Into the Beautiful North(73)

“Do tell.”

“I am Vampi’s man.”

Irma barked out a laugh that turned into coughs. She spit.

“At the wedding,” she cooed, “will you both dye your hair purple?”

El Brujo fired up a cigarette and squinted at her through the smoke.

“That’s not a bad idea, Auntie,” he replied.

“Good Christ in Heaven,” she said. “And what about you, stick man?”

Atómiko showed her his staff.

“I am your protector.”

“Are you marrying someone, too?”

“Nel, esa.”

“What?”

“He said no,” Alex explained.

“Why didn’t he just say it, then?”

“La mera neta,” Atómiko blurted, meaning absolutely nothing to Irma. “Baby,” he said, “I’m only married to freedom.”

“I’d better get back inside,” she said. “Before you degenerates give me a heart attack.”



Nayeli knocked on Chava’s door again.

“?Don Chava?” she cried.

“Go away!”

“It’s me, Nayeli!”

“I know who it is.”

“Let me in.”

“I’m not home!”

“Open the door, Don Chava!”

“Are you alone?”

“El Brujo is waiting downstairs.”

“But She—is She with you?”

“No. But she has sent me.”

After a moment, she heard him rattling the chain and throwing the bolt. He cracked the door open and peered out at her.

“She did?”

“I’m afraid so.”

“But,” he stammered, “I-I-I am so old!”

Nayeli was startled to see he was wearing flannel pajamas. His face was unshaven. His hair stood straight up on his head.

“She is older, too,” she assured him.

“What am I going to do?” he asked.

Nayeli said, “You are going to have to buck up, Don Chava.”

He let her in.

“You must shower,” she said. “Get a clean shirt and comb your hair. Shave!”

“Yes, Nayeli.”

She sat on his plastic-covered couch and idly flipped through his Mexican Reader’s Digests, called Selecciones.

After his shower and shave, he appeared in gray slacks and an undershirt. He wore black socks and had his feet shoved into slippers.

“That’s better,” she said, sitting now at his little table.

He sat across from her, looking as miserable as any man she’d ever seen.

“I know you are worried,” she said. “I understand the romantic tragedies that have separated you. But La Osa is on a mission. You must help her now and worry about the past later.”

“Help her? Me? How?”

“I must go to find my father. You must help her recruit the rest of the seven.”

She wrote down the name of the hotel, Irma’s room number, her telephone number. Chava Chavarín simply stared at the paper.

In a small voice, he said, “I will try.”

“There is no trying,” Nayeli said, sounding like her aunt and liking it. “There is only doing.”

Before Nayeli left, he handed her his gas card and three hundred dollars he retrieved from under his bed.

“?Gracias!” she cried.

“Go with God,” he said, kissing her forehead.

“You, too. You’ll need God more than I will,” she said.



Irma was deeply appalled to learn that La Vampi had promised Alex full control of the Cine Pedro Infante for one night each week.

“Heavy-metal concerts?” she gasped. “In Tres Camarones? Are you crazy?”

Her idiot girls had come to San Diego and handed over the world to these refugees. That Goody Two-shoes Angel believed she could get him a mechanic’s shop. No doubt Chava Chavarín would expect a dance studio to run. Oddly enough, she took a shine to Atómiko. He had immediately become her bodyguard, and he scowled in the corner of every room over which she presided.

Irma invested in a conference room on the ground floor of the Bahia, ordering a pair of long tables and several chairs. Here, she, Chava Chavarí n—if he ever showed some spine and revealed himself—and Yolo and Vampi would interview applicants for the remaining four openings. Just like a business—as it should have been handled from the start! All this romantic twaddle! Ha! That was no way to run a government operation.

La Osa could not convince Atómiko to come to Sinaloa. He was adamant. Too bad. If she washed him and bought him clothes, he could be the town’s first new policeman.

She provided Nayeli with a Bank of America debit card for her foolish jaunt to Kankakee.

“Do you think,” she bellowed, “that I am simply a provincial rube? You don’t think I have resources?”

And:

“Men are no good.”

“My father is good.”

“Your father is a dog like all the other dogs.”

“I will prove you wrong.”

“You will prove what you prove.”

“What does that mean?”