This Love Is Not for Cowards (12 page)

I choose randomly between two pool halls: Pockets, which is larger and looks crowded, and Club Oxido, which seems newer. I choose Oxido, for no real reason. I watch the fight. I drink a few beers, too, walking home afterwards without incident. It's not so bad in Juárez, I conclude. I'm glad I went out. In the morning I flip on the news to see technicians lugging heavy black plastic bags. The bags look like garbage, but inside them there are the bodies of four people murdered while watching the fight—at Pockets.

I should stay in. I keep going out. I hit the Liverpool Bar on Friday nights with El Kartel, drinking with Ken-tokey and Mike late into the night, usually ending up back in the Pronaf District for cigarettes,
cerveza
, and ska—
ska?!
—at Fred's Bar, home of a disco dance floor straight out of John Travolta's youth. When Ken-tokey's girlfriend, Sofia, turns twenty-one, she throws a party at San Martin, a still-popular cantina near the Free Bridge, very close to the statue of Lincoln. The cantina is a landmark of sorts, historically popular with the tourists who no longer visit. It's my first time in the club, and I'm pleased to see it remains crowded. Mariachis roam a hall grand enough for an Oktoberfest. Good music pumps out of the stereo system. We drink a lot and have a lot of fun, and I again conclude it's not so bad in Juárez. Two weeks after the party, eight people are shot in the cantina. Three of the victims die. One week after that, the cantina opens again for business.

I don't go back. I try not to be bonehead stupid. I never visit this one hopping bar in El Centro called Nuevo Sinaloa. As in the Sinaloa Cartel. I have walked around El Centro at night, though. I sometimes order beers in the bars that lack an obvious cartel association. El Centro's safe, I once assured a friend. My friend showed me a fresh bruise on his head. He'd been mugged in El Centro just one night earlier. Maybe I don't get touched because I'm a gringo. Maybe I'm doing a good job keeping my head down, walking the line. More likely, I've just gotten lucky. I know that the best place to be, the safest place, is in my apartment, behind the iron bars protecting my windows and the four locks that fortify my front door. I know this. I've learned.

VILLA PRIMAVERA IS a resort hotel operated by the University of Guadalajara. It sits on a mountain thirty-five minutes outside the city, a world away from urban congestion. Seventy-five acres of rolling forest rise and dip until they fall in with other mountains on the horizon. Patches of spring flowers color wide fields of green grass. Cool, thin air carries notes of pine and dandelion. The view is best from the swimming pool, a cinematic platform ringed by long and thin evergreen trees that remind me of fountain pens. When we first pulled in, I jokingly called this place the Eagle's Nest. Now, as I start my morning with a glass of fruit juice in the restaurant that overlooks the pool, as I take in the forest and distant farmers' fields and the mountain view accurately advertised as “tranquil” and “beautiful,” it might be more fair to say I'm in Mexico's version of Tuscany.

We've got two nights here, and altogether two full days. The hotel operates in partnership with a high-end sports club, located within walking distance down a winding road. The sports club features an Olympic swimming pool complete with a high-dive platform. There are basketball courts and squash courts and tennis courts, including a tennis stadium for championship matches, should Rafael Nadal ever stop by. Inside a clubhouse, rows of free weights gleam alongside their attendant apparatus. Hardwood studios serve dance classes and yoga poses. The Indios are training among the six regulation soccer fields carved like terraces into the mountain slope. The fields are green and manicured and are not located anywhere near a working cement plant. They do not smell or taste like the battery acid the Indios are used to. I think we've landed in soccer heaven.

The morning workout is already under way. I finish up at the restaurant, then walk over to the sports club. I take a seat on a grassy hill and watch the team progress through the usual warm-up drills. Soccer volleyball is played without hands and with a net only waist-high. In passing triangles, three players keep the ball away from an unlucky fourth player trapped in the middle. I watch a circle of forwards juggle the ball in yet another drill. They are loose, laughing, trying on purpose to keep the ball afloat with minimal physical effort. No one lunges for the ball until the very last second. No one exerts more than a quick foot flick or head snap or shoulder twitch. It's amazing how skilled these guys are. Here at practice, away from the harsh grades of competition, their athletic gifts are obvious—and dazzling. Even old man Coco looks graceful. They all keep the ball in the air for a very long while.

The drills continue for more than an hour before Pepe Treviño blows a whistle. The head coach divides the players into two teams of roughly equal talent. Gabino, the traveling secretary who used to play professionally for the Juárez Cobras, launches into laps around the field, his usual endurance workout. I'm so seduced by the setting that I decide to run, too. I opt to hit the country roads around the resort complex. I jog about five miles up and down rolling hills, cutting through farmers' fields and passing vacation homes both modest and opulent, many of them for sale; the global economic recession has hit Guadalajara, too. By the time I make it back to the resort, the whole team is swimming in the Olympic pool. All the players who lost the scrimmage have been ordered to jump off the high dive. It towers ten meters above the water—three stories, way up there. I've never been on a high dive before, so I take off my shirt and running shoes and climb to the top just to check out the view. My knees start shaking when I walk to the edge. High diving looks fairly easy on television. Actually standing on the top platform is something else. Mistime my entry and I could rupture a spleen. My health insurance plan isn't exactly comprehensive, if it even covers me in Mexico. I turn to walk back down.

“Salto! Salto!”
Jump, gringo!
An entire professional soccer team razzes me. My manhood is questioned. I realize I'm trapped. I walk back to the edge of the platform. I gaze down at the water. My knees again buckle, and I must grab a railing to stay upright.

“Salto!”
Jump!
I retreat once more. I can't help it. I can't possibly drop from this height. A young midfielder from a line of Indios backing up on the platform loses his patience. He runs forward, leaping off like an Acapulco cliff diver, somersaulting a full revolution before untucking into the water with barely a splash. Yet another reminder that these guys, for all their struggles on the field, really are fantastic athletes. I have no choice. I've got to jump, too. I plug my nose with one hand, not even aware that I'm doing it—“That jump was
feo,
gringo. Ugly!”—and step off with a prayer for simple survival. I survive. Nothing breaks. Better still, I emerge from the water fully accepted by the team.

“You're our hero, man,” an assistant coach tells me at lunch. Not one of the coaches had jumped off even the lowest platform. After lunch everyone will hang out by the hotel pool, watch television in their rooms, or maybe surf the Web on the Wi-Fi floating over the grounds. Tomorrow the team will put in a light workout, then we'll drive down to Guadalajara proper. It's all great fun, even lunch. We share fajitas and pasta Alfredo and salad and fruit and, for dessert, flan or Jell-O if we want it. Pitchers full of fruit juice rotate around the tables. Who looked better yesterday in Champions League action: AC Milan or Real Madrid? Alain N'Kong cracks jokes, funnier because Spanish is the least his three languages. Pepe Treviño jokes along with him, pulling out his wallet at one point to bet pesos that, contrary to King Kong's claims, there's no eighteen-year-old fashion model wife waiting for the striker back in Cameroon. We're all kids at summer camp. Marco hanging with his best friend Maleno Frías. Everyone playing the sport they love, and for money. Juárez feels very far away.

“This is our life,” the assistant coach says as we linger at the table for another hour. I understand more than ever why they don't want it to end.

The next afternoon, we take the bus down to the city. A WELCOME INDIOS banner hangs in the lobby of our hotel. We're still in the big leagues, a team worth celebrating. Three clubs in the Primera are based in Guadalajara, and this hotel is where the Indios bunk down every visit. The restaurant staff, which knows the Indios' schedule by now, has a meal waiting. After dinner, everyone marches up to their rooms to watch movies and catch some sleep. We're all exhausted. I'm tired, too, which is surprising. I went for another run this morning, but aside from that I haven't really done anything. I never realized the physical toll road trips take on professional athletes. It seems like no big deal—flight, bus ride, rest—but traveling as a team can be a grind.

The schedule on Wednesday gives me only a couple hours to tour Guadalajara. That's not enough time. Some five million people live in a dense urban area that stretches across the state of Jalisco down to Puerto Vallarta, on the Pacific coast, more than a hundred miles away. There's supposed to be a good zoo in Guadalajara. They distill Jose Cuervo, appropriately, in the nearby town of Tequila. I'm told the murals of Hospicio Cabañas are a must-see. I don't have time to see them. I have only time for a surgical strike. After lunch, when I ask a taxi driver to take me to the heart of the city, he drops me off at the Guadalajara Cathedral. It's a really big church, the burial place of three cardinals, including one shot fourteen times at the airport in 1993. Officially, the cardinal got caught in a shootout between rival cocaine cartels. But maybe he was specifically targeted because of his opposition to cartel violence. Or perhaps his assassination was ordered by members of the government of La Línea–friendly president Carlos Salinas. There have been several investigations over the years, with conflicting conclusions. The U.S. Department of Justice has pinned the cardinal's murder on a leader of the Tijuana Cartel. Nobody really knows for sure.

By the time I step out of the church it's started to rain. There's little time to travel anywhere else, so I duck into a coffee shop to read the local papers. An English-language newspaper serves forty thousand Canadian retirees clustered in the suburb of Lake Chapala. I know Canada lacks a tropical province, but why retire to a foreign country just to hang around people from the homeland? I switch to the Spanish-language press to read up on tonight's game. Atlas is the least of the three Primera teams in town. Chivas is far more popular, locally and throughout Mexico. Atlas stays afloat by developing good young talent, then selling this talent to the richer clubs. The Atlas game against the Indios is acknowledged in the papers, but most stories look ahead to more exciting matches on the schedule. I find myself a bit annoyed. The Indios aren't
that
bad. Their defeat is
not
guaranteed. Atlas remains one of the two or three other teams in danger of relegation, should the Indios get their act together. I've just seen up close how good the Indios players can look. I'm excited for the game. When I glance at the clock on my cell phone, I realize I need to get going if I want to watch the game in person. I taxi back to the hotel just in time to catch the team bus to the stadium.

Estadio Jalisco, which is one of Mexico's soccer temples, is surprisingly run-down. Constructed in 1952 during a public-works building boom, and the venue for two World Cup semifinals, the place isn't half as fancy as I'd expected. It's an aged concrete bowl lined with bleachers of dented steel. The stadium's primary tenant, Chivas, will move into a new palace next season. I'm guessing they've stopped paying their maintenance fees on this dump. Even the playing field is a disgrace. With Atlas, Chivas, and two minor league teams all hosting games here, Indios players run pregame sprints across what can be described as slop. No grass remains in one entire corner of the pitch. They've actually sprayed green paint over the mud to make this embarrassment look better on television. I'll never insult Juárez's Olympic Stadium again.

It's Ash Wednesday, which I hadn't realized even when I toured the cathedral. A priest working a small chapel in the stadium's bowels smears black soot on the forehead of Pepe Treviño and other coaches and players. Treviño's ash mark remains visible even after everyone has warmed up and dressed and pumped up on bad heavy metal music. The head coach calls everyone into the center of the locker room. Marco quickly ties special cleats with long metal spikes appropriate for a muddy pitch. A boom box playing the Scorpions is flipped off. It's time once again for Pepe to motivate his men. It's not that hard a task. I'm even willing to write him a proper speech—“Atlas isn't very good. We've played ourselves into a hole, but it's not too late to turn things around. We've all had fun over the past couple of days. Let's have fun out here tonight.”—but Pepe really and truly isn't the kind of coach to seize the moment. He asks an assistant to play a clip from a movie starring Al Pacino.

Gil Cantú recognizes the need for something more. Gil wasn't with us in San Luis, or at the mountain hideout. He flew down today just for this game. When the movie clip concludes, he steps forward to address the team. Gil turned his life over to Jesus Christ two decades ago. Whenever he talks, about almost anything, he usually finds a way to weave in his faith.

“There are five churches in El Paso praying for you tonight,” he tells the team. “One lady said she won't pray just for the Indios, because God might want the other team to win, so she just prayed for you to fight hard and do your best.”

That'll have to do. The players gather in a circle, say a prayer, count to three, and shout the word “Indios!” Everyone touches the tapestry of the Virgin of Guadalupe, then runs onto the field. My cell phone vibrates with a text message from Ken-tokey's girlfriend, Sofia, back in El Paso. El Kartel is watching, she says, and is confident of a victory. Gil and I sprint up to the visiting team's skybox, hustling so we can make it there before kickoff. We find something less than a luxury suite. The small room we enter looks more like a concrete bunker built by the French to repel the Nazis. The view is obstructed. Whenever the ball crosses midfield, I'm going to have to turn to the television to see the rest of the play. Still, there's a buffet of chips and sodas and even beers, though I'm not going to drink alone, and Gil gave up alcohol during his religious conversion. I take a seat just as the referee blows his whistle to start the game. I'm flipping open my notebook when Atlas scores.