“Do you, really?”
“Yeah. I’m not sorry at all.”
He stretched a hand and caught her own, his thumb rubbing circles against her wrist, and he was looking into her eyes with such interest Maite felt herself blushing again, like a girl. With her free hand she touched her neck, a finger pressed against the hollow of her throat.
“So you want to lie low tomorrow?”
“Yeah,” he said. “What, is that really bad? I can teach you how to shoot too.”
“In my apartment? Are you crazy?”
“Without bullets, of course. Or maybe how to punch a guy. I bet you don’t know how to make a fist and throw a punch without breaking your fingers.”
“It sounds like you want me to become a guerilla fighter,” she said. “I take dictation.”
“Well, you never know.”
He wasn’t astonishingly handsome like Emilio, nor enthralling like Cristóbalito, but Maite figured he was something. Right? He was at the very least courageous. She could picture him with a machete, deep in a jungle, carving a path through the greenery and leading his men.
There wasn’t a jungle in Guerrero like the ones inSecret Romance, lush and filled with toucans, but there was some vegetation. Mountains, caves, rugged trails. And if they did connect them to the dead man, then that definitely would be a better location than Mexico City, rugged trails or not.
She imagined herself as an outlaw, far from civilization, while the moon, like a single unblinking eye, stared down at her. A man stood up and picked a song from the jukebox. “Blue Velvet.” She adored that song. The music made her wish to dance, again, while wearing a long velvet dress.
Maite raised her chin, glancing at the man who had thrown a coin into the jukebox, and he looked back at her—his eyes were black, not the blue of the song, but they did resemble the soft velvet upon which you could pin jewels. No one ever looked at Maite for too long, but the man was staring at her. He had a cigarette in hand, but he wasn’t smoking; instead he leaned an arm against the jukebox, looking terribly thoughtful, and he slowly pressed the cigarette against his lips and smirked, his lips curling a tad, before he smoothed his expression and walked back to his table, breaking eye contact.
The song was brief, filling the diner for three short minutes, before the place plunged back into silence.
Maite frowned and opened her purse, looking for a coin. When she found it, she stood up and walked to the jukebox. She went over the song list, nibbling on a nail. Maite picked “Can’t Help Falling in Love.” As she walked back to her table, smiling at Rubén, the young man’s black eyes turned toward her for the briefest moment before he looked down and pressed his cigarette against the bottom of an ashtray.
25
THEY DROVE BACKto the apartment, and Elvis pocketed El Gazpacho’s gun and stuffed a bunch of bullets and the speedloader in a worn leather messenger bag. Then he went into El Güero’s room, looking forhisgun and ammo, because even if he wasn’t allowed to have one, Elvis was sure El Güero secretly kept a firearm in there. He found it pretty quickly. El Güero had hidden it in a tin box in the closet. He handed it to the Antelope.
“Those bastards from the DFS have firepower.”
“We’ll show them next time, put a couple of bullets in their ass. I never get to shoot anyone,” the Antelope replied. He blew a bubble of gum and popped it, making a mocking motion with the gun, as though he were shooting across the room. “And I feel like shooting someone today.”
“Man, don’t play with that,” Elvis muttered.
“Chill. I know weapons,” the Antelope assured him, and he blew an even bigger bubble.
He wasn’t in a mood to lecture anyone. If the Antelope shot himself in the dick by accident, so be it. Elvis went to the bathroom, cleaned up the new scrapes he’d acquired, and washed his face. When he was done, he tried phoning El Mago, but the old man didn’t answer. Elvis didn’t want to swing by his place unannounced a second time, so he told the Antelope that they were going back to the woman’s apartment building, to keep watch as usual.
“You sure about hanging ’round that building? You know, those guys could come back and grab you again,” the Antelope said.
“I’m pretty sure they have what they want. And that’s why we’ve got the guns. Bullets up their ass, like you said.” He wasn’t confident about anything, but he also wasn’t going to tell the Antelope that.
“First chance I get I’m shooting them trice. For El Güero, you know. Poor fucker’s gonna lose an eye, I bet.”
“We’ll see.”
“I mean it,” the Antelope said. He had a hungry look on his face, like he sometimes got when they were beating someone, and Elvis knew he was for real. He was out for blood.
“Yeah. I get it.”
The waiting game went as usual. Apparently Elvis had been right and the DFS agents had what they wanted, because they didn’t show their faces. Elvis chain-smoked, since there wasn’t anything else to do, and listened to the radio. The Animals strummed their guitars while he blew smoke rings and the Antelope chewed his bubble gum. He still hadn’t picked a word of the day, and it bugged him.
When the woman and the man exited the building, they followed them into a restaurant. The Antelope and Elvis grabbed a table, ordered a couple of beers and a couple of daily specials. There was a jukebox in a corner, and the woman stood up and picked a song. It was “At Last,” and he mouthed a line from the song. He knew this song, he knew what it meant. Outside it was starting to rain.
