The Room

George stood outside on the balcony. In the distance, a sign read Welcome to Miami in stark white letters. Underneath, in spray paint, it continued bien venido a Miami. Palm trees lined each side of the street approaching the motel whose balcony held the lumbering weight of George’s two hundred seventy-three-pound frame.

His shirt struggled to cover his gut while the buttons strained against his massive torso to keep from popping them off their strings. Two shirts lay on the floor in the room with broken strings where the buttons of those shirts had failed earlier in the day. The panther tattoo on George’s neck snarled at anyone who dared look at it.

“Jaime, this is your last chance before I break you.”

“Honest, senor,” Jaime said, “I don’t know what happened to it.”

“You better jolt your memory fast before I have to do it for you.”

George held up the end of a live electric wire towards Jaime’s face. Sparks jumped and licked at the man’s terrified visage. Jaime, a much smaller man wore a bloodstained white tank top with denim blue jeans. His yellow eyes pleaded with the hulking George for mercy.

“You won’t be the first person I have killed today Jaime, and you won’t be the last. Where is the shipment?”

“All I know, Senor George, is when we were trying to dock out past the pier the Coast Guard boarded us. They arrested Miko and shot Hector to death on the spot.”

“That,” said George, “sounds like a problem for Miko and Hector.”

His cold gaze showed no emotion. With an enormous fist, he grabbed Jaime and pulled him into the hotel room. Jaime struggled against his grip, but it was futile. After dragging him over near the bed, George picked him up and threw him hard against a reproduction of Starry Night that hung against the golden wallpaper in the room. The snap of Jaime’s clavicle breaking was drowned out by the man’s shrieks of pain.

“Do you know how long I’ve been in this line of work, Jaime?”

“No se,” Jaime said, “I really have no idea.”

“Suffice it to say it’s been longer than you’ve been alive.”

George walked back out onto the balcony. He picked up the electric wire, and carried it back into the room. He made a coil, then another, and a third before setting the cord on a table near the bed. After he set the cord down, he clenched his fist and lunged at the smaller man.

Jaime started to put his hand up in defense, but George was too fast. His fist slammed into Jaime’s face, and knocked him unconscious to the floor. His body lay there for a moment, jerking and kicking, blood pooling from the corner of his mouth.

George walked slowly to the bathroom, picked up a plastic glass and filled it with cold water. He turned, then, and walked back to sit on the corner of the bed. For a moment, he just sat there facing the open sliding door.

The sun rose to the highest point of the day, and the air started getting hot and stifling. What little breeze there was carried with it the sounds and smells from the Cuban district a few streets away. George took a drink of the water, then shook his head like a dog getting out of a bathtub. He then dumped the rest of the cup’s contents on Jaime’s face.

Jaime muttered under his breath as the giant man lifted him off the floor. George looped the electric cord around Jaime’s neck three times, and then lifted him off his feet. He secured the cord to a hook attached to the ceiling.

“Sorry kid,” George said, “we have to send a message to our mules who lose their shipments.”

At that, he walked out of the room with Jaime’s body dangling in midair. As he blended in with the people on the street, George bought a sandwich from a local vendor, and walked on eating it.

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