The Last Lovely City

by Alice Adams

  He hesitates—what Penelope thinks of as a judicial pause. “No, I guess not,” he tells her.

  The group clustered at the TV set seems indescribably sad, to Penelope. She considers the life of Rosa, a life of such hard work, so many children, but successful, in a way: her own good restaurant, there on the beach. Very popular with tourists; or she once was. But now seemingly all is in ruins; nothing is getting through to her but absence and pain, mourning, and noisy TV talk shows. Rosa is so terribly reduced that possibly she has indeed shrunk in stature, Penelope believes. In no sense is she now the woman she once was. All over Mexico, Penelope imagines, there must be women like Rosa, defeated women, bowing to sadness. The emotions that she herself felt after Charles were sufficiently like this to make her now shudder, and some shame for Rosa, for herself, for all of them makes her wish that Ben had not met Rosa in this state.

  Ben and Charles are so totally unlike, as men, that Penelope almost never consciously compares them. Ben is dark, quite presentable but not handsome. He is thrifty, extremely thrifty. Intelligent rather than brilliant, tending to be quiet, almost taciturn. Judicial. His most annoying expression, to Penelope, is, “Well, I’d have to see the evidence on that.”

  His love for Penelope, a love to which he admits, though reluctantly, seems out of character, odd. At times Penelope can hardly believe in its truth, but then Ben is an exceptionally truthful man. She senses that he would prefer a more conventional woman, perhaps another lawyer?—but in that case what was he doing with crazy Betty?

  He must wonder, it occurs to Penelope, if she is in fact thinking of Charles, and if so what in particular she remembers.

  Actually, what Penelope most remembered about San Bartolomeo, in those years of not going there, was the flowers—the spills and fountains of bougainvillea, the lush profusion of bloom, in every color: pink red purple yellow orange. And the bright red trumpet vines, and other nameless flowers, everywhere.

  This year, however, she notices on their way to breakfast that everything looks drier; the vines are brittle, the palm fronds yellowing. There are some flowers still, some hard fuchsia bougainvillea, but far fewer.

  Can there have been a drought in Mexico that she had not read about, along with all that country’s other, increasing problems? Corruption and garbage, pollution, overpopulation, and disease. Extreme, unending poverty.

  In the dining room things are more or less the same. A buffet table with lovely fresh fruit, and boxes of American cold cereal. An urn of awful coffee, not quite hot. Pretty young maids, who take orders for Mexican eggs, French toast, whatever. Penelope scours the room for some maid that she knew before, but finds none, not beautiful Aurelia, or small smart friendly Guadalupe.

  The other guests, on the whole, are younger than the people who used to come here. Younger and less affluent looking. Many couples with small children. They are all probably taking advantage of the new cheap fares—as we are, Penelope thinks, at that moment badly missing the Farquhars, their elderly grace, their immaculate dignity. “You would have liked the Farquhars,” she says to Ben—as she has several times before.

  Down on the beach, the scene is much the same as always, couples or groups lounging in various states of undress around their palapas, with their bright new books or magazines, their transistors, bottles of beer, and suntan lotion. Too many people. Most of the palapas are taken; the only one available to Penelope is at the foot of the steps, near Rosa’s.

  “There’s not a lot of surf,” Ben comments as they settle into uncomfortable slatted chairs.

  “Sometimes there is.” Does he mean that he would rather be in Hawaii, where the surf is higher?

  “Those boats look dangerous,” he tells her.

  Penelope has to agree. Back and forth, perilously close to the swimmers, small motorboats race by, some hauling along water-skiers, others attached to a person who is dangling from a parachute, up in the sky. The boats are driven by young boys, sixteen or seventeen, from the look of them, who often turn back to laugh with their admiring girlfriends, on the seats behind them. In fact Penelope has always been extremely afraid of these boats—though Charles reassured her that they would not hit anyone (laughing: “They never have, have you noticed?”). But this year there seem to be more of them, and they seem to come in much closer than before.

  A young Mexican woman with a bunch of plastic bottles, strung together, comes up to their palapa and asks if they want to buy some suntan lotion.

  No, thank you.

  A very small girl with enormous eyes comes by selling Chiclets.

  No, thanks.

  “It’s odd about vendors this year,” Penelope tells Ben. “There used to be lots of them, and they had some good stuff. Carlotta got some incredible necklaces. There was one in particular, a tall pretty young woman in a white uniform, sort of like a nurse. She had a briefcase full of lovely silver things. Pretty opal rings; it’s where I got mine.” And she spreads her fingers, showing him, again, the two opal rings, one pink and one green, each with seeming depths of fire, each surrounded by a sort of silver filigree. “About ten bucks apiece,” Penelope laughs. “Augustina, her name was. I wanted to get more rings on this trip, but I don’t see her.”

  “Why more?”

  “Oh, they don’t last. They dull and come apart. But I suppose I don’t really need them.” Though thrifty, Ben no doubt disapproves of such cheap rings, or so Penelope imagines—the wives of successful lawyers, and certainly of judges, do not wear ten-dollar rings. And in a discouraged way Penelope wonders why they have come to Mexico together, she and Ben. Most recently in San Francisco they had not been getting on especially well; there was a string of minor arguments, the more annoying because of their utter triviality—where to eat, whom to see, what to do—arguments that had left them somewhat raw, on edge. It comes to Penelope that she must have expected some special Mexican balm; she must have thought that somehow Mexico would make everything come right, would impart its own magic. And she thinks, Alas, poor Mexico, you can hardly heal yourself, much less me.

  “Well, how about a swim?” Ben stands up, so trim and neatly made, in his neat khaki trunks, that Penelope sighs and thinks, He’s so nice, and generally good; do I only truly like madmen, like Charles? Even as she smiles and says, “Sure, let’s go.”

  As always, the water is mysteriously warm and cool at once, both nurturing and refreshing—and green, glittering there for miles out into the sunlight. But perhaps not quite as clear as before? Penelope thinks that, but she is not entirely sure.

  Despite a passing motorboat, this one lolling at low speed, its owner smiling an invitation, drumming up trade—Ben strikes out into deep water, swimming hard. For an instant Penelope thinks, Oh Lord, he’ll be killed, that’s what this ill-advised (probably) trip is all about. But then more sensibly she thinks, No, Ben will be okay. He is not slated to be run over by a Mexican motorboat (or is he?). She herself, more and more fearful as another boat zips by, this one trailing a large yellow inflated balloon, astride which six young women shriek and giggle—Penelope moves closer to a large, wave-jumping group of Americans for protection.

  She persuades Ben to go back to Rosa’s for lunch, but the day scene there is even more depressing than what goes on at night: the same blaring TV, same group clustered in front of it—in broad daylight, the sun streaming outside on the beach, the lovely sea not twenty yards away. Rosa hardly looks up as they come in. And the food is indifferent.

  Walking up the path to their room, Penelope observes, again, the row of empty rooms. And she remembers an elderly couple, the Connors, friends of the Farquhars, who always took the room on this end, that nearest to the path, and sat there, calling out to their friends who passed. The lonely old Connors, now very likely dead. But how easy to imagine them sitting there still, he with his binoculars, she with her solitaire cards. And, in the room after next, Penelope and Charles, and in the next room the Farquhars. It seems impossible, quite out of the question, for all those people
to have vanished. To have left no trace in this air.

  Instead of saying any of that to Ben (of course she would not), Penelope says, “I do wonder how come Augustina’s not around anymore. Her things were great, and she was so nice.”

  During their siesta Penelope has a most curious dream—in which she and Charles and Steven, Charles’s beautiful boy, are all good friends, or perhaps she and Charles are the happy parents of Steven. The dream is vague, but there they are, the three of them—cornily enough, in a meadow of flowers. And, as Penelope awakes, the even cornier phrase, “Forgiveness flowers,” appears somewhere at the edges of her mind.

  Nevertheless, it seems a cheering, on the whole restorative dream, and she awakens refreshed, and cheered.

  That night she and Ben walk into the town for dinner, a thing that she and Charles almost never did, and they find the town very much as it was: dingy, rutted, poorly lit streets leading toward the center, along which wary old men loiter, sometimes stopping to rest on the stoop of a darkened house, to smoke a cigarette, to stare at the night. Then stores, small and shabby at first, little groceries, ill-equipped drugstores, with timid souvenirs, faded postcards, cheap cosmetics. And then more light, larger and gaudier stores. More people. The same old mix of tourists, always instantly identifiable as non-Mexican. And Mexicans, mostly poor, some very poor, beggars, pitiful dark thin women, holding babies.

  At their chosen, recommended restaurant, no table will be available for half an hour. And so Ben and Penelope go into the small, white, rather austere church that they have just passed. A mass of some sort is going on; a white-robed priest is at the altar; everywhere there are white flowers. Penelope and Ben take back-row seats, and she watches as three little girls clamber all over their mother, who prays, paying them no heed. The girls and their mother wear churchgoing finery, black skirts and embroidered white shirts, and all the family’s black hair is braided, beautifully. Whereas, the more Anglo-looking (less Indian) families in the church are dressed more or less as tourists are, in cotton skirts or pants, camp shirts, sandals.

  Their dinner, in an attractive open court, is mildly pleasant. A subdued guitarist plays softly in one corner; there is a scent of flowers everywhere.

  “Do you really think we should marry?” Ben asks, at some point.

  At which Penelope more or less bridles. “Well no, I’m not at all sure; did I say that I did—?”

  He pauses, just slightly confused. “I didn’t mean you had, but—well, I don’t know.”

  She laughs, “You mean, not in Mexico.”

  He looks less nervous. “Oh, right.” He laughs.

  The next morning, very early, Ben says that he wants to swim. “Before those damn boats are around,” he quite reasonably says. “You too?”

  “I don’t think so.” What she wants is just to lie there for a while, savoring the Mexican dawn, just now visible between the drawn window draperies. “I’ll come down in a little while.”

  “Leave the key in the blue sack, okay?”

  Penelope lies there, deliciously, for ten or fifteen minutes. Ben will want to swim for close to an hour, she knows. She lies there, thinking of nothing—and then she puts on her bathing suit, a red bikini, puts the room key in the small blue airline bag, and starts down the path—down past the empty row of rooms where they all used to stay (it now seems very long ago), past Rosa’s restaurant, and out onto the beach, where she leaves the bag with the key on a table beneath one of the palapas. And she steps out into the water, the marvel of cool, of freshness. She thinks she sees Ben’s dark head, far out to sea, but what she sees could as easily be a buoy.

  She swims for a while, fairly sure that dark head is indeed Ben’s. She waves, and whoever it is waves back. Looking to shore, for the first time she notices a sign, TOURIST MARKET, and she wonders what that is. She heads back in, stands up, and starts walking out of the water, up onto the beach.

  She is trying to remember which palapa table she put the bag on, and does not remember. She does not see the bright blue bag on any table.

  And slowly it registers on Penelope’s frightened consciousness that the bag is not there. Gone. No key to the room. At the same moment, the moment of realizing her loss, she sees an old man, a sort of beach bum, wrapped in something orange, rags, hobbling down the beach. And Penelope, wildly out of character, for her, now thinks, I have to run after him, I have to chase that old man, who must have my key. Whether I get it back or not, I have to run after him.

  And she does. She starts off down the beach, running as best she can, but clumsily, in the deep dry sand.

  She is unused to running, but the man ahead of her is very old. She is gaining on him when suddenly he veers off the beach, to the left, and into the Tourist Market. Where Penelope follows, not far behind.

  Getting closer, she begins to shout, “Stop! Stop!”

  The market is a row of booths, now mostly empty, so early in the morning, but here and there a solitary figure pauses, putting aside a broom or a dusting cloth, a crate—to observe this chase. Penelope imagines herself, as she must look: A tall blond skinny American woman in a red bikini, chasing after a poor old man, a derelict, hysterically shouting. Why should anyone help her?

  But there, ahead of her, at the end of the row of rickety booths, to her surprise she sees the old man wheel and turn. He is standing there on one leg, a tattered old bird, maybe too tired to keep on running.

  His dark, grizzled face is all twisted, one eye is gone, the skin closed over, and most of his teeth are gone. His mouth contorts, and the bright remaining black eye stares out at Penelope. A dying Aztec, she thinks. She thinks, Mexico, I should not have come back here.

  Over one of the old man’s shoulders a large old brown leather sack is slung, zippered up. In which there must be her blue bag. Her room key.

  But what she (ridiculously) says is, “Did you happen to see my bag? on the table?”

  “No—” His voice is tentative, querulous, but his eye is challenging, accusing, even. Perhaps it was not he who took her bag but someone else, earlier, while she was swimming.

  Penelope finds no way to say, Open your sack up; let me see what you have inside. How could she?

  She says again, “My blue bag, are you sure you didn’t see it?”

  “Yes.” He turns from her.

  Defeated, Penelope begins to walk back through the market booths, past a sort of workers’ restaurant, just opening up, past more booths, with jewelry, scarves, leather—to the beach.

  Where bearded Ben is getting out of the water. Shaking himself, like a dog.

  He frowns a little at what Penelope tells him, but then he says, “Well, it’s not too bad. We’ll go up to the room, and you wait there while I go to the desk for another key. They should have given us two. As I said.”

  However, after the fifteen or twenty minutes that Penelope has been standing there in the hallway, outside their room, in the gathering heat of the day, Ben comes back to inform her that it is not so simple, after all. They don’t have another key. Honestly, Mexico. Someone has gone to find the housekeeper. God knows how long that will take. It’s Sunday, remember?

  Since there is no existing key to their room—many keys have been lost, they are told, or simply not turned in—the only solution to a keyless room is for Penelope and Ben to move into another room. Which, once the housekeeper has been found (an hour or so) and their old room wrenched open, they finally do: with the help of several maids they repack and move all their clothes.

  The new room is lower down, and smaller, with less of a view. Not as nice.

  However, they are only here for two more days. Ben and Penelope, over their much-delayed breakfast, remind each other of this fact.

  That old man with his rags, his toothless twisted mouth, and his one defiant eye is in Penelope’s mind all that day, however. How angry he must have been, she thinks, if he opened the blue bag, expecting money, to find nothing but an old key.

  And was it, after all, that old
man who took the bag, or someone else, some other stroller on the beach who had vanished in another direction before Penelope got out of the water?

  That night in the bar a young woman, another American whom they have seen around, with her fat young husband and two very fat small children, comes up to them to say, “Are you the guys who lost a blue flight bag, with your room key? My husband found it, in back of that Tourist Market, and he couldn’t find anyone to claim it, so he turned it in at the restaurant there. Just go and tell them it’s yours.”

  The next morning Penelope, dressed, sets out for the Tourist Market. She approaches it from a back road she knows that passes Rosa’s and leads to the corner where she and the ragged old man confronted each other. Where now for a moment she pauses, imagining him, and she looks around, as though he might have come back and been lurking around. But of course he has not; there is only the road, and back of the road the yellowing jungle brush, in the beating Mexican sun. Penelope continues to the restaurant.

  A pleasant-faced, plump young woman tells her, “Oh yes, your bag. Right here.”

  Penelope thanks her very much, gives her some pesos, and walks on with her bag, in which she can feel the room key, still there. And she thinks again of the old man, how angry he must have been to find only a key. Crazily, for a moment this seems to Penelope unfair; she even thinks of trying to find that old man, to give him some money—and she smiles to think of what Ben would make of that gesture, combining as it would two of her (to him) worst qualities: thriftlessness and “irrationality.”

  She continues through the booths, until she is stopped by a display of rings. She bends over, as always hoping for opals—and sees that there are several: opal rings of just the sort that she likes, the lovely stones with their fiery interiors.

  A pretty Mexican woman in a yellow sweater, dark skirt, asks if she can help. These rings are about twenty-five dollars for two, but still so cheap! and so pretty. Penelope feels a great surge of happiness at having found them. The rings seem a good omen, somehow, though she is not sure of what: of this trip? that she was right, after all, to come back to Mexico, and to this particular place?