Shoot him, then what? she thought. Easy: dress in new designer fashions. Use his key to leave the room. Outrun Saturnino and all of the Gulf Cartel gunmen, dodge the loyal servants and the gun-toting padre and the lepers and vanish into the jungle. Live on roots and bugs and dew collected in palm fronds. Move by night. Find a village. Use the cash to get a car or boat to the nearest airport. Done. One blast of the Cowboy Exploder and I’m home free with my son safe and sound inside.
She looked down at the thing, its barrels gaping like the nostrils of a pig, then she ran faucet water and quietly set the gun back down in the tank. She thought: I’ll kill someone when it will do me some good. Yes. Her hands trembled badly as she splashed water onto her face and dried it and when she went back into the room Armenta was watching her with his lugubrious eyes.
He held the Hummingbird toward her with both hands. “Please now perform.”
She took the instrument because her nature was to play it and because playing gave her strength. She heard the faint harmonics of the box and strings brushing through the air as she walked across the room. She sat down on one of the dining room chairs and played the first few phrases of Zevon’s “Keep Me in Your Heart.”
The guitar had a beautiful tone, rich and detailed and seemingly derived from more than just six strings and a hollow body. The smell of the instrument coming through the hole was a quiet thrill for her, as always. Different smells for different guitars, of course, different woods and glues and finishes. But her hands and voice were afraid and unsteady and she couldn’t get them to care. She tried to lose herself in the song anyway but failed, and the failure brought her back to who and where she was. Her voice fell and cracked and she let it lay there.
She carefully set the instrument on the tabletop and glanced at gray Armenta sitting stone-still in the filtered sunlight. He seemed not present. She looked out a window at the rippled silver lagoon and she felt tears coming so she turned away from the man and let them come but made no sound.
“Maybe someday you finish the song for me.”
“Don’t count on it.”
She heard Armenta clear his throat. “Gustavo was eighteen,” he said. “He was my seventh child. He was born quiet and he remained quiet all his life. He was gentle but strong. He hated cruelty but he had good courage. When he was very young he was wise and when he grew older he became younger. He loved to read. He loved futbol. He was a very good horseman. When I watched him jumping it would make great pride in me. When he was ten I could no longer win at chess. When he was eleven I went to the prison for two years and when I escaped and came home he was a man. He was more helping for his mother than the others. The others were good and bad in their own ways but Gustavo was apart. He was not really similar to them. You will see in your life that you do not choose your children and you do not influence them as greatly as you think you will. You are merely the supplier of life. They become who they are in spite of you. So, Gustavo was all this.”
Armenta’s voice was softer and somehow more pleasant when Erin had her back to him. She picked a napkin off the dining table and wiped her eyes. Toughen up, girl, she thought. You’ve got to toughen up. She set the napkin on the table by the Hummingbird, then folded her hands over her middle and bowed her head and closed her eyes.
“When Gustavo is fourteen he meets a girl, Dulce Kopf. Her family came to Mexico from Germany in seventeen-fifty-one and they worked in the mines. Dulce is fourteen also and she is very much like him. They become friends. They go places and do the things that they are allowed to do. And they go and do things that they are not allowed to do. I know this. But I see this love of theirs and I wait for the love to go away. When he is eighteen he has been with Dulce for five years nearly. This is more than one-quarter of his life. They are still the happy children they have always been but now it is time to become adults. They have the best of grades from the private school in Mexico. They have polo and fencing. They are popular and beautiful. Did I mention to you that Gustavo was beautiful? They are very good at languages and technical knowledge and music. They know English and German. He knows the stringed instruments and she the woodwinds, all of the woodwinds. They have composed music alone and together. They are both accept at UCLA in California. Very expensive but I am a wealthy man by then. When they are finished they will be married. But before the UCLA can begin it is over.”
Erin opened her eyes to the heated green jungle and the shimmering laguna. “What happened?”
“Summer. They are living in Buenavista on the border so they can travel to Los Angeles by car to look for an apartment. And because they have a love of geography and certain rocks and plants that grow in the desert. I never understand this love. Gustavo collected many rocks and raised thousands of strange desert succulents and cactus. Their home is filled with these things. One night they have dinner in a restaurant in Buenavista. They sit outside on a patio and it is a quiet night. I have a picture of them taken by the waiter with Dulce’s camera. They are dressed somewhat elaborately for Buenavista because Gustavo and Dulce loved to wear nice clothes. And of course there is violence because there is always violence. A gunfight is about to begin between American ATF agents and two gun smugglers. Gustavo sees this development and he takes Dulce’s hand and they climb the small adobe wall of the patio and they run off into the darkness toward home while the gunshots are heard in the restaurant. They are laughing, Dulce told me. It was so dangerous and almost funny to have a gunfight in a quiet restaurant on a hot desert night, men with guns fighting over more guns. Gustavo and Dulce held hands as they ran. And then Gustavo falls dead. A bullet from the restaurant, fired by the ATF agent Holdstock. One chance in a hundred million that the bullet would find his heart in all of that vast darkness.”
Armenta was quiet for a long while.
“Why do you tell me this?” Erin asked.
“Because you played for me. When I hear ‘Keep Me In Your Heart,’ I think of Gustavo and Dulce. Of course this is why.”
“Where is Dulce?”
“Here. She doesn’t leave her room very often. It has been two years but he was her whole world and now he is gone. I gave her kilos of American dollars and told her to go into the world, anywhere she wants to go. But no.”
Erin stared out the window. The breeze was stiffer now and it hissed through the palms and pocked the lagoon. To the southeast there was an indigo glow in the usually pale blue sky. She wondered why the birds had stopped singing. The pigeons had left her balcony. She thought of Heriberto’s hurricane and of Bradley and of the small life brewing inside her. “Is your wife here?”
“She died.”
“I’m sorry.” For a moment she allowed herself to think of Armenta as a decent man but the moment passed. “Your son Saturnino has threatened to rape me.”
“He will not rape you while I am alive.”
She turned and looked at him. “But you will let him skin me in eight days if you are not made richer?”
“Yes. That is the agreement.”
“You are beyond my comprehension.”
“We can comprehend each other through music.”
“I will play no more music for killers and torturers.”
“Of course you will. It is your weapon. It is how you fight. You will play long and loud and with passion. The Jaguars of Veracruz will perform here the night after tomorrow. It will be a substantial evening. But first, I will give you the stage.”
“I will not perform.”
“Oh?” Armenta gave his eyes a histrionic roll. He looked away from her and raised his eyebrows. “You should know that your husband’s courier is nowhere near here. He has not been communicating with us. I think he maybe has experienced the temptation of the big money.”