We Eat Our Own (15 page)

But tonight, something is different about Hank. He doesn't call out to her like she'd imagined he would, doesn't even go outside when he sees her waving through the window, loping through the darkness and through the door. She sees his face fall for just a moment as she steps inside, and then he fakes a wide smile, kisses her on the cheek once and says Bongiorno, bella, in his shitty Italian accent. Then he passes her a pool cue and a beer—practice for a second, we're just finishing up—and turns back to the man at the bar.

Irena practices kiss shots, tries to pretend that she's not listening. Hank is muttering something hushed and angry in Spanish to the man behind the bar and picking at the label of a beer bottle he isn't drinking from. There's sweat pooled in the hollow of his neck and between the lines of his forehead, the mermaid tattooed on one triceps blurry with it, his whole expression soaked and vague. Hank doesn't seem to realize that Irena can understand Spanish, or that anyone who speaks Italian can puzzle out the basic cognates, and he certainly has no idea just how good an actress Irena is.

He grabs a cue and cranks the chalk around the tip. He says to the man behind the bar, I'm telling you these little teenage assholes are gonna get themselves killed. You just watch.

Irena jumps the cue ball and giggles, Hank, look! Hank glances over at her once and tells her to keep going, baby, you'll get it.

The barman sighs and picks up another can, moving it around like a chess piece on the card table that serves as a rail. I think you're underestimating the M-19s, Hank, he murmurs. They can handle themselves.

They're fucking kids, Hank says.

Kids with Uzis.

Uzis they don't know how to use.

It's called a trigger. You don't exactly need to get a university education.

Irena's skin tingles at the word—
trigger
—but she plays dumb. She makes her voice sorority-high: Take a turn, Hank! Come on, play with me!

Hank circles the table and aims his shot, but he keeps his eyes on the man as he arranges his scratch. Have the rebels ever cut out a man's eyelids? he says too loudly. Tell me that and I'll tell you if they're tough.

Irena translates in her head: Eyelids. Párpados. Palpebre. If she listens hard enough for just a few nights more, she's sure she could learn this language like music.

The barman closes his eyes. Come on. You can't compare—

Just for seeing the boss' face when they weren't supposed to? Huh? Do they know tough like
that
?

They've been planting bombs all over the capital. Blowing off people's legs. What's worse?

I sure like my eyelids. I don't know about you.

The barman gives an exhausted laugh. And you don't like your legs?

Hank chews the edge of his tongue, decides to ignore the question. Do they even have a boss? I thought that was their whole deal.

But that's why they're dangerous, these socialists. The man squints and draws the neck of the beer to his eye, uses the socket of bone to pry the cap off. 'Cause there are so damn many of them. 'Cause they
all
fight like they're the boss.

Hank squints.
Are
they socialists?

Not exactly. Nationalists? He sighs. I don't know what the fuck they are. But I know they think they're some kind of saviors of the working class. I know they don't like being ordered around.

Well, they need to listen to me, now. Hank scoops the cue ball out of the pocket and underhands it to Irena. They need to let me be the boss, now. Where would they be if I hadn't set them up with the cartel?

The barman looks at the floor, stifling a sad laugh.

I'm just saying, if they're supposed trust me, well—they need to
really
trust me. He ambles to the other side of the table, taps at the spot he wants Irena to aim at on the felt. Tell them they need to assign a new delegate. Someone they haven't sent before. One of their women, if they're smart.

Why—

They need to negotiate something. They don't know these cartel guys—if they want more of the cut, they need to pay respect, not just fucking take a kilo. Then he switches to English, to her: Be careful on those pocket shots, baby.

Irena misses the shot on purpose. Hank, she mews. Show me how.

How does the cartel even know they took a kilo? the barman says, worrying a bottlecap between two fingers. The quantity they're shipping, how many places they're sourcing from and going to—couldn't it be an accident?

It doesn't matter if it's an accident. They're responsible. Hank says it to the man, but he's leaning over Irena's shoulder, now, guiding her cue.

But the cartel must have their own accidents, too. When they do their own shipments.

Still doesn't matter. It's about trust. Even if it
was
an ­accident—they counted down that shipment and it was short, period. They have to own up. They have to send a delegate. We'll go meet them together.

The cue fires, sends the ball into the pocket point. Close, Hank says. Practice.

The barman pinches the bridge of his nose, exhausted. At least tell me why they need to send a woman. If they're smart.

They might not kill a woman. Hank pauses, thinking. Well, not as quick as they'd kill a man.

The barman nods, digs for another beer in the cooler. Irena hasn't really looked at the barman yet, and she's surprised when she does by how old he seems compared to his voice. But old in a strange way, the skin not so much wrinkled as hardened.

I'll tell them, he says. But, Hank, you have to listen: the M-19s don't have to go through you like everyone else. Two bottles find each other in his fist and make a sound like music. You may have set them up with the cartel, but they don't need you to keep up communications between them. They can do it on their own.

Hank grunts.

I'm telling you, the barman says, it's not like those filmmakers and the Indians.

And why not?

Because they all speak the same language.

Hank laughs. They may speak Spanish, but only I speak the cartel's language. He points with his bottle. Make goddamned sure they know that.

He turns to Irena, and it's like a knob has turned somewhere behind his eyes, and his whole face has changed.

Now, honey—he smiles—you have to get closer to the table than that. Come on, you have to really get down there.

• • •

It's more powerful than simple elocution, what she can do with her body and her silence. Acting is about listening, and when Irena listens, she understands everything, no matter the
language they're speaking. This was a more powerful thing than talking—she was more powerful than all these men who were always
talking
.

• • •

On set the next day, they shoot one of the early scenes, more gratuitous nudity, more shock-value filler. Irena takes off her shirt and steps into the river to wash it. Teo yoo-hoos from where he's been hiding on the beach, tells her to wave for the camera. She starts and gasps, throws her arms across her chest. Then the costumers give her a dry shirt and she puts it on, wades out, does it again. Again. Every time, she can feel the new American staring from off-camera when she steps into the shot, and she feeds off it; her skin glows with that vibration. Teo is getting tired, but Irena never does. If Ugo is crazy for working this way, well, she is the same kind of crazy herself. She likes the way the lines become deliciously meaningless as she repeats them, until each word is not a word but a complex motion of the face, until she can perform the feeling with every muscle in her body, until her tongue itself is just another muscle.

What are you doing in here?

What are you doing in here?

Get out!

Get out!

Get out!

Get out!

At the end of the take, they eat patacones and beef stew in an oily red broth, a stale, thin bread that feels like coarse fabric in her mouth. The food is terrible, but Irena is starving. She swallows without chewing, her cheeks bulging, her teeth full of meat. Teo looks up at her, stirring a swirl of oil at the bottom of his bowl.

How can you eat this shit?

I'm starving.

I'm too exhausted to eat. Aren't you tired?

No. Why?

Sweat shines over the ridge of his eyebrows. Ugo just made us shoot the same take for three fucking hours.

She looks over at the director, furrowed and a little crazed, flipping through a notebook. She shrugs.

It's fine.

What time did you even get back to the hotel last night?

She squints her eyes, pretending to count on her fingers. Let's see. I guess I didn't.

You stayed out all night?

She smiles as she swigs from her Postobón, shrugs once.

Jesus. Teo prods at a knuckle of fat with his knife. You're not hungover?

Oh, God, of course I am. I'm dying.

You don't look it.

She grins. Thanks, handsome.

He hadn't meant to flirt. She can tell he resents her for taking it that way. Teo's expression snaps back like a rubber band, his face suddenly cold. He prods at his food with his fork.

What are you even doing out there? he says. There can't be anything to do in that shitty little town.

She thinks of Hank, cutting the lines with a razor on the side of the pool table, the dust-white and lush green under the kerosene lamp; the walk home, insect sounds vibrating up to the roots of her hair. She looks at the new American, scanning the lunch tent to find her, and waves him down.

Come out tonight, she murmurs to Teo out of the corner of her mouth. After everyone else goes to bed. I'll show you.

• • •

She tells Teo to swallow the pickle juice and then throw back the shot in one mouthful. Then, when he's not expecting it, she cackles and puts her hand under his jaw to close his lips. Teo sputters and the men at the bar love it. Hank shouts, Careful there! I pay extra liability on this place for tourists!

We're not tourists, Irena shouts back. We're actors!

Hank hugs one arm around her. You little dummy! You sweet little thing!

Hank is drunk tonight, and in a better mood. He spills silver tequila over the pool table and Irena swipes at the gleam. He drags Irena and Teo out of the bar and through the jungle, a fog of insects swirling in the flashlight beam at their ankles. You've gotta see this, he shouts over his shoulder. Hurry up, you drunks.

Irena laughs and leaps on him piggyback. Teo walks ten paces behind, stumbling in the ruts.

Inside Hank's house, all the furniture is new. The porch has glass windows with butcher paper taped over them to keep the sun from bleaching the upholstery. There are wall sockets and long stretches of carpet, and when Hank slaps the sill, the sound is percussive and clean. He knocks on the windowpane. The Indians'll break this shit three times a year, he says, but it's worth it.

Irena spreads out her body and sinks into the plush, into the color of the fabric itself, dusk-orange, incredible.

It is, she agrees. It's so worth it.

Hank grins. He starts propping up a white screen.

We have to be at the canoes at five in the morning, Teo says into her ear.

So?

I usually show this to guests the first thing when they get here, Hank says, but your fucking director is all business. He
straightens the stand to make the screen level. Ted, he says over his shoulder, go ahead and flip that switch down by your left side.

Come on,
Ted.
Irena pronounces it in her American accent. Do what the man says.

Teo gives her a look. Who
are
you right now?

She thumbs the switch. As Hank jogs back to the couch, the projector flares on, turning him white and then a complex, twisting green.

On the screen, now, is another Hank, fifteen years younger, wrestling an enormous snake. There is no sound besides the clatter of the reel. The man and the snake are underwater, the water coffee-colored and spangled with beige sediment. The snake is as thick as the man, coiled around him so many times that she can't tell how long it would be stretched out.

Teo stiffens.

The snake constricts. The picture is too low quality to make out the scales, so the animal looks like a single rope of black muscle, loosed from a body but still moving.

Porca troia, Irena says, slouching into the couch. This is amazing.

On the screen, Hank's head keeps bobbing over the rim of the water, past the upper frame of the shot. The snake curls around his ankles, his thrashing knees, the lean muscles of his abdomen. But when his face returns to the frame, he flashes a grin full of bubbles, the sinews in his arms flexed taut. She was a big one, he says. Called her Magdalene.

Irena sits between Teo and Hank, the heat of the American bright on one side, the Italian rigid on the other. She smiles over at Teo. She puts her hand on the scruff of Hank's neck.

You have to hold the snake here? she says. This part of the neck? Is that how you do it? She strokes with the edges of her fingernails.

Exactly, Hank says through a half smile. That way she never gets a full grip with her teeth. How'd you know that?

I am—how do you say it? I am a natural.

You must be. He leans toward her. Maybe I'll teach you. If your friend doesn't mind.

He glances up at Teo. Teo keeps his eyes locked on the screen, a vein at the hinge of his jaw flickering in the green light.

Irena wonders, sometimes—why does she do things like this? It is not about sex, even if it looks like it. It is not about men, or even, really, about power—or at least, not the crass kind of power that men want. What she wants is to hear Teo's breath speed, to see his face change in the light. She wants to know how he feels before his brain has even had a chance to name the feeling
disgust,
to see it start in the farthest reaches of his body, in the fine motions of his mouth, his veins. This is why Teo isn't a very good actor: he can't summon these details up on his own. When he plays at the big emotions, anger and despair and fear, he does it with broad changes of expression but no real finesse. He is not like Irena; he doesn't have her control. The only way to get the shake in his fingertips and the twitch in his eyelid is to push him to it. It has to come up on him without warning, and grip him by the neck.