“Shit. Ask for ten. Same thing.”
“I know, Charlie. Maybe you could loan me some, a little from Marvin-”
“-Marvin’s in a fuckin’ wheelchair. What’s he gonna do? Run a little soapbox derby for extra bucks?”
“You know my deal. I’m actually good for it for once. And besides, even when I’m not good for it, I pay it back, don’t I?”
Charlie sighed. “I can ask.”
“Brett might loan you a little for me. Between the three of you, you might could scrape it up. Shit, man. A thousand would probably do it, we had to. Oh, and John, of course. He’s probably got the whole thing.”
“Why didn’t you call him?”
“I did. He wasn’t home.”
“So I was second choice?”
“Pretty much.”
“Look. I’ll see what I can do. Give me John’s phone number.”
I gave it to him.
“You know Brett’s?”
“I do.”
“I wouldn’t count on much there. I’m just being wistful. John’s probably the best bet.”
“All right. Who else?”
“I think that’s about all the people who like me. And some of them are a mixed bag. There’s a lawyer friend named Veil, but I have no idea where he is these days. And besides, I’m not sure he and Leonard truly like one another.”
“I know Veil,” Charlie said.
“You do?” I said.
“Everyone knows Veil. You got a number I can call you?”
“No. The lady we’re staying with doesn’t have a phone.”
“She the one you’re doing the hole punch with?”
“That’s an indelicate way of putting it. But yes. We’ll only be there today, though. Tomorrow, we have to head out.”
“Didn’t turn out so good, huh? Bad in the sack?”
“She was fine.”
“Hell, I meant you.”
“I was quite good, actually. She told me so.”
“Now there’s something you can depend on.”
“Charlie, I don’t know where to wire the money. I guess what I’ll do is call you back tomorrow, see if you could raise it, then I’ll let you know where to send it. I get the money I can book a plane flight.”
“Haven’t you got a credit card?”
“I do. But it’s one of those that has a low credit limit.”
“A kiddie card.”
“Pretty much. Something like three hundred dollars. I might even have enough with that and my cash and Leonard’s to put together two plane flights, but if we need to eat, anything goes wrong, well, we’d be screwed. Besides, I need to slip these people a little something. They didn’t ask, but the old man literally saved our lives. He patched Leonard up good and just in time. Without him and the antibiotics his daughter gave us, Leonard might be deceased.”
“All right, Hap. Give me a call tomorrow.”
“Done deal,” I said.
I went back to the cafe and joined Beatrice for coffee. The coffee was rich and black and almost took my breath away. Same as Beatrice’s eyes.
“When does your father come in?”
“Usually midday. And then he goes back. He used to stay on the boat all day. But now he fishes very early, comes back, goes out again late. He does not go too far. He does not have to. He seems to know where the fish are. This is one of the places he sells the fish to, this cafe. Perhaps the fish we ate is one he caught.”
“Doesn’t it bother you to eat a fish you know personally?”
“Not at all.”
“That seems inconsiderate.”
“Fuck the fish,” she said.
She saw me glancing at her little finger, the one with the tip missing.
“You wonder what happened?”
“Yeah. I guess so.”
“Fishing line. A shark was caught. He jerked, the line tangled. It took off the tip of my finger.”
“I didn’t mean to stare.”
“It is all right.”
We wandered around Playa del Carmen, looking at the tourist shops. Actually, after one shop I was pretty much worn out. The rest were the same ol’ same ol’, but I put up with it because Beatrice seemed to think she was showing me a good time.
She suggested a ferry over to Cozumel, but I wanted to be available when her father showed and I didn’t want to give those cops the chance to see me again. I told her so.
“Of course,” she said. “I wasn’t thinking.”
All I could think about was Leonard back at their home, wounded, with nothing but bread and cheese to eat. I ought to get back there, and maybe it would be best to get him closer to town right away, one of the hotels. I might even be able to find a doctor, provided Charlie could rouse enough money.
I said, “Since you need us out tomorrow, we could walk around and see if I can find a hotel for me and Leonard. We actually had a room rented, but we didn’t show last night. We might can get a room there again.”
She didn’t hesitate. “Very well.”
We ended up at a different, cheaper, but nicer hotel. It was white stucco with a large palm near the front and a sign that translated something like the House of Siesta. Out front was a medium-sized yellow dog that looked croaked. It lay in the hot sun like a flapjack on a griddle. When we stepped over the dog, it wagged its tail, just to let us know it didn’t need burying.
Inside, Beatrice spoke Spanish to the man behind the desk. He had rooms.
“Shall I set you up?” she said.
I had been watching a couple of very large cockroaches practice sumo style shoving in the corner of the room. Kind of made me feel homesick, actually.
“Yes. Make it two nights. I want to give Leonard a little time to rest, time for the money to get here.”
She talked to the desk clerk. I gave him my charge card. Signed some papers. When he gave me back my card, Beatrice said, “Tonight, you two stay with us. I arranged for you a night after that. That is enough, is it not?”
I was surprised after what she had told me about wanting Leonard and me out, but I said, “Should be. If not, I can extend it. It doesn’t look as if people are knocking the doors off this place to get in.”
“It’s nicer than our home,” Beatrice said.
I felt bad, but didn’t know what to say, so let it go.
As we left the hotel, I said, “Why are you letting us stay tonight? I had the feeling you needed us out.”
“You are why. I thought maybe we do tonight what we did last night. As for why I want you out, well, I have personal reasons. They are not your fault.”
“I can live with that,” I said.
We wandered around for a while, but her father didn’t show at the dock. We finally went back to the cafe and bought some coffee and sat at a table and talked.
“Have you ever wanted something so bad, and you had it in your hand, and you let it slip away,” Beatrice said. “Just one decision, and everything changed.”
“Beatrice, it’s the story of my life.”
“I had my chance in the States. But I came back here to be a Mexican woman in the tradition of my mother. Why? I know better. Why did I do that?”
“Perhaps you were worried about your father?”
“I like to think so. I told you that last night. But it is more. It is like I am imprinted, and I keep doing the same thing. I cannot go backward now, not easily. I have squandered so much, so much time. I would like the big score, you know?”
“I know. I’ve tried that myself. It can happen, the big score. Win the lottery. Gamble and hit the jackpot. But most likely you don’t win the lottery, you don’t hit the jackpot. Slow and steady wins the race.”
“I am nearly thirty-five, and I have not begun my race. I ran it for a while, but in the wrong direction. Correct that. I ran in the right direction, but like an idiot I turned and came back the way I had run. Now I am at the starting line again. And I am tired, Hap.”
“I’m not trying to get into your life. I don�
��t know your life that well, Beatrice. But why not go back to the States? You’ve got the education. There are opportunities there. You said your father doesn’t expect you to be here. He’d understand. He’d want the best for you.”
“Too hard,” she said. “I would have to get more education to actually get a good job in archaeology. That takes money. I do not have money.”
“Work and earn money. Then take the courses you need.”
“Work at what?”
“You have enough education to get a job. At a small museum maybe.”
“It takes too long. I need the money right now, so I can take the classes. So I can have freedom. I am sick of having nothing, Hap. Physically sick.”
“Maybe we want too damn much,” I said.
“That could be,” Beatrice said. “But you know what? I want it just the same.”
14
Late that afternoon the old man’s boat came in. We were at the dock waiting. When the boat arrived and was tied at the dock, the kid, Jose, jumped off, Spanish tumbling out his mouth so fast you could almost see the words.
“It is Father,” Beatrice said. “He has been hurt.”
We both rushed to the boat, climbed on board.
Ferdinand was lying on the bed in the boat cabin. His leg was bound up in white cloth and there was a lot of blood.
He and Beatrice spoke to one another in Spanish. When they finished, she sat beside him on the bed. I leaned against the door frame. The old man smiled at me.
“Senor. How are you today?”
“I’m good. But you’re not. What happened?”
“Stupid accident. I do this all my life, and now I do this stupid thing. I hooked a small shark. I brought it in, and in the process of hitting it in the head, it came off the hook and wiggled on the deck and bit my lower leg. It is not bad. It was a very little shark.”
“He cannot walk,” Beatrice said. “I consider that bad.”
“No, senor. It is not bad.”
“Bad enough. I hope you doctored it as well as you doctored my friend.”
“I stitched it up myself.”
Beatrice leaned over and looked at the bloody bandage. She started removing it.
“It is fine,” said the old man.
Beatrice let out her breath. “It is not fine. My heavens, Father. It is terrible. You need to see a doctor.”
Ferdinand spoke to her in Spanish.
She looked at me. “He says he cannot afford a doctor.”
“Do you know where one is?”
“Yes. “
“Then let’s get him there.”
Jose had come back onto the boat. He looked in at the old man, his eyes wide. The old man spoke to him. The boy immediately began to unload their catch.
“Jose and his brothers will help sell it in the marketplace. Father will give them nearly half of it. They do not deserve half of it. Only the boy went out.”
“He works hard,” said Ferdinand. “His family is poor.”
Beatrice barked a laugh. It wasn’t a happy laugh.
“Father, you are something. Come, let us get you up from there.”
The doctor wasn’t home. I sat on the doctor’s porch with Ferdinand while Beatrice went to find him. It was nearly dark when she finally came back, an old man plodding along beside her.
He looked like something out of a Humphrey Bogart movie. He wore a white linen suit that looked as if he had slept in it. Scuffed black shoes run-down on the sides and a shirt that had been last washed during the Mexican Revolution, and then only because he had been caught out in the rain. He had salt-and-pepper hair and the front of it hung down on his forehead as if it were too ill to consider being combed.
I heard him call Ferdinand by name, then the rest of it was in Spanish, which left me out. They apparently knew each other well.
I helped the old man up. He was stiffer than before. As the doctor came to help me, I could smell liquor on his breath.
We got Ferdinand inside the house. There were clothes piled up and a couple of men’s magazines on the couch with naked senoritas on the cover. One was open to a centerfold and there was a German shepherd in the picture with a lady one could no longer describe as young. In fact, she looked as if she might have been more at home with a horse.
The doctor paused long enough to flip the magazine closed and toss it off the couch.
I glanced at Beatrice. She looked at me and shook her head. We sat Ferdinand on the couch. The doctor disappeared into the other room.
Ferdinand said, “They are not his magazines. He has a very crazy son. He is my friend’s shame. He lives here with his father.”
“The question is,” I said, “does the son have a German shepherd?”
“I do not think so.”
The doctor came back carrying a bag. He pulled up a chair in front of the couch, sat in it, carefully lifted the old man’s leg, placed the foot on the chair in front of him and began removing the bandages.
The injury was pretty bad. You could see where the old man had poured some kind of red stuff over the wound, and it wasn’t bleeding badly, just sort of oozing, but it was too deep and too wide for stitches, though the old man had tried.
The doctor clucked over it for a moment. He got a bottle of whiskey out of his bag and gave it to Ferdinand. Ferdinand unscrewed the cap, took a snort. The doctor took the bottle back, took a snort himself. He offered us some. Beatrice and I declined.
The doctor went away, came back with a pan of water. He went to work on the leg, cleaning it, snipping away the thread where the old man had tried to sew what couldn’t be sewed.
I went out on the front porch. The smell of the wound bothered me. I had smelled far too many wounds in my lifetime. Beatrice came with me.
She said, “He will be out of work now.”
“What about the kid, Jose? Or his brothers? Can’t they work for him? Help you out.”
“They would expect to be paid.”
“If you catch fish, pay them. If you don’t-”
She laughed. “It is so easy for you, is it not. Being an American. There is always money.”
“I don’t know what you think you know, honey, but one thing is for damn certain, I haven’t got any money. Leonard and I own a dime and we let each other carry it from time to time, but heaven forbid we should spend it.”
Beatrice shook her head. “My father owes money, you see. He has to make it back. He will pay the doctor from his catch. Give him fish. We need every fish to make every peso we can. Not only to live, but to pay back his debt.”
“He borrowed money?”
She looked at me with those beautiful, soulful dark eyes.
“He borrowed for me… It is not your business, Hap.”
“Very well,” I said.
She studied me for a moment, as if trying to make certain I wasn’t going to wrestle it out of her. When she decided I wasn’t, she told me anyway.
“He borrowed from a man who adds much interest. He borrowed so that I could go to the United States, to the university. He has been paying it off all along. And I, well, I did nothing with my time there.”
“You chose to come back. You could have done something with your education if you wanted.”
“Let me put it this way. One night I am in the U.S., and I am out with friends, and they order fish. And I am looking at the fish, and thinking, this is what my father does, and he is doing it every day so I can be here. I decided to come home, help him earn the money back. This was more important. I knew he would never pay it off. The debt would be there. It was right for me to assume the debt.”
“What about what you told me before? Being like your mother. Or feeling obligated to be that way.”
“That is part of it too, Hap. If I were smart, I would have got a job and helped pay off the debt. My degree would have helped do that. Instead, I come back and live like a peasant to pay off this big loan by helping him fish. What kind of thinking is that, if it is not the thinking of someone who belie
ves they are trying too hard, and wrongly, to rise above their station.”
“If you’ll forgive me, Beatrice. It’s stupid thinking.”
“I know. But I do it just the same. Let me tell you why I want you to leave tomorrow. My father has a charter. A big important charter. Men who want to fish. They have agreed to go out three days. They will pay a lot for this. Far more than the cost to fish. They are rich Americans and my father has guaranteed them each a trophy fish. There is a place where there are plenty of great fish. My father knows it. If the fish are not there, we do not make as much. And I must be very kind to one of these men.”
“I don’t think I like the sound of that.”
“I am not yours, Hap.”
“I didn’t mean it that way. I don’t like the idea of any woman having to be nicer to a man than she wants to be.”
“I have met this man. He is not my favorite. But this money, it could pay off our debt to this other man I told you about.”
I was liking the sound of it less and less. But Beatrice was right. It was not my problem. And she was not my woman.
“What happens if you don’t find the fish?”
“This man my father owes. He is a man with much pride. More pride than the need for money. He can be unpleasant.”
“Jesus, Beatrice. Your father is in to a loan shark?”
“He is more than a shark. He is a school of sharks. One time a man owed him and did not pay, and this shark, Juan Miguel, he had the man killed, the body skinned, boiled, and sold his skeleton to a medical school.”
“That sounds like a story to me, Beatrice.”
“This is Mexico, Hap. Stories like that are real here. The final word is this. We owe him money. We are behind in our payments. He has threatened my father. He and his thugs.”
“Your father doesn’t seem worried.”
“He is worried. But he keeps it to himself. He will seem even more congenial now than before. It is his way of dealing with disaster. Tomorrow he will lose the big charter because of this, and then there will be no way to pay the money.”
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