The Collected Stories of Deborah Eisenberg (31 page)

“No, ma’am,” he said.

Caitlin looked at him sharply. If only she’d been able to have Holly with her in New York more often! “Do you think you could find something else to call me?” she said.

“Mama—” Holly began, but Brandon touched her wrist, and she looked down at the table.

“Well,” Lewis said, standing. “I’ll just be off to freshen up a bit.”

Brandon nodded to him, but Holly just stared at her plate, eyebrows furrowed. How helpless she looked! Caitlin reached over to her. “My baby,” she said. “Your hair used to be such a lovely ash brown.”

“Hash brown, Mama,” Holly said. “Like yours.”

“Honey?” Brandon said. He turned to Caitlin. “It’s a hard thing—here she hasn’t seen you in so long, and then you have to be going off again so soon.”

“No I don’t,” Caitlin said.

“Yes you do,” Holly said.

“You know what?” Caitlin said, rage distending the words. “Why don’t we go to the beach right now, before some of us start to get mean?”

“What beach?” Holly said. “Besides, Brandon has to work this afternoon, and I have to help him.”

“Now, sweetheart,” Brandon said. “I’ve got to go out to Palmerola, load up all that stuff for Salvador. You don’t want to hang around for that, do you?”

“Yes I do,” Holly said to her plate in a particularly little voice.

“Well, I can go with you,” Caitlin said.

“No you can’t,” Holly said.

Caitlin turned to her. “Enough,” she said. “First you drag me to this terrible place, then you say I can’t even come with you this afternoon.”

“You can’t,” Holly said. “They won’t let you. Besides, I didn’t drag you anywhere. You invited yourself.”

“I beg your pardon,” Caitlin said.

“I’m sorry,” Holly said. “I’m sorry.”

“Well,” Caitlin said. “I certainly did not invite myself.”

“Well, you did,” Holly said, “you certainly did. And now you’re already complaining again, just like you always do. Just like you’re some princess and I’m something that washed up one day on your—”

“Do we have to—” Caitlin said.

“You act like I come from a
pig
sty. You act like Daddy and I are I don’t know whats. You’re ashamed of me. Look—you can hardly even look at me.”

“How can you say that! Do you think I would have stayed with your father for fifteen minutes if it hadn’t been for you? If it weren’t for you I wouldn’t be able to recognize your father in a police lineup.”

“That’s
exactly
what I—”

“All
right
,” Caitlin said. “If you don’t want me here, I’ll leave.”

“So, good!” Holly said. “Leave! You think you can just show up somewhere and be all
charm
ing and—and
love
ly, and then whatever you’ve done won’t matter, and someone will bail you out of whatever stupid slimehole you’ve fallen into. You think you can just walk away from anything and then by the time you turn around again everything will be just the way you want it to be. It makes me just want to throw
up
!”

“Honey?” Brandon said softly. “Sweetheart? We’re in a
res
taurant.” He turned to Caitlin. “She’s overexcited.”

“I can see that, Brandon,” Caitlin said. “I’m her mother.”

Brandon stood. “I’m just going to take her away now, and we’ll give you a call later when we’re feeling better.”

“That’s what
you
think,” Holly said furiously. She stormed out of the room while Brandon held out his hand to Caitlin.

“Pleasure to meet you, ma’am,” he said with opaque calm.

Jesus, Caitlin thought. How idiotic. Holly would be sorry later—she always was. But in the meantime…Oh, well. Out for adventures. She sighed and looked at the swamp on her plate; how on earth had the others managed to eat these miserable, depressing eggs?

The hilly streets were crowded. Puffs of dust and low, slowly roiling clouds veiled the chalky buildings and churches, and groups of black-haired schoolchildren in blue uniforms flowed around Caitlin, as yielding as a haze of gnats. Men and women passed with soft, despondent expressions; at first, Caitlin smiled cheerfully at them, but the smiles they returned were conciliatory and apologetic, as though hers were something to be evaded, or endured.

Those shorn boys on the plane had been soldiers, of course, Caitlin thought. But who were all these other Americans? Like the burly, red-faced boy who was drinking a beer as he walked. His bright red T-shirt came toward her. “FEED THE HOMELESS
TO THE HUNGRY
” it said. “Gramma’s looking good,” the boy himself said and belched into her ear as he lurched lightly against her.

She steadied herself at a low wall and rubbed her ankle, fuming. When she looked up she saw that she was in a stone plaza, where a knot of ragged people was forming around something. She joined the grimy crowd and saw at its center a man sitting on a blanket, surrounded by small heaps of dried plants, a large trunk, and jars of smoky liquid, inside of which indistinct shapes floated. Of course, Caitlin couldn’t understand what he was saying, but his voice rose and fell, full of crescendos and exquisitely disturbing pauses, and his eyes glittered with irony as he gathered up all the vitality that had dissipated from his dusty audience and their torpor burned off in the air crackling around him.

The women in the crowd giggled and tilted their heads against one another’s shoulders; the men squirmed and smiled sheepishly. Suddenly the man on the blanket went still. He stared, then lifted his arms high and plunged them into the trunk, from which he raised, as the women screamed and scattered, a great snake that seethed luxuriantly in his hands. Caitlin found herself clinging to a barefoot woman, who smiled to excuse herself, and then, as the crowd drew together again, the man on the blanket placed the twisting snake around his shoulders and reached into the trunk for a second time.

This time what he drew forth was a small white waxy-looking block. The crowd peered and craned. The man looked sternly back and silence fell. He passed his hand across the block, and as the crowd sighed like a flock of doves rising from a tree, the block began to foam.

In an instant the onlookers were rushing forward, drawing from their pockets bills as worn and dried out as they themselves were, which the man on the blanket collected, passing out bars of soap in a blur of speed.

And then it was over. The man had packed up his herbs and his snake and his trunk—the bottles and blanket, everything gone, leaving only a few dazzled lingerers and Caitlin, who was penetrated by a rich sorrow.

She took her compact out of her bag and looked in the mirror.
Oh.
Time to redo her makeup and sit down for a refreshing snack. She looked around. Hopeless. But up on the rim of town she saw a towering structure. Perhaps that was where all the cafés and nice shops were. To cheer herself up, she bought a clump of sticky candy from a little stand on the street to eat while she walked.

The steeply inclined streets curved up across little ravines choked with garbage, and, with every dip or turn as Caitlin drew nearer, the massive tower disappeared and then loomed again in the tinted, fumy air.

Up high the town was more prosperous. Houses were set back from the street behind dry gardens. Spectral cars slid by, their occupants invisible behind black glass, and muscular dogs strained at their tethers, baying as Caitlin passed, or snapping their teeth. She paused for a moment, breathless from the heat, and the garden beside her heaved—heavens, there was a man in camouflage clothing!—and she turned away quickly, to find herself right in front of the towering building. It was Harvey Gumbiner’s hotel.

Beige light draped the vast lobby, masking clusters of people. “Praise the Lord,” someone seemed to be saying, and something stirred in a deep chair. Pale men, like those on Caitlin’s flight, spoke quietly, disclosing the contents of their briefcases to dark men in sunglasses. A group of backpackers with Bibles whispered in a corner. A breathtaking girl walked by dreamily with a blond man of about fifty, who looked permanently soaked in alcohol. He wound her long black hair around his hand. She whispered something to him, and he smiled, closing his eyes, her hair still coiled around his hand like a leash.

Caitlin found Harvey in the bar with a man named Boyce—from the Embassy, Harvey explained. Boyce’s eyes were inflamed, and he scratched at himself. “Allergies,” he said unhappily and waved to a group of waitresses, who leaned against the bar, gazing out the window like convicts, or children. One disengaged herself, walking slowly, and shifting her weight from haunch to haunch. She stopped, swaying slightly, at their table, still looking out the window as though she were asleep.

“Is the rum here sensational?” Caitlin asked. The waitress smiled helplessly, then shrugged. “O.K.,” Caitlin said. “What’s to lose? Cuba libre, please.
Bless
you,” she said to Boyce, who had choked.

When her drink arrived, she told Harvey and Boyce about the man with the amazing soap.

“That’s impossible,” Harvey said. “Soap that lathers without water?” He squinted at Caitlin. “How much did this ‘soap’ cost?”

“Two of those things,” she said. “The red ones.”

“Two lempiras!” Harvey said. “It cost two lempiras? That’s damned expensive, you know—that’s about a dollar.”

“Seems reasonable.” Boyce rubbed at his eyes. “If it doesn’t require water. After all, they don’t have water.”

“Of course it requires water,” Harvey said. “Soap requires water—I
know
soap. Obviously, it’s some sort of trick. Two lempiras! You know, this is a very expensive country. I mean considering how damn poor it is. I stopped to buy some batteries this morning for my radio? And two batteries cost me thirteen lempiras! Now, I call that damned expensive.”

“Well,” Boyce said, waving his hand slightly, “what you see here in Tegucigalpa is a dual economy. The international community that’s arrived with all the expansion confuses the picture; the wealthy Nicaraguan émigrés, the new-rich military—” He cleared his throat furiously. “Excuse me. No, what I mean is that the prices you’re seeing confuse the picture, because those prices are for foreigners, not for Hondurans. Out in the smaller cities—Choluteca, for example—you don’t see those prices.”

Harvey frowned. “Still,” he said. “I mean, look: two batteries for my radio cost me thirteen lempiras. Now, that simply has to affect the people in—what did you say? Choluteca.”

“Well,
no
,” Boyce said. “Because my point is, the people in Choluteca
don’t have radios.
”

“Ah. How do you do?” A well-dressed man had stopped at their table to address Boyce. “Excuse me, I shan’t interrupt.”

“Well,” Boyce said. “Mr. Best.” He looked away, but Harvey was already introducing himself and Caitlin. “O.K.” Boyce sighed. “Might as well sit down.”

“My, my,” Mr. Best said. “I see that all our friends are arriving.”

“
Oh
boy,” Boyce said. “
That’s
right—entire international press corps. Another couple of hours they’ll be clogging the pool like lemmings.”

Caitlin looked around and saw that men and women with large bags slung over their shoulders were filtering into the bar. “Why so many reporters?” she said.

Mr. Best smiled and motioned for drinks from a waitress who was idly stacking glasses in a pyramid at the bar.

“It seems, my dear,” Harvey said, as the pyramid of glasses tumbled to the floor, causing convulsions of giggles among the waitresses, “that you and I have arrived on a rather tense day. The White House has announced that Nicaragua invaded Honduras last night.”

“Oh, that’s what it is,” Caitlin said, trying to remember. “Honduras and Nicaragua are at war—”

“Well,” Boyce said. The three men looked at Caitlin. “Not exactly.”

Harvey glanced at Boyce, then turned to Caitlin and smiled. “You see,
we’re
in Honduras. And Honduras is a democracy—everything is fine here. But next door in Nicaragua? Well, about nine years ago the dictator there—an extremely unattractive man—was overthrown—”

“By Communists,” Boyce and Mr. Best said simultaneously.

“Yes,” Harvey said. “And, of course, that’s no good. So we give money to Nicaraguans who liked it better the other way—the Contras, they’re called—to fight the new government. And we let the Contras encamp here in Honduras, where we can—”

“Excuse me,” Mr. Best said. “One slight correction.” He twinkled charmingly at Caitlin. “Honduras is a neutral country—the Contras are
not
here.”

“No, the
point,
” Boyce said loudly to Caitlin, “the point
is
that Honduras is a highly sensitive strategic area. Of course we have financial interests in the region—we’ve never attempted to deny that—but the point is that,
strategically
speaking, Honduras is money in the bank. And that’s why the Soviets and the Cubans are stirring up these indigenous movements all over the place. Otherwise,
Jesus.
I mean, these people are pacific; they don’t know what’s going on—they’re
farmers
, for heaven’s sake. And that’s the point, you see—that we’re not just here because we go all gooey inside when we think about the relationship between free enterprise and democracy!”

Caitlin looked at him. She liked to travel. But this was not traveling.

“I can see that I haven’t convinced you,” Boyce said gloomily. “I can see you think I’m overestimating the danger in order to justify intervention, or God knows what kind of things you’ve been reading. But that’s not true, it’s not
true.
Think of the proximity to the United States, think of Cuba, think of the Canal. When’s the last time you really thought about the map? I want you to close your eyes and picture the map.”

Caitlin took a sip of her drink, and in the reddish mist behind her eyelids tired, dusty figures—like the people in the stone plaza—scrambled across a confused surface. But then flat colors began to mass: the blue of North Carolina, sweet pink of New York, orange of California; little mountain ranges and lakes, little capitol buildings jogged up and down, waiting to be superimposed. They fanned out over the map, the map swung into the night, a light shone in North Carolina from Holly’s room, where Holly sat alone, in her tiny rocker, cradling a bear, waiting. The rum came up Caitlin’s straw again, washing it all away in a flood of gold as she opened her eyes to see Mr. Best watching her with a faint smile.