He went on:
“You’re no big operator, Big Lé, but it’s not worth losing your rep for a lousy three grand.”
We agreed on a plan B. Lévis decided to call Luis to ask him for the rest of the three thousand bucks right away. It was Lévis’s girlfriend in Jonquière who was checking to see if the money had been deposited in our account. We didn’t have the Internet on our cell phones back then. Luis was supposed to fork over the rest of the three thousand for us to get América across the border, and two thousand more once we were on the other side so we wouldn’t haul her back with us. None of that money involved taking the girl all the way to California. We’d said, “Let them deal with it, Christ.”
Lévis said:
“You take care of the girl. I’m calling Luis.”
I said OK, but before hiding himself away around beside the reception desk, he added:
“Fuck it, I’m going to tell him that for two thousand more we can bring him América ourselves. We’ll go down to San Francisco, just the two of us, with the girl. A total road trip. I’ll drive without a licence, we’ll be careful, and that’s that.”
“What do we do with halfwit?”
“Fucking halfwit, we throw him onto a bus, that’s what.”
*
The fourth mistake was to not get everything straight before leaving. When it came to the girl.
When América arrived at the airport, I said to myself, “Me, I’d go to bed with that girl.” I was twenty-three years old, and she wasn’t far off forty. Her face was a bit tired, especially the eyes, and she had a big explosion of black curly hair on her head. She was about so high, almost no breasts but a solid ass, and the most beautiful legs I ever saw on a woman. Above all she had a way of rolling her hips, a way of not being able to stop herself from rolling her hips, that made you choke on your saliva, let’s say.
At first everything went fine with her in the car. Big Lé made her laugh, we pretended to understand her, and Lé’s music rocked. But after a while, his mood changed. I didn’t know why.
I knew that Bezeau, in the back, was getting on his nerves. That retard had brought along a whole kit just to turn coke into crack while we were on the road. He had a funny old spoon shaped like a ladle, a little medicine bottle full of baking soda, and a big bottle of distilled water. He put four parts of coke, one part of Cow Brand into the spoon, two or three drops of water, then he heated it from underneath with his lighter, while stinking up the whole car.
América said over and over, “Están locos, están locos.” Where she came from, that was enough to get thrown in the hole for the rest of your days.
I wouldn’t have wanted to be sitting beside him either, especially in her place. Smoking, it’s not like snorting, it puts you to sleep sometimes. If you can call that sleep. Bezeau was having bad dreams right beside her. Rock dreams. He grabbed at his cock through his jeans, raging, murmurous, through his teeth:
“Here, my cunny. Here, my muffin. Here, my coochie.”
We didn’t quite know what he was talking about. Lévis would have put him up front with me, but the only time he’d tried to do so, after the dinner when he’d stayed in the car to smoke, he’d insisted he wanted to drive, and América had almost had a nervous breakdown.
I know that was more than enough to spoil a trip, but his mood had altered even before Bezeau had started freaking out.
I wanted to talk about it to Lévis that night, while he was having a smoke out on the terrace in front of the motel, but before I could open my mouth, he said:
“She’s not his wife.”
“Of course, if they were married, we wouldn’t have to be doing this.”
“No, what I mean is, she’s not his woman at all. Maybe she was a vacation fuck in San José, maybe he owes her a favour, I don’t know what, but she’s not his woman and she’ll never be his woman.”
I agreed with him. Bezeau had told us all at least a dozen times that América had offered to suck him off the day before at Cindy’s. It wasn’t true, obviously, but you didn’t need a sign as clear as that to see that América was nobody’s woman. You could just tell, I don’t know why.
I agreed with Lé, but I still asked him:
“Why are you saying that?”
“Because if I loved a woman and I wanted her to join me in the States, I wouldn’t give the job to a couple of clowns like us.”
He cleared his throat and spat a large gob onto the ground. He added:
“And if I loved a woman and some clown offered to set her down on my doorstep for two thousand dollars, I wouldn’t say, ‘Once you’re over the border, do whatever you want with her.’”
Lévis got a text from his girlfriend at three in the morning. The money had arrived.
He told me to wake up América and to load up the car and wait for him outside. He woke Bezeau, who was sleeping like a log, and told him, “You’re not coming with us to the border.”
He gave him three hundred bucks to take a taxi to the bus station and a bus to the Saguenay in case we didn’t come back. Bezeau kept shouting, “I can’t even speak English, for Christ’s sake!”
The voices got quieter, and Lévis came out by himself. We got in the car. He turned to América to say, “Todo saldrá bien, guapa.” Then he looked at me and said, “Let’s go.”
The following Friday, Bezeau went to see Lévis at the bar where he was the doorman, to ask him when they were going to split the money.
“There’s no more money. I gave it all to the girl. You, you got three hundred bucks worth of coke out of me, you didn’t drive for two minutes, and you cost me a bus ticket. In my books I don’t owe you a fucking cent.”
Bezeau went off, cursing.
“Anyway, the next time you come up with a plan like that, don’t call me.”
“We won’t call you, that’s for sure.”
*
Our fifth mistake was to go through Detroit.
If we were to do it again, I’d choose a little border crossing in Quebec with one sleepy guy and say, “We’re going shopping in Plattsburgh.” Back then we thought that passing through Detroit would give us a head start if Luis ever gave us the OK to push on all the way to California. In particular, we figured that the Ambassador Bridge had the largest volume of commercial traffic in the world, and that gave us a better chance to get through.
They had the traffic, yes, but they also had the means to manage it. Especially in the summer of 2002.
When we drove onto the bridge early in the morning, the cars were flowing freely. But the line-up was still two or three kilometres long. It was already hot, and I had no air-conditioning in my car. We were in a sweat when we arrived at customs right in the middle of the bridge. The guy looked at our passports.
“So you gentlemen are from Quebec and the lady here is from Costa Rica.”
“Yes.”
“Why are you coming to the United States?”
“To visit. She’s never been here.”
“All right. And why here?”
“I’m sorry?”
“Why travel this far to cross the state line?”
Lévis thought we were already fucked when the customs man saw the Costa Rica passport, but I think we were fucked right there. We had no answer for that. Lévis made one up on the spot. He gestured to the back with his head:
“Oh, she loves Detroit.”
If we’d been less dumb, we’d have known that that was not an answer to give. Nobody likes Detroit, because Detroit is a shithouse.
He had us pull over and park, and escorted us inside. They took América aside and kept her for a long time. The two of us waited a good hour before a guy in a tie came to talk to us. My ears were ringing and my hands wouldn’t stop sweating.
It’s strange, because today I still remember what the guy said as if he was speaking French, even if that’s impossible. Lévis tells me that it’s the same for him.