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“Not as fat as your wife, you motherfucker,” I reply, halfway convinced that he’ll punch me in the throat for that one.
He pauses before responding to keep me in suspense, a classic Santiago move. “Maybe you should be more worried about how small your dick is going to look if you gain another pound.”
We both stand in silence for a moment, then burst into laughter.
“Sorry I haven’t been back to the states more recently. I’ve had to deal with some shit back home,” he replies, suddenly growing more serious than before.
I’m not an idiot, so I can see that there’s something actually going on with him. “Are you alright? Is there something you need?” I ask, my tone matching his.
He sighs, staring off into the desert horizon. “Marat got one of my warehouses. It was like he got off a plane and took off running in the direction of my base. He didn’t waste a goddamn minute. That’s how I know he’s here,” he says solemnly.
“Fuck, why didn’t you say anything before I got here? I would’ve come a lot sooner,” I reply, feeling confused as to why he wouldn’t call me in for backup as soon as it happened. He knows I have the means.
He pulls out a pack of cigarettes, lighting one and taking a long drag. “I wasn’t going to let you fight my battles. You have your own history with Marat. You didn’t need my sob story to get you here.”
I know he’s right. He wouldn’t have let me help him with something like this. He needed to get even with Marat on his own.
“Anyway, come inside. We have a lot to discuss.” He leads me into the building as it overflows with people I would never see back in the city. Everyone looks a little ridiculous to me, but I understand that it’s all part of the culture. Being from Russia, the entire atmosphere of a rodeo feels completely foreign.
We find a table in the stands, and we’re immediately met with a waitress wearing a tight crop top and low-cut shorts. She and Santiago exchange pleasantries in Spanish, none of which I’m able to translate. He orders us both drinks after he’s done flirting with her, and then the first rodeo begins.
The whole idea of a group of men taunting an animal until it tries to kill you seems stupid to me, but I also come from a country where drinking yourself to death is practically a spectator sport. At least with a rodeo, there’s some action to watch.
“You know, I’ve been thinking about how you Americans couldn’t last a second in the ring without your protective gear,” Santiago remarks, pointing over to a white man getting strapped into a suit of padding.
“I’m not American, you know this,” I reply, feeling annoyed at being included in a snarky comment against Americans.
“You have spent enough time with the Americans to blend in as one. Nobody here knows you are Russian, but they absolutely know that you came from America. Your clothes, your gestures, everything makes you stick out just like an American would. To everyone here, you are American,” he explains, throwing back a shot of tequila that has been offered to us for free from a tray.
“Am I going to have to scrape you off the floor by the end of the night?” I ask, only partially joking.
The waitress brings out our drinks, and he sucks down a third of his in one gulp. “What, because I’m drunk or because you’re going to beat me into the dirt?”
“Could be either one at this rate,” I reply, taking a sip of my drink to make sure I actually like it before I drink the entire thing.
“Drink your damn drink! You’re behaving like a damn woman,” he mocks, putting down the rest of his drink in five seconds.
I sigh heavily, gulping down the rest of my drink as I try not to puke it back up. It tastes like five ounces of pure tequila.
He laughs hysterically as I choke down the last of it. “There, now you actually belong here,” he shouts, clanging his glass against mine.
I roll my eyes as he continues laughing at me, knowing fully that I’ll have to drag him out of this place by his feet by the end of the night. We’ve been kicked out of way too many bars and clubs together for me not to know better.
As he calls the waitress over to bother her for more drinks, I glance around the arena to make sure Marat hasn’t followed us. If I stick out as badly as Santiago says I do, Marat would as well, possibly even worse. He hasn’t adapted to life in the States quite as easily as I have.
The atmosphere of the arena is one that I’ve never experienced and would choose not to endure again if I were offered the opportunity. Everybody is already drunk, arriving here after they’ve left their fifth bar for the night. Men leer at the waitresses with no shame whatsoever, and the other women here are dressed to compete for the attention of the men. If I focus closely enough, I can sense the individual doses of animosity shared between the wives and the serving girls.
Santiago is getting drunker by the minute, which means that he’ll soon be providing me with his misguided paternal wisdom. It’s not that I don’t appreciate his input, but most of what he ends up saying is completely incoherent.
“Adas, have another,” he says as he hands me my fifth shot of tequila.
Fortunately, it’s high-quality alcohol, so it goes down much more easily than the swill that the Americans drink.
Unfortunately for me, it’s also extremely potent.
Just ten minutes after throwing back the third shot, I can feel the effects of the alcohol starting to take over. My head is swimming, and everything around me feels blurry and loud. My legs feel heavy as fuck, like all of my blood has pooled in my lower body.
The show begins, and the uproar of the crowd sends my drunken brain through the roof. I attempt to stand as they begin with the first bull rider, a young 20-something who looks like he’d lose everything if one of his teeth were knocked out.
