Going South

by Tom Larsen

  “Funny, from this angle it looks like we’re hardly moving,” the guy in front of her says.

  ”Look mommy, there’s fire across the river,” kid to the rear stomps her seat back.

  Mom glances out the window. “It’s only Camden honey. Not to worry.”

  “No matter how many times I do this it still gives me a rush,” her seatmate confesses.

  “’Pardone?” she gives him a Mediterranean look.

  “Ah, quell coincidence!” he grins like an imbecile. “Il y’est mon bonne chance!”

  She switches to a blank stare of unspecified origin then turns back to her book. Lena has set the time aside for disconnection, a reality respite that won’t include this guy, in any language. But even their brief exchange has thrown things off, made her aware of this, link one in the chain of events. Events that have taken her out of her element and put her on a jet to Mexico, alone, under false pretenses.

  “S’habla Espanol?”

  She reads the same line over and over, feeling his eyes on her, wishing him dead. And he gets the hint, finally, after a go at Italian and something Slavic. Gives up and starts pestering the guy in the aisle seat, attractive, well dressed, thin like Harry. Handsome stranger, that old fantasy, a man with a career and prospects, a skilled professional with an itinerary that doesn’t include murder in the first degree with special circumstances.

  Exactly what she doesn’t want to do for the next however many hours; think about the lunacy and the consequences and how they may just go through with it. Sit here and stew, but she can’t seem to turn it off, the way the big things unfold just like in a movie. How many movies begin like this, jet lifting off etc.

  Lena let’s herself go with it. The movie end of it, how it might just be a good movie with a happy ending. Woman gets on a plane, handsome stranger, Mexico, intrigue with a twist you can’t see coming, something that changes everything, or at least the one thing.

  “Hey mom, you know what Ricky told me?”

  “Don’t play with the buttons, sweetie.”

  “He said that jets are just flying funeral pyres.”

  “Ricky Talbott doesn’t know his ass from his elbow.”

  “He said–”

  “I don’t care what he said. Play with your palm pilot.”

  What? What else did Ricky say? Lena shuts her eyes, counts to ten then starts the page over.

  “He said the whole plane is loaded with fuel. Not just the tanks.”

  “Did you hear what I said Walter? We talked about this, remember? One word to your father and you can forget about fencing lessons.”

  That shuts him up. No fencing lessons, a cruel if unusual punishment. No matter now, he’s given Lena plenty to think about, incineration as a plot device; the killer twist any way you look at it. To calm herself she thinks of Harry home alone, missing her. Then Harry selling himself on the murder, convincing himself he can pull it off. Not yet cruising altitude and she’s into the untenable. Scenarios cued to the horizon, most of them worst case, all of them unthinkable.

  But then this is all uncharted territory, when she thinks of it. They’ve spent a few nights apart in their years together. Three she remembers, all in her absence, once to be in her cousin’s wedding and again to attend a nursing conference in New Orleans. Harry handled both badly, calling the electrician when the circuits tripped, passing out on the couch with the beer opener in his pocket. The old Harry, around the house hapless, seen from this distance the change is unsettling.

  What it was about Harry was his knack for the angle. Before Gerry died, when a knack was all it took. Lena never cared for Gerry. She can admit that now, the know it all bluster, the sly flirtations, the harebrained schemes that never went anywhere. Like the Peppermint Patty machines. How he and Harry would stick one in every gin mill and clean up on the first of the month. Corner the Peppermint Patty market, as if anyone ate that crap anymore, even in Pennsport. As if nothing topped off an evening of boilermakers quite like a Peppermint Patty! Harry bought in on the off chance it might help Gerry out, put him back on his feet like the tanning salon and the water ice place were supposed to. How those stupid machines took up the whole living room until she finally called the company to take them away, and then De Sapios darkening her door. Oh yeah, Gerry was a loser, but Harry had a knack.

  Even then it was insurance. Deep Pockets Swindle had that whiff of win/win Harry couldn’t pass up. It started with car insurance, half a dozen fender benders spread out over two years. That’s how he got them, Harry was patient, had a sense for suspicion, how patterns were tracked, knew who to use and who couldn’t handle it. With Harry at the helm it went off without a hitch. Then it was personal injury claims with that doctor in the Northeast, the Russian with the list of accident-prone comrades. Talk about your poker faces! The KGB couldn’t crack that bunch.

  Yeah, Harry had it going for a while there. His end topped six figures two years running, even with the house down-payment and his betting losses. But then the doctor got pinched and Gerry got sick and Harry simply stopped being Harry. Not all at once, but slow and steady like a disease. Lena saw it progressing, but what could she do? The wheels stopped turning, the hustles dried up and it was down to a bad job and the Vegas line.

  Which had to explain it, at least up to this point. Talking about it, she’d seen the old spark in Harry’s eye, the pace picking up as the pieces fit together. So long now she forgot how she missed it. Like he’d come home from a long time away. So okay, this was different, even crazy, but she knew she’d do worse to have him back.

  “Remember that movie where they sabotage the plane and the guy gets sucked out of the window?”

  “Mommy’s reading, Walter.”

  “He got stuck for a second and you could see his legs flop around and then, boom!”

  “Shut up, sweetie.”

  Lena gives up on her book and looks down on a crust of coastline. She pictures a woman down there catching a glint in the pale blue yonder, someone with hard choices to make taking something from the contact, the farthest flicker, a tremor of kinship. Lena sighs and wishes her well.

  “Miss?”

  She looks over the gap to handsome stranger and a flight attendant.

  “Would you care for something to drink?” the attendant smiles brightly.

  “Red wine, please. Could you tell me what time we land?”

  “3.20 p.m.,” she works the top on a small bottle. “Captain caught a bit of tail wind.”

  Lena checks her watch. Three hours, plenty of time to mull things over. She takes a tin from her purse and pops a purple pill. Best to relax if she wants to think clearly.

  “I hate to be a bother,” handsome guy leans over. “You wouldn’t have another book you could spare, would you?”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “I’m afraid our chatty friend has me at a disadvantage,” he nods to the empty seat between them.

  “Where’d he go?”

  “Well, right now he’s bothering the first class section, but he promised he’d be back.”

  “Here,” she offers her Stephen King. “I can never concentrate on a plane.”

  “Bless you,” he smiles at the heft of it. “If it comes to that I can brain him with it.”

  “I shan’t raise a hand to stop you.”

  “The man spits when he speaks.”

  “Are you going to Mexico?” Lena takes the lead.

  “Sao Paulo,” he tosses the name like a native. “Ghastly flight, fortunately, this should be my last trip.”

  “Business or pleasure?”

  “Neither, in fact. My sister married a Brazilian.”

  “You sound as if you don’t approve.”

  His smile is rakish. “I’ve been assigned to pick up the pieces.”

  The contrast of teeth on deep tan trips an unfamiliar switch, Lena feels something here, a significance bearing directly on the story. Winging her way to the tropics, Banderas
with a moustache, if she wanted this to happen she’d be stuck with Mickey Rooney.

  “Is it . . . perilous?” it just sounds so right.

  His laugh is all crinkles and crow’s feet. “Tedious would be more like it. Brazilians can say the same thing in a million different ways.”

  “Like Rankin here?” Lena eyes the empty seat.

  “Don’t tell me you know the man!”

  She tries a smile she’s never used. “No, that’s just my husband’s name for everybody. I don’t know where he got it but it always seems to fit.”

  Why would she do that, bring up Harry at the first opportunity? Not intentionally, but not by accident.

  “Your husband, he is not traveling with you?”

  “Ex-husband, continents removed.”

  Stranger shakes his head. “Messy business, matrimony. Just when you think you’ve got the hang of it they throw in a new wrinkle.”

  “They?”

  “The fates,” his face goes slack. “My wife died three years ago.”

  “I’m so sorry.”

  “Oh, it’s not like all that. We’d been divorced for years.”

  “Still.”

  “Yes,” he drifts for a second then looks over. “Recovery is a process.”

  “Quick, here comes motor mouth. Scoot over.”

  Stranger grins and switches seats. He is Dominique, engineer of note and authority on everything from mosaic tile to mescaline. His baritone deep and saxophone soft, Lena slips into her Bergman and the cabin fills with chemistry.

  “But that’s enough about me,” Dominique demurs. “What about you? What do you think?”

  “About you?”

  “Well, that would be a start. About me then.”

  “I think you are just what I needed. A distraction.”

  Dominique fakes a pout. “The story of my life.”

  What she might say to this, something ripe with suggestion. Instead she says nothing and the affect is similar. He leans into whispering range.

  “Tell me something about yourself, your name, you never said.”

  “Estralita,” just to top his. “I sing.”

  And here she goes. Estralita prowling the stage, a life on the road and an ex-husband down for the count. Lena’s story and she’s sticking to it.

  “That’s fascinating,” Dominique’s eyebrows come together. “Of course, you could tell me anything.”

  “And you can choose to believe it, of course.”

  “How perfectly delightful, I wish I’d known the ground rules. I would have made myself more interesting.”

  “You’re doing quite well.”

  “What about him?” Dominique nods to third wheel.

  “Rankin? Middle management. Can bore you breathless in three different languages.”

  “A man who spits.”

  “But a loving father.”

  “Of daughters, six and ten.”

  “Three and five.”

  “We could always find out, you know.”

  “What would be the point?”

  The rest is all giggles and elbow jabs, running down the ranks like high school hipsters or housewives on whoever’s missing. By the time they touch down they’ve cobbled an epic and pissed off half the people on board.

  “Pity we must leave them in the lurch,” Dominique watches the cast disbanding. “Somehow, I feel they need us.”

  “You could always stop over for a night,” she opens the overhead.

  “I would love nothing better. But this thing in Sao Paulo is at a crisis stage,” his eyes flash regrets. “You believe that, don’t you . . . Estralita?”

  Lena’s smile is pure Garbo. “I guess it just wasn’t in the script.”

  He puzzles it over. She touches his arm.

  “You’ve been a dear, Dominique.”

  He reaches in his pocket and hands her his card. “Do one thing for me, whoever you are. Keep this with you. If you ever tire of the life you can reach me anytime.”

  “Why thank you,” she closes it in her dog-eared paperback. “It will be a comfort to know.”

  He sees her to the gate with a nod to the uniforms. Claude Rains clearing customs.

  “Remember,” he turns her by the elbow and she sees herself in his eyes. “Any time, day or night.”

  “Farewell Dominique.”

  “Until we meet again.”

  Sigh.

  ***

  Puerto Vallarta. So like she pictured it she has to pinch herself, dusty streets, open cantinas, Day-Glo buses packed to the rivets. She moves along the sunny side swinging her purse like there’s nothing to it, another day another country. One of a handful to get off in town, the rest heading on to the hotel complex, out by the airport, five miles easy. This is where she wants to be, right here in the middle of things, sidewalks buzzing, the day shaping up. Lena crosses to the real estate office and strolls in like she owns the joint.

  “My name is Lena Watts,” she tells the man gazing sleepily at a computer, “I’m here to pick up a key?”

  The man doesn’t answer. Looking closer she sees that his eyes aren’t really open, just slits of wet like a cat dozing in a window. Moving behind him she sees a poker hand on the laptop screen, pair of sixes, king high.

  ”Hey,” she gives a poke. He bolts upright in his chair.

  “I’d fold ‘em if I were you.” She moves to a board tacked with Polaroids, listings for rent, most of them new and uninviting.

  “Forgive me, I didn’t hear you come in,” he swivels to face her. “My name is Louis. You have a reservation?”

  “Watts,” she studies an overhead shot. Some compound carved out of the jungle. “We rented the Casa Luna?”

  “Ah, Casa Luna,” Louis rifles the drawers, piling up keys on the desk. “Our prize hacienda. Lovely setting.”

  “Quite a building boom going on here,” she scans the last row, mobiles and modulars cashing in.

  “Yes Señora. Puerto Vallarta is one of the oldest resorts, but the last few years have been . . .”

  “A real mess, looks like. Next they’ll be putting in a Starbucks, eh Louis?”

  “Starbucks si, we have two actually. I am partial to the double latte.”

  “Tell me, is there a liquor store nearby?”

  “Yes Señora, two blocks that way,” he nods to the window.

  “And a pharmacy?”

  “Si, around the corner.”

  “Excellent. Now, the key?”

  “Of course, my apologies,” he fumbles faster. “Our filing system is in need of updating. You are staying alone?”

  “My husband will be flying down tomorrow. The house is in town, yes?”

  “Oh yes, not far from the beach. At night the sound of the waves is hypnotizing.”

  “No jet skis I’m hoping.”

  “Not after dark,” Louis tries a second drawer. “There is an ordinance.”

  “Or drunken cruise ships?”

  “Not so many. We try to discourage– ah, here they are!” he holds up a keyring shaped like a sombrero. “Casa Luna, mucho grande.”

  ***

  Lena steps over the ditch running through the lot next door. Big lot, bordered in backhoes and front end loaders, bricks and lumber stacked in the middle. Casa Luna’s cordoned off in hedges, a shock of salmon on a field of green with an arched stone gate and a shrine to the virgin. She balances the bag of bottles on her knee and fits the key into the back door lock.

  Inside it’s el magnifico, pastel rooms, open and airy, floors of marble and terracotta, walls inlaid in mosaics and stained glass. Lena sets the bottles on the counter, runs a bagful of limes through the cast iron squeezer and breaks the seal on a fifth of vodka. Mucho fantastic!

  “Buenos dias,” a woman calls from upstairs.

  “Hello?”

  “Hello,” she appears at the landing. “I am Rosa. I’m just making up your room.”

  “Hi Rosa, I
’m Lena. Can I fix you a drink?”

  Rosa doesn’t answer. Lena takes her second out the front door and across the street. Backhoes aside, the casa is a jewel box, half sun-drenched, half swallowed up in palms, street-side trimmed in wrought iron with bay windows opened onto the work site. The shrine wall trellised in roses and bougainvillea, the rear sculpted in gardens framing the pool. Above it the main deck and above that a cozy bedroom balcony, both facing out on the town and the wide Pacific. Lena throws her head back and laughs out loud. Here’s to Harry’s knack on the rebound. Worse comes to worst they’ll be flaming out in style.

  “Will you be needing anything?” Rosa calls from the doorway.

  “No,” Lena raises her glass. “I’m okay now.”

  “I left some snacks for you in the refrigerator. See you tomorrow?”

  “You mean manyana?”

  “Right, manyana. Your husband, he will be here tomor– eh, manyana?”

  “Si, in the evening.”

  “Should I stop over and fix you something? Pizza, maybe?”

  Lena nearly chokes. “Pizza? You’re not even Mexican are you?”

  “Guatemalen,” Rosa shrugs. “But I make a mean pizza.”

  “That’s okay. As a matter of fact we’d kind of like to be alone for a few days.”

  Rosa frowns and lowers her eyes. “I’ll stop around on Wednesday.”

  “Hold it,” Lena crosses over and slips the woman a little something. “Make it Thursday. And call first, okay?”

  “Gotcha,” Rosa pockets the fifty and dances down the hill.

  A housekeeper, no less, not that Lena goes in for that sort of thing. But she’s never had one and could see where you might get used to it. Harry hadn’t mentioned a housekeeper, but he hadn’t mentioned the pool either. Lena wanders through the house trying to take everything in. A soft breeze catches the curtains and a trumpet plays somewhere down the hill. Music, that’s what she needs. She finds some CD’s and a box of scented candles and by drink #3 the casa’s lit up like a backstreet bordello.

  Oh Harry, wait till you see!

  She hadn’t given much thought to this, a night by herself. They’d decided it was best for her to arrive first, pick up the keys and deal with incidentals, Harry sneaking in under the cover of darkness. With any luck, no one here will ever see him.