The Water Knife (32 page)

In an instant her life seemed to make sense. She had always needed this. To live on the fine ragged edge between one thing and the other. Between living and dying. She had always been this way. Anna couldn’t understand it. Her family couldn’t understand it, but now, as she fucked, it felt as if the whole mangled city that she called home made sense.

She could hear the whistles of Texas bangbang girls as they hunted for customers, the pinging of the Red Cross pumps as they finished filling a refugee’s water jugs. The crying of children in jumbled squats, and the shouts of body
lotería
winners as they gathered around their phones, hoping for a big score. Life, all around her. Struggling and surging and trying so very hard to survive in the face of all the horrors the world had to offer.

On this ragged edge, she was alive.

She clutched this man called Angel, who she was sure would be the death of her, and she pulled him deeper into herself. Gasping, she tried to fill herself completely, driving herself against him, filling herself with him, overwhelming herself, and still it wasn’t enough.

She took his hands and pressed them to her throat. “Hold me,” she whispered.

His fingers tightening on her neck. “Yes,” she whispered as his hands tightened. “Like that.” Her voice became ragged as his fingers gripped her tighter still.

She’d stayed.

She’d come to Phoenix to see a place dying, but she’d stayed for the living. Trying to divine something meaningful from this place’s suffering. What does a place that falls apart look like? What did it mean?

Nothing
.

It doesn’t mean anything
.

It just tells me how badly I want to live
.

She fucked in the dark zone, surrounded by people who faced the whirling sawblade of collapse, and she urged the water knife’s strong scarred hands to grip her tighter still as he reared over her. She pressed her hands against his, encouraging him, egging him on. Feeling his strong fingers.

There
.

Powerful hands that had killed untold numbers now held her. Now controlled her as he drove deeper into her. He seemed to know her needs.

“Tighter,” she whispered.

Tighter
.

Iron fingers took possession of her breath. She felt her heart thudding against his grip. He was death. He was taking her as death took all things. He thrust into her again, and she arched against him, overwhelmed with need.
It doesn’t matter
, she told herself. She was surrounded by death.
There’s no way out
.

“Tighter.”

This was what she needed. To lose herself, entirely. To be annihilated. She was desperate for it. She was desperate to feel alive. To know that she risked everything and still lived. His sweat burned on her ravaged tits, her ribs, her belly as he plunged into her. Filling her. Using her. She wanted him. God, she wanted him. She imagined him thrusting through her entirely. Impaling her like this, with his hands around her throat.

“Tighter.”

She was rasping. The crush of his fingers overwhelming. He had her life. He had her breath. He could kill her if he wanted.

There was nothing of her now. She was gone. Her air was gone. Her heart pounded in her ears. His fingers held her throat and her entirely.

Taking away her air, and her, letting him take it.

This was trust. This was life.

“Tighter,” she whispered.

Tighter
.

M
aria’s feelings of security and safety lasted exactly a day—all the way until Esteban and Cato roared up in front of Toomie’s house in their big black pickup.

As soon as Maria saw them, she ran inside and locked the door, but Esteban didn’t seem to care. He and his buddy just went and opened the tailgate of the truck and reached into the bed.

Toomie hit the pavement with a hard thud.

Esteban and Cato hauled him up to the front door, while Maria stared through the barred window. Blood ran from Toomie’s temple. His lips were split from beatings, and one eye was swollen shut. The two thugs had his hands zip-tied behind his back. They dragged him up to the doorstep and threw him down on the concrete.

“Hey there, Maria!” Esteban called. “You got money for me?”

Maria held her breath, trying to be silent. Pretending that he didn’t know she was on the other side of the door.

“Come on, girl! Open on up and cough up the cash.”

Stay quiet. Just stay quiet, and they’ll go away
.

“We know you’re in there!” There was a thud and a grunt. “Dumbass here already told us you’re in there, so make this easy on Mr. Pupusa and get your
culito
out here where I can see it!”

Stay quiet. Quiet like a mouse. It will all go away…

Esteban shouted again: “You think we’re stupid? You think we don’t know you peddled ass the other night?”

“There’s no need to talk like that,” Maria heard Toomie say. “We can keep this businesslike.”

“Businesslike? Is that what you want?” Esteban laughed. “Okay. Here’s some business for you.”

Maria heard a thud and a grunt. Another thud. She inched up, to peer through the video monitor to the outside of the house.

“Last chance, girl!”

Esteban put a gun to Toomie’s knee and pulled the trigger. Toomie screamed as his knee exploded.

“God damn!” Esteban laughed. “That’s got to fucking hurt!”

He turned to the camera and stared up at it, grinning through the screen at Maria, his face speckled with Toomie’s blood, while Toomie writhed behind him on the concrete.

“He said he wanted it businesslike,” Esteban said. “You don’t come out this second, I’m going to do some business with that other knee, too. See how this crippled motherfucker pushes
pupusas
when he’s got no legs.”

“Run, Maria!” Toomie shouted. “Just run! Get out! Don’t worry about me!”

Esteban hit him upside the head, stunning him. He grinned again at the monitor. “I just want to get paid, girl. Either I get paid in cash, or I get paid in blood, and I still come back for your Texas ass.”

Toomie was spitting blood. “Don’t do it, Maria!”

“If you want your friend to live, you come out now. Otherwise I put him down, and then I come and get you anyway.”

“Okay!” Maria shouted through the door. “I got your money! Don’t hurt him anymore!”

“That’s what I like to hear.”

“Don’t do it!” Toomie shouted, but Maria was already running to where she’d stashed the small amount of cash she’d gotten from the scarred man. It wasn’t enough but…she shoved the money through the mail slot. Esteban crouched down and picked up the cash, counting.

“Looks a little light, girl.”

“It’s all I have!”

“Oh yeah?” Esteban knelt beside Toomie and jammed his gun into the man’s mouth. “That’s funny you say that, because someone was going around asking our coyotes about buying a ticket out of here, so unless you were planning on going north with
pupusas
for payment, I think we got ourselves a problem.”

“It’s all I have!” Maria shouted through the door. “He was using his own money. Not yours!”

“I don’t work quite like that, girl, and you know it. You still got debts. Now, if you come out and pay, I promise I’ll leave your friend’s brains inside his head.”

“Don’t!” Toomie shouted. “Don’t do it!”

But all Maria could think of was Sarah dead in the bed because she’d run. She’d let Sarah go, and Sarah had died.

With tears in her eyes, she fumbled with the dead bolts. Esteban grinned as the door swung open. He was enjoying this.

“Leave him alone,” Maria said. “It’s not his fault.”

Toomie’s face was covered with blood. He was breathing heavily, blood bubbling from his nose as he gasped for breath around the barrel.

Not him. Please, not him, too
.

“I don’t have any money. But I’ll come with you.”

For a second she thought Esteban was going to shoot Toomie anyway, but then he smiled and took his gun out of Toomie’s mouth. He motioned to Cato to get in the truck.

Maria crouched down beside Toomie.

“Don’t,” he whispered. “Don’t go with them.”

“I can’t”—Maria blinked away tears—“I can’t let you get killed because of me.”

“I’m sorry,” Toomie said. “I thought I knew a coyote who wouldn’t sell me out.”

“It’s not your fault.” She wiped at her eyes.

“Don’t do this,” he said. “Don’t…”

To Maria’s horror, she could see that Toomie was readying himself to fight again. To try to fight even though it would just get him killed. He was going to try to grab Esteban. Maria lunged forward and hugged him, hard. Hugging him so hard that he couldn’t do anything foolish.

“It’s not on you,” she whispered, and then she straightened. Toomie’s blood was on her blouse, but she didn’t care.

“You can’t hurt him,” she said to Esteban. “I’ll do whatever you want. I’ll earn how you want, but you can’t hurt him.”

“Fine by me. Vet just wants you. He don’t care about no
pupusa
man.”

To Toomie, Maria said, “Don’t worry. I’ll be back as soon as I pay the Vet.”

“Yeah. She’ll be back.” Esteban smirked. “Once she’s all paid up.”

He grabbed Maria’s arm and hauled her toward the truck.

Maria glanced back and saw that Toomie had dragged himself up to a sitting position, still clutching his leg.

“You can’t hurt him,” Maria said again. “You got to promise me.”

“You should be worried more about your own hurting, girl. Vet gave you a special pass, and you fucked him over. Late on payment, and on top of that trying to make a run for it?” Esteban laughed as he jammed Maria into his truck. “
Pupusa
man’s got it easy in comparison to what the Vet’s got planned for you.”

Sitting between the two men, riding to her fate, Maria told herself that she wasn’t going to show fear, but as the truck turned into the Vet’s territory and wound its way through the subdivision curves, she could feel her fear building.

The hyenas caught sight of the truck and paced it as it roared up to the gates. Their fenced pens encompassed four or five properties, and now they poked their heads out of open doors and shattered windows, eager and predatory as Cato honked at the gates and was let in.

Inside the Vet’s compound, some of the Vet’s people looked up at Esteban’s arrival, but most of them were sitting in the shade under big colorful umbrellas, playing cards and dominoes.

The hyenas came loping to where their pens abutted the Vet’s human spaces, pressing their noses against the wire.

The Vet came out of his house as Esteban dragged Maria from the truck. Esteban handed him the cash. The Vet hefted the cash, considered it, then turned his gaze on Maria.

“This all the money you made working for me? This?”

Maria nodded, not trusting her voice.

“I tried to help you, you know.”

He waited, seeming to expect an answer. The silence between them stretched. The hyenas paced behind the chain-link and razor wire.

“I had to—” Maria started.

“You had to try to run away instead of trusting me to take care of you.”

She shut up.

The Vet’s pinprick eyes bored into her. “I would have let you earn your way across the river, girl. Don’t you understand that?” He gripped her chin. “I wanted to help you. I
liked
you.”

He cocked his head, frowning. “Such a smart young lady. I thought, ‘Ah. This one. This girl—she deserves a second chance. I will take this one under my wing. I will give her a chance to earn, and then, when she has worked, she will go north with a tidy bit of cash in her pockets, and she will always remember how I did a good thing for her.’ ”

“I’m sorry.”

“I asked Santa Muerte about you again.” He waved toward where his shrine glittered with emptied tequila bottles. “She didn’t say to save you this time. She doesn’t like people who break their promises, either.”

The hyenas on the other side of the fence whined and giggled, seeming to sense opportunity in their master’s conversation.

“Sarah died,” Maria tried to explain. “I panicked—”

“I didn’t care about Sarah,” the Vet said. “I only cared about you. The Skinny Lady cared about you. And you didn’t do what we asked.”

“I can work now,” Maria said. “I can pay you back.”

The Vet favored her with a pleased look. “We’re past money, I think. The issue before us is atonement, and atonement costs more than just an offering of money.” He stood up and looked to Esteban and Cato. “Take care of her.”

Esteban and Cato seized her arms and dragged her over to the hyena’s pens. She struggled, but they were used to people fighting for their lives and held her easily.

The hyenas went crazy, first one then others sending up yips of excitement, standing up on hind legs, giggling at their approach. More emerged from the shade of the abandoned houses, popping out through open windows and sprinting toward the three of them as Esteban and Cato dragged her through the dust.

Maria jammed her feet into the dirt, screaming. Esteban and Cato
laughed. They threw her against the fence, and the hyenas lunged for her, but she bounced away. She scrambled back as the animals lunged against the fence, shoving their snouts against the chain-link, seeking to slam through.

Esteban and Cato corralled her and shoved her closer to the fence. Levering her closer and closer. “You like them,
puta
? They like you.”

She couldn’t get away. All the hyenas were at the fence, a dozen, at least. Esteban and Cato pressed her closer. Teeth. Saliva. Brindled fur. The seething, bobbing movement of starving fascination. The hyenas pushed their noses through the link, trying to get at her. Their clamor was deafening. Esteban grabbed one of Maria’s wrists and held it tight.

“Let’s give them a taste.”

Maria found herself screaming, struggling to get away, watching her fingers moving closer and closer to the fence and the teeth on the other side.

She couldn’t stop them. She couldn’t get away.

Her fingers touched the chain-link. She made a fist, but Esteban rammed her hand hard against the fence, and the hyenas were there, tearing.

Maria screamed as her fingers came off in their mouths.