The Scared Stiff (13 page)

"Here you are."

A quick look, and she said, "Open it, okay?"

"Sure."

It was a clear glass quart bottle of a very cheap South American dark rum, about half full. I unscrewed the cap and handed it to her.

"Steer," she said, so I put my left hand on the wheel as she put her head back and went
glug-glug-glug.
"Aw, that's good," she said, and grinned at me. Wiping the bottle mouth with her palm, she said, "Have some."

I took the bottle and she took the wheel. My first reaction was, No, I don't want cheap rum, I don't want to share the bottle with you, I want to keep my wits about me. That was followed a nanosecond later by an opposite reaction, much stronger. "Thanks," I said, and tilted my own head back.

Very sweet. Molasses. A waterfall of sweetness, but attached to a dynamo. Powerful, like an engine of sweetness, like a love song from a heavy metal band.

"Wow," I said.

"Good stuff," she said.

"You want more?"

"Not yet," she said. "Keep it in your lap, and if I want it I'll reach for it."

"Right," I said.

You smell Napalma before you see it. It isn't a bad smell exactly; in fact, it's yet another kind of sweetness, like a little spray of sugar caught high in your nose; and it comes from the factory. The town is situated inside a deep curve in the Inarida, where a natural rock shelf makes for an unusually deep harbor, and the factory is built there, partly out over the water.

It's a fish processing plant, taking all kinds of fish from the river and turning them into great sacks of fertilizer. The sacks are loaded on barges that float down the Inarida to San Cristobal, and from there they're flown all over the world to feed gardens the people of Napalma could barely imagine. Luz worked at the factory, not on the factory floor but as a clerk in the billing department.

It's a twenty-four-hour factory, one of the few late-night operations in the entire country. We drove past it, the main town being just beyond, and the primary factory structure was three stories of rattletrap sheets of corrugated tin, many bare lightbulbs, a parking lot full of little beat-up cars, and a few people visible in shorts and T-shirts and yellow hard hats.

Just beyond the factory were four bars, mostly open-air beer gardens, all open and doing business. Then the lights faded, and we were actually in Napalma, another little river town with rickety wood houses on stilts. Some of the houses on stilts were built out over the river, and one of these was where Luz lived. There was a row of similar houses, the front third on land, the rest on pilings over the water. All the houses were dark. A streetlight gleamed far away and stars shone on the river, but still the neighborhood was very dark.

Luz stopped the car in front of her place. The interior light popped on again as she opened her door, and then I opened mine, and got myself and the rum bottle and my suitcase all out onto the weedy ground. I said, "Should I leave the bottle in the car?"

"How much is in it?"

We bent down at the opposite open doors, I held the bottle in the light in there, and we both looked at it. There was less than two inches of amber liquid left.

"Bring it in, we'll finish it," she said.

Was that a good idea? Probably not, but I was past worrying about good ideas. I shut my door, picked up my suitcase, and followed her into the house.

It was shoe-box shaped, with a front room that was part living room and part kitchen. Luz turned on a table lamp perched on the TV set, with a bright pink shade on it that made the room dim but rosy, as though it were a pleasant comfortable place just a little too near Hell.

A doorway with a scarlet curtain over it led farther back, to the part of the house over the river. Luz went through this curtain, me following, and turned on a lamp on her dresser, with a bright golden shade that made this room look as though it had been deep-fried.

This was Luz's bedroom, with her clothing and her shoes and her scent and her personality strewn all over it. It was dominated by a low double bed with extremely wrinkled orange sheets and distorted pillows. Many many photos from magazines were on the wall above the bed, ranging through all levels of piety and celebrity, from the Madonna to Madonna.

Luz grinned at me in a loosely ironic way, gestured at the bed, and said, "I know you don' wanna sleep there."

"Thank you," I said. Nothing else I could have said, it seemed to me, would have been safe.

At the back of this room were another pair of doorways covered by scarlet curtains. Luz went to the one on the left, saying, "I got no electricity back here, but there's a kerosene lamp."

"Okay."

She pushed aside the curtain and went in. I pushed aside the curtain and stood in the doorway, since there wasn't room for both of us in there. A window without glass let in the sight and sound of the river, plus its aroma, mixed with the odor of the factory. Luz bent and lit a wooden match and from that lit a small kerosene lantern with a clear glass chimney. It smoked at first, until she lowered the flame.

The room was very small. A futon on the floor was neatly covered with one sheet and one blanket. In the corner beside it stood a wooden crate, its open interior facing the futon. This would be my bedside table, with the kerosene lantern and a beer bottle containing a bright red hibiscus standing on top of it.

I said, "That flower's great. Thank you, Luz."

"Make it like home," she said. "Come on, I show you the rest."

I backed into the main bedroom and she followed and then turned to the other curtained doorway, saying, "This is — oh, I don't know." She shook her head.
"Lavatorio."

"Lavatory," I suggested.

"Where you piss and like that."

"Yes," I said. "I get it."

She pushed aside the curtain, and it was a closet. That's all. A closet. No light in there. But then, with whatever golden glow managed to creep in there from the bedroom, I saw the round hole in the floor. And the river was below.

All at once, I remembered my entire lifetime's experience of North American plumbing, North American bathrooms. All those great huge tubs, Jacuzzis, bidets, powerful flushing equipment, masterful drains, gleaming porcelain and tile, thick towels, mirrors rimmed with gleaming lightbulbs.

Okay. I'm going through these things now, and I can do it because I'm going to get back. I'm going to have that other life again, and this time I'm going to keep it. Because it's mine, I'm supposed to have it, and I want it. Six hundred thousand dollars. Just keep saying that, I told myself. Six hundred thousand dollars.

Luz looked at me, quizzical, wanting to be sure I grasped the concept. "Ho-kay?"

"Okay," I said. "I get the picture."

"You wanna go?"

"Not at the moment."

"Well, I do," she said. "You get us a couple glasses. In the shelf beside the refrigerator."

"Right," I said, and she let the curtain drop with herself inside. I turned away, and as I crossed the bedroom I heard the strong stream hit the river.

I had left the rum bottle on the square table at the kitchen side of the front room. Now I found two jelly glasses on the shelf, put them on the table, and was just carefully pouring an exact amount of rum into each glass when Luz came in, smiling broadly, saying, "Boy, I needed that. That's a long time. You sure you don' want to?"

"Later," I said. "Here's your rum."

She took the glass and clinked with mine. "To your long life," she said.

"Afterlife," I said. "And to yours."

We drank, and she said, "I gotta get up early, be in the office six-thirty, so I gotta set my radio alarm, but you don' need to get up. And, just in case, you know, you shouldn' go out and around."

"I won't."

"There's food here, what you need. And beer in the refrigerator. After work tomorrow, I gotta go to Rancio to lure you out, then I gotta find you not home, Esilda say you gone, I tell the cousins, I get back here maybe around seven."

"Okay."

"Could be we go out dancin' then," she said, and grinned at me. "I bet you like to dance."

Danger? What the hell, this situation was dangerous all the time. "I love to dance," I said.

"I knew you would," she said. "Lola wouldn' take up with nobody didn' like to dance."

"That's right."

"And other things," she said, and laughed, and then yawned, holding the back of her hand to her mouth.

I said, "Time for — uh, time for sleep."

"You bet."

She raised the glass to me again, and we both finished the rum. She switched off the light and crossed to open the curtain, and illumination from the bedroom made it possible for me to find my way.

She stood beside her bed, yawning. I said, "Good night, Luz. And thanks again."

"You gonna have a good time here," she told me.

"Not too good, I hope," I said, and she laughed and unzipped her cut-offs, and I went into my new room.

Luz got back from work later than she'd said the next

day, almost seven-thirty, and when she came in she seemed rattled and angry and a little scared. She also looked very different, because she wore her office clothes. It was interesting to see she could contain all that animal exuberance when she wanted to: not hide it, that wouldn't be possible, but not flaunt it either.

Her white blouse was cut full and buttoned to the neck, where a small gold crucifix hung from a wispy gold chain. Her skirt was black and not too tight, and ended just below the knee. Her shoes were black and low-heeled and maidenly.

She hurried in, dressed like that, with this upset and distracted look, carrying a brown paper bag, and thrust the bag at me. "Open that. I gotta change."

"Okay."

I was feeling a little dopey. I'd spent most of the day with her photo novels, a kind of comic book that uses posed photos of actors instead of drawings. Luz had a whole stack of them on the floor beside her bed. They were in Spanish, of course, but the stories were not hard to follow. They were mostly love stories of the most sentimental sort, like Esilda's soap operas, but they were also quite sexy, and several of the women looked a lot like Luz. The only difference was, these were actresses faking it. I couldn't imagine a situation in which Luz would fake it.

Now she marched away through the scarlet curtain into the bedroom, taking her upset and alarm with her, and I looked into the paper bag. It contained two bottles of rum. I opened one, put the other on the shelf, and was pouring when she came tripping back in.

Now,
this
was Luz. A tight red skirt the size of a sweatband, glaring orange blouse with nipples that pointed at me as though to say
I know you,
great golden hoop earrings with parrots in cages in the middle of the hoops, and thonged clogs that rattled. "Gimme that glass," she said, and emptied it in one.

I drank more moderately, then held the bottle up. "Yes?"

For answer, she held the glass toward me. I filled it, and this time she took only a healthy swig before she said, "I don't like it."

"What don't you like?"

"I tol' 'em, he isn't there, that Barry Lee he's gone, the maid told me he gone away, she don' know where he gone to; they get mad at
me."

"Who gets mad at you?"

"All them from Tapitepe. Manfredo and Luis and the other Luis with the bad arm and José and Pedro and
poco
Pedro."

"They got mad at you? They think you warned me?"

"No, no," she said. "Come on, we sit down."

The sofa was very old. It had sagged to about an inch from the ground and then been covered with serapes. Luz dropped into it as though going backward into a swimming pool, while I levered myself slowly downward, holding the sofa arm.

When I finally reached bottom, she said, "They think I'm stupid, I say something got you scared. Not today, they know you not there today, 'cause Carlos say that to Luis with the bad arm and
poco
Pedro when they talk to him to make sure he's at his shop, you know. What they figure, these guys, I'm the one, I'm the stupid, I said something
before
that got you scared. So now they gonna cut me and all this shit."

"They're gonna cut you?" This was terrible.

But she dismissed it with an angry wave of the hand. "No, they just talkin', 'cause they mad, 'cause you got away, now they gotta look for you."

"Where?"

"They gonna go talk to Artie." She gave me an angry smile. "Maybe he's gonna punch their heads in, whaddaya think?"

"I'd like that," I said.

"So would I," she said, and bounced all her parts around on the sofa, and said, "You hungry? You wanna go eat?"

"Luz, you know," I said, "I got almost no money. I've been living on Carlos."

"So now you're living on me," she said, and whomped herself on the chest. Her grin was now less angry, looser, more Luz. And rum. "You'll pay me back some other time," she said. "I got a good job."

"Okay," I said. "But I
will
pay you back."

"I know," she said. She finished her rum, put the glass on the floor, and said, "So now we go eat, then we go dancin', and…" She leaned forward, looking around at the floor, then over at me. "Help me outa this, Felicio," she said. Meaning the sofa.

That was the trickiest moment so far.

Dancing was never going to be a sensible idea, what with me having to hide out and Luz being Luz, but I'd agreed to it last night, full of tension and rum, so here we were.

The Napalma equivalent of Club Rick, at least on a Thursday night, was a mostly open-air bar along the river between Luz's house and the factory, whose name I never did find out. It was less than a ten-minute walk from the house. There was a thatch-roofed open-sided part, with the bar and a small dance floor and some tables, and a much larger open part, with Japanese lanterns strung on poles and trees, all these soft colors of light against the surrounding darkness, like a kind of pastel chiaroscuro. There were long plastic picnic tables out there near the riverbank, and a pounded-earth dance floor between the tables and the bar. The music was a live band full of guitars and trumpets and amplifiers, all wailing away.