Don Winslow - The Power of the Dog

“I assumed as much.”

“Can you afford that?”

“Money is not my problem in life.”

“Adan,” she says, “I don’t want you taking money from your family.”

She instantly regrets saying it because she can see he’s offended. He looks up from his shirt, stares at her in a way she’s never seen before and says, “I think you already know that is something I would never do.”

“I know. I’m sorry.”

“I’ll get you a condo here in Tijuana,” he says. “We can agree on annual compensation and renegotiate it at the end of every year. Other than that, we never have to discuss the money. You would simply be my-”

“Mistress.”

“I was thinking more of the word 'lover,’ ” he says. “Nora, I do love you, I want you in my life, but there’s only so much of my life to go around and most of it is already taken up.”

“I understand.”

“I know you do,” he says. “And I appreciate that, more than you can know. I know you don’t love me, but I think I’m more than just a customer to you. The arrangement I’m proposing isn’t ideal, but I think it can give us the most we can have with each other.”

He’s prepared for this, she thinks. He thought it through, chose his exact words and practiced them.

I should probably think that’s pathetic, she tells herself, but I’m actually touched.

That he took the time and the thought.

“Adan, I’m flattered,” she says, “and tempted. It’s a lovely offer. Can I take a little time to think about it?”

“Of course.”

She thinks hard after he leaves.

Takes stock.

You’re twenty-nine years old, she tells herself, a young twenty-nine, a good twenty-nine, but nevertheless, just on the edge of over-the-hill. The breasts are still firm, the ass is still tight, the stomach flat. None of that will change for a while, but every year it will be harder to maintain, even with the workout fanaticism. Time will take its toll.

And there are younger girls coming up, girls with long legs and high breasts, girls to whom gravity is still an ally. Girls who have the bodies without hours on the stationary bicycle and the treadmill, without the sit-ups and the weight lifting, without the diets. And increasingly, those are the girls the platinum johns are going to want.

So how many years do you have left?

Years at the top, because the middle is not where you want to be and the bottom is a place you don’t want to go. How many years before Haley starts sending you out to the B-list clients, then stops sending you at all?

Two, three, five at the outside?

Then what?

Will you have banked enough money to retire?

Depends on the market, on the investments. In two or three or five years I might have enough money to live in Paris, or I might have to work, in which case, what’s the work?

There are two broad streams in the sex industry.

Prostitution and porn.

Sure, there’s stripping, but that’s where most girls start, and they don’t stay for long. They either get out or go into prostitution or porn. You skipped the dancing phase-thank you, Haley-and went straight to the top end of the prostitution business, but what happens next?

If you don’t take Adan’s offer and the market doesn’t perform?

Porn?

God knows she’s had offers. The money is good, if the work is hard. And she hears that they’re careful about the health issues, but God… there’s something about doing it in front of a camera that puts her off.

And again, how long could it last?

Six or seven years, tops.

Then it would be a steep slide to the low-budget video quickies. Fucking on a mattress in the backyard of some house in the Valley. Girl-girl scenes; orgy scenes; being the hot, horny housewife; the nympho mother-in-law; the sex-starved, cock-hungry, grateful, eager older woman.

You’d kill yourself in a year.

A razor along the wrists or a drug overdose.

Same with the inevitable slide as a call girl. You’ve seen it, cringed at it, pitied the women who stayed too long, didn’t save their money, didn’t get married, didn’t hook up with a long-term john. You’ve watched as their faces became bed-worn, their bodies old, their spirits crushed, and pitied them.

Pity.

Self or otherwise, you couldn’t stand that.

Take this man’s offer.

He loves you, he treats you well.

Take his offer while you’re still beautiful, while he still wants you, while you can still give him more pleasure than he ever dreamed possible. Take his money and put it away and then when he gets tired of you, when he starts looking harder at the younger girls, starts looking at them the way he looks at you now, then you can leave with your dignity intact and a decent life in front of you.

Retire from the business and just live.

She decides to tell Adan yes.

Guamuchilito, Sinaloa, Mexico

Tijuana, Mexico

Colombia

1992

Fabian burns.

With what Pilar had whispered to him.

“Yo quiero rabiar.”

Was she telling me, he wonders, what I think she was telling me? Leads to other thoughts, about her mouth, her legs, her feet dangling in the water, the outline of her sex beneath the bathing suit. And fantasies-of reaching his hand beneath that suit and feeling her breasts, of stroking her chocho, of hearing her moan, of being inside her and…

And did she mean rabiar? Spanish is a subtle tongue, in which each word can take many meanings. Rabiar can mean to thirst, to burn, to rage, to go crazy, all of which he thinks she meant. And it can also refer specifically to S amp;M, and he wonders if she could have possibly meant that she wants to be tied up, whipped, fucked roughly-and that gives him yet more tantalizing fantasies. Surprising fantasies that he’s never had before about anyone. He pictures himself tying her down with silk scarves, spanking her beautiful ass, whipping her. Sees himself behind her, she on her hands and knees, fucking her doggie-style and she yelling at him to pull her hair. And he grabs a handful of that thick, black, shiny hair and yanks it back like the reins of a horse, so her long neck arches and stretches and she screams with pain and pleasure.

“Yo quiero rabiar.” ?Ay, Dios mio!

The next time he goes to Rancho Mendez (weeks later-endless weeks later), he can barely breathe as he gets out of the car. There’s a tightness in his chest and he feels light-headed. And guilty. Wonders, as Guero greets him with an embrace, if his wanton lust for the man’s wife isn’t visible on his face. And he’s sure it must be when she comes out the door of the house and smiles at him. She is carrying the baby and has her arm around the little girl, to whom she says, “Mira, Claudia, Tio Fabian esta aqui.”

Uncle Fabian.

He feels a twinge of shame, like, Hello Claudia, Uncle Fabian wants to fuck Mommy.

Badly.

He kisses her that night.

Fucking Guero leaves them alone again in the living room to take a phone call, and they’re standing by the fire and she smells like mimosa flowers and his heart feels like it’s going to explode and they’re looking at each other and then they’re kissing.

Her lips are amazingly soft.

Like overripe peaches.

He feels dizzy.

The kiss ends and they step back from each other.

Amazed.

Scared.

Stimulated.

He walks to the other side of the room.

“I didn’t mean for that to happen,” she says.

“Neither did I.”

But he did.

It’s the plan.

The plan that Raul told him, but Fabian is certain that it came from Adan. And perhaps from Miguel Angel Barrera himself.

And Fabian is carrying out the plan.

So pretty soon they’re sneaking kisses, embraces, brushes of the hands, significant glances. It’s an insanely dangerous game, insanely exciting. Flirting with sex, and death, because Guero would surely kill them both if he ever found out.