the bodyguard

Marco is a bodyguard in charge of Jose Matisse Ruiz’s four children. He is paid well. He drives them to school, across the border. He waits for them, outside the school gates, drinking coffee and chewing gum and smoking three cigarettes, which is all he allows himself for the afternoon. At night, he goes home to his wife, Maria, and their two children, Dionicio and Griselda. She is a school teacher in the States and is very beautiful and makes a point, every day, of admonishing her students not to use such indefinite adjectives as “very.” Tonight, when Marco arrives home, he will be met, in his own living room, by two members of the Castro drug cartel. They will tell him exactly where and at what time he will turn over to them Aldo, the oldest of the Ruiz children, whom they will hold for a $1 million ransom. They also tell him what will happen if he doesn’t comply: his wife will be disfigured. “You will not ever be able to look at her, again,” the smallest and darkest of the henchmen says. His name is Jack. Marco does not sleep that night. Indeed, he may never be able to sleep, again.