The second blast of euphoria hits me even harder this time. It’s like a sledgehammer to the side of my head, sending me reeling back into my chair. I can feel my pulse everywhere, throbbing like the beat of a demented drum, and my fingers have gone completely numb. In fact, my whole body feels kind of numb, like I’m made out of cotton wool. It should be a worrying sensation, and yet it feels good. Really, really fucking good. My lips are tingling like crazy, and fuck…even my dick is getting hard. I want to risk a quick look down to my crotch, to see if my increasingly large boner is all that noticeable, but when I open my eyes, Natalia is watching me again with an intense, fascinated look on her face, and all other thought flies out of the window.
She isn’t “morning-sunrise” kind of beautiful. She’s “out-of-control-burn-your-fucking-house-down-forest-fire” kind of beautiful. And she’s looking at me like she wants to shove me back into my seat, pull down her panties, and sit on my face so she can ride my mouth.
I’m sure her father would not approve.
I could be imagining this, of course. There’s a very good chance I’m just seeing what I want to see, because my dick is now harder than granite, and my eyes feel like they’re shooting laser beams out of them.
Natalia licks her lips. “Would you like some water?”
“Thank you.”
She gets up and leaves the room, which strikes me as strange. If she’s not watching me, then who is? I suppose the men out on the production floor would put me down pretty quick if they thought I was up to no good. But still… If one of Perez’s guys left me alone at his compound, they’d find themselves headless and in need of a shallow grave. Not even Jamie would leave a guy sitting alone in an unlocked room.
Natalia doesn’t come back for quite a while. I sit in my chair and I don’t move, though. I can feel my breath, pulling and pushing around my body; it’s as though the cells that make up my body are bigger than they should be, more sensitive, and I can feel every last one of them. I’m not in my right mind. I’m smart enough to realize that the drugs have fucked me up, and I shouldn’t go making any rash decisions, so I keep my ass parked in my chair and I wait.
Eventually, Natalia comes back carrying a large glass carafe of water and two small tumblers on a tray. She sets it down on Fernando’s desk, and begins to pour the liquid into the two glasses with all of the gravity and measure of a Japanese geisha preparing tea.
When she holds out a glass for me, filled almost to the brim with water, I accept it, holding my breath, not wanting to spill it. Natalia throws back her glass of water like it’s a shot of tequila, down in one, and then she leans forward on her elbows, observing me as I slowly sip from my glass.
“You’re not like most men who come here,” she tells me.
I frown. I need to be like most men who come here. If Fernando’s going to be tricked into thinking that Sam Garrett is a real person, right along with Louis James Aubertin the third, and that we want to start selling his narcotics north of the border, I need these guys to think I’m driven by addiction, desire for power, or a desire for money. Anything else is going to look suspicious. And a man with unclear motives is a dangerous man. “How so?” I ask.
Natalia sits back in Fernando’s chair. She looks like she wants to kick her feet up on the desk, but then thinks better of it. “You’re thinking all the time. Think, think, think.” She taps her temple with her index finger. “Every word you say is measured. Like it’s passed a rigorous vetting program before it is allowed out of your mouth. It makes me think you are trying to hide things.”
I press my fingertips against the sides of the cold glass in front of me, trying not to appear surprised by her very accurate assessment of me. “I promise I’m not doing it on purpose. And of course I’m hiding things. Every single guy you meet is trying to hide something, I can pretty much guarantee it.”
“If you’re referring to your erection, Mr. America, you really need to try harder.”
I bark out laughter—I can’t help it. She does not look like she has any business saying the word erection let alone actually noticing mine, and yet she doesn’t seem embarrassed. Not even slightly pink in the cheeks.
I shift in my chair, angling my hips up for a moment so the bulge in my pants is even more prominent. “That is entirely your fault,” I inform her. “Coke turns me on.”
“Evidently.”
“And so do exotic, half Ecuadorian women with sexy accents.”
“How do you know I’m only half Ecuadorian?”
“Because your skin is almost white. And your eyes are green.”
She harrumphs. “Skin and eye color don’t seem to be a very reliable way of assessing someone’s heritage, Sam.”
“So you are one hundred percent Ecuadorian?”
She smiles a small, weighted smile. After a drawn out second, she says, “No, actually. You are right. My mother was born in Philadelphia. She moved to Ecuador when she was only eleven.”
“And she still lives here?”
“No.”
“She went back to Philadelphia?”
“No. She died, of course.”
She says “of course,” as though it was the natural progression for her mother, like it was fated. Could be she was fated to die, the second she met Fernando Villalobos. “I probably shouldn’t ask how she died, should I?”