I ran my hand over the slope of her back. She didn’t wake up.
We’d found a little hostel with the entire desert in the backyard. I spoke a little broken Spanish to the man behind the desk. When I signed us in as Mr. and Mrs. Spinelli, she blushed and got the smile people get when they can’t help themselves.
The passports wouldn’t be delivered until the next afternoon, and I had business to attend to. Important business.
I’d closed the hotel room door behind us. The room was done in cheap Mexican artifacts imported from China. The air conditioner hummed, and the windows were shut tight. The white curtains hung dead in the heavy afternoon air, and the flies were too lazy to buzz.
Theresa had slipped her bag off her shoulder onto the straight wooden chair as if she had all the time in the world, then peeked at herself in the peeling dresser mirror at the foot of the bed. She’d touched the bump on her head.
Against the sound of crickets and her breathing, I ran my finger along the angle of her shoulder blade, remembering the afternoon.
“I know what you’re thinking.” She’d passed the bed. The mattress was as high as a slice of bread over a metal frame.
“The bed will creak? I think it will, and I don’t care.”
“There’s too much, Antonio. Too much to think about. I’m anxious.”
If she hadn’t said it, I wouldn’t have known. Not a line of worry crossed her brow.
“Get on that bed, Contessa, before I give you something to be anxious about.” I bolted the door.
“I don’t feel like it.”
I pushed her onto the bed, and she fell in a sitting position with her hands behind her. Her denim-covered knees parted slightly, and when she tried to cross her legs, I yanked them open.
“I mean it,” she’d gasped.
I got hard remembering that little bit of resistance I’d had to get through.
“Give yourself to me,” I’d said.
“Not now.”
I wedged myself between her legs, and she fell supine. “Give yourself to me.” I pushed my cock against her.
She put her hands on my chest and pushed me away. I took her wrists and held her hands over her head. She cringed. I let her hands go, and she held them up to me.
They were red. Streaks of white crossed the palms where they’d blistered.[→3] When I looked in her eyes, the bump on her head laughed at me. I’d gone to the tavern and walked on the beach with her and not tended to her injuries. I was already a failure as a husband, and we weren’t even married yet.
“Stay here,” I said, getting up. I was out the door and on the street in seconds.
I had crossed the border a different man. Had it been the border? It was only a line in the sand. Or had it been before, on the drive south? Or the moments when I let her think I was dead, and I couldn’t do it, couldn’t leave her with the corpse of my best friend and a warm gun. The thought of leaving her there seemed wrong. Against the laws of physics and logic. I had been trying to be forte and turn my back, find some other life to ruin. I couldn’t. I was a selfish brute. I was worse than my first wife’s accusations. An animal. A destructive force wherever I went.
I’d gotten got a tube of antibiotic cream, burn ointment, and white tape and gauze from the drug store, then I ran back. I was paranoid, convinced I saw enemies ducking around corners and behind doors. Would I always look for them? See them? When we got out of Los Angeles the second time, would I be able to live like a normal man? Ever?
When I’d gotten got back upstairs, she hadn’t moved. It might be the first time she’d actually obeyed me.[→4]
The bed creaked and bent when I sat on the edge. “Let me see your hands.”
She held them out, and I bit the end off the burn ointment.
“I’m sorry about this. This is not how we start.” I gently coated her palms with the clear gel.
“We’re not exactly normal. Ow.” Her wrist twitched, but she didn’t pull away.
“Are you sure you want to marry me? You’re committing yourself to a man who gives you burned hands.”