One dead Gringa basketball player on the street - short story - Latin America: Private Eyes & Time Travelers

Literary Review, Fall, 1994 by Paco Ignacio Taibo, II, Ilan Stavans

I.

I'LL FUCK MYSELF, BOSS, IF ANYTHING I SAID during my first confession is changed now. I swear I'll fuck myself. I swear for the Virgin and I'll kiss the Crucifix, and then let the ghost of St. Pedro Infante be my witness. They left the hotel alone, a bit drunk after too many beers, laughing at one another and talking a mile a minute in English. Gringas celebrating, you know, there are a thousand around here, far too many, so many that the short, dark-skinned Mexican girls are again becoming an attractive item. They know how to fuck, no question about it. But these particular two were the type of blondie that the personnel finds attractive. Big ones, boss. Fuck these giraffe-like Gringas! They needed to bend in order to go through a door. And that's when I last saw them, until I came out, like everyone else, to hear the frightening screams. But like everyone else, I didn't put much attention into the event. If somebody was being killed, it certainly wasn't a friend of mine, because I was all by myself, waiting for nobody, you know what I mean, don't you? So I came out of sheer curiosity and then I saw everybody. You know how it is, when everybody is curious and you need to talk about something. But nothing could be seen. In short, one of them was lying on the street, the blondest, in front of the hotel, with one hand on the grass and her body motionless in a pool of blood, her legs naked and her skirt up. And a guy, known as The Blind One, was screaming that someone had kicked the Gringa to death. But he's not blind, you see. It's just that sometimes he becomes blind because of the amount of garbage he injects into his body. He is often stoned, you see? And I said to myself, "Nobody can be kicked to death." You can get a broken rib, a dislocated shoulder or elbow, a jaw misplaced, but death, what one can call death, is impossible. After all, nobody used cowboy boots anymore around here, nobody, they are simply out of fashion, and that's why it's hard to kick someone to death. You know what I mean? Buddy, would you please close the window? Do me that favor, because the rain is coming in and I'm sure I'm going to get a cold. Anyway, the Gringa was lying over there, her legs wide open, with blood coming out of her nose and a huge, five-centimeter-long injury in her forehead. What can I say? Then someone came closer to what was happening and said: "I'm a doctor, ladies and gentlemen," as if he was trying to show off in front of the woman who was accompanying him, because that jerk wasn't even a veterinarian, I'm sure. So he got closer, and so did everybody else, and said: "She isn't dead, but she's about to expire. She must have an internal hemorrhage. Call an ambulance." Get it? That fucking doctor was giving orders right there. And people quickly began to leave because who wants to face the authorities around here? Nobody. Not even if your mother was dead. Not even if you win a lottery prize. You know, the federal police is feared, and it's even worse with the state police. You know what I mean? They are something else--federal policemen without mercy--ja, ja, ja...No, I was joking, right? Would you please close that fucking window, pleeeaaase? You see, many of us were asking: And the other Gringa? Because one was missing. And it must have been that The Blind One realized it because he suddenly said, without anyone asking him: "The other one was taken away in the pickup." No, at that very moment I decided I had to leave but the barman stopped and asked me to pay the bill once again. "Mariano," he said, "come here." He asked me not to pretend all moneys had been paid, that I shouldn't act like an asshole, and instead of paying him right there I came back in. But other less stupid individuals remained outside. One known as The Suspender, who plays the bataca in a salsa band and is known as a marijuana dealer, said: "You should frighten yourself with a mirror, asshole. I'll bring the money tomorrow. I'll pay the bill tomorrow since I now have to run." And the Gringa on the floor had her eyes wide open and as I saw it, she was already facing a naked God, in spite of whatever the stupid veterinarian would or would not say. She was dead. You know what I mean? OK, if I'm confessing to you every detail of the murder, why the fuck do you have me naked? You have watered me with a hose. Why the hell do you keep the windows open? Or is it that you left the windows open so that I commit suicide, motherfuckers? I will get a runny nose, assholes! I know, you are neither federal nor state troopers, you're friends from around here, we know each other, and we even played football together in high school. And yet I ask myself: How come the other Gringa was put in the pickup if she was so big? Probably horizontally and from the back door. And at that point, a guy said to The Blind One in elegant manner: "Did you write down the plates?" It must have been some fucking guy from Guanajuato or from the Distrito Federal, who thinks the blind always see, not only when they are willing to. And the other guy realized everyone was looking at him. You get it? He quickly realized it, I'm sure, he realized it as fast as he could. He realized that everybody assumed he was the culprit, only because he was next to the hotel door when some assholes came and kicked the Gringa to death and put her friend in a pickup. So he said: "Plates, my friend? No. Which plates? Here in Ciudad Juarez everybody carries plates from across the border and one can never see them because it's too dark. And I haaave never seeen a fuuucking plate in my fuuucking life." Speaking of something else, could you please take away that hot iron from my balls and close the window, because I'm going to get a cold in my penis and I swear it shouldn't be like this when one is voluntarily confessing. Didn't I even bring a supermarket bag with two bottles of Madero tequila, so that you could see that I only came here to chat with you about the fucking dead Gringa on the street and about her friend, who was stolen by some motherfuckers that remain absolutely unknown? Shall I write all this down, boss?