The Sparrow - Mary Doria Russell [7]
Sandoz shrugged expressively, momentarily a Jewish grandmother. "So what else is new?"
"You don’t eat enough," Jimmy said. This was an old routine.
"Yes, Mama," Sandoz acknowledged obediently.
"Claudio," Jimmy yelled to the barkeeper, "get this man a sandwich." Rosa was already on her way from the kitchen with plates of food for both of them.
"So. You have come all this way to feed me sandwiches?" Sandoz asked. Actually, it was Jimmy who always got tuna sandwiches, bizarrely combined with a double side order of bacalaitos fritos and a half guava in the shell. Rosa knew that the priest preferred beans in sofrito, spooned over rice.
"Somebody’s got to do it. Listen, I got a problem."
"Don’t worry, Sparky. I hear you can get shots for it in Lubbock."
"De Niro," Jimmy said, wolfing a bite. Emilio made a sound like a game-show buzzer. "Shit. Not De Niro? Wait. Nicholson! I always get those two guys mixed up." Emilio never got anybody mixed up. He knew every actor and all the dialogue from every movie since Horse Feathers. "Okay. Be serious for ten seconds. You ever heard of a vulture?"
Sandoz sat up straight, fork in midair. Professorial now: "I presume you do not refer to the carrion-eating bird. Yes. I have even worked with one."
"No kidding," Quinn said, around his food. "I didn’t know that."
"There’s a lot you don’t know, kid," Sandoz drawled. It was John Wayne, marred only by the barely perceptible Spanish accent that persisted during the quicksilver transformations.
Jimmy, who mostly ignored Sandoz’s private games with language, continued to chew. "You gonna finish that?" he asked, after they’d eaten in silence for a little while. Sandoz swapped his plate for Jimmy’s empty one and slumped against the wall again. "So what was it like?" Jimmy asked. "Working with the vulture, I mean. They assigned me one at the dish. Do you think I should cooperate? Peggy will have my guts if I do and the Japs will have ’em if I don’t, so what’s the difference? Maybe I should go for intellectual immortality and devote my life to the poor, which will include me, after the vulture picks my brains and they dump me at Arecibo."
Sandoz let him roll. Jimmy generally reached his own conclusions by talking, and Sandoz was accustomed to confessional musing. Instead, he wondered how Jimmy could eat so fast and still talk without sucking food into his windpipe.
"So what do you think? Should I do it?" Jimmy asked again, finishing off his beer and using a piece of bread to sop up the sofrito. He waved to Claudio for a second beer. "You want another?" he asked Sandoz.
Emilio shook his head. When he spoke this time, it was in his own voice. "Hold out for a while. Tell them you want someone good. Until the vulture does you, you still have some leverage. You have something they want, yes? Once they’ve got you stored, they don’t need you. And if a vulture does a poor job on you, you’re immortalized as mediocrity." Then he was gone again, embarrassed for giving advice, and Edward James Olmos appeared as a pachuco gangster, hissing, "Horalé ... ese."
"Who did you?"
"Sofia Mendes."
Jimmy’s eyebrows shot up. "Latina?"
Unexpectedly, Sandoz laughed. "Remotely."
"Was she good?"
"Yes. Quite. It was an interesting experience."
Jimmy stared at him, suddenly suspicious. When Emilio said interesting, it was often code for bloodcurdling. Jimmy waited for an explanation but Sandoz simply settled into the corner, smiling enigmatically. There was silence for a little while as Jimmy turned his attention back to the sofrito. The next time he glanced up, it was Jimmy who smiled. Down for the count. Sandoz fell asleep faster than anyone he’d ever met. Anne Edwards claimed the priest had only two speeds, Full Bore and Off.
Jimmy, an insomniac whose mind tended to run on a hamster wheel at night, envied the man’s ability to catnap but knew it wasn’t just a fortunate quirk of physiology that let Emilio crash at will. Sandoz routinely put in sixteen-hour days; he crashed because he was beat. Jimmy helped out as much as he could and wished sometimes