“It’s a little scary, isn’t it?”
I exhaled, remembering making this drive by myself. Even so, I’d been glad to leave the border towns. “Yeah. Anything could happen out here.”
Though I didn’t say so, anything could happen when we reached Laredo as well. Adjoining Nuevo Laredo via International Bridge, the town is a shithole, and I wished Chance hadn’t let Min join him there. Then again, he probably didn’t know about the warring cartels turning the place into a charnel house. Thanks to their private war over the I-35 route, which exploded at the intersection of Paseo Colón and Avenida Reforma, the murder rates there rivaled those in DC.
It took the intervention of the Mexican army to break up that fight, but I doubted this was common knowledge for the average American. I knew of it only because an overly informative U-Haul agent offered the news when I passed through, along with a warning to get my ass out of town. And this was where his mother disappeared.
I smelled something burning.
On the Road Again
For once, it wasn’t merely my nose for trouble.
After Chance pulled off to the side of the road to investigate the reason for the dashboard light coming on, I climbed out to stretch my legs. I wandered around while he tried to figure out how to open the hood. As far as the eye could see, there was nothing but trees and mountains narrowly cut by the well-kept highway. Hard to believe we were only an hour out of the city. For about a minute, I managed to hold my tongue and then my sense of humor got the best of me.
“Let me guess. You didn’t check the fluids before we left?”
His head jerked up, his outraged look priceless. Chance did not see to such things. He paid people to see to such things, but he would’ve had a hard time making himself understood at a service station, so I popped the hood myself. Some steam billowed out, verifying there was a problem, but damned if I knew what it was.
The radiator looked intact, and it was beyond me to examine anything else. If we were just low on water, I could walk to one of the roadside spigots, but if the truck needed replacement parts, we were in a world of trouble. I didn’t bother checking my cell; the mountains fucked with reception out here and who would I call anyway? We’d be lucky if a truck driver picked us up within a couple hours.
“Don’t turn off the engine,” I told him. “Let it cool off while it idles. I’ll walk back a ways and get some water. You stay with the Suburban and check the back to see if you have any spare coolant.”
“You want me to make you a sandwich too?”
“Turkey on rye,” I said over my shoulder. “Lettuce and tomato, no onion.”
I found an empty container and set off, grateful we hadn’t gone too far past the last water stop. Highly ill advised to drink from the highway taps, but for a vehicle in trouble, they were a godsend. Chance startled me by laughing, audible a hundred feet away. I turned and gave him a quizzical look.
“You’re so great,” he said. “I’d forgotten that too.”
What could I say? I just kept walking. I sweated, the sun beating down on my head as I reflected how blue the sky is so far from civilization. Later I tried to refill the engine’s water reservoir. Let’s just say Chance didn’t think I was so great when I cracked the engine block.
To his credit, he didn’t rant, just pulled his backpack out of the truck. I had the good sense not to say anything since I’d teased him about not checking the vehicle. It seemed like we were even on catastrophes. So we leaned against the Suburban in silence, tired and thirsty, waiting for a ride, as we’d done for the last two hours.
Finally, someone stopped for us, but his cab was crowded and I rode for several hours on Chance’s lap. If he’d made a comment about his legs going numb, I would’ve clubbed him with my straw handbag. The trucker took us as far as San Luis Potosí, where we arranged for the rental company to reclaim the Suburban. I didn’t want to bitch, but we’d wasted an astonishing amount of time, and we were only around halfway to Monterrey.
So a few hours on the road, a few hours beside the road, and another few hours on Chance’s lap. It was well into the afternoon by the time we sorted out another ride. This time Chance got a Toyota with precious few amenities, looking pained as he slid his credit card across the counter. Mostly, I hoped the vehicle was reliable.
Before departing, we ate at the Holiday Inn there, a nice Brazilian-style place where they laid side dishes in a buffet and then brought to the table skewered cuts of meat for us to choose from. I had the beer-braised chicken and a nice cucumber salad. While he enjoyed a cup of excellent coffee and I pondered having some flan, I heard a familiar voice.
“Chance, is that you?”
There it was again—his luck. If we hadn’t broken down, we’d never have stopped here. What earthly reason could Tanya have to be in San Luis? Yet here she was. He waved her over, smiling. She was one of his acquaintances, and I’d never liked her, rich and useless to say the least. Of course, I might have liked her better if she didn’t seize every possible opportunity to remind me I didn’t belong with him.
When she reached our table, she stared at me as if I were something she’d found sticking to the sole of her shoe. In the end, she decided not to dignify my existence with a comment. Maybe she hoped I’d disappear if she clicked her ruby slippers together (though they were bisque and bronze) and wished hard enough.
“I tried to get in touch with you before I left the country,” she said to him. “But nobody seemed to know where you’d gone. I have your money. Daddy finally coughed up my allowance because I’m doing something useful these days. I’m a patron of native crafts and culture.” Her tone disparaged the art she purported to patronize, but Tanya chattered on, oblivious to our silence. “So odd we’d run into each other here of all places, but then it is the only decent restaurant in town. We’d probably die of dysentery if we chanced one of those tavernas or taco stands.”
I steamed quietly, as I’d eaten in my share of those places and never suffered any ill effects. Chance made an effort to be civil, though I could tell his patience was stretched to the breaking point. We’d be lucky to get there by midnight at this rate, and I’d give myself a lobotomy if he invited Tanya along.
With precise motions, he wiped his mouth on the blue linen napkin and then laid it across his coffee cup. “I wish I could spend more time catching up, but we need to go. If you want to give me a check while we’re here, though, that will be fine.”
Her expression as she got out her checkbook said he’d been rude. I think she had expected to make some social headway with him but I could have warned her that Chance never fucked anyone who borrowed money from him. He was fastidious in that regard; he mingled, wore the right clothes to intrigue twats like Tanya, but he’d never be one of them.
Though he wasn’t a shark with a goon squad that broke legs for him, Chance often made high interest, short term loans to privileged idiots who overspent their trust funds, and I was how he’d earned the capital to do so. Still, the number of zeroes on the check she made out to him in U.S. dollars made my eyes widen.
“Good luck with your art show,” I said to her in saccharine tones.
As we waited for the valet to bring our car around (in Mexico even Burger King has valet parking), he murmured, “That came at a good time.” He paused, as if weighing whether to tell me more. “Things were running a bit lean, and we’re going to need that money before we’re through.”
I rolled my eyes. “Tell me again why you don’t play the lottery.”
“It would be wrong.” Giving me an inscrutable look, he tipped the man holding his door and got into the piss yellow Camry.
“Right,” I said. “We’re the good guys.”
Occupied with heading back toward the highway, he didn’t respond. I grinned as he stopped at a PEMEX and had the fluids topped off; we were taking no chances with the Toyota. We bought bottles of water there as well, just to be safe. However, studying him once we got under way, I decided something beneath his impeccable tailoring suggested a hero keeping dark forces at bay.
The sun was setting by that point, blazing fire over the Sierra Madre. Slate and charcoal clouds gathered over the mountains in the distance. The highway uncoiled before us like a dark, patient snake. We had another four hours to go, and most of the driving would be after dark. I considered offering to spell him, but he’d just sigh and shift in the passenger seat. Chance didn’t like being driven—another control issue.
The vastness between towns had a way of making me feel small, like nobody would notice anything that went down out here except to hose off the road. Headlights shining in the rearview mirror made me feel uneasy. The feeling passed, but the car never did. It kept pace with us for miles.
I tried to dismiss it as paranoia, but I still remembered the way Kel Ferguson had stared at me as the bailiffs led him away. Unlike other cons, he hadn’t sworn vengeance or screamed that he knew people on the outside. His eyes did all the talking, and what they said still woke me up at night.
“Do you ever think about them?” I asked after the silence started to get to me.
“About who?” He didn’t look at me.
I traced a protective symbol against the car window, like that would help. “The guys we put away.”
“I’m glad they’re off the street,” he said. “And no, I don’t worry about them getting out. We have enough law abiding citizens after us to make me wary of borrowed trouble.”
We’d run afoul of lawmen more than once. In Terre Haute, they’d all but run us out of town on a rail. I sighed. “You got that right.”
After that, we didn’t talk much as we headed north along 57. If we were so inclined, we could follow the highway all the way to Piedras Negras, Coahuila, but our business took us onto 40 instead, marking the last miles to Monterrey. Over nine hours in the car so far, not counting the time we spent waiting for rescue.
Since November ranged toward the end of rainy season, the sky didn’t open up until well after full dark. The rain splattered on the windshield as if by the bucket, and Chance leaned forward, slowing to a crawl as we approached the lights of Monterrey. After replaying what he’d said about needing money, it occurred to me then that maybe he knew more than he’d told me, but I wasn’t dumb enough to pick a fight in the middle of a storm.
He had to be tense, worrying about his mother, and this marked our tenth hour in a car. More like fourteen since we left my apartment this morning, so it was a wonder we hadn’t killed each other yet. Unerringly, I found the spot at the base of his skull with my thumb and forefinger, pressed so that he let out a moan.
“Christ, that’s good. Stop while I’m driving, though. I don’t want to run off the road.”
Funny how he had the power to take me back in time with a handful of words. In my mind’s eye, I saw all the other occasions where he’d tipped his head back in bliss beneath my hand. My chest felt tight; I didn’t want to remember the good times. I’d blocked them because it’s next to impossible to leave someone you really like.
