Into the Beautiful North(64)

He left the kitchen and returned in a minute with a picture in a gold frame. “Wili,” he announced. Wili looked like Tacho, or enough like Tacho with the shades that you would look twice. The spiky blond hair, the skin color. Tacho looked like Wili after Wili had slacked off at the gym for a year. The same sunglasses. They could have been mistaken for brothers.

“Audacity is the only solution,” Rigo said.

He reached into his back pocket and produced Wilivaldo’s passport.

He smiled. The girls smiled. Tacho smiled.

“Who wants to go to San Diego?” Rigo cried.

“I do! I do!” said Tacho.



It’s different in a BMW,” Rigo said.

They were in the slow simmering lanes of traffic waiting to enter Los Yunaites. The windows were up: the world was silent. The inside of the car was cool and dark. It had the scent of leather and Tacho’s sweet almond hair. Rigo had dabbed on the slightest hint of XX, and the cologne sweetened the smell imperceptibly. The CD changer was murmuring Manu Chao. Tacho held a go-cup with cinnamon coffee.

“No kidding,” he said.

The many gates of the border crossing were open. Agents in booths asked questions. Tacho watched them walk around cars, sometimes inspect trunks. On the big bridge over the booths, he could see cameras mounted every few feet, watching the traffic. Mexican curio sellers in blue smocks walked between cars, selling an amazing array of kitsch: plaster skulls, blown-glass pirate ships, brightly painted flowerpots, shawls, sombreros, Mexican blankets, statues of Bart Simpson, bulls’ horns, paper flowers, plaster Yodas, churros. The ubiquitous Indio kids wandered among the cars with their sad cardboard trays of Chiclets. Fake Red Cross volunteers with cans asked for change. A man with no legs wheeled his chair up and down the line, looking in car windows. He gestured at Tacho. Tacho hit the button and was hit by the wave of sound and exhaust as the glass slid away like melting ice. He gave the man his Mexican coins. The man said nothing, simply turned his chair away and rolled to the next car.

“Tacho,” Rigoberto said. “Don’t encourage them.”

The window re-formed and shut out the sound and the light.

“Don’t say anything when we get to the booth.”

“No problem.”

Rigoberto grinned and reached over to squeeze Tacho’s knee.

“I’ll miss you, you criminal.”

Tacho laughed.

“I owe you.”

“Not at all.”

“More than I can say.”

“Don’t be silly.”

They moved forward a car length.

“This is a good day,” Rigo said. “It takes three hours to get across these days. We’re really moving. Everybody’s hunting for Iranians. Nobody cares about us.”

Tacho looked up at the dead dirt-clod hills above the border and saw the trucks watching. He watched a team of US agents walk down the line with an agitated German shepherd. It sniffed at the cars. It strained on its leash, wagging its tail.

“You think it’s hunting for drugs?” Rigoberto asked. “Or bombs?”

“Or us,” Tacho said.

Another car length.

“Look relaxed,” Rigo said. “But bitchy. You’d be amazed how far a BMW and some attitude gets you. Let me do the talking.”

Tacho slumped in his seat and put on his best bitch face.

“That’s hot,” Rigo said. “Keep the shades on.”

He rolled up to the booth and opened his window. He took off his own sunglasses. Smiled up at the suspicious woman sitting on a tall stool within. She stood, adjusted her gun belt, was already looking beyond them to the next car as she held out her hand for their papers. She typed in the license plate information of the next car with one hand and reluctantly turned her eyes to Rigoberto.

“Nationality?” she said.

“Mexican, of course!” Rigo replied.

He handed over both passports, flaring them out like a small hand of cards.

She plucked them out of his hand and bent down to the window.

“You’re Rigoberto?” she said.

“Correct.”

“And you?”

Tacho ignored her.

“You!” she repeated.

Rigoberto smacked his arm.

“?Oye, cabrón!” he scolded.

Tacho turned to her.

“What!” he said.

Rigoberto turned to her and blushed deeply.

“Please forgive Wilivaldo,” he said. “We’re having a bit of a spat.”

“A spat.”

“I thought a weekend of shopping, a nice stay in a hotel… You know. I am trying to bring love back into the relationship.”

She had a look on her face that almost made Tacho laugh.

“Love.”

“If not love,” Rigoberto confided softly, “sex.”

She stared at him, her face a complete blank.

“I am hoping what they say about hotel sex is true!”

She handed him the passports and said, “You two have a real nice day,” and backed into her booth.

Rigo put up his window and sped into California as they laughed and turned the stereo up very loud.

Tacho had never seen such a huge freeway. It was so clean. No dogs or donkeys anywhere. No trash. He smiled when they passed a white Border Patrol truck and the agent inside didn’t even look at them.