This Love Is Not for Cowards (26 page)

Marco checks into the Hotel Maria Bonita, in Juárez, as required the night before a home game. He and Maleno Frías watch soccer on television in the room they share. El Kartel's arts-and-crafts brigade stays up all night sewing banners and cutting cardboard into huge red squares to be flashed during the game. Someone in the
barra brava
secures the use of a
rutera
, and it is on this school bus that El Kartel arrives at the stadium in the morning. They ride inside the bus. They also ride on top of the bus like the Indios did back on that night when the team rose to the Primera. Karteleros who can't fit in or on the bus march alongside it, pounding bass drums and spitting into dented brass trumpets. Everyone wears jerseys. They've all got their flags and big cardboard squares. Sofia and a dozen other Kartel girlfriends wear jester's hats and red-and-white pantaloons sewn from the same satin used to decorate the nightclub for the EK prom. Sofia has painted a huge red star on her face, centered on her right eye. VOLVEREMOS, state at least a dozen banners.
We will return
. One hand-painted banner I see: I AM JUÁREZ, I AM INDIOS. The banners float into a parking lot already full with cars and pickup trucks. Above the stadium, a giant white flag—a
megabandera
to rival the Mexican tricolor—announces that it's game day on La Frontera.

Los jugadores
warm up under a sun that's on the cusp of intense. Marco and his teammates wear all-white uniforms to reflect the rays better than the navy-blue tops worn by Pumas. Juan de la Barrera and Marco and everybody else zig and zag around flat orange cones. Christian deflects soft shots lobbed by the goalkeeper coach. Referees check the nets to ensure there are no holes. Pretty girls advertising a cell-phone company walk a lap around the track, wearing blue spandex outfits. They are followed by the Home Depot dance team, in orange spandex, and then the Tecate beer girls in tight red. Groundskeepers straighten vinyl banners for Sony and Office Depot positioned just off the field, near the goals, where they will be seen by television viewers across the continent. Municipal police in riot gear set up a line in front of El Kartel, just in case. Someone lobs onto the track a roll of toilet paper. A Border Patrol helicopter buzzes the river.

It's a sellout crowd, of course. Nobody's going to miss this one. The north bleachers fill with fans of Pumas, a popular team. The tunnels to the dressing rooms inflate maybe fifteen minutes before kickoff. The Indios jog through their tunnel, back to their cramped lockers. Liniment stings the air. Candles burn under the Virgen de Guadalupe. Everyone changes into their game shirts and Gabino calls the team into a huddle, showing more passion than I've ever seen him display. This is it. We can do it. A prayer is offered to the Virgin. The team name is shouted in unison. Marco, just before running out to the field, shakes the hand of the team priest who works the locker room every home game.

Up in the press box, Ramón and Adir assist the national correspondents covering the Indios' descent. I turn toward the owner's box. Francisco Ibarra is not in it. He has not shown up for the final game.
What is up with this guy?
As mystified as I am by his absence, I'm more surprised by who sits in Francisco's regular seat: Paco. The son who said Juárez could drown in its own shit for all he cares. He motions for me to join him, so I do. I watch the game in the owner's box, sitting between Paco and Lorenzo Garcia. Girlfriend Karina Garcia rounds out our row of extra-wide padded seats. Paco orders me a beer before I even ask for one, asserting himself as the host.

“I'm thinking of maybe moving to Mexico City,” he tells me. “I've got a lot of new projects. As for the Indios, my dad's ideas are probably too big for people from Juárez. He presents ideas to the mayor, to the governor, and they don't dare to dream big. In Mexico City, they're more receptive.”

On the field, Coco Giménez gets the start, sort of an honorarium for all his years (and years) of service. I watch him stand still, conserving his energy as the ball caroms around the field. But when the ball randomly lands on his boots, he does get off a nice shot on goal, which the Pumas keeper barely deflects out of bounds. An Indios corner kick follows, and Coco heads it in. Coco has scored. Take
that
,
El Diario
! We're winning 1–0, and then 2–0 when Coco—old man Coco!—scores again, one of the best goals I have ever seen. First, he knocks down a long pass with his chest, and then he spins 180 degrees to face the Pumas goal. Although he's well outside the penalty box, he doesn't wait for the ball to hit the ground before kicking a long shot that arcs over the goalie's outstretched hands and into the far top corner of the net. It's world-class, the goal of the year in the entire league. And with the goal, his second of the game and his second all season, Coco ties Jair for the dubious title of team scoring champion.

The Indios hold on for their third win in their last four games. They've knocked off another top team, shut them out, even. El Kartel spills onto the field, mostly in gratitude. I see Weecho. I see Saul Luna. Arson Loskush's gray tank top reveals a colony of tattoos: DIRTY SOUTH scripted on his left shoulder, a thick EK gunsight logo on the biceps. Red stars shine on his chest, and the name of his son is inked on his neck. The police want to beat El Kartel back into the bleachers, but Gil Cantú calls them off. The fans can stay on the field. Gil runs into the locker room to ask the players to head back out to sign autographs.

Marco is one of the first to emerge. I follow him through the tunnel. He's showered already and dressed in a red Indios polo shirt and an Ed Hardy baseball hat, worn backwards. El Kartel collapses onto him, asking him to sign everything in sight: a T-shirt on which are printed the words EL KARTEL: OUR BLOOD IS FOR YOU, a photo for a teenage girl, another T-shirt. A Kartelero asks Marco if he can hook him up with some merchandise, and Marco takes the polo shirt off his back, signs it, and hands it over. This only excites El Kartel further. They push on Marco so aggressively I start to worry for his safety. Can someone be crushed to death standing up?

“Robert, hold this for me, will you?” he cries out, handing me his messenger bag. It's the last I see of him for three minutes. Everyone wants a piece of Marco, perhaps a piece of his flesh. It's as if El Kartel had been zombified in the hot sun and now they must feed on an Indios midfielder to survive. Marco's buried in there so deeply that Adir from the press office calls in the police to pull him out and back to the locker room, to safety.

“That shit was crazy,” Marco says when I hand him back his bag.

The zombies march out to the parking lot, where Gil is liquidating the Indios' inventory. He's set up a red tent in which everything Indios is available at bargain-basement prices. Everything. All the surplus uniforms, shorts, socks, the remaining cold-weather parkas, duffel bags, red polo shirts exactly like the one Marco just gave away, and more. It's official stuff, the real deal. A Primera game jersey that might cost seventy-five dollars online, you can have it for twenty. What color do you want? White? Black? Red? Long-sleeved or short?
Grande o pequeño?
The other T-shirt vendors working the stadium pack up shop, unable to compete. Gil is sorry to cut into their sales, he tells me, but he's gotta do whatever he can to make payroll. The few remaining front-office staff rifle through boxes to fill the orders, which fly in fast. Just about everyone in El Kartel stands in line, pesos in hand.

“They're actually pretty cheap,” Gil tells me, trying to convince me to buy some stuff, too. “I bought a whole set of uniforms for this youth team I have in El Paso.”

I see Big Weecho in the tent, searching in vain for any jerseys sized extra, extra large. What's next on the El Kartel itinerary? “Drink, man!” he tells me. He points to a live band setting up in a corner of the parking lot, near the
poliforo
, an arena where Weecho has wrestled in the past. A vendor serves
hamburguesas
to a growing crowd of Karteleros. I walk over and fall into conversation with two Kartel girlfriends.

“Life is better when something is on the line,” one of them says. “The league is better when a team has to descend. It's just too bad that team is Los Indios.”

“It's emotional,” her friend adds. She's wearing a brand-new Indios jersey, white. “You cannot cry, because the experience was positive. But you want to cry.”

“Tienes que soportarlo,”
concludes the first girl. You have to bear it. I stay with the girls and the rest of El Kartel through two sets of salsa standards and two orders of hamburgers with onions and jalapeño peppers. We all stay even after the band stops playing and packs up their trumpets and amplifiers. The setting sun stretches shadows across a mostly empty lot. My cell phone rings.

“You're still at the stadium, dude?” Marco asks. He left four hours ago. Yeah man, I'm here with El Kartel. We're doing what Jair Garcia and Edwin did at the last practice. We're loitering. We're remembering. We're reluctant to leave.

Chapter 20

Wedding

Sofia and Ken-tokey appear on the front page of all the newspapers: she in her jester's hat and face paint, the two of them holding up an I ♥ INDIOS banner. They are the faces that best represent the sadness, resolve, and
amor
of
la gente
. The morning after the game, on the way to the Grupo Yvasa complex for a last team meeting, I buy every paper with their picture:
El Diario
,
El Mexicano
,
Norte
, and
PM
, which despite its name usually hits the streets before noon. Photos from the Pumas victory make
El Diario
's society page. Also in the society page: coverage of the
quinceañera
of fifteen-year-old Frida Lara. Her coming-out party is described as “an unforgettable experience.” Her dress is white and puffy. A tiara sparkles in her black hair as she leans against a couch. For a theme song, the paper reports, she chose the pop anthem “Bittersweet Symphony” by the Verve.

“Cause it's a bittersweet symphony, this life. Trying to make ends meet, you're a slave to the money then you die.”

The players have been called to the complex largely to clean out their lockers. When I get there, I find Marco wearing his Ed Hardy baseball hat, gray capris of unknown label, white canvas Izod tennis shoes, and a gray Aéropostale T-shirt. A red Ferrari backpack hangs from his shoulder. He offers me a raspberry-flavored breath mint as he thanks Adir from the media office for printing up directions to the wedding, this Saturday. From his locker, Marco pulls a tube of hair gel and presents it to the goalkeeper coach, a joke because the coach is bald. The coach laughs and asks Marco to sign a jersey for him.

The clubhouse is located in the same building as the front office and the media-relations department. It's understood to be for players and coaches only. In addition to the lockers and showers, there's a big lounge with a computer for checking e-mail and also a microwave, a refrigerator, a coffeemaker, and a large table where the players like to play cards. Official team photos line the walls, along with jerseys signed by every player that particular season. Dozens of framed copies of
Vamos Indios!
magazine show captain Juan de la Barrera touring a maquiladora while wearing plastic safety glasses or Edwin Santibáñez screaming down the pitch with his long hair flying behind him. A leather sectional couch faces a TV that's usually showing live soccer. (There's always a match somewhere.) Occasionally a couple guys fire up the Xbox to play FIFA as themselves, against themselves. Edwin strolls into the clubhouse wearing a tight green Ed Hardy T-shirt. King Kong follows him inside, pulling off mirrored sunglasses. Kong is greeted warmly; all is forgiven. It feels like the last day of school, like exams are over and time off awaits. The meeting, called by Gil Cantú, is quick.

“We just talked about the money and our vacation time,” Marco tells me when we stop afterwards at a roadside stand for gorditas and orange soda served in bottles embossed with pictures of luchador
Rey Mysterio
. Two more players join us at the stand, a quorum that decides to upgrade to Los Bichis for a full lunch. Marco gets on his phone to invite more players. By the time we get to the Sinaloan seafood restaurant, nine Indios are already there, with more on the way. Waiters pull tables together and rope off a section of the dining room. Christian the goalie asks for a spicy shrimp cocktail. I order the fish tacos on Edwin's recommendation. Marco calls for the first of what will be many, many rounds of Tecate Light.

“We're just chilling,” Marco says. “It's the first time we've ever done this in a restaurant where people can see us. Normally we try not to drink in public. But now, you know, why the fuck not?”

Highlights from the Pumas victory flash on a television, and Edwin winces when he's shown absorbing a hard foul. I notice the wrinkles around his eyes, evidence less of his age (he's thirty) than of a life spent working outdoors. Defenseman Tomás Campos orders enough oysters for everyone to share. Marco selects a smaller serving of marlin tostadas and shares them anyway. Christian calls for another round of Tecate Light. The goalie tells me he's outta here. He only came to the border to jump-start his career. He'd been languishing on the bench of the Monterrey Rayados when Gil Cantú offered him a short-term contract and a chance to start. Christian had just married. He didn't want to leave his new wife, and she most definitely wouldn't join him in Juárez. But they prayed—he's as religious as his name—and God told them Christian should go to Juárez anyway. He played so well that several Primera teams want him for next season. It was a good decision to come here, he acknowledges. The city gave him an opportunity. But he is so very gone. He orders yet another round of Tecate Light.

“No más Tecate Light,”
says the waiter. We've drunk them dry. I think of a T-shirt that Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger was photographed wearing at a party: DRINK LIKE A CHAMPION TODAY. The Indios may be minor league losers in soccer, but nobody comes close when it comes to Tecate Light consumption. Christian switches the order to
cerveza
Modelo and the liquid lunch continues. A liquid dinner follows. The players stay into the night, allowed to continue drinking whatever liquor remains even after the restaurant's normal ten P.M. closing. It's a serious binge, but it's only one night.
Why the fuck not?
The rest of the week, Marco's sobered by all the wedding prep he's juggling. Where will his parents sleep? What time does he need to be at the church? How will his sisters get to the church? He calls me one afternoon in a panic. Do I know any place where he can buy live butterflies to be released after the ceremony? Dany still wants those live butterflies.

WEDDING SEASON IN Ciudad Juárez. On the morning Marco and Dany are to marry, the papers chronicle a wedding from the previous evening. Just five minutes after the bride and groom had vowed to stay together until death, gunmen stormed into the Lord of Mercy Catholic Church, ordering everyone to the floor. The groom, his brother, and his uncle were whisked away. A man outside the church was shot. The groom and the two others turned up dead in the bed of a stolen pickup truck. Their bodies showed signs of torture.

“I'm confused, frustrated and in despair,” the father of the groom told the
El Paso Times
. “My wife, she is devastated.”

Marco and Dany also marry in a Catholic church, Our Lady of Peace, located behind the torta restaurant I visited my first week in Juárez, the one where a man was shot more than a hundred times. The church is blond bricks stacked in a style that, in 1974, looked contemporary, perhaps ultramodern. It has a relatively low roof and walls that were never designed to meet at right angles. Although we're deep in the city—I can hear car horns in a Wal-Mart parking lot—Marco rides up to the church on a white horse speckled with gray spots. The horse's saddle is brown leather atop a colorfully striped wool blanket. Marco wears all black—his suit, his shirt, and his shiny black tie. “Rock & Republic,” he tells me with a big smile, “narrow cut.” He knows I was curious about the designer label. Sharp sunlight glints off the diamonds in both of his ears. His uncle pins a red rose to Marco's lapel, right above his heart.

Dany says her strapless white wedding dress was the first one she tried on. Upon further questioning, she admits it was really the first one she tried on at that particular store; she'd previously rejected six other dresses at two other shops. Her black hair sweeps off her face, held back at her ears, which are pierced with pearls. Her narrow white veil is visible only from behind as she walks down the aisle. The youngest of her nephews fidget in wood pews to her left, Marco's family from Dallas and Mexico City sit on the right. Several Indios hang in the back. Gabino in a suit. Edwin in a suit and his daughters in dresses. Juan the captain wears blue jeans and a T-shirt from Abercrombie & Fitch. Francisco Ibarra doesn't show up, but his bodyguard does. The main image on the altar is Jesucristo levitating outside the tomb where he'd been buried three days earlier.

The priest tells Marco and Dany to love everybody with Jesus Christ in their hearts. Dany is specifically instructed, in a lecture that lasts almost fifteen minutes, to obey and cherish her husband. Marco's uncle—chosen because his marriage is the example Marco and Dany want to emulate—lassos a jeweled silver necklace around their necks, symbolically uniting them. Marco and Dany recite their vows into a microphone so everyone can hear. Toward the end of the ceremony, the necklace is removed and the newlyweds carry a rose over to the church's glassed-in shrine to the Virgin of Guadalupe. They kneel and say a private prayer. When they return to the altar, Marco kisses his bride. Outside, in bright sun, family and
futbolistas
shake Marco's hand and tell Dany how beautiful she looks. Live butterflies, I'm sorry to report, are not released.

“I'm happy for you!” cheers Wendy, from the Indios' sales office.

“I'm happy, too!” Marco replies.

No blue jeans allowed at the reception, though winter coats will be tolerated. A cold front has swooped in so suddenly that it snows in Chihuahua city. The outdoor wedding reception is going to be chilly, a holiday on ice. I'm hoping to tough it out in only my best suit, which I'm wearing on Marco's strict orders. The directions Adir provided lead me to the house where Dany grew up and her parents still live. I enter through what is technically the garage, though you wouldn't know it. Gauzy white drapes hide the automatic door so well I feel like I'm in the Delano hotel on Miami Beach. True to Dany's vision, the garage and the backyard it opens onto have been transformed into a nightclub. White leather couches and ottomans cluster around illuminated white cubes. Palm trees bathe in pink light. Ice sculptures try to melt into a swimming pool that has been turned into a fountain, streams of water arcing into the air and somehow landing back in the pool without making a splash. Daisies swirl in the hot tub. Laser lights fire onto the side of the house next door, forming patterns that swirl and change colors, like at a disco.

Waiters aggressively push drinks—“What do you want? Beer? Bourbon? Really good red wine? We've got everything!”—while shuttling guests to their proper places. Marco's parents and sisters control a round table covered in champagne-colored fabric, just like Dany wanted. Teenagers recline on a cluster of couches near the garage. Even the youngest kids, ages six and seven, have their own lounge. I'm steered to what I choose to believe is the VIP section, where the famous soccer players of Ciudad Juárez sit on one set of couches while their wives talk to each other on white couches of their own.

I take note of who shows up and who doesn't. Juan the captain attended the wedding, but he's skipping the reception. Adir from the press office is here. Ramón Morales is not. Whisky the equipment manager has made it. Team owner Francisco Ibarra has not, which I know hurts Marco's feelings. Even Gil Cantú fails to attend—
Drive in Juárez at night? Are you crazy?!
—but at least Gabino the coach is here in his stead. Paco Ibarra has known Dany longer than even Marco has, yet Paco has skipped out as well, same as his father. “I don't like weddings,” he will tell me afterwards. Some of Dany's cousins, as threatened, stay in El Paso.

Huge mistake. When the band takes the stage promising to keep the party going till six in the morning, they mean it. I salsa with Wendy as best I can. Gabino two-steps the achy breaky
corazón
with his tall wife. A full dinner is served, and the drinks keep on coming; there's a dedicated bartender just for shots. As the night unfolds, I discern a circus theme. Mimes show up at one point, slinking around the lounges as silently as the human statues Dany ordered up for the yard. The dance floor is crowded, but I have no problem spotting two guys dressed as jesters and walking on stilts. When the band takes a break, out come a trio juggling fiery batons, kids hired right off the street, where they spit fire in exchange for pesos from passing cars. Marco grabs one of their batons and spins it overhead. The guy's a natural. No one is burnt to a crisp. No leather couches are incinerated. Marco's Rock & Republic narrow-cut suit is not even singed.

“Have you seen the monster you created?” Indio Jair Garcia shouts at Maleno Frías.

“I didn't do anything,” Maleno shouts back. “He was this way when I found him!”

Dany's sister dips a strawberry into a chocolate fountain while mariachis serenade a pack of her nieces. Marco shuttles from couch to couch, posing for pictures. By two o'clock in the morning women are wearing their husbands' suit jackets for warmth and some of the youngest kids nap on the couches. Just when I'm thinking the party might be winding down, the band takes the stage for another set and the kitchen produces a full second feeding. Menudo, a hearty soup, bubbles in steaming cauldrons. I accept a bowl and then a second, dunking chunks of warm bread into the thick broth. Edwin invites me into the house for shots of Don Julio 1942 tequila. “There is none better,” he assures me. Dany slips past us, wearing a puffy ski jacket over her wedding dress but also wearing flip-flops with her name inked on one foot and Marco's on the other. She steps onto the dance floor so we can tape pesos and dollars to her veil. Her girlfriends all dance with her while wearing blinking red plastic devil's horns, which apparently is a Mexican tradition.

“They've done this at every wedding I've ever went to,” one of her friends tells me.

Edwin hands me an apron, telling me to tie it around my waist like the other men are doing. Okay. Before the garter is thrown, the single men are ordered to run figure-eights around the dance floor. I'm dizzy by the time I spin back to one of the leather couches. Dany's mother encourages me to enjoy another shot. Adir slaps me on the shoulder.