I put Nora at a table near the doorway and went over to the bar. The bartender had a flat, broad, brown, impassive face, tiny hooded eyes, and a huge sweep of curved black mustache. In too loud and too contentious a voice I ordered a beer, a Carta Blanca, for Nora, and a tequila anejo for myself. The imitation of drunk is nearly always overdone. To be persuasive, merely let the lower half of your face go slack, and when you want to look at anything, move your whole head instead of just your eyes. Walk slowly and carefully, and speak loudly, slowly and distinctly.
I went back to the table. In a little while the bartender brought the order over, bringing a salt shaker and wedge of lemon, with my shot glass of tequila. In slow motion I took a wad of pesos out of my shirt pocket, separated a bill and put it on the table. He made change out of his pocket and picked it up. He went away. I left the change there. I had told Nora how to act, told her to sit unsmiling and look everywhere except at me.
I heard the clatter of heels. A girl came down the stairs in back and came out of the left doorway; a narrow, big-eyed girl with her dark hair bleached a strange shade of dull red. She wore an orange blouse and a blue skirt and carried a big red purse. She stared at us and went to the bar and had a brief and inaudible conversation with the bartender, and then went out into the sunlight, with one more glance at us, walking with a great deal of rolling and twitching. I hoped it wasn’t Felicia. The girl had a look of brash impenetrable stupidity.
I signaled the bartender and pointed to my empty glass. Nora’s beer was half gone. He brought me a shot and another wedge of lemon, took more money from the change on the table.
On cue, Nora said in a voice of dreadful clarity, “Do you really need that?”
“Shut up,” I said. I sprinkled the salt on the back of my hand, the one in which I held the wedge of lemon. I picked up the shot glass in the other hand. One, two, three. Salt, tequila, lemon.
“Did you really need that?”
“Shut up.”
She got up and hurried out. I sat there stupidly, and then I got up and lumbered after her. I left my change on the table.
“Hey!” I yelled. “Hey!”
She kept walking swiftly. I broke into a heavy run and caught up with her as she was walking through the square. I took her arm and she yanked it away and kept walking, toward the hotel, her chin high. I stood and watched her, and then caught up with her again.
When we were well beyond the village she looked behind us and then looked at me with a little nervous grin and said, “Did I do it right?”
“Perfectly.”
“I still don’t get the point.”
“Credentials. I’m the big drunken Americano who’s having trouble with his woman. I went away and left my money. When I go into town tonight, they’ll have me all cased. I’ll be the kind of a pigeon they can understand. Ready for plucking. I’ll have a lot of friends when I go back in there tonight.”
I arrived at the cantina at about eight-thirty. The tables were full, the bar was crowded, the juke box was blasting. The room was lighted by two gasoline lanterns, rigged with some kind of heavy orange glass, casting a weird and lurid light. Most of the customers were men. There were a couple of fat women with the groups at the tables, and there were four girls in circulation, the one with the red hair and three others. A sparrowy withered little white-haired man was the table waiter. My bartender was still on duty. There was a diminution of the dozen loud conversations as I came in. They made a small space for me at the bar.
The bartender came at once and placed the forgotten change in front of me. He stared at me without expression. I carefully divided it into two equal amounts and pushed half of it across to him. He gave me a big white smile, and, with suitable ceremony, gave me a free tequila. We were closely watched. He made explanation to all, of which I did not understand a word, and the room slowly came back to the full decibel level I had heard as I walked in. I looked no more and no less drunk than before. My only change was a constant happy uncomprehending smile.
It took them about ten minutes to rig the first gambit. She edged in beside me, shoving the others to make room for herself, a chubby, bosomy little girl with a merry face, a white streak dyed in her curly black hair, a careless and abundant use of lipstick. “Allo,” she said. “Allo.”
I pointed at my glass and pointed at her and she bobbed her head and gave the bartender her order. When it came I pointed to myself and said, “Trav.”
“Ah. Trrav. Si.”
I stabbed her in the wishbone with a heavy finger and looked inquisitive.
“Rosita,” she said, and laughed as if we had made wonderful jokes.
“Speak English, Rosita.”
“Af, no puedo, Trrav. Lo siento mucho, pero…”
I smiled at her, took her by the shoulders and turned her away and gave her a little pat, then filled up the space at the bar, my back to her. When I glanced back at her, she was giving me a thoughtful look. I watched her make her slow way through the crowded room and finally edge in near the wall and bend over and whisper to a girl who sat with three men. I could not see her very distinctly in the odd light, but I saw her look toward me, shake her head and look away. Rosita made her way back to the other end of the bar. She beckoned to the bartender. He leaned over and she spoke to him. He gave her a brief nod. A few minutes later he made his way to the girl at the table and bent over her and whispered to her. She shook her head. He said some more. She shrugged and got up. A man at the table yanked her back down into the chair. She sprang up at once. The man lunged at her and the bartender gave him a solid thump on the side of the head. There was a moment of silence, and then all the talk started again, over the persistent sound of the rock and roll. I saw the girl making her way in my direction, and I saw that she was what they call muy guapa. She wore an orange shift, barely knee length slit at both sides. She was quite dark, and she was big. Her dark hair was braided, pulled tight, coiled into a little shining turret on top of her head. Her jaw was squared off, her neck long, her mouth broad and heavy, her eyes tilted, full of an Indio glitter. Her bare arms were smooth and brown, slightly heavy. The shift made alternate diagonal wrinkles as she walked, from thrust of breast to round heavy hip. She came toward me with a challenging arrogance, the easy slowness of a lioness. She was not pretty. She was merely strong, savage, confident… and muy guapa.
Just as she reached me, there was a disturbance behind her, shouts of warning, a shift and tumble of chairs. The bar customers scattered, leaving the two of us alone in the emptiness. She turned her back to the bar, standing beside me. The man who had been thumped in the head crouched six or eight feet from us. He was young, and his face was tense and sweaty, his eyes so narrowed they looked closed. He held the knife about ten inches from the floor, blade parallel to the floor, winking orange in the light. He swung it slowly back and forth, the muscles of his thin arm writhing.
The bartender gave a sharp command. The young man bared his teeth and, looking at my belt buckle, told me exactly what he was going to do to me. I didn’t understand the language, but I knew what he said.
The girl made a lazy sound at him, a brief husky message, like a sleepy spit. She stood with an elbow hooked on the bar behind her, her rich body indolently curved. Whatever she said, in that silence between records, was like a blow in the face to him. He seemed to soften. He sobbed, and, forgetting all skill, lunged forward, clumsily hooking the knife up toward her belly. I snapped my right hand down on his wrist, brought my left hand up hard, under his elbow, twisting his arm down and under, giving an extra leverage to his lunge that sent him by her in a long running fall into the tables and people as the knife clattered at her feet. I swear that she did not make the slightest move until she bent and picked the knife up. The next record started. The man thrashed around. People shouted. His friends got him, one by each arm, and frog-marched him out. He bucked and struggled, crying, the tears running down his face.