Into the Beautiful North by Luis Alberto Urrea Page A

room.”
    The other man, who wore a bright yellow sport jacket, said, “No seas guey” to him. “These fine young ladies aren’t hookers.”
    “We just need to get off the street,” Tacho said.
    “Oh?” the man replied. He finished his taco and wiped his fingers on a napkin. “Come here,” he said.
    He led them into the red-light district.
    “It ain’t pretty, but it’s cheap,” he said, directing them to Hotel Guadalajara, a small cement-block hotel beside the scariest bar they had ever seen.
    “Don’t go in there,” the man said, pointing at the bar.
    “Don’t worry,” Nayeli said.
    They got a room with two beds on the second floor. The stairs were on the outside, and there was a walkway that ran the length of the floor. A woman asked Tacho if he wanted to get his rocks off for cheap, right there on the steps where it was dark, then called him a queer when he shook his head.
    “I smell marijuana,” Vampi said.
    “That’s a shocker,” Tacho replied.
    The door was cheap plywood, and the lock wouldn’t latch properly. Tacho put the chain on the door. The room had a cement floor with no rug. The beds were narrow and stiff as cardboard boxes. They could hear the endless thump of Kid Rock songs coming from next door; shrieks and laughs; a breaking bottle. The room would never be dark, so much street light came in the one window that they could have read magazines, even with their lights out.
    They had two towels in the bathroom. Vampi went first, and she stayed in the shower too long, and there was no hot water for the rest of them. Tacho yelled curses. Then he cursed again when he had to dry himself on the wet towels and get back in the same dirty clothes. They looked like street urchins. But their hair was clean.
    Yolo and Vampi snuffled and cried in their bed. Tacho kept his back turned to Nayeli in theirs. She found him inscrutable. She lay on her back, listening to the insanity next door. Then feet passed outside their room, and the voices of a woman and a man. It was the same woman from before—Tacho’s girlfriend. Nayeli started to hear sounds she recognized immediately, though she had not heard them before. The man was actually grunting. She scrunched her eyes, as if that would shut out the walkway copulation. The man let out a long moan.
    Tacho called, “Somebody milk that cow! It’s starting to moo!”
    “Oh, my God!” Yolo said.
    They buried their faces in their pillows, laughing.
    Just when they thought they were falling asleep, one of them would say, “Moo!” and it would start again.

    The men came for them at about three in the morning.
    Nayeli heard the whispers first and came awake immediately. The faulty latch on their door began to rattle. She held her breath, thinking it might just be ambient sound or perhaps the remnants of some dream. She squinted at the door, and she saw the knob turning back and forth. Then, a bolt of fear when the latch popped and the door cracked open. She stiffened in the bed. The door swung open slowly, reaching the end of the chain. Hisses. A low man’s voice.
    She shook Tacho. He snorted. She punched his arm. He buried his head under his pillow.
    She looked around for a weapon. There was a small chair by the bed—she could club them with it when they broke in. She rose silently and stared. An arm was trying to reach into the room, the hand scrabbling like a spider, reaching around for the thin chain to get it off the hook. Nayeli squinted: a yellow sleeve. That bastard! The man from the taco stand.
    “Almost,” the yellow man was saying to his associates. She could see their shadows through the window shade, backlit by the neon and streetlights.
    She stood in the center of the room, in her panties and her T-shirt, watching the hand clutch at the chain.
    Her girls were deep asleep in their bed. Tachito was snoring. Nayeli stretched. She shook out her arms and raised each leg once. She rotated her neck and felt it pop. She grabbed Tacho’s pepper