Ann Major - The Girl with the Golden Gun

For a while Negra endured her affection. Then as if sensing her nervousness, the independent creature sprang to the floor and curled up to sleep on a little rug under a chair. A door slammed downstairs and she heard Tavio shout to his men.

Feeling only slightly relieved, she placed the knife under her pillow and waited. As the awful seconds ticked by, Mia began to feel dull and hopeless. She could do nothing but sit here and wait.

Hours later, when Tavio still hadn’t come upstairs, she finally drove herself to get up from the bed and shower. As she toweled off, she was surprised that such a little thing had made her feel better. After she dressed, she paced back and forth at the end of her bed, her heart racing every time she heard Tavio or one of his men shout angrily below.

She should go to bed and yet she was afraid of the bed and what it might mean tonight. As she stared at the melon-colored adobe walls that imprisoned her, they seemed to close in on her more than ever. She wanted to run, but she knew that behind those high, thick, adobe walls, Tavio Morales’s immense, adobe mansion was a veritable fortress. An army of gunmen patrolled the rancho and airstrips in trucks and SUVs.

A natural spring with cold, icy water bubbled up from the ground not far from the stables, so there was a sure source of water. Tall cottonwood trees grew around the sparkling pool.

Beyond Tavio’s private army, every Mexican peasant, poor men like Ramiro, in the desert belonged to Tavio, as well. If one of their children was sick, Tavio paid for the doctor, buying their undying loyalty.

“They are my ears and eyes,” he’d told her. “I love them. And they love me. I protect them, and they protect me. I very important man here. I am much loved.” He’d smiled as if that thought pleased him. “If you try to escape, my little friends will tell me. If anyone try to help you, they will tell me, and I kill him.”

Remembering Ramiro watching her again, she bit her lips. Worrying about Julio, she went to the barred window. She had to get away or go mad. She had to.

Since the ranch house was located on a slight rise above the desert floor, Mia’s plush room with its heavy furniture and red-velvet spread and draperies had a view of the Chihuahua Desert and Tavio’s airstrip. She’d spent long hours watching the dusty two-lane road that led across the parched earth to the airstrips. Sometimes she’d watched huge dirt devils race across the barren, beige moonscape, and always she had wished she were free to whirl away.

She’d watched the birds, the vultures, hawks and the eagles with special envy because they could fly. In her other life, she had taken freedom for granted.

If I’m ever free again, I will treasure every single moment.

She had to get out of here.

“Oh, Shanghai…” She called to him, willing him to think of her, willing him to care, willing him to come.

Had she gone mad? Maybe she had if she believed Shanghai could hear her thoughts or that he would be moved by them.

She picked up her brush and sat down on her bed to work with her hair. Despite the thick adobe walls and floors, she heard telephones ring and more doors slam downstairs. She heard men come and go. When heavy boots stomped up the stairs, she cringed.

Tavio’s door opened and slammed.

The noise downstairs continued. Much was going on tonight. Trucks roared up to the compound. Planes took off and landed.

After a long time, most of the activity stopped, but still she listened to the silence, almost fearing it more, because soon Tavio would finish whatever he was doing in his own bedroom and come.

Finally she grew so weary, she lay down. At some point she must’ve fallen asleep because footsteps in the hall awakened her. When her door opened, her hand went to her throat. She sprang up, her heart pounding.

“Are you all right?” Delia whispered across the darkness.

“Delia! It’s only you. Come in! I’m so glad to see you! Turn on the light!”

“I know you are in that plane all day. I worry about you.”

Delia lit the lamp, and Mia forgot her own fears when she saw that Delia was limping. The poor girl had a cut lip and two black eyes that were swollen nearly shut. Her hands shook.

“Did Chito beat you again?”

Delia hung her head. “Tavio, he very scared and angry. The Cessna you hide in—it not return. He is afraid, it no going to. He is afraid for Marco. He ask everybody who hide you. Even me.”

Delia sat down beside her, and Mia clutched her hand, finding strength in her kindness.

“Everybody scared. Many rumors. Tavio, he think one of us betray him. He walk back and forth on the balcony outside his bedroom like a big wild cat. He listen for Marco’s airplane motor. He smoke too much. The crack make him mean tonight. Meaner than Chito even. He accuse everybody of giving information to the gringos. I ask him if he want more tequila, and he jump at me, his eyes burning me. He so crazy he scare me just by looking at me. I don’t go near him. Be careful when he come.”

Mia shuddered. “What about Chito?”

Delia shrugged. “So—they fight each other. Over you, no? It is not the first time they fight over a woman. Then Chito, he hit me. Now he feel better.”

Mia went to her and hugged her. Then she led her to the bathroom and gently washed her face with soap and water.

There were shouts from below. Her eyes large and fearful, Delia pulled away and rushed to the door.

“Stay with me a little while,” Mia pleaded, not wanting Delia to suffer more abuse.

“I have much work. The men, they are hungry…. You hear them….”

“I will teach you to read. Like before.”

Delia’s eyes lit up for the briefest moment, and then her face became dull again. She was very intelligent, but her family hadn’t been able to send her to school for more than a single year. As long as she was with Chito, she would have a life of dreary servitude and abuse.

“All right. For a little while,” Delia said.

When Delia handed Mia the cartoon page from the last newspaper Tavio had given her, Mia forced a tight smile. They sat down on the bed. Pulling the sheets over themselves, Delia began to read.

The gloomy atmosphere from down below seeped into the bedroom. Mia was glad that they had some occupation to distract them.

In between Delia’s nervous, halting words in Spanish and Mia’s gentle corrections, Mia heard the rising wind outside but no plane engine. In the passing of the next half hour, she began to feel Delia’s severely repressed uneasiness. The girl stumbled over words she’d read easily only yesterday. The men had grown silent downstairs, and again Mia’s own fears escalated at the thought of Tavio coming. But still they continued to read the cartoons until Tavio’s bedroom door banged again. When they heard his heavy-booted footsteps in the hall, Delia stopped.

Then Tavio burst into her bedroom, flipped his cell phone shut and stared at them with wild, unseeing eyes.

“Marco’s dead,” he said.

Delia gave a cry. Newspapers slipped to the floor, and she ran from the room.

“Why did Marco have to get out of the plane?” Tavio whispered, more to himself than to her. “He is the pilot. He never gets out. He should have taken off again. When the DEA agents pointed their guns at him, he panicked and backed into the propeller. He…”

“Oh, no….”

At the sound of her voice, his bloodshot black eyes focused on her face as if he realized she was there for the first time. His dark scowl was terrifying.

He’d been smoking, she knew. As a result his tense, vicious, grief-stricken mood was worse.

“I want you,” he whispered.

She sat up in bed shivering. “Please…no…Not like this!”