take Nestor’s hand into the grasp of both of hers. She gives it a playful squeeze and releases it. She’s totally committed to him with her eyes.
“Yeah, mía gringa,” Nestor says, “the Department don’t make it easy for me to get around anymore.”
“Oh, people have told me about it.”
“I don’t doubt that, but whatta they say about it?” said Nestor.
A deep voice: “They say, ‘Whyn’tchoo stop sniffing the girl and let her bring us our damned food.’ ”
It was one of the construction workers Nestor had just pushed past… without so much as a por favor. A good five inches taller than Nestor, this tub was, and God knows how much heavier… americano construction worker from top to bottom—the hard hat, the forehead slick with sweat, the full mustache worn with the accoutrement of an eight-day growth of beard that gave a grizzly look to his sweating jowls, the white T-shirt, now sweat stained the color of broth and stretched over a long expanse of flesh that rated the term “wrestler’s gut,” a pair of fleshy but thick arms, one with a so-called half-sleeve tattoo featuring a huge eagle surrounded by crows wrapped around his biceps and triceps, a pair of gray Gorilla-brand twill working stiff’s pants, scuffed brown steel-toed boots, soles thick as a slice of roast beef—
Nestor was in such a good mood, thanks to Cristy, he would have been glad to laugh at the big lug’s crack—which did have a valid point, after all—and let it pass… except for one word: sniffing. Especially coming from the working-stiff lips of a hulk like this one, it meant sniffing Cristy in a sexual way. Nestor ransacked his brain to find a reason why even that might be okay. He tried and he tried, but it wasn’t okay. It was an insult… an insult he had to stomp to death on the spot. It was disrespectful to Cristy, too. As every cop on patrol knew, you couldn’t wait. You had to shut big mouths now.
He stepped away from the counter and gave the americano a friendly smile, one you could easily interpret as a weak smile, and said, “We’re old friends, Cristy and me, and we haven’t seen each other for a long time.” Then he broadened the smile until his upper lip curled up and bared his front teeth… and kept stretching that grin until his long canines—i.e., eyeteeth—made him look like a grinning dog on the verge of ripping open human flesh, as he added, “You got a sniffing problem with that?”
The two men locked eyes for what seemed like an eternity… Triceratops and allosaurus confronted each other on a cliff overlooking the Halusian Gulp… until the big americano looked down at his wristwatch and said, “Yeah, and I gotta be outta here and back on the site in ten minutes. You got a problem with that?”
Nestor nearly burst out laughing. “Not at all!” he said, chuckling. “Not at all!” The contest was over the moment the americano averted his eyes, supposedly to look down at his watch. The rest of it was double-talk… trying to save face.
Suddenly Cristy was looking right past Nestor in a significant way but not a happy way. “You have a visitor, Nestor.”
Nestor turned around. It was Magdalena. He never dreamed that Cristy knew about him and Magdalena. Magdalena was dressed plainly, modestly, in jeans and a mannish long-sleeved, loose-fitting light-blue shirt buttoned at the wrists and not far from all the way up in front, simply, sensibly. Her face—what was it about her face? A big pair of dark glasses covered a lot of it. Even so, she looked so… pale. “Pale” was about as far as his analytical powers could take him. Men don’t notice a girl’s makeup until it’s missing and even then have no idea what’s missing. The Magdalena he knew always turned her eye sockets into dark shadowy backdrops that brought out her flashing big brown eyes. On her cheekbones she always wore blush. Nestor was innocent of any such sophisticated knowledge. She looked pale, that was all, pale and haggard—was that the word? She wasn’t herself. Plainly, modestly, simply, and sensibly—they were not her, either. He walked right up to her and stared into—or rather, upon—a pair of impenetrable dark lenses. He saw his own dim, small reflection… and no sign of her at all.
“Well, it is you, isn’t it.” Amiably he said it, amiably but without emotion.
“Nestor,” she said, “you’re so kind to do-oo thi-is.” The