Richard Ford - The Ultimate Good Luck

Deats let his hit seep all the way out, delicately pinched off the red tip with his fingers, and put the joint back under his sweater. Deats had a piece, but you couldn’t know where it was or how close to his hand, though the Mexican presented the first problem.

“Their water’s got shit in it.” Deats wiped his fingers together neatly and sniffed, then waited a moment. “Your man played bold down here,” he said calmly, flicking ashes off his trouser crease. He didn’t seem completely interested. “You know that?” He looked up smiling.

“He said he didn’t,” Quinn said.

Deats touched his nose again. “Uh-huh.” He nodded patiently. “But he did . It don’t matter what he said.”

The dope made the room swampy and changed the light. Quinn was sweating again, and his toes felt slick. “I can’t work with that,” Quinn said. He balled the Italian girl’s underpants in his fist. “That’s not what I’m good at.”

Deats smiled. “I know that,” he said. He was a handsome boy with long, delicate fingers that he took nice care of.

“Look.” He turned halfway toward the Mexican so he could keep them both in sight. “Maybe you could come back some other time.” The Mexican stared at him as if he were a long way away from what was happening.

“We won’t be too long,” Deats said. He glanced at the TV. A small fat man with a painted-on mustache was standing beside a fat woman who was grinning and wringing her hands. The man was about to spin a big number wheel, and the fat woman appeared to have a lot of pain riding on the spin. The camera kept closing on her face, and her eyebrows twitched as if she could feel the pressure of the tiny screen.

The Mexican was behind him unexpectedly. He grabbed the hand with the Italian girl’s underpants, pulled back swiftly, and tied it to the other one with a length of metal wire. Quinn let the underpants go. No resistance. He thought about the Italian girl having been in the room this morning. It seemed ridiculous.

Deats fidgeted with the armrest, his other hand holding a small silver pistol that looked like a cigarette lighter. “You can do your man a big favor,” he said, calmly watching Quinn be tied up. The Mexican took his belt, looped his ankles, and knotted it back tight. The Mexican was breathing hard. “You can tell him for me,” Deats said, “that I’m not in this fuckin’ business to let assholes take me off like I was selling brooms. You understand that?” His mouth twitched and he suddenly seemed mad. It was just weirdness. Deats’ eyes seemed to get much smaller and more finely focused.

Quinn wanted to keep his mind off his stomach. “Sure, I understand. Everything’s great now,” he said. He was having trouble keeping his balance. He thought he might fall backward.

“Speak to your man,” Deats said calmly, and nodded at the Mexican. The Mexican whispered close to Quinn’s ear, “Please kneel.” Quinn bent over and the Mexican let him to the floor gently, face on the tiles. The floor began pushing the cramps back.

“And say what the fuck?” he asked, face down. He couldn’t see Deats anymore, only his high-dollar alligator shoes, but he wanted to keep contact. “I told him if he had something you wanted, to turn it loose. He doesn’t have the nuts to take you off.”

The Mexican turned him over carefully so that he was lying on his tied hands looking at the corrugated fiber glass ceiling. It was a shitty place, a shittier place than he’d ever been in. The Mexican unbuttoned his shirt and pulled it open.

“Tell him he’s a greedy boy,” Deats said, staring down smiling. The little silver automatic was gone.

The Mexican began tampering with something in his own shirt pocket, not getting it out easily. “Maybe somebody else’s taking you off,” Quinn said. “Did you ever think of that?” You didn’t look at the Mexican now. You kept your eyes on the green corrugation and talked to the ceiling.

“No,” Deats said. His eyes had gone as swampy as the air. It was good dope. “My business just don’t run that track, you understand?”

Quinn thought he could talk forever now. It was like the moment before anesthesia. “But Sonny can have you off. Right?”

Deats stood up out of the chair. The Mexican in the porkpie hat was ready with whatever he wanted to get, and waiting for Deats to give a sign. He could just see the Mexican’s nose. Deats peered down at him. “Tell him what I tell you,” Deats said. He walked across the room and turned the volume up on the TV. The Mexican had a small square plastic box, the kind trout flies came in. Deats stood in front of the TV and watched the Mexican oddly. He had his porkpie pushed back and he squeezed the lid off the box with this thumbnail, knelt, and delicately turned the contents out onto Quinn’s chest. The Mexican had extremely thick fingernails, industrial fingernails, nails for turning screws. The man on the TV with the mustache was talking very fast in Spanish. He kept pointing to something off the screen and saying “grande.” He kept reaching for the wheel as if he was going to spin it, then stopping and saying something to the fat woman that made her wring her hands harder and grin and flick her eyebrows and rise up on her toes in anticipation. The camera showed her toes. Quinn’s heart began to whip up fast. “You don’t look so hot,” Deats said.

He thought he was going to have a cramp. The muscles up and down his stomach began organizing themselves into a unit, waiting for the scorpion to hit him. Quinn heard the door close and footsteps on the patio, and he was alone on the floor. The rapid voices on the TV built up a wall of sound that was too run-on to get, and he couldn’t put a thought together, and for a moment he was terrified. He wanted to think a thought, but one wasn’t extractable. The scorpion was small and translucent, the color of nicotine. He couldn’t feel its weight, could only see it rise with his breath over his chest contour. Some of them would kill you and some of them were like wasp stings. He couldn’t get the markings you were supposed to remember. The ones in Arizona killed you. He thought about Arizona. It didn’t seem far away. There had once been a communication. Some were green, some were brown, he couldn’t quite distinguish. Some were green and some were brown. You were not to be stung by the wrong one, but he couldn’t remember which was wrong. His face was wet. The scorpion was rising and falling with his breath but hadn’t moved of its own will. Quinn was bridged on the heel of his hand and could tip one way or the other by turning his head and breathing, but that might be enough to make it sting, and he didn’t want it to sting. The TV was loud and the fat man still hadn’t spun the wheel and the fat woman was all the way on her toes as if she wanted to fly and not come down until the wheel hit her number. He wanted to see the screen, couldn’t keep his eyes off the emcee smiling and soaking up the situation, getting the studio audience involved. It seemed to involve him more than it involved the woman who might win something, more than anybody else. The scorpion suddenly seemed to wake up. It moved an inch on his chest then stopped, its tail uncurled. The Mexican suddenly dealt the wheel a huge, knee-bending haul, and the wheel chattered, becoming a whir like a mirage on the tiny aqua screen showing numbers and chances in a vortex, and then slowing as the balance on the heel of his hand gradually sagged to the side so that his chest tipped toward the TV and the scorpion slid off onto the tiles before the wheel had even completely stopped.

He bucked the floor and jerked off from the scorpion, which he couldn’t see now, but knew would come after him once it hit the tiles. He slid on his stomach and kicked his knees so he could achieve a sit. The scorpion hadn’t moved. It was almost invisible against the pale green tiles and gave no sign of intention. He pushed back to the wall and jigged his feet until the belt began to lariat around his ankles and he could get one foot free and force out the loop. The scorpion hadn’t moved. The television was louder than before. The woman had caught her number. Peso signs were flashing on the screen, and the mustachioed man was talking as fast as he could and pointing at the woman accusingly, the woman was looking out through the peso signs in a fur coat, hugging herself and turning around and around in the commotion. Quinn advanced on the scorpion, his hands still wired. He came at it from the side, curling his foot, and slid it onto the space where he’d been lying, into the sweat circle on the floor. The scorpion sat on its stomach with its tail laid behind it inert. He suddenly brought his heel down and ground it on the tile. It made him mad for the scorpion to be still. The television was screaming and the woman was swaying in a daze, the coat hugged to her chest. The word ganadora had begun flashing below the woman’s feet as if that was her name. It pissed him off. The scorpion had been dead, it was a nigger gimmick. It made you an asshole by making you be afraid of something that turned out to be nothing. Though that wasn’t precisely it. It was just all in behalf of what didn’t matter. The thing that scared you was the thing that didn’t matter.