My Monster
"The walk there, I mean, at least you're still busy, holding the fucker down, sometimes even wrestling with him awhile...It's a hard fucking walk to take. The silence, man...the silence...fuck that."
He rarely spoke like this. We were on our way to the casino, then dinner. After a few months we were easy friends, and though I could sense his attraction, I kept up rigidity, my body language that made it known I wasn't interested. In his silence he let me know he accepted that and said he just enjoyed my presence. I wasn't into cocaine at that time, but I liked having access to it.
"Some of the older G's, they take that shit like men, makes it easier for me, you know? Damn... Sometimes I feel like I might have even known them back in the day, you know?"
He looked out of the window wistfully.
"Like maybe they taught me a trick or two back when I was just a little punk in the barrio sniffing the big dog's asses...Just a little criminal. A group of older G's hung out every day behind some auto parts shop in my neighborhood when I was a kid. They gave me little jobs to do, you know, at first it was getting them sodas, run their little errands. They gave me money. After a while they would let me make drop offs for them, pick-ups. I've always been big, and sometime later I found I could get more money from them if I did some collecting. They taught me how to steal cars, never leaving a trace. Yeah, those retired G's man. They just don't make em like that anymore."
"It's real hard to let them go, in a way. Even the ones you can tell they know they've had it coming for a long time, in the end they take that shit like men, like soldiers. They don't fight you and they dig their holes good and deep, almost like they don't want to be found, ever."
He always knew how to catch my attention.
"You make them dig their own graves?" I asked. "That's fucked up. I thought that only happened in the movies. It's the least you could do, fucker."
He sighed, laughed.
"It's fucked up to make them dig the hole but really once you're there you're not going to do it for them. You gotta keep them busy. Anyway fuck that it messes up the whole power structure of the moment. Then they'd be standing there, thinking about their kids or their mom... and I'd be there, fucking sweating my ass off... No, no... the only thing on my mind is just getting to that shitty walk back. But shit man, some, you really feel bad for. Some you can really tell that they've been pussies since they were born, and it really makes you wonder how the fuck they got caught up in all of this mess, you know? Those are the ones you feel sorry for. The fucking whiny, snot-nosed fuckers. They never even stood a chance. Pass that joint Miss Pretty, or am I going to have to make another pickup for you while we're out there?"
I was just lost in his story. The joint had gone out miles ago, but it was still in my hand. I handed it to him.
"So why were the pussies the ones you felt sorry for?" I needed to know.
"What?"
"The pussies, why them? I mean, why not the G's?"
"Sweetheart, not everyone was born to be a criminal. Shit, I was running circuits when I was nine. I had the older fuckers stealing for me when I was seven, eight years old, and even then I'd cheat them on their cut. Some of these little punks, man. I mean, if you can't steal cable, just do yourself a favor and get a nine to fiver. There are levels to criminal behavior that these little punks going around jacking these days don't understand. Those are the fucking worst ones to kill, too. They start fucking slobbering and shit, begging me like they don't know what the fuck we're both there for. Believe me, by the time I get involved we both know exactly why I'm there. It's all good you know, I'll let him go on until the fucker starts wasting my time. If he's really getting on my balls I'll just snap his neck right there."
I drove in silence, my mind a maze trying to make sense of his hands, so close to me, being the same hands that twisted human necks like chicken wire.
"Wanna know something fucked up, Miss Pretty?" he asked, his voice curling like the Cheshire Cat.
"You mean more fucked up than that? What?"
"Those little faggoty ones even have softer bones."
"Oh man, fuck, you are fucked up," I laughed. "That was disgusting. You are fucked up."
He laughed wickedly.
"They do! They're like pollitos, even the fat ones. Especially the fat ones! Man, you know what? The fucking walk back through that fucking desert... fuck! I fucking hate that walk. I always forget where I parked the car, and man, sometimes its wicked cold. You'd almost miss the whiny little fuckers then, the silence, man, the fucking silence after. Silence might as well be some huge fat motherfucker breathing in your ear. Let me tell you, Miss Pretty, the desert screams more at night than people do."
I thought of the desert of my childhood, of jackrabbit eyes.
"The daytime in the desert, it scares me more than the night time. Once I was walking through that area outside of Fabens—must have been for hours in the middle of the day. Fucking hate those daytime jobs. I had to get to my little boy's soccer game or my ex was gonna fucking kill me. You believe that shit?" He laughed, and lowered the window, lit a cigarette.
"Anyway I was just walking along, and this owl, this huge brown owl just came out of nowhere. It was the middle of the day. I hadn't even seen it flying around until I felt it breathing on my face. It swooped down and that fucking owl looked me right in the fucking eyes. It had its wings spread, must have spanned eight feet. Isn't that some shit?"
"Wow. Don't owls symbolize death? Who did you think it was?"
My grandmother always said that. She had once told me that owls could be witches, or healers, too. She once told me that her own mother, my great-grandmother, could shape shift into an owl. How it was well known in the small town in Mexico where they lived, and how she could be seen in several pueblos in one night, although every time I heard the story by the end of it, it remained unclear exactly what she was doing there. Every time I see an owl, in some way, in my mind's eye it's her, forever bending time and space to be near.
"It's crazy you asked that. Did I ever tell you I was adopted?" he asked.
"You were adopted?"
"Yeah. I don't know why I thought I told you that before. I was adopted by a preacher and his wife somewhere in Mississippi. The only thing I was ever told about my birth mother was that she was Iroquois. When I saw that owl's eyes, they looked real familiar to me. At that moment, I don't know why, I felt like it was my grandmother. Crazy shit, huh?"
I eyeballed the small purple dreamcatcher dangling off his rearview mirror. It always seemed a bit ridiculously out of place to me, with gaudy pink and purple beading, but at that moment, I don't know, it looked sacred or something. The more I looked at it the more I thought about my own Indian grandmother. Every time I thought about stuff like that, you know, sacred stuff, my face would get real hot and I would feel this great sadness I could never place. I looked out of the window solemnly at the darkening landscape, tears blurring my sight.
"Damn. Look at me, fucking crying. It's just that, I'm Apache on my father's side. Or at least, that's what my grandmother would say. When you mentioned the owl, I thought about my grandmother, too."
We sat awhile as he drove, listening to our own thoughts.
"I always tell you you're the little dove on the monsters shoulder. I see that Native spirit in you. I don't know why, but I feel like when I'm with you, I'm protected. You have too big a future for Creator to let you get killed, sweetheart. I can see it. You're a very special woman."
I cried in big gulps as he said that. God didn't really exist to me, but hearing about that made me scared, so scared. I lived a reckless life. Many times as we drove-somewhere, I would begin to imagine that some car would suddenly pull up on us and all of a sudden I would see shots break glass. I saw myself, body twisted on the side of the road, face smashed in like a bloody peanut, and my ragged throat gasping for air.
"Oh shit, you think I'm protecting you?"
"Yeah, I do," he said flatly.
"Now I know you're fucked up for sure."
The mood in the car remained thick. We sat there in silence, as we drove into the sunset that by now had exploded across the expanse like broken pottery.
When we got to the casino he handed me five hundred-dollar bills.
"Kiss my fuzzy dice for good luck this time, baby?" he asked, his eyes dancing.
"Fuck off cabron," I answered. "Ya Quisieras."
He laughed.
"See you at dinner then. You have yourself a good afternoon. And don't let your monster out unless you're with me."
"Fuck you," I yelled across the lobby. "What do you know about my monsters?"
I walked through the hotel lobby, the endless buffets. The tourists and the elderly and the criminals all made for strange bedfellows, lined up indiscriminately. An elderly woman wearing a clear plastic visor looking up to the sky, mouthing "Come on...come on..."
Usually prone to spending the money he gave me right away, I had learned to bide my time, walking through the casino floor, enjoying the dizzied sights , sounds, some good sounding stiff drink in my hand. It had already happened to me a few times that here I would enter a dream world, spend the money on foolish nothings and then end up short on my rent just a day later.
Later that evening I ran into him again. This time he was sitting at a small bar table with a drunken big-tittied white girl and there was a bottle of champagne on ice in a small silver stand. I sat with them a bit and every ten minutes or so she'd literally start whimpering, her young face freckled and scowling like a five-year-old on her birthday. It was a very grown-up scene, though, as she pushed her tits up against his arm. He handed her a little baggie of cocaine and she ran off into the bathroom. We both watched her walk away; she had a real nice ass. We caught each other and laughed a long time.
"Here" He stuffed a forty of coke in my hand. "The bag I gave her was almost empty; will you go give her a little more?"
I knew what he meant.
The bathroom doors were heavy on my wrists as I pushed. I walked along the row of toilets, watching the floor until I saw her silver stilettos at the end of the row.
"Hey baby. It's me, from the table. I have something for you mama." I said, suggestively to the stall door.
The door swung open and I went in. She was sting on the toilet, her legs open, black panties bunched at her knees. She was peeing.
I took the baggie out and grabbed my I.D. out of my back pocket. I broke it up gingerly through the bag, and then opened up the baggie and spilled a little bit of cocaine on the credit card corner. I felt real brave.
"You got nice titties, baby. Let me see them a little better."
She pulled down her dress, spaghetti straps falling over her shoulders. I fondled her tits sweetly as I put the coke to her nose. She sniffed it up softly, and looked up at me. I touched her a bit more before we walked out of the stall. As she staggered a bit out into the casino floor I regretted not doing more.
I saw him a bit later; he was playing craps and just for a moment he looked up and smiled at me, eyes shining. He always bet high, made thousands. He was sitting right next to someone who looked real familiar to me, and I got very uncomfortable as that guy's eyes kept trying to pierce mine.
Late that night I met him for dinner at the casino's high-end restaurant. I was high off my encounter with the blonde, and wanted to talk about it. Something was off though, I could tell. His face was somber, his eyes cold as he ordered our wine. He looked over the menu, and said he wasn't hungry.
That guy he had been hanging out with had given me a strange feeling. I don't know how, but suddenly then, I was positive that he was a friend of Rigo's. Fuck. My heart beat hard through my chest, and my palms started getting wet. He knew about me and Rigo.
