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He didn’t eat, that first visit to Pollos. Arturo did, and later Nacho has to talk himself out of believing it had something to do with what happened to him.
He pulled the chicken wing out of an abandoned basket, left behind when the brave remaining customers had been glared out the door.
The smoke from Hector’s cigar hung in the air, mingled sickeningly with the greasy smell of the meat. Arturo shrugged when Nacho pulled a face at him, took another bite.
-
“This is the best chicken I have ever had.” Lalo’s expression was animated; he gestured with his entire arm. His mouth moved constantly; his eyes remained open, wide and still.
Fring waited, Nacho waited.
The chicken was pretty good, Nacho thought. Maybe Lalo meant it. Then again, maybe he didn’t.
Lalo drew the first act of his performance to a close. Fring smiled politely. Nacho felt a distant urge to clap his hands. He suppressed it.
They left Nacho at the table. He slumped in the laminate seat, looked around. The restaurant was quiet. He could see the door, see the counter, see most of the parking lot. Nothing.
His food was still warm. It was good; it was fine. He doesn’t have, like, a discerning palate. He wondered again what Lalo thought.
It was as unlike Lalo’s cooking as food can be while belonging roughly to the same category. Prepared mechanically, bloodlessly, out of sight.
Nacho had seen this chicken before, he realized. Warehoused outside of town with the rest of Fring’s operation. Boxes upon boxes.
Fluorescent light caught the oily sheen on the wax paper lining the plastic basket and he imagined the chicken infected with those midnight meetings.The cooling meat clogged with the fear he’d sweated, standing beside it in that massive refrigerator. He held down a gag, barely.
Lalo was cold when he followed Fring from his office. The smile returned when he caught Nacho’s eye. He shook his head, good-natured disapproval at the uneaten food.
Nacho hesitated, then shrugged.
-
It was the music that worried him first, but the smell was second. He was hungry. Took a moment longer than he should have to see the look on Domingo’s face, notice the cook hunching, frightened, over a coffee.
The music, the food, then the man in the kitchen. He put his hand on his gun. Lalo’s back was turned, bent over the stove. He took his hand off his gun.
Lalo faked his surprise at Nacho’s arrival. Faked well; it took Nacho a moment to recognize the insincerity. Very hungry. He didn’t look at the offered plate. The smile disturbed him immediately.
“ Y me dijeron que eras un tipo inteligente .” They told me you were smart.
Nacho shifted behind his crossed arms. The less he says, the more people look away from his embarrassing eyes, gazes wandering to his biceps, his scarred knuckles. He watched Lalo’s eyes make the familiar journey.
“It will be like I’m not even here,” he winked, and took Nacho’s seat—Hector's seat—at the table behind Domingo.
Nacho stood in the kitchen. The wound in his abdomen hurt him, the music was too loud. Whatever was on the stove was spicy, warm. A special recipe, a family secret. Fucking Salamancas.
He swallowed. He left the kitchen, leaned against the half-wall behind Lalo, crossed his arms.
When it was over, each dealer looking from Domingo to Nacho to Lalo, back to Nacho, and then finally back to Domingo, Lalo stood and stretched. Arms over his head, back arched. His shoulder cracked audibly.
Wandering past Nacho, back towards the kitchen, he swung an arm out, middle finger dragging across Nacho’s bicep.
He looked up, but Lalo was already moving away, smiling to himself.
-
When he was seventeen, Nacho left home for the first time, before his father could throw him out. Manuel knew about the drugs, the money, the Salamancas. He didn’t know how Tuco treated him almost like part of the family, a bigger family, endless broad-shouldered cousins who nodded approvingly at Nacho, at Tuco for having Nacho at his elbow.
He hadn’t mentioned he’d be leaving. They cooked together in the small kitchen that last night, summer evening light through the blue curtains and the TV buzzing in the corner.
They didn’t speak to each other. Unhappy, but not tense. Just the worn-in sadness of having already argued all they could. The food was heavy, fragrant, familiar. They ate at the little round table, across from each other, not looking at each other or at the soccer game on the old television, the yellows green, the greens yellow. They kept their heads down and watched their own plates emptying, though Nacho can’t make himself remember what they ate.
-
He had to take the food eventually. He’d known it from the beginning, and so had Lalo. Y me dijeron que eras un tipo inteligente. Y aquí estás, dice que lo eres! Here you are, and you are.
He’d known he’d like it too.
He didn’t want to eat it any more than he’d wanted to that first day, or any of the times after that when Lalo had offered. But this time it was a command, not an offer. It didn’t matter that Nacho was hungry, though he was, or that the meat was cooked perfectly, though it was.
Nacho didn’t understand his game. Still doesn’t. Showing off? Returning the favor after the transparent rooftop stunt; consummating the vow Nacho had made when he’d pulled the rescued product silently from his pocket? Maybe he just wants well-fed soldiers. Grow up strong, Nachito.
It had been a long time since Nacho’d sat facing the kitchen, and it made him nervous. The toe of Lalo’s loafer pressed to the instep of his boot made him nervous. Lalo’s grin when he assured him that he didn’t need Domingo dead made his skin crawl.
Nacho finished the meal silently, tried not to enjoy it. Tried not to react as Lalo explained his plan. Muttered a “thank you” to his empty plate, already rehearsing how he’d repeat Lalo’s words to Fring.
“Help me with these, would you?” Lalo gestured at the dishes. He started towards the kitchen, carrying only his beer. Nacho grabbed both of their plates.
He washed them, while Lalo cleaned the surface of the griddle, singing to himself, a different song than the one playing on the ancient radio in the corner. He caught the look Nacho couldn’t help sending his way.
“You know this one, Ignacio?”
Nacho shook his head.
“Sure you do.” He sang the next line coaxingly.
Even laughing, smiling, he gives the impression he may be about to go for your throat. Maybe especially when he’s smiling, all those teeth on display under the mustache.
Nacho just looked at him.
Lalo stepped in closer. “No?” As he hummed the next few bars, his hand drifted to Nacho’s face. His skin was warm. The tip of his middle finger traced the outline of his eye socket, dragged along his cheekbone, down the side of his face. He stopped humming. Then another of those smiles.
“Those eyes, Nachito! The girls must go crazy, hmm?”
He took Nacho’s chin in his fingers, thumb pressing in hard, and came even closer, studied him. Nacho didn't allow himself to hold his breath, or look away. He felt Lalo’s breath on his teeth.
Then Lalo winked, and let him go.
-
He should not have returned to his father’s house after he took back Hector’s money. But the key was still under the mat and he hurt where the bullet had been, where the other bullet still was, and everywhere else too.
His father closed his eyes like he could see the new Salamanca blood mixing with his own in Nacho’s veins, left him to sleep on the couch.
Nacho forgot himself in the morning, dragged himself to the kitchen and opened the refrigerator reflexively. The sun had not come up. He stood in the yellow light, the electric hum, and looked at his feet instead of at the food, enough for one old man.
Then he left, and never went back.
-
“You know how to debone him?” Lalo points at the carcass on the countertop.
Nacho shakes his head.
“Ah, don’t worry about it.” Lalo waves away the disappointment, picking up a knife. “You’ll learn another time. Tonight you do the peppers.” He points with the tip of the knife at the red peppers piled on a cutting board. The kitchen of his rented house is as large as El Michoacano’s, twice as beautiful. The island countertop is orange tile.
Nacho picks up the other knife. Lalo pours more wine, and starts in on the chicken.
Nacho slices slowly at a pepper, fingers held out of the way of the blade, eyes on Lalo’s knife. It severs one leg from the body, then the other.
The transition from flesh to food shouldn’t be jarring. Nacho isn’t much of a cook, but he knows where food comes from. Watching Lalo work, it feels more complicated. Lalo does this like he does everything: putting a civilized face on an act that Nacho remembers suddenly is animal. Brutal, even.
He turns his face down, watches the pepper become a puddle of red. Over the music, he can hear the chicken’s thighs popped from the joints.
Nacho has a strong stomach. It was a requirement, working for Tuco. Bloody meat and muscle, sharp snapping bones don’t get to him. This isn’t the gore he’s grown used to, isn’t the sterile, impersonal rationing of the chicken place.
He wonders who it’s for, the elegance layered over the carnality. The smooth agility of Lalo’s knifework as he hums, sways along to ranchera and crackling oil. The kisses he pressed along Nacho’s neck as he shoved into him, earlier.
Maybe it doesn’t make a difference, whether it’s Lalo who requires the facade, whether it’s just for fun, or something he puts on for Nacho’s benefit. But Nacho wants it to be for him. He wants it for himself almost as much as he wants Lalo to put it away, just give up the stupid fucking charade and tear his throat out already.
“Oh, Ignacio.” Lalo shakes his head at the slushy state of the peppers. Nacho inhales, but Lalo seems to think it’s funny. He smiles apologetically.
Lalo circles the island, arrives behind Nacho to turn him with a gentle hand on his waist. Nacho leans back against the counter, trapped. Lalo reaches past him to grab an uneven slice of red, puts it in his mouth. He smiles down at Nacho. “Hey, still tastes okay.”
He reaches for a second piece. “You try.” He holds it to Nacho’s mouth.
Nacho creaks open his jaw, lets Lalo feed it to him.
Lalo leaves his hand in place too long; Nacho has to close his lips over the tips of his thumb and forefinger.
Lalo withdraws his hand as Nacho chews, horribly aware of every crunch, the wet sounds of his mouth. He doesn’t back away though, even when Nacho swallows, jerky.
He peels open Nacho’s lower lip with his thumb, swipes his finger inside it, the flat of his nail scraping against Nacho’s teeth. He hooks it inside Nacho’s cheek, pulls his mouth into a grimace. Nacho heard a long time ago—probably from Domingo, on the playground—that you can bite through your own finger as easily as a baby carrot; it’s only your brain that prevents you from being able to do it. There’s no instinct, no animal chemistry preventing him from crunching through Lalo’s fingers.
Still, he doesn’t do it. He lets Lalo play with his mouth; examining his teeth like a racehorse, checking for fangs, whatever it is he’s doing.
A few moments later, Lalo steps back, wipes his hand on his pants and returns to the chicken. He sips from his glass, sings along to the first line of the new song starting.
Nacho doesn’t bother to wonder. It hardly feels like his business, Lalo’s fascination with his body. He can wait this out.
Lalo’s food is good. Homey, though not quite like Nacho’s home. Smells good. Sounds good, cooking, the metal thwip of the spatula, the sizzling. The knives, of course. His hands move fast, though his face hardly changes. Or the mouth changes, ruched in concentration or grinning or talking or whistling; it’s the eyes that stay the same. Threatening, slicing, stirring, he twinkles. The longer it goes on, the deeper the chill. Nacho prays for the plate to be set in front of him.
-
He should not have eaten before the fire. But he was hungry. Sometimes eating is just filling your stomach. The gas station hotdog went down sour, still feels metallic in his molars.
He feels Fring’s presence in the store; it’s like the man has a magnetic field around him. Even a room away, Nacho thinks he knows just where he is.
As much as he resents being here, resents Lalo for asking it of him, Fring for forcing him to go through with it, Mike for not stopping either of them, the restaurant feels good to smash.
He lets himself enjoy it; how often does he really enjoy anything lately? The place crumples under his crowbar. He’s good at this.
Then he’s aware of Fring again. Fring looks at him over a bird rigged to explode. A chicken that cooks you. Nacho wants to take a swing at him. Wants it so badly. “Go,” Fring whispers.
Nacho goes.
Soon after, the explosion. Nacho is far enough away that it doesn’t knock him over. Still, the heat is almost solid, pressed to his face. And the smell: crisping plastic and melting meat.
His tongue sweats. He puts his hands on his knees and stringy globs of pink spurt from his throat. Fring looks at him with distaste, doesn’t pause on his way to his own car.
Nacho needs to leave too. He retches once more, tasting meat long after his stomach is empty.