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.
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