The Ordinary Seaman (48 page)

Canario’s chances are completely dashed when Cebo stupidly argues that his cabinmate Canario should be chosen because he had to stay behind to guard the ship the night they crossed los proyectos—that’s the luckiest thing that’s ever happened to the twittery cabrón! So they all, even los drogados, cast votes by raising their hands in the air, and José Mateo, Cabezón, and El Buzo tie for the final spot. After two more rounds, José Mateo says he can’t go after all because he has dinner to prepare, and Cabezón finally wins the fourth spot.

The Ship Visitor takes them in by subway, so that they’ll know how to make the journey alone later if they need to. It turns out that there’s a subway stop only about a twenty-minute walk from the ship. And they’re on a very crowded subway, speeding-screeching-rocking through a tunnel, when Esteban suddenly turns to Panzón and says, “Puta! I can’t go to the lawyer!” By the time they get all the way in, meet with him, and come back, he’ll be late for work! It’s unfair that Esteban has only thought of this now, because El Buzo could have gone instead—pero bueno, that’s Esteban. Probably he just wants to go and see la Joaquina. When the subway doors open at the next station, Esteban squeezes through the standing crowd and is gone and the train starts moving so suddenly that Panzón is thrown forward and lands against a pretty gringa’s back with his nose in her hair and she spins around with a frightened shout and glares at Panzón with hate at first sight but Panzón doesn’t notice because he’s too busy regaining his balance, knocking into other passengers, clutching his ledger book, and trying to reach for the bar over his head at the same time.

They switch trains, crossing the platform in one of the underground stations, from the F to the A train. But the Ship Visitor hasn’t even noticed that Esteban left when they were still on the F, because when they get off the A train in another station, he looks at them with an astonished expression and says, “Weren’t there four of you?”

He frantically looks around at the people coming and going on the platform, at the A train disappearing into the tunnel, and then looks back at them wild eyed and says,
“Oh no!
Didn’t he notice we were getting off?
Shit!
That kid’s never going to find his way back!
Oh no!”

And he gapes from one face to another, at Tomaso Tostado, at Panzón (still secretly overjoyed by the clean, flowery scent and silky touch of that gringa’s hair), and at Cabezón, but all three are thinking the same thing: We’re not supposed to tell the Ship Visitor about Esteban’s illegal job.

The Ship Visitor seems to be trying to control his panic. He says, “You don’t understand. That train is an express. Do you think he’ll be able to find his way back?” Then he lifts his hand to his forehead, partly covering his eyes.
“Why?”
he nearly shouts in English. “Tell me
why.”

Another of the long, silvery trains rages into the station, startling them with its iron screeches, making them cringe. When the train is gone, Tomaso Tostado blurts, “He went to see his novia, pues.”

“His novia!” exclaims the Ship Visitor. “He has a novia?”

“Sí, sí tiene.”

And the Ship Visitor grins with surprised relief. “You muchachos have novias?”

“No, no, only Esteban. He met her around the time Bernardo was sent home, pues. He used to share a cabin with the viejo.”

“Esteban? His name’s Esteban?”

“Sí, Esteban.”

“How did Esteban find a novia? Stuck on that ship, and he finds a novia?” Apparently the Ship Visitor hasn’t realized that today is the first time he’s seen Esteban, that he wasn’t on board yesterday.

“No sé,” says Tomaso Tostado. “He found one, pues.”

They walk up the stairs and onto the sidewalk, and there they are, in the middle of the faraway island vision they’ve been watching for so many months from their ship: buildings climbing up all around them, steep, dirty walls soaring into the faraway looking sky; and down on the sidewalk, everything cold, heavy shadows, and lights in all the lobbies and store windows, and the street jammed with traffic; and everywhere, everywhere you look, people rushing, in warm, long coats, and so many pretty gringas. But in the lawyer’s office, the secretary is an older, fat woman with glasses and orange hair and pink lipstick, she looks like a dowdy circus clown. The lawyer’s office is cluttered and
warm, but no one takes off his new coat, just his hat. The lawyer, Mr. Angus Moakly, is also fat, youngish but balding, wearing suspenders and a tie. He’s eating chocolates from a white paper bag, which he passes around. There’s a stationary bicycle for exercise near his desk. Licenciado Angus Moakly seems sleepy: he speaks in a groggy way for a long time, until everyone feels drowsy from the heat in the office and the droning of his voice and no one understands a thing that is said until the Ship Visitor explains some of it and then they sign some papers.

It seems to come down to this: the lawyer is going to have “a lien” taken out on the ship, which means that if the phantom owner doesn’t pay them their wages and for their airfares home right away, the government is going to seize the ship and auction her off in court, and their wages will come out of that sale, and the lawyer is only going to take a little of the money.

On the subway back to the ship, Tomaso Tostado sits next to the Ship Visitor, who stifles a yawn, and then looks down at him and asks him his name for about the tenth time.

And Tomaso Tostado looks up at the Ship Visitor with what must seem like drenching adoration, he’s feeling so happy and grateful inside, and says, “Tomaso Tostado. A sus órdenes.”

The Ship Visitor says he guesses that’s the last they’ve seen of Esteban, no? And he lifts his hands off his lap to mime flying away, and says, “Se voló, no? He ran away to live with his novia!” And then he grins.

And Tomaso Tostado answers the Ship Visitor with just a slight, uncomprehending smile, gold tooth glowing over the gap of missing teeth, because of course he knows Esteban will be back, and he wonders why the Ship Visitor seems so cheerfully taken by this idea of Esteban running away to live with his novia … Then he thinks to himself, Pues sí, it is an incredible thing, a novia. And he remembers Ramona Goyco, who’s the closest he’s ever had to a novia, until Ramona’s husband threatened to shoot him on sight if he ever saw him again and he went away to sea, and it hits Tomaso Tostado that he has nothing to go home to and that if he does go home that crazy matón might still shoot
him on sight anyway, and now he doesn’t feel so elated … The train has stopped in the middle of a tunnel, but apparently that’s normal, nobody seems disconcerted. He takes a long look around at the other passengers. Few people are talking, most look lost deep inside themselves, patiently waiting for the train to move again. So many look tired; white, black, brown, yellow, those who obviously have money and those who obviously do not, they look tired. An old morena woman slouched in her seat, a shopping bag between her legs, deep, unhappy creases around her mouth. People sitting with their heads tilted back against their seats and the walls, some with their eyes closed. He looks across the train at Cabezón and Panzón: Cabezón’s big head tilted back too, he’s staring up at the ceiling, and Panzón sits with his ledger on his lap, drumming his fingers against it, furtively watching a group of dark-skinned muchachos and muchachas, quietly talking and laughing, standing down at one end of the train. He looks around and sees a few young men who could be catrachos or from any of our countries sitting, alone with themselves, looking tired but calm. If Panzón and Cabezón were not so disheveled and dirty, wouldn’t they’d fit right in among the passengers on this train? Tomaso Tostado looks at one of the other Latino-looking muchachos sitting and tries to imagine what and who he’s going home to. He tries to imagine himself sitting here a year from now, and wonders what and who he’ll be going home to, and from where. He imagines himself working in an office, wearing a tie, stamping sheets of paper with a rubber stamp, a pretty gringa in a dress walking by and saying … este… saying what? “It’s cold out, Tomaso, better dress warm.” But he’d already know that. He imagines himself going home… to a muchacha like that one sitting over there, leafing through
Vanidades
, wearing portable stereo headphones. She’s pretty enough, no? A serious, pleasant face and demeanor, her delicate hands turning the pages of her magazine. He can picture that, going home to her. But where would they be living? The train starts to move again. People shift out of their dreamy attitudes just so, some look around, waking up. He meets Panzón’s eye, and Panzón grins, showing all his yellowed, crooked teeth.

As soon as they’ve returned to the ship, the Ship Visitor tells the crew more about what to expect from the legal action, which is going to take a few more days, at least, to set in motion. He says, “I think you should have the clearest idea of what you’re in for, because you’ve certainly all been lied to enough.” It’s not that the lawyer lied, but he may have painted a slightly too rosy picture. He says the lawyer is a good person and charging the lowest possible rate, but that he does like to hear himself talk. The Ship Visitor says that, first of all, he doubts the phantom owner is suddenly going to come forward and pay. And he says that if the ship is seized by the courts and auctioned off, most likely it will be for scrap, which brings in much less money than the sale of a working ship. Unfortunately, the crew will have to stay on the ship until that happens, and the Ship Visitor says he’s sorry about that. Unfortunately, he says, when the ship is sold off, the harbor and court authorities will take what they’re owed first, and that then there might not be enough money left over to cover all the wages they’re owed, of which Panzón has kept an exact record, more than two thousand dollars each now. Still, he says, they should collect some portion of what they’re owed, though it might take a while. Unfortunately, because Capitán Elias never gave them shipping articles to sign, they have never been a legally employed crew anyway, which makes their case less solid. In the Ship Visitor’s opinion, Capitán Elias might not even be a true capitán.

The Ship Visitor really is muy buena onda, and so is la Reverenda, and so all this more or less unfortunate news is not their fault. And, claro, the news could be so much worse. So who can doubt the Ship Visitor’s integrity, after all he’s already done? But when the Ship Visitor is leaving the ship, Pínpoyo, stumbling forward with his blanket still wrapped around him despite the new clothes, blocks his way in front of the gangway. He’s raving about gringo hijos de puta stealing his pay and calling the Ship Visitor a liar and a bunch of other babosadas. Hands still inside the pockets of his pillowy parka, the Ship Visitor looks around at the crew with a baffled expression, while Pínpoyo goes on raving. But then El Barbie steps forward and firmly pulls Pínpoyo out of the Ship Visitor’s path and throws him down on the deck, and Pínpoyo lies there
as if he’s dead, though of course there’s nothing the matter with him except for paint solvent fumes. The Ship Visitor, with an embarrassed smile, mumbles gracias to El Barbie. And then Tomaso Tostado remembers and announces another round of applause for the Ship Visitor, and everyone but Pínpoyo applauds and whistles like they do now whenever the Ship Visitor is about to leave the ship. The Ship Visitor stands there blushing, with an almost apologetic smile, until they’re done, and then he thanks them, waves good-bye, and goes down the ladder to his van.

JOAQUINA REALLY DOES COLLECT COLANDERS, THOUGH SHE DOESN’T HAVE
that many, and most of them are made
of peltre
, enamelware, because these are the most inexpensive, and she likes the bright colors; her mamá has always cooked with peltre at home in Mexico. The colander that Gonzalo gave her for Christmas is made of stainless steel, so silvery and shiny it looks made from a perforated mirror. She doesn’t like anything made of plastic. She also collects steel balls full of pinprick holes that you fill with tea leaves and submerge in hot water. And spoons: big ones, with holes in them, and others that are like broad little shovels, also with holes in them, and that the Chinos, she says, use for lifting dumplings out of caldo; she has spoons that are not really spoons but coppery wire baskets at the ends of wooden handles. Joaquina can’t explain her preference for perforated cooking utensils. Even when Esteban asked, Why do you like things with holes so much? she blushed and grinned ear to ear, as if she herself had only now recognized this, and found it embarrassingly odd herself. And then Joaquina looked at him with an almost hopeful expression, as if she wanted
him
to explain it to her, since he’s supposedly the one with too much imagination.

At first Esteban thought that maybe it’s just that more work has gone into making a spoon with holes than one without, and so Joaquina thinks she’s getting more for her money. A plain metal bowl with holes looks more elaborate than one without. But once he discovered, as Esteban did on his shopping trips with Joaquina, the incredible variety of colanders and other perforated utensils for sale in this city, he began to understand how someone with a magpie’s eye like Joaquina’s might become fixated on this variety: the challenge of recognizing what makes one utensil more beautiful than the other, and the pleasure of orchestrating your own collection, one where all these utensils with holes in them, all different sizes and colors, become their own ordered little
world, one without any other justification. But if you have to explain it, he thought, you might as well say that since Joaquina says she wants to have a fabulous kitchen of her own someday, it seems methodical enough to begin by collecting colanders. Otherwise you’d go shopping and want to buy everything and it would be chaos.

Joaquina also collects teas to put in the little steel balls, and tin containers to keep them in. And she collects spices, which she buys in little plastic bags at Indian, Arabian, and Oriental tiendas in far-flung corners of this city, and containers to keep these in. And she also collects slim, cardboard boxes of flavored rice that she buys in these tiendas too. These boxes of rice come in bright colors and are covered with exotic scripts—just like those still barely legible on the collapsed Wienstock Spice terminal on the cove—and evocative decorations such as elephants and tropical flowers. Most of these things she buys because she can afford them. Because Joaquina’s English comes out sounding like halting, monosyllabic utterances in a rapidly fading radio transmission from Mars—provoking shopkeepers to patronizing grins that vanish from their faces as soon as her glaring eyes plunge them into the brimming caldrons in which she boils her frustration alive—she usually ends up having to point at whatever she wants to buy.