Read Online American Visa by Juan de Recacoechea - Free Book Online Page B

young, but you’re not old either. You’re right at the cut-off age. Maybe if you can get on the consul’s good side . . . What’s your problem anyway?”
    â€œI’m just worried some jackass will deny me the visa and then I won’t be able to see my son.”
    â€œOr the hairdresser.”
    â€œHairdresser . . . ? Oh right, that hairdresser is a real piece of work.”
    â€œIt’s up to you, Señor Alvarez.”
    â€œEight hundred?”
    â€œThey put their jobs and their integrity on the line even though all they’re doing is making sure your papers don’t get lost in the pile or filed away until Christmas. The consul himself looks them over, signs them, and stamps them with his official seal.”
    â€œNo problem then?”
    The fat man smiled as he squashed his cigar like a cockroach. “The visa is totally legal. We just expedite the paperwork to keep those private detectives from sticking their noses where they don’t belong.”
    â€œAnd Mexico?”
    â€œIt’s cheaper, but you’d have to start praying those hoods don’t bust your balls.”
    â€œThat would be worse than eight hundred dollars,” I replied.
    â€œSome people don’t care about their virginity; all they want is to make it to the other side. Think it over, Señor Alvarez. That’s the price and not a cent less. It’s worth it, especially if you find a job in the States and stay there for good. Goodbye, Oruro, hello good life!”
    â€œI’ll think about it,” I said.
    The fat man smiled like a good-natured asshole. “I’ll be in La Paz until Friday. Then I’m making a trip back home to Vallegrande.”
    I couldn’t think of anything better to do than take refuge in the first dive I saw. Ever since I was a kid, I’d been in the habit of using personal setbacks as excuses to get plastered. After Antonia left me, I think I spent a whole year hitting up watering holes until one day I stepped off a curb, completely wasted, and got run over by a motorcycle. I was later resuscitated in the part of the public hospital where they send patients who are about to die. For a few years I survived on soda pop and coffee, until a brainy lady got me drinking again. She was a high school biology teacher who watered her plants with beer. But I only turned into an occasional lush, the kind who can still control his neurons. My hangovers used to keep me in bed for days—vomiting, with a splitting headache.
    I barged into an enormous underground bar where they served only beer. Just inhaling was enough for the acute smell of malt liquor to make my head spin. The place had forty tables, but at that early hour there weren’t a lot of customers, just a few regulars playing dice games; either they were retired or they were public employees. Several dozen beers adorned their tables. The waiter, a thin man with a sour look on his face, escorted me to a secluded table reserved for deep thinkers with serious problems.
    â€œHow many?” he asked.
    â€œOne at a time.”
    I got up to take a leak as soon as the waiter disappeared. A good piss is the only way beer drinkers can purge their bladders of toxins. A white-haired man about sixty years old was resting both palms against one of the bathroom stalls, futilely trying to shoot his spray into a gutter that was meant to be a urinal. His penis hung out of his fly profanely, ridiculously. He was so wasted that if he’d taken one hand off the wall to try and redirect it, he’d run the risk of hitting the cement floor face first.
    Once the old man realized someone was there, he turned to look at me and stammered, “Hey . . . fucking give me a hand, will ya?”
    I was heated and in no mood for charity. So I stepped up to the end of the gutter farthest from the old man. It was a terrific photo-op; the guy just stood there, completely motionless.
    â€œFucking fogey,” I