The Ultimate Good Luck

15

BERNHARDT TURNED WEST toward the airport instead of entering the Centro off the American Highway, and followed the periférico toward the east edge of the city where he had taken Quinn the night before. “I will show you a thing,” he said self-assuredly.

The boulevard began to crowd with motorbikes and Zapotecs on foot as it approached the immediate plain of the Atoyac. There was a displeasing feel of rapid activity without a center to make it knowable, like a disaster area being evacuated. Where the periférico drifted north, returning to the American Highway, the foot traffic thickened and he saw out on the dry flats a wide unspecified expanse of earthworks like a garbage plain, only larger. There was a teeming of bodies in the empty expanse. Smokes were strung out vaguely against the noon light. The Indians on the boulevard were crossing and making out onto the flats with bundles of cardboard and car remnants held over their heads. People were digging and others were simply standing half-dressed among the heaps of dirt and cardboard, staring at the city as if it was something they wanted and were deciding how to get.

“Are those the people who eat garbage?” Rae said, staring interested into the sea of boxes and rubble.

“Marginales,” Bernhardt said officiously, emphasizing the g in a way meant to impress. “Marginal people.”

Bernhardt made a U-turn on the boulevard and stopped at the opposite curb. The camp had a wide public quality that made it seem knowable and unmemorable, like the faces in the buses waiting out on the highway. Humanity without secrets. An army jeep was moving slowly among the earthworks and cardboard hovels, its long antenna with a red pennant wagging listlessly in the sunshine. “They come one time, maybe for Cinco de Mayo, and then don’t leave,” Bernhardt said as if the sight was an understatement of a much more illuminating truth. He sniffed significantly. “I have clients here,” he said. “They climb poles, take electricity, become a nuisance. Some are electrocuted. Sometimes the army comes with clubs and beats them at night. They have no rights, only needs, and so suddenly they are guerrillas.”

“Am I supposed to sympathize?” Quinn said.

Bernhardt pulled the Mercedes down into gear and eased back into traffic. “It is possible to work here without sympathizing. Maybe I don’t like your existence. But.…”

“What’s that designed to do for me?” Quinn said.

“Your business is complicated,” Bernhardt answered. “But it is not the only business. Everyone is marginal.”

“Is that supposed to mean something?”

“The boy you see last night was a boy who lived there”—he motioned at the sea of hovels—“maybe a year ago, maybe less than a year.”

“Maybe not at all,” Quinn said. “Are you running for office, or working for me?”

Bernhardt wheeled the car back up into the narrow streets that led to the Centro. “You see in a tunnel. Outside what you see, things are not one way, but other ways at once. You need to be tolerant.”

“It doesn’t help me,” Quinn said.

“Why don’t you just shut up, Harry,” Rae said wearily from the back seat. “Being an asshole isn’t helping anything either.”

He concentrated on the big Corona Cerveza sign he could see at night from the bungalow, blue-lit against the dark matter, a flat globe shining without motion, the continents shuffled to one side. At night he felt appealed to when he saw it, as if there were endless places to be, every one better than here, though he never believed it in the daylight, and didn’t believe it now.