Andrew Vachss - Pain Management

“I was afraid,” she whispered.

“Of what?”

“That you would be gone.”

“It’s not that dangerous a—”

“Not dead. Gone. Gone away from me.”

“I—”

“I know you will go. I was afraid you would just . . . vanish. Without saying anything to me.”

“I wouldn’t do that.”

She stepped back slightly, her hands still clasped behind my neck. “Yes you would. If you thought it was . . . if you . . . if it made sense to you, that is what you would do.”

“Why would it make—?”

“Stop it, Burke. You are not a good dancer. Come back into the bedroom with me. I want to show you something I bought.”

It turned out to be a simple ottoman, just a solid rectangular lump of black leather with some kind of pattern in red on its top.

“What is it? An antique?” I asked her.

“It is old, but that is not its beauty. You do not like it?”

“I don’t dis like it or anything. It doesn’t race my motor, that’s all.”

“Be patient,” she said, tugging her jeans down over her hips. When she was nude, she positioned herself over the ottoman on her hands and knees.

“Walk around it,” she said, throatily. “Look at it from all angles. Perhaps you will appreciate what I have brought you then.”

I never made the complete circuit.

“Are Flacco and Gordo back, too?” I asked her the next morning.

“Sí,” she said, mockingly.

“What’s that all about?”

“They speak better English than you do.” She chuckled. “I don’t know why men play those games. Machismo. It sounds so much stronger in Spanish, yes?”

“Hey, I’m not the one who tries to speak Spanish, miss. I tried that once—it almost cost me my life.”

“Truly?”

“Oh yeah. Square business.”

“Tell me?” Gem play-begged, kneeling next to where I was sitting.

“You want to hear about how stupid I was?”

“Oh yes!” she said, smiling.

I leaned back in the chair, tangling my hand in her long black hair. “You know I was in the war in Biafra . . . ?”

“Of course.”

“Well, by the time I showed up, the rebels were pretty much surrounded. They’d lost their only seaport, and very little food was getting in. There were only two routes for it: overland through Gabon, or by night flight from São Tomé, a little Portuguese colony island just off the coast.

“The island was like any small town. Only smaller. They didn’t get tourists. There wasn’t but one reason to be there: every visitor was there for the war.”

Gem shifted position slightly, just to let me know she was paying close attention.

“I was trying to make my connections to catch a ride on one of the merc planes, figuring out who to approach,” I went on. “So I spent a lot of time just hanging out. Anyway, in this bar, I met a guy . . . Evaristo, I remember his name was. He was being friendly, showed me how the nut-bowl trick worked. . . .”

“What was that?”

“When you bought a drink, the guy behind the stick would ask if you wanted the ‘nuts.’ He said it in English, but I didn’t know what he was talking about, so I always passed. This ‘bar,’ it was right on the beach. White sand, so pure it looked new. The place was made out of wood, and it was left open on one side. No doors, no windows, no wall, no nothing. When they closed, I guess they just took the stock home with them.

“One day, Evaristo is in there with me when the bartender asks me about the nuts. Evaristo nods his head at me, like he was saying, ‘Yeah, go for it.’ So I did. The bartender hands me a covered wooden bowl full of . . . well, nuts, I guess. And seeds, and all kinds of things I wasn’t going to put in my mouth. Evaristo, he grabs the bowl, closes the cover, and shakes it. Sounded like the way a dried gourd rattles, you know?

“In two minutes, the place was full of birds. Amazing birds, like I’d never seen in my life. I guess they were parrots of some kind. Huge things. Colors I never even knew existed. Evaristo opened the bowl, scattered the nuts all over this wooden plank they used as a bar. The birds hopped up there like they were used to it. I mean, they were close enough for me to touch, and it didn’t bother them at all. I’d never imagined such fabulous things, and there they were, right on top of me.

“I was just a kid then. Nineteen. It was one of the coolest things I’d ever seen. I bought Evaristo a drink, to thank him and all. And we got to talking. It wasn’t a whole lot of talking, because he didn’t speak much English. I knew the island was under Portuguese control, but it sure sounded like Spanish to me. Evaristo, he showed me a picture of his wife. ‘¿Muy blanco, eh?’ he says. I tell him, yeah, she sure is.

“He smiles, and I figure I got enough street Spanish to get by; maybe we could talk. Like I said, I was a kid.

“After that, I saw him all the time. He drove a taxi, but I couldn’t see where he had much business.

“This was when Portugal was still a major colonial power in Angola . . . and having trouble holding on. That’s why they were big players in Biafra—pretty hard to fly bombers from Lisbon all the way down to southern Africa. If the rebels had won in Nigeria, the Portuguese who backed them would have had themselves a perfect launching pad.

“But São Tomé itself was unstable. I kept hearing talk about some ‘independence movement,’ but I never actually saw any signs of one . . . not even so much as a piece of graffiti.

“One day, we’re in the bar, talking, and Evaristo points to me, says ‘Biafra?’ And I think, Here’s my chance to make a plane connect, so I tell him, ‘sí,’ like I’m a real native. Then he goes, ‘¿Soldado?’ and I say, ‘No.’ He tries ‘Jornalista?’ and I shake my head again. Then he moves me up the ladder even more. ‘¿Médico?’ But I have to shrug him off again.

“He makes a ‘ What, then?’ gesture. I figure now’s the time to tell him I’m on this humanitarian mission, so I try to figure out what the word for ‘social worker’ would be . . . and I come up with ‘socialista.’ ”

“Burke! You didn’t! ”

“Yeah, I did. And Evaristo, all the blood goes out of his face. He looks around, makes a ‘Shut the fuck up!’ gesture at me.

“I didn’t think anything of it until a few hours later, back in my room. When I heard the slides being racked.”

“Slides?”

“On the machine guns.”

“Oh!” Gem gasped, like it was the most terrifying thing she’d ever heard in her life. Women.

“ La polícia wanted to talk to me,” I told her. “I guess I fit the Outside Agitator profile.”

“What happened?”

“Well, I couldn’t speak Portuguese. And, after that, I wasn’t about to try. After a couple of hours, they took me to a priest. He translated. Or maybe he didn’t. I never knew what he told them, but, finally, they left.

“The padre told me I better do the same. Right then. Don’t go back to my room, don’t do anything. Just get to the airstrip and catch the first thing smoking.”

“You did that?”

“Yep. Evaristo, he was waiting outside, with the motor running. The plane was on the strip, propellers already spinning. The back was open. I just jumped on, like hopping a freight. One of the mercs looked me over, asked me, was I from the Company? I said I was, and that was it.”

“You were so lucky,” Gem said, her palms together in a prayerful gesture.

“More than I even knew at the time, honeygirl. They made two runs every night. The late run was the best—darker, less chance of getting hit by enemy fire going in. But I didn’t have any choice. The one I took was the early run.”