“I say when it comes to women you are so goddamn dumb as to make a box of tenpenny nails seem high on the IQ scale.”
“You think she trained a shark to attack her father so she could get me on their boat and make a work slave of me?”
“No. It’s broader than that. Damn. This catalogue is not a good idea. Maybe they could at least spring for some toilet paper. I think I ripped myself.”
A moment later Leonard came out of the outhouse. I put my arm around him and started helping him back to the house, even though he didn’t need the help. We went slowly so we could continue talking.
“You will wash your hands at the house, won’t you?” I said.
“Just the one I wipe with. Which, by the way, is the one I have around your shoulder right now.”
There was one little sad tree in the yard, and we went over to that. It was only a little taller than we were. Its limbs were gray and scaly, like a snake shedding its skin; they were spread out wide, like gapped fingers in the moonlight.
Leonard leaned against the tree’s bent trunk. He said, “As your queer friend, I don’t have the same blind side to women you do. A queer can look at things head-on, my honky. Least as far as men and women go.”
“How is Beatrice, a woman I just met, giving me the screw? Outside of the actual screw, I mean.”
“She’s one of life’s victims. Woe is me. Everything happens to her. I think her father, nice man that he is, may not have his head on just right either. Call it a hunch.
“Look. Don’t get me wrong. I’m glad she and her father helped us, but I say tomorrow morning we head into town and get that hotel room and plan our way out of here.”
“Well, she hasn’t exactly asked me to help. Maybe she doesn’t even want me to help. She even told me she wants me and you out of here tomorrow. Probably because all of this coming down. But I think with her father on crutches, she might need some help. That’s all I think there is to it.”
“If she doesn’t want you to help, then don’t. Don’t force it.”
“I just hate to see anyone bullied.”
“I promise you, this whole business she’s telling you, it’s got a light coating of slime on it. Maybe she doesn’t intend for you to get involved. Maybe she knows the whole thing sucks the big old donkey dick. I don’t know. But it’s not our business. So let’s just walk away.”
I stood quiet for a moment. I looked at Leonard leaning against the tree. He wouldn’t be much help anyway. Not by tomorrow. Did I really need to run off and help Beatrice and her father pay a debt that wasn’t mine? She wasn’t even my woman. Not really. She had said so herself.
“You know what, Leonard? I’m gonna fool you. I’m gonna do just what you say. For once. You’re right. This isn’t our problem.”
15
EARLY NEXT MORNING it was very humid and I awoke sweaty. I had been given a pallet on the floor in the room where Leonard slept in the bed. Beatrice had slept on a pallet in the kitchen, and the old man had slept in her bed.
In the middle of the night I awoke to see her standing at the open doorway of the room where Leonard and I slept. She wore a thin white thigh-high nightgown. Her legs were dark and sexy in the shadows. She smiled when she realized I was looking at her. I could smell her perfume from where I lay. It smelled dry and earthy.
I got up, she took my hand. We went to her pallet in the kitchen. Beatrice was soft and sweet and I only thought of Brett a little.
Before daylight, I returned to the room where Leonard lay wide awake.
“You’re so bad,” he said.
“You said it,” I said, and lay down on my pallet and went to sleep.
It wasn’t a good sleep. When I awoke I was exhausted and my bones felt as if they had been sawed up, put in a blender, then poured back into my body. I was sweaty. I rose and wrapped up my blankets and pillow and put them on the bed next to Leonard. Who, of course, was snoring like a man who had just won the lottery.
I slowly moved my body, heard my knees and ankles and hips pop. I got up and limped about. I didn’t find Beatrice.
The old man was in the kitchen. He was on his crutches by the stove. The kitchen smelled of coffee and something baking. The aroma filled my head and made my stomach growl.
“I am baking some bread for breakfast,” Ferdinand said. “I have some butter. We can eat it together. Maybe your friend will be hungry then. Is he doing better?”
“Much better, thanks to you. He ought to be up and around today.”
“It was not too bad a wound. He lost some blood. That was the most of it. The blood. I wish I had a steak to feed him. Steak is good when you lose blood. I know a man down the road who owes me a goat. Perhaps later we can get him to give me the goat and we can butcher it and cook it. It is not a steak, but it is meat.”
“Perhaps,” I said. “Where is Beatrice?”
“She has gone into the town,” Ferdinand said. Like Beatrice, I loved hearing him talk. It was musical even when he spoke English. He spoke nearly perfect English. But the way he emphasized or accented certain words made it sound so unique. I liked the way he looked too. The way I would have thought Hemingway’s Santiago must have looked in The Old Man and the Sea.
“She said she will come back for you,” Ferdinand said.
I was thinking about the boat gig she told me about. What had happened to that? I couldn’t help myself, I said, “Not to meddle, but didn’t she tell me she had an important job that the two of you were to do today?”
“You are right. We are supposed to do a job. I have told her I cannot. Even though we must and it is important. We cannot. She has gone to tell the men we cannot and that we must delay the job if they will delay. Otherwise, no job. Did she tell you the job?”
“Very little,” I said.
“I would like to do the job. It pays well, but I cannot. This is the first time in twenty-five years I have been injured that I do not fix it myself. Like I fix your friend.”
“You did a good job.”
“I am too old. I cannot fix myself. I cannot deal with it the way I once did.”
“No reason to.”
“I do a lot of things, allow a lot of things now that I would not allow before. I am nowhere the man I once was.”
The old man’s gaze took a position over my shoulder. I turned and saw Leonard shuffling in. He found a chair and sat.
Leonard said, “I don’t know if I thanked you properly or not, sir. But thank you. You did us both a great favor. You’re good with that machete.”
“The machete was part of my life growing up. For work, for play, and for fighting.”
“Play?” Leonard asked.
“Play fighting. We fought using the flat of the blade. The art of machete fighting is nearly lost, my friend.”
“I can see that,” Leonard said.
The old man smiled.
When the bread was done it came out flat and blackened in spots. We put some real butter on it and had coffee. It wasn’t a gourmet meal, but it wasn’t bad either.
We sat around the table and talked about this and that, the weather, life, women. I didn’t mention Beatrice, of course, but from the way the old man looked at me, it was obvious he knew what his daughter and I had been doing. Once he stared at me long enough and hard enough I added too much sugar to my coffee.
When we finished all of that coffee, he brewed us more and we drank that, and by noon he had found a bottle of wine and was drinking heavily from that.
Neither Leonard nor I touched the wine.
About two o’clock Ferdinand passed out in his chair and Leonard and I put him in his bed, took off his shoes, and propped a pillow under his head.
“I like the old bastard,” Leonard said. “He tells good stories.”
“He’s worried,” I said. “He’s trying to put his mind on other things.”
“There you go worrying about other people’s problems again.”
“You said you like him.”
“I said I l
ike him. I didn’t say I wanted to raise him. We get home, I’ll buy you your own old man. Better yet, you can take care of me. Hold my balls up while I wash.”
“That’ll be the day.”
We went back to the kitchen and got the last of the coffee. We had already gone through two pots, and now, with another cup of coffee poured up, I felt as if I might be able to levitate, in an agitated sort of way, of course.
There were a couple of chairs on the front porch, so we went out there and sipped our coffee. It was hot outside and the coffee made us sweat twice as bad.
We hadn’t been out there long when we saw a dust cloud coming from the south, a red clay swirl against a bright hot sky. Pretty soon, out of the cloud, came Beatrice in the van. When she braked to a stop, the dust continued on, as if it had disgorged her. It passed over the house and made us duck our heads and cough. When I looked up there was a coating of it over what remained of my coffee. I leaned out of my chair, past the edge of the porch, and poured it in the dirt.
Beatrice practically leaped from the car. Her hair was up. She wore jeans and an oversized red shirt with white deck shoes. There was a sweat line around her neck and sweat blooms under her arms. She saw us on the porch, sauntered over a little too casually.
“How are you this morning?” she asked.
We both answered in the affirmative.
“And you?” I said.
“Well enough. Are you ready to go into town?”
“I suppose we are. Maybe you could show us a store or two where we can buy a few things. We left some stuff at the other hotel, but we haven’t the inclination to go back for it.”
“Some bellhop is wearing Hap’s new underwear right now,” Leonard said.
“I will just check on my father, wash a little, change clothes, then we will go.”
She rushed inside quickly, as if she might burst into tears at any moment. I started to follow. Leonard took hold of my arm.
“Leave it be, buddy. It’s not your problem. You can’t solve everyone’s problems. Look at it this way. You can’t even solve your own.”
“Point,” I said. “Damn good point.”
A little later, when Beatrice had herself together, looking fresh in a blue blouse, she drove Leonard and me into town, to the hotel where I had rented us a room.
After Beatrice had gone up with us to see our room, which though not fancy was nice, I walked her back to her car.
She opened the door, said, “You have been very kind.”
“I have to say the same.”
“I have been loving, have I not?”
“You have.”
“No complaints?”
“No complaints,” I said. “You’ll give our best to your father?”
“Of course,” she said.
She got in the car, pulled the door to. The window was open, she leaned out of it.
“I think, in another time, things could have been different,” she said.
I wasn’t sure I wanted them to be that different. I liked her, but I didn’t love her. I loved Brett, goddamn me.
Still, I couldn’t help myself. “How did it go?”
“Go?”
“You know. With the men who wanted to rent your boat?”
“You don’t want to know,” she said, and I saw a tear well up in her eye. I started to push it, remembered Leonard’s advice.
“Whatever you say,” I said.
“Goodbye, Hap.”
“Goodbye, Beatrice.”
She drove away, and I thought that was the end of it.
16
I WAS IN THE HOTEL ROOM, taking off my shoes, getting ready to lie back on my bed and rest a bit, when Leonard, who was already reclining on the other bed, said, “You know what we should do, Hap?”
“I hope you’re not going to suggest anything sexual.”
“Nope. I didn’t bring any of my devices with me. But, now that you mention it, we could catch a mouse and grease him up, let him run up our ass. That might be fun.”
“We don’t have a mouse.”
“There are little black turds next to that hole in the wall to the left of the electric socket by the TV set. So that tells me there are mice.”
“Now you’ve piqued my excitement. But alas, we’ve nothing to grease the mouse with.”
“You’re right. And who’s to say we can catch one? They’re pretty fast, you know.”
“All right, I bite. What should we do?”
“Stay.”
“Stay? I thought you wanted to go.”
“I wanted to get you away from that woman. Women make your head mushy. I tell you, she’s a manipulator.”
“Not much of one. She dumped us off and went home.”
“It would have been just a matter of time, Hap. What we ought to do is just go ahead and turn this into a vacation. Have Charlie wire us some money just like you planned. But we do it a little different. We can get a flight out of Cancun in a couple weeks, be home a few days before we’re supposed to go back to work.”
“Don’t you want to see John?”
“Of course. I love him. But this is our chance for a vacation. We’ve never really had one. Not a real one. Not a good one. Things we do tend to go wrong. This could be different.”
“We’ve already been abandoned by our own cruise ship.”
“Yeah. Well, you’re right.”
“Cruise ships are noted for their hospitality. Their ability to deal with cantankerous assholes. Yet, somehow, you found a way to piss them off.”
“It was just that one guy.”
“You’ve been in a fight. You’ve been knifed. That’s not quite as good as being shot, but it ought to count for something. And your hat was destroyed.”
“True. You’re right. It’s not a totally different kind of trip for us, is it? There’s some of the old charm still there. But the rest of it, we can make it uneventful. We get up late. We eat late. We wander around town. Maybe go fishing. Get out on the water.”
“I don’t like water. I’ve seen all of it I want to see.”
“We could see the sights. I wouldn’t even mind going back to Tulum. Wouldn’t it be nice just to hang? Nobody trying to kill us. No one beating on us. It could be rejuvenating.”
“People do try to hurt us a lot, don’t they?”
“On the nosey. Maybe that should tell us something.”
“What?”
“I’m not sure. I think we irritate people.”
“We? You got a mouse in your pocket?”
“If I did, we’d be in business. A dry mouse, but in business … But tell me, Hap. Doesn’t that sound like a pretty damn good idea?”
“A dry mouse?”
“A real vacation.”
“You know, it doesn’t sound too bad at that.”
Early the next morning I went downstairs and expanded our stay at the hotel to a week. I put it on the charge card, knowing full well I was working on the edge. It might not take more than a couple of pennies for it to be full.
I didn’t want to use the hotel phone, because the prices were jacked up, so I walked down the street to the same pay phone I had called from before, dialed Charlie to let him know our plans. He seemed bored to hear I was calling. When I told him what we had in mind he wasn’t bored any longer.
He had already raised some money, and was surprised we were staying. So was I, but I was glad to break him out of his boredom. I consider it a kind of special accomplishment to rattle Charlie.
I told him Leonard wanted a real vacation and I felt like I owed it to him. So far, this one hadn’t been as bad as our other outings.
Charlie agreed that it hadn’t been as bad as it sometimes gets. He also agreed to wire us the money, tell John we were all right, and explain our plans.
On my way back to the hotel I was surprised to see Beatrice sitting in her car out front. When she saw me walking up, she got out, leaned on the hood.
The jeans she was wearing were so tight they must have made her ank
les swell. She had on a halter top that was working overtime to hold her breasts in. The sun struck her black hair and made it the color of a raven’s wing. There were little brown freckles on her shoulders I hadn’t noticed before, but now, out in the full sunlight, they showed clearly. I liked them.
I said, “Don’t tell me this is a coincidence.”
“I was trying to decide if I wanted to go in and ring your room. I did not expect you to be out so early.”
“I had a phone call to make.”
“You are not leaving already?”
“That seems like a funny question. You know I was supposed to.”
“Yes.”
“Leonard and I changed our minds. We’re going to stick a few days.”
“Good. Good. I need to talk to you.”
“We can go upstairs,” I said.
Leonard greeted Beatrice with as much enthusiasm as his suspicious mind could muster, and we all went downstairs together and over to a little café for breakfast. The café was fairly crowded and there was the sound of European and American voices all over the place. A cruise ship had most likely sent in its passengers on a tender. We found a table in the corner, ordered coffee and food, waited a long time for it.
While we waited, Beatrice said, “I have had a situation arise.”
“Oh?” said Leonard. “Really?”
I gave him a hard look. He gave me back a dreamy smile.
Smug sonofabitch.
“You have problems with me?” Beatrice said.
“I just don’t like to be fed shit and told it’s tapioca,” Leonard said. “My buddy, Hap, he don’t mind some shit for tapioca. He even gets to like it now and then.”
“I do not understand,” Beatrice said.
“Look, I’m not trying to be offensive,” Leonard said.
“You are doing a very good job of it,” she said.
“All right. Take it like you want to take it. But I think you can smell a sap good as a shark can smell blood. I think you’ve got a scam going and you’re playing him into it, which means you’re playing me into it. It happens to him, it happens to me.”
“You think that, Hap?” Beatrice asked.