Pidgin, tourist Spanish from a pitiful, tortured soul.

“Hey buddy, do you think you could change the channel on that thing...?”
The bartender seemed very interested in something, some sort of speck that I was unable to see, in one of his dishwashing sinks. I’m not sure he spoke English, but then again, I had known “cerveza, por favor.” The talking head on the fuzzy little black and white unit was speaking Spanish at a rate that seemed dizzying to me, at least, what I could hear over the whirring and sputtering air conditioner unit it sat upon.
It was a newscast though, and my palms were clammy and gross. 104 degrees of dry heat and I’m guessing I would feel like a cadaver if anyone else was here to touch me. Anything but a newscast. They had told me I’d be gone and could forget about everything before it happened. Somewhere with a beach and no newspapers, I’d asked, dry-mouthed. They smiled, even over the phone, even over the online checking of my bank balance, I could tell they were smiling. They were smiling at how easy it was to get their way. My stomach convulsed.
I looked at my watch. I didn’t know anything, I didn’t know any kind of anything, schedules or locations, or anything. I told myself that every time I looked at my watch, which meant every ninety seconds or so over the past thirty-seven minutes. I didn’t know anything. I could feel the bright light and the hard wooden seat of the interrogation room as I repeated my mantra. I didn’t know anything. Anyone would have done the same thing. The amount they offered. I still didn’t know any particulars. You have to believe me, right? Sweat ran down my temple.
“Amigo? Amigo? Change the el channel on the televis-ee-own?”
Pidgin, tourist Spanish from a pitiful, tortured soul. His head didn’t even waver. He was still inspecting a microscopic nothing about fourteen feet away from me. I couldn’t blame him. I was doing the same thing, in a way. Except the TV was messing it all up. The newscaster at this point seemed like a 33 ⅓ record on the 45 setting. A high-pitched highway pileup of phonics. Every grainy picture that flashed up on the screen rang out like a car’s backfire and made me twitch.
Where is my plane, I begged in my mind. I want to get out of here and further along on my way to nowhere. Where I belong. The windows, translucent from dust and scratches, gave no hint of any approaching or arrived craft. The single roughly paved landing strip just outside the swinging door of this “terminal” would certainly alert everyone to any kind of impending arrival.
My bottle of beer had accumulated a little lake of condensation at its base. I noticed it when I turned my frame back square to the bar. My brain latched on to the detail to avoid the television drone. It had to be soon. It had to be today. Not that I knew, of course. Those bags could have been just drugs.
Just drugs. I laughed a horrible and desperate laugh into the sour top of my beer bottle. Tears welled up along the lower lids of my eyes and I told myself it was just the dust in this shitty little fucking airport shanty bar. I didn’t do anything wrong. I didn’t. Do. Anything. Wrong.
“Hey! Change the goddamned channel. Hey! Buddy!”
This time he turned around but I doubt that changing the television set was on his mind. His eyes smoldered and he was muttering something under his breath like a dog panting. My breath was ragged and hurt my chest. My eyes jumped non-stop from his menacing face to the flickering awful stream of unknown words and images on the little idiotbox.
I fumbled in my pocket for some cash, threw down a bill on the nauseating formica countertop and, after a moment’s hesitation, pushed over my beer bottle. The few ounces backwash in the bottom sloshed out on the bar and the bottle rolled off and busted on the floor on his side.
My lips curled into a sneer. I turned, seemingly oblivious, and walked outside. I was counting in my head, a silent timer until he would emerge and threaten me, enraged at this gringo polluting his space. I reached in my shirt pocket, pulled out a cigarette. I put it to my lips and lit it with the lighter that had NOT been confiscated from me for the plane ride down here. I smiled at that.
A small black dot circled around in the blue that wrapped around me. My angel, my salvation, my winged rest; coming to take me away. That bartender was long overdue out here, ready to bust my chops, to be up in my face. I could have used the release of tension. Even a solid one right in my jaw might have been a welcome distraction. Guess it just wasn’t my day.
With each puff of the cigarette, the plane drew closer and as it landed, I threw the butt in the dust carelessly. I looked over my shoulder, at the dilapidated clapboard building and my duffle on the bench just behind me. I waved to the pilot not to stop anything, grabbed my bag and headed over to sling myself and all my belongings left in the world into the co-pilot’s seat of the tiny prop plane.
I was in the prop wash when the bartender ran out of the bar. “Too late,” I thought of his tardy need to fight. He was screaming something.
“Muchacho... Senor... “
I already had one leg in and was ducked under the overhead wing and could barely hear.
“Senor... They crashed into...”
I closed the door. I spun my finger in a tight circle to signify it was time to go. The pilot shrugged and started taxiing back from whence he came.
I was asleep before we were airborne.


Flash Fiction attempt, assignment between friends: Genre: Noir/Hardboiled. Element: Terrorism. Theme: Man vs. Himself. Word count: 999