Moist (5 page)

Broth.

Martin considered his place in the shabu-shabu. He was white, but not tofu. Meat, maybe pork or chicken. Halibut? Or was he that fake crab? He didn't feel out of place like he sometimes felt around Esteban. He felt just fine. Like fake crab.

He smiled at Esteban.

“We're makin' girl soup.”

Esteban was too tired for this bullshit.

“Yeah.”

The girl with the fake tits piped up.

“Who's got the big spoon to eat me with?”

Esteban looked at Martin.

“Him. He'll eat you.”

Martin knew it was an order. He tried some of his Spanish.

“
Seguro
, baby.”

Esteban winced.

“First we need to talk. You girls go on upstairs.”

The women carried their drinks out of the pool and quickly tiptoed into the house. Esteban turned to Martin.

“I'm worried about something.”

“What?”

“Amado's arm.”

Martin knew this was something serious. He had been trying to figure out a way to tell Esteban but was afraid he'd go nuts.

“It's a problem.”

Esteban took Martin's drink from him and sucked half of it down.

“How?”

“It's how they got John Gotti.”

“What do you mean?”

“For the feds to build a racketeering case against you, they need to tie you to a specific crime. An ‘incident,' like a murder, then tie you to the murderer.”

“Amado.”

“Correct.”

“What happened to Gotti?”

“Sammy Gravano killed nineteen people, but Gotti got life in jail for ordering the hits.”

“But Gotti didn't shoot anybody.”

“Right. But he was the head of a criminal conspiracy. Racketeering.”

Esteban finished Martin's drink.

“
Carajo
.”

Martin could only nod. It was fucked up, no doubt about it.

“So we gotta get Amado's arm.”

“Unless it's already been processed.”

“What if it has?”

“My advice would be we go to Mexico.”

Esteban grunted.

“Fuck that,
cabrón
. I didn't work my ass off to go running back to Juarez just because some
culero
got his arm chopped off. No. We're stayin'.”

Esteban stood up, the water dripping off him.

“I got some friends. I'll make the calls.”

Martin nodded blankly as Esteban climbed out of the Jacuzzi. It was going to be a long night.

. . .

Norberto blinked awake again. This time he made sure to take some deep breaths, get some oxygen going to his throbbing head. He smelled old vomit. It made him gag. He felt his hands. The handcuffs were still there. So was the pole. Norberto tested his voice. It worked. Norberto took a chance and yelled for help. It hurt his head, almost made him puke again, but he yelled.

Suddenly the door flew open and Esteban walked in. In the brief blinding flash of light Norberto saw that he was in a bathroom in a nice home. White tile gleamed, clean and inviting. A porcelain sink stood above him, reminding him of a hotel he went to once with a couple of hookers and an ounce of blow. Good memories. Norberto smiled up at Esteban, but only for a second as Esteban began to viciously kick Norberto in the ribs, face, and testicles.

. . .

Max Larga sat in front of his big-screen TV. His robe was open and he let a bowl of microwave popcorn warm his nuts. A Japanese cooking show was on. Larga was bored, but it was his job to keep up with current trends in cooking, and Japanese cuisine was hot right now. His editors kept bugging him to write about preparing sushi at home, something Larga knew would cause thousands of cases of food poisoning. He tried
to argue against it, but the editors prevailed. So Larga watched. He knew that the quality of the ingredients was the single most important thing. Were there enough fresh fish markets in Peoria? Or would some well-meaning housewife be making maki with week-old catfish? It was all too much to worry about.

Larga shoveled fistfuls of popcorn into his mouth. The fake butter coated his fingers, his fat lips were swollen and shiny from the oil and salt. The warm bowl between his legs gave him a pleasant sensation, and soon he felt himself getting aroused. He thought about all the affairs he'd had in his life. Bored housewives who'd come to watch him give cooking demonstrations. Professional women he'd met on airplanes and in hotel bars. He'd always managed to get laid somehow. But the experience was never fully satisfying. Never as good as a ripe cheese or a well-prepared soup. Larga was concerned that there might be something wrong with him, that there was some aspect of sex that he just didn't understand. That's why he'd gone to the masturbation coach in the first place. Maybe, he figured, if he could pleasure himself, then he could find pleasure with others.

He flicked the TV over to the soft-porn channels and watched a couple of blondes smear chocolate syrup on each other's breasts and slurp it off. Larga's cock grew stiff as he began to stroke it, using the fake butter as a lubricant. He shifted on the sofa and did his homework.

B
OB LOOKED AT
his penis. It was early in the morning, and Bob had woken with a blistering hard-on. Stretched out and throbbing, he could admire it in all its glory. Why did Maura find it repulsive? Maybe it wasn't as long as, you know, a porn star's, but he'd never had any complaints. In fact he'd experienced just the opposite. His penis usually earned kudos from the women who encountered it.

And why not? Aesthetically his penis seemed just right. It had a nice organic form, healthy pink color. He kept it clean. He used condoms. Maybe Maura was going lesbo on him. It'd happened before with a girlfriend in college.

Bob looked over at Maura. She didn't look like a lesbian. But then, Bob wasn't sure if you could tell that way. People change.

She was sleeping peacefully on her side, her back to him. He watched her breathing. He remembered the first time he'd watched her sleep. He'd never met anyone so self-assured, so dynamic. In bed she was a pneumatic drill sergeant, barking out commands and inflicting harsh punishments if her orders were not carried out to the letter. Bob was used to women
who were awkward, a little shy, mostly sweet, but never like Maura. He used to marvel at her. Maura's drive to orgasm was a planned, sometimes inflicted, sequence of events. Failure was not an option.

She was like that out of bed too. A dynamo. She didn't wait for Bob to hem and haw about what restaurant to go to. She told him when and where. Bob admired her decisiveness. She always picked right. She was an amazing woman, and Bob was infected with enough postfeminist guilt so that he would never admit that she was sometimes overbearing, somewhat obnoxious, and frankly neurotic.

Reflecting on their time together, Bob came to the surprising realization that she had not only swept him off his feet but had put him in a bag and sunk him in the river. Suddenly, his cock deflated. It sagged like a punctured beach ball. Flaccid and done. Bob realized that they would never have sex again.

She found him repulsive. He found her overbearing. Bob sighed. He loved Maura, but he wasn't a retard.

Bob picked the Polaroid of the tattooed arm off the bedside table. He looked at the image and it filled him with longing.
Maybe I can find her
, he thought.
Maybe she'll be sweet and warm and won't think my penis is repulsive.

Bob got out of bed and started getting ready for work. His ritual—he actually thought of it as a ritual—was the same every morning except Sunday, when he liked to stay in bed, read the paper, and have sex as many times as he could before his body screamed for some protein.

But today was Wednesday, so he began the ritual. He unscrewed the Italian espresso maker and filled the bottom half with water, right up to that weird little gasket thing. Then he plopped the metal basket into place and spooned in a
heaplette of fine ground coffee. The coffee smelled good. Earthy. Dark. Charged. Bob screwed the top half onto the bottom and turned the flame on. He poured milk into a little pot and put that on the stove to warm.

Then Bob walked into the bathroom. He had just enough time to take a shit before the coffee was ready, this learned from years of experience, the espresso maker designed to give him grace.

As the sound of flushing receded in the background, Bob returned to the kitchen just as the gurgling of the espresso maker became a full-throated roar. Bob cut the gas and poured the coffee and milk into his cup simultaneously, getting the color just right. He did the same into a second cup.

As was his practice, Bob carried the two cups back into the bedroom and put one down on the bedside table next to Maura. She stirred.

“Thanks.”

Bob sipped his coffee and cleared his throat. He didn't say, “You're welcome,” and he didn't say, “Good morning.” He thought about the woman in the Polaroid and a life filled with sweet pleasures. He turned toward her.

“I think you should move out.”

That got her attention. She rolled over and gave him a nasty look.

“What?”

“I think you should move out.”

“Why?”

“Well, come on, Maura, if you find my penis repulsive and don't want to have sex with me . . .”

“I don't find you repulsive.”

“Just my penis?”

Maura turned away from him.

“Yeah.”

“Can you tell me why?”

“I don't know why.”

“Have you gone gay or something?”

“No.”

Maura sat up. Bob watched sadly as her beautiful breasts heaved under her nightgown.

“If it's any consolation, it's not your penis, it's all penises.”

“Maybe you're just burned out from your job.”

“I don't think that's it.”

“Then you should move out.”

It was funny, in a way, but Bob didn't feel that bad. He felt slightly numb. But not too bad. No urge to cry or go get drunk.
Maybe,
he thought . . .
maybe I don't love her.

Bob went into the bathroom to shave. Maura sighed and sipped her coffee. Then she said, “Maybe you should move out.”

Bob closed the door. He ran the tap, waiting for the water to get hot, and thought about the apartment where they lived. It wasn't anything special. Just cinder blocks covered in stucco and paint. Really nothing to look at. A giant horseshoe-shaped thing with a gate at the open end and a pool in the middle. Now that he thought about it, Bob realized that the apartment building might seem ugly to some people. But, like most things in Los Angeles, if you looked at it from another angle, say floating on an inflatable raft in the middle of the pool, you wouldn't see the cinder blocks or the trash cans, you'd see several large and graceful palm trees swaying in the breeze against a pure blue
sky. If you looked at if from that angle you might think you were in paradise.

Perspective. Bob was trying to put it all in perspective. He opened the door a crack.

“Maybe I will.”

. . .

On an average day in Los Angeles the weather is clear, the temperature around seventy-five degrees. It rarely rains and it never snows. Modern streets and freeways, with traffic signals designed to provide efficiency of transport, crisscross the great basin, wind up over the hills, and spread out across the valley.

Despite what can only be called ideal driving conditions, there are, on an average day, approximately two hundred traffic accidents. It's unexplainable.

Martin woke up to screeching tires and crumpling metal. The screech was a blinding pain behind his left eye, the crumpling metal was the taste in his mouth. A fender-bender in his brain. A sig-alert in his body. A bong-hit hangover in full bloom. This could be explained.

He looked over at the woman sleeping next to him. Good God, her tits were standing straight up. Virtually antigravity. Martin mused that he must be upside down, in outer space, or in Australia, something that would account for these tits. Then he remembered what those breasts felt like. Hard as fucking stones. He looked at her and shook his head in dismay. Fake tits, dyed blond hair, skin artificially bronzed the color of strained carrots. Maybe she was an illusion. Maybe she was not real at all.

Martin stretched, got out of bed, and slouched toward the shower. He liked to take a shower in the morning. Otherwise he never felt fully awake. He let the hot water caress his body, the scented soap reinvigorating his mind, the steam cutting through last night's reefer fog.

When Martin, fresh from the shower, his soul patch neatly trimmed, walked into the kitchen, Esteban was already at the table forking mouthfuls of nopalito cactus and scrambled eggs into his mouth. The Latina with the natural breasts who, Martin was to learn, was named Lupe, stood in front of the stove. In the daylight he could see how lovely she was. More Mexican Indian than Mexican Mexican. Black hair to match her black eyes, her skin a luminous terra-cotta. She looked at Martin.

“Buenos días.”

Martin nodded.

“Good morning.”

Esteban looked up.

“Eat. We got a lot of shit to do.”

Lupe handed Martin a plate and a fork.

“Thanks.”

Martin sat down and sipped his coffee. He waited for the acidic brew to hit his tequila-tenderized stomach. It did, and the feeling he got can best be described as queasy. He watched as Esteban dumped vast splotches of hot sauce on his eggs. The same hot sauce that Martin felt hit his tongue like battery acid and gave his lips a raw and unpleasant sensation for most of the day. Esteban spoke with his mouth full.

“I talked to some people down at Parker Center.”

“Yeah?”

“The arm's getting delivered later today.”

Martin couldn't believe it.

“They don't have it?”