The Mirror Thief Read Online Free PDF Page A

the antidemocratic bullshit you get most other places. No country-club secret-handshake jive. No artificial barriers to trade. Everything just is what it is.
    What are you doing now?
    What? For dollars, you mean? Albedo smirks, shaking his head, like this is a dumb question. I’m doing
lots
of shit, man. I’m just taking it as it comes. And lately it’s been coming faster than I can reach out and grab it. I got action to give away.
    Anything steady?
    Some of it is. A couple nights a week I been chauffeuring these lovely ladies around town. To their various assignations. Them and a number of their professional cohorts. And that earns me enough to live on: two nights a week, eight or ten hours a night, chauffeur and security. Shit, the fucking
valets
out here pull down six figures per annum. It’s a boomtown, baby. For the right kind of guy. Boom boom boom.
    Curtis gives Albedo a thin smile. This is a bunch of static, and it’s good to see him dishing it out, overplaying his hand. The guy’s dumping a lot of chum, but he can’t seem to figure out how to get any hooks baited, and Curtis starts to think that maybe he’s not in trouble here after all. Unless Albedo’s just stalling, lining him up for the blindside. Curtis turns away, scans the screaming crowd. Somewhere behind him a slot machine is playing a tinny rendition of “Tequila”; the familiar melody emerges from the surrounding noise like light coming through a pinhole. His beer is half-empty now.
    The Hispanic girl is smiling, watching him, and he gives her a politenod. He wonders what she and the other girl are doing here with Albedo when they could be out earning, and then he thinks maybe they’re earning right now. She’s leaning close to him. I like your glasses, she says. With each syllable Curtis feels a tiny puff of air on his neck.
    Her accent isn’t bad; she’s been in the States awhile. I wear contacts, she says. Her irises are the color of Windex, so Curtis isn’t surprised to hear this. She reaches for his face. Can I try?
    Curtis lets her. They are not so strong, she says, handing them back.
    They’re nonprescription.
    So are my contacts, she confides. Also nonprescription. She sleepily bats her mascaraed lashes.
    ¿De dónde eres? Curtis asks.
    I am from Cuba.
    He wouldn’t have guessed, but it’s there in her voice, in her stretched vowels and dropped
s
’s and
nonprescrikshun
. He wonders how she ended up here instead of Miami or Tampa or NYC but has neither the vocabulary nor the inclination to pursue the topic.
¿De qué región?
    Santiago de las Vegas. You know where is Santiago de las Vegas?
    Está cerca de la Habana, ¿verdad?
    Yes. You have been to Cuba?
    Sí
, Curtis says,
he estado en Cuba
, but he doesn’t say where, or why. If he hadn’t taken his retirement he might be there right now, and he thinks about that for a second. Recalling a bright morning last April in the hills above Granadillo Bay. Looking down at the camp. All the orange jumpsuits like cactus-flowers caught in the wire.
    You speak good Spanish, the girl says. She’s not very convincing; her smile has started to wilt. She has fingers on his thigh now, a foot brushing his ankle. Moving automatically, like this is something she learned from an instructional video, which for all Curtis knows maybe she did.
    He pats her roaming hand and turns back to Albedo, who’s trying to explain to the blond girl who Condoleezza Rice is. Taps him on the shoulder.
    What’s up, my man? Albedo says. You need another beer?
    How’d you find out I’m in town?
    Albedo looks surprised, nonplussed; he sputters theatrically for a second. It ain’t exactly a secret, he says.
    No. It’s not. But how did you find out?
    They stare at each other. Albedo’s face is empty, frozen between expressions. A big vein flutters on his throat; Curtis half-consciously counts the throb: one-two, three-four, five-six.
    Damon, Albedo says. He told me. Called me up last night. Gave me your