shiny dome. All of them, the whole bunch, would love to see him go under… some, like his own family, to see the stain disappear once and for all… others, like Mr. Ruiz, so they would have such riveting, grossly embellished stories to tell… “He came skulking in wearing dark glasses, thinking I wouldn’t recognize him”… and you, Señor Comemierda Ruiz, you’d probably lubricate it with sympathy at the same time… Oh, how you’d love it if I now just went with the current and let the undertow take me all the way to the bottom… well—
I’m damned if I will!
You’d all find it too delicious, and I truly resent that! Sorry, you’re not going to have the satisfaction! And if you don’t like it, don’t blame me. Blame Mr. Ruiz with his te cagaste at the break of dawn. And then kindly go fuck yourself!
“You maybe zink thees fonny,” said Mr. Yevgeni Uhuhuh—Nestor couldn’t catch the last name—“bot I moss say ze kvestion. What you know aboud art?”
Nestor had no idea what to say. He was getting desperate. It was 3:15 p.m. The shift began in forty-five minutes. This was his third Craigslist visit in the past three hours… and he had to have this apartment. By sharing it with the tall bony, somewhat stooped Russian before him he could afford it… and he had to have it! He couldn’t survive another night like last night, when he had no choice but to be taken in like a stray—by a reporter from Yo No Creo el Herald! He and this Yevgeni were talking in the pathetically small vestibule between the apartment’s two small rooms… Crammed into the vestibule were a tiny filthy kitchen, a tiny filthy bathroom, and the standard clattering aluminum-clad front door you found in Low-Rent apartments like this. Yevgeni, it seemed, was a “graphic artist.” He referred to the apartment, which he wanted to share, as his “studio.” Nestor didn’t know what a graphic artist was, but an artist was an artist, and he lived and worked in his art studio… and now he’s asking what does he, Nestor, know about art? Know about art?! His heart sank. ::::::¡Dios mío! I wouldn’t last two sentences in a conversation about art. There’s absolutely no point in pretending otherwise. Damn! Might as well look him in the eye and take it like a man.::::::
“What do I know about art? To tell the truth… nothing.”
“Yessss!” exclaimed Yevgeni. He raised his fist to shoulder level and pumped it with his elbow, like an American athlete. “You vant to share zees studio?—eet’s yours, my fren!” Noting Nestor’s consternation, he said, “Ze graphic art ees now not good, and I haf to share thees studio. Ze last person I vant ees ze person who zinks he knows aboud art, ze person who vants to talk aboud art, and zen zat person vants to gif me adfice!” He put a hand over his eyes and shook his head, and then looked at Nestor again. “Belief me, I cannot zink of any fate vorse. You are a police officer. How much you like it eef zomebody comes een, and he zink he knows about ‘ze cops,’ or he vants to know about ze cops, and you moss tell him… You crazy in vone veek!”
Besides, he didn’t want to live with the Russians up in Sunny Isles and Hallandale. They’d drive him crazy, too. Here, in this studio in Coconut Grove, he felt more at home. It didn’t hurt, either, that he liked to work from the afternoon into the night—and Nestor would be away, on his shift.
::::::Perfect:::::: Nestor said to himself. ::::::We’re both aliens, you from Russia, me from Hialeah. Maybe we can make it in Miami.:::::: He wrote out a check right away and showed Yevgeni his badge and invited him to write down his badge number. Yevgeni gave him the shrug that said, “Oh, why bother?” He seemed as eager as Nestor to be sharing this place.
This was the sort of thing the Chief never talked about to anybody… anybody… He wasn’t a fool, after all. People would sooner talk about their sex lives—sometimes, among cops, you couldn’t shut them up—or their money or their messy marriages or their sins in the eyes of God… about anything other than their status in this world… their place in the social order, their prestige or their mortifying lack of it, the respect they get, the respect they don’t get, their jealousy and resentment of