The Beasts of Juarez

did this really need to be the first thing she asked?
“This ain’t the Club Med, sweetheart,” he joked, sloughing off the judgment in an attempt to preserve what little pride remained. “Guys want to ass-rape you in here when you have a pretty face, and as you know, I happen to have a pretty face. I thought it would be best to dress down the rest of me.” He said this and then he leveled her with one of his more charismatic grins.
“There’s the smile I once knew,” she said in Russian, her tough exterior softening into what some might argue was the slightest hint of a smile.
Atlas was about to ask why she was speaking to him in Russian when he saw that douchebag boyfriend of hers sitting nearby. So, that explained her speaking in her native tongue.
Rocco Rosato sat by himself like a good little boy. He frowned at the sight of Atlas staring back at him. Atlas didn’t care. The kid’s hair was still a little long, the front falling just below his eyes and the back resting on his collar. Even worse, his hair was nothing but loose curls. It made Atlas sick. Rocco looked like the kind of guy who did cologne ads in overpriced magazines when he wasn’t doing underwear and abs ads. His brilliant green eyes would have been his best feature had the rest of his face not been model-perfect. Even the guy’s physique—while much smaller than his own—looked lean and strong the way it would look if you did a lot of Pilates or hot yoga a few times a week.
“If I didn’t know you better,” he said, holding his sarcasm in check, “I’d say you were dragging your little brother around with you. He’s cute, does he have a girlfriend or is he the kind of guy who’s into other guys? He sure is pretty, pretty enough to go both ways.”
“Stop it, Atlas,” she said. “That’s Rocco.”
“I know who he is. I just don’t know why he’s here.”
“He wants to talk to you.”
“I’d like to feed that cocksucker his own spleen.”
“Be nice,” she warned.
“To the man who took my wife? You want me to be nice to him after I’ve spent six months in here?”
“This is the responsible adult who was there for me when my husband lost his way and forgot how to be a good man,” she said. “You know, I used to be sad thinking of what happened to us, but then you went berserk and that clarified everything for me.”
He forced a smile, then wagged his index finger at her and said, “You were letting him inside of you before I went 5150, my Belarusian beauty.”
“Don’t call me that anymore.”
“Let’s try again,” he said, his temperature rising. “You were letting him inside of you before I went 5150, Rocco’s little Belarusian beauty.”
“Doesn’t roll off the tongue quite the same way,” she said without emotion. “I appreciate you finally acknowledging him, though.”
“What does that skinny little bitch want to tell me?”
“I don’t know. He’s his own man these days, so just…indulge him if you will.”
Atlas was about to bring up Alabama when Jade pulled out some papers and said, “I hired a divorce attorney. He needs you to sign some papers.”
“No, he wants me to sign some papers.”
“C’mon, Atlas. This was inevitable and you know it.”
He couldn’t believe he was sitting across from her, but even more, he couldn’t believe the different emotions crashing around inside of him. And they were crashing around. He was so attracted to her that his entire body ached with need. But she was gone, now sharing a bed and a life with another man, a better-looking, younger man. That stung, too.
Once upon a time, she and Atlas had their youth, their daughter, and a family. All of that filled him with so much joy he wanted to cry. But now, that same family had been hit with an Atom bomb and had been completely destroyed.
“I hate that you brought him here.”
“I know,” she said.
With the end of their journey together just one signature away, Atlas suffered a deep and lasting humiliation as well as the ripping-open of old wounds. All those tender memories of their lives were memories they would never make with each other again.
Mother of Christ, he thought as the heartache took hold.
It was like every lovely, vile thought was a hot, iron poker being shoved into his skull, his heart, into the deepest, darkest depths of his soul.
“Send him over,” he finally said, resolved to get this done.
“Before I do, why do you really look like that?”
He smoothed back his hair, pulled his beard straight. “I’ve been watching Vikings re-runs.”
“No, you haven’t.”
“My heart has been obliterated in here, Jade,” he confessed in a moment of unguarded vulnerability. “Another large piece cracked off just now.”
Nodding, rendered speechless by his confession, Jade abruptly stood and walked over to Rocco. She talked to him for a moment and then he got up and headed Atlas’s way. Rocco picked up the phone looking nervous, which was exactly how one should look after taking a man’s wife.
“Hello, Atlas,” he said.
“What do you want, Rocco?”
“You’re bigger than I thought you’d be. Jade says you use your size to intimidate people.”
“I was bigger than this last month, but I just did thirty days in solitary for bad behavior.”
“What constitutes bad behavior in a place like this?” Rocco asked.
“You get that kind of time for committing murder.”
“You killed someone in here?”
“I’ve killed a few people, Rocco,” he said with hooded eyes and a tight jaw. “You came here to tell me something, so just spit it out before I break through this barrier and crush your fucking windpipe.”
Rocco swallowed hard, all that beauty devoured by fear, intimidation, and nervousness.