Toni Sala - The Boys

First lesson, stupid whore: don’t fuck with strangers. Don’t try someone’s patience when you don’t know who you’re dealing with. Don’t be so conceited.

What if he gave her the lesson she deserved? What if he shot her? He undid the safety. You can’t just go around provoking people, you piece of shit, one day you’ll run into someone with a real nasty streak.

Seriously: he hadn’t planned on firing the gun. But things happen. Miqui heard a horn he wasn’t expecting, as if a car was about to plow into him. The jolt stiffened his fingers. His index finger pulled the trigger and the shotgun went off. He had never fired a real shotgun. The kickback sent him flying. His heart skipped a beat. He was left stunned and deaf. The cab filled with smoke and he couldn’t see anything. He coughed. The horn was still going off, frantically. His shoulder hurt. He looked through the other window and saw the van that kept track of the girl. The man inside was desperately honking the horn. Miqui’s heart was going a thousand miles an hour. His fingers and legs trembling, he put the truck into first and stepped on the gas. The wheels spun before gripping the asphalt — they were too worn, fucking Isma. Shit, shit, shit. He got into second gear, into third, and when he reached the first houses of Vidreres, he looked into the rearview mirror.

They hadn’t followed him. The whore was running across the highway to the van. The driver opened the door and the girl got in, crouching down inside the van to hide and cry. The van sped down the road, growing smaller as it went toward the main highway.

The streets of Vidreres weren’t as deserted as the day before. The truck’s engine once again filled them with noise. The women making lunch looked out their kitchen windows — maybe for the second time, maybe they’d looked up before, surprised by the distant thundering of the buckshot — what was that? Hunters, on a Tuesday? Please, not another accident. They were surprised to see the cruiser passing by, a big white plastic shoe, and thought about how it would be carnival soon and that some group must be secretly preparing a parade float with sailors — sailors in Vidreres, that’s a good one. Children screamed with excitement when they saw the cruiser pass by on the other side of the schoolyard gate through the school’s large windows, and their teacher had to scold them. A motorboat in Vidreres. Passing by the ATO milk packaging plant, passing the bakery and the little supermarket, passing the tobacconist’s and the town hall, toward the church, a boat on a flood of invisible water. Vidreres-Venice, such a thing had never been seen. A boat sailing along narrow streets, between the first-floor balconies, over dry fish and mermaids, over submarine cars and seaweed dogs. The trucker already knew where to park, and when he passed in front of the office with the red Santander Bank sign he thought that must have been where the potbellied man from the day before worked. Hadn’t he told him not to come back to Vidreres? Well, here he was again. And, to let him know, he honked his horn a couple of times.

He parked and made sure the truck’s door was securely closed. He was safeguarding a weapon. He walked toward the community center without thinking any more about the bank, but just as he passed in front of the office the door opened. There was his buddy, with his white shirt and dark tie, looking fatter than the day before, his face redder, a good candidate for a heart attack. And he had the balls to come out and point at him. Today, everybody and their mother was skating on thin ice.

“Where are you going?”

He answered with a contemptuous smile. The door opened again and another man came out, about the same age and wearing the same uniform, but thinner.

“What’s wrong, Ernest?”

“Nothing,” said Ernest. “Somebody I know.”

“Who is he?”

Miqui didn’t stop. Who was that shitty banker anyway? Cindy’s father? Her chaperone? Her protector? He didn’t even turn to provoke him. He went into the club with a generous smile, with the energy he’d released inside himself by pulling that trigger: his prize for having successfully taken a risk. He could have killed her and he hadn’t.

He found it odd to see people sitting around the tables inside the club, with its normal atmosphere, the same dark interior it must have had when it opened its doors a hundred years ago, the ceiling so high you assumed there were cobwebs, the checkered floor with white squares already graying and black ones fading, and the occasional chipped corner of a tile, some split in two, others ill-fitting. More than one club member took their eyes off the television newscaster to look at Miqui. There was a novelty inside the club now, a stranger who had just come in at noon, that intimate time of the day. None of this should’ve surprised him. When someone from out of town walked into the bar in the Sils town square they got the same welcome. Social clubs were the engines that moved the towns — there were others: the town hall, the church, the sports center, the library, and the schools served that same function for the children and teenagers. The folks from Vidreres sat with their own kind, and every table was a toothed gear in a powerful, lubricated motor, and Miqui was a grain of sand that they’d grind, but he saw Cindy at the bar, and her gaze stopped on him. Cindy wasn’t part of the machinery either, she couldn’t be, with that name; all it took was one look at her, with her thin, straight black hair pulled into a ponytail, her dark skin, her short, indigenous body type, the singsongy South American accent that she’d never be rid of. Miqui sat at the bar, and she was drawn to him like a magnet; of course, he was her savior.

“I’ll have a beer.”

The waitress smiled and kneeled to get a bottle. She took off the cap and a bit of foam came out. She dried off her fingers, grabbed a mug, and poured the beer into it.

“Were you able to unload, yesterday?”

“I unloaded, now I’ve come to load up again.”

“To load up what?”

“You.”

“Me?” She smiled again.

“When do you get off? I want to show you something.”

“I’m here until nine, and after that they’re expecting me at home.”

“Until nine? Don’t you need to have lunch? You eat here, too? What is this, the Middle Ages?”

The girl lowered her gaze and shook her head.

It wasn’t possible that she ate lunch at the club. She was lying to him. And she had made it clear they wouldn’t see each other after work either. She hadn’t given any excuse; she hadn’t said she was sorry about it. Then Miqui noticed the little man by the register. A short, badly-shaven guy around sixty who turned his back when he saw Miqui looking at him. Fucking old bastard, he must be screwing Cindy. That’s why she was so nice and sweet yesterday: the boss wasn’t around, he was at the funeral like everyone, except her. Miqui slugged down the rest of his beer and glanced around the place again. Folks from Vidreres having an aperitif and some olives or potato chips. All in the know about when the girl behind the bar had arrived, and why. He could imagine the jokes at first, jokes between men. The owner of the hardware store in Sils, a lifelong bachelor, had a girlfriend from Eastern Europe behind the counter too, blonde and sturdy with green eyes. She didn’t even speak Spanish, but waited on you just fine, and it was a pleasure to shop there, because the blonde belonged to all the men in town, in a way. It must have been the same thing with Cindy: these girls had infiltrated like parasites, you saw them everywhere if you looked, the ones who hadn’t left despite the recession, wearing rings more effective than wedding bands, invisible rings that everyone knew about.