T. Boyle - The Tortilla Curtain

It was nearly midnight and she'd nodded off-she couldn't help it, couldn't keep her eyes open a second longer-when she felt a touch at her shoulder. She woke with a start-nearly jumped out of her skin-and there he was, Cándido. Even in the bleak half-light of the streetlamps she could see the blood on his face, slick and black and without color. It could have been oil, molasses, could have been coal tar or makeup for some fright-house play in the theater, but it wasn't and she knew it the minute she saw him. “They hit me with something,” he said, his voice so pinched and hoarse she thought at first he'd been strangled. “A baseball bat, I think. Right here.” He lifted a hand to his hairline and touched the place where the blood was blackest. “They got everything. Every penny.”

And now she saw that his shirt was torn and the cuffs of his trousers hacked away till it looked as if some animal had been chewing its way up his legs. _They got everything.__ She looked into his eyes in the dim subterranean glow of the streetlamp and let the words sink in. There would be no bed, no shower, no dinner even. And in the future: no apartment, no shops, no restaurants, no toys and blankets and diapers for her baby. Her mind raced ahead and back again, and then she thought of the woods, of the canyon, of that shitpile of sticks, and she wanted to die.

His head ached, but that was nothing new. For a while there, his eyes had been playing tricks on him, everything doubled and doubled again, two walls, two windows, two streetlamps, then four and eight and sixteen, till he had to clamp his lids shut and start all over again. The world was back to a single image at least, and that was all right, but his shoulder throbbed where he must have fallen on it, and what next? It was like getting hit by that car all over again, except that this time he had no one to blame but himself. How could he have been so stupid? That _chingón__ had no aunt. He was as bad as any _vago__ at the labor exchange, worse. “This way,” he kept saying, “it's just up here, my aunt's house, you'll like it, man, you'll like it.” He didn't have any aunt. But there were two more just like him waiting in the alley, and how many _mojados__ had they clipped in their time? They knew just where to look-every dumb hick must have sewed his bankroll into his cuffs. Where else would it be? At the Bank of America? Under his pillow at the Ritz? It was his stinking bad luck, that was all, and now his head ached and he had nothing left in the world, not even a decent pair of pants, and America was looking at him as if he were the lowest form of life on the earth, no sympathy in her eyes, not a trace.

The first thing to do was find a gas station and have America ask to use the rest room so he could slip in and wash the blood off his face. It wasn't bad, a little headache, that was all-a headache and a whole lot of blood. He didn't give a damn for the blood, but if the police spotted him looking like this it would be the end of him. First the rest room, then something to eat. He hated to do this to her, to America, because this was just what he'd tried to protect her from, but they were going to have to go out back of one of the fast-food places-Kentucky Fried or Taco Bell or McDonald's-and go through the trash. After that they'd need a place to sleep, some business with shrubs around it and a little patch of lawn, someplace quiet where nobody would notice them, least of all the sons of bitches roaming the streets for blood, and now he had two of them to kill, _hijo__ de _la chingada__ and fuck the whole world.

“Okay,” he said, and America wouldn't look at him, “okay now, listen to me…”

And she listened. Scared, angry, defeated, full of pity and hate, her heart in her mouth, no bed, no shower, no nothing. The nearest service station was five blocks up the street, up Sherman Way, and nobody said a word to her with Cándido at her side, his face a flag of blood, his pantlegs flapping like ragged banners. The attendant was Nicaraguan and he looked at her like she was dirt when she asked for the key to the rest room without buying anything, but she smiled and used her smallest voice and he relented. She took advantage of the opportunity to use the commode and cushion the back strap of her sandals with toilet paper, while Cándido washed the blood from his face and patted the mouth of the wound dry with paper towels. His face was pale and bristling with a vagrant's short stiff whiskers, but his hair hid the black slash of the contusion and when he'd finished he looked almost presentable, but for his torn shirt and the frayed ends of his trousers and the pit under his left eye that was part of him forever now.

He walked two steps ahead of her and he had nothing to say, his shoulders squared up like a fighting cock's, his eyes eating up the street. The few people out at this hour-drunks, mainly-gave him a wide berth. Though she was tired and shot through with despair, though her feet hurt and her stomach clenched on nothing, America didn't dare ask him where they were going or what the plan was or where they would sleep, eat, wash, live. She just followed along, numbed and vacant, and all the acid odors of the street assaulted her as if they'd been distilled just for her, for her and her alone. They walked for blocks and blocks, heading west, then turned onto a bright big boulevard to the south and followed it eternally, past shuttered restaurants, record shops and great hulking dimly lit malls floating like factory ships in black seas of macadam. It was very late. The leaves of the trees hung limp. There were hardly any cars at all on the streets.

Finally, just as she thought she was going to collapse, they came to another broad boulevard that looked familiar somehow, painfully familiar, though it was different now in the muted light, the sidewalks deserted, traffic dormant, every decent person home in bed. She'd never been very good with directions-Cándido joked that she could get lost just going from the kitchen to the bathroom-but she knew this place, didn't she? They were crossing against the light, no cars coming in either direction, when it came to her: they were back on the canyon road, right back where they'd started, where the shade trees overhung all those pretty little unattainable houses and the yards that were thick with swing sets and tricycles. She felt her heart sink. What were they doing here? He wasn't going to make her walk all the way back up the road and down into that miserable hole tonight, was he? He couldn't. He was crazy. Insane. She'd throw herself down right here on the sidewalk and die first.

She was about to say something, when he stopped suddenly just outside a restaurant she remembered from the morning, a little place set apart on its own paved lot, with plate-glass windows, a candy-striped roof and a big illuminated red-and-white bucket revolving round a pole atop it. The place was closed, dark inside, but the lot on either side of it was lit up like brightest day. “You hungry?” Cándido whispered, and they hadn't spoken in so long her voice sounded strange in her own ears when she said yes, yes she was. “Okay,” he said, shooting a nervous glance up and down the street, “follow me and be quick about it-and keep your voice down.”

She wasn't thinking. She was too tired to think, too depressed. There must have been some vague wonder in the back of her brain, some sort of puzzlement-did he know someone who worked here or was he going to lift something, supplies they delivered late at night? — but it never came to the surface and she just followed him stupidly into the harsh flood of the lights. They were in the back lot now, hidden from the street, fenced in on three sides. A big gray metal bin stood there, just outside the rear door, and it gave off an odor that told her immediately what it was.