Toni Sala - The Boys

“I can just imagine your girlfriends.”

“What’s wrong with my friends?”

“No, thanks.”

“You haven’t seen them. Don’t be in such a rush. You aren’t made of stone. Look how worked up you got over a little spic piece of ass. They’ve got us by the balls, that’s what I always say. They should teach it at school. Strategies for resisting them. Just like you learn not to piss the bed. They should’ve prepared us when we were little.”

“Those girls are kidnapped from their countries. Everyone knows that. They drug them, they beat and rape them, they kidnap them, they threaten to kill their families. They’re found dead on the side of the road and they can’t be identified, nobody knows anything about them. They find them destroyed, twenty-year-old girls, on this highway right here.”

“And if you screw them your dick falls off. You’ve seen too many movies. I’m telling you, none of that is true. It’s not against the law.”

“Because we pretend they don’t exist.”

“Well, if they do exist, I guess they have to eat. It’s a business like any other; life is rough for everyone, except the bankers. Don’t look at me like that. I’m a good guy. I’ve never left without paying. I’ve never hit any of them. Now you’re gonna say that other businesses are different. And that, coming from a banker, for fuck’s sake.”

“Let’s forget about it. But I’d prefer not to see you in Vidreres again.”

“Now you’re the sheriff again. When I’ve got my shotgun, you want me to lend it to you, or what? You’ve got some balls. You’re threatening me, right? You’re threatening me, right, banker? A fucking coward, threatening me? What the hell were you doing there at the tree? Do you talk to the dead or what? Didn’t you say you didn’t know them? That’s spineless. You think about them to avoid thinking about your own fucking life. I know a few guys like you. Starting with my father, or that old guy by the tree. There was a war, poor him! When he was a kid! And he’s still not over it! Shit, what a good deal. Eighty, ninety years later and he’s still thinking about it. My mother died when I was this tall. You see me crying? Do you? No, we won’t forget about it. Come with me to see the girls. Grow a pair, man. It’s all very well that you want to have balls, banker, but you can’t just talk. Come on, shake a leg. You’ll be a big hit in that suit. Let’s go see them. Right after lunch is a good time. You’ll see, all your hang-ups will disappear, just like that.”

He saw the tree again, the bouquet of flowers, the ribbon snake bandaging the wound. He drove, following the truck: they were headed to Lloret. Before they got there they left the highway and entered a housing development, passing over empty streets named after flowers. The street where they stopped only had one sidewalk, with detached houses. To build the houses they had emptied out the granite, which still showed its teeth between some of them. There were houses with swimming-pool blue awnings, rolled up and faded, lethargic summer homes with lawns hibernating in front. A single car parked on the entire street, no smoke from any chimney — little hills filled with empty houses. The trucker got out of his cab with the flowers in his hand.

“You thought I was gonna take you to some club, banker?”

When he had to make a big decision — approving a mortgage, giving a credit line for a risky business operation — the bank employee thought about his daughters. Normally he decided in their favor, but sometimes he decided against them. The trucker rang the doorbell. They heard a girl’s voice.

“Just a minute!”

The door opened and it was a blonde, like a projection from youth. Healthy face, precise movements. The trucker held a flower out to her.

“Miqui. . how sweet! Marga!” she turned into the house. “They’re here!”

This was Cloe, the one the waitress had mentioned. They kissed on each cheek, and then the two men followed her through the hallway toward the empty dining room.

“Would you like some coffee? Marga! Marga!”

Marga had just taken a shower. She was wearing a tight, matching blue outfit with a short skirt like her friend’s. Nothing like the girls on the highway. She and Miqui gave each other kisses on each cheek, and Marga received the second flower.

They couldn’t have gone out onto the street dressed like that. Ernest tried to figure out which girl was for the trucker and which one was for him. It wasn’t like on the highway, where you just passed them by. Perhaps it was sordid, just a few hours after the burial, perhaps the trucker was sordid, perhaps the housing development was. . but the girls’ skin made the sordidness seem far, far away. He couldn’t decide between them, and he was afraid that, if the trucker discovered which one he wanted, he would take her from him. His body made the decision all on its own, choosing Marga, with her hair still damp from the shower and combed back, with all the skin on her face revealed as a pale mask against the bright color of her earrings, which hung like stone worms from her earlobes. He had never had a girl like this so close to him before. His daughters couldn’t hold a candle to her. There was no shelter from the carnal bombing.

“How ya doing, Miqui?” said Marga.

“You two are my downfall.”

The girl must have gotten cold, because she put on a short, tight red leather jacket and sat beside Ernest, with the tips of her hair dripping onto her leather shoulders. She had the flower on her knees, held in one hand. She put it on the table, with the other. He touched her leg with his pants. He felt stuck to her, threaded through her earrings, overlapped like half of the zipper, stuck together by the pull whose paint was peeled, which meant she’d worn the jacket more than it seemed, so bright and waxy, so new-seeming with the damp hair. The girl’s long fingers had gripped the pull a thousand times to open and close the jacket. It hadn’t been long since that jacket had been in contact with her adolescence.

“That’s why I brought my banker friend,” said Miqui, winking and gesturing to say: choose the one you want. “We met. . Have you ever done it with a guy from South America?”

“Don’t be weird,” said Cloe.

“I met a chick from somewhere down there.”

“You never stop,” said the girl.

“You have no idea. Times are bad now, but remember Ahmed? The Arab guy who used to come with me in the truck — I don’t need him now, there’s no work, but I’m talking about the good times, five or six years ago. One Saturday we left Vallcanera in the morning with the truck, and we did the whole highway. We left no stone unturned. When we got to La Jonquera that night, shit, we dropped dead at the Paradise. Four in the morning, both of us, first him then me — we switched off, and took whatever chick we got. Shit. It was like we were high as kites but we hadn’t taken a thing, we were laughing so hard we almost pissed our pants. We ate in Banyoles, took a snooze by the lake on the grass, and kept going up toward the border. To see who would cry uncle first. You know, the further north you go, the more material. The whore would climb into the cab, and one of us would go take a piss — you didn’t come back until the other whistled. We kept our eyes on the prize, and whatever you got you had to make do with; if you got an old cow, tough luck. We held up like sons of guns. We were in a dead heat. I could do a porn film, I swear. Isn’t that right? The next day, we kept going, back down from the border, wanting to break the tie, first him then me and on and on like that. But there was no way. We exited at Banyoles again for a rest and got to Sils that night, destroyed, still laughing our asses off. And we weren’t drunk, but we couldn’t stop laughing and shouting like lunatics, fucking hell, Ahmed, and with the music blaring. We didn’t need to drink; we had central heating! Those whores couldn’t finish us off in one weekend, no way! We were wrecked! Fucking Ahmed! Wonder where he is now. Must have gone back to Morocco, fucking hell. I wouldn’t do that again for anything in the world, banker.”