David Corbett - Do They Know I'm Running

It was a Mexican folk waltz in the habanera style, with Cuban and Creole touches. The lyrics were poignant if overwrought. Lupe settled back into the wedge of her seat and the door, humming softly along, closing her eyes again. When the final verse rounded to a close, she sang along softly:

Y yo les digo que mienten,

mienten Que hasta la vida daría por ti

And I tell them that they lie, they lie

That I would even give my life for you

Roque had almost forgotten how much her voice moved him, the husky sensuality, the simplicity. So suited to ranchera , all that betrayal and pride, love’s misery, survival’s regrets.

– I’m sorry for the way I’ve acted these past two days .

He felt stunned. After a moment, he managed:- I just figured you were angry. And scared .

She gathered up her hair in a ponytail, held it one-handed.- Scared? Yes. But what will anger buy me?

That didn’t really seem the point, he thought. Emotions weren’t currency. You couldn’t trade them for better ones, no matter how badly you might want to. And who was she kidding, she’d been angry as a hornet.- If you don’t mind my asking, what made Lonely… He let the question trail off gently, a prompt.

– Fuck me up? Who says he needed a reason?

– I just -

– I got pregnant .

Roque dodged a slung-back horse grazing in the roadside grass.- Why beat you for that?

– Why do you think?

Lonely’s not the dad, he thought, he tuned her up because he was jealous. But how did they know who the father was? A girl balls more than one cat, she can point the finger where she likes, at least until the baby pops out. Then again, maybe they didn’t have sex. Maybe Lonely couldn’t.

– I don’t know enough about the two of you to think much of anything .

She looked at him like he’d sprung a third eye.- What do you mean “the two of you”? Me and Lonely. You really take me for that kind of skank?

Roque sighed. Skank, no. But he’d always found it interesting that Tía Lucha’s favorite word for being in love, agarrado , derived from the word for a fight, agarrón .- If you’re not together, I don’t get it. Why slap you around if you’re knocked up? What’s it to him?

She shook her head in bemused disgust.- You really have no clue .

– How can I have a clue when you won’t tell me anything?

– You have eyes in your head .

– Okay, fine, I’m blind. I’ve got bad habits too. Want to hear about them?

– He owns me .

Feeling self-conscious, Roque gazed past her out the window. The terrain was more dramatic here, steep hills, jagged rock outcroppings, small misshapen trees.

– What do you mean, he owns you?

– Oh for God’s sake-

– Tell me. I mean it. I want to know .

A cop on a motorcycle shot past them, coming over a hillcrest from the opposite direction. Off the road, a spanking-new pickup sat parked outside a windowless hovel.

– I answered an ad for a singer, this casino in the capital? I came in, looked the place over. The lounge was packed on weekends. I thought, Wow, this could work out. I could make a name, build an audience, you know? Lonely and his chamacos, they worked security. I should have seen right there the thing was wrong. Nobody with real money, the kind of people who can change your life, none of them would come near a place where those fools hung out. Even the bigwigs in bed with the maras know better than to be seen with them. The owner of the place, he looked like he was on something, like he was sleepwalking. That should have tipped me off too .

– Meaning what?

– Meaning they’d taken the place away from him, Lonely and his crew. A protection racket, probably, taxing a piece each week, then little by little or all at once they just took over. Great places to launder money-casinos, nightclubs. I could feel something screwy but I wanted the job too bad. The owner, his name was Miguel, old man from Sonsonate, he was very sweet, very quiet. I thought he was being polite .

Then Lonely says he likes my voice. The crowds dug me, man: Friday, Saturday night? It was a scene, I loved it. So yeah, Lonely, he wants to help my career. He’ll get me a recording session, burn a CD, take it around to the radio stations. He’s not always a complete shit-bag, you know-he actually says this to me. I can be half nice, he says, when there’s something in it for me. I fell for it. Then he told me the other half of the bargain. There’s a cathouse half a block away, the customers who know about it buy chips from the casino cage then take them down, so the girls have to cash out at the casino to get paid. Harder to steal that way .

The terrain flattened out again and thirty yards beyond the next turn a sawhorse blocked the road, bearing a sign reading: PUESTO DE REGISTRO. Orange cones veered traffic to the berm, where a trio of uniformed cops waited.

The group didn’t look too motivated. Two sat off in the grass, smoking, watching the clouds cross the sky, while the third, a bucktoothed chavo with a scraggly fade, shirttail out, waved the car on desultorily, shotgun slung from his shoulder. Dress code must be lax out here in the sticks, Roque thought as he eased past the youth and his dead eyes. If all the checkpoints are like this, he thought, we’ll be home in three days. He didn’t even need to smile.

He drove on a ways, checking his rearview, see if the cops changed their minds.- So Lonely, this place, this brothel, in return for this recording gig -

Lupe cackled.- Recording gig. Yeah .

There was no way to win with this girl.- Okay, the promise of a gig, whatever. He forces you to work there. That’s how he owns you .

She turned to stare at the scraggy hills.- Yeah. He forced me .

Roque waited.- What are you saying?

– I knew I’d screwed up by then, screwed up bad. I couldn’t see a way out. Except maybe, if I got careless .

Roque was thunderstruck.- One of your johns?

– It didn’t matter who. Not to me. Not then .

– You could’ve gotten AIDS .

– But I didn’t. Lucky me . She glanced over her shoulder, eyes like small black marbles.

– Lonely found out .

– That was the first beating, the one I got right before you showed up in La Chacra. To punish me for being such a sloppy whore. He never did figure out what I was really up to. Not that it mattered. I wouldn’t get an abortion-children are a gift from God, no matter how they are conceived-so he decided to make a lesson out of me .

He wondered what the bruises were like where he couldn’t see.- You lost the baby .

– Who would wish a child on me where I’m going? God saw fit to show the little one some mercy. I thank Him .

Just what the world needs, Roque thought, a devout Catholic lounge singer.- This latest beating. What was that for?

Lupe laughed quietly, lowering her chin.- You really are a boy sometimes .

– Look -

– Because he can. Because he likes it. Remind me just how fucked I am .

Up ahead, he saw the sign, hoisted over an open roadside restaurant: CHALETE DE CHITA. He pulled into the sand parking lot and turned off the ignition but didn’t get out. A hint of rain still scented the wind but the clouds were high overhead, looking starchy and white, like dumplings. He wasn’t sure whether to be impressed with her courage or fault her for being so stubborn. Like I’m one to judge, he thought, or she’d listen regardless.