Then they settled down to watch the third installment of the
Hobbit
trilogy on a 3-D screen that scrolled down over the big picture window while doing some serious damage to bowls of mint chocolate ice cream from the Aztec Café downtown. Eric pulled two beers out of the refrigerator and started to chuckle.
“What?” Cheba said.
“This,” he said, turning it so she could see the label. “It’s called Stone Arrogant Bastard Ale.”
When she looked puzzled, he translated it:
“
Más o menos, El Cabron más Presumido
.”
He had to hunt for the equivalent of
Bastard
because the dialect of
ladino
Spanish he’d grown up with as his second language had a lot of English loanwords in it including that one as well as being archaic even by Mexican standards.
And bastard is too common a condition south of the border to be an insult the way it is in the North, and arrogant? They’re all arrogant under the right circumstances.
“That is…what’s the English word…” Cheba said, flashing a smile. “Like him? The right word, the…”
“Appropriate?”
“
Sí
, the a-prro-priate word for the man who owns this house.”
“Adrian’s not a bad guy.”
“He has good manners and he is a man of honor. He has balls, too. He is also, yes,
a stone arrogant bastard.
Like a cat, you know? Or a don in the old days.”
“Yeah, but he’s
our
stone arrogant bastard. He killed…well, he and Ellen killed…that Shadowspawn bitch who murdered my partner and his girlfriend. Right over there where the kids are now, after I pumped the whole magazine from a Glock into her and she laughed at me and told me I looked delicious. I owe him.”
“Me also too. And I don’t like owing things to people. I pay the debt as soon as I can, so I guard his children.” She sipped, and looked around. “Good beer. And someday I will have a house like this.”
He’d grown up on Bud from cans, and at first this stuff hadn’t tasted like
beer
at all. It was caramel and coffee and chocolate and a smooth richness with a kick like a ball-peen hammer upside the head, and he’d come to like it. He’d been a little surprised by
Casa Grande
Adrian Brézé’s house and everything in it; it was simpler than he’d expected, certainly a lot plainer than what the bad branch of the Brézés had in that creepy place in California. Then he’d realized it was the simplicity of someone who did exactly what he wanted and didn’t give a damn for either expense or what anyone else thought of his choices.
“I could get used to all this,” he said. “It’s not exactly what I’d have if I could have whatever I wanted, but it’s fun. And honest.”
“So, your family, what did they do? Mine were
campesinos
, farmers. From always, and then when my father died my mother and I sold baskets to tourists in Tlacotalpan.”
He leaned back in the chair and looked out at the moon-washed mountainscape, tilting the beer back again. The conversation required a little backing and filling and dropping in and out of Spanish and English:
“My grandfathers both had little ranchos and a few sheep, sometimes my mother’s father worked in the mines and my father’s father on the railroads, and they were soldiers in the time of Vietnam. My grandmothers worked in the gardens and around the house, the chickens, that sort of thing.”
Cheba nodded; it was all obviously fairly familiar to her, the outline if not the details.
“My father had a garage…fixed cars, did fancy work on them sometimes, restored old cars, classics, for rich people. Before then he was in the Suck, the Marine Corps, in the first war in Iraq. He died years ago, cancer, when I was still young.”
“You were a soldier too, no? Before you were a policeman?”
“Soldier, hell. Marine! I enlisted out of high school and stayed in until I made sergeant and got a correspondence degree from UNM in Criminal Justice, then came back here. My sister is married to a dentist named Anderson—pretty decent
Hobbit
trilogy on a 3-D screen that scrolled down over the big picture window while doing some serious damage to bowls of mint chocolate ice cream from the Aztec Café downtown. Eric pulled two beers out of the refrigerator and started to chuckle.
“What?” Cheba said.
“This,” he said, turning it so she could see the label. “It’s called Stone Arrogant Bastard Ale.”
When she looked puzzled, he translated it:
“
Más o menos, El Cabron más Presumido
.”
He had to hunt for the equivalent of
Bastard
because the dialect of
ladino
Spanish he’d grown up with as his second language had a lot of English loanwords in it including that one as well as being archaic even by Mexican standards.
And bastard is too common a condition south of the border to be an insult the way it is in the North, and arrogant? They’re all arrogant under the right circumstances.
“That is…what’s the English word…” Cheba said, flashing a smile. “Like him? The right word, the…”
“Appropriate?”
“
Sí
, the a-prro-priate word for the man who owns this house.”
“Adrian’s not a bad guy.”
“He has good manners and he is a man of honor. He has balls, too. He is also, yes,
a stone arrogant bastard.
Like a cat, you know? Or a don in the old days.”
“Yeah, but he’s
our
stone arrogant bastard. He killed…well, he and Ellen killed…that Shadowspawn bitch who murdered my partner and his girlfriend. Right over there where the kids are now, after I pumped the whole magazine from a Glock into her and she laughed at me and told me I looked delicious. I owe him.”
“Me also too. And I don’t like owing things to people. I pay the debt as soon as I can, so I guard his children.” She sipped, and looked around. “Good beer. And someday I will have a house like this.”
He’d grown up on Bud from cans, and at first this stuff hadn’t tasted like
beer
at all. It was caramel and coffee and chocolate and a smooth richness with a kick like a ball-peen hammer upside the head, and he’d come to like it. He’d been a little surprised by
Casa Grande
Adrian Brézé’s house and everything in it; it was simpler than he’d expected, certainly a lot plainer than what the bad branch of the Brézés had in that creepy place in California. Then he’d realized it was the simplicity of someone who did exactly what he wanted and didn’t give a damn for either expense or what anyone else thought of his choices.
“I could get used to all this,” he said. “It’s not exactly what I’d have if I could have whatever I wanted, but it’s fun. And honest.”
“So, your family, what did they do? Mine were
campesinos
, farmers. From always, and then when my father died my mother and I sold baskets to tourists in Tlacotalpan.”
He leaned back in the chair and looked out at the moon-washed mountainscape, tilting the beer back again. The conversation required a little backing and filling and dropping in and out of Spanish and English:
“My grandfathers both had little ranchos and a few sheep, sometimes my mother’s father worked in the mines and my father’s father on the railroads, and they were soldiers in the time of Vietnam. My grandmothers worked in the gardens and around the house, the chickens, that sort of thing.”
Cheba nodded; it was all obviously fairly familiar to her, the outline if not the details.
“My father had a garage…fixed cars, did fancy work on them sometimes, restored old cars, classics, for rich people. Before then he was in the Suck, the Marine Corps, in the first war in Iraq. He died years ago, cancer, when I was still young.”
“You were a soldier too, no? Before you were a policeman?”
“Soldier, hell. Marine! I enlisted out of high school and stayed in until I made sergeant and got a correspondence degree from UNM in Criminal Justice, then came back here. My sister is married to a dentist named Anderson—pretty decent
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