by Mary Monroe
It had never occurred to me that people in the travel business, other than the ones at Bon Voyage, would know Ann! Then it dawned on me: If I was going to travel in Ann’s name I had to make arrangements in bits and pieces. For each trip I would have to book flights with an airline on my own and get hotel information from the Internet. I would also have to bypass the countries that she frequently visited. It saddened me to know that if and when I decided to visit the Caribbean, I’d probably have to use my own name—and pay for it out of my own pocket! There was not much of a chance for that to happen any time soon, so I had to settle for places like Mexico. Right after the aborted call with the travel agent who knew Ann, I called Mexicana Airlines and made a reservation to fly to Puerto Vallarta.
Since I had made my plans on such short notice, I had to pay a huge fare. But I didn’t care. I could afford it. It pleased me to know that Ann’s credit history was so strong that she qualified for new instant credit cards with generous credit lines. Even before my bankruptcy, the highest credit line I had ever had was a paltry thousand dollars. The cards in Ann’s name were all between five and ten thousand dollars! And the one that I considered the Holy Grail was a Platinum Visa with a fifteent-housand-dollar limit that I’d just received.
I’d left work before noon that Friday and gone home “sick.” I took a cab directly to the airport. I had breezed into Mexico that Friday afternoon like it was something I did every day.
With only a weekend to work with I had to squeeze in as many activities as I could. After checking into my lavish hotel suite, I enjoyed a scrumptious seafood dinner in my room, which included a view of the Pacific Ocean. I felt like a queen!
After my dinner and a brief siesta, I leaped into a round bathtub filled with rose-scented bubble bath. It was as spontaneous as a lot of things I’d begun to enjoy.
CHAPTER 57
The Puerto Vallarta weather was much warmer than South Bay City so I had on a pair of short shorts and another one of my new low-cut blouses. Sarah, from the beauty shop, had given me a perm the night before so I didn’t have to worry about my hair sweating out and balling up on my head. I was pleased with my appearance.
Just as he’d promised, my grinning cab driver, Carlos, pulled up in front of my hotel at nine that night. He still had on the same T-shirt. The same foul odor that I’d smelled earlier was still in the air, though not as potent as it had been in the airport area. It no longer bothered me. I was feeling too good to let it.
As soon as I stepped inside the Club Bonita a handsome young Mexican darted across the floor and started pulling on my arm, begging me to dance. He was clearly disappointed when I politely turned him down. I sat down at the nearest vacant table and ordered a piña colada. This was the first time I’d ever gone to a nightclub by myself and it was a strange experience. Local men in groups of three and four, most of them potbellied, plain, and middle-aged, hovered over my table, smiling and saluting me with their drinks. Looking around my immediate area I realized that my table was the only one occupied by a lone woman. Every other woman I saw was either with a man or with a party of two or more individuals. It seemed like all eyes were on me.
I was pleasantly surprised when an attractive young Black woman in a bright pink blouse and matching shorts appeared at the side of my table. “Ain’t you from D.C.?” she asked, taking a long drink from a tall glass.
“I’m from California,” I replied cordially.
“Oh. You look like somebody I know back in D.C. You wanna sit with me and my crew? You gonna get eaten alive, girl. These Mexican men love them some Black women. Me and my girls, we’ve been beatin’ ’em off with a stick all week.”
“That’s all right,” I replied with a dismissive wave. “I’m only in town for the weekend and I think I can take care of myself,” I said with a smile. “Thanks anyway.”
“All right, now. Just be careful down here,” the woman said, easing back across the floor.
Before the waiter returned with my drink, two tall, very dark-skinned men with kinky black hair came out of nowhere and pulled out chairs at my table. The cuter one dropped a rose on the table in front of me.
“Excuse me,” I said, annoyed and flattered at the same time. The club was crowded. The music, the latest hip-hop tune from the States, was so loud it made my ears ring. Like it was with other nightclubs I’d been to, this one was a ball of confusion. I smiled apologetically and started to rise.
“And where are ju going?” one of the men asked, speaking with a thick Spanish accent. He firmly wrapped his long brown fingers around my wrist.
“I’m going to another table,” I replied.
“No, ju are not,” the man said, giving me a stern look. His fingers tightened around my wrist.
“Uh, is this your table?” I stammered, looking around for another vacant table or the table with the sister and her friends from D.C.
“It is now,” the other man said. “I am Adrian. His is my brother Marcos.”
“Oh. Uh, I’m from the States. Where are you two from?” I asked, looking from one to the other, expecting them to tell me they were from Panama, Honduras, Guatemala, or some other Spanish-speaking country with Black folks. It was hard to tell their ages in the dim light.
“This is home. Born here, raised here,” Marcos told me, laughing. “Ju are surprised?” he asked with a raised eyebrow.
“You don’t look Mexican,” I said, reaching for my drink from my waiter before he could even set it on the table. Even the waiter was bold. It wasn’t enough for him to just wink at me. With two big strapping men sitting on either side of me, the frisky waiter still tapped, rubbed, and pinched the back of my hand. I loved the attention. But I had to wonder about how sincere these south of the border men were.
“Lots of black Mexicans. Most of us come from Vera Cruz. Blexicans is what we are called.” Marcos laughed again. “They don’t teach ju in America about black Mexicans?”
“No, they don’t,” I chuckled.
“All of our people didn’t end up in America, the Caribbean, and other parts of the world, ju know. Lots of slaves ended up in Mexico,” Adrian added.
“Oh.” I smiled, feeling warm all over. “I knew that,” I said, clearing my throat and glancing around the room. The same Black woman who had invited me to her table stood along the wall. She gave me a cautious look and mouthed the words: Be careful.
Within minutes Adrian and Marcos told me their stories. They worked for Mexicana Airlines. I must have looked skeptical because they whipped out their airline photo IDs right away and waved them in my face. Adrian was a pilot, a capitan he proudly emphasized. Captain Adrian Gallardo’s position was a dozen steps above a store manager in a discount mall like James was . . .
Marcos was a flight attendant. They had flown in from Mexico City where they lived. Neither one asked about my background, not even if I was married. As sheltered as my life had been so far I did know from racy conversations with Wendy and Pam that vacations usually included no-strings-attached flings with the locals. Within an hour Adrian had talked me into letting him spend the night with me. After being only with James for the past ten years, I was curious to find out what I’d been missing.
Adrian dismissed his brother and led me to a cab and accompanied me back to the Sheraton. He started nibbling on my ear and purring to me in Spanish as soon as the cab pulled away from the club. He started tugging on my clothes during the elevator ride to my suite, right in front of another frisky couple. As soon as we got inside my room, he snatched off my clothes completely, with me squealing like a peacock.
James gave me compliments every now and then, mostly about my cooking. Adrian complimented almost everything I did. When I accidentally belched he said, “Aaah, a woman who expresses herself in such a basic way is a natural treasure.” He liked my firm breasts, my dark skin, and my big round ass. He was good with his tongue, but when he sucked my toes, one by one, I shivered the whole time. Before he could finish I had already planned my next trip to Me
xico.
Adrian didn’t prepare me for lovemaking by ramming a spit covered finger into my pussy and telling me to “brace yourself, girl,” the way James did.
The first time Adrian’s tongue explored my crotch was a major first for me. I lost control and screamed so loud the guests in the room next door banged on the wall.
“Anita, ju are the woman I make love to in my dreams,” he whispered, with his big hand covering my mouth to keep me from disturbing the people in the room next door again. Now, what woman wouldn’t want to hear words like that? And I loved the way he said my name: “Anita.” Little Ann in Spanish. It would not have sounded as sexy if he’d called me by my real name. A name that I hardly recognized anymore.
Reality reared its ugly head when Adrian told me he had to call up his wife in Mexico City to check up on her and their three kids. As soon as the words left his mouth, he slid off me and reached for the telephone on the nightstand. That one gesture made me feel like a ten-dollar whore.
I knew enough about Latin men, married or single, to know some of them hopped from one woman’s bed to another. Even though Adrian spoke to his wife in Spanish I didn’t want to hear anything he had to say to her, so I wobbled to the bathroom and stayed there until he came to get me to take me back to bed. If James had ever been this romantic I probably would have been with him tonight instead of in Mexico wallowing around in a king-size bed with a stranger.
When it was over with Adrian, it was over, period. There was no mention of a future liaison, or even a “wham-bam-thank-you-ma’am.” Adrian disappeared from my life as suddenly as he had come. The knowledge of that settled over me like a wet sheet.
The rest of my vacation went by in a blur. I spent a lot of time stretched out on a towel, lounging under a beach umbrella on the beach. I smiled back at all the handsome men who smiled at me but I didn’t encourage any more than a smile. After my romp with Adrian I didn’t want, or need, to be with anybody else. He had done his job well, and I wanted to isolate and savor the memory.
I was exhausted and sore. It was amazing how much good sex and a whupping had in common. Daddy hadn’t whupped me since I was a child, but I could still remember the pain. But the pain of good sex was worth it. It was the perfect excuse for me to remain in the same spot on the beach for hours, slurping on one exotic drink after another and rubbing my sore spots. When the blazing hot sun began to resemble a huge orange ball sinking into the ocean, I took my drink and started to walk along the beach. By the time I decided to make a U-turn and return to my hotel room, my skin looked and felt like leather. The party was over and it was time for me to go home.
I stayed in my room until time to check out.
CHAPTER 58
If it had been left up to me, I would have stayed in Mexico for the rest of my life. I would have drunk margaritas from sunrise to sunset. I would have loved a life of lounging on a beach and spending passion-filled nights with handsome men who put no pressure on me to commit to anything more than a night or two. Except for my daddy, I didn’t have much to go home to. That thought saddened me.
I liked my job at Bon Voyage, but I could have lived without it. I figured that if Ann eventually got her way I’d soon be living without my job at Bon Voyage anyway. I would leave with dignity no matter what happened. Even if Ann found out about me stealing her identity, and charging thousands of dollars’ worth of merchandise and services to her name.
One day when I am too old and feeble to be held accountable, I plan to share stories about my Bon Voyage escapades with my great-grandchildren.
In addition to Bon Voyage being a major prop in my life, there was James. I looked at James from a whole different perspective now. He had become a cross between a savior and a beast of burden on my back. I was so confused, I had a hard time thinking straight anymore. I don’t even remember the cab ride from the airport once I returned to the States. I got off the plane and breezed through Customs and the next thing I knew, I was dragging my feet toward the house I had lived in for almost thirty years. Right back where I’d started.
I couldn’t locate my keys in the bottom of my purse so I had to knock on the front door. My rough, ashy, sunburnt hands looked like ET’s feet. Daddy greeted me with a massive scowl on his face. “Gal, why you lookin’ so much darker now than you was when you left here the other night? You look like you been workin’ in a coal mine,” Daddy said as he stood in the doorway like a sentinel. It was around ten that Sunday night and he was in his bedclothes. Daddy padded across the floor with his long bare feet looking less than human. The smell of greens and neck bones filled the air, as usual. I smiled because the smell reminded me of the unidentified odor I’d smelled the whole time I was in Mexico. Beer bottles lined up on the coffee table looked like brown bowling pins. Daddy’s house shoes sat neatly in a corner under the coffee table.
“There was a pool at our hotel, Daddy. We spent a lot of time swimming.” I sighed, dropping my suitcase onto the floor.
Daddy scratched his chin and gave me a puzzled look. With his head turned to the side, he squeezed his eyes into narrow slits. “Your job sounds more like a shindig, don’t it? Them retreats don’t seem to be doin’ nothin’ but givin’ y’all a excuse to have a good time.” Daddy followed me to my room, wrapped in the new blue terry-cloth bathrobe I’d bought him for Father’s Day. His thin gray hair was shooting up all over his head, making him look like Medusa.
“You’re right, Daddy. But you know how White folks like to get loose. One of the White girls I work with dared me to get into one of those tanning booths.” I laughed, plopping down hard onto my lumpy bed. There was a good reason why I had not rewarded myself with a new brass bed or something similar. It was because I didn’t want to get too extravagant when it came to buying things that Daddy could see. As clueless as he was in some respects, he was still sharp enough to smell a rat if the smell was strong enough. I didn’t know how long I would be able to keep him off my back with stories about my job sending me on retreats. But I planned to enjoy things while I still could.
Daddy frowned and scratched his chin again. “You need a tan like you need another leg.” He laughed and waved his hand. “As soon as you get settled, give James a call. He done left six messages since dinnertime. He said the least you could have done was call him from that retreat in Mexico.”
“I will, Daddy.” I looked at the framed Polaroid of James and me on my nightstand. It had been taken during last year’s Fourth of July picnic at Mavis’s house. In the background, peeping out of her kitchen window, was Mavis. That same picture said it all. It represented my future. If something drastic didn’t happen, I was going to spend the rest of my life with James . . . and Mavis. “Did anything happen while I was gone?”
Daddy grunted and threw up his hands in disgust. “Sadie just about done drove me crazy frettin’ over them grandsons of hers,” Daddy complained. “Every time she visits them two that’s in prison, I have to peel her off the ceilin’ the next day.”
“What about that other one?”
“Kenny? Oh, he the only one ain’t in jail. But he’s a good boy, and he ain’t gave Sadie no trouble . . . yet.”
As soon as Daddy left my room, I turned the picture of James facedown and sat staring at the wall, rubbing the side of my arm. The memories of Mexico and my fling with the sexy airline pilot were so fresh on my mind I completely forgot about James until he called me.
He didn’t even greet me the way he usually did. This time he mumbled some gibberish in a gruff voice. After a few tense moments, he cleared his throat and said very clearly, “Listen, Trudy, we are going to have to communicate better once we get married. How come you didn’t tell me about this retreat sooner? I could have gone with you.”
“Baby, this was work-related. Nobody brought their mates,” I lied, listening to James, and still hearing the airline pilot’s voice in my head calling me Anita.
“I could have stayed at a different hotel. Nobody but you would have known I was there. I want y
ou to know that I don’t like some of the things you’ve been doing lately, Trudy.”
“Like what?” I asked in a crisp voice. I sat up straighter on my bed and crossed my legs, prepared to defend myself.
“I don’t get to see much of you anymore. And when I do, you are too tired to do much of anything, and you look and act like you are bored most of the time. You are slow about returning my calls, you don’t come by like you used to. What’s happening to us?”
I let out a deep sigh and rolled my eyes, looking around the dreary bedroom that I couldn’t wait to escape. Even if it was just to go back to work. “James, I’m tired. Can we talk tomorrow? I’ll call you from work. No, I will call you as soon as I get home from work.”
“See there! Now that’s the kind of shit I’m talking about. Woman, I am your man. I’m going to marry you—at least that’s what I thought.”
“Let’s talk about all this tomorrow, James.” I let out a mighty yawn, hoping it was noticeable enough to encourage James to conclude the conversation.
“No, we are going to talk now. I’m coming over there!”
“James, I have to go to work tomorrow,” I said. I had more of a whole life now. I had some real independence and financial leverage, if you could call using fraudulent credit cards that. I was now the one in control of myself; not Daddy, not James.
“I have to go to work tomorrow, too, dammit. I want to talk to you face to face. I’m coming over there.”
“Don’t you bring your black ass over here, mister. I will come by your place tomorrow when I get off work!” I yelled, shaking my finger in the air. I glared at the telephone as if I could see James’s face through it.
There was nothing but silence for several seconds. Then I heard James suck in his breath. “Trudy, I love you. I have always loved you. I knew I wanted to marry you the first time I saw you and I thought you felt the same way. If you don’t want to marry me, you need to let me know, and let me know now.”
