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  THE NAFTA

  BLUEPRINT

  RODRIGO RIBERA D’EBRE

  The NAFTA BLUEPRINT.

  Rodrigo Ribera D’Ebre

  Copyright © Rodrigo Ribera D’Ebre, 2011

  Published by Steampresspublishing.com

  All Rights Reserved

  ISBN-978-0-9848511-0-2

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  Publisher’s Note

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, locales, or business establishments is entirely coincidental.

  About the Author

  Rodrigo Ribera D’Ebre is an American writer of short stories, novels, and essays. He was born in Los Angeles in 1976 to a working class family. He spent his adolescence involved in street crime, experiences which gave him an understanding of the complex urban environment, leading to his excommunication and forced exile in Mexico. Thereafter, he graduated from California State University, Los Angeles with a degree in Political Science. Since then, he has devoted himself to literature. He lived in Latin America for four years and has traveled throughout the United States, Latin America, and Europe. His influences include: Turgenev, Roth, Kafka, Conrad, London, Chekov, Gogol, Tolstoy, Camus, Machiavelli, Dostoyevsky, Hobbes, Rousseau, Robert Pastor, Jorge Castañeda, and Mike Davis. He writes about geopolitics, crime, and paranoia. The NAFTA Blueprint is his first published novel.

  1.

  The phone rang with persistence, escorted by violence without any sign of refraining. The ring tone wavered in and out of my dreams making it unclear as to where it had originated. I squinted in the darkness at my surroundings seeking some orientation to guide me like a compass. I couldn’t remember where I was.

  Was I dreaming? Was the ring coming from next door or was it from the film I was watching? My eyes flickered in reluctance while my body was determined to resist until I made the connection, it was my damn telephone. I slumbered out of bed, I staggered over to my work desk which was draped in outdated newspapers, torn magazines, used books, loose notebooks, and writing tools, covered in unkempt filth, but it’s how I got my work done. Life hadn’t been so favorable in the last two years and my personal concerns had taken a toll on my routine including my cleaning habits. I was in imminent danger of becoming slothful, but I no longer cared.

  “At this ungodly hour! Ugh…hello?”

  “Korsakov! What are you doing…sleeping? Early bird gets the worm, rise and shine buddy boy. Come down to the office―ASAP, I have a story for you. See you in twenty, and don’t let me down.”

  What did he mean about not letting him down, when did I ever let him down? I started thinking about other stories, about previous work I had submitted, about stories I was pursuing. Was there something wrong with my work or was I overanalyzing an ambiguous comment? I couldn’t stop thinking about it.

  I didn’t have time for a shower or a shave, it’s not like I pondered it much anyway. I stumbled into some clothes thrown about on the floor, so I grabbed anything I could find that was at least comfortable and presentable. A quick brush of the teeth, a few strokes of deodorant, and the old brown leather messenger bag I had bought when following a lead as an amateur journalist in San Cristobal de Las Casas years ago. I rushed out through the front door adjusting my black, thick-framed reading glasses rushing down four flights of stairs with my cornhusk hair galloping in stride. I hadn’t cut it for about a year now. I was making some sort of statement but only I seemed to realize it―freedom.

  My roughened skin itched from coarse soap scrubbed with cheapened razor blades. I had pondered not shaving my facial hair either, but I wasn’t ready for that, the hair would suffice with a week-long beard leaving me in aesthetic dire straits. I rushed into my car, I drove in haste towards the office, hoping to elude any type of law enforcement authority and fly under the radar.

  I arrived about thirty minutes later with fumbling embarrassment. “Korsakov, nice of you to drop by, glad you could finally join us,” said my overweight, unsympathetic boss while he rolled his eyes before turning his back. Meanwhile, he took a sip of coffee and took a bite into a pastry mocking my late arrival with breakfast.

  My boss was somewhat of a prick, quite the horror show to glance in his direction. He was tall and overweight, with his belly flapping out of his tucked-in shirt, two dragon tattoos across his forearms and he wore thin-framed reading glasses and slick-backed pomade hair. He looked like the Terminator when he wore dark sunglasses pulling into the parking structure on his motorcycle. I always wondered how he maintained his balance. I thought for sure his number would get pulled any day. He had a tendency of being aggressive with employees, thus it made him intimidating, even more so when he waltzed around the office spying on staff members making sure they were executing their work duties effectively. He was sloppy, around the newsroom he was known as, ‘Sloppy Joe Franklin.’

  “Oh…yeah…I’m sorry, I had car trouble, you know, it’s always―”

  “Yeah, I don’t really care. Look―there’s some sort of protest, some conservative right-wing nut jobs out there in Edinburg’re giving a speech about the border patrol and illegal immigrants from the south flooding our borders from Mexico. I know it’s kind of far, but I think this could be a good lead. There’s going to be a lot of protestors clashing with them as well. I know you like that sort of sentimental, bleeding-heart, liberal nonsense…I want you to take some photos and maybe interview some people from both sides of the fence, so as to make it more objective. You think you could handle that Korsakov?”

  “Yes, of course, definitely, I’ll get on it…right away!”

  “Good, shut the door behind you then, what’s your problem. Oh, and Korsakov…”

  I turned back before walking out of the door. “Yeah?”

  “Don’t let me down, son. This is a good opportunity for you. You haven’t landed a decent story since you covered the international section when you worked for the L.A. Times, you know, that Gold Shirts piece in Mexico. It’s why I hired you, boy. Maybe this could give you a good lead, huh?”

  I never knew that piece would haunt me in an infinite capacity. Newspaper critics were always trying to compare my recent work to a story I had written a few years back, I could never walk out of its shadow…it was becoming clearer. The story was a finalist for an Investigative Reporting and Editors Award, submitted by peers, but it was defeated by a story in the New York Times. It was as close as I’d ever come to receiving the medal, it was the biggest story I had ever chased, bringing me some fame but I had become stagnant―that was hard to swallow. Maybe it was my beloved Chloe’s fault. I always blamed her for my troubles.

  Franklin made it seem as if the work I had contributed to The Houston Chronicle was mediocre, and now I needed to find a great story to pursue in order to justify my employment. Maybe I was being canned, I don’t know. I once considered starting my own journal, something to avoid all this nonsensical bureaucracy. Maybe it would be about politics, art, geography, and culture. I would call it Atmosphere, but that would require robust effort that I couldn’t muster. I thought about getting into politics or maybe going to law school, maybe going into consulting. I didn’t have a contingency plan. I felt inadequate as a reporter though, a slight sting of inferiority crept through me. Perhaps this could be that story that could alleviate me from a string o
f stagnation, put me back on the map.