I’m a silent partner. I pay my tab like any customer and nobody knows I backed Pedro to open the place. I gave him half the bar for moving here to run it; he’s working off the other half. Shit, I could have given him the whole thing outright. I got the money. God knows I got the fucking money.
THE DAY-TRIPPERS are starting to drift onto the beach. They hear about it in town or read about it in Lonely Planet and come looking for unspoiled Mexico, but they’re usually pretty damn happy they can get a cold beer and a cheeseburger. The expats will come around in the evening when they get back from fishing trips or working in town. The locals mostly show up on Friday and Saturday evening to drink. Me, I drink soda water all day, haven’t had a real drink in over two years. It’s the healthy life for me now. I take another sip of coffee, light the first cigarette of the day, and get back to the sports page.
The Dolphins have a problem. Their problem is a head coach who happens to be an idiot. I have a problem. My problem is the Miami fucking Dolphins of the National fucking Football League. When I got down here, I found out I couldn’t give up sports. I tried to get into fútbol, but it just didn’t click. A basketball season is like a basketball game, only the last two minutes count. And, unless I was ready to watch bullfights, that left football. Baseball? Yeah, I like baseball. I would have liked to have spent the last three years watching, listening to, and reading about baseball just like I did the thirty-two years before them, but that’s one of the things I had to give up. I got into football because I always hated football and nobody looking for me is gonna look for a guy who likes football. It makes it harder for people to find me and kill me.
And you know what? After three years of watching football, I hate it more than ever. But I hate the Dolphins’ idiot head coach more than anything else, because I am a sucker who has developed a bad habit of caring about the Dolphins.
Fuck me.
A classic warm-climate team, the Fins always start fast and collapse come the winter. All reason and all past history indicate that the Fins should be sliding. But they are not. Their new rookie running back, Miles Taylor, is shattering first-year records left and right and, despite his gutless teammates and inept coach, he has them winning consistently.
I am not deceived. In the AFC West, Oakland, San Diego, and Denver have been playing out of their heads and all look play-off bound. Miami will need to edge past the New York Jets if they want to get to the post season. Right now, despite the teams’ identical 9–3 records, the Fins are in first because they beat NY in an early season matchup at Miami. But even if they keep that lead for the next three games, it will be at risk on the last day of the season when Miami travels to New York for the finale.
Even my limited experience has taught me that you can always depend on Miami to do one thing: lose on the road against a division rival in December. Bet on it. So I will enjoy the wins they have now and not count on getting any more. Maybe if they miss the play-offs their coach will finally be fired. One can hope.
By noon there’s about twenty people spread along the half mile of beach and three more sitting at the bar with me. Pedro takes the radio from beneath the bar, clicks it on, and twirls the dial till the fuzzy sounds of WQAM Miami come through. He extends the antenna, alligator clips one end of a wire to it, clips the other end to the sheet of chicken wire that covers the palm roof. Suddenly the signal jumps in loud and clear.
I sit at the bar, sip seltzer and smoke, and listen to the game. Some pretty Spanish girls in bikinis stop at the bar to buy some beers. One of them smiles at me and I smile back. She asks me for one of my cigarettes and I slide her the pack. I watch as she and her friends walk off down the beach, and she glances back at me and smiles again. I wave. I like pretty girls.
The game drones on predictably. The Fins jump out early with three unanswered touchdowns, stand around while the Pats cut into their lead just before the half, and then come out flat for the third quarter. By the start of the fourth quarter, they’re hanging on to a three-point lead and the coach is calling plays as if they were still up by twenty-one.
A shaggy backpacker wanders up the beach and over to the bar. He shrugs out of his pack and takes a seat on the swing next to mine. Pedro is poking at some ribs on the grill. The guy is sitting backwards on the swing with his elbows on the bar, looking at the ocean. He glances over his shoulder at the radio. The Pats have just pinned the Fins on their own two-yard line. He looks at me and nods his head.
—Football.
Nothing odd about that, a perfectly reasonable observation. Except that he says it in a Russian accent, which is not something we get a lot of around here. Me, I take it in stride, just spit-take my seltzer all over the bar. I’m smooth like that. The guy slaps me on the back while I choke.
—OK?
I nod and wave my hand.
—Fine. Choke. Fine.
I point at the radio.
—Fucking Dolphins.
He shrugs.
—American football. Too slow.
The Fins try to run up the gut three times, get one yard, and punt miserably to their own thirty-five. Pedro comes over and the guy orders a shot of tequila and a Modelo.
—Hockey, very fast, good sport to watch. You like hockey?
—Not really.
—European football, soccer?
—Not really.
—But to play, yes? Americans like to play soccer, but not to watch.
—I guess.
The game comes back on. New England tries a play-action pass down the sideline. It’s complete. The receiver dodges the cornerback and sprints for the goal line. I hang my head, ready for the inevitable New England game-winning touchdown. The Fins’ strong safety hammers the receiver. The ball pops loose into his hands, and he’s running upfield. I jump off my swing and pound my fist on the bar.
—Go, go, go, go!
As he runs the ball all the way back for a touchdown.
—Yeah!
The backpacker guy nods his head, smiles like he approves of the play, takes a sip of his beer.
—What about baseball? You like baseball?
JUST AFTER sunset I walk back up to the north end of the beach. I pass the group of Spanish girls. They have a little overnight camp set up about a hundred yards from my bungalow. They’ve slipped shorts or baggy cotton pants on over their bikini bottoms in deference to the marginally cooler evening air. Two of them are walking in from the tree line that stretches the length of the beach, their arms full of deadwood for a fire. The girl with the nice smile is sitting cross-legged on one of the blankets they have spread on the sand, braiding the hair of the girl in front of her. There are five of them, none can be more than twenty-three. I try to remember what I was doing when I was twenty-three. I was still in college, studying something I never used. Christ, why wasn’t I camped out on Mexican beaches with girls like these?
I watch her quick hands weaving hair as I walk past. She looks up at me, smiles again.
—Buenas noches.
In that Spanish Spanish accent.
—Buenas noches.
She tilts her head toward my bungalow.
—Su casa?
—Mi casa.
—Bonito
—Gracias.
Tossing the strands of hair between her fingers the whole time, slipping a rubber band from her wrist when she gets to the end of the braid, cleverly twisting it into place. The girls with the wood arrive and dump it in a pile next to the blanket. She hops up, starts digging a hollow in the sand for the fire and gives me a little nod as I continue on to the bungalow. Behind me I hear Spanish chattered far too quickly for me to follow. There’s a great deal of laughter and I get the distinct feeling I’m being talked about. But it’s nice to be talked about by pretty girls, no matter what they might be saying.
THE BUNGALOW really isn’t much, but she’s right, it’s bonito in its way. Wood walls up to about waist level, topped by screen windows that circle the one-room building, with heavy storm shutters.
The whole thing is set on pilings that lift it a foot above the sand, and topped with the same palm thatching as The Bucket. I step up on the porch, past the canvas-back chair, small wooden table and hammock, and dig the key from the Velcro side pocket of my shorts. In the normal course of things, if I was just a guy down here living on the beach, I wouldn’t really need to lock my door. But I’m not that guy and I do need to lock my door. I have secrets to hide. I open the door and secret number one says hello.
—Meow.
I GOT into some trouble when I lived up in New York. I did a guy a favor and I got into some trouble for doing it. The favor he asked me to do that led to all the trouble, to me being on the run in Mexico, was he asked me to watch his cat. I said yes. And here I am three years later, still watching his cat.
BUD JUMPS down from the bed and limps over to say hi. One of his front legs was pretty badly broken in all that trouble. And some of the fur on his face grows in a weird little tuft because he has a scar from the same encounter that broke his leg. The guys that did the leg-breaking and the scarring are dead. Someone felt bad about that, not Bud. He rubs his face against my calf and I bend down, scoop him off the floor, and drape him over my shoulders.
—Jesus, cat, you’re getting fat. You are a fat fucking cat and no two ways about it.
I walk to the low shelf that holds my boom box and CD collection. I rummage around until I come up with Gram Parsons’s Grievous Angel. Gram and Emmylou’s harmonies twang out of the speakers. I open one of the kitchenette cupboards, grab a can of Bud’s food, scoop it into his bowl, and he leaps off my shoulders and digs in.
—Enjoy it while it lasts, cat. You’re going on a diet.
It’s pretty dark now, so I light a few candles. Like The Bucket, my place has no electricity, just batteries for the boom box, and candles and lanterns for light.
I take off my shirt and sit in my comfy chair. My face, arms, and legs are a deep, reddish brown from my years here, but my torso is white. Just like I don’t follow baseball or talk about my cat, I don’t take my shirt off in front of other people. They would kind of notice the livid scar that starts at my left hipbone, wraps around my side, and stops a couple inches from my spine. I took a bad beating up in New York and my kidney almost ruptured and had to come out. Later, some guys wanted some information from me and got the clever idea that I might be encouraged to tell them what it was if they started ripping out my staples. It was a really good idea because I would have told them anything, except that I didn’t know anything. Yet. Anyway, I keep the scar covered around people because if I didn’t, and anyone asked them if they knew anyone with a big kidney scar, they could happily say yes and I’d be a step closer to dead.
I leave the music on and walk down to the water. I usually do this naked, but I keep my shorts on tonight because of the girls right over there sitting around their fire. The water is perfect. It’s always perfect. I wade out, lean back, let my legs drift up and my arms float out until I am bobbing on the surface of the Caribbean, looking up at the stars. And for half a second I almost forget the Russian backpacker who set up his tent at the opposite end of the beach. The one who might be here looking for me and the four and a half million dollars that the New York Russian mafia thinks is theirs.
I have that money.
But it’s mine.
I killed for it.
BACK THERE at the bar, he sat and waited, the baseball question floating between us while I took another sip of seltzer.
—No, never got into baseball much. Just the football really.
Pedro comes over with some ribs for me. The backpacker is mostly quiet while I listen to the Dolphins actually hold onto a fourth-quarter lead and win the game. Of course, the radio tells me that the Jets have just beaten Buffalo, so we’re still locked in a death march to the last game of the season. But hope springs eternal after every win. And next week the Jets have to go to Green Bay, where come December the Packers treat opposing teams the way Napoleon got treated once the Russian winter hit him. Meanwhile, Miami gets to play 2–11 Detroit, at home. So you never know. God, I’m such a sucker.
I light a cigarette. The backpacker points at the pack.
—Benson Hedges.
—Want one?
—No. Don’t smoke. You know, only Russian doesn’t smoke in whole world.
—Huh.
—Father smoked Benson Hedges.
—Oh.
—Died, lung cancer.
—Yeah, it’ll get ya.
—No smoking for me.
—Good call.
It’s late afternoon. People are packing up on the beach after baking all day. Pedro is sitting on the far side of the bar with his guitar, strumming almost silently, whispering a song to himself. No one else is at the bar. I take a paperback from the rear pocket of my shorts, bend it open till the spine cracks a little, and lay it flat on the bar in front of me. The backpacker turns around on his swing to face the ocean again, still sitting right next to me. I read the same sentence a few times. He cranes his neck and tries to see the title of the book printed at the top of the page I’m staring at. I hold up the book, show it to him. East of Eden.
—Good book?
—Yeah.
I flatten the book on the bar again and stare at the sentence, waiting.
—Vacation here?
I surrender, flip the book facedown, light another cig, and turn to face him.
—Nope, live here. That’s my place up at the end of the beach. What about you, been on the road long? Doing the whole vagabondo thing or just on a quick vacation?
Which is how I end up spending the next hour chatting with Mikhail the Russian backpacker who really likes to be called Mickey.
He’s in his early twenties and has a round face and the kind of patchy beard and scraggly hair that all backpackers aspire to. He tells me that his family is originally from Armenia, but was in Russia for five generations, how his father was an importer/exporter of some kind who moved the family to America in ’95, which is where the Benson & Hedges caught up with him. He tells me about his four years in Jersey City and the four he spent at NYU in the film department and how he’s been on vacation since last May, but he has to be back after New Year’s to start graduate work in the second semester. And as he’s sucking on his ninth or tenth tequila since he first sat down, I’m thinking that if he really is a Russian gangster hunting me, he has the best cover act ever. Then he leans closer to me, shaking his head.
—I say my father was importer and exporter of goods, but truth is different.
He does another shot of tequila and chases it with sangrita.
—Truth, he was “business” man.
He says it so I hear the quotation marks.
—Wanted me in “business” with him. Mother was actress, married him for money. Big fucking deal, you know. Everybody in Russia married for money if they could. Mother was so happy I wanted to be artist like her. Pissed father off, pissed him fucking off. But I go to film school. Make film about dancer marries gangster. He dies before he can see film. Fucking “business” man.
I nod my head.
—Businessman, huh?
He’s crying now, big Russian tears.
—Big-shot “business” man.
He slips off the swing, almost hangs himself on the ropes. I steady him and get him standing. He wipes the tears from his eyes.
—Thanks you. Got to put up tent. Sleep.
He stumbles away from the bar.
Pedro comes over.
—Didn’t pay his tab.
—Get him tomorrow, he’s not going anywhere.
—Russians. Can’t drink tequila.
—But don’t get in a vodka-drinking contest with one.
“Business” man.
I chew on that for awhile, until Pedro’s brother buzzes up in his dune buggy with Rolf. They take fuel cans and fishing gear out of the buggy and start hauling it all down to the waterline. I go over and lend a hand.
—Hola.
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Rolf bumps fists with me.
—Que pasa, dude?
—Nothing.
He grabs one end of an ice chest, I grab the other and we lift it out of the buggy. Rolf is an American expat: a dreadlocked, nipple-pierced, surf bum vagabond from San Diego who washed up on the Yucatán about ten years ago. He mostly works up in town as a diving instructor for the tourists. He got into business with Pedro’s brother because he likes the action.
They do actually run night-fishing excursions, but I can tell from the amount of fuel I’m now shouldering out to the boat that they won’t be catching anything tonight. Pedro’s brother, Leo, is up in the boat. He has the same flat face and short round body as his brother, but the roundness covers muscles made hard by hauling fishing nets. He easily one-hands the fifteen-gallon fuel can I’ve carried to the boat and tucks it away in the stern. Rolf splashes up, pushing a sealed plastic tub that bobs low in the water. I boost up onto the gunwale and help Leo pull it aboard. Through the translucent plastic I can see a GPS rig, a high-power halogen spotlight, battery cells, and the AK-47 they bring along for these trips. Leo nods his thanks as we clunk the tub down in the bottom of the long-hulled, open fishing boat. I jump back into the water and head for shore. Looking back at Leo, I give him a thumbs-up.
—Via con Dios.
—Always, man, always.
Then he’s yanking the engine to life. I pass Rolf on his way to the boat with a six-pack, the last of the supplies. I bump fists with him again.
—How many?
—Just two. Supposed to be offshore in a raft. We’ll see.
—Luck.
—Fuck that, dude. See you in the morning, you can buy me a beer.
—You got it.