Daniela went to the sofa to fetch the straw bag containing her towel and other things. I was wearing my swim trunks under my pants and my towel was in the car. Just then, Rocha entered from the hallway, his head bandage freshly changed but still held in place by the sillylooking ribbon. He paused when he saw me—his eyes running over my beat-up face—and then busted out laughing.
“Felipe!” Señora Avila chided him for his amusement in my disfigurement. “No es cosa cómica. No seas tan bruto, por amor de dios!”
He just laughed harder. For a second I had an urge to go in there and bust his nose for him, see how funny he thought that was. He slumped against the wall and bumped his head slightly and winced and put his hand to the ridiculous bandage but kept on laughing.
And then I just couldn’t help it and started laughing along with him.
The women looked at us like we’d lost our minds. Daniela gawked at the señora and the woman shook her head and shrugged and the expressions on their faces made me and Rocha laugh even harder.
Mrs. Avila’s aspect became a little anxious. “Ya, locos!” she said.
Daniela’s eyes on me were large. I waved a hand at her like it was nothing to be concerned about, and I worked to get myself under control. Rocha wiped at his eyes with a dirty bandanna and straightened up. And then we looked at each other and broke up again.
It took another half-minute but we finally got a grip on ourselves. Rocha had to dry his eyes again and he blew his nose and tucked away the bandanna. He looked at me and we grinned but didn’t go into another laughing fit. He cleared his throat and asked if I’d like a bottle of beer.
I thanked him but said maybe later. He nodded and raised a hand at me and went off to the kitchen, chuckling low.
Mrs. Avila said we were both crazy as goats and then kissed Daniela on the cheek and said she should have a good time but to be home by ten o’clock. She gave me a tight look of maternal warning and I nodded, which I thought was vague enough to keep from being an outright promise. The señora stood in the doorway and watched us go out to the Terraplane convertible I’d borrowed from the Club. It was a warm night and I’d already put the top down.
T he road from Brownsville to Kingsville runs straight north and the sparse traffic moves fast.
They make good time to Corpus Christi before being slowed by one stoplight after another. The coastal lowland is a patchwork terrain of swamp and scrubland and grazing pasture, and Gustavo remarks that it looks the same as the gulf country in Mexico. Angel tells him this region was part of Mexico at one time, before the gringos stole it for themselves about ninety years ago. The information comes as outrageous news to Gustavo and he falls to a fit of low cursing of every gringo ever born, be he dead or alive.
They take turns trying to nap in the backseat of the car while the other drives but their sleep is fitful at best and both of them are left unrested and irritated.
At sundown the sky is the color of raw beef. They stop at a roadside café called La Mexicana to have an early supper. Angel orders pork tacos and Gustavo goes for the chicken enchiladas and both of them are greatly disappointed with the food. When they go to pay at the register, Gustavo tells the cashier that the food isn’t fit for pigs, but she is an Anglo woman who speaks no Spanish and only stares apprehensively at their hard brown faces.
Then they are on the road again, bearing into the darkness of the newrisen night.
I turned west at the seawall, away from the bright lights of the boulevard’s good-time joints. The sky was clear, the stars thick and blazing in the east, dimmer in the west, where the moon was gleaming like a silver egg high above the gulf. She laughed at the pleasure of her hair whipping in the wind and had to keep brushing it from her eyes. The radio was tuned to a big-band station and she swayed to the rhythms of “I Get a Kick Out of You.” The Hollywood Dinner Club’s big spotlight beam was revolving in the sky ahead of us and off to our right. She said the Avilas had told her all about the Hollywood, even though they themselves had never set foot inside. They had told her it was as luxurious as a palace, that it belonged to the man I worked for.
“Him and his brother,” I said. “Would you like to go dancing there sometime? They have swell dance bands.”
“Swell?”
“Very good. Excellent.”
She slid closer to me on the seat and hooked her arm around my elbow. I felt the light press of her breast against my arm, the touch of her thigh against my leg. “I think that is a swell idea,” she said.
I drove almost all the way out to the west end of the island before turning off onto a narrow hardpacked access road that connected to a stretch of beach hardly anyone ever used except for a few daytime fishermen. The Hollywood spotlight was far behind us now and we could no longer see the glow of the city lights. I parked alongside a row of dunes and cut the lights and motor. The tide was in, and we sat in the car, listening to a mild surf lapping along the beach. The gulf was almost placid, its waves low and gentle and gleaming bright under the moon.
“It’s beautiful,” she said.
“It’s the same water you swam in at Veracruz. But like I warned you, girl—it’s probably colder right now than what you’re used to.”
She slapped my shoulder playfully and said, “I am not so afraid of cold water as someone I know.” Then slid across the seat and got out of the car.
I stepped out and stripped down to my bathing trunks and tossed my clothes on the car roof. The Mexican Colt was under the driver’s seat. When she came around the car she had her dress in one hand and her bag in the other and she placed them both on the hood of the Terraplane.
The bathing suit she wore was a stunner—a black sleek thing that clung to her like a second skin. It rode high on her legs and was held up by a pair of thin straps and was cut so low in the front it exposed the tops of her breasts. She held out her arms and did a model’s pirouette and I saw that the suit was backless almost to her waist. If she’d worn that thing on a public beach she would’ve been arrested for indecent exposure. My dick swelled in my swimsuit.
“It was made in France. I bought it from a catalog but I have not worn it until now. If it shocks you I can put my dress on and swim in that.” She could probably read my face in the moonlight. Her voice was full of fun.
“No. It’s fine. It’s…I like it.”
She laughed. “I thought perhaps you would.”
She reached in the bag and took out a folded cotton bedsheet and handed it to me. “So we don’t have to sit on the sand,” she said.
As I spread the sheet out on the sand, she ran into the water, her legs flashing, her hair flying. She took long splashing strides until the water was to her thighs and then dove into a swell. She came up about ten yards beyond where she’d gone under, then stood in water as deep as her breasts, her hair plastered to her head and shoulders. She waved to me and yelled, “Come on, pollito—it’s not so cold! Don’t be afraid to get your feathers wet!”
I ran in. It wasn’t as cold as it could’ve been but was cold enough. I whooped and dove and came up sputtering. I trudged toward her through the waist-deep water and she laughed and began backstroking away.
I dove again and started swimming hard, but every time I paused to look ahead of me I saw that she had put even more distance between us, backstroking smoothly, moving through the water as lightly as a canoe.
I swam on in my clumsy fashion, forcing myself to breathe in rhythm with my strokes. The next time I looked in front of me she was treading water twenty feet away, watching me. I stroked on, then stopped and looked again and couldn’t see her. Then heard her laughter and saw that she had moved off to my left.
“What’s the matter, Mr. Youngblood? Are you lost?” I could see the whiteness of her teeth. She went into a smooth crawl, heading for open water. I swam after her.
She went out a long way before she finally stopped and turned around to watch me plodding toward her. When I got to within a few feet of her I stopped stroking. We were out f
arther than I’d ever been before. From way out here the beach was a thin pale strip in front of a vague dark line of dunes.
We treaded water, rising and falling on the mild swells. The moon was slightly behind me, its light on her face, her smile. I slowly sidestroked closer to her until we were within arm’s length of each other. Her foot lightly brushed my leg. She reached out and touched my face.
Then her eyes shifted past me and went wide and she said in a whisper, “Ay, dios…”
I turned to look—and saw a black fin standing high against the light of the moon and cutting toward us like an enormous cleaver.
Twenty yards away…fifteen…
Daniela grabbed my arm and yanked me to her and swirled us around so that she was between it and me. I tried to get back in front of her but she held me off balance with an arm around my neck, pinning my head against her shoulder. She ordered me to pull my feet up under me as high as I could. She had the physical advantage over me in the water and I couldn’t have broken loose of her except with a struggle that wouldn’t have helped matters at all, so I drew my feet up and her legs pulled up against mine and she clutched me tightly to her, one arm still around my neck, the other around my chest.
The thing barreled past us, its rush so strong and close that the wash lifted and pushed us aside and I saw the white scars of buckshot and bullets in the monstrous fin. Its wake had a fiery sparkle and the tailfin hissed by like a scythe blade.
Daniela held me fast, turning us so we could see the phosphorescent streaks as it bore away.
Then it swung around and started back.
“Levanta los pies!” she said, nudging my leg—and I pulled my feet back up under me as high as I could. Her legs clamped up around mine and she held us in a tight bobbing tangle of arms and legs as the shark came at us again.
Daniela kicked at it as it bumped us. I saw grooves along the front of its wide flat hammerhead and saw the eye on its outer edge—black as a shotgun muzzle and twice the size. It knocked us aside as lightly as a ball of cork.
The high fin trailed its glimmering fire toward the moonbright horizon and then vanished under the surface.
“Vete!” Daniela said, pushing me off toward the distant beach.
I swam—fighting down the fear that surged at the thought of the thing turning around and coming for us again, this time from underneath and with its jaws wide.
She could’ve made it back to the beach in half the time it took me, but she stayed at my side, swimming easily and slowly and with hardly a sound, while I stroked as hard as I could, busting up the water and gulping mouthfuls of it and huffing like a bellows. I had no idea how long it was before we were in water shallow enough to stand up in. I hacked out some of the water I’d swallowed and we slogged out of the surf and staggered over to the bedsheet and sprawled onto it.
I lay on my back, panting, staring up at the stars. She hugged my chest and pressed herself against me, her face on my neck, her breath rapid and warm on my skin.
When I was finally able to talk, I said, “Jesus Christ!”
“I have never seen a martillo so big.”
“Whooo! It had to be that Black Tom bastard they tell about. They say it’s been around here forever. They say it’s eaten more than a dozen men over the years. They say it once ate a goddamn rowboat—and the two guys in it.”
“Then we must thank God we were not in a…goddamn rowboat,” she said.
My laughter started me coughing again. I propped myself up on an elbow and got the fit under control.
“What made you think,” I said between hard breaths, “of pulling up our legs?”
“My father was a fisherman. He knew very much about sharks. But he said the trick does not always work.”
Her eyes were bright and wide, her breasts pumping. I’d nearly pissed at the sight of that monster. And she’d kicked it.
I put my hand on her leg and she lost her smile and for a moment I thought maybe I was pushing things. Then she hooked a hand around my neck and pulled my face down to hers.
We kissed long and hard. Our tongues got into it. I stroked her leg and then moved my hand to her breast and she made a low sound. I pushed the straps off her shoulders and tugged down her top. Her nipples were erect under my fingertips. I put my lips to them, my tongue, and she arched her back and pulled my face harder against her. She slid a hand down my chest and belly and into my trunks and closed it around my erection.
We slipped off our suits. She sucked a deep breath when I entered her. Her legs clamped tight around mine and we rocked and rocked and it couldn’t have been a minute before I came and collapsed on her like I’d been clubbed, my face against her neck and hers against mine, both of us gasping like we were trying to inhale each other from under our skins.
After a while we were kissing again, stroking each other’s hips and ass. My cock hardened inside her. We started rocking once more, this time more slowly and gently. I had better control now and held myself back until I sensed her getting close—and just as she arched against me and gave a high moan I let myself go.
We held to each other and didn’t talk much as the night grew cooler. The moon was a lot closer to the gulf when she whispered that Señora Avila would be worried. We hugged and kissed and the press of her breasts and belly started rousing me again. She laughed low against my ear and then rolled away and stood up and went to retrieve her dress from the car hood, saying we really shouldn’t make Señora Avila worry. So I got up and got dressed and put the top up on the Terraplane. We kissed a few times more in the car and then I got us rolling.
It was a little past ten o’clock. She was right that Mrs. Avila would be anxious. She snuggled against me and hugged my arm, her legs folded under her on the car seat, her skirt high on her thighs. Her face was against my shoulder and her damp hair smelled of the sea. We rolled along without talking, just listening to the radio—“Temptation,” “Begin the Beguine.” She knew “Red Sails in the Sunset” in Spanish and softly sang along with the instrumental.
I supposed there was really no reason to be surprised that she was so bold about sex. Anybody as brave as she’d been with that hammerhead wasn’t likely to be afraid of too many things or be one for coyness. Except for whores, though, I’d never met a Mexican girl so sexually direct. Most Mex girls of respectable family made at least a show of being good girls, and most actually stayed virgin till their wedding night. But Daniela was no virgin, and I wondered how she’d lost it, especially since she was hardly more than a kid. But I didn’t wonder about it for long—because when you got right down to it, what the hell difference did it make?
T he Avila porch light was on, of course, and light showed in all the windows. At the end of the street the Casa Verde was all lit up too, the card game still in progress. I parked in the shadows of an oak in front of the Avila house. We were kissing goodnight when the screendoor screeched and the señora came out to the top step and looked at us with a theatrical hand over her eyes like she was scouting the open sea under a bright sun.
In the darkness of the car, Daniela giggled and held my hand pressed to her breast. She kissed me and said, “I must go.”
“Will you have breakfast with me tomorrow?”
“Of course.” She put a hand to my face and kissed me again.
“Seven?” I said.
“Yes.”
I got out and went around to her side of the car and opened the door for her and she slung her bag over her shoulder and I held her hand as we went up the dirt walkway to the Avila porch, where the señora stood with her arms out to receive the girl.
“Goodnight,” she said. “I had a very lovely time.”
I raised her hand to my lips.
“Ya, basta!” Mrs. Avila said, coming down to put an arm around the girl and pull her away. Daniela said goodnight again and laughed like a child as she allowed Mrs. Avila to steer her around and up the porch steps.
At the door she looked back at me to smile and wave and I raised my hand to
her. Then the screendoor slapped shut and the wooden door closed behind it.
I parked the Terraplane next to the rickety fence in front of the Casa Verde, and as I clumped up the porch steps and entered the parlor I heard laughter and radio music and good-natured cursings coming from the kitchen. The house smelled of cigarette smoke and fried chiles. I went to the kitchen doorway and saw Pablo Lopez laughing and pulling in a pot at the table. They were all happily half-drunk. The countertop was littered with empty beer bottles and the sink crammed with greasy plates.
Gregorio looked over at me and said, “Qué tal, joven? Como te va?” Then he frowned slightly and I remembered what my face looked like.
I said everything was fine as could be, and he shrugged and said, “Ya lo creo.” I exchanged hellos with the others at the table and they also refrained from remarking on my bruises. All this time as their neighbor and I still made them nervous. I fetched a beer from the icebox and leaned against the counter and watched Morales form up the deck and begin shuffling.
There was an awkward silence while “Arbolito” played on the radio and then Gregorio asked if I wanted to sit in. The others all nodded and said yes, join us, please, and so forth. I said no, thanks, I was tired and going to bed in a minute. Avila’s wife must’ve told him of Daniela’s date with me, but of course he would make no mention of it. I was debating whether to tell them of our adventure with Black Tom when Gregorio asked if I’d seen my telephone message on the slateboard. I hadn’t. The only messages I’d ever received at the Casa Verde had been from the office and I hadn’t gotten one in so long that I rarely even glanced at the board anymore when I came into the house.
Under the Skin Page 22
