He took her to dinner, he took her to clubs, he took her dancing. He introduced her to his police friends and they’d all go out together, her and Chido and the other cops and their girlfriends.

Chido bought her clothes so that she would look nice (“Your clothes should be as pretty as you”), and one of the other girlfriends took her out to buy makeup and taught her how to use it and how to fix her hair.

Every Friday she would go to Padillo’s and he would have the package wrapped in brown paper and hand it to her and she would bring home the goat, or the chicken, even pork, and one time steak. And three times a week a man would come to their place with big blue bottles of clean water.

No charge.

“Have you fucked him yet?” her mother asked.

“Mama, no.”

“When you do, make sure he uses something or he comes on your belly,” her mother said. “He won’t want you if you’re fat with a baby.”

A month after they met, he took her to what he called his “crash pad,” an apartment that he shared with his partners.

“We come here in the day to get out of the heat,” Chido explained. “You can’t work all the time, and we need to relax.”

He walked her into the bedroom.

It was clean, with nice sheets on the bed.

He laid her down and unbuttoned her blouse and she let him kiss her and his hand slid down and touched her where she had only touched herself and his lips touched lightly on her breasts and then her stomach and soon she spoke his name, Chido Chido, and he slid up and came into her.

He felt good, he felt so good, she wrapped her legs around him to keep him there forever but when he was close he pulled free and later he went into the bathroom and came out with a damp washcloth and wiped her stomach off and it felt cool and nice.

“We’ll get you on the pill,” he said. “I hate condoms.”

“I got blood on your sheets.”

Chido shrugged. “We’ll get new sheets.”

They had a woman who came in once a week to clean.

He got up again and came back with two bottles of beer and they lay on the bed looking out the widow at the sunbaked street and drank the beers and fell asleep and woke up and made love again.

When she got home that night her mother looked at her and said nothing, but her mother knew, because women know.

Ester was at a party at the crash pad when she found out Chido was married. This was about a year after she started going with him, and she was in the bathroom with Gerardo’s girlfriend, sharing the mirror to put on makeup, when Silvia casually mentioned Chido’s wife and kids, then saw Ester’s expression in the mirror and said, “You didn’t know, did you?”

Ester shook her head.

“Sobrina,” Silvia said, “they’re all married.”

Ester went back out into the party and pretended nothing had happened, but when she confronted Chido about it later, in his car as he was taking her home, he said, “So? You have a good life, don’t you? Don’t I take care of you? Your family? Don’t I give you nice things? Take you nice places?”

She had to agree these things were true, but she also said, “I thought we were going to get married someday.”

“Well, that’s not going to happen,” Chido said. “You want to go back to waiting in line for water, eating posole, go ahead and marry some street cleaner. I’ll send a nice gift to the wedding.”

Ester went inside and lay down on her mattress, knowing that she wasn’t a girlfriend but a segundera, a mistress.

—

“You treat me like a whore,” she said to Chido one day.

Chido slapped her, grabbed her black hair in his fist, hauled her off the couch, lifted her face up, and said, “You want me to treat you like a whore, I will. I’ll put you out on the street and then you’ll know what it’s like to feel like a whore. Now get dressed and try to look decent for a change. We’re going out and I don’t want you to embarrass me.”

Ester fell asleep—passed out—at the crash pad that night and he left her there because he had night duty. He told her to go home and she said she would but then lay down for just a minute and fell asleep. She woke up to the sound of someone crying and cracked the bedroom door open to see Chido, Gerardo, and Luis and a fourth man she knew as a local car thief.

It was the fourth man who was crying—his clothes were torn, his face was bruised and bloody—and as Luis shoved him down into a chair, she heard Gerardo ask, “What did you bring him here for?”

“It’s cool,” Chido said. “No one saw us.”

“Now we’ll need a new pad,” Luis said.

“Good,” Chido answered. “I’m sick of this one anyway.”

The man in the chair cried and Ester saw piss run down his leg onto the floor.

“Now we’ll really need a new pad,” Chido said.

“How many times did we tell you,” Gerardo said to the crying man, “that you have to pay us?”

Ester wanted to shut the door but she was afraid to make a sound.

“I’m sorry,” the man said. “I will, I will.”

“Too late,” Gerardo said.

Ester watched as Chido held the man’s wrist so his hand was flat on the table, and then Gerardo took a hammer and brought it down on the man’s hand. The man screamed and Ester thought she was going to be sick as she saw his bones stick up through his skin.

“Try stealing cars now,” Gerardo said.

The man screamed again.

“Jesus, shut up,” Chido said.

But the man wouldn’t. He bellowed. Chido looked at Gerardo, who nodded. Chido grabbed the hammer and brought it down on the man’s head.

Again and again.

They picked the man up and started to carry him out, and then Chido glanced back and saw Ester.

“I’ll be right down,” he said. He pushed Ester back into the bedroom, closed the door, and said, “What did you see?”

“Nothing.”

“That’s right,” Chido said. “You saw nothing.”

After that she didn’t see him for three weeks.

That first Friday, she went to Padillo’s for her package, and when he told her how much it cost she said, “I don’t have that much,” and he shrugged and took the package back. And when no water in the big blue bottles appeared, her mother said, “No wonder he dumped you. You look like shit. Go wait for the trucks—we need water to live.”

She handed Ester a plastic bucket.

Three weeks later, Ester went looking for Chido. She knew the restaurant where he’d be on Friday nights and she got high on viesca and wine and walked into the restaurant and saw him at a table with Gerardo and Silvia.

And some other woman.

Ester went up to the table and asked Chido, “Can I speak with you?”

Chido looked surprised, angry. “Get out of here. Now.”

“I just want to speak with you.” Then she broke down crying. “I’m sorry. I love you, I love you. I’m sorry.”

“You’re drunk,” Chido said. “High.”

Silvia got up, took her by the elbow, and tried to walk her away. “Don’t embarrass yourself, sobrina.”

But Ester got mad and jerked her arm away, looked at the pretty girl sitting next to Chido, and asked, “Who’s this cunt?”

“Enough,” Chido said.

“They kill people, you know,” Ester said to the girl, who sat there with her red-lipsticked mouth in a shocked O. “I saw them—”

Then Chido and Gerardo had her by the arms and she couldn’t shake away and they walked her out of the restaurant into the alley and she saw Chido’s face and it was red and angry and she saw his eyes and knew he was high on coke and she was suddenly sober and very afraid as they pushed her against the wall.

“What did you see?” Gerardo asked.

“Nothing.”

“What did you see?”

When Ester didn’t answer, Gerardo said to Chido, “You know what we have to do.”

Ester started to run, but Chido grabbed her and pushed her back against the wall. Then he saw the bottle at their feet. A green bottle that had once been full of cheap wine. He smashed it against the wall and held the jagged neck to her face.