“I want a haircut. This hair has been unlucky. Bueno, vos, until the other day, because that’s when I met you.”
“Ay no, qué cursi!” But she smiled, shyly he thought, and even blushed a bit, and then turned her attention to a rack of dresses, rapidly thumbing through them with her back to him. And he knew his comment, even if it was corny, had hit its mark, awakening her to his sudden existence in her life in a way that so far nothing else had, not even the rose.
There was enough money left over for a red T-shirt without any advertising on it and a pair of thick socks. He kept his new sweater on for the walk back to the salon, during which he kept looking for himself and Joaquina reflected together in the windows of the stores they passed, though all he saw were fleeting, translucent shadows barely denting the midday glare. Joaquina was eating peas again, telling him about how she’d been setting money aside for a José José concert in Manhattan, in a huge arena there, it wasn’t going to happen for another six weeks, but just the other day she’d been shattered to learn it was already sold out. Her friend Rebecca had two tickets, but she was going to invite some galán, that traitor. He felt flushed with pleasure over how natural it suddenly felt and must have looked to others, he and Joaquina on the sidewalk together, she so absorbed in eating peas and telling her story and walking so close to him that he felt the constant pressure of her shoulder tucked against his biceps, shifting without breaking contact whenever she brought another pea up to her mouth. Yet he sensed that if he were to call her attention to this proof of what seemed an instinctual intimacy between them, or try to press it further by putting his hand on her back or by turning his head to lower his nose into the golden clover of her hair, which he was dying to do, she’d instantly pull away. Love hasn’t caught up to us yet, he thought, but it’s following a trail of dropped peas down the sidewalk. He wanted to impress her with another clever remark but couldn’t think of a way to make this one sound less presumptuous or more believable. She’d only dropped a few peas anyway, and every time she did, she said, “Chiiün,” or “Mierda.”
When Esteban is finally seated in the barber’s chair, he profusely thanks Gonzalo for the haircut and promises to pay him back as soon as he can for the clothes and the sandwich.
“Coño, don’t even think of it,” says Gonzalo. “We refugees from the communist countries have to look out for each other, no?”
He feels his face turning hot again. He doesn’t know what to say, but he knows he has to say something if he doesn’t want to end up losing himself in the maze of a prolonged lie. Gonzalo is fastening a scratchy paper collar around his neck.
“The truth is I’m a refugee from a ship,” says Esteban.
Joaquina is standing beside them, sipping at a can of coke through a straw and watching in the mirror.
“Pues, sí,” says Gonzalo. “But you’re from Nicaragua and I’m from Cuba. Same boat, as they say here, no?” Gonzalo is misting his hair with water from a plastic bottle. “The same rapidly sinking boat, I hope. Why did you leave? Did they want to take you and put you in that horrible war?”
“I was in the war,” he says. Joaquina looks up from her can of coke in the mirror. “In el Ejército Popular Sandinista,” he says, holding her gaze in the mirror until she glances away. “I served in an irregular warfare battalion for two years. And that’s all I’m going to say about it. Bueno, if that means you don’t want to do me the great favor of cutting my hair, I understand, I—”
“Niño, shut up,” says Gonzalo. “We do not discriminate against nice people here. Bad people, I snip off their earlobes. But it will be much easier for you to get legal status here when you tell them you’re fleeing those maldito Sandinistas. If you say the opposite, chico, you won’t stand a chance.”
“You know, earlier I was thinking that with long hair you looked something like that famous güey revolucionario,” says Joaquina, sitting in one of the chairs against the wall now. “That güey, tu sabes, in the Zocalo they sell T-shirts with his face.”
“That famous homophobic-assassin-psychopath, you mean,” says Gonzalo. “That’s another reason to cut off all this hair.” He pulls on Esteban’s earlobe and lightly closes his scissors around it. “Do you agree? You have three seconds to answer, Che Güey.”
“Gonzalo, putísima madre!” Joaquina laughs.
Esteban, still reeling with confusion over what Gonzalo said about legal status, says nothing: It’s as if he’s completely overlooked all the implications of being in the United States. What, he’s going to have to betray old War Gods to stay in this country with Joaquina? Vos, now that the world is changing, he’s going to have to figure out on his own what should stay the same, no?
Gonzalo has resumed cutting his hair. Joaquina goes into the back and comes out with her coat on, holding a spiral notebook with a glossy yellow cardboard cover. Esteban is stunned that she’s leaving.
“I have to go,” says Joaquina. “Or I’ll be late for my class.” But she’s doing that thing with her hair again.
“You don’t want to see what this niño marinero looks like under all this hair?”
She laughs. “Marinero or soldier boy. Who knows what he’ll claim to be next? I think Esteban is as full of fantasies as you are, corazón.”
“No one is as full of fantasies as I am, corazón,” he says, and he gives Esteban a firm tap on the top of his head with the flat side of his scissors. Esteban stiffens with alarm.
“Ah sí?” she says. Joaquina seems on the verge of saying something else, but then she simply says, “Bye.” And she’s out the door. It’s night out now. She looks in through the window as she hurries up the sidewalk, carrying her yellow notebook, giving Esteban a quick wave and a smile, and then she’s gone.
Esteban stares at the empty window.
“Sí, mi reina, vete,” says Gonzalo under his breath, as if insulted that Joaquina hasn’t stayed to see the haircut. “Que Dios te acompañe.”
Esteban has never before in his life been aware of being in such intimate proximity to a homosexual, nor, certainly, has he ever felt so beholden to one. Claro, in Corinto there were plenty of patos, but most depended on foreign seamen for their kind of love, just the way the putas did, and were forced to seek it much more furtively. But because of what Gonzalo said just before Joaquina left, he feels pushed overboard into a sea of suspicion and unease.
Gonzalo must sense it, because after a few moments of cutting his hair in silence, he releases Esteban from his guilty misery and hostility with what seems a studied observation:
“Why do you heterosexuals always play such games? You two have been steaming up the mirrors in here all day, and look, you barely say good-bye to each other. I suppose she wants you to think that maybe you’ll never see her again.” He laughs. “She wants you to suffer for her. And she wants to suffer over you.”
Esteban is too surprised to refute him. It occurs to him that, in a way, his first impression of Gonzalo was correct, he’s the same as any inveterate womanizer: his attitude is so simplistic because, with his physical beauty and self-confidence, he’s used to getting his way, and quickly.
“She told me she has a novio,” he finally says.
“Who? That little lawyer? Don’t worry about him.” Gonzalo works silently awhile. “You know what everybody says, Amor de lejos, amor de pendejos.”
The world’s most famous love slogan. Even la Marta teased him with it, when he had to go back into the war. And he’d answered, But I’m not going to be that far away. Then they’d both felt shaken by the unavoidable mine lying at the heart of what he’d said, because of course where he was going it was easy to end up in the infinite far away. And then la Marta had—
“Vos, Gonzalo. Does Joaquina dye her hair?”
“She’s as blonde as a truck tire. Curls it too. Needless to say, I’m the one responsible for that. I tried to talk her into going platinum, but she wouldn’t have it.”
He tries to imagine Joaquina with straight, black hair and finds t
he image so adorable, so strangely sexual and private—as if he’s undressed her and is seeing her naked for the first time, which is what he finds himself trying to imagine next—that his pija begins to stiffen and he wants to shout out in surprise from the vibrant warmth flooding through him.
“Chocho!” He grins like a fiendish monkey in the mirror.
“Eso qué?”
“We use it the same way you do coño. I guess they’re both words for vagina too, no?”
“Coño,” says Gonzalo. “If you two ever have children they’re going to have filthy mouths.”
Then the haircut is done. But Esteban feels disillusioned: he looks like a crazy monk, short hair on top and almost as bald as Capitán Elias on the sides, ears sticking out and the bottom of his face full of soft, messy hair. Impossible that Joaquina could have felt anything for that goatish gnome in the mirror! But Gonzalo comes out from the back with a hot, wet towel to put over his face, and uses a short, stubby brush to lather his face with the shaving cream he’s mixed in a small bowl, and strops a razor against a leather strap attached to the chair, then slowly and carefully shaves him. He fills his hands with talc from a green tin container with an elegant man in a top hat depicted on it, claps it around his neck, and then frees him from the hair-covered apron and paper bib. Gonzalo holds an oval mirror up so Esteban can see the back of his head, rounded and black as an overripe plum, with a mouse tail hanging out of it.
“I left a little in back, you can grow it out, even braid it if you want. It’s the fashion with all you young machos.”
Esteban is so disturbed by this notion that he has trouble appreciating the shock of how clean and neat and changed he looks, with his haircut and new sweater. He remembers a teacher he had in Corinto, Compañera Silvia, who painted her nails bright purple, wore specially made maternity militia fatigues through the last months of her pregnancy, and let the hair grow out from the mole under a corner of her lips until she was able to twirl a fine, thin, braid that hung down like one of Ho Chi Minh’s whiskers.
“Mira qué guapito,” says Gonzalo. “Do you like it? You’d better!”
“Claro,” he says. “Gonzalo, I don’t know how to show my gratitude.”
“A week of sweeping and mopping should do it. Now that you’re in New York, chico, you have to learn: nothing is for free. Nothing.”
Gonzalo opens a cabinet under the mirrors and brings out a dark green bottle, which he uncorks, pouring dark red liquid into two glasses. “It’s good for your cold,” he says.
“It’s wine?” asks Esteban, uselessly trying to sniff it.
“Pues, claro.” Gonzalo touches his glass to his. “Salud.”
Gonzalo sits in the other barber chair, sighing over his exhausted feet, and sips his wine.
Esteban sits up in his chair and takes a slow drink. At first it doesn’t taste like much, a bit sour, but it doesn’t taste like anything else either. But even with his cold, he feels his mouth pucker and decides that he likes the sensation.
“Where are you going to sleep?” asks Gonzalo.
“No sé.” Hijueputa, one thing after another! He has nowhere to sleep. “On the ship,” he says, finally.
“But you can’t go back there after you’ve come all this way, chico.”
They sit in silence a moment.
“Where I live, the bed barely fits in the one room we have,” says Gonzalo. “Maybe one night on the floor, but I’d have to ask Marco.”
Esteban says nothing. There’s nowhere else but the ship. At least there’s a mattress there—
“Oye,” says Gonzalo. “Why don’t you just stay here for the night? I can lower your chair all the way. It will be like sleeping on an airplane, no? There’s a blanket in back.” Gonzalo stands up from his chair, gives him a light tap on the arm. “And then, first thing in the morning, you can see her.”
BUT LUCK IS NOT FOR EVERYBODY …
1
ELIAS HAD FOUND THE SHIP THE PREVIOUS APRIL, IN ST. JOHN harbour, New Brunswick, in a little shipyard there, in unseaworthy condition, declared a total constructive loss by her insurers and waiting to be sold as scrap. In February the ship, then called the Seal Queen, port of registry Monrovia, had been disabled by an engine plant fire that broke out during a heavy storm while she was en route from Yarmouth, Nova Scotia, to Sydney Harbour, N.B., to load a cargo of wood pulp; the Seal Queen, dark and without power, was stranded outside St. John Harbour with the crew still onboard, including two who’d been badly scalded by sprayed diesel fuel and steam and urgently needed to be evacuated, and the body of one dead engineer—rescue helicopters weren’t able to reach the ship until the blizzard began to calm.
Elias had read about the Seal Queen in a Lloyd’s casualty report and made a few phone calls. The ship’s owner, listed as Gemco Corporation of Monrovia, had apparently decided that it wasn’t worth the bother or expense to repair her at shipyard prices. Gemco was probably a single-vessel owner, eager to get out of shipping now; so Elias had deduced in a telephone conversation with the ship’s operator, Corfian Ship Management, out of Staten Island, a Greek guy. Elias flew up to St. John, changing planes in Montreal. When he arrived at the shipyard, workers had already begun removing everything of salable value from the ship, the galley equipment, all the furniture and light fixtures, paneling from the bulkheads, even some of the porthole covers and watertight doors.
That night Elias phoned Mark in New York.
“This is the one, I think,” Elias said. “Maybe just a little older than what we wanted, built in Japan in nineteen seventy-one. Overall length four hundred thirty-six feet, seven inches. A converted dry cargo ship, tonnages four thousand, eight hundred eighty-eight gross and three thousand six hundred thirty-eight net—”
“Yeah, I get it,” said Mark, impatient as always with such details. “Big.”
“Well, medium. Mitsubishi engine in very good shape, thank God they haven’t started pulling that apart yet. Janmar generators somewhat scorched; we’ll need some new parts. But mainly it’s a wiring problem. I can fix that, and with a little luck, we’ll get it right the first time. Cargo gear, all fine. Would have been nice to have hydraulic hatches. And for all the pounding she took, hull’s OK too, just scraped up, rusted. They agreed to put most of the navigation equipment back.”
“How much?”
“I talked to the operator—”
“C’mon, how much, Elias?”
“Mark, chill, fuck’s sake. I said, How much do you expect to get selling her for scrap? and he said, Fifty thousand. I offered him five thousand more and said we’d take over the maintenance expenses from day one.”
Mark felt his spirits plummet. He was expecting a bargain? “That’s in the ballpark of what we were aiming for,” he acknowledged.
“I’m happy,” said Elias. And Elias did sound about as giddy as he ever does. “Upstairs in the officers’ quarters? It has these wonderful tiled Japanese steam closets. They’re practically worth the price all by themselves.”
Get one of those cheap flag of convenience registries and incorporations. Import the cheapest possible crew, even have them pay their own airfare. Work night and day, repair the ship fast, in a month to six weeks. Keep expenses to a minimum, pile up debts. And then decide if they want to sell her: should be able to get half a million dollars, at least, for a decent working ship like this. Then pay off the crew, the port fees, the equipment rentals and materials and everything else, shouldn’t come to more than fifty grand if they work fast. Or maybe even keep the ship and go into business, see how they feel about it. Lure in some investors, and really fix her up and modernize her. Not as much money up front of course, but a ship like the Urus, in good working condition, should bring in five thousand in charters a day, before operating expenses. Maybe go into the Amazonian timber trade, with all Elias’s connections down in South America, they’ll be able to get something going pretty fast. Eventually branch out, build an eco lodge in the rain forest, charge rock stars and such a ton to s
tay there. Hey, a fun life, Mark. Just the sort of thing we used to dream about back in college. A guy Elias had gone to the Nautical Academy in Mexico with had been working the scam for years, out of Panama and Venezuela, had sold some ships off and kept some, steadily building up a small fleet. Just a little bit illegal at the start-up end, like so many other risky businesses that, in the end, become legitimate and profitable. Elias liked to use a homeopathic metaphor for this: the Law of Similars. Just a little bit of evil to defend against the inner rot of a greater one, leading to buoyant good health.
Such were the arguments Elias Tureen used to persuade Mark Baker, his best and nearly oldest friend, into investing the insurance money he’d collected after his father’s death. Elias was going to be a father soon, and as much as Kate loved him, he worried over his kid having a loser for a dad. A man of adventure, of jungle and sea, a risk taker, a shipping and timber magnate, an eco lodge owner with his own medicinal plant business down in the Amazon—Elias’s holistically interrelated dreams—there’d be nothing wrong with all that. It really anguished Elias, Mark knew, the thought of his kid having a father he or she couldn’t look up to, a clever, dabbling-in-this-and-that, philandering, deeply insecure, do-nothing dad; and Mom with all the prestige and money and always bringing in more. Kate’s love for Elias certainly seemed unconditional, but would it always be?
Mark, it’s not like you have anything else going right now, Elias would say with the bluntness of an oldest pal. True, Mark’s video rental shop had gone bust. Blockbuster came to the neighborhood and took him right down, though of course like an idiot he’d tried to hang in too long; had to go back to waiting tables, until his father’s heart attack (the life insurance policy had originally been taken out in both his and his younger sister Linda’s name, but last year, with uncharacteristic intuition and … pity? … his father had changed it so that Mark would get most of the money, because Linda was already rich). Then Sue, a graphic designer with her own small company, left Mark after six years of their living together. She kept the apartment. So she really didn’t leave, she booted him, and Miracle. And so there he was, suddenly pushing forty, living with his dog in a tiny, thousand-dollar-a-month Upper West Side studio, nothing hopeful going on except for this stressfully provocative amount of money in the bank. What if one day he had to go back to New Hampshire, go into the dry-cleaning business with his mother, just not to fucking starve? So worried was Mark about his future, so certain was he that his father’s bequeathed treasure represented a final opportunity to make something of himself on his own, that during the week he spent pondering Elias’s proposition he kept waking up in the middle of the night to rush into the bathroom and vomit, once tripping over Miracle and not making it in time.
The Ordinary Seaman Page 30
