The Water Museum

Six. Amapola

Here’s the thing — I never took drugs in my life. Yeah, okay, I was the champion of my share of keggers. Me and The Pope. We were like, “Bring on the Corona and the Jäger!” Who wasn’t? But I never even smoked the chronic, much less used the hard stuff. Until I met Pope’s little sister. And when I met her, she was the drug, and I took her and I took her, and when I took her, I didn’t care about anything. All the blood and all the bullets in the world could not penetrate that high.

The irony of Amapola and me was that I never would have gotten close to her if her family hadn’t believed I was gay. It was easy for them to think a gringo kid with emo hair and eyeliner was “un joto.” By the time they found out the truth, it was too late to do much about it. All they could do was put me to the test to see if I was a stand-up boy. It was either that or kill me.

You think I’m kidding.

* * *

At first, I didn’t even know she existed. I was friends with Popo. We met in my senior year at “Camelback”—Cortez High. Alice Cooper’s old school back in prehistory, our big claim to fame, though most of us had no idea who Alice Cooper was. VH1 was for grandmothers.

Still, you’d think the freak factor would remain high, right? But it was just another hot space full of Arizona Republicans and future CEOs and hopeless football jocks not yet aware they were going to be fat and bald, living in a duplex on the far side, drinking too much and paying alimony to the cheerleaders they never thought could weigh 298 pounds and smoke like a coal plant.

Not Popo. The Pope. For one thing, he had more money than God. Well, his dad and his aunt Cuca had all the money, but it drizzled upon him like the first rains of Christmas. He was always buying the beer, paying for gas and movie tickets and midnight runs to Taco Bell. “Good American food,” he called it.

He’d transferred in during my senior year. He called it his exile. I spied him for the first time in English. We were struggling to stay awake during the endless literary conversations about A Separate Peace. He didn’t say much about it. Just sat over there making sly eyes at the girls and laughing at the teacher’s jokes. I’d never seen a Beaner kid with such long hair. He looked like some kind of Apache warrior, to tell you the truth. He had double loops in his left ear. He got Droogy sometimes and wore eyeliner under one eye. Those li’l born again chicks went crazy for him when he was in devil-boy mode.

And the day we connected, he was wearing a Cradle of Filth T-shirt. He was staring at me. We locked eyes for a second and he nodded once and we both started to laugh. I was wearing a Fields of the Nephilim shirt. We were the Pentagram Brothers that day, for sure. Everybody else must have been thinking we were goth school shooters. I guess it was a good thing Phoenix was too friggin’ hot for black trench coats.

Later, I was sitting outside the vice principal’s office. Ray Hulsebus, the nickelback on the football team, had called me a faggot and we’d duked it out in the lunch court. Popo was sitting on the wooden bench in the hall.

“Good fight,” he said, nodding once.

I sat beside him.

“Wha’d you get busted for?” I asked.

He gestured at his shirt. It was originally black, but it had been laundered so often it was gray. In a circle were the purple letters VU. Above them, in stark white, one word: HEROIN.

“Cool,” I said. “Velvet Underground.”

“My favorite song.”

We slapped hands.

“The admin’s not into classic rock,” he noted. “Think I’m…advocating substance abuse.”

We laughed.

“You like Berlin?” he asked.

“Berlin? The old band?”

“Hell no! Lou Reed’s best album, dude!”

They summoned him.

“I’ll play it for ya,” he said, and walked into the office.

And so it began.

Tía Cuca’s house was the bomb. She was hooked up with some kind of Lebanese merchant. The whole place was cool floor tiles and suede couches. Their pool looked out on the city lights, and you could watch roadrunners on the deck cruising for rattlers at dusk. Honestly, I didn’t know why Pope wasn’t in some rich private school, but apparently his scholastic history was “spotty.” I still don’t know how he ended up at poor ol’ Camelback, but I do know it must have taken a lot of maneuvering by his family. By the time we’d graduated, we were inseparable. He went to ASU. I didn’t have that kind of money. I went to community college.

Pope’s room was the coolest thing I’d ever seen. Tía Cuca had given him a detached single-car garage at the far end of the house. They’d put in a bathroom and made a bed loft on top of it. Pope had a king-size mattress up there, and a wall of CDs and the Bose iPod port, and everything was Wi-Fi’d to his laptop. There was a huge Bowie poster on the wall beside the door — in full Aladdin Sane glory, complete with the little shiny splash of come on his collarbone. It was so retro. My boy had satellite on a flat screen, and piles of DVDs around the slumpy little couch on the ground floor. I didn’t know why he was so crazy for the criminal stuff—Scarface and The Godfather. I was so sick of Tony Montana and Michael Corleone! He had an Elvis clock — you know the one — with the King’s legs dancing back and forth in place of a pendulum.

“Welcome,” Pope said on that first visit, “to Disgraceland.”

He turned me on to all that good classic stuff: Iggy, T. Rex, Roxy Music. He wasn’t really fond of new music, except for the darkwave guys. Anyway, there we’d be, blasting that glam as loud as possible, and it would get late and I’d just fall asleep on his big bed with him. No wonder they thought I was gay! Ha. We were drinking Buds and reading Chic and Hustler mags we’d stolen from his uncle Abdullah or whatever his name was. Aunt Cuca once said, “Don’t you ever go home?” But I told her, “Nah — since the divorce, my mom’s too busy to worry about it.”

One day I was puttering around his desk, looking at the Alien figures and the Godzillas, scoping out the new copy of El Topo he’d gotten by mail, checking his big crystals and his antique dagger, when I saw the picture of Amapola behind his stack of textbooks. Yes, she was a kid. But what a kid.

“Who’s this?” I said.

He took the framed picture out of my hand and put it back.

“Don’t worry about who that is,” he said.

* * *

Thanksgiving. Pope had planned a great big fiesta for all his homies and henchmen. He took the goth-gansta thing seriously, and he had actual “hit men” (he called them that) who did errands for him, carried out security at his concerts. He played guitar for the New Nouveau Nuevos — you might remember them. One of his “soldiers” was a big Irish kid who’d been booted off the football team, Andy the Tank. Andy appeared at our apartment with the invitation to the fiesta — we were to celebrate the Nuevos’ upcoming year, and chart the course of the future. I was writing lyrics for Pope, cribbed from Roxy Music and Bowie’s Man Who Sold the World album. The invite was printed out on rolled parchment and tied with a red ribbon. Pope had style.

I went over to Tía Cuca’s early, and there she was — Amapola. She’d come up from Nogales for the fiesta, since Pope was by now refusing to go home for any reason. He wanted nothing to do with his dad, who had declared that only gay boys wore long hair or makeup or played in a band that wore feather boas and silver pants. Sang in English.

I was turning eighteen, and she was fifteen, almost sixteen. She was more pale than Popo. She had a frosting of freckles on her nose and cheeks, and her eyes were light brown, almost gold. Her hair was thick and straight and shone like some liquid. She was kind of shy, too, blushing when I talked to her.

The meal was righteous. They’d fixed a turkey in the Mexican style. It was stuffed not with bread or oysters, but with nuts, dried pineapple, dried papaya and mango slices, and raisins. Cuca and Amapola wore traditional Mexican dresses and, along with Cuca’s cook, served us the courses as we sat like members of the Corleone family around the long dining room table. Pope had seated Andy the Tank beside Fuckin’ Franc, the Nuevos’ drummer. Some guy I didn’t know but who apparently owned a Nine Inch Nails type synth studio in his garage sat beside Franc. I was granted the seat at the end of the table, across its length from Pope. Down the left side were the rest of the Nuevos — losers all.

I was trying to keep my roving eye hidden from The Pope. I didn’t even have to guess what he’d do if he caught me checking her out. But she was so fine. It wasn’t even my perpetual state of horniness. Yes it was. But it was more. She was like a song. Her small smiles, her graciousness. The way she swung her hair over her shoulder. The way she lowered her eyes and spoke softly…then gave you a wry look that cut sideways and made savage fun of everyone there. You just wanted to be a part of everything she was doing.

“Thank you,” I said, every time she refilled my water glass or dropped fresh tortillas by my plate. Not much, it’s true, but compared to The Tank or Fuckin’ Franc, I was as suave as Cary Grant.

“You are so welcome,” she’d say.

It started to feel like a dance. It’s in the way you say it, not what you say. We were saying more to each other than Cuca or Pope could hear.

We were down to the cinnamon coffee and the red grape juice toasts. She stood behind me, resting her hands on the top of the chair. And Amapola put out one finger, where they couldn’t see it, and ran her fingernail up and down between my shoulder blades.

Suddenly, supper was over, and we were all saying good night, and she had disappeared somewhere in the big house and never came back out.

Soon Christmas came, and Pope again refused to go home. I don’t know how Cuca took it, having the sullen King Nouveau lurking in her converted garage. He had a kitsch aluminum tree in there. Blue ornaments. “Très Warhol.” He sighed.

My mom had given me some cool stuff — a vintage Who T-shirt, things like that. Pope’s dad had sent presents — running shoes, French sunglasses, a.22 target pistol. We snickered. I was way cooler than Poppa Popo. I had been down to Tucson, and I’d hit Zia Records and brought him some obscure 70s LPs: Captain Beyond, Curved Air, Amon Duul II, the Groundhogs. Pope got me a vintage turntable and the first four Frank Zappa LPs — how cool is that?

Pope wasn’t a fool. He wasn’t blind, either. He’d arranged a better gift for me than all that. He’d arranged for Amapola to come visit for a week. I found out later she had begged him.

“Keep it in your pants,” he warned me. “I’m watching you.”

Oh my God. I was flying. We went everywhere for those six days. The three of us, unfortunately. Pope took us to that fancy art deco hotel on the west side of Phoenix. That one with the crazy neon lights on the walls outside and the dark gourmet eatery on the ground-floor front corner. We went to movie matinees, never night movies. It took two movies to wangle a spot sitting next to her, getting Pope to relinquish the middle seat to keep us apart. But he knew it was a powerful movement between us, like continental drift. She kept leaning over to watch me instead of the movies. She’d laugh at everything I said. She lagged when we walked so I would walk near her. I was trying to keep my cool, not set off the Hermano Grande alarms. Suddenly he let me sit beside her. I could smell her. She was all clean hair and sweet skin. Our arms brushed on the armrest, and we let them linger, sweat against each other. Our skin forming a thin layer of wet between us, a little of her and a little of me mixing and forming something made of both of us. I was aching. I could have pole-vaulted right out of the theater.

She turned sixteen that week. At a three o’clock showing of The Dark Knight, she slipped her hand over the edge of the armrest and tangled her fingers in mine.

This time, when she left, Pope allowed us one minute alone in his garage room. I kissed her. It was awkward. Delicious. Her hand went to my face and held it. She got in Cuca’s car and cried as they drove away.

“You fucker,” Popo said.

* * *

She didn’t Facebook. Amapola didn’t even email. Calling from Nogales was out of the question, even though her dad could have afforded it. When I asked Pope about his father’s business, he told me they ran a duty-free import/export company based on each side of the border, in the two Nogaleses. Whatever. I just wanted to talk to Amapola. So I got stamps and envelopes. I was thinking, what is this, like, 1980 or something? But I wrote to her, and she wrote to me. I never thought about how instant messages or email couldn’t hold perfume, or have lip prints on the paper. You could Skype naked images to each other all night long, but Amapola had me hooked with each new scent in the envelope. She put her hair in the envelopes. It was more powerful than anything I’d experienced before. Maybe it was voodoo.

At Easter, Cuca and her Lebanese hubby flew to St. Thomas for a holiday. Pope was gigging a lot, and he was seeing three of four strippers. I’ll admit, he was hitting the sauce too much — he’d come home wasted and ricochet around the bathroom, banging into the fixtures like a pinball. I thought he’d break his neck on the toilet or the bathtub. He said the old man had been putting pressure on him — I had no idea how or what he wanted of Pope. He wanted the rock and roll foolishness to end, that’s for sure.

“You have no idea!” Pope would say, tequila stink on his breath. “If you only knew what they were really like. You can’t begin to guess.” But, you know, all boys who wear eyeliner and pay for full-sleeve tats say the same thing. Don’t nobody understand the troubles they’ve seen. I just thought Pope was caught up in being our Nikki Sixx. We were heading for fame, world tours. I thought.

Somehow, Pope managed to get Amapola there at the house for a few days. And there she was, all smiles. Dressed in black. Looking witchy and magical. Pope had a date with a girl named Demitasse. Can you believe that? Because she had small breasts or something. She danced at a high-end club that catered to men who knew words like “Demitasse.” She had little silver vials full of “stardust,” that’s all I really knew. It all left Pope staggering and blind, and that was what I needed to find time alone with my beloved.

We tried to watch a movie, but our hands crept toward each other. Which led to kissing. And once we kissed, we no longer cared what was on the TV. I freed her nipple from the lace — it was pink and swollen, like a little candy. I thought it would be brown. What did I know about Mexican girls? She pushed me away when I got on top of her, and she moved my hand away gently when it slipped up her thigh.

Pope came home walking sideways. I had no idea what time it was. I don’t know how he got home. My pants were wet all down my left leg from hours of writhing with her. I knew I should be embarrassed but I didn’t care. When Pope slurred, “My dad’s in town,” I didn’t even pay attention. He went to Cuca’s piano in the living room and tried to play some of “Tommy.” Then there was a silence that grew long. We looked in there and he was asleep on the floor, under the piano.

“Shh,” Amapola said. And “Wait here for me.” She kissed my mouth, bit my lip.

When she came back down, she wore a nightgown that drifted around her legs and belly like fog. I knelt at her feet and ran my hands up her legs. She turned aside just as my hands crossed the midpoint of her thighs, and my palms slid up over her hip bones. She had taken off her panties. I put my mouth to her navel. I could smell her through the thin material.

“Do you love me?” she whispered, fingers tangled in my hair.

“Anything. You and me.” I wasn’t even thinking. “Us.”

She yanked my hair.

“Do,” she said. “You. Love me?”

Yank. It hurt.

“Yes!” I said. “Okay! Jesus! I love you!”

We went upstairs.

* * *

“Get up! Get up! Get the fuck up!” Popo was saying, ripping off the sheets. “Now! Now! Now!”

Amapola covered herself and rolled away with a small cry. Light was blasting through the windows. I thought he was going to beat my ass for sleeping with her. But he was in a panic.

“Get dressed. Dude — get dressed now!”

“What? What?”

“My dad.”

He put his fists to his head.

“Oh shit. My dad!”

She started to cry.

I was in my white boxers in the middle of the room.

“Guys,” I said. “Guys! Is there some trouble here?”

Amapola dragged the sheet off the bed and ran, wrapped, into the bathroom.

“You got no idea,” Pope said. “Get dressed.”

We were in the car in ten minutes. We sped out of the foothills and across town. Phoenix always looks empty to me when it’s hot, like one of those sci-fi movies where all the people are dead and gone and some vampires or zombies are hiding in the vacant condos, waiting for night. The streets are too wide, and they reflect the heat like a Teflon cooking pan. Pigeons might explode into flame just flying across the street to escape the melting city bus. Pope was saying, “Just don’t say nothing. Just show respect. It’ll be okay. Right, sis?”

She was in the backseat.

“Don’t talk back,” she said. “Just listen. You can take it.”

“Yeah,” Pope said. “You can take it. You better take it. That’s the only way he’ll respect you.”

My head was spinning.

Apparently, the old man had come to town to see Pope and meet me, but Pope, that asshole, had been so wasted he forgot. But it was worse than that. The old man had waited at a fancy restaurant. For both of us. You didn’t keep Big Pop waiting.

You see, he had found my letters. He had rushed north to try to avert the inevitable. And now he was seething, they said, because Pope’s maricón best friend wasn’t queer at all, and was working his mojo on the sweet pea. My scalp still hurt from her savage hair-pulling. I looked back at her. Man, she was as fresh as a sea breeze. I started to smile.

“Ain’t no joke,” Pope announced.

* * *

“Look,” he said. “It won’t seem like it at first, but Pops will do anything for my sister. Anything. She controls him, man. So keep cool.”

When we got there, Pope said, “The bistro.” I had never seen it before, not really traveling in the circles that liked French food or ate at “bistros.” Pops was standing outside. He was a slender man, balding. Clean-shaven. Only about five-seven. He wore aviator glasses, that kind that turn dark in the sun. They were deep gray over his eyes. He was standing with a Mexican in a soldier’s uniform. The Mexican was over six feet tall and had a good gut on him.

The old man and the soldier stared at me. I wanted to laugh. That’s it? I mean, really? A little skinny bald guy? I was invincible with love.

Poppa turned and entered the bistro without a word. Pope and Amapola followed, holding hands. The stout soldier dude just eyeballed me and walked in. I was left alone on the sidewalk. I followed.

They were already sitting. It was ice-cold. I tried not to stare at Amapola’s nipples. But I noticed her pops looking at them. And then the soldier. Pops told her, “Tápate, cabrona.” She had brought a little sweater with her, and now I knew why. She primly draped herself.

“Dad…,” said Pope.

“Shut it,” his father said.

The eyeglasses had become only half-dark. You could almost see his eyes.

A waiter delivered a clear drink.

“Martini, sir,” he said.

It was only about eleven in the morning.

Big Poppa said, “I came to town last night to see you.” He sipped his drink. “I come here, to this restaurant. Is my favorite. Is comida francés, understand? Quality.” Another sip. He looked at the soldier — the soldier nodded. “I invite you.” He pointed at Pope. Then at her. Then at me. “You, you, and you. Right here.” He drained the martini and snapped his fingers at the waiter. “An’ I sit here an’ wait.” The waiter hurried over and took the glass and scurried away.

“Me an’ my brother, Arnulfo.”

He put his hand on the soldier’s arm.

“We wait for you.”

Popo said, “Dad…”

“Cállate el osico, chingado,” his father growled from deep in his chest so only I could hear him. He turned his head to me and smiled. He looked like a moray eel in a tank. Another martini landed before him.

He sipped. “I wait for you, but you don’t care. No! Don’t say nothing. Listen. I wait, and you no show up here to my fancy dinner. Is okay. I don’t care.” He waved his hand. “I have my li’l drink, and I don’t care.” He toasted me. He seemed like he was coiled, steel springs inside his gut. My skin was crawling and I didn’t even know why.

“I wait for you,” he said. “Captain Arnulfo, he wait. You don’t care, right? Is okay! I’m happy. I got my martinis, I don’t give a shit.”

He smiled, and I was pretty certain he did give a shit.

He pulled a long cigar out of his inner pocket. He bit the end off and spit it on the table. He put it in his mouth. Arnulfo took out a gold lighter and struck a blue flame.

The waiter rushed over and murmured, “I’m sorry, sir, but this is a nonsmoking restaurant. You’ll have to take it outside.”

The old man didn’t even look at him — just stared at me through those gray lenses.

“Is hot outside,” he said. “Right, gringo? Too hot?” I nodded — I didn’t know what to say.

“I must insist,” the waiter said.

“Bring the chef,” the old man said.

“Excuse me?”

“Get the chef out here. Now.”

The waiter brought out the chef, who bent down to the old man. Whispers. No drama. But the two men hurried away and the waiter came back with an ashtray. Arnulfo lit Poppa’s cigar.

He blew smoke at me and said, “Why you do this violence to me?”

“I—” I said.

“Shut up.”

He snapped his fingers again, and food and more martinis arrived. I stared at my plate. Snails in garlic butter. I couldn’t eat, couldn’t even sip the water. Smoke drifted to me. I could feel the gray lenses focused on me. Pope, that chickenshit, just ate and never looked up. Amapola sipped iced coffee and stared out the window.

After forty minutes of this nightmare, Poppa pushed his plate away.

“Oye,” he said, “tú.”

I looked up.

“Why you wan’ fock my baby daughter?”

* * *

Sure, I trembled for a while after that. I got it, I really did. But did good sense overtake me? What do you think? I was full-on into the Romeo and Juliet thing, and she was even worse. Parents — you want to ensure your daughters marry young? Forbid them from seeing their boyfriends. Just try it.

“Uncle Arnie,” as big, dark Captain Arnulfo was called in Cuca’s house, started hanging around. A lot. I wasn’t, like, stupid. I could tell what was what — he was sussing me out. He sidled up to me and said dumb things like “You like the sexy?” Pope and I laughed all night after Uncle Arnie made his appearances. “You make the sexy-sexy in cars?” What a dork, we thought.

My beloved showered me with letters. I had no way of knowing if my own letters got to her or not, but she soon found an Internet café in Nogales and sent me cyber-love. Popo was drying up a little, not quite what you’d call sober, but occasionally actually on the earth, and he started calling me “McLovin’.” I think it was his way of trying to tone it down. “Bring it down a notch, homeboy,” he’d say when I waxed overly poetic about his sister.

One Saturday I was chatting online with Amapola. That’s all I did on Saturday afternoons. No TV, no cruising in the car, no movies or pool time. I fixed a huge vat of sun tea and hit my laptop and talked to her. Mom was at work — she was always at work or out doing lame shit like bowling. It was just me, the computer, my distant girlie, and the cat rubbing against my leg. I’ll confess to you — don’t laugh — I cried at night thinking about her.

Pope said I was whipped. I’d be like, that’s no way to talk about your sister. She’s better than all of you people! He’d just look at me out of those squinty Apache eyes. “Maybe,” he’d drawl. “Maybe…” And I was just thinking about all that on Saturday, going crazier and crazier with the desire to see her sweet face every morning, her hair on my skin every night, mad in love with her, and I was IM-ing her that she should just book. Run away. She was almost seventeen already. She could catch a bus and be in Phoenix in a few hours and we’d jump on I-10 and drive to Cali. I didn’t know what I imagined — just us, in love, on a beach. And suddenly, the laptop crashed. Just gone — a black screen before Amapola could answer me. I booted back up, not thinking much about it, but she was gone. Completely. I couldn’t even find her account in my history. That was weird, I thought. I figured it for some sort of computer glitch, cursed and kicked stuff, then I grabbed a shower and rolled.

When I cruised over to Aunt Cuca’s, everyone was gone. Only Uncle Arnie was left, sitting in the living room in his uniform, sipping coffee.

“They all go on vacation,” he said. “Just you and me.”

Vacation? Pope hadn’t said anything about vacations. Not that he was what my English profs would call a reliable narrator.

Arnie gestured for me to sit. I stood there.

“Coffee?” he offered.

“No thanks.”

“Sit!”

I sat.

I never really knew what the F Arnie was mumbling, to tell you the truth. His accent was all bandido. I often just nodded and smiled, hoping not to offend the dude, lest he freak out and bust caps in me.

“You love Amapola,” he said. It wasn’t a question. He smiled sadly, put his hand on my knee.

“Yes, sir,” I said.

He nodded. Sighed.

“Love,” he said. “Is good, love.”

“Yes, sir.”

“You not going away, right?”

I shook my head.

“No way.”

“So. What this means? You marry the girl?”

Whoa. Marry? I…guess…I was going to marry her. Someday.

Sure, you think about it. But to say it out loud. That was hard. But I felt like some kind of breakthrough was happening here. The older generation had sent an emissary; perhaps they were warming up to me.

“I believe,” I said, mustering some balls, “yes. I will marry Amapola. Someday. You know.”

He shrugged, sadly. I thought that was a little odd, frankly. He held up a finger and busted out a cell phone, hit the speed button, and muttered in Spanish. Snapped it shut. Sipped his coffee.

“We have big family reunion tomorrow. You come. Okay? I’ll fix up all with Amapola’s papá. You see. Yes?”

I smiled at him, not believing this turn of events.

“Big Mexican rancho. Horses. Good food. Mariachis.” He laughed. “And love! Two kids in love!”

We slapped hands. We smiled and chuckled. I had some coffee.

“I pick you up here at seven in the morning,” he said. “Don’t be late.”

* * *

The morning desert was purple and orange. The air was almost cool. Arnie had a Styrofoam cooler loaded with Dr. Peppers and Cokes. He drove a bitchin’ S-Class Benz. It smelled like leather and aftershave. He kept the satellite tuned to BBC Radio 1. “You like the crazy maricón music, right?” he asked.

“…ah…right.”

It was more like flying than driving, and when he sped past Arivaca, I wasn’t all that concerned. I figured we were going to Nogales, Arizona. But we slid through that little dry town like a shark and crossed into Mex without hardly slowing down. At the border, he just raised a finger off the steering wheel and motored along, saying, “You going to like this.”

And then we were through Nogales, Mexico, too. Black and tan desert. Saguaros and freaky burned-looking cactuses. I’m not an ecologist — I don’t know what that stuff was. It was spiky.

We took a long dirt side road. I was craning around, looking at the bad black mountains around us.

We came out in a big valley. There was an airfield of some sort there. Mexican army stuff — trucks, Humvees. Three of four hangars or warehouses. Some shiny Cadillacs and SUVs scattered around.

“You going to like this,” Arnie said. “It’s a surprise.”

There was Big Poppa Popo, the old man himself. He was standing with his hands on his hips. With a tall American. Those dark gray lenses turned toward us. We parked. We got out.

“What’s going on?” I asked.

“Shut up,” said Arnie.

“Where’s the rancho?” I asked.

The American burst out laughing.

“Jesus, kid!” he shouted. He turned to the old man. “He really is a dumb shit.”

The American walked away without introducing himself and got in a white SUV. He slammed the door and drove into the desert, back the way we had come. We stood there watching him go. I’m not going to lie — I was getting scared.

“You gonna marry Amapola?” the old man asked me.

“One day. Look, I don’t know what you guys are doing here, but—”

He turned from me and gestured toward a helicopter sitting on the field.

“Look at that,” he said. “Huey. Old stuff, from your Vietnam. Now the Mexican air force use it to fight las drogas.” He turned to me. “You use las drogas?”

“No! Never.”

They laughed.

“Sure, sure,” the old man said.

“Ask Amapola!” I cried. “She’ll tell you!”

“She already tell me everything,” he said.

Arnie put his arm around my shoulders.

“Come,” he said, and started walking toward the helicopter. I resisted for a moment, but the various Mexican soldiers standing around were suddenly really focused and not slouching and were walking along all around us.

“What is this?” I said.

“You know what I do?” the old man asked.

“Business?” I said. My mind was blanking out, I was so scared.

“Business.” He nodded. “Good answer.”

We came under the blades of the big helicopter. I’d never been near one in my life. It scared the crap out of me. The Mexican pilots looked out their side windows at me. The old man patted the side of the machine.

“President Bush!” he said. “DEA!”

I looked at Arnie. He smiled, nodded at me. “Fight the drogas,” he said.

The engines whined and chuffed and the rotor started to turn.

“Is very secret what we do,” said the old man. “But you take a ride and see. Is my special treat. You go with Arnulfo.”

“Come with me,” Arnie said.

“You go up and see, then we talk about love.”

The old man hurried away, and it was just me and Arnie and the soldiers with their black M16s.

“After you,” Arnie said.

* * *

He pulled on a helmet. Then we took off. It was rough as hell. I felt like I was being punched in the ass and lower back when the engines really kicked in. And when we rose, my guts dropped out through my feet. I closed my eyes and gripped the webbing Arnie had fastened around my waist. “Holy God!” I shouted. It was worse when we banked — the side doors were wide open, and I screamed like a girl, sure I was falling out. The Mexicans laughed and shook their heads, but I didn’t care.

Arnie was standing in the door. He unhooked a big gun from where it had been strapped with its barrel pointed up. He dangled it in the door on cords. He leaned toward me and shouted, “Sixty caliber! Hung on double bungees!” He slammed a magazine into the thing and pulled levers and snapped snappers. He leaned down to me again and shouted, “Feel the vibration? You lay on the floor, it makes you come!”

I thought I heard him wrong.

We were beating out of the desert and into low hills. I could see our shadow below us, fluttering like a giant bug on the rises and over the bushes. The seat kicked up and we were rising.

Arnulfo took a pistol from his belt and pointed down.

“Amapola,” he said.

I looked around for her, stupidly. But then I saw what was below us, in a watered valley. Orange flowers. Amapola. Poppies.

“This is what we do,” Arnulfo said.

He raised his pistol and shot three rounds out the door and laughed. I put my hands over my ears.

“You’re DEA?” I cried.

He popped off another round.

“Is competition,” he said. “We do business.”

Oh my God.

He fell against me and was shouting in my ear and there was nowhere I could go. “You want Amapola? You want to marry my sobrina? Just like that? Really? Pendejo.” He grabbed my shirt. “Can you fly, gringo? Can you fly?” I was shaking. I was trying to shrink away from him, but I could not. I was trapped in my seat. His breath stank, and his lips were at my ear like hers might have been and he was screaming, “Can you fly, chingado? Because you got a choice! You fly, or you do what we do.”

I kept shouting, “What? What?” It was like one of those dreams where nothing makes sense. “What?”

“You do what we do, I let you live, cabrón.”

“What?” I was screaming too.

“I let you live. Or you fly. Decide.”

“I don’t want to die!” I yelled. I was close to wetting my pants. The Huey was nose-down and sweeping in a circle. I could see people below us, running. A few small huts. Horses or mules. A pickup started to speed out of the big poppy field. Arnulfo talked into his mike and the helicopter hove after it. He took up the.60 caliber and braced himself. I put my fingers in my ears. And he ripped a long stream of bullets out the door. It was the loudest thing I’d ever heard. Louder than the loudest thing you can imagine. So loud your insides jump, but it all becomes an endless rip of noise, like thunder is inside your bladder and your teeth hurt from gritting against it.

The truck just tattered, if metal can tatter. The roof of the cab blew apart and the smoking ruin of the truck spun away below us and vanished in dust and smoke and steam.

I was crying.

“Be a man!” Arnulfo yelled.

We were hovering. The crew members were all turned toward me, staring.

Arnie unsnapped my seat webbing.

“Choose,” he said.

“I want to live.”

“Choose.”

You know how it goes in the movies. How the hero kicks the bad guy out the door and sprays the Mexican crew with the.60 and survives a crash landing. But that’s not real life. That doesn’t even cross your mind. Not even close. No, you get up on terribly shaky legs, so shaky you might pitch out the open door all by yourself and discover that you cannot, in fact, fly. You say, “What do I do?” And the door gunner grabs you and shoves you up to the hot gun. The ground is wobbling far below you, and you can see the Indian workers down there. Six men and a woman. And they’re running. You’re praying and begging God to get you out of this somehow and you’re thinking of your beautiful lover and you tell yourself you don’t know how you got here and the door gunner comes up behind you now, he slams himself against your ass, and he says, “Hold it, lean into it. It’s gonna kick, okay? Finger on the trigger. I got you.” And you brace the.60 and you try to close your eyes and you pray you miss them and you’re saying Amapola, Amapola over and over in your mind, and the gunner is hard against you, he’s erect and pressing it into your buttocks and he shouts, “For love!” and you squeeze the trigger.