They were too far away from the woman’s table to hear what she was telling the man, but he was leaning forward and smiling, and she blushed.
Elvis wondered how people did this. This being normal and going out together. He couldn’t remember going out with many girls. Fucking, yes, and chasing skirts in the noisy, wild way boys from his neighborhood did. But he hadn’t gone out much with the older gringa—he was private entertainment—and with Cristina there were always the other members of their fucked-up cult milling around. It wasn’t ever him and a girl, together, out like this, drinking and eating while the jukebox played its tunes.
He didn’t even know why he was thinking about this since the woman he was looking at wasn’t particularly pretty, not the kind of woman to inspire a man to fantasize. Yet there was something about her. It was that air of tragedy, that’s what it was, the way she sat, with one hand constantly pressed against her neck. And her eyes were dark and deep, slightly lost and unfocused.
He wondered if he had met her in another way, in another place, whether she would have accepted an invitation for coffee. If Justo was right, there weren’t going to be Hawks soon anyway. He didn’t know what he’d do then. Join another group of goons? Fuckers who hungered to shoot someone, dogs who had acquired a taste for blood. The more he thought about that, the more he hated the idea. But he wasn’t sure what else he’d do.
And what if Justo was right and El Mago had killed El Gazpacho?
“No fucking way,” he muttered.
“What?” the Antelope asked.
“Nothing,” Elvis said, and he stood up and walked to the jukebox. He tossed a coin in and picked “Blue Velvet” as a joke, a little secret chuckle lodging in his throat, and turned his head to look at the woman.
She raised her head and looked at him, her eyes fixed on Elvis for a few precious seconds. She seemed a little confused. When the song ended, she stood up, walked daintily toward the jukebox—as if she could not let him have the last word—and picked another song: “Can’t Help Falling in Love.” Her lips curled into a tiny smile. When she smiled she looked almost pretty, like someone had struck a match and lit a veladora and the light was streaming out, but the glass colored it. Made it yellow or red or blue, like you could see the colors of her soul.
There he was thinking stupidities again. Elvis put out his cigarette and hoped the Antelope hadn’t noticed he’d been staring at the woman. But the Antelope had glued his gum under the table and was cutting into a bistec, terribly indifferent to anything that wasn’t the meat in front of him.
They drove back to the apartment and watched the couple walk into the building arm in arm. Elvis pushed the car door open.
“Where you going?” the Antelope asked.
“Gonna try to get in touch with El Mago again,” Elvis said. That was true enough, but he also wanted to walk. He felt irritated from being cooped up in the car, and his body ached. Plus he was a little pissed off because that fucking hippie put his arm tight around the woman, all romantic, and meanwhile the Antelope kept blowing his bubble gum and popping it. It was annoying.
It was raining, and he walked with brisk steps toward a public telephone booth, tossed in a couple of coins and waited.
“Yes?” El Mago said.
Elvis braced himself against the plastic wall of the booth and pressed the receiver close to his mouth. “It’s Elvis. We need to talk.”
“Where are you?”
“Girl’s place.”
El Mago mentioned the name of a nearby intersection and told him he’d drive by in half an hour, which was more than enough time for Elvis to walk back, tell the Antelope he was meeting El Mago, and then head to the intersection.
He was running low on cigarettes, so he wandered into a pharmacy and bought another pack. He stood under the green glow of the store’s sign for several minutes, thinking of nothing, watching the rain trickle down the awning. Persistent, this rain. All day long it had fallen slow and steady.
El Mago was punctual, and as soon as he rolled around the corner, Elvis tossed his cigarette away and hopped into the car, setting his leather bag on his lap. For a couple of blocks Elvis didn’t say anything, hypnotized by the back-and-forth of the windshield wipers.
“What is it?” El Mago asked.
“The mole knew how to get in touch with the girl with a code in the classifieds, so I used that, thinking I might flush her out. But nothing so far.”
“You have a new scrape on your brow.”
“Yeah,” Elvis said, touching his forehead and glancing at the rearview mirror. “Sócrates is dead. Anaya and his buddies thought we did it, so they gave us a beating. El Güero was pummeled pretty bad and I had to take him to the doctor. Everything else is pretty much the same.”
“There is no sign of the girl?”
“No. But as you can imagine, I’m a little short-staffed right now,” Elvis said, trying to keep a very formal, straightforward tone about the whole thing. It made no sense to wriggle like a worm in El Mago’s presence. It would make it worse.
“What, did El Güero lose a hand?”
“Almost lost an eye. He’s too mangled, can hardly move. Maybe you could get El Gazpacho back to us?” he asked, managing to maintain that same neutral tone. He sounded casual.
El Mago frowned. Elvis stared straight ahead, looking at the big billboard with a picture of a woman inviting everyone to drink a tall glass of Jugo V8.
