Under the Skin

chill desert night of wind and rain. The trade at
Mrs. O’Malley’s house has been kept meager by
the inclement weather and the loss of the neighborhood’s electrical power since earlier in the day. Rumor

has it that a stray bullet struck dead a transformer. For the
past two days errant rounds have carried over the Rio
Grande—glancing off buildings, popping through windowpanes, hitting random spectators among the rooftop
crowds seeking to be entertained by the warfare across the
river. Even through the closed windows and the pattering
of the rain, gunfire remains audible at this late hour,
though the latest word is that the rebels have taken Juárez
and the shooting is now all in celebration and the exercise
of firing squads.

The house is alight with oil lamps. Its eight resident
whores huddled into their housecoats and carping of boredom. Now comes a loud rapping of the front door’s iron
knocker and they all sit up as alert as cats.

The houseman peers through a peephole, then turns to
the madam and shrugs. Mrs. O’Malley bustles to the door
and puts her eye to the peeper.

She works the bolt and tugs open the door. The lamp flames dip
and swirl in their glass and shadows waver on the walls as a cold rush
of air brings in the mingled scents of creosote and wet dust.

Mrs. O’Malley trills in Spanish at the two men who enter the dim
foyer and shuts the door behind them. The maid Concha takes their
overcoats and they shake the rainwater off their hats and stamp their
boots on the foyer rugs.

“Pasen, caballeros, pasen,” Mrs. O’Malley says, ushering them into
the parlor.
They come into the brighter light and the girls see that they are
Mexicans in Montana hats and suits of good cut. One of the men has
appeared in photographs in the local newspapers almost every day for
the past week, but few of these girls ever give attention to a newspaper and so most of them do not recognize him.
“Attention, ladies,” Mrs. O’Malley says, as the girls assemble
themselves for inspection. “Just look who’s honoring us with a visit.”
She extends her arms toward one of the men as if presenting a star
performer on a theater stage. “My dear old friend—”
“Pancho!”
one of the girls calls out—Kate, whom the others call
Schoolgirl for her claim of having attended college for a time before
her fortunes turned. Only she and two of the other girls in the
house—a small brunette they call Pony and a fleshy girl named Irish
Red—were working at Mrs. O’Malley’s last winter when this man
regularly patronized the place. The three waggle their fingers in
greeting and the man grins at them and nods.
“General Francisco Villa,”
the madam enunciates, fixing the Schoolgirl with a correcting look and poorly concealing her irritation at
being usurped of the introduction.
The girls have of course all heard of him and they make a murmuring big-eyed show of being impressed. He is tall for a Mexican,
big-chested and thick-bellied without conveying an impression of

fatness. His eyes are hidden in the squint of his smile. The madam
hugs him sideways around the waist and says how happy she is to see
him again. He fondly pats her ample bottom and repositions her arm
away from the holstered pistol under his coatflap.

“Hace siete o ocho meses que no te veo, verdad?” the madam says.
“Que tanto ha occurido en ese tiempo.”
Villa agrees that much has happened in the eight months since he
was last in El Paso, living as an exile in the Mexican quarter with
only eight men in his bunch. Now he commands the mighty Division of the North. He is one of the most celebrated chieftains of the
Mexican Revolution and a favored subject of American reporters
covering the war.
Would he and his friend like a drink, the madam asks. Some music
on the hand-cranked phonograph?
Villa flicks his hand in rejection of the offer and returns his attention to the women, a man come to take his pleasure but with no time
for parlor amenities. The girls have thrown open their housecoats to
afford the visitors a franker view of their charms in negligee or
camisole, but Villa already knows what he wants. He has come with
the express hope of finding the Irish girl still here, and now beckons
her. He much admires her bright red hair and lushly freckled skin as
pale as cream—traits not common among the women he usually enjoys. She beams and hastens to him.
Mrs. O’Malley pats his arm and says she just knew he’d pick
Megan again.
“Y cual prefiere tu amigo?” she says, and turns to the other man.
“Pues?” Villa says to him.
He is taller than Villa, leaner of waist but as wide of chest, his mustache thicker, his eyes so black the pupils are lost in their darkness.
“Esa larguirucha,” he says, jutting his chin at a tall lean girl with
honey-colored hair and eyes the blue of gas flames. The only one of
them able to hold his gaze, her small smile a reflection of his own.

“Ava,” Mrs. O’Malley says. “Our newest.” She turns from the man
to the girl and back to the man, remarking the intensity of the look
between them. “My,” she says to Villa. “Parece que tu cuate se encontró una novia.”

“Otra novia mas,” Villa says with a laugh. Then says to the redhead, “Vente, mi rojita,” and hugs her against his side and they head
for the stairway. The Ava girl takes the other man by the hand and
they follow Villa and Irish Red up to the bedrooms.

The rest of the girls resettle themselves, some of them casting envious glances after the couples ascending the stairs, chiefly at the Ava
girl, who has been with them but a week, the one they call the Spook
for her inclination to keep her own company and her manner of seeming to be elsewhere even when she’s in their midst.

t dawn the rain has departed. So too the men. The few remaining clouds are ragged red scraps on a pink horizon. The
light of the ascending day eases down the Franklins and into the city
streets.

By late morning Mrs. O’Malley is away to her daily mass at Our
Lady of Perpetual Sorrows. The girls rouse themselves from their beds
and descend to the sunbright kitchen for coffee and the pastries Concha has fetched from the corner panadería. They sit at a long table
under a row of windows open to the late-November coolness and the
croonings of Inca doves in the patio trees. The gunfire across the river
has abated to faint sporadic fusillades, each volley prompting Concha
to a quick sign of the cross.

As usual at the breakfast table most of the girls are closemouthed
and drawn into themselves, absorbed in the ruminations that come
with the light of each newrisen day. Only Kate the Schoolgirl, reading a newspaper, and Irish Red and Juliet—called Lovergirl—who
are engaged in antic whisperings about Megan’s night with Pancho

Now the Lovergirl’s giggles rise keenly and Betty the Mule, longfaced and bucktoothed, says, “Why don’t you two take your snickering somewhere else? You sound like a couple of moron kids, for shit’s
sake.”

“Why don’t you mind your own business?” the Lovergirl says.
“Nobody’s anyway talking to you.”
“She’s just jealous,” Irish Red says.
“Jealous?” the Mule says. “Of
what
? Some greaser who probably
left you a case of clap and a furpatch full of crabs?”
Lightfoot Gwen chuckles without looking up from her coffee, but
the Pony says, “Hey,” and gives Betty a look of reprimand and nods
toward Concha standing at the stove with her back to them. The
Mule glances at the maid and makes a face of indifference.
“Not much you aint jealous,” Irish Red says.
“Jesus,” the Schoolgirl says, gawking into her newspaper. She will
sometimes share with the table an item she finds of particular interest, sometimes even read it aloud in spite of their inattention and
feigned yawns. But now the timbre of her voice is such that few of
them can ignore it. She glances from one item on the page to another
and then back again, as if confirming some correspondence between
them. “Sweet Jesus.”
“What now?” says Jenny the Joker.
“He killed
three hundred
men,” the Schoolgirl says. “Prisoners. Just
yesterday.”
“Who did?” the Pony says.
“Hell, they’re always shooting them by the trainload over there,”
the Mule says. “They’re shooting them right now, just listen.”
“It’s not the same,” the Schoolgirl says. She looks down at the
paper and puts a finger to it. “They were in a corral and there was this
wall and he said any man who could get over it could go free. He let

throb of their carnal flexions, as if what he sought after lay in some
unreachably distant region of the soul itself. But whether the soul he
strove toward was hers or his own she could not say. She could not
have given words to any of this, she could but sense it, know it only
by way of her skin.

On completion of their first coupling he sat with his back to the
headboard and drank from a bottle he’d brought with him. She recognized the uncorked smell as the same one she’d tasted with their
first kiss and it occurred to her that he might be a little drunk. He lit
a cigarillo and offered her both the packet of smokes and the bottle
and she accepted only the cigarillo. He lit it for her and she said,
“Thank you,” the first words between them. In the dim light from
the lantern turned down low on the dresser he looked to be carved of
copper.

The query was among the rudimentary Spanish locutions she had
thus far learned from Concha. “Ava,” she said.
He chuckled low and repeated the name in its Spanish pronunciation, watching her eyes in the low light. Then said, “Es una mentira.
Dime la verdad.”
“I don’t hablo español too very... bueno. Sorry.”
“No te llamas Ava. No es... is no true.”
She wondered how he’d known she was lying, and why she was not
surprised that he’d known. His eyes on her were as black as the night
of rain at the window and utterly unfathomable, but she felt as if they
saw directly to the truth of her, whatever that might be.
“Ella,” she said. “Ella Marlene Malone.”
“El-la-marleeen-malooone,” he said in singsong. “Como una cancionita.”
“You’re making fun,” she said, and put her fingers to his mouth.
He held her hand there and kissed each fingertip in turn. And then
he was on her again.