We were looking for flowers. Sunday morning in Mexico, walking up and down streets looking for a flower shop. There were no flower shops. We tried to ask people where a flower shop was, but they just looked at us like they couldn't understand. Maybe our Spanish was so bad. Maybe they just thought we were foolish to think a flower shop would be open on Sunday. Maybe there just weren't any flower shops.
There were flowers along the roads. Flowers along the streets. We picked flowers. while we walked toward the beach. A few here from this yard, a couple from in front of that restaurant. By the time we got down to the beach, I had a good handful of flowers. It was getting close to 11:00. We walked across the beach, the sand pulling at our shoes and making our legs work hard. My right arm across Dar's shoulder. Her left arm around my waist. My left hand holding this bunch of flowers we'd picked from the side of the road and from a restaurant's flower bed. Holding this bunch of flowers out in front of me, my arm all stiff, like it was the first flowers I ever got for a girl.
The sun was shining and the sky was clear and the ocean made that roaring sound oceans make on the sand. I knew where I wanted to go.
Cabo San Lucas is the tip of Baja peninsula. The peninsula gets thinner as it goes south and there's a point, an actual point that sticks out. A point that sticks out like a wedge in the water. Like a mountain into the sky., Like the space between your legs when your feet are a couple of feet apart. On the Pacific ocean side, the rocks have all been worn into smooth tan shapes. All the rocks on the Pacific side look like sand that's been molded into rounded shapes. Cylinders. Columns. Minarets. Frozen molded sand cliffs that looked like the curtains at a theater. Like someone made them as a project for sand castle day.
The molded sand cliffs and the ocean waves get closer and closer together, the further south you go. and you can't really get out to the exact tip, not unless you're a mountain climber or something and have special gear. But there's a place there, just as the molded sand cliffs cut off the beach sand and start hanging out in the waves. There's a place there where you can walk up on some of the smaller molded sand boulders, there's a little pile of them between the cliffs and the beach and the ocean where the ocean waves come in and splash over the molded sand boulders. A narrow inlet that comes and goes with the tide and the tide was going so the boulders were coming and that's where I was going.
Somewhere between where we started walking on the beach and those boulders I started thinking about what I was doing. Why I was there, and my mouth started feeling all twisted up again and I coughed, only it wasn't a real cough. It was that cough that sometimes happens when you cry. Somewhere between where we started walking and those boulders I went through the whole mess again. Why was I here and not there? Why did this have to happen? Why couldn't I just be normal and have a normal life? Somewhere between where I started cough/crying and those boulders Darlene stopped and let me go on by myself. I went on by myself walking through the sand like quicksand and I wanted it to suck me in and I wanted to kick free from the sand and fly away and I wanted to just tune it all out and I wanted to kill whoever killed my sister.
The sand dragging at my feet at my shoes and then the molded sand boulders up onto them and the waves were smashing in there between the boulders and the cliff and the sound was so loud. So loud I couldn't hear myself crying, so I cried louder. Sat down on a molded sand boulder and the ocean loud gray wet came over my shoes. My arm tossed in some of the flowers. For you, Betty Jeanne, I said. The next wave came in, my arm tossed in some more flowers. I'm sorry I can't be there, I said. The flowers weren't really going out with the waves, but they moved a little bit away and when the next wave came I tossed in the last of the flowers. Please forgive me, I said. Wanted to sit there and watch the waves take the flowers away. Wanted to pretend the waves were taking that hurt away with the flowers. Wanted to wait for a sign from heaven that I wasn't going straight to hell. A sign from Betty Jeanne that she understood.
But there was a voice and it wasn't Betty Jeanne's voice and it wasn't God's voice and it wasn't even Darlene's voice, but just some guy's nerdy voice and the sound of his rubber sandals on the molded sand boulders and this touristy guy in khaki shorts and a Gortex jacket and a beard was climbing on my rocks. Climbing up on my boulders where I'd come to say good-bye to my sister. Yelling for his friend to come take a look. Couldn't he see? Couldn't he tell this was my private ceremony?
The flowers were mostly out in the ocean, spread out over a few dozen yards of bouncy water, going up and down in sheets. Darlene was sitting up the beach aways, arms crossed over her knees, straw hat on her head, big sunglasses and hat shadow hiding most of her face. I walked back over to her, beach sand sucking on my legs and shoes, but not like before. Not as bad as before.
Thursday, February 10, 2005
Heads and Tails
The Mercedes has started shaking and shivering. Two bucks and a backfire and some dark smoke out the back. Coming downhill into Cali, the Mercedes stalling at stop signs and farting black smoke. I'm looking around, trying not to look like I'm looking around, to see if everybody's staring, but no one is staring. No one is looking. No one cares.
I pull into a gas station. They still have service stations there. The kind where you can get gas and have your engine tuned up or have your transmission rebuilt, if they can find the parts and you have the time. Still have the kind of place where neighborhood kids hang out and learn about cars and girls and sports, mostly football. The kind of place where you pull in on a Saturday afternoon, not particularly in a hurry, and Heco comes over to pump your gas and smear your windshield until it's clean and then he checks your oil, down a quart there, Gomez, what say ya try this here Shell stuff, Heco sez. Sure, sez Gomez, and then he says Hey, Heco, he says, how about them Panteros, eh? Didja see that last quarter against Brazil? Man, yeh, Gomez, Heco sez, what a set of huevos that Albondandos has. When he kicked the referee in the head? Gomez sez, I thought for sure it was all over. And then maybe a girl walks by, like 16 or 17 wearing those short shorts and a shorty T-shirt and Heco leans his elbow up against Gomez real light and nods in that direction, doesn't say nothin' 'cause Senora Gomez is in the car so she don't know Heco's doin' that to Gomez and nodding like that but the kid, that skinny kid, ten years old with the buck teeth over there hanging out on the bench by the soda machine, he sees Heco and Gomez nudging and nodding and looking at that girl and that kid, when he grows up, he wants to be just like Heco. He wants to work in the gas station and take greasy engines apart and make cars run and smoke cigarettes and spit on the sidewalk and nod at the young girls who walk by in their shorts, and tip his hat to the young wives who come up during the day to get gas and have their windshield cleaned, and they watch the muscles in Heco's arms and shoulders. Those young señoras watch Heco move while he leans over their windshield, Heco always wearing a sleeveless white muscle shirt. He leans over the windshield, wiping, hand and arm and shoulder circling across the glass, muscles stretching and bunching under his mahogany skin, other hand holding the windshield wiper up and they get the urge, some of them, one or two of the señoras out putting gas in their husbands' cars on a hot summer day in their thin summer dresses, they get the urge, sometimes, some of them, maybe one or another gets this urge to open her knees while Heco is leaning over the windshield. Open her knees and tug up the hem of her skirt while Heco is circling arm muscles across the windshield and leaning over, his face right there, sometimes he smiles and nods at her when he sees her watching him and she wants to raise her skirt and open her knees and show him that she wears no underwear this day. She gets the urge even though the kids are in the back and even though she loves her husband and of course Heco loves his wife and there is no way they could either of them get away with it anyway, since the neighborhood is so small and close, everyone in each other's business all the time and there's that kid, that skinny kid with the buck teeth always hangs out here, Heco feeds him but he'd probably go tell everyone anyway. That skinny kid who's always playing with a distributor or some kind of car thing, always got springs and screws and tubes and strange shaped metal pieces all around him on that bench, he'd probably tell one of my kids, so she shakes her head and gives Heco a little tip when she pays him, not much, but enough to let him know he's appreciated and Heco puts the tip in his pocket and watches her drive away in her husband's sedan. Sometimes, Heco says to the kid, Sometimes I get the feelin' somethin's gonna happen, but then it don't. And the kid looks up at the man he wants to be and he says; Does this spring go here or over here?
That's the kind of place this service station is.
Heco tells me where the Mercedes dealership is. Right downtown with all the skyscrapers and traffic and smog. Downtown Cali is kinda like the garment district in New York City with people rolling racks and carts full of stuff all over the streets and cab drivers cutting in and out and people on bicycles wobbling all over. I pull up to the service entrance and when I stop the Mercedes lets off a big huge backfire and a kind of mist of nasty brown smoke, and I know it's the head gasket.
Four men and a woman come walking out of the Service department doors, shaking their heads and talking among themselves. I get out of the car. I lean in and pull the hood release.
The woman holds a clipboard in her hand. She looks at the license plate, then looks again harder. She squints and frowns, eyebrows in an uneven v shape. She looks up at me, pen held over her clipboard, ready to write.
"¿Estados Unidos?" she says to me.
"Si," I say, "Oregon. ¿Habla Englais?"
"Sure," she says, kind of like shoo. "What's wrong with your car?"
"I think it's a blown head gasket." I say. I point past her shoulder.
One of the men has pulled out the oil dipstick. The dipstick is coated with a milky brown sludge. It looked like a kind of nasty chocolate shake gone bad. A shake that maybe started out nice enough, went to school, obeyed it's parents, got good grades, helped old frappes across the street, but somewhere along the line the shake began to go bad, started hanging with the wrong crowd, began breaking windows and spraying graffiti on the back of the Frosty Freeze drive-in, using foul language and leaving sticky trails behind.
"Oh, yes," the woman says. Her name badge reads Estella.
"I hope you didn't warp the head," Estella says. "Those would be hard to find around here."
"The temperature gauge didn't get very high," I say.
"Well, that's good," Estella says, "But with that kind of sludge in your water, you don't know if the gauge was fouled, yes?."
"Can you fix it?" I say.
"Of course we can," Estella says, "We're Mercedes technicians, and that's a Mercedes, no matter what you've done to it. Are those bullet holes?"
"Yeah," I say, "I had a little..."
"You want them patched?" Estella says, "No problemo, we're really good at it."
Estella leans in close and looks up at my eyes. Estella is short and fills her coveralls tightly. Estella's eyes are beautiful dark brown in the late afternoon light with flecks of gold in them eyes. Estella's lips are bright red lipstick like to smile over white teeth lips. Estella's hair is stuffed under a baseball hat but escaping in wisps all around hair. Estella's face is a round, high cheek bones, pointy chin with dimples face.
"We do them all the time," Estella says, one side of her mouth all up and her eyebrows flick just a little up and down. Estella's eyes hold on to mine and I see a reflection of the outline of my head in her eyes.
"How long do you think it'll take." I say. I look at my watch.
"You in a hurry?" Estella says. "Forget it, it will be a few days, maybe four at the most. You got a place to stay?"
"Um," I say. I hope she's inviting me. I hope she's going to invite me to stay with her. She'll take me home to her little place near the edge of town with the jungle in the back yard and a hot tub and I'll strip her out of her coveralls and carry her to the tub and I'll lick her all over her belly her thighs her breasts her...
"Hotel down the street," Estella pointed with her pen. "Clean rooms, won't cost you too much."
I find the hotel, more of a boarding house, really, between a pawn shop and a barbershop that is closed. The old woman who runs the hotel smiles toothless at me and shows me to my room, a dingy place with mildew on the flowered wallpaper and a sagging bed under clean sheets and blankets. The toilet is down the hall.
After dropping my bag on the bed, I go back down to ask about food. The woman gives me some vague directions that seem to involve a number of turns and churches and I step out into the night to try my luck.
Several streets away there is a lot of commotion, music, laughter, fireworks. I go that way, usually music and fireworks means food of some kind. I come upon a street full of color and movement. Red green yellow blue striped skirts white blouses flying around against dark shadows, dancing color, clothing dancing with shadow people inside hooting and calling. Lit by torches spaced around the square. Strings of electric lanterns in the trees, hung from balconies. Small gazebo in the middle of the square, salsa band squeezed into the back of it, all the men in those big white sleeves, red cummerbunds, black pants hanging over the railing on either side and in back. Horns and guitars and basses sticking out all over the place, all squeezed into the back half of the gazebo to make room in front for the singer and the percussionist. Beautiful mulatto woman singer singing words high and sharp and clear, hands and eyes flashing and rolling, bare leg playing hide and seek out of her long skirt. Her thigh solid, and calling to my hand. My hand wanting to slide up that thigh while she is dancing, feel the muscles harden under the skirt.
A dozen couples spin and shake in the open area before the bandstand. Must be more than a hundred watching from the sidelines. Or not watching; talking or eating or calling their children. Children chasing each other through the crowd, laughing hyena smiles and wild pony eyes.
Aromas catch my nose and rumble my belly and turn my head toward the vendors. My mouth is watering as I find a booth where a woman stands behind a large pot on a portable gas stove, the front of her lit by the gas flame. A young girl, really, barely in her teens. She smiles and looks happy to see me.
"Try the meat sticks," she says in Spanish, "They're really good, today."
"Okay," I say, "Can I get rice and beans, too?"
"Comes with it," she says.
She scoops some beans from the pot onto a paper plate, steps over to another pot and scoops out some rice with an ice-cream scoop. Then she picks up two wood skewers from a dark grill in the back. There is an older woman back there by the grill. She is watching me, I think, or something right behind me. I glance over my shoulder. Just the rest of the crowd.
The girl brings my paper plate back to me, holding its edges with both hands. She catches her lower lip in her teeth, somehow smiling at the same time, when she reaches to hand the paper plate over the counter. My heart thunks around in my chest then, at her face, her hands, her arms, her hair, her open eyes. So young. So hopeful. So unaware of the crap life hands you.
I take the plate and set it on the edge of the counter, by a row of squeeze bottles.
"¿Quanto?" I say.
"Treinta pesos." she says.
"For being friendly," I say.
I am just picking up my plate, leaning over, reaching for a paper napkin from the dispenser. The napkins are in there really tight and I'm tugging and the dispenser is moving and I'm still trying to hold my plate with the other hand because there's not much room on the counter and I'm happy. Happy to have food, happy to have been treated well, and smiling at the thought of a pretty young girl looking forward to her life and there's this screaming and I straighten up jerking my plate toward my chest and pulling back my head and a hand comes swinging by my face, not an inch away. I feel the breeze and the older woman from back there by the grill is leaning over the counter waving her hand and yelling in shrill Spanish. Yelling at me. Something about child molester and calling the police. She's got the young girl back behind her, her other hand holding the girl’s wrist so tight I can see pain on the girl’s face and I take another step back and bump into someone and there's a burning on my stomach and I look down and the beans are over the edge of the plate and spilling down my shirt. The woman is still shrieking at me. Look around. No one is paying any attention. Don't think anyone is. I turn and walk away. The screaming stops.
I'm looking around for a place to set the paper plate down. There are several little tables around, most have three or four people sitting around them. One has only one man and he is looking at me. He smiles and moves his hand in a laying out motion, palm up, over the bare side of the table and the chair that faces it.
I put my plate down.
"Gracias" I say. I start to wipe at my shirt with the tiny paper napkin. The man hands me another.
"You must understand," he says in Spanish, "it is very prevalent here."
"What is?" I say. I hope this sauce isn't going to stain. I'll probably have to find a dry cleaner’s to get it out.
"Child stealers," he says, "Cali has many pedophiles. They pay good money for... unspoiled young people."
"Child stealers...?" I say. What is he talking about. I look up from the brown stain on my shirt.
The man who is talking is short and quite round. He wears a bright Hawaiian shirt. His hair is greasy long held back in a little pony tail hair. The top of his head has very little hair at all, and is freckled. His eyes are dark brown look like they're squeezing out of his head eyes. His nose is a set off to one side a bit nose, or maybe it's his mouth. One way or another his nose and his mouth are not centered on each other and I find this hard to look at. Or hard not to look at, while he’s talking. He sits very straight with his hands folded on the table. His belly sticks out, creased by the edge of the table. I pick up some rice and beans on my fork.
"I was just being nice," I say, in English, "I wanted to tip her for being such a good worker. I get served by so many dull, bored looking people that it's refreshing...."
"You are North American, no?" he says, in English.
"...to find someone bright and outgoing." I say, "Yes, I am. How’d you guess?"
I put the rice and beans in my mouth. Tasty.
"Some of the most notorious pedophiles in town are North Americans who come down because they hear they can find children easily." he says in English. He blinks several times.
"Can they?" I say. English is easier for me. I pick up one of the sticks. Meat skewered on there looking like wet deep grained wood.
"Sadly, yes," he says, "it is true."
"Hmph." I take a bite. The sauce is quite spicy and some of it drips down my chin, I can feel it.
"There are those who say," The man says, "That it is only nature."
"Nature?" I say. Wipe my face. Wondering how I can eat this without getting sauce all over my face.
"Yes," the man says, "Nature. I am Jorge Marquista de la Romas, by the way." He sticks his right hand out across the table. My right hand is still coated with barbecue sauce. I hold it up so he can see it and make a face like I'm saying, I'd shake your hand but mine is kind of messy, so I don't think it's wise right now. I tell him my name. He hands me another napkin with his left hand, keeps holding his right hand across the table like that.
I put down the barbecue meat stick and wipe the sauce off my right hand. He waits with his hand stuck out. It takes a while, but I get my hand clean and shake his. His hand is clammy and I resist the urge to wipe my hand again on the napkin. I put my hand under the table and wipe it on my pants leg.
I put another forkful of red beans and rice in my mouth. The red beans are firm and have a kind of spicy taste, and the rice is perfectly done. I like the way they feel in my mouth while I'm chewing. Wish I hadn’t spilled half of them on my shirt.
"Yes," Jorge says, "Nature."
Jorge interlocks his fingers on the little shelf his belly makes pushing up against the table.
"Okay," I say, "What's that mean?"
"It has to do with the millennium mankind spent before history. Before civilization. When we were all little more than animals ourselves." Jorge says, "Perhaps we still had tails."
"Uh huh," I say. I take a bite of the meat. I don't really feel like talking, but he allowed me to sit with him; I’ll let him ramble on about his stupid theories.
"First of all," Jorge says, "Humans were a kind of pack. They formed small social units consisting of a dominant male, two or three females and children still young."
"Yeah," I say, "I've heard that."
"So think about it," Jorge says, "One of the main drives of the family unit was procreation, no? Food, protection from predators, and procreation. For these things, the females, who were smaller and required to bear and nurture children, would seek out the male who could provide best for the family unit. The biggest and strongest male. While the male would seek out females who could bear and nurture the most children."
"Uh huh," I say. Maybe I should look for another place to sit. I look around, but all the other tables are occupied to overflowing. This table here is the only one not crowded with four or more people, their paper plates overlapping on the tiny table tops.
"In those days," Jorge says, "The average life expectancy of the human animal was twenty five years. Anyone thirty years old was near death. Those people had to start young. That is why humans enter puberty at around ten to twelve years old. As soon as the body is large enough to reproduce and support a child, it becomes ready to do so."
"Yeah?" I say. I nod. I put some more food in my mouth.
"Oh, yes," Jorge says, "And it only makes sense that females would start pumping out babies as soon as possible, since they might only have ten years in which to do so. And also the death rate among infants was so much higher, then. For a woman to have more than twenty five percent of her children reach puberty, that would be a rare instance."
"Uh huh?" I say.
"Okay," Jorge says, "Those are the facts. But let us look at it a little closer. Let us put on a human face, so to speak. The male, he is watching the female children, waiting for them to become old enough for reproduction. In those days, there was no such concept as incest. Animals do it all the time; the instinct is there to be followed. Occasionally, females would come into a unit from some other unit. The thing is, in order for the unit to survive, to reproduce itself, the male has to impregnate as many females in his unit as possible, as often as possible, and as soon as possible. So he's watching those females for the first signs of puberty."
"Okay," I say. I'm almost finished with this meat. There's some rice left. Maybe I'll just stick around long enough to finish the rice. Then I’ll go.
"Okay," Jorge says, "So remember, this goes on for hundreds of thousands of years, maybe longer. For the male in this situation, the most desirable woman on the planet is twelve years old, because that's the one who can have the most children. This is instinct for survival, pure and simple."
"Twelve," I say. He's looking at me with his pop-out eyes. His eyebrows are level across his forehead, almost touching in the middle. His lips are slightly parted. His hands are holding the edge of the table. There are little drops of sweat on his forehead. He does not blink.
"Yes," he says, "Twelve. And older females are not so attractive; at eighteen and older, they have been pregnant six or more times. Perhaps three quarters of their children have died in one way or another. Life is hard in those times; the elements and the dangers of living and disease takes a toll. These females are hags at twenty years old. But perhaps this is as it is supposed to be."
I turn my chin down and look at him through the tops of my eyes. As it's supposed to be?
"Say what?" I say.
"Well, think about it," he says, "These females have survived a number of pregnancies, and a number of years. They have a lot of knowledge and survival skills that they can pass along to the younger females and children. They probably do most of the food preparation and tool making for the unit, what few tools they have. If they were as desirable as the younger females, they would have to keep having babies. They would be bothered all the time by the males. They wouldn't have time to be taking care of the growing children and younger pregnant females, passing on those survival skills, preparing food and medicine, making tools. For the family unit's survival, those older females have to be less attractive to the males."
I don't think I can eat the last bites of my food. My mouth doesn’t want that stuff in it.
"And the point of all this would be?" I say.
"Just that it is hundreds of thousands of years of instinct that causes males to be attracted to young females. We have been civilized for maybe ten thousand years, and even the early parts of that civilization had matings between early teenagers. Hell, Romeo and Juliet were thirteen years old. It is only in the last few hundred years that sex became something reserved for those over eighteen. People are fighting perhaps a million years of natural instinctive behavior."
"And so all this instinct," I say, "Is a justification for having sex with children?"
"No, no, no, my friend," Jorge says, "Of course that is wrong, in this day and age. We use our heads, our minds, our intellect, to override our instincts. At least, most of us do. All I am saying is that those instincts are undeniably there, and that is why there is the attraction. Take yourself, for example."
“Myself?” I say. I want to take myself far away from this fruitcake.
“Yes,” he says, “Look at that girl.”
Jorge points back toward the booth. The girl there is smiling, watching the dancers, swaying back and forth, stirring her pot. Her white blouse is loose, but not so loose that you can’t see that she has breasts.
“Don’t you think she is pretty?” Jorge says.
“Well,” I say, “Yeah, I guess she’s pretty, but...”
“But what?” Jorge says, “You don’t find her attractive?”
She sees me looking at her and her eyes drop, but I can see she’s smiling that smile girls get when they know you’re looking at them and they like that you are. I look back at Jorge. His eyes are steady on mine. One of his eyebrows is up.
My mouth wants to say something back to him. Tell him he’s wrong, but I don’t know how he’s wrong. I don’t know how to tell him he’s wrong.
“I have to go,” I say. Get up. Find a trash can. Toss the plate and the stick and the messy napkins. Turn away. Head into the crowd.
There is something mystical about that age of a young girl where she is just becoming aware of her own body and womanhood. Just becoming aware of the affect she has or soon will have on boys. There is a brief moment in time just before she turns hard and knowing and cynical, where she has an inner light of expectancy, of being on the doorstep of a magical new world, and she is eager to open her eyes and plunge in and explore. This is before she learns that it is just a world full of horny men of all ages. A world of physical pain and discomfort once a month, of having to work harder for less, and of finding limits imposed by the outside, the system, the management. During that magic year or two, a girl has a special appeal.
It disgusts me to think that within myself is that most ignoble of man's urges; the urge to rape. The urge to destroy. The urge to bring down beauty and innocence and have it under my control, twisting and gasping and moaning at my hand. To trample the flower bed, throw paint on the mural, drive a monster truck through the tea party, piss on the crown, knock down the totem poles, shoot the lions.
The sound of the festival now is tinny and sharp and off key. Remote. The people become harsher, less human, their faces change into caricature masks, painted over rubber and steel, glass eyes rolling mocking inside sockets, shrill animal sounds from gaping mouths as if by ventriloquist.
Forcing my way through the thick crowd makes my walk a stagger. Searching for the way out, turn and I’m just at the edge of the gazebo, staring up at that woman singer. Up close I see she is old, her breasts sagging and liquid under her blouse. The flesh of her upper arm loose and spongy. Her neck corded and strained. Her eyes look disconnected from her wide smile, and glare at me like broken glass when she finds me staring. A man with a trumpet and a large mustache leans over the railing me and tells me to get out of there.
I go back to my hotel. I dream of young girls who turn into ugly witches and angry villagers with torches.
I pull into a gas station. They still have service stations there. The kind where you can get gas and have your engine tuned up or have your transmission rebuilt, if they can find the parts and you have the time. Still have the kind of place where neighborhood kids hang out and learn about cars and girls and sports, mostly football. The kind of place where you pull in on a Saturday afternoon, not particularly in a hurry, and Heco comes over to pump your gas and smear your windshield until it's clean and then he checks your oil, down a quart there, Gomez, what say ya try this here Shell stuff, Heco sez. Sure, sez Gomez, and then he says Hey, Heco, he says, how about them Panteros, eh? Didja see that last quarter against Brazil? Man, yeh, Gomez, Heco sez, what a set of huevos that Albondandos has. When he kicked the referee in the head? Gomez sez, I thought for sure it was all over. And then maybe a girl walks by, like 16 or 17 wearing those short shorts and a shorty T-shirt and Heco leans his elbow up against Gomez real light and nods in that direction, doesn't say nothin' 'cause Senora Gomez is in the car so she don't know Heco's doin' that to Gomez and nodding like that but the kid, that skinny kid, ten years old with the buck teeth over there hanging out on the bench by the soda machine, he sees Heco and Gomez nudging and nodding and looking at that girl and that kid, when he grows up, he wants to be just like Heco. He wants to work in the gas station and take greasy engines apart and make cars run and smoke cigarettes and spit on the sidewalk and nod at the young girls who walk by in their shorts, and tip his hat to the young wives who come up during the day to get gas and have their windshield cleaned, and they watch the muscles in Heco's arms and shoulders. Those young señoras watch Heco move while he leans over their windshield, Heco always wearing a sleeveless white muscle shirt. He leans over the windshield, wiping, hand and arm and shoulder circling across the glass, muscles stretching and bunching under his mahogany skin, other hand holding the windshield wiper up and they get the urge, some of them, one or two of the señoras out putting gas in their husbands' cars on a hot summer day in their thin summer dresses, they get the urge, sometimes, some of them, maybe one or another gets this urge to open her knees while Heco is leaning over the windshield. Open her knees and tug up the hem of her skirt while Heco is circling arm muscles across the windshield and leaning over, his face right there, sometimes he smiles and nods at her when he sees her watching him and she wants to raise her skirt and open her knees and show him that she wears no underwear this day. She gets the urge even though the kids are in the back and even though she loves her husband and of course Heco loves his wife and there is no way they could either of them get away with it anyway, since the neighborhood is so small and close, everyone in each other's business all the time and there's that kid, that skinny kid with the buck teeth always hangs out here, Heco feeds him but he'd probably go tell everyone anyway. That skinny kid who's always playing with a distributor or some kind of car thing, always got springs and screws and tubes and strange shaped metal pieces all around him on that bench, he'd probably tell one of my kids, so she shakes her head and gives Heco a little tip when she pays him, not much, but enough to let him know he's appreciated and Heco puts the tip in his pocket and watches her drive away in her husband's sedan. Sometimes, Heco says to the kid, Sometimes I get the feelin' somethin's gonna happen, but then it don't. And the kid looks up at the man he wants to be and he says; Does this spring go here or over here?
That's the kind of place this service station is.
* * *
Heco tells me where the Mercedes dealership is. Right downtown with all the skyscrapers and traffic and smog. Downtown Cali is kinda like the garment district in New York City with people rolling racks and carts full of stuff all over the streets and cab drivers cutting in and out and people on bicycles wobbling all over. I pull up to the service entrance and when I stop the Mercedes lets off a big huge backfire and a kind of mist of nasty brown smoke, and I know it's the head gasket.
Four men and a woman come walking out of the Service department doors, shaking their heads and talking among themselves. I get out of the car. I lean in and pull the hood release.
The woman holds a clipboard in her hand. She looks at the license plate, then looks again harder. She squints and frowns, eyebrows in an uneven v shape. She looks up at me, pen held over her clipboard, ready to write.
"¿Estados Unidos?" she says to me.
"Si," I say, "Oregon. ¿Habla Englais?"
"Sure," she says, kind of like shoo. "What's wrong with your car?"
"I think it's a blown head gasket." I say. I point past her shoulder.
One of the men has pulled out the oil dipstick. The dipstick is coated with a milky brown sludge. It looked like a kind of nasty chocolate shake gone bad. A shake that maybe started out nice enough, went to school, obeyed it's parents, got good grades, helped old frappes across the street, but somewhere along the line the shake began to go bad, started hanging with the wrong crowd, began breaking windows and spraying graffiti on the back of the Frosty Freeze drive-in, using foul language and leaving sticky trails behind.
"Oh, yes," the woman says. Her name badge reads Estella.
"I hope you didn't warp the head," Estella says. "Those would be hard to find around here."
"The temperature gauge didn't get very high," I say.
"Well, that's good," Estella says, "But with that kind of sludge in your water, you don't know if the gauge was fouled, yes?."
"Can you fix it?" I say.
"Of course we can," Estella says, "We're Mercedes technicians, and that's a Mercedes, no matter what you've done to it. Are those bullet holes?"
"Yeah," I say, "I had a little..."
"You want them patched?" Estella says, "No problemo, we're really good at it."
Estella leans in close and looks up at my eyes. Estella is short and fills her coveralls tightly. Estella's eyes are beautiful dark brown in the late afternoon light with flecks of gold in them eyes. Estella's lips are bright red lipstick like to smile over white teeth lips. Estella's hair is stuffed under a baseball hat but escaping in wisps all around hair. Estella's face is a round, high cheek bones, pointy chin with dimples face.
"We do them all the time," Estella says, one side of her mouth all up and her eyebrows flick just a little up and down. Estella's eyes hold on to mine and I see a reflection of the outline of my head in her eyes.
"How long do you think it'll take." I say. I look at my watch.
"You in a hurry?" Estella says. "Forget it, it will be a few days, maybe four at the most. You got a place to stay?"
"Um," I say. I hope she's inviting me. I hope she's going to invite me to stay with her. She'll take me home to her little place near the edge of town with the jungle in the back yard and a hot tub and I'll strip her out of her coveralls and carry her to the tub and I'll lick her all over her belly her thighs her breasts her...
"Hotel down the street," Estella pointed with her pen. "Clean rooms, won't cost you too much."
I find the hotel, more of a boarding house, really, between a pawn shop and a barbershop that is closed. The old woman who runs the hotel smiles toothless at me and shows me to my room, a dingy place with mildew on the flowered wallpaper and a sagging bed under clean sheets and blankets. The toilet is down the hall.
After dropping my bag on the bed, I go back down to ask about food. The woman gives me some vague directions that seem to involve a number of turns and churches and I step out into the night to try my luck.
Several streets away there is a lot of commotion, music, laughter, fireworks. I go that way, usually music and fireworks means food of some kind. I come upon a street full of color and movement. Red green yellow blue striped skirts white blouses flying around against dark shadows, dancing color, clothing dancing with shadow people inside hooting and calling. Lit by torches spaced around the square. Strings of electric lanterns in the trees, hung from balconies. Small gazebo in the middle of the square, salsa band squeezed into the back of it, all the men in those big white sleeves, red cummerbunds, black pants hanging over the railing on either side and in back. Horns and guitars and basses sticking out all over the place, all squeezed into the back half of the gazebo to make room in front for the singer and the percussionist. Beautiful mulatto woman singer singing words high and sharp and clear, hands and eyes flashing and rolling, bare leg playing hide and seek out of her long skirt. Her thigh solid, and calling to my hand. My hand wanting to slide up that thigh while she is dancing, feel the muscles harden under the skirt.
A dozen couples spin and shake in the open area before the bandstand. Must be more than a hundred watching from the sidelines. Or not watching; talking or eating or calling their children. Children chasing each other through the crowd, laughing hyena smiles and wild pony eyes.
Aromas catch my nose and rumble my belly and turn my head toward the vendors. My mouth is watering as I find a booth where a woman stands behind a large pot on a portable gas stove, the front of her lit by the gas flame. A young girl, really, barely in her teens. She smiles and looks happy to see me.
"Try the meat sticks," she says in Spanish, "They're really good, today."
"Okay," I say, "Can I get rice and beans, too?"
"Comes with it," she says.
She scoops some beans from the pot onto a paper plate, steps over to another pot and scoops out some rice with an ice-cream scoop. Then she picks up two wood skewers from a dark grill in the back. There is an older woman back there by the grill. She is watching me, I think, or something right behind me. I glance over my shoulder. Just the rest of the crowd.
The girl brings my paper plate back to me, holding its edges with both hands. She catches her lower lip in her teeth, somehow smiling at the same time, when she reaches to hand the paper plate over the counter. My heart thunks around in my chest then, at her face, her hands, her arms, her hair, her open eyes. So young. So hopeful. So unaware of the crap life hands you.
I take the plate and set it on the edge of the counter, by a row of squeeze bottles.
"¿Quanto?" I say.
"Treinta pesos." she says.
I count out 3 ten peso coins and give them to her. Then I give her a five peso coin.
"For being friendly," I say.
I am just picking up my plate, leaning over, reaching for a paper napkin from the dispenser. The napkins are in there really tight and I'm tugging and the dispenser is moving and I'm still trying to hold my plate with the other hand because there's not much room on the counter and I'm happy. Happy to have food, happy to have been treated well, and smiling at the thought of a pretty young girl looking forward to her life and there's this screaming and I straighten up jerking my plate toward my chest and pulling back my head and a hand comes swinging by my face, not an inch away. I feel the breeze and the older woman from back there by the grill is leaning over the counter waving her hand and yelling in shrill Spanish. Yelling at me. Something about child molester and calling the police. She's got the young girl back behind her, her other hand holding the girl’s wrist so tight I can see pain on the girl’s face and I take another step back and bump into someone and there's a burning on my stomach and I look down and the beans are over the edge of the plate and spilling down my shirt. The woman is still shrieking at me. Look around. No one is paying any attention. Don't think anyone is. I turn and walk away. The screaming stops.
I'm looking around for a place to set the paper plate down. There are several little tables around, most have three or four people sitting around them. One has only one man and he is looking at me. He smiles and moves his hand in a laying out motion, palm up, over the bare side of the table and the chair that faces it.
I put my plate down.
"Gracias" I say. I start to wipe at my shirt with the tiny paper napkin. The man hands me another.
"You must understand," he says in Spanish, "it is very prevalent here."
"What is?" I say. I hope this sauce isn't going to stain. I'll probably have to find a dry cleaner’s to get it out.
"Child stealers," he says, "Cali has many pedophiles. They pay good money for... unspoiled young people."
"Child stealers...?" I say. What is he talking about. I look up from the brown stain on my shirt.
The man who is talking is short and quite round. He wears a bright Hawaiian shirt. His hair is greasy long held back in a little pony tail hair. The top of his head has very little hair at all, and is freckled. His eyes are dark brown look like they're squeezing out of his head eyes. His nose is a set off to one side a bit nose, or maybe it's his mouth. One way or another his nose and his mouth are not centered on each other and I find this hard to look at. Or hard not to look at, while he’s talking. He sits very straight with his hands folded on the table. His belly sticks out, creased by the edge of the table. I pick up some rice and beans on my fork.
"I was just being nice," I say, in English, "I wanted to tip her for being such a good worker. I get served by so many dull, bored looking people that it's refreshing...."
"You are North American, no?" he says, in English.
"...to find someone bright and outgoing." I say, "Yes, I am. How’d you guess?"
I put the rice and beans in my mouth. Tasty.
"Some of the most notorious pedophiles in town are North Americans who come down because they hear they can find children easily." he says in English. He blinks several times.
"Can they?" I say. English is easier for me. I pick up one of the sticks. Meat skewered on there looking like wet deep grained wood.
"Sadly, yes," he says, "it is true."
"Hmph." I take a bite. The sauce is quite spicy and some of it drips down my chin, I can feel it.
The man hands me another paper towel.
"There are those who say," The man says, "That it is only nature."
"Nature?" I say. Wipe my face. Wondering how I can eat this without getting sauce all over my face.
"Yes," the man says, "Nature. I am Jorge Marquista de la Romas, by the way." He sticks his right hand out across the table. My right hand is still coated with barbecue sauce. I hold it up so he can see it and make a face like I'm saying, I'd shake your hand but mine is kind of messy, so I don't think it's wise right now. I tell him my name. He hands me another napkin with his left hand, keeps holding his right hand across the table like that.
I put down the barbecue meat stick and wipe the sauce off my right hand. He waits with his hand stuck out. It takes a while, but I get my hand clean and shake his. His hand is clammy and I resist the urge to wipe my hand again on the napkin. I put my hand under the table and wipe it on my pants leg.
I put another forkful of red beans and rice in my mouth. The red beans are firm and have a kind of spicy taste, and the rice is perfectly done. I like the way they feel in my mouth while I'm chewing. Wish I hadn’t spilled half of them on my shirt.
"Yes," Jorge says, "Nature."
Jorge interlocks his fingers on the little shelf his belly makes pushing up against the table.
"Okay," I say, "What's that mean?"
"It has to do with the millennium mankind spent before history. Before civilization. When we were all little more than animals ourselves." Jorge says, "Perhaps we still had tails."
"Uh huh," I say. I take a bite of the meat. I don't really feel like talking, but he allowed me to sit with him; I’ll let him ramble on about his stupid theories.
"First of all," Jorge says, "Humans were a kind of pack. They formed small social units consisting of a dominant male, two or three females and children still young."
"Yeah," I say, "I've heard that."
"So think about it," Jorge says, "One of the main drives of the family unit was procreation, no? Food, protection from predators, and procreation. For these things, the females, who were smaller and required to bear and nurture children, would seek out the male who could provide best for the family unit. The biggest and strongest male. While the male would seek out females who could bear and nurture the most children."
"Uh huh," I say. Maybe I should look for another place to sit. I look around, but all the other tables are occupied to overflowing. This table here is the only one not crowded with four or more people, their paper plates overlapping on the tiny table tops.
"In those days," Jorge says, "The average life expectancy of the human animal was twenty five years. Anyone thirty years old was near death. Those people had to start young. That is why humans enter puberty at around ten to twelve years old. As soon as the body is large enough to reproduce and support a child, it becomes ready to do so."
"Yeah?" I say. I nod. I put some more food in my mouth.
"Oh, yes," Jorge says, "And it only makes sense that females would start pumping out babies as soon as possible, since they might only have ten years in which to do so. And also the death rate among infants was so much higher, then. For a woman to have more than twenty five percent of her children reach puberty, that would be a rare instance."
"Uh huh?" I say.
"Okay," Jorge says, "Those are the facts. But let us look at it a little closer. Let us put on a human face, so to speak. The male, he is watching the female children, waiting for them to become old enough for reproduction. In those days, there was no such concept as incest. Animals do it all the time; the instinct is there to be followed. Occasionally, females would come into a unit from some other unit. The thing is, in order for the unit to survive, to reproduce itself, the male has to impregnate as many females in his unit as possible, as often as possible, and as soon as possible. So he's watching those females for the first signs of puberty."
"Okay," I say. I'm almost finished with this meat. There's some rice left. Maybe I'll just stick around long enough to finish the rice. Then I’ll go.
"Okay," Jorge says, "So remember, this goes on for hundreds of thousands of years, maybe longer. For the male in this situation, the most desirable woman on the planet is twelve years old, because that's the one who can have the most children. This is instinct for survival, pure and simple."
"Twelve," I say. He's looking at me with his pop-out eyes. His eyebrows are level across his forehead, almost touching in the middle. His lips are slightly parted. His hands are holding the edge of the table. There are little drops of sweat on his forehead. He does not blink.
"Yes," he says, "Twelve. And older females are not so attractive; at eighteen and older, they have been pregnant six or more times. Perhaps three quarters of their children have died in one way or another. Life is hard in those times; the elements and the dangers of living and disease takes a toll. These females are hags at twenty years old. But perhaps this is as it is supposed to be."
I turn my chin down and look at him through the tops of my eyes. As it's supposed to be?
"Say what?" I say.
"Well, think about it," he says, "These females have survived a number of pregnancies, and a number of years. They have a lot of knowledge and survival skills that they can pass along to the younger females and children. They probably do most of the food preparation and tool making for the unit, what few tools they have. If they were as desirable as the younger females, they would have to keep having babies. They would be bothered all the time by the males. They wouldn't have time to be taking care of the growing children and younger pregnant females, passing on those survival skills, preparing food and medicine, making tools. For the family unit's survival, those older females have to be less attractive to the males."
I don't think I can eat the last bites of my food. My mouth doesn’t want that stuff in it.
"And the point of all this would be?" I say.
"Just that it is hundreds of thousands of years of instinct that causes males to be attracted to young females. We have been civilized for maybe ten thousand years, and even the early parts of that civilization had matings between early teenagers. Hell, Romeo and Juliet were thirteen years old. It is only in the last few hundred years that sex became something reserved for those over eighteen. People are fighting perhaps a million years of natural instinctive behavior."
"And so all this instinct," I say, "Is a justification for having sex with children?"
"No, no, no, my friend," Jorge says, "Of course that is wrong, in this day and age. We use our heads, our minds, our intellect, to override our instincts. At least, most of us do. All I am saying is that those instincts are undeniably there, and that is why there is the attraction. Take yourself, for example."
“Myself?” I say. I want to take myself far away from this fruitcake.
“Yes,” he says, “Look at that girl.”
Jorge points back toward the booth. The girl there is smiling, watching the dancers, swaying back and forth, stirring her pot. Her white blouse is loose, but not so loose that you can’t see that she has breasts.
“Don’t you think she is pretty?” Jorge says.
“Well,” I say, “Yeah, I guess she’s pretty, but...”
“But what?” Jorge says, “You don’t find her attractive?”
She sees me looking at her and her eyes drop, but I can see she’s smiling that smile girls get when they know you’re looking at them and they like that you are. I look back at Jorge. His eyes are steady on mine. One of his eyebrows is up.
My mouth wants to say something back to him. Tell him he’s wrong, but I don’t know how he’s wrong. I don’t know how to tell him he’s wrong.
“I have to go,” I say. Get up. Find a trash can. Toss the plate and the stick and the messy napkins. Turn away. Head into the crowd.
* * *
There is something mystical about that age of a young girl where she is just becoming aware of her own body and womanhood. Just becoming aware of the affect she has or soon will have on boys. There is a brief moment in time just before she turns hard and knowing and cynical, where she has an inner light of expectancy, of being on the doorstep of a magical new world, and she is eager to open her eyes and plunge in and explore. This is before she learns that it is just a world full of horny men of all ages. A world of physical pain and discomfort once a month, of having to work harder for less, and of finding limits imposed by the outside, the system, the management. During that magic year or two, a girl has a special appeal.
It disgusts me to think that within myself is that most ignoble of man's urges; the urge to rape. The urge to destroy. The urge to bring down beauty and innocence and have it under my control, twisting and gasping and moaning at my hand. To trample the flower bed, throw paint on the mural, drive a monster truck through the tea party, piss on the crown, knock down the totem poles, shoot the lions.
* * *
The sound of the festival now is tinny and sharp and off key. Remote. The people become harsher, less human, their faces change into caricature masks, painted over rubber and steel, glass eyes rolling mocking inside sockets, shrill animal sounds from gaping mouths as if by ventriloquist.
Forcing my way through the thick crowd makes my walk a stagger. Searching for the way out, turn and I’m just at the edge of the gazebo, staring up at that woman singer. Up close I see she is old, her breasts sagging and liquid under her blouse. The flesh of her upper arm loose and spongy. Her neck corded and strained. Her eyes look disconnected from her wide smile, and glare at me like broken glass when she finds me staring. A man with a trumpet and a large mustache leans over the railing me and tells me to get out of there.
I go back to my hotel. I dream of young girls who turn into ugly witches and angry villagers with torches.
Cabo San Lucas
This is why I didn't go home for my sister's funeral.
Back in the room, after the phone call. The room dark. Our new room. The room downstairs on the first floor with the unbroken screen.
"They killed my sister," I said. It was hard to say. Those words, the sounds of those words getting stuck in all the places in my throat and mouth that words can get stuck in. All the places words catch on and cling to because they don't want to come out. They don't want to come out because once they are out then they are real and true and mean something hard and solid and unchangeable. Before the words come out, they could be anything at all. They could be 'There goes a butterfly' or 'I think I'll have red beans and rice with my fish tacos.' or 'I heard it's going to be sunny again tomorrow.' Before they come out of your mouth, those words could be just something you thought about in passing, like when you were a kid imagining what it would be like if your dog died. When I was a kid I would get myself all worked up imagining the dog died and how sad that would be and how I'd feel, and I'd almost cry and then I'd remember that the dog wasn't dead and I would feel really great and happy that the dog wasn't dead and grateful to have a dog. I could think things like that when I was a kid and even when I was older but I never had to say it out loud because it was never true.
But when words like that are true, then they are hard dry scratchy things with thorns on them like dried up rose stems. Words made out of splintery old wood and busted glass and rusty nails. Words that rip up everything they pass on the way from your diaphragm past your heart and lungs through your throat the back of your mouth your tongue, bloody teeth gums lips stabbing up into your eyes on the way out. Those words in me came out like they were taking a raw bloody chunk of my insides out with them and when they finally got all the way out they put a red haze in the air. All around me.
"Oh no, bunny," Darlene said, "I'm sorry." I'm sure she said something like that, but I wasn't really listening. I was putting my arms around her and holding on. Holding on, body shaking and mouth open and sounds coming out. Sounds that have no words for them but are like breathing made solid. Like breathing thick chunks of stuff out, solid chunks of air that make sound. Sound like pain and sound like coming. Sound that means more than words can say. I put my face down and stopped my mouth with Darlene's soft shoulder. The sounds were quieter then, but I couldn't put them away. There was nothing going on in my head. Just the big hollow sound of empty.
When I stopped crying, I was tired. I wanted to sit on the bed. Held on to Dar and started to sit down and she sat down with me. I had to touch her. Had to hold on to her.
"Now," Darlene said. "Who did this?"
"They don't know," I said, "I guess the police are investigating."
My voice was not coming out right. All those ripped up raw places inside, my voice came out sounding like someone else's to me.
"The service is on Sunday." I said. Somewhere I had heard this. My father must have told me. It was Friday evening. Friday evening when I got the phone call.
"You have to go back." Darlene said.
"I don't know," I said. How could I go back? How would I get to the airport. How would I get a ticket? I was all the way in Mexico.
"What do you mean, you don't know," Darlene said, "How can you not go back?"
"Come with me," I said. Darlene would know how to get back there. I couldn't do it on my own.
"I can't go with you," Darlene said, "That wouldn't be good, your sister dead and here's this woman they've never met before. I can't go, but you should."
"I have to think about it." I said.
"You have to think...?" Darlene said. Her voice was hurting me. My ears were raw and bleeding from the words that she pushed through them, and each word she said now hit my ears like a hammer wrapped in foam rubber, my left eye went out of focus and that side of my head was hanging down.
Once I saw a fight on TV. A boxing match. I was young. Don't remember if it was a real match or a movie or what. It was in black and white. The two fighters looked about the same size and weight, when they started, two guys in shiny shorts, one pair shiny black and one pair shiny white doing the fighter dances around each other. Each holding one glove up over his nose, head down, looking over the top of that glove while the other glove stayed out in front, waving around, looking for openings. They swung at each other, both connecting, but the one with the black shorts was better than the one in white shorts, and got more hits in. Every round the one with black shorts would get more hits in. The one in white shorts started spending more and more time backing up, and didn't bounce around as much on his toes after a while. The one in white shorts got a cut over his eyes. Then in the next round the same guy got his lip split open. The one in black shorts moved in and threw a bunch of punches, real fast, to the other guy's stomach and arms and chest and head, but then the bell rang and they both had to go sit down. The next round the one in black shorts was just hammering on the white shorts guy, punching him twenty, maybe thirty times, but the white shorts guy wouldn't fall down. He stayed on his feet. The black shorts guy backed him into the ropes and started punching away, and I thought the referee might stop it, might break it up, but he didn't. Finally the one in black shorts backed off a little, gloves still up, still dancing on his toes, still making little air jabs in the direction of the white shorts guy. The white shorts guy, he had his gloves up over most of his face and he was hunched over, left side of his head down. His face was all red from the blood and sweat and you could see his eyes were swollen almost shut and his knees were turned in and just about touching. His arms kept falling a little, like it was hard to hold them up, but he kept flinching, like his muscles would flick and his whole body tense up every time the black shorts guy moved a glove or a foot. When the ref came close, the white shorts guy flinched, too, and when his handlers came up and tried to take him back to his corner, he kept throwing those gloves up in front of his face, body jerking away. His body was telling him this; everyone is an enemy, everything wants to hurt you. Signals going in the eyes and ears and bypassing the brain and going directly to the muscles, action and reaction, no processing in between.
Darlene's words were hurting me like that.
"I need to lie down," I said. "I need to sleep. Can you stay with me?"
"Sure, bunny," Darlene said, "You just lie down."
Darlene got up off the bed.
"Where are you going?" I said.
"To the bathroom," Darlene said. "I'll be right back. Go to sleep."
I put my head down on the pillow. My arms felt wrong, they didn't know where to go. Darlene came back and stretched out on the bed next to me. I moved up close to her. She put her arm out and my face found that soft spot where the shoulder connects to the arm, just above her breast. I put my face in that soft spot and put my arm across her belly and she put her hand that was attached to the arm under my cheek on my side and her other hand over my hand on her belly. My face hurt, all the muscles, from the inside. My stomach hurt, all the muscles. I fell asleep.
"I think I should come back." I said into the phone. Don't think I sounded like I really thought I should go back. I looked past the white plastic tables out to the dirt street. Omar was sitting at a table near the street, talking with a beach bum looking guy.
"Oh, don't come back," my Mom said, Her voice sounded far away on the phone. "There's nothing you can do. The memorial service is tomorrow..."
"I can't get there before tomorrow," I said. My stomach was hurting again. Darlene was looking at the home bottled liquor on the plywood bar. Roberto wanted her to try some.
"I know, honey," my Mom said, "By the time you get here, it'll be all over, it's better if you stay there. The service is at two. You should remember her somehow, then."
"That's eleven o'clock, here." I said. The sun was shining. People in Bermuda shorts and straw hats went by on the street. They looked at Omar and the hotel like it was some attraction at DisneyWorld.
"I'll do something.” I said, “Flowers in the ocean."
"That'll be nice," my Mom said, "I have to go now, sweetheart, I'll talk to you later. Love you."
"I love you, Mom." I said. I hung up the phone, but I held on to the handset. There was a war going on inside me. I wanted to go and I wanted to stay. If I go it means packing up and getting a taxi back to the airport and trying to get a different flight from there back to La Guardia or Kennedy and then getting a taxi out to Joyce's and getting there at like three in the morning. If I go it means leaving Darlene and Mexico and this magic place and this woman I wanted to be with and maybe never getting back to either.
If I stay it means I would not be there. Not be home for my sister's funeral. Not be with my family, with what was left of my family. How could I live with that? If I stay it means I could be with this woman I wanted to be with so bad I'd miss my sister's funeral for her. It means I'd be spending the rest of the week in this sunny place with the water and the surf and the sand and the shops and the food and the Spanish speaking and the getting sunburned and the lazy days and I could pretend that I'd never got that goddamned phone call. I could deal with it when I got back. Except of course it would all be over when I got back. There's that pain again, like indigestion or something and my head, and things are not looking very clear, everything, the bar the tables the umbrellas Darlene Omar the street are all looking out of focus. How could I not go back? How could I not stay?
"Bunny," Darlene said. Said it kind of sharp.
I jumped. Not really jumped, just all my muscles spasmed. I was standing there with my hand on the phone just standing there looking at the wall and the sunshine the pattern the sunshine made on the wall the corner of the roof making a darker blue vee in the light blue paint of the wall and How could I stay here when my sister is dead and there's going to be a funeral tomorrow? How could I go when I wouldn't get there in time and if it was the other way around, if it was me dead and her in Mexico, she wouldn't go back. She wouldn't have gone back, she would have stayed, I know she would have stayed there in Mexico and had her own private service for me. We were never very close, anyway. I mean there was always a kind of tension between us, not like me and Joyce. Joyce and me, we were really close. Not Betty Jeanne. Betty Jeanne and me, we weren't that close but fuck, how could I just not go back, what would people think about me. Stayed in Mexico, his sister murdered and he stays in Mexico with his new girlfriend. What a jerk. I had to go back, but I couldn't pick up the phone. There was my hand, resting right on the phone there, I could have picked it up and called for a taxi. But what if there isn't a flight out until way later? Like the next morning? It's a small airport and they might not have flights out all the time.
"Bunny!" Darlene said. "What's wrong, you're like, frozen."
"I'm not going back." I said. Hand on the phone.
"How can you not go back?" Darlene said.
"It's okay," I said. "I'm just not."
"I'm sure," I said, "I need a drink."
Back in the room, after the phone call. The room dark. Our new room. The room downstairs on the first floor with the unbroken screen.
"They killed my sister," I said. It was hard to say. Those words, the sounds of those words getting stuck in all the places in my throat and mouth that words can get stuck in. All the places words catch on and cling to because they don't want to come out. They don't want to come out because once they are out then they are real and true and mean something hard and solid and unchangeable. Before the words come out, they could be anything at all. They could be 'There goes a butterfly' or 'I think I'll have red beans and rice with my fish tacos.' or 'I heard it's going to be sunny again tomorrow.' Before they come out of your mouth, those words could be just something you thought about in passing, like when you were a kid imagining what it would be like if your dog died. When I was a kid I would get myself all worked up imagining the dog died and how sad that would be and how I'd feel, and I'd almost cry and then I'd remember that the dog wasn't dead and I would feel really great and happy that the dog wasn't dead and grateful to have a dog. I could think things like that when I was a kid and even when I was older but I never had to say it out loud because it was never true.
But when words like that are true, then they are hard dry scratchy things with thorns on them like dried up rose stems. Words made out of splintery old wood and busted glass and rusty nails. Words that rip up everything they pass on the way from your diaphragm past your heart and lungs through your throat the back of your mouth your tongue, bloody teeth gums lips stabbing up into your eyes on the way out. Those words in me came out like they were taking a raw bloody chunk of my insides out with them and when they finally got all the way out they put a red haze in the air. All around me.
"Oh no, bunny," Darlene said, "I'm sorry." I'm sure she said something like that, but I wasn't really listening. I was putting my arms around her and holding on. Holding on, body shaking and mouth open and sounds coming out. Sounds that have no words for them but are like breathing made solid. Like breathing thick chunks of stuff out, solid chunks of air that make sound. Sound like pain and sound like coming. Sound that means more than words can say. I put my face down and stopped my mouth with Darlene's soft shoulder. The sounds were quieter then, but I couldn't put them away. There was nothing going on in my head. Just the big hollow sound of empty.
When I stopped crying, I was tired. I wanted to sit on the bed. Held on to Dar and started to sit down and she sat down with me. I had to touch her. Had to hold on to her.
"Now," Darlene said. "Who did this?"
"They don't know," I said, "I guess the police are investigating."
My voice was not coming out right. All those ripped up raw places inside, my voice came out sounding like someone else's to me.
"The service is on Sunday." I said. Somewhere I had heard this. My father must have told me. It was Friday evening. Friday evening when I got the phone call.
"You have to go back." Darlene said.
"I don't know," I said. How could I go back? How would I get to the airport. How would I get a ticket? I was all the way in Mexico.
"What do you mean, you don't know," Darlene said, "How can you not go back?"
"Come with me," I said. Darlene would know how to get back there. I couldn't do it on my own.
"I can't go with you," Darlene said, "That wouldn't be good, your sister dead and here's this woman they've never met before. I can't go, but you should."
"I have to think about it." I said.
"You have to think...?" Darlene said. Her voice was hurting me. My ears were raw and bleeding from the words that she pushed through them, and each word she said now hit my ears like a hammer wrapped in foam rubber, my left eye went out of focus and that side of my head was hanging down.
* * *
Once I saw a fight on TV. A boxing match. I was young. Don't remember if it was a real match or a movie or what. It was in black and white. The two fighters looked about the same size and weight, when they started, two guys in shiny shorts, one pair shiny black and one pair shiny white doing the fighter dances around each other. Each holding one glove up over his nose, head down, looking over the top of that glove while the other glove stayed out in front, waving around, looking for openings. They swung at each other, both connecting, but the one with the black shorts was better than the one in white shorts, and got more hits in. Every round the one with black shorts would get more hits in. The one in white shorts started spending more and more time backing up, and didn't bounce around as much on his toes after a while. The one in white shorts got a cut over his eyes. Then in the next round the same guy got his lip split open. The one in black shorts moved in and threw a bunch of punches, real fast, to the other guy's stomach and arms and chest and head, but then the bell rang and they both had to go sit down. The next round the one in black shorts was just hammering on the white shorts guy, punching him twenty, maybe thirty times, but the white shorts guy wouldn't fall down. He stayed on his feet. The black shorts guy backed him into the ropes and started punching away, and I thought the referee might stop it, might break it up, but he didn't. Finally the one in black shorts backed off a little, gloves still up, still dancing on his toes, still making little air jabs in the direction of the white shorts guy. The white shorts guy, he had his gloves up over most of his face and he was hunched over, left side of his head down. His face was all red from the blood and sweat and you could see his eyes were swollen almost shut and his knees were turned in and just about touching. His arms kept falling a little, like it was hard to hold them up, but he kept flinching, like his muscles would flick and his whole body tense up every time the black shorts guy moved a glove or a foot. When the ref came close, the white shorts guy flinched, too, and when his handlers came up and tried to take him back to his corner, he kept throwing those gloves up in front of his face, body jerking away. His body was telling him this; everyone is an enemy, everything wants to hurt you. Signals going in the eyes and ears and bypassing the brain and going directly to the muscles, action and reaction, no processing in between.
Darlene's words were hurting me like that.
* * *
"I need to lie down," I said. "I need to sleep. Can you stay with me?"
"Sure, bunny," Darlene said, "You just lie down."
Darlene got up off the bed.
"Where are you going?" I said.
"To the bathroom," Darlene said. "I'll be right back. Go to sleep."
I put my head down on the pillow. My arms felt wrong, they didn't know where to go. Darlene came back and stretched out on the bed next to me. I moved up close to her. She put her arm out and my face found that soft spot where the shoulder connects to the arm, just above her breast. I put my face in that soft spot and put my arm across her belly and she put her hand that was attached to the arm under my cheek on my side and her other hand over my hand on her belly. My face hurt, all the muscles, from the inside. My stomach hurt, all the muscles. I fell asleep.
* * *
"I think I should come back." I said into the phone. Don't think I sounded like I really thought I should go back. I looked past the white plastic tables out to the dirt street. Omar was sitting at a table near the street, talking with a beach bum looking guy.
"Oh, don't come back," my Mom said, Her voice sounded far away on the phone. "There's nothing you can do. The memorial service is tomorrow..."
"I can't get there before tomorrow," I said. My stomach was hurting again. Darlene was looking at the home bottled liquor on the plywood bar. Roberto wanted her to try some.
"I know, honey," my Mom said, "By the time you get here, it'll be all over, it's better if you stay there. The service is at two. You should remember her somehow, then."
"That's eleven o'clock, here." I said. The sun was shining. People in Bermuda shorts and straw hats went by on the street. They looked at Omar and the hotel like it was some attraction at DisneyWorld.
"I'll do something.” I said, “Flowers in the ocean."
"That'll be nice," my Mom said, "I have to go now, sweetheart, I'll talk to you later. Love you."
"I love you, Mom." I said. I hung up the phone, but I held on to the handset. There was a war going on inside me. I wanted to go and I wanted to stay. If I go it means packing up and getting a taxi back to the airport and trying to get a different flight from there back to La Guardia or Kennedy and then getting a taxi out to Joyce's and getting there at like three in the morning. If I go it means leaving Darlene and Mexico and this magic place and this woman I wanted to be with and maybe never getting back to either.
If I stay it means I would not be there. Not be home for my sister's funeral. Not be with my family, with what was left of my family. How could I live with that? If I stay it means I could be with this woman I wanted to be with so bad I'd miss my sister's funeral for her. It means I'd be spending the rest of the week in this sunny place with the water and the surf and the sand and the shops and the food and the Spanish speaking and the getting sunburned and the lazy days and I could pretend that I'd never got that goddamned phone call. I could deal with it when I got back. Except of course it would all be over when I got back. There's that pain again, like indigestion or something and my head, and things are not looking very clear, everything, the bar the tables the umbrellas Darlene Omar the street are all looking out of focus. How could I not go back? How could I not stay?
"Bunny," Darlene said. Said it kind of sharp.
I jumped. Not really jumped, just all my muscles spasmed. I was standing there with my hand on the phone just standing there looking at the wall and the sunshine the pattern the sunshine made on the wall the corner of the roof making a darker blue vee in the light blue paint of the wall and How could I stay here when my sister is dead and there's going to be a funeral tomorrow? How could I go when I wouldn't get there in time and if it was the other way around, if it was me dead and her in Mexico, she wouldn't go back. She wouldn't have gone back, she would have stayed, I know she would have stayed there in Mexico and had her own private service for me. We were never very close, anyway. I mean there was always a kind of tension between us, not like me and Joyce. Joyce and me, we were really close. Not Betty Jeanne. Betty Jeanne and me, we weren't that close but fuck, how could I just not go back, what would people think about me. Stayed in Mexico, his sister murdered and he stays in Mexico with his new girlfriend. What a jerk. I had to go back, but I couldn't pick up the phone. There was my hand, resting right on the phone there, I could have picked it up and called for a taxi. But what if there isn't a flight out until way later? Like the next morning? It's a small airport and they might not have flights out all the time.
"Bunny!" Darlene said. "What's wrong, you're like, frozen."
"I'm not going back." I said. Hand on the phone.
"How can you not go back?" Darlene said.
"It's okay," I said. "I'm just not."
"Well," Darlene said, "If you're sure. Its your family."
"I'm sure," I said, "I need a drink."
Marsita
The door creaks open. It isn't a loud creak, but in my hyped up state it seems as clear and sharp as glass breaking. A female figure is silhouetted against the light in the hallway just for a moment. The door closes and she stands there. Maybe she's trying to let her eyes adjust to the darkness. I point my flashlight at her and flick it on. She flinches when the light hits her, and raises a hand to shade her eyes. It is Marsita. Her body very white and compact in the glare of the flashlight. The dark triangle of her pubic hair stands out against her skin. She makes no move to cover herself.
"Por favor," she says, squinting into the light.
I place the flashlight on the nightstand so that the beam bounces off the ceiling. The ceiling has been finished in wallboard but never taped or painted. The indirect light is much kinder to us both. Marsita drops her hand and walks to the side of the bed, using all of her muscles, all her leg muscles, all her arm muscles, all her stomach muscles, her walk is a panther's walk. Her eyes are deep golden brown loam of the earth Treasure of the Sierra Madres eyes. Her breasts are small perfect breasts and the swell of her hips and curve of her thighs is a beautiful terrible tragedy. A tragedy that such beauty can not last. A glory that exists for a terrible moment, then is gone. Her walk, her eyes, her muscles, her inevitable end, it is enough to make me cry.
The cocaine is wearing off.
Marsita slides onto the bed in one motion, on top of the sheet that covers me, and lays on her side beside me, one hand propping up her head, the other stretched along her thigh, one finger of that stretched out hand, pointed, running up and down on her leg, a little dent of flesh filling with shadow, following the tip of her finger. Marsita's eyes are hot fires in red clay ovens beneath half-lowered lids eyes and I can feel a heat emanating from her center, from the furnace of her body. My body is responding, a snake coming out from between the rocks to feel the warmth of Marsita the sun.
"Are you really driving to the South Pole?" Marsita says.
"I don't think I'll make it quite that far, do you?" I say.
"Mmmm, I don't know. You look very...capable." Marsita says. Her eyes are down.
"It'll definitely be a long and interesting trip." I say.
"Mmm, hmm, and hard, I suppose." Marsita says.
She runs her fingertips up my leg through the sheets, avoiding direct contact with my genitals, but causing the sheet to slide in such a way that my penis jumps. She smiles and winks at me.
"Yes," she says, "very hard."
* * *
Tragedy runs down the walls and drips from the ceiling. The world is a hard and cruel place. Children die needlessly. People starve from indifference. I see the cold reality of our hopelessness trapped in harsh black and white on the wall. The shadows of the trees outside, edged in diamond clarity, rip jagged across the floor and up the wall. My life is a disaster. The lives of those I touch are shattered. Fate comes crackling down upon me, crushing my world, killing everyone around me and then hurting me. Hurting me with such finality that there can never be any coming back. I watch with a sinking, that awful knowledge foremost in my mind that from this injury I can never recover. That I will be crippled forever. That there is no turning back. I remember too late why I gave up cocaine, so many years ago.
The small, warm body next to mine quivers. Her foot, walking in some dream pasture, tapping against mine. Her hand on my chest twitching, trying to pick up some dream thing.
It is time to go.
I try to get out of bed without disturbing Marsita, but she wakes up saying No, no, no, sleepy, like a kitten.
"What is it?" she says, leaning on one elbow and rubbing her eyes with thumb and forefinger.
"Nothing, chiquita, I have to go." I say. Standing by the bed, reaching for my clothes.
"Go?" she repeats as if the word makes no sense to her. "You can't go."
"Whattaya mean I can't go?" I say.
"They'll shoot you." she laughs and lays back down. The moonlight slides across her gunmetal skin. A single nipple stands like a dark tower in a moat of muddy water.
I'd forgotten the guards. They probably wouldn't look kindly on anyone trying to sneak out in the middle of the night. I sit down on the edge of the bed, one shoe in my hand. A tragic shoe. Lost and alone.
"We will go in the morning," Marsita says, "we can..."
"We?!" I say.
"...say we are going to the village for shopping..." Marsita says.
"Whattaya mean, 'We'?" I say.
"...and we will just keep driving," Marsita says, "oh darling!"
"It will work, you wait and see." Marsita says, "Now come and sit back down over here and we will make love one more time and go to sleep. We will need our rest for the trip. Come!"
I shut the louvered doors over the windows. No more tragic shadows on the walls.
* * *
There are dogs running through my dream. Big heavy leather dogs with buckles and straps running on the boardwalk next to my beach chair. Someone pulls the towel off me and starts shaking my shoulder, and the beach is a room and the dogs are men going down the stairs and Marsita is peeking through the door cracked open, naked, holding the sheet to her chest, but her back, her small shoulders, shoulder blades smooth overhangs curve of back, bumps of backbone, dimples that hurt my eyes and my heart over swell of hips so round and then legs. Stripes from the louvers, sun coming in the louvers stripes on the wall, the door jamb, the legs the door all like a kind of topographical map showing the hills and valleys of Marsitaland.
"¿Que pasa?" I say. "¿Quien es?"
"No se," Marsita says, "Son los guardia. The guards."
The room is dim and hazy but bright morning light is squeezing through the louvers in the shutters, and around the edges of the shutters over the windows. The big floor to ceiling windows with the louvered shutters over them. Maybe they're really doors, not windows. You can open them up and walk through them.
"Put your clothes on!" Marsita says. Marsita runs to the windows, running on her toes, short steps, holding the sheet over her breasts and hunching forward, eyes sharp and watching, mouth tight. Marsita looks through a broken slat and curses. I drag my pants on.
"¿Que?" I say.
I hear a distant thumping noise. It is a helicopter.
Marsita runs to my suitcase, running on her toes, short steps. She drops the sheet on the way.
"A raid," Marsita says, "Out by the lab."
The lab is out at the back of the plantation grounds, maybe 300 yards away from the hacienda. Omar showed it to me last night while we were buzzing around.
Marsita pulls a pair of my jeans out of my suitcase. The helicopter sound gets louder. I look for my shirt.
There is a burping sound. Gunfire.
"Shit." I say. I think I say.
Marsita pulls one of my T-shirts on over her head. She throws another at me and I struggle to put it on. There doesn't seem to be enough holes.
The windows explode glass and wood flying around the other end of the room, the farthest window. Holes appear high in the wall over there and in the ceiling. Marsita and I drop to the floor. There is a louder chunk! chunk! sound that shakes the floor every time it happens. Which is two or three times a second, then a pause for about a second maybe and then another series chunk!, chunk!, chunk!.
"¡Vamanos!" Marsita says from the other side of the bed. I can see her over there by looking under the bed. She is on her hands and knees and is opening the door. I wonder if I can fit under the bed. I think getting on all fours is presenting too high a target. The bed's too low, though.
I leave the shirt half on, one arm and my head through but the rest of the shirt bunched up around my shoulders. I start to get on all fours and another window explodes bullets glass wood splinters flying all over the room and my legs push off like a frog in a frying pan and I hit ground again by the door, next to my suitcase. I scrabble out the door, legs slipping on the area rug on the slick wood, arm caught on something but not stopping to see what. I get out in the hallway and sit up next to the wall, which is what everyone else is doing.
Everyone else being SiSi, Marsita and Tanya. Everyone else but Maria, who is lying on the floor her head and shoulders like nailed to the floor not moving her eyes open and not seeing blood in them and spreading around her head on the floor and her legs kick and flex like they want to get up and hands slapping in the puddle of blood and then Maria stops her legs stop and her arm stops and Maria stops.
Marsita grabs SiSi by one of their hands. SiSi are staring at Maria. Tanya is crying and her pouty lips are pouting all out and she has blood on her face from Maria splashing. Black blood in Tanya's white blond hair.
"This way!" Marsita says. Marsita pulls one of SiSi up and the other follows and I grab for Tanya and she jumps back from me like she didn't know I was there and looks at me like she doesn't know who I am. Grab her hand and this time she goes with me and we follow Marsita and SiSi down the hall bent over running and I've got my suitcase somehow and it's dragging on the floor spilling socks and underwear.
The helicopter comes in close and the wind it makes, the sound and noise blows dust and paper and crap around in the hallway and then at the top of the stairs. DiDi is there, hanging on to the banisters and crying.
"Bring her!" Marsita says.
"Tanya!" Marsita says, sharp like a drill sergeant bark and Tanya jumps I feel her arm muscle jump in my hand and I let her go and drop my bag and take DiDi by the shoulders. Her shoulders feel like electricity. Like one time when I was a kid I stuck a knife in a power outlet and it vibrated my hole body just like DiDi's body vibrating here and I take hold of DiDi's arm with one hand and go to follow Marsita and SiSi and Tanya down the stairs but DiDi yanks back so hard my feet go out from under me. She doesn't want to leave the banister. Glass and wood and bullets flying in the hallway behind us and a bunch of new holes letting in rays of light death rays of light only by the time the ray of light hits you you're already dead and dust making those death rays look solid flowing melted glass butter. Prying DiDi's fingers off the banister she grabs onto my arm and it hurts but at least I can move her now, get up and the suitcase strap is around my ankle follows me to the stairs DiDi sliding on the floor and a kind of a high squeal going on and I think it's the helicopter but then the helicopter moves away and the squeal is still there and it's DiDi through her clenched teeth drag her down the stairs she balls up and hangs on to my arm like she's going over a cliff and the suitcase strap comes off my ankle fall down the stairs rolling me bag DiDi me bag DiDi me bag me lost DiDi somewhere and catch up with Marsita and the rest at the bottom the fountain spraying water straight up in the air the statue gone and men are dead on the floor by the front door and there are death ray beams all over the place and two more men are shooting out the windows and new death ray holes come in the hall and Marsita has led us to a trap I think but then Marsita leading us around a corner to the right to some plywood hallway I hadn't been in before and it's quieter here and we stop.
Marsita is listening at a plywood door. SiSi are holding each other. Tanya is staring at her hands. DiDi is still curled up in a ball. Saying ahhhh ahhhhh. All high up and quiet and shaky. I walk up to Marsita, heart about four times bigger than usual and knocking into lungs on either side. Lungs that are no way near big enough.
The machine gun fire and helicopter noise and chunk chunk chunk are softer here, farther away and as I come up to Marsita she says “Come on” and “Get DiDi” and Marsita guides SiSi and Tanya and I get DiDi on her feet, up on those long legs and we follow Marsita left and right and left and left and then we're alongside that bus. That yellow school bus and the only light is coming through the bus's windshield and Marsita pulls SiSi and Tanya up the steps and pushes them down the aisle and Marsita sits down in the drivers seat while I pull DiDi up the steps and get her into a seat and sit next to her.
Next to DiDi. Breathing hard. Watching Marsita. She pumps the pedal. She turns the key. The engine turns over. The engine coughs. I cough. The engine catches. The engine quits. I'm looking ahead. Look through the windshield. Not really seeing. Not seeing at first. Then I see it. I see what I'm seeing. A bunch of guys. Guys in black suits. Not business suits, black swat team suits. And helmets. Hunkered down behind the heaps in the yard. Behind them a tank.
Maybe not a tank. Just an armored vehicle with a gun turret, okay, but it looks like a fucking tank. It's black. It's hard to see it through the windshield. Get up and stand next to Marsita trying to start the bus. Lean over to try to see through the haze on the windshield. The gun in the turret in the armored vehicle is not pointed at us. It's pointed over back where the tower is. Pointed over to where the chunk! chunk! chunk! sound is coming from. The armored vehicle is rolling, slow, trying to get through the heaps to get closer to the house. Crack! is the sound it makes when the gun in the turret goes off, fire spitting out, and the armored vehicle rocks on it's wheels.
The bus starts up and shakes and shudders on it's wheels, the fan belt screeching like there's a cat caught in there. An explosion right next to the armored vehicle rocks it sideways, and it takes off pretty fast on a flanking run across the front yard, away from us. My lungs are taking in a big breath of relieved air when the helicopter shows up, cutting sideways across the sky in front of the hacienda, guns blazing away under it's belly.
The bus's engine has settled down to a sort of steady running with a cough or two now and then.
"You drive!" Marsita says to me.
"Me?" I say. I'm about to say something else but Marsita comes up with a pistol out of a bag behind the driver's seat. A big and shiny pistol with a hole I could fit my head into pointed at my face.
"The helicopter," I say. I turn and point and there's a flash when something hits the helicopter and it starts to smoke as the pilot takes it up fast and then away from the house, out over the jungle, trailing some kind of flaming liquid.
"Good pointing," Marsita says. "Now drive."
Okay. I get in the driver's seat, let off the emergency brake, push in the clutch. It goes down maybe eighteen inches from all the way up to all the way down on the floor. I shove the gearshift into gear. After the Mercedes, it feels like I'm reaching to Equador.
"Hold on!" I yell. I try to yell, but my teeth are stuck together and I don't know how loud it really is.
I let up the clutch, giving it some gas. Let it up about three inches. Let it up slow, don't want to stall the engine, don't want to make the bus jump forward just a little bit and then stall jump forward just enough to draw everyone's attention and then stall, sitting duck. Big yellow sitting duck bus called attention to itself and then stalled with a big huge wide picture glass window in front and me framed in the window, sitting pretty, sitting duck and all those guys out there with automatic guns able to shoot me like a big fat sitting duck framed in a barrel. I let the clutch up to six inches above the floor and give it a little more gas. Nothing.
"¿Que Problema?" Marsita says.
Marsita wraps her arm around the pole next to the driver's seat. I smell gun oil and gun powder and sex and sweat. She's got a big old automatic rifle with a long curving clip sticking out of the bottom and another clip taped upside down to the first clip with duct tape. Sitting duck tape.
"Don't want to stall it." I say.
I let the clutch out to nine inches above the floor. My left calf is starting to spasm.
"It catches high," Marsita says, loud, her pitch higher. Her grip tightens on the rifle and she braces one leg out behind her.
"Gun it!" Marsita says, "Pop the clutch! It'll work."
I do it. I floor the gas and let the clutch pedal push my foot up all the way and the bus jumps up like a goosed duck and we're bouncing across the lawn. There’s a sound like wood tearing behind us.
We're moving across the lawn fast, the bus has got pretty good pickup for a bus. But then the windshield gets a star in it, then two more stars real quick after that and for a tiny fraction of a second I wonder how I'm gonna see and then another tiny fraction later and I realize that it's bullets hitting the windshield, real live bullets trying to kill me and then my ear is blasted by the gun going off in Marsita's hands next to my head and the windshield is gone in a billion pieces out on the hood and in my lap and face and the guys who were shooting at us are ducking down behind the heaps and speaking of heaps Bam! we hit the rear fender of one that was in the way because I'm heading straight for that driveway through the woods and I don't care who or what is in my way and Marsita is shooting but not aiming just letting the bullets go out in front of the bus and Bam! we hit the rear fender of a car a big Chevy Suburban painted black that just came out of the road and saw us and tried to turn out of the way and almost made it and then we're on the road and Marsita stops shooting and runs to the back of the bus. The windows back there are starred for an instant and then Marsita is shooting out the back and I'm slowing down because there's a sharp corner coming up and if I hit it at this speed we'll roll. The rear end still breaks out a little in the dirt on the corner and the far rear corner of the bus Bam! sideswipes a tree but that bumps us back on track and we're rolling again, bouncing down the road.
I look in the rear view. No one's back there. Shit, I think, did I lose them?
"Marsita!" I yell, trying to look in the rear view and watch the road ahead. Trying to do both at the same time. Trying not to look in the rear view but eyes going there anyway. The road ahead is twisting and turning again, I have to slow down, but at least it seems like no one's shooting at us anymore.
"Marsita!" I yell. I think my voice cracks. My voice doesn't sound right to me.
I see her hand come up from behind the second to rear seats.
"DiDi." Marsita's voice says, "SiSi!"
"Okay!" DiDi's voice says.
"Aqui!" SiSi's voices say, almost together, one pitched a little higher than the other, almost in harmony.
"Tanya?" DiDi says.
I have to slow down to go across a narrow bridge. The bridge doesn't look strong enough to hold the bus, but at least the bridge is so short that the front end of the bus will be almost off before the rear end gets on. Marsita is back next to me, squatting by the driver's seat, holding the rifle, strap wrapped around her forearm. The muscles in her arm stand out like a weightlifter’s.
"You okay?" Marsita says.
"Yeah, I think so," I say, "But what the fuck is going on."
"CIA," Marsita says, "Deep cover. Thought you were a contact."
Branches were rubbing along the roof of the bus. Branches trying to come in the front windshield, that hole where the windshield had been. The bus bouncing in the ruts of the road. Marsita holds herself easily with one hand on the pole, squatting on legs that bounce like the springs of the bus to keep her steady. Bouncing legs in my jeans. She's ripped a knee out and is oozing blood. Her blood turns the white fibers of the jeans fabric dark red. If jeans are blue, I think, how come the threads when they rip are always white?
"Contact?" I say. What was she saying? Another branch tries to come in the front windshield hole. How am I gonna get back to town?
"I thought there'd maybe been a change in plan and you were coming to warn me?" Marsita says.
"Warn you?" I say. I hope my Mercedes still has all the gas I put in it yesterday. I hope it's right where I parked it.
"About the change in plans." Marsita says.
"What change in plans?" I say. We have to change our plans, I think. What's wrong with my plan, I think. If I just can get back to the Mercedes, I think, everything will be all right.
"About the raid." Marsita says, "You're not listening!"
"Listening?" I say. I think I say. I think the turn to the village is up here a little. I don't know why I think that, but I really hope it is. We come around a corner to a T in the road. Right, I think, I have to turn right here.
"Listen," Marsita says. Marsita takes me by the shoulder and my muscles spasm, all my muscles together, my left foot falls off the clutch while my right foot is still on the brake and the engine stalls.
It is quiet in the jungle. The bus's engine makes ticking noises. Birds are calling. Sun is coming through the opening in the trees made by the intersection. It falls on the hood and reflects up into my eyes, butter yellow. The jungle smell comes in from the windshield hole, pushing away the gunpowder smell.
My jaw hurts. Try opening my mouth. Mouth does not feel comfortable opening.
"Listen," Marsita says. "I'm a CIA agent, working with the Colombian government to shut down these drug suppliers. The raid was planned for today, but when you showed up, I thought there might have been some change, so I had to get close to you to find out."
"CIA?" I say. Had to get close, I think.
"Yes, CIA." Marsita says. “There's a bunker, under the house. I was going to hide there. That was the original plan."
Marsita's eyes are deep rich loam of the earth eyes. Marsita's eyes look hard into mine. Marsita's hand on my arm, my arm shaking. My hands shaking. I see my hands shaking, my legs shaking and then I'm shaking all over, shivering, cold and the lights are going out, slow and brown and soft.
"Por favor," she says, squinting into the light.
I place the flashlight on the nightstand so that the beam bounces off the ceiling. The ceiling has been finished in wallboard but never taped or painted. The indirect light is much kinder to us both. Marsita drops her hand and walks to the side of the bed, using all of her muscles, all her leg muscles, all her arm muscles, all her stomach muscles, her walk is a panther's walk. Her eyes are deep golden brown loam of the earth Treasure of the Sierra Madres eyes. Her breasts are small perfect breasts and the swell of her hips and curve of her thighs is a beautiful terrible tragedy. A tragedy that such beauty can not last. A glory that exists for a terrible moment, then is gone. Her walk, her eyes, her muscles, her inevitable end, it is enough to make me cry.
The cocaine is wearing off.
Marsita slides onto the bed in one motion, on top of the sheet that covers me, and lays on her side beside me, one hand propping up her head, the other stretched along her thigh, one finger of that stretched out hand, pointed, running up and down on her leg, a little dent of flesh filling with shadow, following the tip of her finger. Marsita's eyes are hot fires in red clay ovens beneath half-lowered lids eyes and I can feel a heat emanating from her center, from the furnace of her body. My body is responding, a snake coming out from between the rocks to feel the warmth of Marsita the sun.
"Are you really driving to the South Pole?" Marsita says.
"I don't think I'll make it quite that far, do you?" I say.
"Mmmm, I don't know. You look very...capable." Marsita says. Her eyes are down.
"It'll definitely be a long and interesting trip." I say.
"Mmm, hmm, and hard, I suppose." Marsita says.
She runs her fingertips up my leg through the sheets, avoiding direct contact with my genitals, but causing the sheet to slide in such a way that my penis jumps. She smiles and winks at me.
"Yes," she says, "very hard."
* * *
Tragedy runs down the walls and drips from the ceiling. The world is a hard and cruel place. Children die needlessly. People starve from indifference. I see the cold reality of our hopelessness trapped in harsh black and white on the wall. The shadows of the trees outside, edged in diamond clarity, rip jagged across the floor and up the wall. My life is a disaster. The lives of those I touch are shattered. Fate comes crackling down upon me, crushing my world, killing everyone around me and then hurting me. Hurting me with such finality that there can never be any coming back. I watch with a sinking, that awful knowledge foremost in my mind that from this injury I can never recover. That I will be crippled forever. That there is no turning back. I remember too late why I gave up cocaine, so many years ago.
The small, warm body next to mine quivers. Her foot, walking in some dream pasture, tapping against mine. Her hand on my chest twitching, trying to pick up some dream thing.
It is time to go.
I try to get out of bed without disturbing Marsita, but she wakes up saying No, no, no, sleepy, like a kitten.
"What is it?" she says, leaning on one elbow and rubbing her eyes with thumb and forefinger.
"Nothing, chiquita, I have to go." I say. Standing by the bed, reaching for my clothes.
"Go?" she repeats as if the word makes no sense to her. "You can't go."
"Whattaya mean I can't go?" I say.
"They'll shoot you." she laughs and lays back down. The moonlight slides across her gunmetal skin. A single nipple stands like a dark tower in a moat of muddy water.
I'd forgotten the guards. They probably wouldn't look kindly on anyone trying to sneak out in the middle of the night. I sit down on the edge of the bed, one shoe in my hand. A tragic shoe. Lost and alone.
"We will go in the morning," Marsita says, "we can..."
"We?!" I say.
"...say we are going to the village for shopping..." Marsita says.
"Whattaya mean, 'We'?" I say.
"...and we will just keep driving," Marsita says, "oh darling!"
I stand up. Backing away.
"I don't think that's a good idea..." I say.
"It will work, you wait and see." Marsita says, "Now come and sit back down over here and we will make love one more time and go to sleep. We will need our rest for the trip. Come!"
I shut the louvered doors over the windows. No more tragic shadows on the walls.
* * *
There are dogs running through my dream. Big heavy leather dogs with buckles and straps running on the boardwalk next to my beach chair. Someone pulls the towel off me and starts shaking my shoulder, and the beach is a room and the dogs are men going down the stairs and Marsita is peeking through the door cracked open, naked, holding the sheet to her chest, but her back, her small shoulders, shoulder blades smooth overhangs curve of back, bumps of backbone, dimples that hurt my eyes and my heart over swell of hips so round and then legs. Stripes from the louvers, sun coming in the louvers stripes on the wall, the door jamb, the legs the door all like a kind of topographical map showing the hills and valleys of Marsitaland.
"¿Que pasa?" I say. "¿Quien es?"
"No se," Marsita says, "Son los guardia. The guards."
The room is dim and hazy but bright morning light is squeezing through the louvers in the shutters, and around the edges of the shutters over the windows. The big floor to ceiling windows with the louvered shutters over them. Maybe they're really doors, not windows. You can open them up and walk through them.
"Put your clothes on!" Marsita says. Marsita runs to the windows, running on her toes, short steps, holding the sheet over her breasts and hunching forward, eyes sharp and watching, mouth tight. Marsita looks through a broken slat and curses. I drag my pants on.
"¿Que?" I say.
I hear a distant thumping noise. It is a helicopter.
Marsita runs to my suitcase, running on her toes, short steps. She drops the sheet on the way.
"A raid," Marsita says, "Out by the lab."
The lab is out at the back of the plantation grounds, maybe 300 yards away from the hacienda. Omar showed it to me last night while we were buzzing around.
Marsita pulls a pair of my jeans out of my suitcase. The helicopter sound gets louder. I look for my shirt.
There is a burping sound. Gunfire.
"Shit." I say. I think I say.
Marsita pulls one of my T-shirts on over her head. She throws another at me and I struggle to put it on. There doesn't seem to be enough holes.
The windows explode glass and wood flying around the other end of the room, the farthest window. Holes appear high in the wall over there and in the ceiling. Marsita and I drop to the floor. There is a louder chunk! chunk! sound that shakes the floor every time it happens. Which is two or three times a second, then a pause for about a second maybe and then another series chunk!, chunk!, chunk!.
"¡Vamanos!" Marsita says from the other side of the bed. I can see her over there by looking under the bed. She is on her hands and knees and is opening the door. I wonder if I can fit under the bed. I think getting on all fours is presenting too high a target. The bed's too low, though.
I leave the shirt half on, one arm and my head through but the rest of the shirt bunched up around my shoulders. I start to get on all fours and another window explodes bullets glass wood splinters flying all over the room and my legs push off like a frog in a frying pan and I hit ground again by the door, next to my suitcase. I scrabble out the door, legs slipping on the area rug on the slick wood, arm caught on something but not stopping to see what. I get out in the hallway and sit up next to the wall, which is what everyone else is doing.
Everyone else being SiSi, Marsita and Tanya. Everyone else but Maria, who is lying on the floor her head and shoulders like nailed to the floor not moving her eyes open and not seeing blood in them and spreading around her head on the floor and her legs kick and flex like they want to get up and hands slapping in the puddle of blood and then Maria stops her legs stop and her arm stops and Maria stops.
Marsita grabs SiSi by one of their hands. SiSi are staring at Maria. Tanya is crying and her pouty lips are pouting all out and she has blood on her face from Maria splashing. Black blood in Tanya's white blond hair.
"This way!" Marsita says. Marsita pulls one of SiSi up and the other follows and I grab for Tanya and she jumps back from me like she didn't know I was there and looks at me like she doesn't know who I am. Grab her hand and this time she goes with me and we follow Marsita and SiSi down the hall bent over running and I've got my suitcase somehow and it's dragging on the floor spilling socks and underwear.
The helicopter comes in close and the wind it makes, the sound and noise blows dust and paper and crap around in the hallway and then at the top of the stairs. DiDi is there, hanging on to the banisters and crying.
"Bring her!" Marsita says.
"Tanya!" Marsita says, sharp like a drill sergeant bark and Tanya jumps I feel her arm muscle jump in my hand and I let her go and drop my bag and take DiDi by the shoulders. Her shoulders feel like electricity. Like one time when I was a kid I stuck a knife in a power outlet and it vibrated my hole body just like DiDi's body vibrating here and I take hold of DiDi's arm with one hand and go to follow Marsita and SiSi and Tanya down the stairs but DiDi yanks back so hard my feet go out from under me. She doesn't want to leave the banister. Glass and wood and bullets flying in the hallway behind us and a bunch of new holes letting in rays of light death rays of light only by the time the ray of light hits you you're already dead and dust making those death rays look solid flowing melted glass butter. Prying DiDi's fingers off the banister she grabs onto my arm and it hurts but at least I can move her now, get up and the suitcase strap is around my ankle follows me to the stairs DiDi sliding on the floor and a kind of a high squeal going on and I think it's the helicopter but then the helicopter moves away and the squeal is still there and it's DiDi through her clenched teeth drag her down the stairs she balls up and hangs on to my arm like she's going over a cliff and the suitcase strap comes off my ankle fall down the stairs rolling me bag DiDi me bag DiDi me bag me lost DiDi somewhere and catch up with Marsita and the rest at the bottom the fountain spraying water straight up in the air the statue gone and men are dead on the floor by the front door and there are death ray beams all over the place and two more men are shooting out the windows and new death ray holes come in the hall and Marsita has led us to a trap I think but then Marsita leading us around a corner to the right to some plywood hallway I hadn't been in before and it's quieter here and we stop.
Marsita is listening at a plywood door. SiSi are holding each other. Tanya is staring at her hands. DiDi is still curled up in a ball. Saying ahhhh ahhhhh. All high up and quiet and shaky. I walk up to Marsita, heart about four times bigger than usual and knocking into lungs on either side. Lungs that are no way near big enough.
The machine gun fire and helicopter noise and chunk chunk chunk are softer here, farther away and as I come up to Marsita she says “Come on” and “Get DiDi” and Marsita guides SiSi and Tanya and I get DiDi on her feet, up on those long legs and we follow Marsita left and right and left and left and then we're alongside that bus. That yellow school bus and the only light is coming through the bus's windshield and Marsita pulls SiSi and Tanya up the steps and pushes them down the aisle and Marsita sits down in the drivers seat while I pull DiDi up the steps and get her into a seat and sit next to her.
Next to DiDi. Breathing hard. Watching Marsita. She pumps the pedal. She turns the key. The engine turns over. The engine coughs. I cough. The engine catches. The engine quits. I'm looking ahead. Look through the windshield. Not really seeing. Not seeing at first. Then I see it. I see what I'm seeing. A bunch of guys. Guys in black suits. Not business suits, black swat team suits. And helmets. Hunkered down behind the heaps in the yard. Behind them a tank.
Maybe not a tank. Just an armored vehicle with a gun turret, okay, but it looks like a fucking tank. It's black. It's hard to see it through the windshield. Get up and stand next to Marsita trying to start the bus. Lean over to try to see through the haze on the windshield. The gun in the turret in the armored vehicle is not pointed at us. It's pointed over back where the tower is. Pointed over to where the chunk! chunk! chunk! sound is coming from. The armored vehicle is rolling, slow, trying to get through the heaps to get closer to the house. Crack! is the sound it makes when the gun in the turret goes off, fire spitting out, and the armored vehicle rocks on it's wheels.
The bus starts up and shakes and shudders on it's wheels, the fan belt screeching like there's a cat caught in there. An explosion right next to the armored vehicle rocks it sideways, and it takes off pretty fast on a flanking run across the front yard, away from us. My lungs are taking in a big breath of relieved air when the helicopter shows up, cutting sideways across the sky in front of the hacienda, guns blazing away under it's belly.
The bus's engine has settled down to a sort of steady running with a cough or two now and then.
Marsita jumps up out of the driver's seat.
"You drive!" Marsita says to me.
"Me?" I say. I'm about to say something else but Marsita comes up with a pistol out of a bag behind the driver's seat. A big and shiny pistol with a hole I could fit my head into pointed at my face.
"The helicopter," I say. I turn and point and there's a flash when something hits the helicopter and it starts to smoke as the pilot takes it up fast and then away from the house, out over the jungle, trailing some kind of flaming liquid.
"Good pointing," Marsita says. "Now drive."
Okay. I get in the driver's seat, let off the emergency brake, push in the clutch. It goes down maybe eighteen inches from all the way up to all the way down on the floor. I shove the gearshift into gear. After the Mercedes, it feels like I'm reaching to Equador.
"Hold on!" I yell. I try to yell, but my teeth are stuck together and I don't know how loud it really is.
I let up the clutch, giving it some gas. Let it up about three inches. Let it up slow, don't want to stall the engine, don't want to make the bus jump forward just a little bit and then stall jump forward just enough to draw everyone's attention and then stall, sitting duck. Big yellow sitting duck bus called attention to itself and then stalled with a big huge wide picture glass window in front and me framed in the window, sitting pretty, sitting duck and all those guys out there with automatic guns able to shoot me like a big fat sitting duck framed in a barrel. I let the clutch up to six inches above the floor and give it a little more gas. Nothing.
"¿Que Problema?" Marsita says.
Marsita wraps her arm around the pole next to the driver's seat. I smell gun oil and gun powder and sex and sweat. She's got a big old automatic rifle with a long curving clip sticking out of the bottom and another clip taped upside down to the first clip with duct tape. Sitting duck tape.
"Don't want to stall it." I say.
I let the clutch out to nine inches above the floor. My left calf is starting to spasm.
"It catches high," Marsita says, loud, her pitch higher. Her grip tightens on the rifle and she braces one leg out behind her.
"Gun it!" Marsita says, "Pop the clutch! It'll work."
I do it. I floor the gas and let the clutch pedal push my foot up all the way and the bus jumps up like a goosed duck and we're bouncing across the lawn. There’s a sound like wood tearing behind us.
* * *
We're moving across the lawn fast, the bus has got pretty good pickup for a bus. But then the windshield gets a star in it, then two more stars real quick after that and for a tiny fraction of a second I wonder how I'm gonna see and then another tiny fraction later and I realize that it's bullets hitting the windshield, real live bullets trying to kill me and then my ear is blasted by the gun going off in Marsita's hands next to my head and the windshield is gone in a billion pieces out on the hood and in my lap and face and the guys who were shooting at us are ducking down behind the heaps and speaking of heaps Bam! we hit the rear fender of one that was in the way because I'm heading straight for that driveway through the woods and I don't care who or what is in my way and Marsita is shooting but not aiming just letting the bullets go out in front of the bus and Bam! we hit the rear fender of a car a big Chevy Suburban painted black that just came out of the road and saw us and tried to turn out of the way and almost made it and then we're on the road and Marsita stops shooting and runs to the back of the bus. The windows back there are starred for an instant and then Marsita is shooting out the back and I'm slowing down because there's a sharp corner coming up and if I hit it at this speed we'll roll. The rear end still breaks out a little in the dirt on the corner and the far rear corner of the bus Bam! sideswipes a tree but that bumps us back on track and we're rolling again, bouncing down the road.
I look in the rear view. No one's back there. Shit, I think, did I lose them?
"Marsita!" I yell, trying to look in the rear view and watch the road ahead. Trying to do both at the same time. Trying not to look in the rear view but eyes going there anyway. The road ahead is twisting and turning again, I have to slow down, but at least it seems like no one's shooting at us anymore.
"Marsita!" I yell. I think my voice cracks. My voice doesn't sound right to me.
I see her hand come up from behind the second to rear seats.
"DiDi." Marsita's voice says, "SiSi!"
"Okay!" DiDi's voice says.
"Aqui!" SiSi's voices say, almost together, one pitched a little higher than the other, almost in harmony.
"Tanya?" DiDi says.
"We've got her," One of SiSi says.
I have to slow down to go across a narrow bridge. The bridge doesn't look strong enough to hold the bus, but at least the bridge is so short that the front end of the bus will be almost off before the rear end gets on. Marsita is back next to me, squatting by the driver's seat, holding the rifle, strap wrapped around her forearm. The muscles in her arm stand out like a weightlifter’s.
"You okay?" Marsita says.
"Yeah, I think so," I say, "But what the fuck is going on."
"CIA," Marsita says, "Deep cover. Thought you were a contact."
Branches were rubbing along the roof of the bus. Branches trying to come in the front windshield, that hole where the windshield had been. The bus bouncing in the ruts of the road. Marsita holds herself easily with one hand on the pole, squatting on legs that bounce like the springs of the bus to keep her steady. Bouncing legs in my jeans. She's ripped a knee out and is oozing blood. Her blood turns the white fibers of the jeans fabric dark red. If jeans are blue, I think, how come the threads when they rip are always white?
"Contact?" I say. What was she saying? Another branch tries to come in the front windshield hole. How am I gonna get back to town?
"I thought there'd maybe been a change in plan and you were coming to warn me?" Marsita says.
"Warn you?" I say. I hope my Mercedes still has all the gas I put in it yesterday. I hope it's right where I parked it.
"About the change in plans." Marsita says.
"What change in plans?" I say. We have to change our plans, I think. What's wrong with my plan, I think. If I just can get back to the Mercedes, I think, everything will be all right.
"About the raid." Marsita says, "You're not listening!"
"Listening?" I say. I think I say. I think the turn to the village is up here a little. I don't know why I think that, but I really hope it is. We come around a corner to a T in the road. Right, I think, I have to turn right here.
"Listen," Marsita says. Marsita takes me by the shoulder and my muscles spasm, all my muscles together, my left foot falls off the clutch while my right foot is still on the brake and the engine stalls.
It is quiet in the jungle. The bus's engine makes ticking noises. Birds are calling. Sun is coming through the opening in the trees made by the intersection. It falls on the hood and reflects up into my eyes, butter yellow. The jungle smell comes in from the windshield hole, pushing away the gunpowder smell.
My jaw hurts. Try opening my mouth. Mouth does not feel comfortable opening.
"Listen," Marsita says. "I'm a CIA agent, working with the Colombian government to shut down these drug suppliers. The raid was planned for today, but when you showed up, I thought there might have been some change, so I had to get close to you to find out."
"CIA?" I say. Had to get close, I think.
"Yes, CIA." Marsita says. “There's a bunker, under the house. I was going to hide there. That was the original plan."
Marsita's eyes are deep rich loam of the earth eyes. Marsita's eyes look hard into mine. Marsita's hand on my arm, my arm shaking. My hands shaking. I see my hands shaking, my legs shaking and then I'm shaking all over, shivering, cold and the lights are going out, slow and brown and soft.
Cabo San Lucas
Cabo had the feel of unfinished business. Walking down the dusty streets with no names out back away from the beach. Out away from the harbor and marina, there were vacant lots with rebar growing from cement foundations along with the weeds. Buildings started but never completed. The weeds and the cinder blocks and the rebar there untouched for years. They were building new hotels down by the water, right across the street from our unfinished hotel. Like they had started to build a hotel and got it part way done and then decided that they didn't like it and just left it there and went next door and started another one. Like a little girl named Megan with a new sketch book would put a couple of crayon lines, maybe a circle, gonna draw a dragon or maybe a horse. Gonna draw a big green dragon with silver teeth and lots of shiny scales and wings that are crimson and gold edged. Wings that spread out over the page and then out of the page and over the land like a big crimson and gold cloud. This big dragon with silver teeth and fire breath and smoke from his nose and diamond claws and eyes like cauldrons. Eyes like cauldrons full of hot melted smoking glowing steel ready to pour out of the edges of his eyes and burn a big hole in the ground. Or maybe a horse. A big black Arabian stallion with a shiny coat that shows all the muscles. Hooves like polished blue steel like a gun. A mane so long it could touch the ground and all shiny and straight and black and a tail like that too. A tail so shiny and black and wild it could whip you. And the horse is rearing up on her hind legs and screaming in the wind on a rocky mountain top because it doesn't want you to come any closer. Because she's a wild horse and she doesn't want to be broken.
But those couple of lines there. Those couple of black crayon lines, kinda rough and crumbly on the page, those don't look anything like that horse. They don't look like they could ever be anything like that horse or that dragon either, so it would be better just to start over. Better just to turn to a fresh blank page and there on that blank page you can see how great that horse or that dragon is going to look, how real and fire breathing and hoof pounding and jumping out at you they are going to look but somehow between seeing the dragon on that blank page and knowing how it should be and reaching to touch the green crayon to the blank paper, somewhere in that space between your head and the paper that your hand has to cross. Somewhere in that space growing wider and wider the closer the crayon gets to the paper so you have to reach farther and farther, only the farther you reach the harder it is to see the dragon, the harder it is to see all the scales and the crimson and gold wings and the diamond claws, and then when the crayon touches the paper and makes those first few lines, all shaky and crumbling crayon, you know. You just know that those lines, those crumbly green crayon lines on the paper, those lines will never make the dragon. Those lines aren't even close, you can't use those lines, it's not like the dragon you want at all. So you have to start over again, have to turn the page and get a clean sheet and start all over again and pretty soon you're halfway through the sketchbook and there's just a bunch of lines that don't look like a dragon. Don't look like a horse. Don't look like anything, and never will.
A lot of this was going on all over, in Cabo, with buildings.
In the hotel across from us, the one they were building, at night the construction workers would string up their hammocks between the girders. Would hang quilts and blankets to make little rooms. Would have a charcoal fire in an old 50 gallon drum turned on it's side and flattened out and cook their rice and beans and smoke Marlboros and talk and eat until it was time to sleep and then they would climb into their hammocks or roll up in their quilts and blankets on the open floors and sleep until it was time to get up and make breakfast and start working again. Jorge was there.
Jorge was a high steel worker. Jorge worked on the office towers in Mexico City until the bust and then he'd left his wife and children in their shack in the Barrio Juanita dela Velo Blanco and had hitched a ride to the coast to build hotels in Puerto Vallerta. Jorge had worked on the hotel Los Ochos Cascadas in Puerto Vallerta for a year and when that was done the contractor asked Jorge if he would come to Cabo to work on the sister hotel. The contractor liked Jorge because Jorge worked hard and steady and didn't go get drunk and didn't disappear for days at a time. Every night after eating rice and beans and a fish taco, Jorge would climb up to the highest part of the building, where it was coolest. Jorge would string his rope and blanket hammock between two beams where it would catch the sea breeze. Up there the stars were easy to see. There was a candle to light and between the stars and the moon if there was one and the candle flame there was enough light to see the small notebook. The small green covered notebook with the spiral wire through the holes on one side. Jorge would sit and hold his notebook so the light from the candle would show on the page and he would write a letter to his wife and children. Every day Jorge wrote to tell his wife what happened that day, even if it was nothing exciting, just that they'd finished another floor or that he saw a skydiver jump out of a plane and land on the town beach. He wrote a page or so everyday and saved the pages until payday. On payday, Jorge would put in a cashier's check he had made out to his wife, with most of his pay in it. Jorge didn't need much, just enough to buy his food. Jorge worked all day every day but Sunday and then he would go to church and pray, thanking God for his good fortune and asking Him to watch over his wife and children while he was in Cabo. At night he wrote to his wife, then slept under the stars, in the highest part of the building.
This is why I didn't go home for my sister's funeral.
Our second day in Cabo, Darlene and I walked all around the bay. On the east side of the bay, they were putting up more new hotels. On the west side was the main marina, and the place where in the afternoons, a cruise ship would send in a small boat full of cruise ship tourists.
There was a kind of bazaar there, where the cruise ship tourists came ashore. The sun was bright and hot.
The bazaar was an area with a wooden plank floor and a kind of a roof made of two by twos supported by four by four posts and some heavier beams to hold up the two by twos. The two by twos were spaced about five or six inches apart. The sun shining through the two by twos made stripes on everything. Everything underneath the canopy was striped. The stripes flowed over the tables and stands and people like someone had come along with a spray gun and a ruler and painted everything. Just walked in with the spray gun and a billion gallons of black paint and looked at the work order in his hand. The work order that said paint everything with two inch stripes. Leave a four inch space between each stripe. He looked down at the work order and looked at the bazaar and all the people and tables and pottery and jewelry and clothes and blankets and cacti and hats and umbrellas and painted ceramic lighthouses that said Cabo San Lucas and then at the work order and shrugged and said "Okey dokey!" and started spraying. He stretched a string along from one end to the other and then just pulled the spray gun trigger and started spraying lines, two inches wide with a four inch space. Everything got striped. Everybody got striped. It was hard to see because of all the stripes but he got the job done anyway. All the stripes all parallel and even.
I don't know if that's a good analogy.
"Time for cervesa," I said.
"Thought you'd never ask." Darlene said.
We went to a bar near the bazaar that had an outdoor patio and tables with dried palm leaf umbrellas over them. We had to duck to get under the edge of the palm leaves, and we sat down, looking out over the bay. A cruise ship had come in while we were in the bazaar. It was too big to come up to the docks of the marina, so there were some smaller boats ferrying tourists to shore, so they could shop at the bazaar.
"I guess there's no waiters," Darlene said.
"Oh," I said. I looked around to the building that the bar was in. There was an outdoor bar and a woman was waiting behind it. The sun was so bright, and the roof of the building hung over the bar, so I couldn't really see in there.
"I'll be back," I said, like Arnold in The Terminator.
"Okey doke," Darlene said, trying to sound all low like me doing Arnold.
I went to the bar and asked for Cervesa.
"What kind?" the woman said. She was a short woman with a white blouse and a striped skirt. the skirt was striped red and white and green and yellow and kind of stuck out from her legs like she had petticoats under it. Her English was better than my Spanish, even though she left consonants off here and there, so it sounded more like "Wha kine?" but she really didn't sound much different than a lot of Brooklynites I've known.
"What kinds do you have?" I asked.
"Corolla, Negro Modella." she said.
"Dos Corollas, por favor," I said. I held up two fingers to make sure I got the number right. She went over to a low white cooler and opened it up and looked inside. I pulled a bunch of Mexican currency out of my pocket. There were lots of bills with very high numbers on them. They looked like play money. “Cuanto?"
"Cinco mil." She said. She put the two beers down on the counter and took a bottle opener out of her skirt pocket and popped the tops off in two quick movements. Then, since I was still trying to translate Cinco Mil because I had to remember that mil meant thousand, not million, she said. "Fi tousan pesos."
She pointed at a bill in my hand. I gave it to her and then picked a hundred peso coin out of the pile and put it on the counter. She smiled, bright teeth in the shadow under the overhang.
"Muchas Gracias," I said.
"Gracias," she said.
We got back to the hotel when the sun was going down over the hills to the west of town. We were walking slowly, my arm around her shoulder, her arm around my waist, her head on my shoulder, my head on hers. We walked up to the hotel past the empty deli case and the picnic tables and the bar and the umbrellas. And the moon. And the stars.
Roberto was behind the counter, and when he saw us he got excited. I mean he started bobbing up and down on his toes and doing this thing with his hands, not exactly waving, but they were jumping around a lot. Omar was there, too.
"A message!" Roberto said.
"You had a phone call," Omar said.
"Muy importante!" Roberto said.
"You have to call home." Omar said.
"Call home?" I said. What home? Call Mark and Mare and Adrian and Dave and Ogly the dog?
"What's the message?" Darlene said.
Roberto was waving a piece of paper and pushing the phone toward us. Omar took the paper from Roberto and put it flat on the counter.
"Your sister," Omar said.
"My sister?" Darlene said.
"No," Omar said, "His sister."
"Your sister," Omar said to me.
I looked at the paper and the phone. The area code was 516. That was Long Island. That was Joyce's number. How had Joyce called me here? I hadn't told anyone where I was going. Hadn't told any of my family. They were all so far away, it just hadn't seemed like a necessity. How do you make a phone call back to the states from Mexico. There was no way they could have found me here.
"You have to call Joyce." Darlene said.
"Um, yeah," I said. Looked at the phone. Looked at the number on the paper.
"How, um, how do I do this?" I said.
"You have to dial the country code first," Omar said. "Here, I'll do it."
Omar picked up the phone while I stood there trying to figure out what was going on. Something bad was happening in my chest.
Omar handed me the phone and when I put it up to my ear it was ringing.
"Hello?" Joyce said. Her voice was low. So low.
"Joyce?" I said. "It's me."
"What...?" I started to say, but she was gone. Then my father came on the line.
"Son," my father said, "It's good we found you." His voice was low, so low, and my chest was beginning to hurt.
"Dad, what's going on?" I said. "How did you find me?"
"Are you sitting down?" my father said. Oh jesus christ he said are you sitting down.
"Just tell me what's going on." I said. I didn't want to say what's wrong, I didn't want anything to be wrong.
"It's Betty Jeanne," he said, "She's been murdered."
He said.
That's why they tell you to sit down. Because they don't use phrases like weak at the knees and a blow and it hits you just to be dramatic. Because it did hit me like someone socked me really hard in the chest and my legs couldn't hold me up any more and I was on my knees, forehead pressed up against the plywood reception desk and people’s legs all around me above me talking low and the lights from the candles flickered my shadow on the plywood and the cool evening breeze was running through the alley and the smell of tequila was strong from the bar and the stones of the walkway felt sharp on my knees and I couldn't breath.
"Dad." I said. But that's not what I said. I said the word Dad, but that word didn't mean just Dad.
Not Betty Jeanne.
"Dad" I said.
"I know, son," my father said.
You all know how my sister died. You all think you know. They plastered it all over the newspapers and in People magazine and called it the "Fatal Attraction" murder. They made three fucking TV movies about it and probably a couple of books. How the woman who murdered my sister shot her nine times with a twenty-two caliber pistol and left her bleeding to death to go suck off my sister's husband in the back seat of a car parked by a bowling alley.
I don't have to tell you about that.
But those couple of lines there. Those couple of black crayon lines, kinda rough and crumbly on the page, those don't look anything like that horse. They don't look like they could ever be anything like that horse or that dragon either, so it would be better just to start over. Better just to turn to a fresh blank page and there on that blank page you can see how great that horse or that dragon is going to look, how real and fire breathing and hoof pounding and jumping out at you they are going to look but somehow between seeing the dragon on that blank page and knowing how it should be and reaching to touch the green crayon to the blank paper, somewhere in that space between your head and the paper that your hand has to cross. Somewhere in that space growing wider and wider the closer the crayon gets to the paper so you have to reach farther and farther, only the farther you reach the harder it is to see the dragon, the harder it is to see all the scales and the crimson and gold wings and the diamond claws, and then when the crayon touches the paper and makes those first few lines, all shaky and crumbling crayon, you know. You just know that those lines, those crumbly green crayon lines on the paper, those lines will never make the dragon. Those lines aren't even close, you can't use those lines, it's not like the dragon you want at all. So you have to start over again, have to turn the page and get a clean sheet and start all over again and pretty soon you're halfway through the sketchbook and there's just a bunch of lines that don't look like a dragon. Don't look like a horse. Don't look like anything, and never will.
* * *
A lot of this was going on all over, in Cabo, with buildings.
In the hotel across from us, the one they were building, at night the construction workers would string up their hammocks between the girders. Would hang quilts and blankets to make little rooms. Would have a charcoal fire in an old 50 gallon drum turned on it's side and flattened out and cook their rice and beans and smoke Marlboros and talk and eat until it was time to sleep and then they would climb into their hammocks or roll up in their quilts and blankets on the open floors and sleep until it was time to get up and make breakfast and start working again. Jorge was there.
Jorge was a high steel worker. Jorge worked on the office towers in Mexico City until the bust and then he'd left his wife and children in their shack in the Barrio Juanita dela Velo Blanco and had hitched a ride to the coast to build hotels in Puerto Vallerta. Jorge had worked on the hotel Los Ochos Cascadas in Puerto Vallerta for a year and when that was done the contractor asked Jorge if he would come to Cabo to work on the sister hotel. The contractor liked Jorge because Jorge worked hard and steady and didn't go get drunk and didn't disappear for days at a time. Every night after eating rice and beans and a fish taco, Jorge would climb up to the highest part of the building, where it was coolest. Jorge would string his rope and blanket hammock between two beams where it would catch the sea breeze. Up there the stars were easy to see. There was a candle to light and between the stars and the moon if there was one and the candle flame there was enough light to see the small notebook. The small green covered notebook with the spiral wire through the holes on one side. Jorge would sit and hold his notebook so the light from the candle would show on the page and he would write a letter to his wife and children. Every day Jorge wrote to tell his wife what happened that day, even if it was nothing exciting, just that they'd finished another floor or that he saw a skydiver jump out of a plane and land on the town beach. He wrote a page or so everyday and saved the pages until payday. On payday, Jorge would put in a cashier's check he had made out to his wife, with most of his pay in it. Jorge didn't need much, just enough to buy his food. Jorge worked all day every day but Sunday and then he would go to church and pray, thanking God for his good fortune and asking Him to watch over his wife and children while he was in Cabo. At night he wrote to his wife, then slept under the stars, in the highest part of the building.
This is why I didn't go home for my sister's funeral.
Our second day in Cabo, Darlene and I walked all around the bay. On the east side of the bay, they were putting up more new hotels. On the west side was the main marina, and the place where in the afternoons, a cruise ship would send in a small boat full of cruise ship tourists.
There was a kind of bazaar there, where the cruise ship tourists came ashore. The sun was bright and hot.
The bazaar was an area with a wooden plank floor and a kind of a roof made of two by twos supported by four by four posts and some heavier beams to hold up the two by twos. The two by twos were spaced about five or six inches apart. The sun shining through the two by twos made stripes on everything. Everything underneath the canopy was striped. The stripes flowed over the tables and stands and people like someone had come along with a spray gun and a ruler and painted everything. Just walked in with the spray gun and a billion gallons of black paint and looked at the work order in his hand. The work order that said paint everything with two inch stripes. Leave a four inch space between each stripe. He looked down at the work order and looked at the bazaar and all the people and tables and pottery and jewelry and clothes and blankets and cacti and hats and umbrellas and painted ceramic lighthouses that said Cabo San Lucas and then at the work order and shrugged and said "Okey dokey!" and started spraying. He stretched a string along from one end to the other and then just pulled the spray gun trigger and started spraying lines, two inches wide with a four inch space. Everything got striped. Everybody got striped. It was hard to see because of all the stripes but he got the job done anyway. All the stripes all parallel and even.
I don't know if that's a good analogy.
When we got to the bazaar, there was hardly anybody there. I took some pictures of the bazaar and of Darlene in the bazaar trying on hats and making noises about the lighthouses. It was hard to see what was what because of the stripes. I bought a straw hat and a silver and turquoise money clip. Darlene bought a blanket for the beach. I bought Darlene some earrings. Silver earrings with little drop shaped turquoise stones hanging down. Darlene took the earrings she'd been wearing off and put on the new ones I bought for her. I took Darlene's picture with the earrings.
"Time for cervesa," I said.
"Thought you'd never ask." Darlene said.
We went to a bar near the bazaar that had an outdoor patio and tables with dried palm leaf umbrellas over them. We had to duck to get under the edge of the palm leaves, and we sat down, looking out over the bay. A cruise ship had come in while we were in the bazaar. It was too big to come up to the docks of the marina, so there were some smaller boats ferrying tourists to shore, so they could shop at the bazaar.
"I guess there's no waiters," Darlene said.
"Oh," I said. I looked around to the building that the bar was in. There was an outdoor bar and a woman was waiting behind it. The sun was so bright, and the roof of the building hung over the bar, so I couldn't really see in there.
"I'll be back," I said, like Arnold in The Terminator.
"Okey doke," Darlene said, trying to sound all low like me doing Arnold.
I went to the bar and asked for Cervesa.
"What kind?" the woman said. She was a short woman with a white blouse and a striped skirt. the skirt was striped red and white and green and yellow and kind of stuck out from her legs like she had petticoats under it. Her English was better than my Spanish, even though she left consonants off here and there, so it sounded more like "Wha kine?" but she really didn't sound much different than a lot of Brooklynites I've known.
"What kinds do you have?" I asked.
"Corolla, Negro Modella." she said.
"Dos Corollas, por favor," I said. I held up two fingers to make sure I got the number right. She went over to a low white cooler and opened it up and looked inside. I pulled a bunch of Mexican currency out of my pocket. There were lots of bills with very high numbers on them. They looked like play money. “Cuanto?"
"Cinco mil." She said. She put the two beers down on the counter and took a bottle opener out of her skirt pocket and popped the tops off in two quick movements. Then, since I was still trying to translate Cinco Mil because I had to remember that mil meant thousand, not million, she said. "Fi tousan pesos."
She pointed at a bill in my hand. I gave it to her and then picked a hundred peso coin out of the pile and put it on the counter. She smiled, bright teeth in the shadow under the overhang.
"Muchas Gracias," I said.
"Gracias," she said.
* * *
We got back to the hotel when the sun was going down over the hills to the west of town. We were walking slowly, my arm around her shoulder, her arm around my waist, her head on my shoulder, my head on hers. We walked up to the hotel past the empty deli case and the picnic tables and the bar and the umbrellas. And the moon. And the stars.
Roberto was behind the counter, and when he saw us he got excited. I mean he started bobbing up and down on his toes and doing this thing with his hands, not exactly waving, but they were jumping around a lot. Omar was there, too.
"A message!" Roberto said.
"You had a phone call," Omar said.
"Muy importante!" Roberto said.
"You have to call home." Omar said.
"Call home?" I said. What home? Call Mark and Mare and Adrian and Dave and Ogly the dog?
"What's the message?" Darlene said.
Roberto was waving a piece of paper and pushing the phone toward us. Omar took the paper from Roberto and put it flat on the counter.
"Your sister," Omar said.
"My sister?" Darlene said.
"No," Omar said, "His sister."
"Your sister," Omar said to me.
I looked at the paper and the phone. The area code was 516. That was Long Island. That was Joyce's number. How had Joyce called me here? I hadn't told anyone where I was going. Hadn't told any of my family. They were all so far away, it just hadn't seemed like a necessity. How do you make a phone call back to the states from Mexico. There was no way they could have found me here.
"You have to call Joyce." Darlene said.
"Um, yeah," I said. Looked at the phone. Looked at the number on the paper.
"How, um, how do I do this?" I said.
"You have to dial the country code first," Omar said. "Here, I'll do it."
Omar picked up the phone while I stood there trying to figure out what was going on. Something bad was happening in my chest.
Omar handed me the phone and when I put it up to my ear it was ringing.
"Hello?" Joyce said. Her voice was low. So low.
"Joyce?" I said. "It's me."
"Oh, thank god," Joyce said, "Talk to Daddy."
"What...?" I started to say, but she was gone. Then my father came on the line.
"Son," my father said, "It's good we found you." His voice was low, so low, and my chest was beginning to hurt.
"Dad, what's going on?" I said. "How did you find me?"
"Are you sitting down?" my father said. Oh jesus christ he said are you sitting down.
"Just tell me what's going on." I said. I didn't want to say what's wrong, I didn't want anything to be wrong.
"It's Betty Jeanne," he said, "She's been murdered."
He said.
That's why they tell you to sit down. Because they don't use phrases like weak at the knees and a blow and it hits you just to be dramatic. Because it did hit me like someone socked me really hard in the chest and my legs couldn't hold me up any more and I was on my knees, forehead pressed up against the plywood reception desk and people’s legs all around me above me talking low and the lights from the candles flickered my shadow on the plywood and the cool evening breeze was running through the alley and the smell of tequila was strong from the bar and the stones of the walkway felt sharp on my knees and I couldn't breath.
"Dad." I said. But that's not what I said. I said the word Dad, but that word didn't mean just Dad.
That word meant Dad, take it back and Dad how could you let it happen and Dad, you've ruined my vacation and Dad, it's too horrible to be true and Dad, make it all right, make it better, make it go away how could you tell me this how could you call me all the fucking three thousand miles away I am in Mexico in love in heaven in paradise and now it's all shit how could you do this to me how could I be so fucking selfish and oh dear god jesus christ betty jeanne no it can't be fucking true you fucking liar and god it must be true because he couldn't he wouldn't track me down all the way down here in Mexico when I didn't even tell the roommates where I was gonna be it's just too fucking much and oh my god dad, you, what are you going through how are you standing up how are you talking on the phone your oldest daughter your pride and joy your first born your betty jeanne.
Not Betty Jeanne.
"Dad" I said.
"I know, son," my father said.
* * *
You all know how my sister died. You all think you know. They plastered it all over the newspapers and in People magazine and called it the "Fatal Attraction" murder. They made three fucking TV movies about it and probably a couple of books. How the woman who murdered my sister shot her nine times with a twenty-two caliber pistol and left her bleeding to death to go suck off my sister's husband in the back seat of a car parked by a bowling alley.
I don't have to tell you about that.
Friday, January 28, 2005
Columbia
The place is an armed camp. Gates and guards and barbed wire and lookout towers. Up a narrow windy road with hidden traps and fold-up bridges across several streams. On the way up, bouncing around in the passenger seat while the three thugs squeezed like overgrown children in the back seat.
"Enough for an army of women," I say. “All that Avon.” I'm trying to get a laugh out of him.
"An army," Omar says. He isn't necessarily agreeing with me, more like he's testing out the sound of it.
"Yes," Omar says, "That's almost right, my friend. But the most beautiful and deadly army in the world. Knock you dead without any weapons, yes?"
The thugs in the back snicker goonfully. Like movie goons. Like stereotype goons.
"You will see, my friend," Omar says, "that this army of women, well, perhaps a platoon at most? They are quite good at following orders."
"They have learned," Omar says, "that not cooperating is not conducive, you know?"
We pull up in front of the house, and even as we are jolting to a stop the front screen door bangs open and a young woman, all legs and hair runs down the steps to greet the driver.
"Omar, Omar!" she yells, but I am distracted by the house. The structure. Whatever it is. Had been. Is becoming.
Start with had been. It had been a large white plantation home in the Georgian style, with fluted columns fronting a wide low porch. Two story, with a widow's walk and a low-ceilinged attic. Tall windows had looked out over a gently sloping lawn.
Now, Is becoming. Is now becoming inundated, overtaken, crowded on all sides to the point of exhaustion by rude additions of raw wood, peeling plyboard, canvas lean-tos and sheet metal sheer walls. A log watchtower rises from a back corner of the heap, with a rude ladder up to the platform. Barbed wire is strung along the edges, cruel party streamers. But the barbed wire isn't strung like the US Army or Marines would string barbed wire. The barbed wire is strung like by someone with the attention span of an avocado. Orange extension cords hang out of upper story windows in the central house and into spaces between panels on the cancerous growth on the outside. Underwear hangs on clothes lines between the columns, and someone has started to paint the front of the house a fluorescent green, but has given up or run out of paint. A collection of old cars and trucks, mostly '60s beaters from GM, Ford and Chrysler, stand in various stages of heapdom around the yard. An aluminum Boston Whaler lies belly deep in grass on top of what might be a shattered wooden boat trailer. Someone has started to paint the Boston Whaler the same green. The final, perhaps crowning touch is the school bus that has been partially built into the mass of stuff on the left side of the house. It still looks like it might be able to run, though its windshield is caked with dirt. A black lace bra hangs from the antenna.
While I am staring at the house, trying to climb out of the Bronco and stare at the house at the same time, everyone else is getting out of the Bronco and slamming doors and there are women coming out of the house, so many women.
The first woman, the young one with all the legs and hair, opens the back of the Bronco and starts rustling with the bags. Two other women come down the steps together, their hair is black and curly around their shoulders. Three more women stay up on the porch.
"This is my army," Omar says, "My platoon!"
Omar spreads his arms out and turns, pointing his smile at all the women.
"Who is that?" One woman says. She is standing at the center of stairs. Her hair is thick black, pulled back from her face hair. Her head seems fuzzy from all the short curly pieces that won't stay pulled back. Her skin is brown smooth evenly shaded skin. Her eyes are squinted almost shut eyes, eyebrows pulled down over them almost touching in the center. Her lips are full and generous lips, now pulled tight. She holds her arms crossed in front of her, standing back on one leg, the other leg in front, foot turned out. She wears a white tee shirt, a red embroidered skirt to mid calf, and black ballet slippers.
"This is Maria," Omar says to me, quiet, "She runs the place."
"Maria!" Omar says, loud so she can hear, "This is our guest for a few days."
"Everyone," Omar says, "This is our guest, who is not a drug agent!"
Omar tells everyone my name. Most of the women are more interested in the Avon. Most of the men are more interested in the women. Omar puts his hand on my arm and leans close.
"That one," Omar points to the young one with the legs and hair, "That is DiDi. She is young and impetuous, but great legs, no?"
DiDi's hair is short, brown, curving around her face hair. Her body is a high-waisted body, her legs are long, slender legs. DiDi wears cut off jeans that show her butt cheeks and a string bikini top. When she goes by us, she waves her hand without looking.
"Hola!" DiDi says. She keeps on walking back to the house.
"Those two," Omar says, "They are SimoneandSigrid. SiSi. They are always together. Always!"
Omar digs his elbow into my ribs.
SiSi look alike. SiSi are the pair with the black curly hair around their shoulders. SiSi are joined at the shoulder and hip. SiSi look in their bag, SiSi look at each other. One says something too low for the rest of us to hear. The other laughs. SiSi look in their bag and smile.
SiSi walk past Omar and me. SiSi don't say anything, don't look at me or Omar. SiSi go onto the porch and sit in a porch swing.
"¡Tanya!" Omar says. Tanya looks up from her bag. Tanya is blond, so blond. Tanya's hair is white, cut in long bangs over her eyes and curving softly into her shoulders hair. Tanya's eyes are blue, lined with black eyeliner and green shadow eyes and her lashes are black Avon lashes. Tanya's lips are pouty lips. They pout when she smiles, they pout when she frowns, they pout especially when she pouts.
Tanya's face is blank like white paper. Tanya's eyes look at everything the same.
"Say hello to our guest," Omar says to Tanya.
Tanya smiles a blank smile, through pouty lips.
"Hi!" Tanya says. She looks at me.
"Hello," I say.
"Uh-huh," Tanya says. Tanya stands her weight on one foot and sways her upper body back and forth. Tanya's other foot slides toward the house. Tanya holds her bag in one hand. Tanya'a eyes go from mine to Omar's and back to mine and then down to her Avon bag. Tanya catches her pouty lower lip in her upper teeth.
"Tanya is from Fresno," Omar says, "Is that not so, Tanya?"
"Yeah," Tanya says, "You from the states?"
"Portland," I say, "Oregon."
"Oh yah," Tanya says, "I heard of that."
Tanya nods and smiles her pouty smile. I nod along with Tanya. Omar nods, too, and we all stand there nodding for a minute like bobble head ceramic dogs in a car rear window.
"Cool!" Tanya says. Tanya shifts her weight to the other foot, the one closer to the house.
"Well," Tanya says, "See ya."
"Yeah," I say.
Tanya turns and runs a couple of steps, then slows down and walks the rest of the way to the house. Tanya is wearing cut-off jeans, too, like DiDi, but Tanya's butt is rounder and wider than DiDi's. Tanya's cut-offs are longer, there's actually an inch or so of leg on them. Tanya is wearing highheeled sandals, the kind with the solid rope heels and open toes. They make her legs seem longer, but not as long as DiDi's.
"Hello," a woman says from right next to me. I get a muscle spasm that makes me bump against Omar. Omar moves away.
"Maricosa Angelina!" Omar says, his voice low and rough, like a father teasing a daughter.
"It is very rude of you to sneak up on our guest." Omar says.
"I did not sneak." Maricosa says. "I never sneak."
Maricosa is only as tall as my shoulder. As tall as Omar's shoulder. Seeing Maricosa up close, the other women are large and clumsy. I hadn't noticed how large and clumsy the other women are. Coarse, almost.
"This is Maricosa," Omar says.
"Call me Marsita!" Maricosa says.
"Marsita?" I say. I can't think of anything else to say. Marsita is looking up into my eyes and I can't look away. Can't look at anything but Marsita's eyes.
Marsita's eyes are golden brown deep rich loam of the earth eyes. Treasure of the Sierra Madres eyes. Soft warm fire in clay ovens eyes. Diamonds and emeralds in dark room eyes. Independence day night Chinese New Year fireworks eyes.
Marsita's eyes are tilted up at the corners, like Asian eyes eyes. Marsita's eyelids disappear when they are open. Marsita's face is a round face, her chin a pointy chin. Marsita's hair is straight black parted in the middle hair. Marsita’s nose is a short round nose. Marsita's mouth a small thin mouth that quirks up on one side like there's some kind of humorous thing going on and she's not about to laugh out loud. Marsita wears no make up.
"Make up?" I say. I point at her bag. Marsita shakes her head without looking down.
"I don't wear make up," Marsita says. "Massage oil."
“Scented.” Marsita says.
She lifts one eyebrow at me.
"Coming?" Marsita says.
"¡Amigo!" Omar yells from the porch. "¡Vamanos!"
I look around to where he'd been standing next to me. I don't remember him leaving my side. I look back at Marsita. She is walking toward the house, her back is to me. Her back says follow. I follow.
Omar introduced me to the three goons in the back of the Bronco on the way up to his hacienda. They are Raoul, Chico and Bambino, Raoul being the oldest one with the mustache who was hassling me, and Chico being the one without the mustache who dumped my clothes on the ground. Bambino never says anything, but he laughs when the others laugh and the rest of the time he just looks tough.
At the hacienda, as the women make their way inside, two more goons come out onto the porch, carrying guns. The first is wearing a black T shirt and black fatigues, black combat boots and a black belt and holster slung low on his hip like a bad guy in the old western movies. He is very fit, by which I mean his arms are as big around as my thighs and his chest is so well defined in his T shirt that it looks like those plastic muscles they put on Batman in his latest movies. This goon wears black wraparound sunglasses and his hair is brush cut to be flat on top hair.
"This is Rocky," Omar says, turning to me as I come up to the porch steps. Omar punches Rocky on the arm and Rocky smiles. Rocky lifts his left hand, fingers hard and straight like he's going to salute but his hand only gets up to shoulder height where the fingers pivot across a precise arc, once. Rocky's smile is a missing a few teeth smile, and Rocky's nose is a flattened and bent nose. Rocky's eyes are hidden behind sunglasses eyes. I wave back.
"Hi," I say.
"And this," Omar is saying, "Is the Terminator!"
Omar slaps the back of a large round man with a stained white muscle shirt over a sunken chest and huge belly. The Terminator's hair, what's left of it, is wispy light brown hair that floats around the big bald spot on top of his head as if trying to decide whether to land there or not. The Terminator's head sits directly on the Terminator's shoulders, and his arms are, like Rocky's, as big around as my thighs but unlike Rocky's, so loose the skin flaps as he puts out his hand to shake. Around the widest part of the Terminator's belly is tied an apron that reaches almost to the ground. Under the apron the Terminator is wearing khaki shorts to his knees and the Terminator's bare feet are wide and black with dirt.
"The Terminator is our cook!" Omar says.
"A great cook." Rocky says.
"The best." The Terminator says.
"Nice to meet you." I say.
"Come on inside," Omar says, "Take a load off."
I follow Omar inside. Inside the entrance hall is dark. Dark like a cave, almost. Dark like you can't really see the ceiling because it's way up there all gloomy and you expect bats to be flying around. Dark like all the windows have been boarded up and only a little light comes in from the doors that open up into the entrance hall.
There is a huge curving staircase in the entrance hall that goes up into the gloom. The floor of the entrance hall is marble, I think, under the dirt. There are lumps that look like bushes piled up along one wall. A huge fountain with a statue of a cherub up on one toe, other leg pointed back, head twisted up to look at the sky and a plate in one hand. It looks like a plate. The plate is spilling water into the round pool at the base of the fountain. The cherub is also peeing into the fountain.
We go into what must have been a library, floor to ceiling shelves all around the room; bookcases, and one of those ladders that runs on a rail on each wall so you can reach the top shelves, if you wanted to. If there was anything up there you really wanted to reach. Opposite the door we go in are three sets of big French door type windows, six foot tall, spaced evenly, they let in a lot of the afternoon light, even through the milky haze on them. Can't really see outside through the haze.
There are a few books, left on the shelves, but mostly other stuff. This is what I see on the shelves; guns, ammo, sacks of food, coconuts, Stereo equipment of every shape and size, a large collection of records, tapes and CD's. three televisions, a microwave oven, baskets, bags, bones, skulls, skeets, computers, printers, speakers, electric piano keyboards, guitars, clocks, toy dinosaurs, remote control cars, dart boards, baseballs, bowling balls, soccer balls, tennis balls, ping pong balls, crystal balls, mirrored balls, popcorn balls, three large parrots who have obviously lived here for years and a monkey. That's what I see when I first go in, but I'm sure there's other stuff, too.
In the center of the room are four large sofas surrounding a glass-topped table. On the table stands a scale and a box of plastic zip-lock bags and several piles of white crystally powder, which of course I have no idea is cocaine. Maria and SiSi sit on one of the couches, DiDi and Tanya sit on the couch to the right of them and Marsita sits opposite Maria and SiSi. All the women, except for Marsita, are pulling out all their Avon stuff and showing it off to each other. Omar and Raoul sit down next to Marsita, opposite Maria and SiSi, Omar in the middle. Omar waves his hand that I should sit on the final couch, all by myself. Marsita between me and him. Rocky standing behind me. I feel his presence back there like I'm a jackrabbit on a highway, and Rocky's a big vulture, waiting for that semi to come along.
Omar sits forward on the couch and picks up a gold plated razor blade that is sitting by a pile of coke. He starts to set up some lines.
"Rocky," Omar says, "I thought you were going to run the tests and bag this up?"
Omar uses the blade to separate a small pile of coke from the larger pile closest to him. I estimate it to be about a half an ounce. 16 grams.
Rocky started to answer in Spanish.
"Please, Rocky," Omar says before the man can finish, "We have a guest, where are your manners? In englais, por favor."
"¿Habla español?" Omar says to me.
"Muy poco," I say.
"Ah!," Omar says, "We will speak English then, it is good practice for us."
Omar didn't sound like he needed any practice, but Rocky went along with him.
"Doc had questions." Rocky says, "Y then the farmers brought in samples of their crop this ah, como se dice temporada."
"Season, Rocky," Omar says, "This growing season."
"Season," Rocky says, only he says it like Say Son.
Omar has separated the smaller pile by now into four even smaller piles and is spreading the smaller piles out into lines. The razor blade goes tap tap and squeak on the glass, tap tap and squeak and a little flourish of the hand. Omar cutting the lines of coke reminds me of those Japanese cooks who juggle the knives while they're cooking your shrimp and slicing your teriyaki beef. Under Omar's hand, the lines form long and even, two and two, a pair for me and a pair for you.
"The crop samples," Omar says, looking at me. "What luck! You can help me decide!"
"Decide?" I say.
I'm looking at those lines. Those lines of coke. Those lines are a quarter of an inch thick. Those lines are a quarter of an inch tall. Those lines are six inches long. And I know, I just know this coke ain't coke like that half gram in the little triangular bag cut from a no-pleat baggie and sealed with a Bic lighter that you got on the streets of Miami back in 1979. This ain't Coke that's been cut six times and there's so much Minoxydol that you have to go poop within five minutes of tooting your little tiny toothpick line. This coke is straight out of the lab and pure as driven snow, so to speak. As they say. My jaw starts working just looking at it.
So.
"Decide?" I say.
"Yeah," Omar says, "Choose which to ship where."
"Which what?" I say.
"Marijuana," Omar says. "Which marijuana to ship where."
Omar pulls a hundred dollar bill from his wallet and rolls it up. He sticks one end of the bill in his nose, holds the other nostril shut with two fingers of his other hand, and leans down to inhale a line. He switches hands and nostrils and sucks up the other line. He holds the bill out to me, and raises his eyebrows, still holding one nostril shut with the other hand.
I take the tubular money from Omar. Test out the clarity of my nasal passages by holding each nostril closed in turn and pulling in a bunch of air. Turn my head away from the piles of coke and exhale as much as I can. Stick the hundred bucks up my nose, lean forward and suck maybe a thousand street dollars worth of cocaine into my right nostril. That's like a quarter of one of these lines Omar has on the table here. Switch nostrils and do the same for the other side.
My head expands to encompass most of the room. The top of my head transmutating through the roof. I can feel the hot sun and light breeze ruffle my hair up there. My head is instantly clearer than I ever remember it being, both thoughtwise and sinuswise, and I begin chewing an imaginary cud. This is an unfortunate side effect. This always happens. Coke makes me work my jaw around, like I'm tryin' to chew something, but there's nothing to chew on. Back when I roomed with a drug dealer, he would use this phenomenon to judge the quality of the coke he bought.
The quality of this coke, this particular coke, is much better than anything I remember. I touch a damp finger to the glass tabletop, collecting crumbs to wipe on my gums, and I can taste the coke through my fingers. That's how good it is. I touch it with my fingers and taste it in my mouth.
Marlboro time. I feel much more animated than I have in a long while. Omar is already setting up another pair of lines for himself. Raoul laughs a short laugh at me. Raoul leans back and snaps his fingers in the direction of DiDi and Tanya. DiDi looks up, but she looks mad, her lips all up in the middle and her eyebrows down. DiDi's eyes go from Raoul to me to Maria to Omar and then back to Raoul. DiDi's got one leg crossed over the other and that upper leg, that foot on that upper legs flippin' back and forth real fast.
"Go get us tequila!" Raoul says.
"None for me, thanks!" I say, "Hey, Omar, this is some place you got here! Whoever did your decorating?"
"Did it myself, man," Omar says, "You like the parrots?"
"Don't they shit on everything?" I say.
"Yeah," he says, "but it adds to the..ah.. ambiance!"
"Are they tagged?" Omar says.
"¿Que?" Rocky says.
"Los etiquetos," Omar says, "Tags?"
"Ah Si, I mean, yes!" Rocky says.
"Grab those," Omar says. Omar waves a hand at four bushes.
"Don't get 'em mixed up," Omar says.
The plants still have their root systems complete with dirt attached. There are six of them. We drag them into the library. Omar takes his over to one of the French doors. I follow him. Omar opens the French door and the sunlight comes in to light up the plants. The smell is like that old weed pile my mom used to have out back, about halfway through the summer, with a new pile of weeds on it from yesterday.
Omar looks at the plant he is holding.
Rocky says "That is from..."
"Don't tell me!" Omar says, "I already know. Alvarado, correct?"
Rocky looks at the tag and nods.
"The strong trunk," Omar says, "The vermilion color, the firm leaves." Omar takes in a huge sniff. "That aroma, do you see?"
Omar holds the plant to my face. There is a bud just ready to burst there, the tiny dark green leaves twisting around the flower as if to protect it. I take a sniff. I'm amazed that I can still smell anything after that coke.
"The nose is quite earthy," Omar is saying, "A little acidic." Omar pushes the leaves up around his face.
"Piquant, I'd say, Charles," Omar says, "What do you think?"
Omar is speaking like a stuffy English twit. I look around to see who Charles is. But Omar means me.
"Oh, I say," I say, "Quite ripe."
"Notice the way these leaves ball up in your fingers when you rub them." Omar says. Omar holds up a ball of leaves about the size of a marble. Omar's fingers are stained green.
"See the residue?" Omar says, "Alvarado always takes forever to dry. We have to stash it away for a month before shipment."
Omar's using his own voice again.
"Hmm," I say.
"Now this," Omar grabs another bush. "This must be from Guzman, No?"
Omar looks at the tag.
"Guzman, of course, see the faded color," Omar says, "the narrow leaves, the weak stalk?
"But still," English Omar says, "It's an impetuous little vintage with a crisp tongue and a delightful afterbite!"
Omar pulls a handful of leaves and a bud from the Guzman plant and puts them in a toaster oven on a shelf next to an Eddie Murphy doll and a chocolate Easter bunny with no ears. Omar sets the timer and goes for the next plant.
"Soon Li," Regular Omar says, "See how fat the leaves are? Soon Li has a spread down by the river."
Omar looks at the tag.
"No, I am wrong," Omar says, "but not by much. It's Garcia, but he too is down by the river. Too much jungle, not enough sun, but he grows a lot of it and he sells it cheap, so we can pass on the savings to you! We'll send it to Miami, I've got a volume dealer there."
"Notice," English Omar says, "The full body, the spicy aroma with a hint of, what do you say..."
"Manure?" I say.
"Clove," Regular Omar says, "Garcia grows clove, also."
A bell rings. It is the toaster oven. Omar opens the door and pulls out a little aluminum tray with the leaves and bud from the Guzman plant. He holds the tray in both hands in front of his face and moves his head back and forth, nose going side to side over the dried vegetable matter. He looks like the Galloping Gourmet.
"Mmm, my goodness!" Omar says, "done to a turn!"
I remember the rest of the line. The rest of that big line of coke over there. It's been almost ten minutes. It's time for another toot.
"Enough for an army of women," I say. “All that Avon.” I'm trying to get a laugh out of him.
"An army," Omar says. He isn't necessarily agreeing with me, more like he's testing out the sound of it.
"Yes," Omar says, "That's almost right, my friend. But the most beautiful and deadly army in the world. Knock you dead without any weapons, yes?"
The thugs in the back snicker goonfully. Like movie goons. Like stereotype goons.
"You will see, my friend," Omar says, "that this army of women, well, perhaps a platoon at most? They are quite good at following orders."
"They have learned," Omar says, "that not cooperating is not conducive, you know?"
We pull up in front of the house, and even as we are jolting to a stop the front screen door bangs open and a young woman, all legs and hair runs down the steps to greet the driver.
"Omar, Omar!" she yells, but I am distracted by the house. The structure. Whatever it is. Had been. Is becoming.
Start with had been. It had been a large white plantation home in the Georgian style, with fluted columns fronting a wide low porch. Two story, with a widow's walk and a low-ceilinged attic. Tall windows had looked out over a gently sloping lawn.
Now, Is becoming. Is now becoming inundated, overtaken, crowded on all sides to the point of exhaustion by rude additions of raw wood, peeling plyboard, canvas lean-tos and sheet metal sheer walls. A log watchtower rises from a back corner of the heap, with a rude ladder up to the platform. Barbed wire is strung along the edges, cruel party streamers. But the barbed wire isn't strung like the US Army or Marines would string barbed wire. The barbed wire is strung like by someone with the attention span of an avocado. Orange extension cords hang out of upper story windows in the central house and into spaces between panels on the cancerous growth on the outside. Underwear hangs on clothes lines between the columns, and someone has started to paint the front of the house a fluorescent green, but has given up or run out of paint. A collection of old cars and trucks, mostly '60s beaters from GM, Ford and Chrysler, stand in various stages of heapdom around the yard. An aluminum Boston Whaler lies belly deep in grass on top of what might be a shattered wooden boat trailer. Someone has started to paint the Boston Whaler the same green. The final, perhaps crowning touch is the school bus that has been partially built into the mass of stuff on the left side of the house. It still looks like it might be able to run, though its windshield is caked with dirt. A black lace bra hangs from the antenna.
While I am staring at the house, trying to climb out of the Bronco and stare at the house at the same time, everyone else is getting out of the Bronco and slamming doors and there are women coming out of the house, so many women.
The first woman, the young one with all the legs and hair, opens the back of the Bronco and starts rustling with the bags. Two other women come down the steps together, their hair is black and curly around their shoulders. Three more women stay up on the porch.
"This is my army," Omar says, "My platoon!"
Omar spreads his arms out and turns, pointing his smile at all the women.
"Who is that?" One woman says. She is standing at the center of stairs. Her hair is thick black, pulled back from her face hair. Her head seems fuzzy from all the short curly pieces that won't stay pulled back. Her skin is brown smooth evenly shaded skin. Her eyes are squinted almost shut eyes, eyebrows pulled down over them almost touching in the center. Her lips are full and generous lips, now pulled tight. She holds her arms crossed in front of her, standing back on one leg, the other leg in front, foot turned out. She wears a white tee shirt, a red embroidered skirt to mid calf, and black ballet slippers.
"This is Maria," Omar says to me, quiet, "She runs the place."
"Maria!" Omar says, loud so she can hear, "This is our guest for a few days."
"Everyone," Omar says, "This is our guest, who is not a drug agent!"
Omar tells everyone my name. Most of the women are more interested in the Avon. Most of the men are more interested in the women. Omar puts his hand on my arm and leans close.
"That one," Omar points to the young one with the legs and hair, "That is DiDi. She is young and impetuous, but great legs, no?"
DiDi's hair is short, brown, curving around her face hair. Her body is a high-waisted body, her legs are long, slender legs. DiDi wears cut off jeans that show her butt cheeks and a string bikini top. When she goes by us, she waves her hand without looking.
"Hola!" DiDi says. She keeps on walking back to the house.
"Those two," Omar says, "They are SimoneandSigrid. SiSi. They are always together. Always!"
Omar digs his elbow into my ribs.
SiSi look alike. SiSi are the pair with the black curly hair around their shoulders. SiSi are joined at the shoulder and hip. SiSi look in their bag, SiSi look at each other. One says something too low for the rest of us to hear. The other laughs. SiSi look in their bag and smile.
SiSi walk past Omar and me. SiSi don't say anything, don't look at me or Omar. SiSi go onto the porch and sit in a porch swing.
"¡Tanya!" Omar says. Tanya looks up from her bag. Tanya is blond, so blond. Tanya's hair is white, cut in long bangs over her eyes and curving softly into her shoulders hair. Tanya's eyes are blue, lined with black eyeliner and green shadow eyes and her lashes are black Avon lashes. Tanya's lips are pouty lips. They pout when she smiles, they pout when she frowns, they pout especially when she pouts.
Tanya's face is blank like white paper. Tanya's eyes look at everything the same.
"Say hello to our guest," Omar says to Tanya.
Tanya smiles a blank smile, through pouty lips.
"Hi!" Tanya says. She looks at me.
"Hello," I say.
"Uh-huh," Tanya says. Tanya stands her weight on one foot and sways her upper body back and forth. Tanya's other foot slides toward the house. Tanya holds her bag in one hand. Tanya'a eyes go from mine to Omar's and back to mine and then down to her Avon bag. Tanya catches her pouty lower lip in her upper teeth.
"Tanya is from Fresno," Omar says, "Is that not so, Tanya?"
"Yeah," Tanya says, "You from the states?"
"Portland," I say, "Oregon."
"Oh yah," Tanya says, "I heard of that."
Tanya nods and smiles her pouty smile. I nod along with Tanya. Omar nods, too, and we all stand there nodding for a minute like bobble head ceramic dogs in a car rear window.
"Cool!" Tanya says. Tanya shifts her weight to the other foot, the one closer to the house.
"Well," Tanya says, "See ya."
"Yeah," I say.
Tanya turns and runs a couple of steps, then slows down and walks the rest of the way to the house. Tanya is wearing cut-off jeans, too, like DiDi, but Tanya's butt is rounder and wider than DiDi's. Tanya's cut-offs are longer, there's actually an inch or so of leg on them. Tanya is wearing highheeled sandals, the kind with the solid rope heels and open toes. They make her legs seem longer, but not as long as DiDi's.
"Hello," a woman says from right next to me. I get a muscle spasm that makes me bump against Omar. Omar moves away.
"Maricosa Angelina!" Omar says, his voice low and rough, like a father teasing a daughter.
"It is very rude of you to sneak up on our guest." Omar says.
"I did not sneak." Maricosa says. "I never sneak."
Maricosa is only as tall as my shoulder. As tall as Omar's shoulder. Seeing Maricosa up close, the other women are large and clumsy. I hadn't noticed how large and clumsy the other women are. Coarse, almost.
"This is Maricosa," Omar says.
"Call me Marsita!" Maricosa says.
"Marsita?" I say. I can't think of anything else to say. Marsita is looking up into my eyes and I can't look away. Can't look at anything but Marsita's eyes.
Marsita's eyes are golden brown deep rich loam of the earth eyes. Treasure of the Sierra Madres eyes. Soft warm fire in clay ovens eyes. Diamonds and emeralds in dark room eyes. Independence day night Chinese New Year fireworks eyes.
Marsita's eyes are tilted up at the corners, like Asian eyes eyes. Marsita's eyelids disappear when they are open. Marsita's face is a round face, her chin a pointy chin. Marsita's hair is straight black parted in the middle hair. Marsita’s nose is a short round nose. Marsita's mouth a small thin mouth that quirks up on one side like there's some kind of humorous thing going on and she's not about to laugh out loud. Marsita wears no make up.
"Make up?" I say. I point at her bag. Marsita shakes her head without looking down.
"I don't wear make up," Marsita says. "Massage oil."
“Scented.” Marsita says.
She lifts one eyebrow at me.
"Coming?" Marsita says.
"¡Amigo!" Omar yells from the porch. "¡Vamanos!"
I look around to where he'd been standing next to me. I don't remember him leaving my side. I look back at Marsita. She is walking toward the house, her back is to me. Her back says follow. I follow.
* * *
Omar introduced me to the three goons in the back of the Bronco on the way up to his hacienda. They are Raoul, Chico and Bambino, Raoul being the oldest one with the mustache who was hassling me, and Chico being the one without the mustache who dumped my clothes on the ground. Bambino never says anything, but he laughs when the others laugh and the rest of the time he just looks tough.
At the hacienda, as the women make their way inside, two more goons come out onto the porch, carrying guns. The first is wearing a black T shirt and black fatigues, black combat boots and a black belt and holster slung low on his hip like a bad guy in the old western movies. He is very fit, by which I mean his arms are as big around as my thighs and his chest is so well defined in his T shirt that it looks like those plastic muscles they put on Batman in his latest movies. This goon wears black wraparound sunglasses and his hair is brush cut to be flat on top hair.
"This is Rocky," Omar says, turning to me as I come up to the porch steps. Omar punches Rocky on the arm and Rocky smiles. Rocky lifts his left hand, fingers hard and straight like he's going to salute but his hand only gets up to shoulder height where the fingers pivot across a precise arc, once. Rocky's smile is a missing a few teeth smile, and Rocky's nose is a flattened and bent nose. Rocky's eyes are hidden behind sunglasses eyes. I wave back.
"Hi," I say.
"And this," Omar is saying, "Is the Terminator!"
Omar slaps the back of a large round man with a stained white muscle shirt over a sunken chest and huge belly. The Terminator's hair, what's left of it, is wispy light brown hair that floats around the big bald spot on top of his head as if trying to decide whether to land there or not. The Terminator's head sits directly on the Terminator's shoulders, and his arms are, like Rocky's, as big around as my thighs but unlike Rocky's, so loose the skin flaps as he puts out his hand to shake. Around the widest part of the Terminator's belly is tied an apron that reaches almost to the ground. Under the apron the Terminator is wearing khaki shorts to his knees and the Terminator's bare feet are wide and black with dirt.
"The Terminator is our cook!" Omar says.
"A great cook." Rocky says.
"The best." The Terminator says.
"Nice to meet you." I say.
"Come on inside," Omar says, "Take a load off."
I follow Omar inside. Inside the entrance hall is dark. Dark like a cave, almost. Dark like you can't really see the ceiling because it's way up there all gloomy and you expect bats to be flying around. Dark like all the windows have been boarded up and only a little light comes in from the doors that open up into the entrance hall.
There is a huge curving staircase in the entrance hall that goes up into the gloom. The floor of the entrance hall is marble, I think, under the dirt. There are lumps that look like bushes piled up along one wall. A huge fountain with a statue of a cherub up on one toe, other leg pointed back, head twisted up to look at the sky and a plate in one hand. It looks like a plate. The plate is spilling water into the round pool at the base of the fountain. The cherub is also peeing into the fountain.
We go into what must have been a library, floor to ceiling shelves all around the room; bookcases, and one of those ladders that runs on a rail on each wall so you can reach the top shelves, if you wanted to. If there was anything up there you really wanted to reach. Opposite the door we go in are three sets of big French door type windows, six foot tall, spaced evenly, they let in a lot of the afternoon light, even through the milky haze on them. Can't really see outside through the haze.
There are a few books, left on the shelves, but mostly other stuff. This is what I see on the shelves; guns, ammo, sacks of food, coconuts, Stereo equipment of every shape and size, a large collection of records, tapes and CD's. three televisions, a microwave oven, baskets, bags, bones, skulls, skeets, computers, printers, speakers, electric piano keyboards, guitars, clocks, toy dinosaurs, remote control cars, dart boards, baseballs, bowling balls, soccer balls, tennis balls, ping pong balls, crystal balls, mirrored balls, popcorn balls, three large parrots who have obviously lived here for years and a monkey. That's what I see when I first go in, but I'm sure there's other stuff, too.
In the center of the room are four large sofas surrounding a glass-topped table. On the table stands a scale and a box of plastic zip-lock bags and several piles of white crystally powder, which of course I have no idea is cocaine. Maria and SiSi sit on one of the couches, DiDi and Tanya sit on the couch to the right of them and Marsita sits opposite Maria and SiSi. All the women, except for Marsita, are pulling out all their Avon stuff and showing it off to each other. Omar and Raoul sit down next to Marsita, opposite Maria and SiSi, Omar in the middle. Omar waves his hand that I should sit on the final couch, all by myself. Marsita between me and him. Rocky standing behind me. I feel his presence back there like I'm a jackrabbit on a highway, and Rocky's a big vulture, waiting for that semi to come along.
Omar sits forward on the couch and picks up a gold plated razor blade that is sitting by a pile of coke. He starts to set up some lines.
"Rocky," Omar says, "I thought you were going to run the tests and bag this up?"
Omar uses the blade to separate a small pile of coke from the larger pile closest to him. I estimate it to be about a half an ounce. 16 grams.
Rocky started to answer in Spanish.
"Please, Rocky," Omar says before the man can finish, "We have a guest, where are your manners? In englais, por favor."
"¿Habla español?" Omar says to me.
"Muy poco," I say.
"Ah!," Omar says, "We will speak English then, it is good practice for us."
Omar didn't sound like he needed any practice, but Rocky went along with him.
"Doc had questions." Rocky says, "Y then the farmers brought in samples of their crop this ah, como se dice temporada."
"Season, Rocky," Omar says, "This growing season."
"Season," Rocky says, only he says it like Say Son.
Omar has separated the smaller pile by now into four even smaller piles and is spreading the smaller piles out into lines. The razor blade goes tap tap and squeak on the glass, tap tap and squeak and a little flourish of the hand. Omar cutting the lines of coke reminds me of those Japanese cooks who juggle the knives while they're cooking your shrimp and slicing your teriyaki beef. Under Omar's hand, the lines form long and even, two and two, a pair for me and a pair for you.
"The crop samples," Omar says, looking at me. "What luck! You can help me decide!"
"Decide?" I say.
I'm looking at those lines. Those lines of coke. Those lines are a quarter of an inch thick. Those lines are a quarter of an inch tall. Those lines are six inches long. And I know, I just know this coke ain't coke like that half gram in the little triangular bag cut from a no-pleat baggie and sealed with a Bic lighter that you got on the streets of Miami back in 1979. This ain't Coke that's been cut six times and there's so much Minoxydol that you have to go poop within five minutes of tooting your little tiny toothpick line. This coke is straight out of the lab and pure as driven snow, so to speak. As they say. My jaw starts working just looking at it.
So.
"Decide?" I say.
"Yeah," Omar says, "Choose which to ship where."
"Which what?" I say.
"Marijuana," Omar says. "Which marijuana to ship where."
Omar pulls a hundred dollar bill from his wallet and rolls it up. He sticks one end of the bill in his nose, holds the other nostril shut with two fingers of his other hand, and leans down to inhale a line. He switches hands and nostrils and sucks up the other line. He holds the bill out to me, and raises his eyebrows, still holding one nostril shut with the other hand.
I take the tubular money from Omar. Test out the clarity of my nasal passages by holding each nostril closed in turn and pulling in a bunch of air. Turn my head away from the piles of coke and exhale as much as I can. Stick the hundred bucks up my nose, lean forward and suck maybe a thousand street dollars worth of cocaine into my right nostril. That's like a quarter of one of these lines Omar has on the table here. Switch nostrils and do the same for the other side.
My head expands to encompass most of the room. The top of my head transmutating through the roof. I can feel the hot sun and light breeze ruffle my hair up there. My head is instantly clearer than I ever remember it being, both thoughtwise and sinuswise, and I begin chewing an imaginary cud. This is an unfortunate side effect. This always happens. Coke makes me work my jaw around, like I'm tryin' to chew something, but there's nothing to chew on. Back when I roomed with a drug dealer, he would use this phenomenon to judge the quality of the coke he bought.
The quality of this coke, this particular coke, is much better than anything I remember. I touch a damp finger to the glass tabletop, collecting crumbs to wipe on my gums, and I can taste the coke through my fingers. That's how good it is. I touch it with my fingers and taste it in my mouth.
Marlboro time. I feel much more animated than I have in a long while. Omar is already setting up another pair of lines for himself. Raoul laughs a short laugh at me. Raoul leans back and snaps his fingers in the direction of DiDi and Tanya. DiDi looks up, but she looks mad, her lips all up in the middle and her eyebrows down. DiDi's eyes go from Raoul to me to Maria to Omar and then back to Raoul. DiDi's got one leg crossed over the other and that upper leg, that foot on that upper legs flippin' back and forth real fast.
"Go get us tequila!" Raoul says.
"None for me, thanks!" I say, "Hey, Omar, this is some place you got here! Whoever did your decorating?"
"Did it myself, man," Omar says, "You like the parrots?"
"Don't they shit on everything?" I say.
"Yeah," he says, "but it adds to the..ah.. ambiance!"
* * *
Omar leads me and Rocky and Raoul out to the dark cave entrance hall. Omar looks at the lumps that are bushes and laughs a little.
Omar leads me and Rocky and Raoul out to the dark cave entrance hall. Omar looks at the lumps that are bushes and laughs a little.
"Are they tagged?" Omar says.
"¿Que?" Rocky says.
"Los etiquetos," Omar says, "Tags?"
"Ah Si, I mean, yes!" Rocky says.
"Grab those," Omar says. Omar waves a hand at four bushes.
"Don't get 'em mixed up," Omar says.
The plants still have their root systems complete with dirt attached. There are six of them. We drag them into the library. Omar takes his over to one of the French doors. I follow him. Omar opens the French door and the sunlight comes in to light up the plants. The smell is like that old weed pile my mom used to have out back, about halfway through the summer, with a new pile of weeds on it from yesterday.
Omar looks at the plant he is holding.
Rocky says "That is from..."
"Don't tell me!" Omar says, "I already know. Alvarado, correct?"
Rocky looks at the tag and nods.
"The strong trunk," Omar says, "The vermilion color, the firm leaves." Omar takes in a huge sniff. "That aroma, do you see?"
Omar holds the plant to my face. There is a bud just ready to burst there, the tiny dark green leaves twisting around the flower as if to protect it. I take a sniff. I'm amazed that I can still smell anything after that coke.
"The nose is quite earthy," Omar is saying, "A little acidic." Omar pushes the leaves up around his face.
"Piquant, I'd say, Charles," Omar says, "What do you think?"
Omar is speaking like a stuffy English twit. I look around to see who Charles is. But Omar means me.
"Oh, I say," I say, "Quite ripe."
"Notice the way these leaves ball up in your fingers when you rub them." Omar says. Omar holds up a ball of leaves about the size of a marble. Omar's fingers are stained green.
"See the residue?" Omar says, "Alvarado always takes forever to dry. We have to stash it away for a month before shipment."
Omar's using his own voice again.
"Hmm," I say.
"Now this," Omar grabs another bush. "This must be from Guzman, No?"
Omar looks at the tag.
"Guzman, of course, see the faded color," Omar says, "the narrow leaves, the weak stalk?
Guzman's plantation is at high altitude."
"But still," English Omar says, "It's an impetuous little vintage with a crisp tongue and a delightful afterbite!"
Omar pulls a handful of leaves and a bud from the Guzman plant and puts them in a toaster oven on a shelf next to an Eddie Murphy doll and a chocolate Easter bunny with no ears. Omar sets the timer and goes for the next plant.
"Soon Li," Regular Omar says, "See how fat the leaves are? Soon Li has a spread down by the river."
Omar looks at the tag.
"No, I am wrong," Omar says, "but not by much. It's Garcia, but he too is down by the river. Too much jungle, not enough sun, but he grows a lot of it and he sells it cheap, so we can pass on the savings to you! We'll send it to Miami, I've got a volume dealer there."
"Notice," English Omar says, "The full body, the spicy aroma with a hint of, what do you say..."
"Manure?" I say.
"Clove," Regular Omar says, "Garcia grows clove, also."
A bell rings. It is the toaster oven. Omar opens the door and pulls out a little aluminum tray with the leaves and bud from the Guzman plant. He holds the tray in both hands in front of his face and moves his head back and forth, nose going side to side over the dried vegetable matter. He looks like the Galloping Gourmet.
"Mmm, my goodness!" Omar says, "done to a turn!"
I remember the rest of the line. The rest of that big line of coke over there. It's been almost ten minutes. It's time for another toot.
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