The Power of the Dog by Don Winslow
So how many years do you have left?
Years at the top, because the middle is not where you want to be and the bottom is a place you don’t want to go. How many years before Haley starts sending you out to the B-list clients, then stops sending you at all?
Two, three, five at the outside?
Then what?
Will you have banked enough money to retire?
Depends on the market, on the investments. In two or three or five years I might have enough money to live in Paris, or I might have to work, in which case, what’s the work?
There are two broad streams in the sex industry.
Prostitution and porn.
Sure, there’s stripping, but that’s where most girls start, and they don’t stay for long. They either get out or go into prostitution or porn. You skipped the dancing phase—thank you, Haley—and went straight to the top end of the prostitution business, but what happens next?
If you don’t take Adán’s offer and the market doesn’t perform?
Porn?
God knows she’s had offers. The money is good, if the work is hard. And she hears that they’re careful about the health issues, but God . . . there’s something about doing it in front of a camera that puts her off.
And again, how long could it last?
Six or seven years, tops.
Then it would be a steep slide to the low-budget video quickies. Fucking on a mattress in the backyard of some house in the Valley. Girl-girl scenes; orgy scenes; being the hot, horny housewife; the nympho mother-in-law; the sex-starved, cock-hungry, grateful, eager older woman.
You’d kill yourself in a year.
A razor along the wrists or a drug overdose.
Same with the inevitable slide as a call girl. You’ve seen it, cringed at it, pitied the women who stayed too long, didn’t save their money, didn’t get married, didn’t hook up with a long-term john. You’ve watched as their faces became bed-worn, their bodies old, their spirits crushed, and pitied them.
Pity.
Self or otherwise, you couldn’t stand that.
Take this man’s offer.
He loves you, he treats you well.
Take his offer while you’re still beautiful, while he still wants you, while you can still give him more pleasure than he ever dreamed possible. Take his money and put it away and then when he gets tired of you, when he starts looking harder at the younger girls, starts looking at them the way he looks at you now, then you can leave with your dignity intact and a decent life in front of you.
Retire from the business and just live.
She decides to tell Adán yes.
Guamuchilito, Sinaloa, Mexico
Tijuana, Mexico
Colombia
1992
Fabián burns.
With what Pilar had whispered to him.
“Yo quiero rabiar.”
Was she telling me, he wonders, what I think she was telling me? Leads to other thoughts, about her mouth, her legs, her feet dangling in the water, the outline of her sex beneath the bathing suit. And fantasies—of reaching his hand beneath that suit and feeling her breasts, of stroking her chocho, of hearing her moan, of being inside her and . . .
And did she mean rabiar? Spanish is a subtle tongue, in which each word can take many meanings. Rabiar can mean to thirst, to burn, to rage, to go crazy, all of which he thinks she meant. And it can also refer specifically to S&M, and he wonders if she could have possibly meant that she wants to be tied up, whipped, fucked roughly—and that gives him yet more tantalizing fantasies. Surprising fantasies that he’s never had before about anyone. He pictures himself tying her down with silk scarves, spanking her beautiful ass, whipping her. Sees himself behind her, she on her hands and knees, fucking her doggie-style and she yelling at him to pull her hair. And he grabs a handful of that thick, black, shiny hair and yanks it back like the reins of a horse, so her long neck arches and stretches and she screams with pain and pleasure.
“Yo quiero rabiar.”
¡Ay, Dios mío!
The next time he goes to Rancho Méndez (weeks later—endless weeks later), he can barely breathe as he gets out of the car. There’s a tightness in his chest and he feels light-headed. And guilty. Wonders, as Güero greets him with an embrace, if his wanton lust for the man’s wife isn’t visible on his face. And he’s sure it must be when she comes out the door of the house and smiles at him. She is carrying the baby and has her arm around the little girl, to whom she says, “Mira, Claudia, Tío Fabián está aquí.”
Uncle Fabián.
He feels a twinge of shame, like, Hello Claudia, Uncle Fabián wants to fuck Mommy.
Badly.
He kisses her that night.
Fucking Güero leaves them alone again in the living room to take a phone call, and they’re standing by the fire and she smells like mimosa flowers and his heart feels like it’s going to explode and they’re looking at each other and then they’re kissing.
Her lips are amazingly soft.
Like overripe peaches.
He feels dizzy.
The kiss ends and they step back from each other.
Amazed.
Scared.
Stimulated.
He walks to the other side of the room.
“I didn’t mean for that to happen,” she says.
“Neither did I.”
But he did.
It’s the plan.
The plan that Raúl told him, but Fabián is certain that it came from Adán. And perhaps from Miguel Ángel Barrera himself.
And Fabián is carrying out the plan.
So pretty soon they’re sneaking kisses, embraces, brushes of the hands, significant glances. It’s an insanely dangerous game, insanely exciting. Flirting with sex, and death, because Güero would surely kill them both if he ever found out.
“I don’t think so,” Pilar tells Fabián. “Oh, I think he would kill you, but then I think he would yell and cry and forgive me.”
She says it almost sadly.
She doesn’t want to be forgiven.
She wants to burn.
Nevertheless, she says, “Nothing can ever happen between us.”
Fabián agrees. In his words. In his head, he is thinking, Yes, it can. Yes, it will. It’s my job, my task, my assignment: Seduce Güero’s wife. Take her away with you.
He starts with the magic words, What if.
The two most powerful words in any language.
What if we’d met each other first? What if we were free? What if we could travel together—Paris, Rio, Rome? What if we ran away? What if we took enough money with us to start a new life?
What if, what if, what if.
They’re like two children playing a game. (What if these rocks were gold?) They start imagining the details of their escape—when they would go, how, what they would take with them. How could they get away without Güero knowing? What about his bodyguards? Where could they meet? What about her children? She wouldn’t leave them behind. Could never leave them behind.
All this shared fantasy done in snatches of conversations, moments stolen from Güero—she’s already unfaithful to Güero in her mind and her heart. And in the bedroom—when he’s on top of her, she’s thinking about Fabián. Güero is so pleased with himself when she screams out her orgasm (this is new, this is fresh), but she’s thinking about Fabián. She’s started stealing even that from him.
The infidelity is complete—all that remain are the physical details.
Possibility shifts to fantasy, fantasy becomes speculation, speculation turns to planning. It’s delicious, planning this new life. They go after it in minute detail. Each of them a clotheshorse, they spend entire precious minutes discussing what they will pack, what they can buy there (“there” being, variously, Paris, Rome or Rio).
Or more serious details: Should we leave Güero a note? Or just disappear? Should we go together or meet somewhere? If we rendezvous, where? Or maybe we can go separately, on the same fligh
Rabiar.
No, I couldn’t wait, she tells him. I will go to the washroom on the plane. You will follow. The door will be unlocked. No, they will meet in a bar in Rio. Pretend they are strangers. He’ll follow her into an alley, shove her against a fence.
Rabiar.
Will you hurt me?
If you want.
Yes.
Then I’ll hurt you.
He’s everything that Güero isn’t: sophisticated, handsome, well dressed, stylish, sexy. And charming. So charming.
She’s ready.
She asks him when.
“Soon,” he says. “I want to run away with you, but . . .”
But.
The terrible counterweight to What if. The intrusion of reality. In this case . . .
“We’ll need money,” he says. “I have some money, but not enough to hide us for as long as we’ll need to hide.”
He knows this is delicate. This is the fragile moment in which the bubble could burst. It floats now on the light air of romance, but the mundane, gross financial details could pop it in a flash. He puts on his face a mask of sensitivity, mixed with a dash of shame, and looks down at the ground as he says, “We will have to wait until I can make more money.”
“How long will that be?” she asks. She sounds hurt, disappointed, on the verge of tears.
He has to be careful. So careful. “Not long,” he says. “A year. Maybe two.”
“That’s too long!”
“I’m sorry. What can I do?”
He leaves the question in the air as if there is no other answer. She provides the response that he wants and expects. “I have money.”
“No,” he says firmly. “Never.”
“But two years—”
“It’s out of the question.”
Just as their flirting was once out of the question, just as their kissing was out of the question, just as their running away . . .
“How much would we need?” she asks.
“Millions,” he says. “That’s why it will take—”
“I can withdraw that much from the bank.”
“I couldn’t.”
“You’re just thinking of yourself,” she says. “Your male pride. Your machismo. How could you be so selfish?”
And that’s the key, Fabián thinks. It’s a done deal now that he’s flipped the equation. Now that his taking her money would be an act of generosity and unselfishness on his part. Now that he loves her so much he would sacrifice his pride, his machismo.
“You don’t love me,” she pouts.
“I love you more than life.”
“You don’t love me enough to—”
“Yes,” he says. “I do.”
She throws her arms around him.
When he goes back to Tijuana he finds Raúl and tells him it’s a done deal.
It’s taken months, but the Shark’s about to feed.
It’s good timing, Raúl thinks.
Because it’s time to start the war with Güero Méndez.
Pilar carefully folds and packs a little black dress.
Along with black brassieres and panties and other lingerie.
Fabián likes her in black.
She wants to please him. She wants it to be perfect, her first time with him. Pues, a menos que la fantasía sea mejor que e acto—well, unless the fantasy is better than the actual fuck. But she doesn’t think it will be. No man can talk the way he does, use the words he uses, have the ideas he has, and not be able to back up at least some of them. He makes her wet talking to her—what will he do when he has her in his arms?
I’ll let him do anything he wants to me, she thinks.
I want him to do anything he wants.
Will you hurt me?
If you want.
Yes.
Then I’ll hurt you.
She hopes so, she hopes he means it, that he won’t be intimidated by her beauty and lose his nerve.
About any of it—because she wants a new life, away from this Sinaloan backwater with her husband and his hillbilly friends. She wants a better life for her children—a good education, some culture, some sense that the world is wider and better than a grotesque fortress tucked away on the outskirts of an isolated mountain town.
And Fabián has that sense—they’ve talked about it. He’s talked to her about making friendships outside the narrow circle of narcotraficantes, about creating relationships with bankers, investors, even artists and writers.
She wants that for herself.
She wants that for her children.
So when, at breakfast, Güero had excused himself and Fabián had leaned over and whispered, “Today,” she’d felt a thrill that fluttered her heart. It was almost like a little orgasm.
“Today?” she whispered back.
“Güero is going out into the countryside,” Fabián said, “to inspect his fields.”
“Yes.”
“So when I go to the airport, you will go with me. I’ve booked us a flight to Bogotá.”
“And the children?”
“Of course,” Fabián said. “Can you pack a few things? Quickly?”
Now she hears Güero coming down the hall. She slips the suitcase under the bed.
He sees the clothes scattered around. “What are you doing?”
“I’m thinking of getting rid of a few of these old things,” she says. “I will bring them to the church.”
“Then go shopping?” he asks, smiling, teasing her. He likes when she goes shopping. Likes it when she spends money. He encourages it.
“Probably.”
“I’m going,” he says. “I’ll be gone all day. I might even stay overnight.”
She kisses him warmly. “I will miss you.”
“I will miss you,” he says. “Maybe I will grab una nena to keep me warm.”
I wish you would, she thinks. Then you wouldn’t come to our bed with such desperation. But she says, “Not you. You are not one of those old gomeros.”
“And I love my wife.”
“And I love my husband.”
“Has Fabián left yet?”
“No, I think he’s packing.”
“I’ll go say good-bye to him.”
“And kiss the children.”
“Aren’t they still alseep?”
“Of course,” she says. “But they like to know that you kissed them before you left.”
He reaches for her and kisses her again. “Eres toda mi vida.”
You are all my life.
As soon as he goes out, she closes the door and gets the suitcase out from under the bed.
Adán says good-bye to his family.
Goes into Gloria’s room and kisses her on the cheek.
The girl smiles.
Despite everything, she smiles, Adán thinks. She’s so cheerful, so brave. In the background, the bird he brought her from Guadalajara chirps.
“Have you given the bird a name?” he asks her.
“Gloria.”
“After yourself?”
“No,” she giggles. “Gloria Trevi.”
“Ah.”
“You’re going away, aren’t you?” she asks.
“Yes.”
“Papaaaa . . .”
“Only for a week or so,” he says.
“Where?”
“A bunch of places,” he says. “Costa Rica, maybe Colombia.”
“Why?”
“To look at coffee to buy,” he says. “For the restaurants.”
“Can’t you buy coffee here?”
“Not good enough for our restaurants.”
“Couldn’t I come with you?”
“Not this time,” he says. “Maybe next time.”