Chapter 2
It's Good to See You Again
Disclaimer: I am not Robert Rodriguez.
Rating: R for language and graphic images
Summary: What a year it's been. Our heroes reunite, and we find out what happened after the showdown with Ramon Escalante.
Author Notes: First, a big thank to Erin, who helped me with some rough spots in the first chapter. I forgot to thank her last time, which was very terrible of me. Erin, you're the best, girl.
A few of you have asked if this story is building off the slash or gen version of ATDHC. The answer is the gen version. Although if you prefer, you can choose to believe that this follows the slash version. It doesn't much matter, really. It's whatever you want to imagine. :-)
I don't know too much about what happened in Puerto Vallarta between El and Sands, but I hope to find out soon and let you all know.
****
El just stared. Time, it seemed, had no effect on Sands. The man looked the same as he had when El had last seen him.
He still wore his dark hair down to his shoulders. He was still slender. He was deeply tanned. He wore opaque wraparound sunglasses to hide his blindness, and he was dressed in black. Twin gunbelts criss-crossed his hips. Nothing about him suggested that any part of the past year had been any kind of hardship for him.
Yet there was something different, El realized. Sands carried himself with confidence now, and an air of coiled grace. Sands looked like a man who had been tested – severely tested – but who had passed the test and come out the other side.
"Well, that's a fine way to say hello," Sands smirked. "You've gone from a man of few words to a man of no words with remarkable speed, El."
Because he could think of no response to this, El turned to Ramirez. "Why is he here?" he asked.
"The same reason you are," Ramirez said. The former FBI agent sat down on a chair, and exhaled heavily. "Wanting information."
"Why, Jorge! I'm surprised at you. I stopped by for a visit, to see how my old friend was doing." Sands had not stopped smiling. His voice was bright, happy. He rocked on his heels like he was about to burst with good energy. To El, he had never seemed more insane. "That hurts, when you say I only want to use you."
Ramirez did not dignify this with a response.
"Then you can help," El said, ignoring Sands. He was pleased with himself for having the foresight to come out here. He had begun to think this had been a wasted trip. But now Ramirez would get him the information he needed, and then…. Well, he would figure out what to do next once he knew what he was facing.
"No, I can't," Ramirez said. "I told you I don't know anybody. Not to get the kind of information you need." There was an edge to his voice now. He heaved himself out of his chair. "Now, if you would excuse me." He opened the screen door and let himself into the house.
El was left alone on the porch with Sands. He happened to be looking at the man as the screen door slammed shut, and so he saw the transformation that came over the CIA agent. The moment he was sure Ramirez was gone, Sands dropped the cheerful facade. The humor fled from his face, and he looked deadly serious.
He looked like a killer.
"What is wrong with him?" El asked, and sat in the chair Ramirez had just vacated.
"Cancer," Sands said. "I think. I 'accidentally' wandered into his bathroom the other day, and found a lot of pill bottles. Of course I have no idea what they're really for. Could be vitamins for all I know."
El was sorry to hear it. He liked Ramirez. "Why doesn't he go back to the U.S.?"
Sands shrugged, and sat down. "Why don't you ask him that?"
An uncomfortable silence fell. El remembered that the last time he had seen this man, Sands had waved to him. He cleared his throat. "How have you been?"
"Great, just great," Sands said evenly, with no hint of the hearty cheer he had spoken with earlier. "There's a surprising amount of work out there for blind gunfighters."
El nodded. "That is what you have been doing?"
"Well, at first I was going to hire myself out to a carnival, you know, charge people money to see the man with no eyes, travel Mexico, see the sights. But then I remembered."
Knowing he would regret it, El took the bait anyway. "Remembered what?"
"Why, that I'm blind, of course!" Sands laughed. "I can't see the sights! So that sort of shot the idea of the traveling carnival all to hell."
El decided he hated that laugh. He much preferred the old, sullen Sands.
"And you came here. . . why?"
"You know why," Sands said. All trace of that dark humor had left him. "The same reason you're here. They're looking for us."
"Who?" El asked. He wanted to hear Sands say it.
"My old employers, El my dear friend. The good ol' Central Intelligence Agency has finally come looking for me. I'm not so sure why they want you, though. Probably just as a sideshow attraction, the mariachi who goes around shooting up drug cartels in his spare time. Hell, they might even want to offer you a job. Maybe you should let them find you."
"Why wait so long?" El asked. "All that was a year ago."
"Don't you read the papers? Watch TV? There's been a war in the Middle East. Priorities, you see. But now all that's winding down, and they can finally devote time to hunting down their rogue agent in Mexico." Sands shrugged. "I didn't expect them to take this long, either."
"Then why did you come back here?" El asked. "This is the first place they would look for you."
"It was the first place they looked," Sands said. "They've moved on by now, following my trail. I do sort of stand out, you know.
"I came here to see if Jorge could contact anyone in DC, find out just how serious they are. Maybe they're just killing time until they get pulled off the assignment for something new and exciting." He paused. "Or maybe they mean it."
Suddenly El understood something. No one else would have known it, because Sands was just that good at hiding what he truly felt, but El had spent a lot of time around him, maybe more than anyone else ever had. He knew this man, better than Sands realized.
And what El saw now, what Sands was trying so hard to hide, was that he was terrified. For Sands, giving up his hard-won independence would be a fate worse than death.
"How long have you been here?" he asked.
Sands cocked his head to one side, thinking it over. "A week," he finally decided.
El was silent. He thought of his quiet existence in Villa de Cos, his guitars and his music, and suddenly it seemed like he hadn't been living at all for the past year. He had only been marking time. Waiting, it seemed, for something like this. And he could curse at himself all he wanted, but the truth was there in the quickened beat of his heart, and the renewed energy running through his veins. The truth was, he felt more alive now than he had in months.
"What will you do now?" he asked.
"I don't know," Sands said. And that, El knew, was the closest he would ever come to admitting his fear.
"Maybe it would not be so bad," he offered, trying unsuccessfully to keep a straight face.
He had thought maybe the CIA agent would shoot him for that. Instead Sands just sat there, his shoulders hunched as though to make himself smaller in his chair.
This was not the reaction El had expected.
And it occurred to him that what he had just said was not funny, not in the slightest. That it was, in fact, cruel. Sands had been through hell. The man deserved better, especially from him.
But it was very easy, he was finding, to slip into the old rhythms. To find that peculiar mixture of kindness and hostility that worked best when dealing with Sands. To remind himself to expect nothing from the man, and hope for everything, all at the same time.
And he was remembering. Things he hadn't thought about in a year. Dirty motel rooms, dirty bars, dirty fights.
An ugly pink house surrounded by bushes with red flowers.
A hacienda draped in honeysuckle, and a bloody courtyard.
Ramon Escalante.
Are you still standing?
Still.
Then let's get the fuck out of here.
****
El remembers little of the time immediately following the destruction of the Escalante cartel. He is in a lot of pain, and bleeding badly. Everything he looks at is overlaid with a surreal shine that makes him wonder if this is the precursor to the light everyone supposedly sees before they die.
He and Sands reel across the courtyard, arms about each other, staggering like drunks. He can barely walk, and he is forced to lean heavily on the CIA agent, much to Sands' dismay. "You're crushing me," Sands complains. "I can't breathe."
"That's because you got shot in the chest," El snaps. "That's not my fault."
"Well, in a way it is," Sands mutters, and is silent.
Then there is a long gray blank in his memory. The next thing he remembers is sitting in a car, an old convertible painted red and white. One of Escalante's cars. He looks stupidly at the steering wheel. "No keys."
Sands reaches up with a bloody hand and pulls down the visor over the driver's side. A set of keys tumbles out.
Then another one of those blank walls obscures his memory.
What he remembers next is so strange it surely cannot have happened. He is driving, somehow, and Sands is helping. They are sitting together in the driver's seat, and he steers while Sands works the pedals, because he cannot use his wounded leg. He calls out when it is time to brake in a feeble voice. He is cold all over, except for the agonizing fires burning in his side and his leg. Sands is slumped against him, his head on El's shoulder. There is a liquid rattle to the agent's breathing now, and his entire front is soaked in blood. A thick ribbon of blood trails down his chin. But when El says, "Stop," he mashes down the brake, right on cue.
After that there is only confusion. Bright lights and faces, a wrinkled old man who must be a doctor because he is wearing a white coat. Hands touch his side and he screams with the pain, and the scream echoes as it follows him down to unconsciousness.
When he wakes he is in a clean, narrow bed, and he knows he will live. It is truly over.
****
All this passed through El's memory in the span of a moment, reminding him of the history he shared with Sands, a history he could not forget.
They had stayed in the hospital for two weeks. Afterwards, they had made their slow way to Puerto Vallarta, and arrived on a sunny Thursday morning in late March. El had breathed deep of the ocean air, and smiled.
He had only stayed there a week. There was no fond farewell, no handshake, nothing to indicate they understood how lucky they were just to be alive. El had simply walked out to the car, where his guitar case was already waiting.
He had held up a hand. "Stay out of trouble."
Sands had raised a hand in return. "See you around."
And that was it. He had driven away, and ended up in Zacatecas, and eventually the town of Villa de Cos. He had found a guitar maker and a house, and he had considered one chapter of his life over. It was time for a new one to begin.
What he should have realized, he thought now, was that even though the chapter ended, the story itself still went on.
El looked at Sands. Deep in his chest, the old excitement was stirring. The air seemed so much crisper than it had been yesterday. Everything was clear and bright.
"You could come to my village," he said.
Sands frowned. "Oh gosh, El, that's very kind of you, but I don't exactly see us hiding out in your little village, playing out the Mexican version of The Odd Couple."
El shook his head, unsure whether to laugh or be worried. That was the thing about Sands. He used words like "look" and "see" -- and he meant them. El didn't know if he merely liked to keep people off guard about his blindness, or if he genuinely didn't care how strange it was to hear him talk like that.
"Not to stay," he said. "Just as a place to start."
"Is it safe?"
El hesitated.The two old men in the village had made it sound as though the CIA agents were close. Too close. They had meant for him to understand Villa de Cos was not safe for him anymore, and if it wasn't safe for him, it sure as hell wasn't safe for Sands. But then, no place would be safe, not as long as those agents were still out there. And at least in Villa de Cos, he and Sands would have a chance to defend themselves.
"Yes," he lied. "It's safe."
"Good." Sands sat up a little straighter. "Then what the hell are we still doing here?"
*****
A haiku for all of you:
Deadly, beautiful
A killer with a soft voice
The man with no eyes