Chapter 17
Reacting
Disclaimer: El and Sands are the intellectual property of Robert Rodriguez. Emotionally, however, it feels like they belong to me. Am I allowed to say that?
Rating: R for language
Summary: What happens after the auction
Author's Notes: Many thanks to my beta reader, Melody.
****
He woke to the sound of rain. This was so unexpected that for a long moment El just lay there, his brain functioning on only the most basic levels. He did not think anything at all.
Eventually he remembered he was not alone, and he turned his head.
Sands was asleep in a plush armchair situated between the far bed and the wall. He had obviously started curled up on the seat, but in slumber he had relaxed and now one foot hung off the cushion and his hands were lax in his lap. His breathing was slow and even, and his head hung low; El winced in sympathy at the thought of the neck cramp his friend would have when he woke.
But he could not deny he was glad to see Sands sleeping so soundly.
He turned his head the other way, so he could look at the digital clock atop the TV. He frowned at it for a moment before deciding that yes, the display was not showing anything.
He realized that the light in the room was very dim. The ceiling fans were not turning. Outside, the rain continued to fall, and at last El understood that the motel had lost electricity, probably due to the storm that had just moved through.
He sat up slowly, wincing as he did. His arm hurt, his chest hurt, and he had a headache. He was hungry and thirsty and his bladder was aching; but for all that, he felt better than he had in three days.
And he knew why. The man asleep in that armchair was the reason.
Moving stiffly, he scooted across the bed, and stood up. He reached across his body with his right hand and pulled his left arm close. His shirt was still on the floor where he had dropped it, and even in the dim light filtering in through the window it was easy to see the crude stitching on the gunshot wound in his upper arm. The stitches were not quite as crooked as the ones Carolina had made, but they were awfully close.
El smiled. Not bad for a blind man, Sands had said last night.
Not bad at all, he had agreed.
He wondered what time it was. From the looks of things, they had slept through the remainder of the night, and well on into the afternoon.
He walked into the bathroom, noting that Sands did not even flinch as El went past him. This was good. The needle marks on his neck and arm were blatantly obvious, and Sands himself had admitted to spending most of the last two days unconscious, but drugs were no substitute for real sleep.
A cracked mirror hung over the toilet, and El peered into it as he did his business. It was even darker in the bathroom, but the lack of light didn't begin to account for the fact that he almost didn't recognize the face that stared back. The bruises there were just beginning to fade, and his lower lip was still cut and scabbed. His hair was a bedraggled mess, part of it still pulled back into a ponytail, the rest hanging in clumps about his shoulders. A smear of blood ran across his forehead, and El touched it curiously. He wondered if it was his blood, or Sands'.
He washed his face and hands, patted them dry with the towel -- taking special care with his broken fingers -- and stepped out into the room again.
Just in time to hear the dry click as Sands cocked the gun he was aiming at the bathroom.
"It's just me," El said.
Immediately Sands thumbed the hammer back. "Good." He slumped in the armchair. El had put a fresh bandage over his eye last night, and he was relieved to see no blood marring its white surface today. "Is that really rain?"
"It is," El said. "This time of year, it comes off the Gulf."
Sands nodded, but said nothing.
El sat on the bed and looked around.
The motel was cheap, but clean. It reminded him strongly of the motel he had stayed at in Acuña, where everything had started all those years ago. Two twin beds were separated by the nightstand, and a long, low dresser stood opposite the beds. The armchair and carpet were the same ugly olive green shade, and the table near the door was of fake wood.
The room was a mess. Last night had been about doctoring, about hacksaws and handcuffs, blood and bandages. An open bottle of strong painkillers sat on the nightstand, the cotton that had been stuffed into the top of the bottle strewn carelessly on the floor. Also on the floor were the handcuffs, two pairs of boots, El's shirt, a spool of mostly unraveled fishing line, two empty bottles of tequila, wads of bloody gauze, and the remote control for the TV.
"Well," he said, and then stopped. He really could think of nothing to say.
Sands just nodded. He had tipped his head back, and he grimaced as he stretched his cramped neck muscles.
"What are you doing over there?" El asked. The second bed had not even been turned down.
"Hell if I know," Sands said. "I seem to recall thinking I would just sit down for a moment, and then...good morning, sunshine."
"Actually I'm pretty sure it's afternoon," El said.
"Whatever," Sands said.
"The power is out," he explained. "So I am not sure."
Sands just shrugged, lifting only his left shoulder.
"You should see a doctor," El said, knowing he was wasting his breath.
"I'll be fine," Sands said, so predictable in his response that El was able to mouth the words along with him.
El nodded. Maybe it was sick, but he admired the cause for Sands' shoulder injury. He would never have been able to do it himself – his hips were just too broad. Only Sands, slender as he was, could have done that trick with the handcuffs.
Sands shifted in the armchair so he was more or less sitting up straight. "Okay, here's the thing, El. And I need to say this now, before it's too late."
"What do you mean, too late?" El asked. The words sounded so ominous.
"Now is a good time," Sands said. "It's raining, we have no power, no one has said 'I'm hungry' or anything stupid like that. It's not too late yet, savvy?"
Not at all sure he savvied, El nodded. "All right."
"The thing is." Sands took a deep breath. "The thing is, El, back there, in that casino, I thought I killed you. I was so sure of it. And I...I couldn't bear it. It was..." His voice trailed off.
"Terrible," he whispered. "It was terrible."
El frowned. He could not think why Sands would have believed such a thing.
"His face... I thought it was you, do you understand? I thought I had killed you, with my own stupidity, my own fucked-up fears. And I couldn't... Ah, shit." Sands shook his head sharply, clearly frustrated with his inability to articulate what he meant. He stood up and began walking across the room, his hand before him to feel out the way.
El made it easy for him. He stood up and moved so he was directly in front of Sands.
"And I wanted..." Sands gave a short laugh, the kind of laugh that a man made when he couldn't believe what he had just done. "I wanted so many things. But mostly I just wanted to do this again."
With his left hand he reached up and drew El's head down, and he kissed El.
In all the time they had been together, he had never kissed El like that. That kiss stole El's breath. It was gentle and it was shy, and yet it was territorial and confident. It was the kind of kiss one person gave another when they knew where they belonged, when they had found their home.
Sands drew back, but his palm remained on El's cheek. "Do you understand?" he breathed. "Can you?"
El could only think of one response.
He kissed Sands back.
****
Sometime later, he said, "Why did you think you had killed me?" He thought maybe it was a metaphor, that Sands had believed him to be captured by the casino suits all that time.
So he was shocked when Sands told him about the man and the dagger. "They took the dagger from me. It's lost," Sands concluded.
They were in bed, but not quite touching. El stared up at the ceiling and swallowed hard. He knew the horror that came from realizing you had just gotten a friend killed, but he had never been personally involved in any such murder. He could not imagine how it felt to believe that yours was the hand that had taken that life.
"It doesn't matter," he finally said. "The dagger was never important."
Sands sat up, propping himself on one elbow. "It matters to me," he said, his tone somehow managing to be both deliberately cold and heatedly urgent at the same time.
"Then we'll go back and get it," El said. It was a simple decision to make, and he made it without hesitation.
Mollified, Sands lay back down.
"Not now, though," El said. "We rest, first."
****
They slept.
When he woke, it was dark outside, dark in the room. Thin orange light filtered in through the curtains from out in the parking lot. Sands was sitting on the other bed, leaning against the headboard, one knee up, the other leg stretched before him. He was naked, and he was smoking. "We're going to have to do something about that wheezing, El. You drive me fucking crazy." He exhaled a long plume of smoke into the air.
El stared. Sands was just a silhouette in the dim light, but even so, he was beautiful. The lines of his body were so clean, so graceful. Shortly after their first arrival in Vera Cruz he had cut his hair shorter, and it fell to his jawline, except for where one lock fell across his cheek. El had an overpowering urge to get up and kiss the place where that hair lay, but he made himself lie still, and just watch.
"El? You awake?"
He cleared his throat of sleep and sat up. "I'm awake."
"Ask me a question."
He frowned. "What?"
"You heard me."
"What do you want me to ask?"
"Anything," Sands said. He shrugged, using only his left shoulder. "I just..." He shook his head, making the lock of hair tremble. "I feel like talking. So ask me a question."
So El said, "Why did you do it?"
Sands did not pretend to misunderstand him. "I had to." He finished his cigarette and stubbed it out on the ashtray sitting beside him on the mattress. He reached up and raked the hair out of his face, with the resulting effect of the same lock falling down again, now joined by two others.
"Why?" El asked. The ceiling fan pushed cool air against his chest. "Why did you have to?"
"It was the only way," Sands said faintly. He was not wearing his sunglasses, and in the shadowy light, the hollow where his left eye had been was just a darker shadow, looking not too much different than if he had still been sighted.
"Did it work?" El asked, remembering what Sands had said in the truck. I'm saying, I won.
"For the time being," Sands said. He smiled, just a quick thinning of his lips. "Don't worry, El. I'm still insane. Still the same psychotic asshole you know and love."
The room went so quiet El could hear the hum of the night insects outside in the parking lot.
Did he love Sands? He didn't know, and now was hardly the time to find out.
He tried to think of something to say, something clever, something to show he didn't hold Sands' blunder against him. But his brain didn't seem to want to work. He could think of nothing.
"And I mean that figuratively, of course," Sands said dryly.
Grateful for the reprieve, El croaked, "Of course."
And was it his imagination, or did Sands' shoulders slump a little?
But he must have been mistaken, because in the next instant Sands was getting off the bed, absently brushing the hair off his face again. "Well," he drawled, "of course I can't see it, but I felt all the shit on the floor when I walked over here, and I don't think housekeeping is going to be very happy with us tomorrow." To prove his point, he kicked El's shirt out of the way. "I say we pick this shit up and get the hell out of here."
"Where?" El asked.
"Anywhere but here," Sands said.
El had no problem with that.
****
They went to Cozumel, stopping at dawn to eat breakfast. When they arrived on the island they checked into a Holiday Inn. Very normal, very American.
As they were walking down the hall to their room, a man and his wife turned the corner. The man was blond, and he wore a big cowboy hat and brown leather boots under his jeans. The whole outfit was so reminiscent of what Sands had worn on the day El had met him that the mariachi couldn't help laughing.
"What's so funny?" Sands demanded.
"Oh nothing," El said. "You had to see it."
"Fuck you," Sands said reflexively.
Their room was on the eighth floor. Every morning they went down to the beach. In the afternoon they returned to the hotel room and slept and sometimes had sex. At night they either went back to the beach or went out to the many clubs and bars Cozumel had to offer. Still later they would return again to their room and spend most of the night finding new ways to torment each other.
They spent three weeks in Cozumel. They got tan, healthy, and bored. They drank a lot, and they ate a lot; Sands teased him that he was getting a potbelly, and El could not deny it.
In Cozumel, they broke the Rules. Not all of them, of course, because some things would never change, but some of them. Enough of them to give El hope. They could talk about what they were doing now. He could tease Sands to "just you wait until tonight," and not wince. He could touch Sands now without having to ask, and Sands would not flinch. A few mornings he woke up with Sands' dark head resting on his chest, and then he lay perfectly still, hardly daring to breathe for the hope that filled him.
One night, sitting on the beach, stars glittering over his head as he watched the tide come in, El found himself wondering if he was even really here. Maybe he was just dreaming all this. Certainly it did not seem real.
Sands sat beside him, leaning back on his hands behind him, bare toes buried in the sand. The sea breeze lifted the hair off his neck, and fluttered the silk of the black blindfold tied about his eyes. A small, enigmatic smile curled his lips. He looked utterly content.
El smiled, and returned his gaze to the incoming waves. Two years ago if anyone had told him he would be sitting here, experiencing this moment, he would have just laughed. He thought briefly about rising to his feet, scooping Sands into his arms, ignoring the agent's protests. Striding down to the water, until the waves lapped at his knees. Dropping Sands in the water. Watching him splutter and holler. Getting into a splashing contest. Playing in the ocean like kids.
It would be fun, but he couldn't do it. He couldn't take the chance. If the salt water got in Sands' eyesockets, he would be in agony. El could not risk such a thing, not for a weak joke.
So he simply sat there, with the water and the stars, and his friend.
There were only two bad times during those lazy Cozumel days. One night Sands, who rarely slept peacefully anyway, had a nightmare that left him screaming and shivering. When he woke, he would not let El comfort him, or hold him. That was a long night.
The other bad time was El's fault.
One night he woke to find Sands standing on the balcony. Naked. Smoking. He walked up. "Have you no shame?"
"Apparently not," Sands smirked.
"They have laws here against public indecency," he said. "That makes you a criminal."
"Guess so," Sands drawled. He stubbed the cigarette out on the stucco wall.
El put his arms about Sands, gripping the wrist of his left hand with his right at the small of Sands' back. He began walking backward into the bedroom, taking Sands with him. "That's it," he said in a low voice. He nipped at Sands' bottom lip. "You've broken the law. You've been very bad. Come with me."
The smile curdled on Sands' face. "No," he said.
El continued to walk backward. "You've been bad," he said. "Time to face the consequences."
"No!" Sands twisted free from his arms and backpedaled across the balcony until the wrought-iron railing touched his back. He had gone very pale, and he was trembling. "I'm not. Don't."
So that was how El learned yet one more detail about the horrible summer Sands had lost his sanity. And he added another rule to the list: Never talk about things like punishments, or being bad. He did not mind. So many of the rules had been broken during these past few weeks that adding a new one was not hard.
But that was the worst of it. There were many more good times.
The best thing, by far, was the silence. Not once in those three weeks did Sands hear the voice in his head. Sands did not tell him this, but El knew it was true. After all this time, he knew the warning signs. The agent would be talking normally, then his speech would falter, or break off entirely; and when he next spoke he would sound harsh or cold or bitter. He would rub his temple sometimes, a completely unconscious gesture El was pretty sure Sands wasn't even aware he made.
But in Cozumel, there was none of that. No muttered conversations, no headaches, no nothing. Just silence.
And then there was laughter.
Like the morning they were on the elevator going up to their room, and the woman got on at floor three. She was American, beautiful, and very arrogant. She was talking on a cell phone, berating the person at the other end.
When the elevator reached the eighth floor, the doors opened. El walked out. Sands brushed past the lady, deliberately bumping into her. "Excuse me, sugarbutt."
The lady drew herself up stiffly. "What did you call me?" she demanded.
The elevator doors shut behind them. Sands made it two steps down the hall and exploded with laughter.
The rest of that day El kept thinking of that moment with a sort of awe. But over the weeks he heard that laughter more often, and he became used to it.
They laughed a lot. At things on the TV, at shared jokes, at the stupidity of the American tourists all around them. Sands had an infectious, young-sounding laugh, and El never tired of hearing it. If he hadn't known such a plan would backfire, he would have gone out of his way to be funny and make Sands laugh. As it turned out he need not have bothered -- there was plenty of laughter during those three weeks in Cozumel.
But, like all things, the laughter had to come to an end.
****
It was a newspaper headline that did it. El saw it on the front page of a paper being read by a businessman sitting in the hotel lobby. "Cartel Blamed for Death of Woman."
Cartel.
They had been given three weeks, but now the idyll was over. Reality could not be ignored any longer.
He could not eat his lunch. He pushed the food around on his plate and finally gave up. "We have to go back," he said.
Sands stiffened. That simple gesture told El quite clearly that Sands had not been thinking of leaving Cozumel any time soon. He was rather relieved by this, but saddened, too. He had half-expected Sands to say that it was about time he figured it out. But the truth, it seemed, was that Sands wanted to stay here. He did not want to leave.
But he knew it had to be done. "Yeah. Today?"
Tomorrow, El wanted to say. But if they waited, tomorrow there would be another reason to stay. There would always be a reason to stay. The only way to do it was to leave now.
"Yes," he said.
"I was afraid you were going to say that," Sands said. He took a deep breath, and in that moment he changed. The laughter and easy banter was gone. In its place was the cold strength that had kept him alive all these years. "Then let's go."
****
El was miserable. He could not remember the last time he had felt this way. The happiness of the last three weeks only made his misery that much keener.
He stared around the hotel room as they packed. He had not had the chance to play his guitar here; his healing fingers had not allowed it. Suddenly that fact seemed very sad, almost enough to move him to tears.
So he blamed that sadness for what he said next. "We should leave Mexico."
"I'm not leaving," Sands said. He was standing by the double doors leading to the balcony.
El ignored this. They could not stay. Mexico was no good. America was no good. "We'll go to Canada or--"
"Yeah, right."
"Or Argentina, or--"
"I don't think so."
"We cannot stay," El said firmly, thinking of that newspaper headline. "They will always find us."
"You mean, they will always find me," Sands said. He did not sound bitter. He just sounded resigned. "You blend right in. Not so much me. You should ditch me."
"No," El said. "There is no us, without you."
A strange expression crossed Sands' face. For a moment El thought he might cry. Then he said, "I'm not leaving Mexico, or Culiacan."
"Why?" El demanded. "Why would you stay?"
And then Sands said the one word El could not argue with, the one word that changed everything.
"Chiclet."
Sands raised his chin in stubborn defiance. "I won't leave Chiclet."
El felt himself shrink. He had not thought about the boy in weeks. It was a shaming realization.
But he had to keep trying. It was wrong to go back. He was sure of it. "We can't go back. They'll be expecting us." Diego Sanchez had deliberately kept out of the firefight behind Casino del Suerte. El was pretty sure he knew the reason why. "The moment we return, they will know. They will be waiting for us."
"Probably have the house staked out," Sands agreed. His tone said he had no problem with this.
The house. El felt the blood drain from his face. He tried to speak and only managed a hoarse croaking noise.
And Sands, damn him, had one of those moments of intuition where he seemed to read El's mind. "The house," he said. "They're at the house. Oh God, El, tell me Chiclet isn't at the house too."
El said nothing. All he could think of was what he had asked Chiclet. And you'll look after the house for us?
"Jesus Christ, El!" Sands shouted. "What the hell were you thinking?"
"I didn't know," he said helplessly. "How could I know?"
Sands shook his head in disgust. "For Christ's sake, El. Use your head!" His expression narrowed, and El suddenly realized that he was utterly furious. "If they hurt him..." He trailed off, but El knew the rest of that sentence had been a dire threat aimed at himself.
He just nodded. There was nothing he could say. He had fucked up, and he knew it.
****
They were on the road within half an hour. They made the drive in complete silence. El spoke only once, to say that he intended to stop in Mexico City for the night.
Sands said nothing.
So it was a complete surprise then, to feel Sands' hand on his thigh, when they were still half an hour out of the city. El caught his breath. Sands moved his hand over, and smirked as he felt the bulge in El's jeans.
"What are you doing?" El asked.
"Making sure you'll be horny when we get to the hotel," Sands said. He applied pressure with his hand, and El shivered.
"That," he said dryly, "will not be a problem."
****
There was a strain of violence to their movements that night. Sands bit him on the shoulder, and El, his hand moving in involuntary reaction to the pain, struck him across the face.
Shocked silence descended. El cringed.
Then Sands grinned. "Well. If that's how you want it."
When they finally fell asleep near dawn, they were sweaty and bruised, but very content.
****
An hour away from Culiacan, El slowed down. He was hoping to spot the cartel's spies. He passed a police car sitting on the side of the road, ostensibly waiting to trap speeders, but El stared at the cop inside mistrustfully. You just never knew. Maybe that was a real cop, and maybe it was a real cop on the cartel's payroll, and maybe it was just a cartel man.
In the village, everyone seemed to be staring at them. But few people waved. No one smiled. El felt a knot of tension settle in his belly. Had Sanchez's men been terrorizing these people as punishment for taking in El Mariachi and the American spy?
"Go to Chiclet's house," Sands said. He had been silent all morning; this was the first thing he had said. "I want to make sure he's all right."
El did not disagree. He stopped the car in front of the boy's house. As he turned off the engine, the front door opened and Chiclet's mother stepped out. She waved, but she did not look happy to see him. "He's at the house!" she called.
"Fuck," Sands swore loudly.
El winced. He raised his hand and started the car up again. "What do we do now?"
"What the hell do you mean?" Sands demanded. "We're going up there."
"That is what they want us to do," El said. He did not put the car in drive. "If we return to the house we will be walking into their trap."
"Go," Sands said quietly. "Stop along the road. About half a mile away."
"I love him too," El said. It hurt his heart to think of that brave boy in the hands of someone like Diego Sanchez. "But this is not the way. We have to come up with a plan first."
Sands said nothing to this. He just bowed his head. His hands clenched into fists in his lap. He exuded such silent frustration that El could not bear to look at him.
El scowled. But he put the car in gear and began driving through the village. "This is a very bad idea."
Sands did not reply to this.
Slowly El made his way up the road that led to his house. Not his house, though, not really. First it had belonged to Jorge Ramirez, and now it belonged to Sands. He only lived there on Sands' sufferance.
No, he thought. I live there. It is my home.
And suddenly the thought of his home being under attack – yet again – filled him with rage. For many long years he had been on the run, enduring the loss of his latest home with stoicism, but he had had enough. He was not going to run anymore, and he was not going to let them take another home from him.
And Chiclet. If they've hurt him, I'll kill every last one of them. Starting with Sanchez.
If there were men lying in wait along the road, El did not see them. Not that they were necessary. A man in sunglasses had been sitting at the cantina, sipping a beer at one of the outside tables. As El had driven past, the man had pulled out a cell phone.
Sanchez knew they were coming.
With half a mile to go, he pulled over and stopped the car. He had walked this road so many times, on his way to market, to town, to visit Chiclet, to make confession at the church. Today, he reflected, might be the last time he ever walked it.
He started to open his door, and Sands put a hand on his arm. "Wait."
"What is it?" He turned to face Sands.
The agent looked surprisingly somber. "I told you once that I would take my meaning in life wherever I could find it. Do you remember that?"
El did. They had both said it, in the hotel room where they had begun being honest with each other, where the trust had begun.
Sands leaned over and kissed him, fumbling at first to find his mouth. It was a sweet kiss, entirely at odds with his cold expression.
"What was that for?" El asked, his heart beating fast.
"I have found my meaning," Sands said. He did not smile.
El frowned. If this was true, why didn't Sands look at least a little happy about it?
"And I'm sorry," Sands continued, "but that's the reason I can't let you come with me."
His fist caught El in the jaw, snapping the mariachi's head back. Sharp pain splintered through El's head. Then Sands hit him again, and there was nothing.
Only darkness.
******