I was sitting on the edge of a raised flowerbed, resting my leg, and watching a bunch of people jump about to the rhythm of a big drum. They were dressed like Indians of some sort, with bandanas round their heads and leggings made of shells that rattled together as they jumped. On the other side of the square, a mariachi band had squeezed into a small taco joint and every now and then a trumpet wailed through the sun like something out of a spaghetti western. Between the dancing Indians and the mariachis was a row of stalls selling trinkets, sandalwood boxes, jewellery, bits of tat with feathers on and the like. I was thinking it would be nice to have someone to buy some tat for, or some money to buy it with.
I hadn’t noticed the bloke sitting next to me.
“Hey man, nice shirt,” he said. “Where’d you get it?”
I looked at him and then at my shirt. It was just a white shirt, but it had been ripped and sewn maybe a dozen times or more, so it looked kind of quilted.
“A friend made it,” I said.
“Cool,” he said.
We watched the dancing. One of the dancers, I had noticed, was a woman. She looked like a Disney cartoonist’s wet dream of Pocahontas.
“Do you like the Concheros?” the bloke said.
I didn’t know what he was talking about, so I just said “What?”
“The Concheros,” he said. “These guys with the drum.”
They were blowing on whistles now, lifting their feet and pointing their toes. “Oh,” I said. “They’re good, I suppose. I like the dancing.”
“Would you call it dancing?” he said. “I call it stylised hopping. They reckon they’re recapturing their indigenous heritage. It’s a crock of shit, of course. In reality they’re middle-class Mestizos taking a break from anthropology class. The real indigenous are begging on the street corners or cleaning people’s houses.”
There was a few words in there I didn’t understand, so I just said “Right” and focused on the dancing girl’s legs. Hopping is good for the thighs, I thought.
I stretched my own leg. I’d been walking all day in the hot sun with a massive rucksack on my back and a shoebox under my arm, I didn’t feel I could walk another step, now that I’d sat down, and I had blisters on one hand from leaning on my cane. I opened the rucksack and took out the last of my cheese and ham sandwiches, with extra jalapenos, no mustard. There was a couple of bottles of beer in there too, but most likely they were warm by now, and anyway I didn’t have an opener, so I left them.
“You hungry?” I said. He shook his head. I took a bite, but he was watching me, so I put the rest of the sandwich back.
“I have beer too,” I said. “But I don’t have an opener.”
“Where are you from, anyway?” he said.
“Not far.”
“How long you been here?”
I shrugged. “Year, year and a half.”
“Where are you headed?”
I shrugged again. “Dunno.”
“Got nowhere to stay?”
“Nope.”
“Got any money?”
I didn’t know if he was trying to pick me up or rob me; he wouldn’t get much joy either way. “Not much,” I said.
We were quiet a while and I turned to watch the Concheros again.
“Sexy isn’t she?” he said.
“Who?” I said.
“The girl you’re looking at, the one dancing with the short skin skirt and the tight top,” he said.
“Oh right,” I said.
“Hot isn’t she?”
I shrugged. “Maybe.”
“Maybe?” he said. “What, are you fucking blind, man?”
“No,” I said. “I mean yes, she’s nice looking.”
“She’s not available,” he said. I didn’t answer. I was feeling a bit nervous.
“I wouldn’t even dream about it,” he said then. I thought about getting up and walking away, but I was tired, so instead I looked at him. His face seemed to hate itself; his eyebrows were sparring for a fight.
“You should just move along,” he said. “We don’t need any more strays. And don’t look at her again, understood?”
I nodded. I understood alright, but she was hopping quite close now, and the drum was getting louder and faster, there were beads of sweat on her forehead and cleavage, and she was barefoot and her toes were tiny little suckable things. The drummer gave a big roll and then whacked his instrument with all his might. The dance was over, and a couple of the Concheros blew conches and the rest drifted off, taking packs of cigarettes out of their skin pouches and sparking them up. The girl walked towards us and sat down next to the bloke, panting.
“Who’s your friend?” she said.
“Don’t know,” said the guy. “Just some fucking tramp.”
“Manolo!” she said, slapping his arm. She leaned around him and held out a hand.
“He has a habit of harassing our audience,” she said. “I’m Pili, and this is my cousin Manolo.”
Her pupils were massively dilated and had a rim of hazel round them. Something shifted in my pants – that hadn’t happened in a while.
“Peter,” I said. “I’ll be moving along.”
Manolo turned to Pili, who, having dropped my hand, had begun to roll a cigarette. “He is a fucking tramp, though,” he said. “He has nowhere to go, no job and no money. I’d call that being a fucking tramp.”
She didn’t look up from her fingers. I noticed that the nail on her little finger was about the size of a ladybird, and the same bright red.
“Well,” she said. “Thanks to you, the spare room is empty now; he could take that.”
“You are fucking with me,” said Manolo.
“No I am fucking not,” she said. “And I could get him a job at my dad’s school.”
“Are you insane?” he said. “Your dad wouldn’t give him a job; look at him!”
“He’ll clean up,” she said.
I could almost feel him shaking next to me.
“I don’t want him in my apartment,” he said.
“It’s my apartment,” said Pili, lighting her cigarette and picking a stray piece of tobacco off her plump lower lip. “And anyway, you’re going away for months; you won’t even see him.”
“I told you I have to work,” he said. “We’ve been through this.”
“Fine,” she said. “Go and fucking work, just don’t tell me about it. I don’t want to know.”
“I can’t tell you.”
“Well, don’t then, but don’t tell me either who I can or cannot put up in my spare room.”
“You are the fucking limit,” he said, and he got up and stormed off. There was nothing for a while; I looked at the space where Pili had danced, she smoked her cigarette. Then she stubbed it out and turned to me.
“So that’s settled,” said Pili, turning to me and smiling. “We’ll get you a job and you’ll stay at my place till you’re back on your feet.”
It hadn’t occurred to me that I wasn’t on my feet, but I wasn’t surprised. I looked down at her feet. She had a tiny silver ring on her little toe, the left one.
“Thanks. What kind of job?” I said.
“Teaching English,” said Pili.
My heart fell into the dust of an early evening Mexican square.
“I can’t teach,” I said.
“You can speak English, can’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Then you can teach it,” she said.
“Really?”
“Well, no, not really, but you can talk to people with your English accent and they’ll say ‘oh my God that’s so cute!’ and throw money at you.”
I wasn’t sure; it didn’t seem like a real thing, so I said nothing and expected her to go away.
She was quiet for a while too, but I could feel her looking at me, and then she said: “Why not? You seem harmless. You are harmless, aren’t you?”
“I suppose,” I said.
“You can keep me company for a while,” she said. “Anyway, do you have a choice?”
Well yes I did; I could stay there at the edge of the flowerbed, then lie down and sleep in it when it got dark, then see what happened the next day. The truth was I had enough money for maybe three days’ eating; then I was fucked.
“OK, thanks,” I said. “I’ll give it a go.”
“Good man,” she said. “Right, I’ve got to do another set. Wait here.”
She did another set, and I waited there, watching happily since Manolo was nowhere in sight, then she came to collect me.
“Still here then?” she said.
“Yes,” I said. “I’m ready.”
I struggled to my feet, picked up my bag, shoebox and cane, and followed her.
“What’s with the limp?” she said.
“Accident,” I said. I could add the detail later.
It was an old building, maybe hundreds of years old, but it had been stripped out inside and tarted up. Everything looked expensive, from the furniture and fittings to the knickers dropped on the kitchen floor.
“Sorry we’re not very tidy,” said Pili, bending down to pick the knickers up. She looked at me and dangled the black lace on the end of her finger.
I shrugged. “I’m not much good at being tidy either,” I said.
“Well,” she said, carefully folding the knickers into a little triangle and then tossing the triangle onto a kitchen top. “You’ll learn.”
She showed me the spare room, which was small, but a lot more comfortable than what I was used to. The bed was soft, the sheets clean and warm, and there was even a chest of drawers, and a small television on top of it, though the television didn’t work, and the drawers were crammed full of blankets so I couldn’t use them. I stuck my rucksack in between the chest of drawers and the wall and put my shoebox with the souvenirs next to the dead telly. There was a window, wooden framed, just big enough to climb out of, I reckoned, and it was open to the street outside, which was noisy with traffic, but polite traffic, no blaring horns. This was a good neighbourhood.
“I’ll leave you to it, then,” she said. “I have to get changed, and I’m going out tonight, so make yourself at home. Help yourself to anything you want.”
“OK, thanks,” I said, and she closed the door. I lay on the bed and fell into a deep sleep. I didn’t wake until the next morning.
It turns out it was a weekend, Saturday afternoon when I moved in to Pili’s place, so the next day, being Sunday, I was left pretty much alone as the two of them were out visiting relatives and praying or whatever. I had no keys so I couldn’t go out and get back in, but there was plenty to look at in the apartment. I wandered around poking my nose into every bookshelf and drawer, examining every bit of broken old pottery, the heads of little statues, bits of sharp volcanic glass shaped into arrow heads and the like on shelves and tables, on every surface available. I stared at the paintings on the walls, mostly dark paintings, mostly old looking like they could do with a good clean, but some brightly coloured ones of fat Indian women in garish clothes carrying baskets and the like, or paintings just of baskets full of exotic fruit. On one wall there was nothing but masks, made of light wood by the feel of them, masks in the form of leopards’ faces and boars’, birds, insects and devils, hundreds of them covering the wall from floor to ceiling.
After looking around I drank my beers, which I’d cooled in the freezer compartment of the massive fridge, then lay down in my room.
I’d woken from a nap and was sitting in an armchair, which was a new experience for me, when Pili came home in the early evening and threw herself on the couch opposite me. I’d found a copy of The Pickwick Papers and was reading it. I didn’t know anything about Dickens, but this was fun, and I was kind of laughing when she came in.
“What are you so pleased about?” Pili said. Her head was wobbling a bit, like she was maybe drunk.
I showed her the book. “He’s an idiot, but he’s nice,” I said.
She smiled. “Funny you should say that.”
I didn’t answer, but I put the book in my lap and watched her stretch out on the couch, raise her hands above her head so her tits pushed against her top, and though she only dressed up like a squaw on Saturdays, her clothes were still quite tight, figure hugging, you could say. Her eyes were closed so I took a good look, and I was still looking when she opened her eyes again.
“You have an appointment with my dad tomorrow,” she said, sitting up and folding her arms. “But the problem is that he’s kind of conservative, you get me?”
I nodded slowly, waiting for more information before committing myself.
“How long is it since you had your hair cut?” she said.
I had a flashback to a late night winter kitchen in south west England. I had a beer in one hand and a cigarette in the other. I could even feel the cold blades of the scissors on the back of my neck, and it made me shiver. A dead woman was cutting my hair, only she wasn’t dead then, and we were laughing.
I shrugged. “Maybe three years ago,” I said.
“Fuck!” she said. “Right, come with me.”
I hadn’t seen a mirror in a long time. Now and then I’d seen my reflection in a shop window, but I tried not to look. Now I had no choice. She stood me in front of this big mirror that took up half the wall in the bathroom, and she made me take my shirt off. I spent a lot of time in the sun, so my face was dark, but otherwise I was long, white and bony, and she was short, brown and soft, it was like winter and summer had met unexpectedly and weren’t quite sure what to say.
I felt a finger run along one of my ribs and it made me jump.
Pili sighed. She made me sit on a low stool, knees in the air, facing the mirror, and pulled my hair into a bunch. The scissors weren’t very sharp, and they tugged at my scalp as they cut, but the hair started coming off in huge chunks.
While she cut, she talked, but I didn’t listen much, I just felt her fingers pulling through my hair, the warmth of her palm on my shoulder as she steadied herself, checking in the mirror for progress. Now and then she stood straight in front of me, straddling my leg, and pulled my head forward. It was the closest I had been to a woman in ages.
We were like that when Manolo walked in. Neither of us had noticed him.
“What the fuck is going on here?” he said.
“I’m cutting his hair,” Pili said.
“I can see that,” he said. “But can’t he go to a barber?”
I was tense now; the moment had been broken.
“There’s no time,” she said. “He’s seeing my dad tomorrow. Anyway, I’m finished now.” She stood back and handed me a towel, smiling. “It’s not the best cut in the world, but it’s a lot better. Takes years off you. You’ll look even better once you’ve shaved that beard off.”
I ran my hand over my shorn head. “Thanks Pili,” I said.
“Yeah, thanks Pili,” Manolo said. “Love-in over.”
Pili muttered something as she left the room, pushing past him.
“What the fuck happened to you, anyway, man?” said Manolo. “You look like you’ve been starving in a desert for forty days.”
I held the towel in a bunch against my chest. “I haven’t been eating much recently,” I said, shrugging. “You know, sometimes you forget.”
Truth was I’d eaten nothing but crappy cheese and ham sandwiches with jalapenos for a year, maybe more, and some crisps, and beer and tequila. I wasn’t much good at feeding myself.
Pili reappeared with a dustpan and brush.
“What the fuck are you doing?” said Manolo.
“Cleaning the fucking hair up,” she said back at him. That made me smile, but just for a tiny moment.
“Let him clean his own fucking hair up,” he said, snatching the dustpan and brush out of her hands and pushing them at me.
I listened to them arguing next door as I swept up the hair, on my hands and knees in the bathroom. Their voices rose and the rhythm got quicker as they did, overlapping each other until one of them ended the episode with a loud slam of a door.
I was kind of lost in the rhythm of sweeping up my hair as well, so I didn’t notice her for a while, but when I did look up she was leaning in the doorway, watching me. I looked down again to finish the job.
“I wonder where you’ve come from,” she said.
“England mostly,” I said. “Then I came to Mexico. I was living in this fella’s service room on his roof for a while. But I had to leave.”
“I’ll bet there’s a lot more to it than that,” she said.
I didn’t think so, it was just my life, so I shrugged, which isn’t easy when you’re on all fours.
“Don’t mind Manolo,” said Pili. “He’s a good man, really, but he’s very protective.”
I finished the job and sat back on my heels and looked at her. I wondered what it was like to have someone you want so much, just inches out of reach, forever. It didn’t sound like a bunch of laughs to me.
“You’ll find everything you need to shave in the cupboard there,” Pili said, nodding in the cupboard’s direction. “Have a bath. Get a good night’s sleep. I’ll leave some clothes on the bed for you. Have you eaten today?”
“No,” I said.
“Alright, I’ll leave some food out too,” she said then. “Good night.”
“Good night,” I said. And she left, closing the door behind her. I watched the door a while, and then undressed.
When I came out of the bathroom red raw and scrubbed clean, practically hairless, there was no one to be seen and just the sound of a ticking clock. It was getting dark, and in the dining area of the huge living space a soft yellow light shone down onto the heavy wooden table. It looked like a painting, a still life with a big bowl of fruit, a haunch of beef. I circled the table a couple of times before sitting down, taking one of the plates stacked there like it was time for a feast, and began to fill it.
I hadn’t known how hungry I was until the plate started to fill, and I had a hunger of months gnawing at my insides.
There were dark beans in a sauce that tasted like iron filings, but in a good way, and chicken in spicy brown and green sauces, little leaf parcels that you opened up to find a steamed blob of cornmeal filled with more of the chicken or with some fruit I couldn’t identify, and there were corn tortillas, a stack of them wrapped in a tea towel and starting to curl at the edges, bowls of hot green and red salsas, bunches of metallic tasting herbs, these strange pale green vegetables or fruit that I was later told were chayotes but which I was very suspicious of at the time, and a bowl of pickled chillies, garlic and carrots.
But I couldn’t have sampled it all, my stomach wasn’t used to it, even my mouth thought it was a bit too much. I did my best, though, and I washed it all down with a jug full of this pale red water that was sweet and fruity, hibiscus, they told me later.
I don’t think I had ever eaten so well before. To me, a treat would be fish and chips in a polystyrene carton on a Friday night, and I hadn’t had that in a couple of years. This was all new, as was the feeling of being full to bursting; I waddled to bed and fell asleep as soon as my head sank into the big soft pillow of night.
I started talking for a living. Doesn’t sound that hard but it was for me at the start because I’m not much of a talker. Pili’s dad looked me up and down and I looked him up and down – he didn’t look like a language school director, whatever that’s supposed to look like. He was in his fifties but he was wearing cowboy boots, dark blue jeans that were so tight they would make my eyes water and a bright green, shiny shirt. I could see he was a good looking fella though, and I couldn’t help imagining what his wife must be like.
He spoke to me in Spanish and Pili answered for me. I didn’t say anything during the interview, and when it ended he shook my hand and said something else to Pili, who rolled her eyes and then spat some words at him.
I started early the next morning. I had no idea what to do but Pili said I should just relax and talk about stuff. I was sat at a desk in a windowless room when this bloke came in, carrying a briefcase and wearing a suit. First thing he did when he sat down opposite me was check his watch. Then he held his hand out to me and said “Alfonso Garcia blah blah blahdy blah” or whatever – he had a name as long as my fucking arm and told me all of it as if I was supposed to remember it.
“Pete,” I said, taking his hand.
“So, Pete,” he said.
“What?”
He held his hands out. “I’m a busy man,” he said.
I realised he expected me to do some teaching, or talking at least. The only thing I could think of was a story I was told once by John, the landlord at the pub where I used to work, about a man getting his cock caught in a vice. So I told Al this story, and that maybe took ten minutes because it was quite a complicated story.
Al was quiet for a while, then he said: “So they cut his cock off?”
“Yup,” I said. “It was that or adjust all his trousers to fit the vice.”
Al laughed a big, throw your head back laugh. “That’s not a very plausible story is it?”
“Plausible?” I said.
“Yes,” said Al. “That’s the right word isn’t it? Plausible… believable?”
Turns out Al had a bigger vocabulary than me, and he had a good point too. I hadn’t thought about it before, I just remember John telling me that story one night when I was on the floor of his cellar. My head was hurting because I’d been shouting so much and my fists were broken and bloody from trying to crack the cellar floor. I was curled up behind a beer barrel and John was sitting next to me, telling me this story. He did that a lot those days.
I stretched my right hand; it would still ache on damp days. I looked Al in the eyes. “It’s bollocks isn’t it?”
Al cocked his head to one side. “Bollocks?”
“Rubbish,” I said. “Nonsense.”
He took a notebook out of his briefcase and wrote in it. “With a CK, right?”
“What?” I said.
“Bollocks, with a CK and two Ls.”
“Oh, right, yes,” I said.
We talked some more. The vice story reminded him of carpentry classes back at school or whatever, so he went off on one about his childhood and youth growing up in some town up north. It was quite interesting, but then he wanted to know about me, so I made some stuff up – turns out I’m a dab hand at the violin; who’d have known it? After an hour and a half was up, he looked at his watch again and said: “Great, see you on Thursday?”
I followed him out of the room and Pili’s dad was there, pacing up and down. He shook Al’s hand and patted him on the back and talked at him ten to the dozen. Al looked a bit shifty as he ducked into another room with Pili’s dad, looking around like he was expecting to get caught.
Outside there was a big car with dark windows and a big bloke in dark glasses leaning against it, but I lost focus on him pretty quick as Pili was on the other side of the road, waving.
She took me for breakfast to celebrate. She ordered, and I got fried eggs, thin steak, beans and avocado, all with a hot red salsa and tortillas. It was fucking delicious.
She said: “You just earned enough money to pay for that breakfast and get change. How does that feel?”
It felt pretty good, actually, but my mouth was full so I just nodded, and Pili smiled and blew smoke into the air.
Turns out Al was a government minister, and I had taught him to use the word bollocks.
He was my star pupil, and I liked him particularly because a lot of the time he didn’t turn up, so I’d just sit there for an hour and a half making paper aeroplanes or doodling and I still got paid. I had other students, too, some in groups of two or three, but mostly lone middle-aged professional types that already spoke better English than me but wanted to practice. We read books, and they brought in magazines and newspapers and we read them too. I started learning about what was going on in the world and it was mostly bad stuff. Most of the classes were early morning before normal working hours, or in the evening, and between classes I was free to wander about the city. I learned how to use the metro and zipped about on it, visiting places I’d picked out of an old visitor’s guide that Pili had given me.
She was teaching me Spanish too, and fattening me up. Every time I saw her, food was involved somehow. She didn’t eat much herself, but she seemed to like watching me eat. We’d sit outside these cafes and restaurants and I would get served massive plates of food while she would watch me through her dark glasses, sipping on a coffee or juice, smoking, and playing with her braids.
So it was all going pretty well until one day I went into the school, which was actually an old hospital with thick walls and pokey corridors, and the place was in relative chaos. There’d been a massive walk out, someone told me. Everyone had defected to a new school that was offering better money, so there was just me and a couple of older folks who couldn’t be arsed to go to a new place. I would have to take some regular classes, they said.
Next thing I knew I was standing in front of about ten people, all around my age or younger, all frowning because they’d already been waiting for half an hour. So I thought I’d cheer them up by telling them my vice-cock story. I’d told it a few times by then so I’d added some bits, some movements and gestures to liven it up, and usually it entertained people. But this lot were like stone. I died, and when I’d finished dying one of them shows me this exercise book with pictures in it and these lists: “I am, You are, He/she/it is.”
I left the room, but Pili was outside, expecting me.
“Please, Peter,” she said. “Give it a go.”
“But they’re fucking beginners,” I said. “I can’t teach fucking beginners.”
“Please,” she said again, squeezing my arm this time for added effect.
I went back in.
It was bloody hard work. I actually had to learn how to speak English properly so that I could teach it. Every night I had to plan a lesson, plan ways of getting them to learn simple things without getting bored, and without them thinking I was treating them like kids. If they didn’t understand they got pissed off with me and swore, so I’d swear back. I was learning the lingo pretty quick now. But after a few months of doing this I started getting kind of good at it, and the money was coming in – I had classes all day most week days. I bought some new clothes and shoes and stuff, and Pili took me to this posh hairdresser’s where I sat looking like a fucking twat in a kind of dressing gown while this bloke minced about me jabbering at Pili and running his fingers through my hair.
He did a good job though.
We didn’t see anything of Manolo after that first night; it was just me and Pili putting our feet up at the end of the day, talking about this and that, or reading, or me standing in the kitchen watching her cook things that I would then eat. She was a great cook; some of the stuff she made I wouldn’t normally trust, like she made fried crickets and cows’ brains – I mean who’s going to eat that shit? But I couldn’t turn her down, and actually it was all good. Except the chayotes, I’ll never like them fuckers.
Sometimes she had friends round, and at first I would hide in my room, listening to them and looking through the souvenirs in my shoebox or reading something, but gradually I started coming out and having a chat. It made my head ache, talking in another language, but mostly they were nice to me and waited quietly while I squeezed out a sentence. After a few beers, though, they would get into the swing of a proper conversation and it was chaos, for me at least; I just sat there trying to keep up and mostly failing.
One of Pili’s friends, Beto, was in a band. It was quite a famous band in Mexico and he was the drummer, but he wasn’t very rock and roll. He looked the part alright, with a long mess of matted hair and torn jeans and the like, but he hardly drank, maybe a couple of beers, max, and he didn’t smoke or do drugs that I knew of. The rest of them, usually all girls unless one of them brought round a boyfriend, would get hammered, and they’d go off to the bathroom every now and then and come back rubbing their noses and sniffing.
Beto was like their mascot. They took him everywhere with them and you could tell he liked being looked after by a bunch of good looking women, but he had a girlfriend. I never met her, but they were constantly talking about her because it seemed she had a habit of shagging other men, then she’d tell him and say sorry, then she’d do it all over again. It tore the poor bugger apart and he would just sit there crying and being cosseted by Pili and the others.
I don’t know why I did it. Normally when he was in a state like that I’d sit quiet and let them get on with it or I’d mooch off to the spare room, taking a couple of beers with me, because I know no bloke likes to show his weakness to another. One night, though, when he’d had a good weep about this lass of his, the girls took a break and went off to the bathroom, and Beto sat there looking at me. His eyes were red and lips tight; he looked more angry than upset, and he was like a shaky rock when I put my arms round him.
“She’s gone, mate,” I said. “Let her go.”
I was getting up off the floor when the girls came back, chattering like a bunch of starlings fighting over a perch. How he’d managed to get such a powerful swing to connect with my eye when I was so close I don’t know; maybe being a drummer helped, but I could already feel the swelling.
“What’s going on?” said Pili.
I looked at Beto through my one good eye, and he stared back at me.
“I fell over,” I said. “I’m going to bed.”
The days that followed you can imagine I got quite a lot of comments from students and that. I was walking around with this shiner and everyone wanted to know why, so I gave them all sorts of reasons. Girls liked to hear about me being jumped by muggers, or better, saving some other girl in trouble; boys liked a good pratfall.
I didn’t tell anyone that I’d been thumped by a drummer because I gave him a hug.
The shiner faded and life went on and I stayed in my room mostly when Pili’s friends were around. I felt kind of left out, and I suppose I was in a huff and it didn’t help that no one came to get me and they just went on partying without me. But when the others weren’t there, Pili was just the same with me, maybe more so, maybe more interested, cooking for me, helping me pick out the right shirt, the right shoes. She started wandering around half naked too. I might be sitting in the living room watching the TV or reading and she’d wander through wearing a tiny T-shirt and nothing else or just some skimpy see-through underwear or something. It made me want to reach out and touch, it made my heart thump in my ears, and sometimes, when she stopped in front of me, stood close by or bent over to take a book from the shelves, always the lower shelves, my hand ached to touch her skin, because I’d never touched it before. But I never did.
One night I came in after having a few drinks with one of my students, this good looking older woman who was deadly serious most of the time, but then this evening after we’d finished class looked at her watch and said: “I have a little time to kill, would you like to join me?” and I thought “why not?” and she drove me to this bar through the dark, quiet streets, and the bar itself was dark and quiet, and there was hardly anyone there apart from us, and she stained a champagne glass with her lipstick, asked me questions about my past, squeezed my knee when I told her about my dead girlfriend, laughed when I told her about living on a roof, kissed my cheek and gave me a squinty kind of smile when she dropped me off late that night. So I came in and Pili was watching the TV, arms folded, frowning.
It was a bit hard to focus, but I stood there wobbling, looking at the screen. There were pictures of police cars and ambulances, a body lying in the street next to a shot up car, a pool of blood and chalk circles round empty shells, then a flash of a face, a government minister, talk of drugs, corruption, summary executions.
“Where have you been?” she said.
I shrugged. “Out.”
Pili picked the remote up and pointed it at the TV. “Looks like you’ve got the morning off,” she said. The TV blinked black and Pili went to her room.
I went in to the school anyway the next day, but there was no one there. I sat on a wall outside watching the traffic, thinking about Al, and all the other people that were dead and I’d never see again, trying to get my head round it. But I couldn’t so I went home, went to the spare room, opened my shoebox and took out the photo of Alice and her dog when they were both alive, both smiling at the camera, just kids. Not like when I knew her, when we’d shared a bed and made a baby that died too. I had a pair of her knickers as well; they were pink and girly, cheap, not silky see-through, not lace, not sexy, but I wished they were filled again, wished I was back there, lazing on a rainy afternoon with Alice, without a pot to piss in, with no idea what goes on in the world, fucking, pure and simple.
Manolo came back that night. Walked in pissed with Beto and a bunch of guys I’d never seen before. He looks me up and down and says: “Well, she’s fixed you then.”
I answered him in Spanish, said it was good to see him, asked him how he’d been.
“You cunt,” he said.
I went to the room. I had a bottle of tequila there. I also had an icon of the Virgin that I’d picked up along the way and I talked to her while I drank the tequila. I told her about Pili, about wanting her, wanting anyone after all this time, but it was useless. I was a loser, a cunt, like Manolo said. I’m not a religious type, and I mostly just talked to drown out the sound of the guys out there, taking the piss, talking in this phoney English accent, and Manolo telling the story of how he’d found me in the square, down and out, a hobo, and look at me now in my fancy clothes and fancy haircut and soft leather shoes.
I tried to block them out, but it wasn’t easy, especially when one of them, I didn’t recognise the voice, said: “Hey, do you think he’s fucking Pili?”
All hell broke out, shouting and things being knocked over, the sound of fists landing on skin and Manolo shouting at them all to get the fuck out or he’d kill the fucking lot of them, right after he’d killed me. And then silence, a deep, scary silence. I stood with my back pressed against the door, straining to hear him; I couldn’t, couldn’t hear a thing except traffic in the street, my own heart banging like a drum, but I could feel him, just inches away behind the door, and I felt his hand on the handle. I looked at the darkened window at the other end of the room; I wasn’t skinny enough to get through it anymore – I’d been trapped by the good life.
She saved me, walking in then, end of her day, probably expecting to see me sitting on the sofa or standing in the kitchen waiting to be cooked for. But she walked in and saw him standing there, and I heard her saying: “Manolo, I thought you’d be back. What are you doing? What’s been going on here?”
I heard his footsteps as he walked toward her. “Have you been fucking him?”
Her sigh was so loud that even that reached me.
“No,” she said. “But what business is it of yours if I do? You’re my cousin, not my boyfriend.”
“It’s my business because I love you.”
“And I love you, but it’s impossible.”
“It’s fucking painful, that’s what it is.”
“I know it is, so don’t make it worse.”
It sounded like a script they’d read a thousand times, like they were tired actors who no longer believed their parts.
“Why did you bring him here?” said Manolo. “Why is he still here?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “I wanted some company, and he just kind of settled in.”
“You wanted someone to fuck you, that’s what you wanted.”
“Maybe I did,” she said, and she was getting more into it now. I opened the door just a tad. “Maybe I wanted some attention, because I’m not getting anything from you.”
“I’ve been away,” he said. “I’ve been working.”
“Even when you’re here you never touch me unless you’re drunk,” she said. “And then you can’t bear the guilt in the morning. How do you think that makes me feel, looking at that tortured face when all I want you to do is make love to me again.”
“Because we’re cousins!” he shouted.
“I don’t give a fuck,” she shouted back. “Take me away, make us a couple, or leave me alone to be with whoever I want.”
Something broke, shattered on the stone floor, and then there was nothing.
I’d already packed. My cane was propped up against the chest of drawers waiting for me, and I was sitting on the edge of the bed, watching Pili sleep in the early morning light. She looked peaceful now, though her face was stained with dried tears. I was leaning over to kiss her cheek when I felt the hand pulling at my hair, felt the damp cloth clamped over my mouth.
My head was banging like a drum and my chest was as tight as its skin when I woke again. The light stung my eyes but I could make out two shadows, Manolo and Beto, standing over me. I struggled to my feet, stiff and aching like I’d been in a confined space. It was still morning, or another morning, and the three of us were stood in a clearing, surrounded by thorn bushes.
“I told you to keep your fucking eyes to your fucking self,” said Manolo. “I told you to move along.”
Beto didn’t say anything, just examined the blade of his machete.
“I haven’t done anything wrong,” I said.
“You broke the rules,” said, Manolo. He had my cane and was tapping it against his calf.
“She was upset,” I said. “She came to me.”
The leg didn’t trouble me much those days, though I still had a limp, but when the cane cracked against it, it was like the shin broke again and I fell onto my knees.
“Get up,” said Manolo. “Get up and run for your fucking life.”
It’s not a thing you would normally do, run full pelt into a thicket of thorn bushes ─ those thorns are maybe two inches long and thick, even the dry ones lying dead on the floor don’t break so easily, they’re flexible and sharp ─ but that cane was flexible and sharp too, and Beto was looking murderous, lifting the machete over his head and hopping from side to side. So I ran.
My shirt was torn up pretty quickly, the silk staining with blood on the arms and chest, and my shoes were too light, too Italian to protect me from the thorn carpet.
I could hear them laughing behind me, hear the swish of the machete through the bushes. I had no thought about where I was going, wasn’t looking, wasn’t really feeling much at all except my heart pounding until my foot snagged on a root and I went flying, sailed for a while through the sunlight, smacked my face into the ground with the full force of my body behind it.
It was quiet for a while, not even the sound of a snake slithering or a fly buzzing round my blood. I rolled over, looked through one eye at the deep blue sky.
“Oh my fucking god!” said Beto.
“Oh, fuck man, that is disgusting!” said Manolo.
They were standing over me again, one on either side so that I had to roll my head to look at them in turn. I could feel warm wet trickling down the right side of my face.
“What?” I said. “What’s the matter?”
“Can’t you feel it, you stupid cunt?” said Manolo. “You have a fucking thorn in your eye.”
I reached a hand up to my face and regretted it immediately. I pushed the thorn just a little deeper into my eyeball.
So that’s it, really, that’s what I got for looking, a two-inch thorn, straight though my closed eyelid, and all the fluid draining out and dripping off my face.
By the time they got me back to the car the whole side of my head was numb. They placed me carefully in the back seat and leaned over me, examining the thorn.
“Do you think we should pull it out?” said Beto.
“Don’t be fucking stupid,” said Manolo. “That’ll make it worse.”
“Don’t take it out on me, man,” said Beto. “This wasn’t my idea.”
“It wasn’t my idea either,” said Manolo. “My idea was to chase him a bit, scare him off. Where the fuck did you get the machete from anyway?”
“One of my roadies left it behind at a gig,” said Beto. “Cool, isn’t it?”
“Idiot,” said Manolo.
They were quiet for a bit, leaning on the car and looking in at me. “So what are we going to do with him?” said Beto at last.
“I don’t know yet,” said Manolo.
“Look, man,” said Beto. “I know I said I’d help you out, but you know, whatever happened to that last guy, I don’t want to be part of it.”
“Shut the fuck up,” said Manolo, pushing him away from the car. “Nothing happened to the last guy. He just walked, OK?”
Beto held up his hands, the machete still in one of them. “Sure man, whatever you say.”
It was a hot, bright morning, and they were just shadows against the sky to me. But they didn’t make me walk like the last guy; they drove me back to town, dropped me outside a hospital with my rucksack, shoebox and cane, and sped off.
The receptionist seemed a bit freaked out when she looked up from the book she was reading.
“I had an accident,” I said.
They were good there. They saved the eye. They said that there was only one person in town who could save it and suddenly she turned up and did just that.
In a way she saved it too much. She explained it all too me, but I didn’t listen much mainly because I didn’t understand. But the upshot was that the iris never worked again in that eye, and the one pupil would be forever massively dilated. She was telling me this in a darkened room when this nurse came in and swished open the curtains. She wasn’t to know, didn’t deserve hearing my swearing, but half of my head had exploded with this searing, painful light, and I had something to say about it.
“That’s how it’s going to be,” said this doctor. “You’ll have to wear a patch in the day, be careful at night.”
“How can I be careful at night?” I said.
“You’ll learn,” she said.
So they gave me a patch on the same side I carried my cane, and there was a kind of symmetry. When I was wearing it I could tell people I had had one accident that affected one side of my body; I would change the story from time to time.
As my days recovering in the hospital blended into each other and I watched the shadows creep across my room, day after long day, my hopes of a visit faded and my chest became as numb as my head. I’m not sure how long I was there, but on the morning I was told to leave this guy turned up in a sharp suit, carrying a briefcase. I was pushing hospital pyjamas into one of the outer pockets of my rucksack when he came in and threw a fat envelope onto the bed next to my shoebox.
“Your hospital bills have been paid,” he said. “And future provision has been made for you.”
I sat on the edge of the bed and looked at him. I thought that despite the sharp suit and mature, handsome face, he looked a bit nervous.
“What do you mean, future provision?” I said.
“Well,” he said, pointing at the envelope. “There is money in there, and keys for an apartment, and as I understand it, you will be given work.”
“Oh right,” I said. “So I’ll go back to the school? I was wondering about that, what with me being off a while. I thought maybe they’d find some other bloke to do it, you know, someone with two eyes.” I tried a bit of a laugh then, just to lighten things up, you know. But he wasn't up for it.
“No,” he said. “I don’t know the details, but you are to stay away from the school where you were previously employed.”
“Stay away?” I said, and the guy nodded. I thought it was a bit harsh. Al was dead, but there were people there I’d like to keep in touch with. Maybe me and Pili could sneak off for breakfast sometime or something.
“And stay away from the property where you were living, and anyone you knew there,” the guy said.
He didn’t say much more, and anyway I wasn’t listening, and I didn’t see him go because I was staring at the floor.
It was a Saturday - one of the nurses told me when I was leaving. So I got on a bus and went to the square where I’d first seen Pili. I thought I’d hide in the shadows, completely unnoticed with my eyepatch, cane, massive rucksack and shoebox, and watch her one last time. The Concheros were there alright, hopping with style or whatever it was Manolo said, but there was no sign of him or Pili.
I still had keys, and I didn’t think I had much to lose, but all the same I was nervous when I pushed open the door to Pili’s apartment.
It was still and silent, some drawers had been pulled out and emptied, and there were clothes tossed on their bed, a suitcase with a broken handle abandoned on the floor. It looked like they’d left in a hurry, and it might seem weird to you, but I was glad.
I took a mask from the wall, a small red demon face with black flecks and black horns, and slipped it into my shoebox.
When I stepped back into the street, Dolores was stepping out of her car, a slim ankle and black high heel attracting my attention first.
“Hello Peter,” she said.
She looked the same as she had in our classes, and she was wearing the same shade of lipstick that stained champagne glasses. Today, though, she was wearing dark glasses too.
“Do you know where this is?” I said, holding out a piece of paper with the address of my new home. “I have to move there and I don’t know where it is.”
She took the paper and folded it into her purse without looking at it.
“It’s on the other side of town,” she said. “A long way from here. Come on, I’ll give you a lift.”
I felt warm wet dripping down my face again. Dolores put her hand on my arm.
“Hey,” she said. “It’s for the best, you know.”
And she stepped back into the car, slim ankle and high heel first, and I climbed in after her, massive rucksack on the back seat, shoebox under my arm.
Ray Hoskins
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