Puerto Vallarta Squeeze

by Robert James Waller

  Such was the order of things. Hard, but double hard when you had the kind of dreams Luz had, even as a young girl. Hazy dreams from the old magazines she’d read, from the embellished stories migrants had told when they’d returned from el Norte. Even without that information Luz would have had her own dreams; she was that way.

  She’d awakened before dawn in late summer of 1983, eight years before she would meet Danny. Roosters crowing, first light coming, mist over the fields, and a feathery breeze through the village called Ceylaya. She’d helped her mother cook breakfast for her father and brothers. Before seven o’clock, Jesús Santos and his three eldest sons had pedaled rickety bicycles to the chili plantation where they worked eleven hours for low wages. The two younger boys spent the day working in the family’s portion of the communal fields.

  On that morning ten years ago, her stomach had hurt and she’d bled a little the day before. She was twelve, and something was happening inside her body she didn’t understand, since her mother had never told her about menstrual cycles or anything else connected with womanhood. But the bleeding scared Luz, so when pressed, and looking at the young black eyes asking questions, her mother tried to explain as best she could. She’d said this was God’s way of preparing Luz to have a family.

  Luz had also asked if she might have a blanket of her own. It hadn’t seemed right anymore to be sharing one with the youngest boy, Pedro, and sleeping on the straw floor mat next to him, since he was now fifteen and once or twice his morning erection had accidentally touched her while he slept. She’d been too embarrassed to speak of these things, but clearly it was time for a blanket of her own. Her mother had said she would talk to Luz’s father about it.

  The roosters were joined by other village sounds, and Luz, twelve years old and dreaming, had thought of the day to come. She would sweep the dirt floors of the two-room house, sew, and pat-pat tortillas in a rhythm her mother called the heartbeat of Mexico. It was too dark to see what hung on the adobe walls, but she’d known what hung there from having looked at those walls for all the years of her life: old newspapers and calendars, a few religious posters, and one photograph of Jesús and Esmeralda Santos on their wedding day. The photograph, yellowing and curled a little, would have been nicer if a drunken hombre hadn’t been holding a glass and looking over her parents’ shoulders when the picture was taken.

  In the front room her other four brothers had been waking up. The boys shared two beds, and between the beds was a wooden table holding a stack of schoolbooks and Catholic religious pamphlets. Below the table was a wooden chest where the family records were kept, baptismal and birth certificates, and a few more photos taken on special occasions, such as Jesús-the-second’s confirmation day. Esmeralda Santos was allowed a corner of the chest for her single pair of shoes and the one good dress she owned.

  In the afternoon Luz had helped the younger boys in the fields, bending low, picking vegetables her mother sold to other villagers. Out there in the sun, Luz’s feed-sack dress had blown up around her legs and her straw hat flapped in the wind and dust, but the string around her chin held the hat close to her thick black hair.

  Coming home from the fields in those times, Luz had kept her eyes straight ahead, not looking at the men in the outdoor cantina who already were watching her as she passed. It was understood she would marry one of the younger ones and keep his house and bear his children. “As many children as God decides,” was the church’s rule, though the village women seemed unconvinced when they said it. In the way things were, and are, Luz would be expected to endure her husband’s beatings when he’d turn up drunk and to treat him perpetually as if he were his own small god of the household. “The man isn’t perfect, but he’s yours.” That’s something else the village women had said.

  Two years later she’d awakened in the same way in the same room, on a straw mat next to her parents’ bed. She had the mat to herself then, since a space for Pedro opened up when Jesús-the-second found a job near Teacapán, working as a gardener in a small gringo colony. Luz was fourteen, and the younger men were beginning to stare at the front door of Jesús Santos’s house. Sometimes they talked to her at village fiestas. She kept her eyes downward most of the time while they talked, but not all of the time. Luz was different, which was a third thing the village women had said.

  Luz had been fortunate in one way, since a spasm of educational reform provided the local school with teachers who could take her all the way through sixth grade. No farther, but at least that far. By Mexican village standards that was good. Her brothers had never gone beyond fourth grade, except for Jesús, who completed five years before he’d gone to work for the gringos near Teacapán to bring money back home.

  Jesús-the-elder had spoken to her mother, saying grade three was enough for a girl, saying also too much education made women difficult to handle and a husband for Luz would be that much harder to find. Luz’s mother had argued with him and said Luz was special, that she had dreams and should go as far as the teachers could take her. For such insolence Esmeralda Santos was beaten, but she was stubborn about it, and Luz was allowed to continue in school. She’d learned to read and write and studied basic Mexican history, a history colored by emotion and not entirely accurate, but no worse than colored-up history anywhere. She’d also learned to hunch her shoulders and bend a little forward when passing the village men, hiding in that fashion her breasts, which already were large and seemed to grow more so every day.

  The other village girls were envious when a gringo photographer had visited Ceylaya and had chosen her for a series of portraits. He’d followed her into the fields and photographed her in her straw hat and feed-sack dress. And later a package had arrived with a picture of her, neatly matted and framed in silver. The photograph showed her standing, with the sea wind whipping her light dress about her legs and bending the brim of her hat. She was barefoot and smiling in a shy way back over her shoulder at the camera. The quiet, long-haired man in khaki shirt and orange suspenders had also smiled when he’d finished, lowering his camera and saying what he had just done would make a nice photograph of her and that he would send a copy. She kept the photograph as one of her prized possessions, a reminder of her village days.

  Cholera—first from a traveler’s hand, then from water or fruit—blew north. It had taken Luz’s mother, then her father, then one of the middle boys. Luz escaped the disease, and the decision was clear: stay or go. Two young men in the village had needed wives, and everyone said Luz was a good catch; she not only had beauty but also knew how to work. Her only flaw was intelligence coupled with a slightly rebellious nature, but a few good beatings and seven or eight children would smother those qualities. As the men liked to say, “If they are pregnant, they will not wander.” And machismo demands they do not wander—always, always, there is the fear of a woman giving favors to another man, for that is as bad as things get for un hombre macho married to the woman.

  In the same gringo colony where he worked as a gardener, Jesús found Luz a maid’s position in an American’s house. She was fifteen and worked as hard as she did at home. But there was more food, and she was given shoes and a uniform and a bed of her own over the garage in a room she shared with two other young women. At night, she could hear the Pacific waves slapping the shore only fifty yards west of where she lay.

  When the American’s son had visited on holidays, he’d noticed Luz, noticed the fine legs and prominent breasts showing beneath her uniform, the pretty face with only the slightest hint around the eyes and high-cheeked facial structure of Indian blood left from generations back. The son was called David, and he was her first man. That he and Luz were swimming together at night and doing other things was understood by all, understood and accepted. David’s father had worried about disease, so the boy always used a condom.

  David was seventeen and clumsy, but Luz hadn’t known any different and presumed such things lasted no more than the thirty seconds the boy made them last until his breath came fast
and he lay still upon her afterward. Her mother had said it was the man’s prerogative and whatever the man did was the right thing. But that’s not what the images in magazines implied, not what the television soap operas suggested. The magazines and television made it clear that wearing fancy dresses showing off your woman’s body was permitted, that it was all right to smile and speak unafraid in the presence of men. The stories said there should be moments of abandon in which the woman reached ecstatic heights of her own. It was all very confusing.

  But David was a decent boy, and the family was decent overall, better than Luz had been taught to expect of gringos. They’d tutored her in basic English, good English, American colloquialisms included. Everyone said learning English was the key to better jobs in places where the tourists went. Climb the language hierarchy, get fluent, and you could become a hotel clerk or work in a shop where the gringo women purchased beachwear and Mexican clothing they toted back home and wore at garden parties.

  At eighteen Luz had taken her things, become a gypsy for a day, and had ridden the bus to Puerto Vallarta. It was said a million tourists a year came to that exotic place and work was available for those who could speak English well. It was also whispered that once in a great while a gringo would take a young Mexican woman back to el Norte with him, back to the good life. From chambermaid at the Sheraton to assistant cook at La Plazita, that was the route for Luz, living those days with five other young women in a hillside shack. She would have stayed longer at the Sheraton, but the assistant manager would not leave her alone, saying if she wasn’t nice to him, she wouldn’t have a job much longer. He was fat and ugly and had thick fingers that touched her when she walked by. La Plazita had a clean kitchen, at least.

  The young gringo men who came in groups to Puerto Vallarta had money, more money than she could imagine. If you sat along the Malecón and smiled at them, they sometimes stopped and talked, saying, “Jeez, your English is pretty good,” among other things. They wore T-shirts with obscenities printed on them and other ones saying, “Life Is a·Beach,” a metaphorical word-play Luz didn’t understand at first, and they wore floppy shorts showing off their hairy, muscular legs. But they had paid twenty dollars for a night with a young Mexican woman, a cheap enough price for bragging rights back at Texas A&M.

  Twenty dollars had been Luz’s top body-price, since other young women had the same idea. And in Puerto Vallarta a twelve-year-old girl could be rented for only three dollars a night, cash paid directly to the girl’s mother, who handed over the girl or brought her to a specified place. Guaranteed virgins ran a little higher. Danny eventually had told her about a bloated gringo who bragged around Las Noches about being the first to take one of the young girls. The man had laughed when he let everyone know she wasn’t large enough to handle him, how he’d torn her up and sent her back to her mother, who’d then had to find a doctor to staunch the bleeding.

  Luz had whored only when she saw a new dress in a shop window or a nice pair of shoes she wanted. Not that it was a question of essential morality by this time, just that the whole business was fairly boring and not very refined, besides. There wasn’t much to it, not all that different from the boy David, You played nice, drank a little something with them, and it was soon finished in one of the little hotels south of the Rio Cuale. It was a practical matter, nothing more. They’d usually leave as soon as they were finished, but Luz would stay in the room all night since it had been paid for and there was hot water and a little privacy of her own for a while. None of them had said anything about taking her to el Norte.

  When she was twenty and working at La Plazita, one of the busboys was ill on a Tuesday evening. Along with her work in the kitchen, Luz helped clean tables that night, something she ordinarily was not allowed to do. The gringo who came in was tanned and carried only a little belly, not as tall as some of them—perhaps five ten or so—and he had a pleasant face and nice brown hair hanging just over his shirt collar. She noticed the hair had a few streaks of gray in it.

  He’d scratched his chin and ordered enchiladas, thinking she was there to take his order, but only men were allowed to be waiters. Before the waiter came, she whispered that the chiles rellenos were better, so he’d decided on that and asked her if she’d like to have an ice cream later. She’d said she would, and moved in with Danny Pastor two weeks later, heaven for a village girl. His apartment was small, but it had running water and a bathroom and a bed and closet. All of that plus a refrigerator and a stove.

  Danny had known about making true love, more than Luz knew, but that didn’t lay claim to much. Still, he’d been married and had read books on it. He told Luz he wanted to please her in bed, to bring her happiness, and taught her how to use her hands and mouth on him. The first time he put his tongue on her she tore the bed apart with pleasure and learned to scream into a pillow so the neighbors wouldn’t hear. If truth usually lies somewhere in the middle of all continuums, it seemed in this case the magazines and television knew more than Esmeralda Santos and the other villagers about men and women and the things they do with one another. Besides, Mexican men preferred that their wives remain ignorant of the erotic arts, afraid, as they said, “she might get to like it too much.” Those were good things for mistresses or other bad women to know, but not wives, who might then seek out even more distant frontiers.

  Danny had bought her three cassette tapes by María Conchita Alonso, whose love songs were popular with the younger women. He also had bought her two tapes by Pedro Infante to play on his battered tape player, since she still liked the old música ranchera she’d heard as a girl in Ceylaya. And also two tapes of salsa music by a guitar player called Ottmar Liebert, looking on the album cover as very close to a young Marlon Brando and playing rhumbas with just a touch of Maríachi woven into them. When Ottmar Liebert played “La Rosa Negra,” that one especially, was when Luz would dance a lickerish, naked rhumba for Danny. Danny, grinning and lying back on the bed and spilling tequila on the sheets and shouting, “God, let it all run forever!”

  In the evenings, if Danny had money, they would go uptown and listen to Willie and Lobo in Mamma Mia. María de la Luz Santos had been born for this sweet life, and she wanted even more of it. Though it could get a little over the edge if you weren’t careful. Such as the night Danny had been hanging all over a blond woman from San Diego. Just to show him, Luz went off to someone’s yacht, where three men practically drowned her in tequila. She didn’t remember much about it, except she was very sore in her lower parts for days. She never did that again.

  The abortion had been a hard, hard thing for her, though it was common enough in Mexico among women of all classes, even those who considered themselves good Catholics. There was, first of all, the idea of family, drilled far and deep into a young girl’s soul by a mother who could not see beyond that. And the village priest had railed against abortion—murder, he said it was. Above all, however, was the sense she wanted the child, wanted motherhood, and wanted Danny for a husband, even though he was nearly twenty years older than she.

  But, after her wild night on a harbor yacht, Danny wouldn’t hear of it, wouldn’t think about having a child in any case, and she was afraid of losing what she had with him. So Luz had submitted to the abortion on a hot July day. She’d tried to forget it and after a while did forget it most of the time, yet the thought of it sometimes would come back to her, dwelling within her like a tack in the soul. Even after a year or two, she would cry when she remembered that summer morning. Afterward that same day, Danny had bought her a new Panasonic tape player. He’d also made sure she had plenty of birth control pills and made just as sure she took them.

  Slowly she’d repressed thoughts of the abortion and got back to the way things were meant to be. When Danny’s checks had arrived, they’d driven to Bucerias and eaten lobster and afterward driven out to Punta de Mita and swum naked in moonlit surf. Then one evening a curious thing had happened in the bar of El Niño, and later on that same night she rode in the B
ronco named Vito, running hard with Danny and another man, running toward el Norte, where she’d always wanted to go and where Danny would never even talk about taking her.

  IN THAT KIND OF PLACE

  In late afternoon, heading due north on Route 15, Danny, Luz, and the shooter came up a long, high hill in heavy traffic, heat enveloping the Bronco as if they were riding through a brickyard kiln. At the top of the hill, Vito heated up and boiled over. Danny pulled off and inventoried the water supply, cursing himself for not bringing more. They’d been drinking water at a high rate, and there wasn’t enough left to get Vito cooled down and moving again.

  A Buick with Iowa plates was coming south and stopped. Leaning out the passenger-side window, a brown dog with white markings on her face panted and looked at them. An older gentleman with an “LSU Tigers” cap on his head leaned out the other window and asked if he could be of help. Danny said he could use some water if the man had any to spare.

  “Sure do. It’s in the trunk.”

  The man got out to open the trunk, and the dog followed him. While Danny was topping off the radiator, the shooter squatted down and petted the dog. “She got a name?” he asked of the older gentleman.

  “Bandida. She’s not much to look at, but she’s got a lot of heart.” Pretty bad cut on the man’s face, he noticed.

  “Bandida… that’s a good name.”

  ““tep. Found her in New Orleans. She was in bad shape, living down by the waterfront.” He glanced at the pretty Mexican woman sitting in the back of the old Bronco.

  “Thanks,” Danny said. “I think we’re all right now.”

  “No bother.” The older gentleman grinned. “Think I’ll get on down the road. Retired a while back, and me and Bandida are visiting all the little beach towns. Got a lady librarian friend flying in from Otter Falls, Iowa, to meet me in Puerto Vallarta in a few days. If you ever need some good reading about travel, I’d recommend getting this.” He held a book out the window, Collected Essays on the Road Life, written by someone named Michael Tillman.