All My Relations

by Christopher McIlroy

  “My wife,” Boehm said. “Isn’t she beautiful?”

  The whore scratched her ear. She gave him a hard, direct look, devoid of shrewdness or coquetry. Boehm handed her a ten from his wallet.

  “Good night,” he said. He undressed and lay on the bed, listening to the lapping of the water.

  The far wall glowed a hot, featureless white in the morning sun. Boehm didn’t feel well rested. He came back from the bathroom and stood over Olivia’s side of the bed.

  She hadn’t wanted the trip to Mexico. The reservations were months old and now the idea was grotesque, she had said, “a honeymoon for divorce.” Finally she said she would do it for the guilt. Her affairs, Boehm interpreted. She claimed several, although at least one was bogus. The particular man had visited Boehm in Phoenix the night he supposedly spent with Olivia in San Francisco.

  Already yesterday morning, their first, Boehm and Olivia had argued.

  “Pelicano,” she had said. “Look.” The wheeling bird plummeted straight into the water, creating no perceptible splash, and disappeared except for the tips of its wings and tail. It bobbed up gulping a fish, crop quivering.

  “Pelicano,” Boehm said. “I never heard that cognate. I wonder if it’s border Spanish.”

  “It’s not border Spanish. It’s the standard word.”

  “The word I learned was alcatraz”

  “That’s the prison,” she said, “the island.”

  “It doesn’t matter. They’re probably both standard.”

  “Stand up for yourself, Steve. You think it’s fairness but you’re just being slippery.” Abruptly she’d bundled her beach gear and returned to the hotel, where she’d read most of the day.

  Boehm watched her sleep. “I feel like a buffalo tortured by mosquitoes,” he whispered. “My head shaking, hooves pawing the dirt. Clouds of them. Their whine penetrates to every part of my body.”

  Boehm was a zookeeper, and had loved his animals, feeding and watering them, singing to them, snatching away the sugared junk thrown in their cages, bathing them. He had enjoyed watching the elephant shudder with pleasure under the hose. When unobserved he had tried to hug the animals, particularly those considered most aloof or dangerous. Though the animals nipped and kicked him, he had succeeded in hugging all but the carnivores. Some animals had injured themselves, struggling. Anticipating Olivia’s absence, however, Boehm no longer cared about the animals. By the end of his shift, their cages, less well tended, would take on a tinge of rankness.

  Boehm paraded naked before Olivia, daringly, knowing if she woke she would think him fat. After her first affair he’d begun to eat very well, steaks, Belgian waffles, sundaes, fine liquor. He planted his heels with exaggerated firmness so that his bearded face quivered. Arms over his head he pirouetted, bourreed, feeling the jiggling of his thighs, chest, belly.

  Olivia was obsessed with fresh vitamins, he reminded himself, and decided to buy her fruit for breakfast. The day before, a vendor had muscled his cart through the sand on the hour. Boehm put on his trunks and went down to the beach.

  Low tide exposed brown blobs of rock. A veil of stranded seaweed, infested with flies, stretched to the highwater mark. The village children, Los Saneamienteros, as Boehm thought of them, were playing softball. They performed as if suffering from a neurological or muscular disorder. After an elaborate windup, the pitcher fell on his side during his delivery. Runners stumbled over the bases and veered into the outfield. Boehm moved closer, into the shadow of a thatched cabana. Without apparent cause, the first baseman toppled backward. A looping fly caromed off the third baseman’s glove. He sank to his knees. Cursing, the pitcher charged him. The third baseman crawled after the ball, whirled, and flung it at the pitcher’s head. It traveled slowly, like a balloon, struck the boy’s cheek and fell to his feet. The pitcher’s nose began to bleed.

  The vendor’s cart was stationed under an umbrella, surrounded by deserted beach. Boehm bought a slice of watermelon and sucked the seeds, falling into step several dozen paces behind the saneamienteros, who were wandering toward a row of cantinas. The two players still screamed at each other. Boehm heard footsteps just before Olivia reached him, snagging the waistband of his trunks with her finger. She wore her tiny flame orange bikini and her chest was flushed. She wanted to swim, she said, plucking at the elastic, touching his shoulder. Boehm realized his solitary walk had excited her. She loved him most, she had told him the first year of their marriage, when he was most absorbed in his own activity. Even simply rolling his sleeves could be enough.

  Boehm took her hand and led her into the water. A hundred yards from shore Umichehueve reached only to Olivia’s chin, Boehm’s breastbone. Olivia ducked underwater and unfastened his drawstring. Boehm stripped off her suit, beloved by him, the anomaly in her wardrobe of soberly tailored slates, navies, tans. Olivia held his penis in both hands. Boehm hitched her legs around his waist. They kissed, rocking. Boehm felt himself exploring inside her. When he opened his eyes the blue of the sea and sky overwhelmed him. The color looked vast and granular. He was mesmerized by the white islands. He remembered a night when he’d lain over Olivia, feeling huge and gray, saying, this is all that matters to me, and she’d said, that’s not really the idea, Steve. Now he moved her with his hands, held still while she moved herself, and she came, and again. Boehm couldn’t come. This had never happened. He didn’t think Olivia knew.

  For the first time, Olivia agreed to go shopping in town. Holding her hand tightly in his very large one, Boehm escorted her along empty streets, always keeping between her and the curb, “an old custom, so the carriages don’t splash mud on your finery, my dear.” In fact, Olivia wore a plain white smock. Boehm’s Mexican wedding shirt was embroidered with red and orange flowers, and the V-neck opened wide across his broad, curly-haired chest.

  The air, shimmering with heat, looked like white smoke. A hot wind sent litter skipping across the pavement. Children sauntered past licking paletas, the glossy hues of tamarind, papaya, watermelon as vibrant as Polaroid. A paleta melted into a violet puddle on the sidewalk.

  Most shops were closed. In a narrow wooden stand which filled the space between two department stores, Boehm bought a scratchy, flamboyantly dyed hemp shopping bag ornamented with straw butterflies.

  “You big dingo, there’s nothing to put in it,” she said, laughing. “There’s nothing here.”

  “Just us.”

  “O.K., Steve,” she said. She patted his hip and left her arm wrapped around his waist. The shopping bag swung at her side.

  They had bought only a few cans of tropical fruit nectar and a half-liter of rum at the supermarket when they discovered Discoteca Saturday Night Fever. A simian, gyrating John Travolta was painted on the stucco facade.

  “Catch this,” Boehm said. “A must, babe.” The dance floor was cramped and dark. A few children and young teenagers sat against the wall. Cool air and music, “I Like the Night Life,” one of Boehm’s favorites, blew from a vent in the ceiling. Boehm loved disco. He hooked Olivia by the waist and swung her around his head. She shrieked. Her smock flared out and settled over his face as he lowered her.

  Boehm had met Olivia when she was a student in the dance class he taught for Parks and Recreation. She said he could see any dance once, a samba, a minuet, a Balinese gamelan, and perform it. He danced without needing to think.

  “Dah-dah-dah-dah-DAH,” Boehm sang between his teeth, winding Olivia in, out, guiding her twirls with nudges from his knee. He rocked her, draped her over his thigh, tossed her in the air and caught her gently as the song ended.

  The points of her cheeks were red. She rested her head on his shoulder and bit his neck.

  “Maybe we can go on after this,” Boehm blurted.

  She covered his mouth with her hand.

  That night Boehm’s whore was wearing an ostrich plume in her hair and silver glitter around her eyes.

  He would like some of her friends as well, Boehm said, the jangling of his nerves easing
even as he spoke to her.

  “They are all at the Cantina Magui smoking cigarettes and sitting on their culos. What they like is sitting on a man’s cigarette and their culos smoking, ha ha.”

  He would wait in his room, Boehm said.

  An hour later a procession of whores filed in, their fantastic hairdos casting shadows on the wall like the heads of mythical creatures. Boehm uncovered Olivia. He bent over her, held his hand a few inches over her face, and let it pass up and down her from head to ankle, without touching, as if stroking an invisible outer body.

  “I like her legs best,” Boehm said. His hands hovered over her thighs, then dragged toward her feet as if encountering resistance from the flesh.

  “Now you do it,” he said to the girl with the ostrich feather.

  “She’ll wake up and yell.”

  “No she won’t.” He took the girl’s hand and skimmed it along the warmth that blanketed Olivia’s body like an atmosphere. He stood back. Palms outstretched, the whore’s hands made sweeping flights over Olivia. Her arms followed the motion, then her torso, until she was swaying rhythmically. She began to hum softly, almost in a whisper. Boehm gestured to the others. They surrounded the bed, heads inclined. Their hands made small circles over Olivia, then moved out from her center and down her sides, as if molding a sand angel. The paths of their hands crossed, weaving over and under each other. The whores hummed.

  Olivia’s breathing deepened. The gaudily enameled fingernails seemed to be spinning a cocoon around her.

  “Touch,” Boehm said. A border of sixty fingers radiated, like fluting, from Olivia. She looked like a profane Lady of Guadalupe.

  Olivia flinched and groaned. The whores’ hands recoiled. Olivia curled into a ball, hand clenching and opening, fingers spread wide. Boehm flipped off the lightswitch and lay beside her. She groaned again, and rolling onto her other side, slapped her arm against Boehm’s chest.

  “It’s hot,” she said. “It feels strange. You’re all dressed up.” Boehm heard her respiration, thick against the sheet, become slow and even. The breathing of the whores was like seafoam hissing around a stone.

  Boehm paid the whores in the hall. None of them, he saw, could have been older than twelve. When they turned the corner toward the lobby they broke into frenzied giggling.

  The next morning Olivia complained of feeling weak, with an upset stomach. Boehm suggested they stroll to an inlet where the town children played, and get their fresh air before the day’s heat. The inlet was marked by a jetty, an outcropping of black volcanic boulders like an immense dorsal fin rising from the water. To Boehm’s right sat the row of peeling cantinas. Directly ahead, a circle of Mexicans, mostly children, had gathered on the beach. Women in the local bathing uniform of shorts and baggy blouses were clapping their hands, laughing. Arms folded across their chests, men drank beer, smiling sternly.

  “Barbecue,” Boehm said.

  Then he saw the rakes rising and falling quickly like threshing rods, and the pelican, foolishly tilted head and broken wings, lurching toward the edge of the circle, fluttering under the blows of the saneamienteros.

  “What are you doing?” Olivia cried, running into the midst of the circle. One of the saneamienteros struck the pelican in the middle of its long neck. The bird’s head flopped to the sand. Olivia screamed at them. Boehm charged the boys, fists clenched, stopped, pumped his arms, relaxed. A spectator shrugged. Others shook their heads. There was laughter, and the people moved away. The saneamienteros slipped their sticks under the dead bird and tossed it into the air. Olivia sprawled on the sand, crying.

  “I hate Mexico,” she said when Boehm reached her. “Why do I have to go through this? I want to go home, today.”

  They couldn’t get to the station in time for the day’s train, Boehm said.

  “Tomorrow. I’m leaving tomorrow.”

  All right, Boehm said. For now she should lie down in their room.

  “I don’t want to go back there.”

  The gazebo, Boehm suggested. Olivia had wanted to visit the bronze-roofed landmark, built when the hotel was Porfirio Diaz’s personal resort.

  “Why didn’t you do something about that bird? How could you stand there? Think of your animals, Steve.”

  “It’s their way. This is another culture,” Boehm murmured. His comprehension filled him with serenity. “Animals shrink to nothing in a landscape like this,” he said dreamily. “It would take herds and herds of them, thousands, to matter.” Boehm thought of his zoo enclosures and couldn’t visualize animals inside them. The iron cages, their contours of sandstone-colored gunnite, were empty.

  Olivia stared at him. “Poor Steve,” she said.

  “But I feel like that bird.”

  Olivia wouldn’t respond.

  The stretch of beach to the gazebo’s rocky hill was white and blank. Its terraced gardens were overgrown with weeds. Livid green grass sprouted between the tiles of the walkway.

  “So this is our last night,” Boehm said. Olivia wouldn’t look at him. “Olivia,” Boehm said, voice cracking, “this is our last night.” He squeezed her arm.

  “Don’t.” She shrugged away. In the gazebo two stone benches were set in an L, not quite joining. Olivia lay on one, feet toward the water. Boehm lowered himself onto the other. The stone surface was cool under his back. A hot wind ruffled his sleeves. Boehm could see the beaches falling away down the coast. He understood a fever was coming on, and then he was asleep.

  When they woke, both were sluggish with fever. Hand in hand, without speaking, they walked back along the glittering beach. While they sipped fruit nectars laced with rum on the hotel veranda, the Guadalajara man joined them, drinking mineral water.

  “There was a shark this morning.” The man nodded toward the bay. “Be careful. I had lunch with the director of tourism and he said it was a porpoise. Flipper.” He laughed. “I asked him to accompany me for a swim then, but he said he had important conferences.”

  “The children killed a pelican this morning,” Olivia said. She told the story, crying again.

  The man’s brow furrowed. “The people’s lives are horrible. They have become ugly. I’m sorry. It wasn’t always this way.”

  Boehm and Olivia finished their drinks. The sugared alcohol seemed to make the sickness burn through Boehm’s body. His brain felt bloated and clogged.

  “I need to lie down,” Olivia said. “I feel like I’m going to faint. Thank you,” she said to the Guadalajara man. She clasped his wrist. If she’d stayed the full week, Boehm thought, she and the man would have become lovers.

  In their room Boehm and Olivia made love for a long time. Afterwards Boehm stayed inside her, dozing. Then he rolled away. Olivia curled against him, rubbing her face against his chest, his face, crying.

  When they were first married, she told him, she would speed to the zoo on her lunch hour and spy on him. The unfamiliarity of his uniform—white shirt, gray slacks—and of his stately pace from cage to cage frightened and thrilled her. “But then that day I poked you in the ribs and you spun around and dropped the feed bag. You pranced, and imitated the animals, and draped your arm around me, giving me your weight in that way you have, and kiss kiss kiss. You were exactly the same. I was so disappointed! I’m sorry.” Her voice was hoarse. “I feel so bad. I knew two years ago but I couldn’t admit it. It’s my fault.”

  Boehm woke remembering a cocktail party at their home. Gracious but withdrawn, Olivia poured drinks—bare arms against the glass tabletop—and watered the chrysanthemums. The wind molded the white muslin dress to her body, giving her the appearance of rough plaster sculpture. After the guests left, she and Boehm danced on the lawn. He lifted the dress over her head.

  “Wait,” she said, catching his wrist. “Stand beside me. Hold my hand. Can’t you ever be content just like this?”

  The patio spotlight made her skin glisten as if wet. Shaking his head miserably, Boehm slipped her underpants down her thighs. How could he tell her he wanted to wea
r her skin over his, that he desired her body so much he wished it to be his own, to feel himself enter her?

  In bed next to Boehm, Olivia tossed, sweating, yet after a double dose of the medication her breathing, though harsh, was regular and incredibly slow. Boehm dressed. The hotel lobby was empty. Feeling the electricity in his veins, he clattered down the wooden stairs to the beach and started for the cantinas. In the moonlight the sky and water were sludge gray.

  The Cantina Magui was lit by lavender tubes at either side of the jukebox. The ceiling was black, the frayed carpeting crimson. Dark red plastic roses were pinned to the walls. A nude blonde woman in an Uncle Sam top hat danced obscenely on stage.

  Boehm took a booth. Jammed into a booth opposite, the whores chattered with nervously animated gestures. They didn’t acknowledge him. A tall waiter with a sad face and drooping gray mustache served him. When the waiter turned away, Boehm saw a long slash in his trouser leg. The saneamienteros, occupying the tables nearest the stage, threw wadded napkins and lime twists at the dancer. Laughing, she kicked the debris back in their faces. A lighted butt struck her thigh with a shower of sparks. She winced, swearing.

  The atmosphere lulled Boehm. He sipped his drink and stretched out his long legs. He waved at the whores but still they paid him no attention. He didn’t know what he wanted with them. He drummed his fingers on the table and sang a little song. He went to the saneamienteros’ tables.

  “Birdman.” They laughed. “And where is Mrs. Birdman this night?” A boy made a clacking pelican bill with his hands in front of his mouth. “Always shouting.”

  The children crowded around him, jostling, their eyes murky and glazed. Boehm imagined himself sinking to the floor under their rhythmic blows. The image momentarily appealed to him, but he said, “I have beer money at my hotel. Come back and party.”