Rattling Around Walmart

   Darla stood beside five rows of marijuana plants in the backyard sun worrying over whether she was a criminal and how long before the police handcuffed her and took her away under the staring eyes and pointing fingers of her neighbors. She looked around warily and called to her husband crawling around down below the bushy plants, “Julius, are you sure we’re okay on this? I keep thinking we’re going to end up on the Judge Judy show one day and jail the next.”

     Her husband’s head popped up from the plants. “I told you a hundred times already it’s okay because I got a medical disability license to grow this stuff. Long as I got the rheumatoid arthritis and my license we’re not going to be busted. Hand me that trowel by the chair.”

     Julius passed over a basket of clipped leaves heavy with buds, took the trowel and disappeared once more beneath the luxuriant green.

     She wandered back to the house still not certain they were safe from the long arm of the law.

     Julius came in a little while later, hands brown with dirt. Washing up at the sink he said to Darla, “Gotta drive over to Walmart and get some mulch for my plants, see if I can keep the weeds down. Think I saw in the paper they was having a sale on their garden supplies.”

     Standing beside him at the sink, Darla pointed out a red welt on Julius’s hand. “What bit you there on top of your hand?”

     “I don’t know what that was but it stung like hell. Maybe a bee, I don’t know.”

     “Let me put some ointment on it. Dry it off…I'll be right back.”

     Returning with a flattened tube of Cortaid she rubbed some on the raised welt, “That’s the last of it. You better pick up a new tube while you’re at Walmart.”

     “Thank you, baby. I love you. What else you need? Want me to stop at the Winn-Dixie?”

     “Yes, please. I’m getting those signals,” she patted her stomach, “would you mind getting me a bottle of Midol.”

     “Oh, hell no, Darla. That’s an embarrassing purchase for a man to make. I’ll take you to the store later.”

     Not waiting for an answer Julius grabbed his car keys off the hook and headed out to his truck. The Walmart was across the bridge in Weedon, a fifteen minute drive out 61. He pulled out the insert from the newspaper on the seat, looking for the Walmart garden supplies coupons. He folded the page and stuffed it in his jeans pocket. Backing out of the driveway, he had to wait for a car to pass. It was a Chula County sheriff’s car and Julius smiled, figuring Darla would be peeping through the blinds and wetting her pants.

     Inside the giant store he had to walk what felt like half a mile to reach the pharmacy section, then scanned the shelves looking for the ointment Darla said she wanted. He found it after a minute and when he started toward the registers he stopped after a step or two remembering that lady’s medicine she wanted him to buy. Still not sure, he cruised the aisles looking for Midol and when he found it was too self- conscious to reach for it. Fidgeting for a minute, he thought, “What the hell,” and grabbed up the bottle.

     After going through the checkout, he unscrewed the top on the Cortaid and squeezed out a half inch curl onto the bee sting, rubbing it in and thinking two times is better than one. 

     On the way outside to the garden supplies area he looked through his newspaper coupons hoping there was one there for garden mulch. He found a special on the Amerigrow Premium Gold and thought that would do the trick. He flagged down a guy unloading trays of petunias and asked him where the mulch was. “You know anything about this mulch offered on the discount coupons?”

     From his kneeling position, the man looked up at Julius and asked, “Which one is that?”

     Extending the coupon he said, “This Amerigrow Premium. I want to use it around my marijuana plants but have to be sure it’s a good match. I don’t remember the name of the one I used last year.”

     Big smile on his face, the man answered, “Yep, I think the Amerigrow is just the thing you need. Walk up this aisle here and turn left where you see those pots of red flowers. The mulch is about halfway down.”

     Julius saw the bags of mulch stacked up ahead, figuring in his head as he approached how many bags he would need to cover his eight foot square plot of plants. He stopped in front of the bags and still thinking about how much to buy, leaned over to pick up a small tree branch in the middle of the aisle and toss it off to the side. In a split second the ‘small branch’ lunged and attached itself to his outstretched hand. A snake about a foot and a half long clung to Julius’s hand. He tried to fling it off, but the snake held on despite the sudden jive dance and arm flaps that followed. The snake finally let go and Julius stomped on it, mashing its head flat.

     Verging on shock, Julius recalled some old Boy Scout remedy and stretched out on the ground, clapped his left hand tourniquet-like on his right wrist and held his hand up from his body. “Holy mother of God, Oh, Jesus, Jesus!” he shouted from the ground.

     Shopping for soil additives on the other side of the aisle, Tonya Cardamun heard the screams and rushed to help. “What is it? What’s wrong?” she said kneeling beside Julius, “Are you having a stroke?”

     “Do I look like a goddamned stroke victim?” he moaned. “The snake. Look at the snake. The damned thing took a bite outta my hand!”

     Tonya looked at the hand he was holding up. “Oh, my god! Did he make that big red spot on your hand?”

     “Hell no! That was the bee. Look at the two holes between my thumb and index finger.”

     “I see ’em now. Hold on a second, I’m going to call 911. Hold on. Don’t move.”

     “Where do you think I’m going with rattlesnake venom up in my heart?”

     Tonya pulled out a cell phone and punched the numbers in, leaning over to get a better look at the dead snake. “Yeah, that’s a rattlesnake alright, one of them pygmy kind…Hello? Is this 911?…I’m over at the Walmart on Highway 61 and a rattlesnake just jumped out and bit somebody…My name? Ain’t nobody got time for this! He got snakebite, fool!” 

     Tonya snapped the phone shut and said to Julius, “They’re too slow. Come on, I’m going to drive you to the hospital. Where’s your car?”

     Julius guided Tonya to his truck, handed over the keys and got in the passenger seat. She didn’t act like the truck was any challenge to her driving skills, so he didn’t say anything. Once they pulled out into traffic she said there was an urgent care clinic at the second light and they would go there.

     A hundred yards down the road she slammed on the brakes in the middle of traffic, cursing herself. “I got so nervous and worried with your condition I forgot to tell my husband I was leaving the Walmart. He’s sitting in the parking lot waiting for me.”

     “Keep driving and let me have your phone. I’ll call your husband and tell him what’s going on.”

     Tonya gave him her cell phone and told him the number to dial. Julius punched in the numbers and waited for an answer. After a couple of rings someone answered saying, “Tonya, what’s taking so long? I’m burning up in this car.”

     Julius explained the situation and heard back, “What? Who the hell is this? What are you talking about?”

     “I’ve been bitten by a rattlesnake and your wife is driving me to the hospital.”

     Tonya yelled out loud enough for her husband to hear, “I’m driving this man—what’s your name?…

     “Julius Arhight.”

     I’m driving Julius to the hospital. You go on home and I’ll be there in a while. Julius, he’ll take me home after he’s had the rattlesnake poison removed.”

     “Did you hear that?…” Julius closed the phone saying, “He’s cool. Drive faster. Feels like somebody’s shooting fire into my hand.”

     At the urgent care clinic a doctor there told Julius and Tonya that they weren’t able to handle snakebite, to drive three miles further to the Bert Belson Medical Center. Tonya looked at the doctor and asked, “You telling us you never learned how to cure a snakebite in college?”

     At the medical center doctors took Julius into a curtained area to examine the bite, leaving Tonya in the waiting area arguing on the phone with her husband. Looking closely at the bee stung, snake bit hand, the doctor decided it was a dry bite, that the rattlesnake had not injected any venom. “What’s this other big red spot on your hand…Looks a little like a bee sting. That happen today as well?”

     “Yeah, that happened out in my garden earlier today. Doesn’t hurt much now though.”

     “I’d like you to hang around for a little while so we can keep an eye on the snakebite for a little longer. Can you do that?”

     “I suppose so. Maybe Tonya’s husband can come pick her up.”

     “Who’s Tonya?”

     “Maybe she’s the lady that saved my life. I’ll see if she can call her husband for a ride home.”

     “I appreciate your help, Tonya. But listen, they want me to wait a while before leaving so they can make sure everything is okay with this.” He held up the bandaged hand in a shy apologetic way, as if to show it was a minor accident. “Can your husband come and pick you up?”

     “Yeah, sure. He’s just pissed I didn’t get the damn soil additive for his rose bushes. Said I shoulda done that before bringing you here. Kinda like trading you off for some stupid rose bushes I never have liked in my front yard.” She smiled at Julius. “You gonna be alright?”

     

     By the time Julius got back to his house, his right hand was the size of a cantaloupe. He returned to the the medical center with Darla and was treated with two bags of anti-venom. The doctor said they wanted him to stay overnight, and if she wanted his wife could stay with him. The anti-venom had done its work but there was some concern for muscle damage in his hand.

     Late that night, the room quiet and Darla half-asleep in a chair by his bed, Julius said to her, “Darla, call up that Walmart and tell them the guy that got snake bit in their garden section today wants them to hold onto that dead snake. I’m gonna skin that damn thing, make a hatband for my cowboy hat…and ask them if they got my Cortaid and Midol.”

     “Aaww, honey,” Darla said, “you bought my Midol?”

Bypass Burger

Miss Mary Teresa Sterling tapped her long fingernail on the menu, “And give me a margarita with that, too.”

It was the waitress’s first day at the Heart Attack Grill, her third in Las Vegas, and her head was hurting so badly under the harsh lighting she couldn’t remember if she had taken any aspirin or not. “I’m sorry, I want to be sure I have your order correct. Could you repeat what you said, please?”
“What’s your name?”

Still thinking about Manny saying she was too slow to be a waitress, that it was her looks keeping her in the game, she hardly heard the woman. Had she been asked something? She opened her mouth to speak and finally said, “I’m……Uh, let me just try and repeat back to you what I got down. You want the Double Bypass Burger with fries, extra mayonnaise…Is that right?”

The woman stared at the girl, flicked her eyes to the menu and tapped again on the photograph of the burger. Then she leaned forward a few inches running her eyes up and down the waitress’s uniform and seeing what appeared to be a nurse from Victoria’s Secret. “Yes, that’s right…Heidi,” reading the name off the girl’s name tag. “And don’t forget the margarita.” She pulled out a cigarette and tapping the filter against a lighter, called out to the retreating waitress, “Bring the drink first.”

Enjoying a deep pull on her cigarette and picking a fleck of imaginary tobacco from her lip, she looked out at the slots lined up in the lobby, her mind on work like always. She was a big, full-figured woman with dainty hands and beautiful features, hair a rich and lustrous shade of chestnut. Between thoughts of how she was going to make next month’s rent she noticed that the slots looked odd, like something you would see in a hospital room, heart monitors with pull down handles. She reached for the ashtray, not surprised it was a miniature bedpan in pink ceramic. Another time she might have been disgusted with the restaurant’s emergency room decor, but for now she just wanted her drink and a chance to work out the possibility of a bank loan. That was about the only thing that would give her the operating capital she needed to keep the doors open at her agency. She had four girls working in shows now and that brought in just about enough to put gas in her rusted out Coupe de Ville. A year ago she had girls in every show on the strip. Looking at the couple leaning toward each other at a nearby table clinking their glasses in a toast, she began to wonder if the waitress had forgotten her drink. After all, she had trouble taking the order. She turned her head and the waitress was standing there with a margarita in a pint-sized martini glass.

“Thanks. Listen, honey,” the woman said, deciding to have a little fun. “I know you’re busy but do you happen to know if this is an authentic margarita?”

“Huh?…Yeah, I think so.” Heidi had no idea what the lady was talking about but threw in as an afterthought, “The bartender looks like he might be from Mexico.”

“Oh, well if he’s from Mexico it must be authentic, right.”
“I guess.”

After delivering the woman’s drink, Heidi’s phone vibrated in her pocket. Turning toward the kitchen she tried to get straight in her head the orders she had in, all of it swirling in confusion along with whatever authentic margaritas were. Two steps inside the door and Manny was yelling at her. “Hey, you! You going to leave this food up here all day? Get it together. Take this milkshake out to fourteen and the Quadruple to twelve. Come back and I'll have that Double ready for you.” 

She grabbed the milkshake in one hand, the burger in the other and started back to the dining room, but staggered by the weight of the hamburger platter, she quickly put it down again. Stacked with two pounds of beef, eight slices of cheese, a whole sliced tomato and one sliced onion, all surrounded by a half-pound of French fries, the Quadruple was hell to carry. This one was the Bacon Quad that included eight slices of bacon. She cradled the platter in one arm, picked up the milkshake again and reeled away to table fourteen.

Back in the kitchen, the phone vibrating once more in her pocket, Heidi made a move at detouring to the ladies room but Manny caught her, ordering her to take a side of mayo to a man at the bar. “And here’s the Double for the woman at thirteen.”

She got to the woman’s table with the Double but something didn’t look right about the woman. “I’ve got your burger. Is everything okay? Do you need anything else?” 

The woman sat with her chin in her palm, a cigarette clamped between two extended fingers, the other hand drumming nails on the tabletop. Her face was blotched and her voice dry. “No, I’m good.” She was staring again and before Heidi could turn away she said, “I think you’re wasting your time in this place. You ever think about doing something else?”

“I’m sorry?”

“Hey, I’m not coming on to you. I have an agency. I place girls in shows, you know, in the hotels and casinos…showgirls.” She looked down at the hamburger and fries. “You think about it. Think about it and if you’re interested I’ll give you my card.”

Finally able to steal a moment and head for the bathroom, Heidi telephoned Buddy and was astounded to hear that he had decided to leave town. “You drag me all the way across the country from Georgia to this desert town and three days later tell me you’ve had enough, you’re leaving? You don’t even have to say it, Buddy. What damn plan you got brewing in that hard head of yours this time?” Someone flushed the toilet in the next stall and the door banged open. “Hold on. I can’t hear you.” A second later someone banged on the stall door.

“Heidi, Manny’s looking for you. He’s pissed as usual. Better get out here.”

“Thanks, Rita. I gotta go, Buddy. I’ll call you later.”

She delivered another six pounds of food, wrote a check for one table, signed a free pass for another customer, bonus for weighing over 350 pounds, and was back in the kitchen to pick up four butter-fat milkshakes when Manny called her. Heidi found him at the bar and he whispered, “What’s with the lady on thirteen?”

“Who?”

“The fat lady sitting in front of the window. What’s wrong with her?”

“What do you mean?”

“Go over there and see if she’s okay,” the manager told her, worried because of an incident last month when a customer suffered a heart attack while being wheeled to his car after eating a Quadruple Bypass Burger. Yeah, the burgers were advertised as big enough to cause heart attacks but that happening on the premises didn’t help business.

“Ma’am, are you okay?” It was a stupid question considering that the woman was clutching her breast and gasping for breath. Her face was a sheen of oily sweat and Heidi could see a large pulsing vein in her throat. “Can I get you something? Should I bring some water?"

The platter in front of her was empty of all but a few uneaten fries, a cigarette smoldered in the mini-bedpan and a crumpled business card lay beside the empty margarita glass. The woman forced her eyes up and motioned to her business card. “Call me, honey. I can take you outta this deathtrap” she said, as her eyes flew wide and she slid to the floor between table and chair.

Watching from the bar, Manny covered his face with both hands, then picked up the telephone to call 911.

Before bending down to help the woman, just in case she was going to be okay, Heidi reached over and slipped the business card in her pocket.

Hogs in the Bush

Lamar was cleaning his gun, the kitchen table spread with oily rags, a can of Gun Scrubber, another of rust protector, dirty cleaning patches and a cleaning rod. The rifle was bought cheap at the flea market on Dixie Highway, a thirty caliber Savage Hog Hunter painted camouflage green and fitted with a Leupold Hog scope. So far, his only experience with the rifle was cleaning it and drawing a bead on targets out back, dry firing and mouthing a soft “pow.” Over the past five days a hundred mockingbirds, armadillos and a tree full of squirrels had blown up with nothing more than trigger clicks and whispered ‘pows.’

“Lamar, take that damn gun out my face and go outside if you gon’ play Rambo. And get all that stuff off the table so I can make my potato salad,” Edna stood at the sink looking into the barrel of the rifle Lamar had aimed out the window directly behind her.

“It ain’t loaded.”

“I know it ain’t loaded, but that don’t mean I like it pointed up my nose.” She turned back to the stove poking at the eggs boiling for the potato salad.

“I’m gonna pick all this up and go call that hunting camp out on Hoops Road off of 305. If they're open on Saturday you’re going with me, huh?” Lamar put the rags and cans in a battered cardboard box and took it out to a locker on the back porch. He sat down on the steps, took out his cell and punched in a number written on the back of his hand, hollering back to Edna, “You going with me?” 

“Yeah, I’m going, you damn fool. If I didn’t you might kill somebody out there,” she muttered, scraping mustard and chopped pickles into a bowl of boiled potatoes.

Lamar talked to the man at the camp and found out that Saturday was a good day, the hunting open from daylight to full dark, $45 per person with an extra fee tacked onto to any killed game. Later that night they decided to drive out early on Saturday and see about hunting some wild hogs. Edna didn’t hunt, didn’t like to even hold a rifle, but enjoyed getting out in the country with Lamar. He had special hunting clothes all colored up like the woods for both of them and she said she would make some ham sandwiches to take along with the potato salad. Edna normally worked on Saturdays, but called a friend who agreed to cover for her. She'd been a beautician at House of Beauty in Codys Corner for fourteen years, where the owner didn’t much care if a couple of the girls switched days now and then. As for going along with Lamar out in the woods to hunt, the only thing she worried about was stepping on a snake, but Lamar said they didn’t have snakes at Buster’s Hog Camp.

He had to work late at the meat packing plant on Friday and by the time Lamar got home Edna had everything ready to go except his rifle and ammo, which she wouldn’t touch. She had the two camouflage outfits out of the closet and was wearing hers while she packed the food and cold drinks in the cooler. She said to Lamar when he looked at her funny, “I wanted to try it out and see if it’s gonna be comfortable.”

“What are you wearing underneath?”

“Nothing.”

“You ain’t supposed to be naked under there, Edna.”

She flapped a wrist at him and started fixing her hair, like the mossy polyester required a special hairdo that wouldn’t scare the wild pigs. “Nobody can see through it, you know,” she said, giving the fabric a quick spritz of perfume.

Lamar shook his head, going to the closet to get his new Savage and a box of ammunition.

By eight-thirty on Saturday morning Lamar and Edna were somewhere in the middle of 5,000 acres of woods and palmetto scrub, crashing along unconcerned about the noise they made. Edna plugged in her iPod and lit a cigarette, Lamar walking ahead looking for big game while the back beat of rock and roll leaked from Edna’s earphones. They’d been assigned a blind to use, but had gotten tired of waiting inside hoping a wild hog might wander out of the brush and up to the door. They left the cooler there and ventured out to see what the landscape offered. Lamar got a whiff of Edna’s perfume on the breeze and said to himself, “Perfume over the smell of that L&M cigarette…pigs around here have to be deaf and born without a nose.”

Edna gave a sudden shriek and ran up to grab hold of Lamar. “I knew I’d come up on a snake out here! There’s one under that tree right there.” She held tightly to Lamar’s arm.

“Well, you’re okay. It’s not gonna chase after you.” After a while they found a fallen tree that offered a good place to sit and look out on a creek some distance down a slope of pine trees.

“You getting hungry?”

“No, I’m okay for now. Let me have one of your cigarettes.”

She passed over her pack and for the next hour they sat in the sun-speckled glade enjoying the bird sounds and the burble of water in the creek. Lamar pointed out birds, letting Edna look at them through the scope on his rifle.

There was no sight of wild hogs, no sign that they ever passed by this pretty gap in the trees so they went back to the blind, Lamar watching carefully through the blind’s front slats while Edna played a game on her cell phone, colored light flashing off the screen in the dimness of their cover. Without turning his head Lamar said quietly, “You got that potato salad about perfect this time, Edna. I don’t think my mama could make potato salad that good.”

“Mmm…Hey, Lamar, you wanna fool around?” Edna whispered like there might be someone outside listening through the slats. She laid aside the cell phone and purred, “Light me a cigarette, will you? Do it like they did in that old movie we saw on TCM the other night. Light two at one time and pass one over to me. Lord, that was sexy.”

“In a minute. I gotta take a leak. Hold on and I’ll be back in a minute.” 

Lamar crawled out of the blind taking the rifle with him just in case. He walked a ways over to a tree and unzipped. In mid-stream he heard a rustling in the palmetto behind the blind and suddenly excited, peed on himself hurrying to tuck it in. Snatching up the Savage Hog Hunter he crept back toward the bushes where the noise had come from. There it was again, movement and what sounded like the snuffling of a big pig. Taking slow deep breaths, Lamar sighted the rifle on the place the fans of palmetto were shaking. His thumb slipped the safety off and letting his breath out slowly he squeezed the trigger splitting the silence with the crack of a thirty caliber round exploding from the rifle.

“Edna! Edna come out here. I think I got one! Come on and help me round him up.” Without waiting he ran over and began crashing through the stand of palmetto he had fired into. He stumbled deeper into the swampy green, his ears alert for the dying grunts of a wild hog. 

Then he was through and upon his quarry. But instead of a hog Lamar gaped at the sight of Edna standing by a tree naked, pants around her ankles. Speechless in the first moments, Lamar found his voice, shouting, “Edna! What the hell are you doing here? Why are you standing there with your ass in the wind? I could a killed you!”        

“Well, that’s just what I would expect of you, Lamar. Shoot me dead while I’m taking a pee. Thank the good Lord Jesus you’re a lousy shot. Evidently me and the hogs around here are safe for another day. Now gimme that gun. If we sight a hog I’ll give it to you and make sure I’m standing behind your sorry ass.”

Flight to Freedom

For as long as he could remember Ronaldo had imagined himself a woman trapped in a man’s body. Though he admitted it to no one he often dreamed in lipstick and high heels, drifting through midnight fantasies of bubble bath and wifely duties, waking in the morning to a flat chest and hairy legs. He suffered the usual family pressures and Catholic shame for these secret reveries, but lived among people who would have no understanding of such repressed desires and would cast him out, a shunned pariah left to fight for his life in a cruel society of unfortunates and dangerous drug runners. And so he woke each morning, laid aside the marabou dreams and donned the masculine role expected of him.

Like many in his downtrodden neighborhood of Bogota, Ronaldo made his living as a drug mule, moving white powder from supplier to middleman, sometimes riding shotgun on longer trips to bring blocks of the drug from a jungle lab to a city warehouse. He had developed a catalog of gestures and postures to go along with the dangerous work, rough masculine movements and words that left none suspecting Ronaldo to be anything other than a rough customer.

On Friday morning, Ronaldo’s boss, Juan De Carlos “Cheeks” Otero picked him up at home explaining that they were heading up to the factory for a pick up, to bring the gun and tell his wife to expect him late.

Adoracion watched the men drive away. Turning back to the house she caught sight of a dainty woman’s handkerchief in the rutted street and bent to pick it up. She wondered where it had come from, never thinking that it was something that had fallen unnoticed from her husband’s pocket.

The handkerchief was in fact the single thing in Ronaldo’s daytime life that carried the nighttime fragrance of his dreams. It was a stolen touchstone he snatched up one day when he accompanied his wife into a downtown ladies store on the Avenida Jimenez, quickly stuffing the dainty square into his pocket while Adoracion and the store clerk whispered together over blouses. He kept it hidden from his wife, washing and drying it himself every few days, adding a spritz of La Vida. Countless times during the unpredictable and perilous days of hauling cocaine with savage men, Ronaldo slipped a hand in his pocket to grip his handkerchief, a feminine talisman against harm and ultimate arrest.

“Cheeks” was heading the car past the edge of Bogota when Ronaldo realized he didn’t have the handkerchief.

Four hours later the car’s side panels were loaded with cocaine as Ronaldo rounded a curve, “Cheeks” dozing in the seat beside him. The turn opened up to reveal a row of three uniformed officers standing in front of a barrier, rifles across their chests. Ronaldo’s foot slammed against the brakes, the roadbeaten old Mercedes jitterbugging to the verge. The sleeping “Cheeks” slammed forward, splitting an eye on the dashboard. From the rearview Ronaldo saw more officers and another barrier slide into place behind them.

By early evening Ronaldo was in a jail cell wondering about the chances of escape. From a small window high in the opposite wall he could see a grassless lot with other prisoners milling about, smoking cigarettes, throwing dice and playing samba on makeshift instruments. The lot was surrounded by a high fence that looked flimsy enough to push over with a hard rush.

Hearing a guard shout “Visitors!” the next morning, Ronaldo was surprised to see Adoracion walking through the door of his cell. She’d gotten a message late the night before from someone on the street telling her that her husband was being held at La Modelo Prison. Not knowing the reason or circumstances of her husband’s plight, she arrived with spare clothes, toiletries, a basket of food and a wad of cash given to her by the messenger. Asking no questions, she sat beside her husband on the filthy cot, sobbing, her eyes fastened on the ceiling mumbling prayers to heaven through dingy prison walls. When the shout came that time was up, a file of wives, girlfriends and sisters passed down the walkway headed out. As she stepped out of the cell, Ronaldo grabbed his wife’s arm, pulled her close and in a frightened whisper told Adoracion to return the next day with a set of women’s clothes in her bag. She looked at him with new eyes.

That night Ronaldo slowly shaved his legs, chest and arms, then paid careful attention to scraping away the rough beard on his face. With money funneled in by the messenger, he bought a long black wig and painted glue-on fingernails from a transvestite in the next cell. When the shouts and quarrels of 200 incarcerated men faded into troubled sleep, Ronaldo revived his dreams and began prancing the confines of his cell, a nighttime woman practicing the airs, pouts and moues he would employ to get past guards the next morning. At long last his true self would emerge, a woman with reddened lips confounding the men with guns on their hips. He fell asleep to dream of Hermès scarves.

Adoracion arrived with a cache of feminine items the next morning and watched while her smooth-skinned husband crammed himself into a brassiere, a blue dress open to the waist and a pair of white patent leather high heels a size too small. He applied a slash of red across fevered lips, clapping the black wig on his head and asking his wife to straighten and fluff the jailhouse angora into a Salma Hayek look. As she teased out the wig Ronaldo whispered, “Hurry! Hurry! Time is almost up. I never realized the time required to become a beautiful woman.”

As the women passed out of the cells shouting their goodbyes, Ronaldo pushed his wife out first, waiting a few beats before joining the line in a sinuous promenade. By the time he got to the first checkpoint his feet were killing him. It occurred to him that some adjustment in his step would be needed to manage four-inch heels in a size made for petites. He reached the outer gate in agony, trying to pass off a wobbly limp as girlish affectation. But the press of women around him served as camouflage and got him out to the street unnoticed. Tortured toes and scraped heels be damned, he lit out in double time for the bus station at the end of the street hoping to lose himself in the crowded depot.

Feminine wiles forgotten, Ronaldo staggered down the street in a grimace of patent leather pain, sure that his high heels were by then spotted with blood. Unfortunately, in the fear and excitement of escape he failed to remember that bus stations routinely have at least one policeman on station, scanning the crowd for perverts, skells and runaways. Bored with the ordinary assortment of travelers, the policeman this time was quickly drawn to the unshapely would-be maiden staggering along on shiny white shoes, frantic eyes signaling desperation.

In the next moment a motorbike pulled up to the curb at the station entrance. Seeing his chance, Ronaldo made a clumsy dash for the bike, hoping to jump on the back and speed away. In his haste he lost a shoe, and stopping to scoop up the precious footwear, the policeman stepped in to clamp a hand on Ronaldo’s neck. His hand come away holding a frazzled wig and Ronaldo made a last leap for the motorbike. But it was too late. He was caught and dragged away, wigless, his lipstick smeared, limping along in the policeman’s grip, his right pump left behind as a metaphor of freedom. Ronaldo’s brief dream-come-true melted away as the policeman shoved him roughly into the backseat of a patrol car.