humo caliente 2
What is freedom anyway?
Cutting it down and turning it over, it's not freedom at all. It's an imposed idea. Freedom in a society of self-indulgent cows is equal to nothing. You forget it's there, you walk over it, you come to Mexico and freedom is the dust in the air from unpaved roads and days without bathing.
Sands can't sleep.
Here's a scenario: take a person. Take away that person's eyes—well, gouge, scoop or skewer, if you will—and see if that person sleeps for the first week. The first week of bandages rapped so tight that's all you're think about. Of smelling vinegar and piss, people screaming, squeaking gurney wheels. Needles you can't see but you feel. Cold hands.
Oh, they won't sleep. And they'll begin to wonder if they ever will again, and not just subsequently pass out from exhaustion. Every time. And what after that?
Sitting long enough in any one place can make you wonder if you're asleep. Nodding off in public could have been a problem, if not for headaches. On and off. Flash floods.
The only thing Sands can rightly say he sees anymore is red.
"Fucking mother—are you there?"
"Si, si..."
He might have coughed up a sting about El being awake, but he skips it, for once, everyone needs a break, and says, "Does this Candy Land carry any pills?"
"Quizá."
"Could you scurry your fine ass down stairs and rustle me up some, then?"
"El tiempo es cuatro de la maZana."
"Not... entirely privy to that information. Being eyeless, and all... What are you still doing awake?"
"Your mouth runs."
"Yes, yes I know, that's nice... What are you doing?"
"Sentada."
"Golly, thanks for painting me a picture. Let's try another. What are you—that's you, El Mariachi, Mexican—doing up—which certainly isn't sleeping, like I wish I could be doing—at four in the morning?"
"Cannot sleep."
"Of course."
There isn't much expectance in a dark world. With dark sounds and a darker touch. If you get bruised enough the only expectance is to stop pushing. But Sands never did.
"Imagine that... They're sleeping pills?"
"Si."
"And this will knock me... oh, say—right out?"
"Si."
"Well, thank you, amigo. Let's have a hand shake."
When he feels a hand closing around his own, he tugs it in and towards his chest. Hard. To get a little point across.
"Let's hope here, that you're not pulling my chain and these are, in fact, sleeping pills. If they aren't? That would just, well... be bad beans on your part. Bingo?"
"Si."
Sands nods, letting go. Disgruntled business man all over again.
Some things you just can't change.
"You were tormenting the natives today?"
"What?"
"You went out?"
"About that. You see, I haven't been able to sleep.."
A nod he can't see.
"...and I asked around. Seems some guy had what I wanted."
"What did you buy from him?"
"Magic pills."
A smile he can feel.
Who needs eyes when all you ever did with them in the first place was watch bad Mexican TV, ogle breasts, and intimidate people? You can still do the intimidation part. Wide sunglasses, sly smiles, hinting tones. They tend to do that.
Sands never was a fan of TV. He'd said watching too much made you go blind. He remembers saying that to Ajedrez once in a bar, in this town, when they were still an item, and scowls.
He'd said it. And she hadn't said anything back.
"These aren't fucking wooorking."
He misses ogling breasts.
El Mariachi is music wherever he goes. He's music when he sits down. He's music when he stands up. And that's all because he has these annoying little chains stuck on his pants. They jangle. Obnoxiously. Sands might have made an unfriendly comment about them when they met, but... first impressions were important.
You've got to play the game right. Keep the proverbial peace.
As soon as El's crossing his legs Sands knows that he's sitting across the room. Which is as far as his power goes. He can't tell if he's sitting on something, or holding something, looking somewhere, looking a certain way—he has no eyes after all. You can only do so much.
"I'm not feeling anything, here."
Sands is lying across the only bed in the room. A rented room above the smoking cantina.
"Let them work."
"You know," he turns over, from being on his back to being on his stomach, "They've had time to work, fucknut. I want to sleep now. Pass right on out. Fly free..."
"Give it time."
"Well, I thank you for your support, Captain Obvious, but I think I've been done over. And that makes me, ohh—a wee bit angry."
"You should not have gone out."
"I. Can't. Sleep."
Cue moment of silence—almost silence. A car drives buy, a cat meows, someone yells, a door slams, El's chains jingle.
"El's bells," Sands groans, cracks a smile at the joke, then feels like he's falling. Only he's not. He's on a bed. One that's full of lumps and smells like starch mixed with blood and alcohol. Realizes the last two are because of him, and then doesn't realize anything because he's out.
"I had a dream... You were in it, by the way. Well. Your pants."
El laughs and says, "What?"
"And I've slept." He's almost disappointed when he says it. As it passes the lips. He really needed a good reason to shoot someone today. It takes the edge off a headache. Makes you feel two years younger. Quells loneliness. Hypes you up.
Only extremes ever got Sands doing anything. Extreme fear, extreme pain, annoyance, the list goes on. Not much he did was what he didn't want to do.
He didn't want to get up.
El, being the jingling fiend he is, says, as if to no one at all, "We need to move."
Sands is especially annoyed by this and flashes the finger where he thinks El is standing. He's right, and gets a door shutting for his trouble.
"Yeah, love you too... Bring me back something to drink!"
El comes back, drink absent.
"I find it entirely too funny you've managed not to get killed wearing those pants. I mean, really. Makes me think cat. I hate cats."
"I like cats."
"And you would."
Not that it matters, but Sands supposes it's in the afternoon, when it's at its hottest and everyone's cramped in bars where it's no cooler but it's out of the Sun. He's feeling sticky and all over gross.
"I need a fuck..."
"Sex?"
"Are you offering?"
El doesn't answer.