David Unger - The Mastermind

When Guillermo Rosensweig wakes up his left cheek is pressed against the kitchen floor. A sliver of saliva curls out of his mouth, forming a sticky pool. He is butt-naked and his arms hug his shoes as if they are a lifesaver.

Blinking several times, he tries to recall why he’s on the floor. His mind registers nothing. With great effort, he raises his head — which weighs exactly thirteen pounds — and looks around for clues.

He draws a blank and drops his head back down to the floor. The sunlight drills into his eyes through a hole in the window. Judging by the ache in his body, he has probably passed out again. At least this time he managed to take off his shoes.

The phone rings.

“Jefe,” the voice says, with undisguised certainty.

“Say what?”

“Do you need some intervention?”

Oh, code-talking time. It’s his driver and bodyguard Braulio Perdomo: his shadow, his do-anything-you-want-me-to-do; actually, more like his common law wife at this point. Intervention is the code word if he’s been kidnapped, his car sequestered, someone is holding a gun to his head, or if his tires need air, or his stomach antacid.

“No, no, I’m fine. A little tired is all.”

“Swallow two raw eggs, with lemon and chile. It will lift the cruda.”

There’s a long silence, long enough to walk to the garita, chew the rag with the guard at the entrance to his gated community, and stroll back home. Before Guillermo can round up a reply, the chauffeur adds, laughing, “On Sunday morning such things are permitted. The raw eggs might even give you an erection.”

Guillermo obediently looks down at his mostly hidden pecker, sound asleep in its bed of hair, and then curses Braulio’s arrogance. Why had he accepted Miguel Paredes’s offer of Braulio’s protection? In a mere three week’s time, Braulio has managed to gain control of his employer.

But better to focus on the first clue: it’s Sunday morning. “Did I ask you to call me today?”

“It’s about tomorrow. You wanted me at nine, but I can’t get there before ten. My wife, she has a doctor’s appointment, and the children, you know, one of us has to take them to school, what with the violence—”

“There’s no school bus?”

“I guess you’ve forgotten that two were commandeered last week, held for ransom. Can’t chance it, jefe.”

“Please don’t call me jefe.”

“Whatever you say, Guillermo, but that doesn’t change things.”

What the fuck. “Ten is fine. But on the dot. With the car washed.”

“I washed it before leaving on Friday. Remember, jefe ?”

Guillermo can actually see Braulio smirk. “So we’re set.”

“We are all set. Enjoy your Sunday,” Braulio chimes.

Yes, enjoy Sunday. Too scared to drive your own car to the supermarket, even though the BMW has bulletproof glass and sensors on the chassis; too suspicious of the gardener, the guards, the maid, your own up-till-now trustworthy chauffeur. Enjoy your Sunday. Things have degenerated fast.

In Guatemala, your own shit betrays you.

Guillermo pushes himself up and walks over to the sink. He opens the tap and slurps water like a guppy. Unpurified, it might sicken him, he knows, but something’s bound to kill him anyway. It’s only after the third mouthful that he realizes the water smells of dog puke and spits it out. No need to help the executioner.

He manages to stagger across the living room to his bedroom and fall facedown on the bed. If he could get one brain cylinder to fire up, he might force the cloud to lift in his mind and bring a brief moment of clarity. At least there’s hope for that.

He could call Maryam. She would know what to do. Then he remembers that she is dead, and is the reason he has lost the will to live.

His head pounds. He needs jugs of purified water and a handful of ibuprofen, but he’s nailed to his bed. Where are his clothes?

In the shower he could whistle “Oh What a Beautiful Mornin’” and do what? Beat his shrunken meat, as Braulio often suggests? Go bicycling? Maybe jog to work?

What work? What day?

The cloud’s lifting and his dim brain begins to strategize.

He should stop these alcoholic binges. But for whom? For himself? Not for his wife and kids who left him for Mexico. Actually, his ex -wife and kids because Rosa Esther became his ex eighteen months ago, when he wouldn’t break off his relationship with that mierdita arabe — that “little Arab shit,” as Rosa Esther referred to Maryam. This was ancient history, back in the days when dinosaurs walked the earth and he was bewitchingly in love — with Maryam, that is, the one true love of his life.

Is this the way to refer to what happened? To his loss? Someone should pay. Someone will. Maybe he is ready to do what Miguel Paredes has asked him to do, and set the whole world aflame. What’s the point of living?

Guillermo closes his eyes, relaxes his body. Inhale three deep breaths, exhale through the mouth because your nose is clogged. Pranayama yoga. Dispel all thoughts and concentrate on the soft point of light issuing from the blue cloud of emptiness. If he does this for ten minutes every day he will unlock the door to the sanctum of tranquility where he can begin to reorganize his life.

Breathe in, breathe out, in and out. The road to nirvana. It’s that simple.

After only fifteen seconds, he opens his eyes, his mind wandering, his breath distorted. He turns on his back. The fan circulates above him, the lines on the ceiling becoming constellations he recognizes but cannot name.

He maneuvers across the mattress, swings his legs down, and sits at the edge of the bed. The German shepherd next door begins yodeling from the terrace. Bandits must be scaling the building walls or a zompopo circling and confusing the Aryan dog’s head. Arrrrrroooo. Arrrrroooo . If Guillermo had a gun, he’d blow tracers into the crevice between its lidded eyes. So long, Rin Tin Tin. Hasta la vista, baby.

Without the strength to sit, he falls back down on the bed. The breathing has helped. His mind’s perfectly clear now. He clasps his hands behind his head and lets a bemused smile form on his lips. His eyes close and he begins to recall the sweetness of life, when he fell in love with Rosa Esther because of the softness of her skin, and her devotion to the grandmother who raised her. Then there were Sunday lunches at Casa Santo Domingo in Antigua, weekend trips to Lake Atitlán. This was during the golden era of their matrimony, when Rosa Esther still believed she had married a good man — one foregoing dalliances, committed to her, to the Union Church, and of course to their children, Ilán and Andrea.

His eyes well up as he acknowledges his deceptions. He had become an expert in betrayal. All he’d needed to do was call home and say he was working late with an important client on a case so hush-hush he couldn’t whisper a word about it over the phone. Rosa Esther, who embodied trust, would believe him, releasing him to meet with Rebecca, Sofia, then Araceli, and finally Maryam, at the Best Western Stofella for a few hours of boozing and pounding the mattress and floor.

Johnnie Walker made him invincible. Two, sometimes three fucks an hour, the hotel manager often banging on the door because the neighboring guests complained of the commotion. . fucking against the walls, down on the floor, on the bathroom sink, or in the tub when most guests were getting dressed for dinner in the Zona Viva.