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The doorbell rings, and Amber leaves to grab the food from the delivery guy. She comes back with Lalo Salamanca in tow. "This guy says he's your boss," she says, but there's a question in her voice, that ever present undertone: did I do it right?
"Yeah," Nacho responds, taken aback. He was expecting Thai food. "Yes. Lalo? Que pasa?" He sets a hand on Amber's shoulder. He hopes it comes across as comforting, but it feels possessive. Lalo eyes the gesture like he's thinking the same thing.
"Aren't you going to introduce me to this lovely lady, Ignacio?" He spots Jo, peering at him in the corner from behind her Gameboy, and grins. " Ladies , then. Mierda, Ignacio, tienes que estar ocupado…."
"Lalo," Nacho says, investing energy into staying patient. "What is it?" He hopes Lalo won't ask again for an introduction; he doesn't want to tell him their names. It would be giving away something that he'd rather keep for himself.
Lalo turns around and takes the house in, his face betraying nothing but a vague, impassive curiosity. Nacho swallows hard-- he hates this part of the job, the invasiveness of it. He hates feeling like a bug under a microscope. "No te preocupes. I had something I wanted to run by you, and I thought I'd take the opportunity to come by. See where you live."
There's a second meaning behind his words, one which Nacho only sees because he's well trained, because he's been in the business long enough. Lalo's here to stake claim on what little space Nacho thinks of as his own. Lalo says I wanted to see your house but what he means is what's yours is mine, and don't forget it . Nacho swallows again and reminds himself of the passports in his safe, one for him and one for his father.
"Jo," Amber says, just barely less than a hiss, "I need your help with something. In the, uh, the bedroom." Jo stands and the two of them pad out of the room and disappear into the house. Thank God one of them has a head on her shoulders , Nacho thinks, and feels guilty immediately. They're good girls-- both of them.
Lalo whistles as he watches them go. Whether it's at Amber's ass (extremely visible in her shorts) or at their presence in general, Nacho couldn't say. "Two girls, huh? Impressive." He claps Nacho on the shoulder, some kind of fraternity to it that knocks him off guard. Everything Lalo says is like days old leftovers-- Nacho can't touch it without wondering if it's gone bad, if it's off somehow. None of it comes without some threat of rancidity. "Well, man, I'm glad you have beautiful girls to come home to after a long day's work." He winks and collapses onto the couch, picking the remote up and fiddling with it.
He wants to argue, wants to say something like they're more than just pretty faces, sir, but he can't, and it would feel insincere anyway. It's true, and he believes it, but it's only a partial truth.
The whole truth is this: when Nacho was in high school, one of his friends' dad died. He was shot, caught in the crossfire in a cartel shootout, a civilian casualty. The kind of story that comes a dime a dozen now but was, at one time, a tragedy in Nacho's sphere. Anyway, the important part was that the man's wife, the mother of Nacho's friend, fell into some kind of depression, some deep hole that she couldn't seem to dig her way out of. The community looked after her, for a time, but there was only so much time they could dedicate to her. Once the world started moving again, she was left behind.
What turned it around for her, and for her family, was this dog that she rescued, this little mutt that stuck around after she started tossing scraps for it during her widow's walks. This dog was a mangy thing, not cute and not particularly friendly, either, but it gave her something to get up for in the morning. Taking care of the dog made her into a person again.
` Nacho's never been fond of dogs. They lack complexity, and self-preservation, and discretion. There's something disturbing about their limitless loyalty. You should only be able to kick something once or twice before it stops coming back.
(He sees the irony in this, he does, but there are differences. For example, a dog isn't likely to have an aging father to worry about. A dog doesn't need two passports under fake names to escape being beaten.)
Amber and Jo are nice, and, despite appearances, are interesting, likeable people. Amber is funny in a dry, sardonic kind of way, and, while he can't say for sure, Nacho gets the impression that she was at one point notably intelligent. On occasion, she makes vague allusions to a missed opportunity for some ambitious academic future, which Nacho is curious about but, as a rule, does not pry about for fear of pushing her further away. Sometimes, observations and understandings make it through the meth haze and she has little shining moments of cleverness that Nacho has learned to watch for, intriguing as it can be to witness.
Jo is funny purely by virtue of being such an airhead. Even in a different world, a hypothetical scenario in which she had never taken the path on which she is spiraling down currently, Nacho can't imagine she'd have much real potential for bigger things. The component parts that allow for grand achievement don't seem to be present; the drugs can only account for so much. Despite all this, she has an impressive stamina for occupying herself which Nacho envies-- she frequently finds some kind of activity to occupy her hands or her mind and dedicates herself to it entirely for hours at a time without showing signs of fatigue or boredom. In this way, she makes things a little easier to bear on days when the tedium of working as the Salamancas' stooge and Fring's double agent starts to wear down on Nacho.
The real truth, in its entirety, comes back to that dog and those scraps of food. Nacho spends his days working as a glorified Australian Shepherd-- keeping everything in line. meeting quotas, mostly barking but with a bite to match when needed. He looks down at his hands sometimes, clenches and unclenches his fist, and wishes he could start over. If he had realized this was where he was headed, a straight shot to becoming a tool for violence and punishment, he would've stayed away from it all. If he looks too hard in the mirror he makes himself sick with guilt and resentment.
So it's nice, then, to use his hands for something sweet. He's not much in the kitchen, but sometimes he'll mix drinks for the girls or he'll bring them Diet Cokes from the fridge. On days when he's twitchy, too full of nervous energy to sit still, he rubs Amber's shoulders while she sits on the floor between his legs. He once spent an entire afternoon helping Jo beat a level of Super Mario that she got stuck on-- it's actually a great memory, him sitting on the couch hunched over in concentration while she hung on his shoulders and shouted encouragement.
"Are you listening, Ignacio?" Lalo is leaning forward, elbows on his knees, a wry amusement written on his face that could very easily become indignation.
"Sorry," Nacho says, "Sorry. I've got… stuff on my mind."
"Well, get this on your mind instead; it's important. I want you to help me get an idea of…" and then he's all business, a no-nonsense list of instructions and ideas. Take me here, Nacho, tell me this, threaten this guy for me, Nacho, make sure everything is perfect. You have fists, Nacho, and a good head on your shoulders. Use them, make us money, make us proud.
Nacho listens and nods along and makes the occasional sparsely worded correction or comment. As much as it's starting to wear him down, he is good at this; he has a knack for leadership and management that would've come in real handy in pretty much any other industry, though maybe none so profitable as this.
The doorbell rings again. Lalo pauses and looks at Nacho expectantly, with that ever present hint of curiosity, always evaluating the way Nacho handles basic tasks. He steps back a couple feet to give himself some illusion of distance from Lalo and shouts, "Amber, the food's here!"
After just a couple of seconds she shuffles back into the entrance of the home and quickly out the door, not looking at either of them at all. Lalo seems to make her uncomfortable, despite his enduring charm. Nacho feels a surge of affection flood through him at her intuition and instincts.
"Ok, Ignacio, es todo. I'll get out of here and leave you to your dinner, eh?"
"There's no rush," Nacho says, because he knows the expectation is there. "The girls don't eat much if you wanted to stay and eat with us." He hates that he has to offer.
"Ah, I appreciate it, Nachito. I would say three's a crowd, but...." He winks again, seemingly endlessly amused by the premise of two whole girlfriends. "Anyway, I have plans. But you enjoy your food, and your ladies." Amber steps back into the house with a paper bag full of food and, despite her best efforts, makes eye contact with Lalo. He grins at her and she offers an awkward smile. "You're a lucky lady," Lalo says, with an odd little conspiratorial nod. He claps her on her shoulder, his large hand making her skinny arms look frail and breakable. Nacho knows he could hurt her, could kill her, if he thought it would help him keep control or get ahead. He makes a mental note to slip in some offhand comment later about how little he cares about his girls-- a defensive move in this long game of mental chess. Maybe it's paranoia, but Nacho's playing to win.
Nacho snaps back to the moment at hand when the door shuts behind Lalo. It's probably unwise to let Lalo let himself out, considering his attitudes towards respect and his tendencies towards curiosity at everyone else's expense, but a bone deep exhaustion has settled into Nacho and he doesn't find it in himself to care. He takes the bag from Amber and collapses onto the couch, removing the contents one by one and setting them out on the coffee table. "Jo? Food's here!" he calls. He knows it's likely that she won't come-- the meth fucks up her already small appetite, makes her go days without eating. He'll make her a milkshake later, something calorie dense so she won't faint tomorrow morning.
Amber toes out of her shoes and shuffles over, sitting next to Nacho on the couch. She's sitting right up next to him, her body pressed against his like she's seeking comfort.
"That guy was… that's your boss?"
"Yeah," he sighs, handing her a pair of chopsticks and one of the takeout boxes. "Sorry," he finishes, even though there's really nothing to apologize for.
"Was he flirting with me? Or… with you?" She unwraps the chopsticks and breaks them apart, using them to stir through the container. She'll pick out all of the snap peas, because she always does. "Because, like--"
"If I ever figure him out, I'll let you know," Nacho interrupts, failing to keep the bitterness out of his voice. She shifts away from him, ever so slightly, just enough so that he senses it in the reduction of pressure against his side. Guilty, he places a hand on her knee and rubs his thumb over her skin soothingly. "I'm sorry. If it were up to me, he wouldn't… you wouldn't have to… but it's not up to me."
"Yeah," she agrees, although he gets the feeling she doesn't know what she's agreeing with.
"Sorry," he sighs, breaking his own chopsticks apart. Suddenly, he's not hungry. Look on the bright side , he thinks, Lalo doesn't seem interested in Papa. The sentiment doesn't offer much comfort-- there's still Fring to think about. Fucking Chicken Man.
Jo emerges from the guts of the house, twitchy and unsure. She smells like acetone, and when Nacho looks down at her nails, sure enough, they've been freshly painted. Badly. (Nacho is reminded, for a brief moment, of the time he had let her paint his nails. When she finally went to sleep for the night, he had spent nearly an hour meticulously scrubbing away any sign of the freshly dried hot pink.) "Did you get, um, the wonton things? With the cream cheese?"
Nacho reaches down across the table and finds the little crinkly wax paper bag, offering it out to her silently. "Fuck yes," she mutters, grabbing it from his hands and tearing into the bag. "Thanks, babe," she says, smiling at him for one golden second.
He smiles back.