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How To (Not) Fall In Love: A Guide, As Told By Eduardo 'Lalo' Salamanca
Between one-night-stands, cartel business, and his favorite recipes, Lalo Salamanca lives a life dictated by codes. Typically unspoken, definitely unwritten: less Code of Hammurabi than Fight Club .
This framework was built out of necessity, of course. Instilled into him from a young age, nay, in his veins, inescapable until the blood inevitably drained out of him upon his death. He won’t go peacefully, and he knows that.
Everyone from Don Eladio to the piss-stained high schoolers who peddled teenths knows how things are done, and if they don’t, they are taken care of with the wave of a looming hand. A threat that stands over every cartel man until the day he dies, a strangely human shadow greedily eating daylight. Arrest, death, a fate worse—no matter: with such high stakes, it is rare someone enters the cartel without their fears spelled out on their faces.
This is how things are done.
The rules of Lalo's sex life are no different in their steadfastness nor detail. They'd come to fruition when he was much younger, spry on the streets of Mexico City without his gray hair and aching knees. For prudence regarding his tío finding out what he did most weekend nights, for his own sake, the thought behind it stopped mattering long ago. It simply matters that the rules are abided by.
This is how things are done.
I: Find Someone In An Equally Precarious Position
Downtown Santa Fe has a bustling financial ward spanning several blocks, day and night brimming with suits and skirts dashing in and out. They might be attending a business lunch, striking a nine iron with friends, or to Lalo's familiarity, hitting the gay bars down the street.
It’s convenient that the lavender and financial districts border one another; dreadfully convenient. His partners have grown so similar, he can’t distinguish David in mergers and acquisitions from Seth in accounting or Jack in client relations. They share the same fundamental characteristics: guys in their late forties, rich beyond their wildest dreams, yet lonelier than they'd ever imagined—which certainly reflects nothing on Lalo's emotional state—divorcées with kids who hate them, drive BMWs. Watch Lobos games so they have something to talk about at work.
The amalgam of men almost never seek a love lasting longer than the night. This is a perfectly convenient system for Lalo: keep it tidy, emotionally detached, and no doubt they will as well. They have far more to lose than he did. Aforementioned: he likes to take precautions.
Lalo is beside himself as to why he let the lawyer betray his rules. Before Howard left in the morning, fed toast and coffee by Lalo himself, he'd left his cell number written on a scrap of paper on the nightstand. And had the gall to sign it with his name. And a smiley face.
Lalo calls him two days later.
He’s in the passenger seat of Nacho's Javelin, window cracked down, going faster than the wind. Not having anywhere to be soon—just for the fuck of it. He doesn’t care what Nacho hears, which, if he is as smart as Lalo thinks he is, will be nothing. Lalo doesn’t concern himself with what his subordinates think of him.
He picks up after the second ring. " Hola , Howard," he says with a low and firm smile, anticipating. He knows the lawyer loves to tease, but more than his pride, Howard seems to cater to his own sentimentality. Nacho side-eyes him without an attempt to conceal it.
"Hello, Lalo," he says with a tone masked in formality. He hesitates after the hello, a hitch in his breath, that returns the favor to Lalo's own pride.
"What are you doing at work? It's practically bedtime," Lalo scoffs in his satiric American accent reserved for their bizarre sayings he adores.
Howard sighs, as if he wouldn't get it. If Wardito had his way, no one would get it. His suffering is something on display, like a snowglobe on a mantel that elicits a factoid about its origin. He sounds so fucking miserable. Lalo debates between soothing his qualms or aggravating them.
"I've just been swamped, I suppose," Howard frowns.
"I want to see you tonight," Lalo smiles, flicking his lashes up and down, slight spread of his legs, the whole show, as if he can see him.
Howard's mask of botheredness crumbled away across the line. If Lalo focused, he could see each expression of denial on the blond's face contorting. "Well, I—"
"I've missed you, you know," Lalo interrupts with a mid-sentence lilt. He knows it will melt away Howard's resolve, they both do. Lalo has tipped his hand for the proposition, a rarity considering how closely he (thinks he) plays his cards to his chest.
"Just come to my house?"
Lalo's mouth remains agape in shock, as he had opened it to say something, and had the words snatched from behind his teeth. I knew you had it in you, 'Wardo .
"I can be there around ten," Lalo adds casually, negating the fact that he’s occupied with more crimes than Howard could count on both hands.
"It might be a bit of a drive," Howard adds tentatively. "I live closer to Albuquerque than Santa Fe."
"So do I," Lalo shrugs, as if he doesn’t already know. Lalo had Ignacio canvass him the same day he woke up in Lalo's apartment, making no attempts at an excuse as to why he was given the particular task. Thus, Ignacio strokes his temple as he drives. "Look at our luck," Lalo croons. He turns to Ignacio, keeping the same proud smile. He mouths: Jealous?
Wardo proceeds to walk Lalo through the dance of arriving at his guesthouse while avoiding his wife, as if Lalo hasn’t heard an awfully similar tune a hundred times before. Lalo lets him keep talking despite himself. Yes , he’ll cut through the south gate, no he won’t park on Santa Madre. If Howard believed there was a plan in place, it would help him feel better when it inevitably blew up in his ever-flushed face.
"So I'll see you at ten," Lalo repeats with a fools-gold smile and thinks about signing off the beginning of his goodbyes with a sickly-sweet petname before deciding against.
"Yeah," Howard says, pleased. One of the most articulate men Lalo’s ever known and that's all he ever fucking says around him. For his birthday, Lalo will get him a thesaurus. Lalo hangs up the phone and the ricochet of the plastic makes Ignacio flinch.
"So," Ignacio frowns. "Are you gonna need a ride?"
II: Never Let Them See
It isn’t like it’s a secret. And though many cartel men are idiots, it didn’t take Hercule Poirot to put the pieces together. Mexico’s most clearly eligible bachelor, rich beyond any woman’s wildest dreams, not to mention powerful, with a family legacy to pass on, who fucked like a Boeing 747: and single. Sure, he could have had a severe allergy to domesticity—which is what he usually told people whose judgment he actually valued, obliging in the pissing contest—but every party at Eladio’s, he spent most of his time unaccompanied by one of the many bikinis that roamed the place.
But he’s gay, and that was that. It doesn’t bother him anymore, not like it did when there was still plausible deniability. Sure, it’s a roadblock in his relationship with Hectór, but when the other contestants in the running for his uncle’s favorite nephew are a meth-head and the twins from The Shining, Lalo doesn’t find himself pessimistic about his odds.
So he finishes the week’s dead drops with Ignacio and lets him drop him off about a block away from Howard’s tired American mansion. Christ, Americans and their architecture; Lalo will have to show Howard his place in Mexico, what real art looks like. But shit , he’s getting ahead of himself, and throws up in his mouth a little. The idea of a monogamous, sanitized love affair he can’t have, no, never wanted, has breached his typical defenses. He has been thrown off of his game.
Lalo comes half an hour early, to surprise him as well as satisfy some of his own curiosity about the man’s life. He pokes around his bedroom, thumbing through the novels piled on the nightstand: Faust, Candide, some legal yet criminally boring law books in a jargon-ridden dialect he doesn’t care for enough to understand. He tosses them back on the nightstand, not interested in leaving them in their previous order.
Howard has left the intention that things are, simply put, bad between him and his wife, and this came by Lalo with no surprise. What does surprise him, however, was the extent to which he allowed his misery to ferment. A dog who traps himself in his own locked car on a hot day. He lives in the guest house of his own home, works the world’s most boring yet tedious job, and Lalo is the only thing he’ll let himself have? If Lalo is to be Howard’s, he’ll at least make it worth the horseshit.
He hangs over the en suite bathroom, haunting, leaning against the doorframe on his elbow. He takes a quick sniff and is puzzled to find a distinctly different cologne than when they first met, accompanied by a light tang of sweat and air freshener.
Howard’s Jaguar roars down the road and his breath quickens. Nobody has managed to make him do that before, give over an admission of weakness so corporeal, and it scares the fuck out of him.
Lalo stands by the front door from the inside, staring at his own reflection in the pitch-black window from the overhead lights. He hears Howard fumble with his keys—not a quiet man.
“Lalo,” he says wide-eyed, with all the peril Howard felt as he had the first time they met written all over his face. Breathless.
Lalo smiles cooly and stands his ground. He shoves his hands into his jacket pockets, with the taut string between them woven around his fingers. “Good to see you,” Lalo smiles, attempting to conceal the true sentiment of the statement behind his slightly-amused façade he props up to Howard.
“You too,” says Howard after a beat. His eyes flick up and down Lalo’s height, opening a window to his longing that he tries so hard to still.
Lalo takes this as a green light. He approaches Howard, still grinning, and straightens the lapels on his suit. “My businessman,” he coos, “Working so hard.”
Howard’s breath leaves his mouth like tires burning on asphalt—staggering, space-taking, and terribly, terribly hot. His eyes flick from the window adjacent to the front door to Lalo, looking at Howard with focus he could definitely have used on more productive endeavors.
In the time Howard buys himself, he still couldn’t think of a quip biting enough, so Lalo answers his own, well, talk— not dirty, not quite clean, either way pumping Howard’s chest (and head) full of air. “Looks good on you,” Lalo says more sincerely than before.
Howard curls his hand around Lalo’s bicep, keeping him close, but still is at a loss for words. Lalo maintains his position, roughly three inches from Howard’s face, giving nothing more.
Howard leans in to kiss him as he runs a hand through Lalo’s hair.
Rule III: Put Yourself First But Like, Don’t Be A Dick About It
Lalo grabs Howard’s ass, pulling him toward the man’s eerily suburban guest bedroom and he thinks he’s going to get away with it. Howard indulges him briefly, sinking into his grasp, letting his head fall back on the wall— Fifty Shades of Greige, he thinks—before Howard pushes him against the opposite hallway wall with minimal effort.
Lalo hits the drywall with a light bounce, his intrigue silenced by a series of rapid kisses, unrelenting, nearly all tongue. Howard reaches for Lalo’s wrists and pins them behind his back. He opens his mouth to say something biting, but finds himself both unable and weak in the knees. He shifts his hips and legs outward, planting his feet, and consequently their bulges meet through denim and khaki.
Howard lets out a hiss while Lalo looks at him innocently, intentionally or otherwise encouraging him to keep on. Howard grabs a fistful of his hair, fallen in ringlets around the nape of his neck from the humidity, and uses his other hand to cradle his jaw, thumb right over the pulse point. Howard’s skills in self-discipline are met with appreciation as Lalo revels in the controlled mania: slumped downwards, taking Howard’s tongue as far down as it could go and grazing it with his teeth teasingly, still smirking like an asshole.
While Howard’s distracted with cataloging every curve of Lalo’s skull with his soft palms, Lalo pulls his arms from the self-restricting, mildly numbing hold they were in behind his back. He reaches for Howard’s tie, fumbling with the knot, wishing corporate attire was more easily removable. Or Howard could invest in something that merely clipped onto his collar.
Howard pinches Lalo’s wrists together with little of the vitriol from before, almost gentle, and removes his tie in one smooth motion. He continues with the first few buttons of his white-and-blue pinstripe shirt, enough to pull off and let his head through. He lets go of Lalo’s wrists and encourages him to do the same with a nod.
Howard pushes him by to the bedroom the small of his back, fingertips resting on the hollow.
Howard fucks him like there’s no time left.
Rule III ½: Be A Dick About It
“Fuck,” Howard sighs into his hands. He lets his fingertips rest over his eyes, Lalo watching his tired game of pillowtalk hide-and-seek. Lalo speaks gently, softly, eyes wide in admiration: “What?”
Howard turns onto his side, facing Lalo, clutching the bedsheets as the light sheen of sweat cools over his back. His eyes are wistful, miles away. “I don’t know. I don’t know.” Lalo casts his eyes down briefly, as supportive as he can be without vomiting at the vulnerability of it all. He feels naked—and well, he is—but there is an odd affection brewing in his chest he is increasingly powerless to stop. That is true nudity, he thinks while Howard’s stare never falters from him, the inability to clothe his feelings in indifference.
“I’ve just never let myself have something I want,” Howard says with pause. His eyes are trained on the ceiling fan, temperment of a sinner in a confession booth. “At the loss of someone else, no less.” He fidgets with his wedding ring, sliding it up and down his ring finger with precision. “Does that… am I a bad person?”
Lalo snorts and hunches over the edge of the bed, leaning to the floor, and fishes a pack of Newports out of his jean pockets. “Howie, I wish you’d let yourself be more selfish,” he chuckles and flicks the flint of his lighter. “Although, you’re gonna say that makes me selfish.”
“God, everything’s a fucking circle,” Howard resigns and lets his head fall onto the pillow. “Maybe you’re right. I don’t know. This is making my head hurt,” Howard says contemplatively and takes Lalo’s cigarette, dribbling ashes on their shoulders.
“Let’s consult one of your fancy philosophy books, eh?” Lalo smiles and turns to sort through the nightstand’s stack. “ Ooh, Kierkegaard,” he teases, poking Howard in the rib. “Oh, listen to this. The paradox is really the pathos of intellectual life and just as only great souls are exposed to—”
Howard laughs over him, flipping the book shut in his lap as Lalo lightly swats him away, laughing too. He looks up at Lalo. “Big words for one in the morning,” Lalo sighs.
Howard sits up tentatively, twiddling his thumbs in his lap. “Are you gonna spend the night?” He bites the inside of his lip, a nervous habit Lalo picked up on when they first met.
If you want me to.
If that’s alright.
Can I?
“You have work in the morning,” is what Lalo settles for. “As do I.”
Howard stares down into the sheets, sighs, and runs his hands through his hair. “You’re right, you’re right. Are you gonna be okay walking out to your car, though? The streetlights in this neighborhood are actual shit.”
Lalo lets out a soft chuckle and presses a light kiss to Howard’s forehead; unable to stop himself, he steals one off of his lips as well. “Don’t worry, Howie,” Lalo says onto his lips, his smile and Howard’s frown matching up oddly, both still relishing the action. “I can handle myself.”
Rule IV: Work Comes First
Lalo sits with his legs crossed on a rocky outcrop overseeing Gustavo’s farm. He has shacked up there for the better part of two days, taking tallies, counting shipments, being a general nuisance (he aims to, of course—he brings his most reflective binoculars, close enough to be able to make eye contact with some of the workers). Some might call his observations paranoia, but he would respond he is merely on the duty of due diligence.
Except that diligence has peddled to a slow speed, like a broken truck ambling along a dirt road. He will never admit it, but the whole… situation? with Howard plagues his thoughts, starting passive, then overtaking the work he’s given himself completely.
He’d never let a love affair interfere with work before, not ever. And Christ, he’s already naming it that godforsaken four-letter word. Calm the fuck down, you’ve slept with him twice.
Not that he has many affairs to boast of—last time he had a stable—“ stable ”—boyfriend, he wasn’t yet forty. Another self-deprecating anecdote for the absolute railroad disaster of a train of thought that passes him: he is getting old.
He runs a pair of fingers over his mustache, settling over his smile lines. Yes, there is no denying his age. Not that the issue interferes with the previous subject—he is something of a silver fox—but it makes him feel too much like Hectór. And aware of the fact it’s the first time he’s ever wished he were less like him.
Collection day comes and Lalo’s out of his head. He taps his finger on the table, thinking of Hector’s bell and Hotel Talipan, and realizes maybe he himself has been the odd one for the first time in his life. Nacho spins a poker chip between his index and middle fingers, sometimes doing triple axles and Lutzes, but mostly turning on itself tiredly while Nacho manipulates it like a benevolent giant. Lalo, however, could (before he met Howard) sit in the stillness and be comfortable. With his newly-minted distraction, Lalo finds the stillness to be a malignant presence.
Ignacio notices. He asks, firmly with an aftertaste of concern: “Something wrong?”
“No. No, nothing is wrong,” Lalo says with a curl of his lip, irritated. “Worry about collection, not me.”
Ignacio lets out a hot breath, almost a huff. “Who said I’m worried about you?”
“You didn’t have to say it.”
V: Don't Get Attached
Lalo sees quite a bit of Howard in the subsequent weeks.
Howard buys a second cell phone for the sole purpose of communicating with him. It’s untraceable, a little something often slipped to guys in prison on the cartel’s payroll. Howard protests at first, stating something about premeditation and physical evidence, but gives in to a series of wide-eyed looks.
Lalo gets one as well, hoping to avoid the loud chime of his ringtone whether it should sound during a meeting with the higher-ups or the beating of a street dealer accompanied by eerie quiet. Silence is a powerful tool, just as Lalo’s ability to fill it is; he is already embarrassed about his Howard habit interrupting his hours-long shifts of plotting.
One day, Lalo leaves his second phone in the glovebox of his car and doesn’t touch it for hours. When he finally checks it, the sun sinking into the Sandias, he sees two missed calls glaring at him from the screen. Alone in his car, he picks up the phone, sandwiching it between his shoulder and ear as he drives.
He realizes he has called Howard without planning what to say. He considers his tone, to greet him as mildly bothered, eager, or sardonic; the truth is, in this moment in time he doesn’t feel much of anything.
Howard picks up on the first ring and settles Lalo’s dilemma. “I have the day off work tomorrow.” He says nothing about him not picking up.
Lalo thumbs his lower lip in consideration.
“Lalo, are you there?” Howard asks, more commandeering than normal; Lalo thinks he has exhumed him to the directive depth he had seen their second meeting.
“Well, what are you waiting for?”
VI: Don’t Open Up
Lalo picks him up that night, honking outside his door like a highschool sweetheart. His wife is gone, allowing Lalo to gain more leverage on that damned string between them, reeling him in like he has barbs poking out of his tongue. Howard wears a smile so big his cheeks strain when he gets into the car.
His face is pallid as Lalo zips down the residential street and pulls into a comfortable eighty miles an hour down Iglesias Boulevard. It’s around ten, though the night feels cheap as neon signs and crowds of young club-goers gleam in the night under the light of the full moon. Lalo fumbles with the radio dials and plays an old, eighties synth-pop tune that gets Howard to tap his foot with compensation.
Howard eyes him. He still faces forward. “Where are we going?”
Lalo smiles and changes lanes without looking. “We both know I’m not going to answer that question.”
Howard’s chin dips to the valley between his collarbones, wearing a look that Lalo can only discern to be exhaustion. The corners of his mouth furrow in a boyish, truly sorrowful frown, and Lalo feels like he has kicked a puppy. “It’s a surprise, love.”
Howard looks up at him and there’s something behind his pupils now, like the shadows of trees shifting in the night as headlights pass by. There’s fear for a split second, but his features resign into some misplaced trust Howard’s adopted for him.
Lalo grieves something he cannot name.
Lalo pulls the car between the cemetery gates, parking with his back tires halfway on the grass. He gets out and immediately starts walking, not looking for a reaction from Howard, but checks that he hasn’t darted in the opposite direction. Per his expectations Howard steps forward tepidly and eyes the field. He fixes his gaze on a cluster of dandelions in the wild grass.
Lalo’s twenty feet ahead and doesn’t bother to step around the graves, treading over the inlaid stones inscribed with faceless names.
“Don’t tell me this is it!” Howard calls after him, still behind the car door. Both his hands are outstretched like he is Lalo’s to crucify.
“What’s it ?” Lalo asks as if they both don’t know.
Lalo’s face droops into a resigned frown. He pulls his hair back, but the thick piece that sits atop his widow’s peak falls back onto his forehead like a boulder, rolled up a hill, fallen again. “It’s not.” Lalo sounds irritated enough for Howard to believe him.
Howard catches up to him once Lalo stops in front of a gravestone: a tall, thick thing of warm-toned granite.
“I killed this man,” Lalo says quietly, facing the grave. His hands are clasped together in front of his body like he is paying his respects.
He looks up at Howard, whose facial expressions are changing like a bubbling brook. The water settles after a few seconds with his mouth slightly agape and shoulders stiff. “Hm.”
Lalo steps into his space pointing an accusatory finger. This response is not accounted for in his rules. “ Hm? The fuck do you mean, hm?” He clutches a fistful of Howard’s shirt and runs his thumb over a smooth button.
“I mean hm, ” Howard said smugly, pleased to have sunken Lalo’s upper hand, even for a moment. “I know who you are, you know. I found out the night after we met.”
Lalo, who was prepared for a do-gooder diatribe, doesn’t know how to take this. He lets himself melt for a moment, then releases his hold on Howard. “And you came back?”
“Yeah,” Howard says and mimics Lalo’s mourner’s stance from before. “I did.”
His melted demeanor turns frozen in the night air, warm and damp with a cool breeze. Before he can melt again, Howard rushes up to him and kisses him, punishing him with tenderness. He even clasps their hands together and Lalo laughs like it’s cruel. He backs away.
“Why can’t you just hate me?” Lalo asks, and this time he sounds strangely defeated.
“Sounds like a problem for Kierkegaard,” he sighs. “Divine providence? Self-hatred? Or the fact that I’m in love with you?”
***