most Mexicans differentiate tattooed Chinese peopleâthe one with the dragon, the one with the knife, the one with the bleeding heart.
âDo you like Peking duck?â asked Triplet C.
Then they started talking about money. They mentioned a number and my throat seized up.
I didnât answer. The triplets were barely thirty years old. Their obesity made them look like radioactive babies from some Chinese sci-fi flick.
âThatâs what youâre worth.â Triplet B scratched his beard. âThe Toucans really need you.â
âThe brewery is backing us.â They gestured to the case on the bed.
At that point, I should have understood they were planning to launder their money with beer. Narcos are so powerful, theyâre free to act like narcos. They didnât need to dress as geography teachers.
Instead of asking for a few days to consider, I asked the question that would be my undoing:
âAre you thinking of hiring any Argentinians?â
âNo fucking way!â said Triplet A.
He smiled, and I thought I saw the gleam of a diamond on his incisor.
I had just turned 33, and I had a fractured ankle. I couldnât afford to turn down this season in the desert. In the match where I broke my bone, Iâd scored an owngoal. âThe Last Sensation of Christ,â wrote some snarky reporter, rejoicing in my martyrdom.
âYouâre playing with fire,â Tere told me. I liked that. I liked playing with fire.
She saw things differently. Anyone who was interested in me had to be suspect.
âThere are no toucans in Mexicali.â
She kept saying that, day after day, until we stopped talking about toucans and started talking about Argentinians.
I owe Maradonaâs country two fractures, sixteen red cards, and one season on the bench, thanks to a coach who accused me of âprioritizing my trauma.â What I didnât know was I would owe my divorce to the Argentinians, too.
Baldy DÃaz played on two teams with me. One of those guys whose head was fat with talk; in interviews, he spoke like heâd just come from breakfast with God.
He had a big mouth, but nothing on him was as big as his cock. You canât avoid seeing things like that in the locker room. None of this wouldâve been important, except Tere knew about it too. About Baldyâs size, I mean. The time she accused me of âplaying with fire,â she had just come back from visiting him. Later, I found them in my own bed. It wasnât the classic situation where the husband arrives home early. âIâll be home at six,â I told Tere, and at six I found her riding Baldyâs giant cock. It was her way of telling me she didnât want to go to Mexicali.
We got divorced through the mail, thanks to a lawyer with five gold rings whom the triplets found for me.
On the way to Mexicali, I went through La Rumorosa, a mountain pass where the wind blows so hard it flips trucks. Looking down from the cliffs, I could see the remains of crashed cars at the bottom. I felt a weird kind of peace. A place for things to end. A place to end my career.
I continued as midfielder, but acted more like a fifth defender. I recovered balls at a reasonable rate for the triplets, although more often, I was being recovered from between the opposing teamâs legs.
I got used to playing through the pain. Then I got used to the injections. I played on painkillers more often than a normal body should. But my body isnât normal. Itâs a kicked-in lump. When she was feeling for my nerve with the needle, the doctor talked about my calcified flesh, as if I were turning into a wall. I liked that idea: a wall the opposing team smashes into, a wall on which Argentinians crack open their heads.
One of the triplets had a white tiger. Feeding it cost more than my salary. I got on the tripletâs good side when I asked him to pay me the same as his pet.
âI have an orca, too,â he