo gods.