Weep for Me (22 page)

“If it didn’t fit like a sack,” I said, “it would be more becoming.”

He gave me a pained look. “But you do not understand! I am perhaps old-fashioned. A lady should not flaunt her body before eyes that have no claim upon it. That is another flaw with your country and, I am afraid, one that is becoming more serious here in Mexico. Naked women adorn your advertisements. You have contests to select the finest body among a group of half-naked women parading about. I find it rather decadent.”

My breakfast was brought. They had finished. Flores patted his thin lips with a napkin and stood up, saying, “My dear, stay with Mr. Cameron and keep him company while he eats.” He gave me a benign look, with a touch of triumph behind it, and walked lightly away, whistling softly.

“Now he leaves us together. He must be pretty confident,” I said.

“He is.”

“But he’s wrong. You still want to get out of here.”

Her eyes had gone dead. “No.”

“Did he break you that easily? I though you had more guts, Emily.”

“I’m not broken, all the way. But I can’t risk a failure. I can’t fail and have him get those great white hands on me again. I can’t take that again. Ever.”

“Then he’s broken you.”

“Don’t say that. He hasn’t. He may think he has. But he hasn’t. I want a chance. Just one chance.”

“Shall I help you find one?”

“No.”

“What do you want me to do?”

“I don’t care what you do, or where you go.”

“That doesn’t make much sense.”

“It makes sense to me. You know what pain does? It turns you inside out. Everything in your brain jumps up and falls down and lands different than it was before. I don’t even know you any more. You are a stranger. All
those weeks we were taking money. That horrible trip. They don’t exist any more. They happened to somebody else.”

“I’ve felt that way.”

“He’s … a strange man, Kyle. If Harry had been more like him …”

“He would have been able to keep you in line?”

“Easily.”

She got up and walked away without another word. I finished eating and found my way back to my room. It had been cleaned. The tile floor was still damp, the bed made. The girl with the dark red braids was still there. She pointed to a box on the bed. “Señor Flores, he sent. For the swim. Fitting you, he hopes.”

I broke the seals on the box. It bore a French label. A man’s bathing trunks and beach coat. “Liking?” she said eagerly.

“Very nice. Thank Señor Flores.”

“Swimming now?”

“I’ll put it on and get some sun, then maybe I’ll swim.”

“Shoes,” she said, smiling shyly and pointing down at my feet.

“Yes, that’s right. They’re shoes.”

She frowned. “Not meaning what is word.” She pointed toward the bed. “Please, sitting, señor.”

I was puzzled. So I sat. She dropped onto her knees, sat back on her heels, took one of my feet into her lap, untied the knot, and pulled the shoe off. She set it aside. I wouldn’t let her do it with the other shoe.

“Wait a minute!” I said.

She looked frightened. “Is wrong?” She touched herself between heavy breasts with a forefinger. “I am named Adela. Your maid. Serving you. Doing all things. Giving love if you say.”

“Señor Flores, he sent?” I asked bitterly.

“But yes.”

“Stand up. Stop kneeling there.”

She stood up quickly. “The señor, he is angry.”

“Tell Señor Flores no, thanks.”

She looked troubled. She stared at me with compressed
lips. Then she turned slowly, all the way around, like a mannequin. “Not pretty?”

“Very pretty.”

“And strong. And clean. That is certain. Is the English bad?”

“It is good.”

“I cannot say a thing. I have not words. But it is like this. That cloth for swimming. You like. You take. Adela you like. But not take. It is not clear.”

“A woman isn’t a thing you can give somebody.”

“Ah! But the Señor Flores can. Here he is king.” She smiled as though she had solved the problem.

“Adela, in my country, a woman cannot be given to someone. A woman can give herself. She owns herself.”

“But the Señor Flores owns me! He bought me in Sola de Vega. My village. It is near Oaxaca. So he can give.”

“No human owns another human.”

“Then why he paid? For what?”

I stared at her in complete frustration. Suddenly she smiled. “Ah, so! I say you, I give myself. Is better? I am just servant anyway.”

I threw up my hands. “All right. All right. You are my servant. But that’s all.”

She pointed toward a corner. “Sleeping there on serape. Is good?”

“No.”

“Others laughing. Please.”

“All right.”

She beamed at me, dropped to her knees again, and said meekly, “Other shoe.”

For the rest of the long day, I was smothered by service. She ran out onto the hot sand with an ice-cold bottle of Carta Blanca just when my thirst had become almost unbearable. In the afternoon she did mending, took away the clothes I had worn in the morning. It was with the utmost difficulty that I dissuaded her from coming in to scrub my back when I took my shower.

When at last I turned the bed lamp off, I was highly conscious of her, curled in the far corner, like a warm, brown, affectionate animal.

“Sleeping?” she asked, her voice rising above the sound of the surf.

“Yes,” I said, too loudly.

“It is good,” she said, as though awarding a compliment.

As I did not wish to see Emily again, I sent Adela to ask Flores if my meals could be served in my room. It was all right with him. Adela brought in a small table and hovered over me as I ate, moving things a fraction of an inch closer.

At times I would turn quickly and catch her looking at me with a troubled, uncertain expression. Finally she found the courage to speak.

“The señor was loving the dark-haired one? The norteamericana?”

“Yes.”

“And the Señor Flores, he took?”

“Yes.”

“It is a shame for the señor. Adela is sorry. But please, do not fight him. He will kill.”

“I have no courage,” I said. “I have none left.” She smiled, touched my shoulder timidly, reassuringly, and then gathered up the empty dishes.

O
n the morning of the third day, after Adela had left the room to get my breakfast, she came running back. “The Señor Flores, he says come.”

I followed her. Where the morning sun slanted into the corridors it lit her hair to a red like waxed cedar. She walked with a healthy young animal’s unconscious grace.

She took me to a strange corridor, flattened herself against the wall, and motioned me to go on. I went down three steps into a big living room. One whole wall was a series of big glass panels overlooking the sea. I had noticed that glass wall from the beach.

Flores stood with his back to the room, looking out over the sea. He turned and gave me his grave smile. “Ah, good morning, Cameron. Come and have a look at your transportation.”

I walked over to him and he handed me a pair of heavy Zeiss binoculars and pointed out the direction. I adjusted them to my eyes and swept the area of sea he had indicated. For a time I saw nothing, and then I saw the sun glint on something. I steadied the glasses and waited until once again the boat was lifted on a wave crest. It seemed to be a fair-sized motor launch.

“Small, isn’t it?”

A new voice spoke behind us. “She’ll take a heavy sea, son.”

I turned sharply. I had not noticed the man before because he sat in a deep wing chair. He had small, bright blue eyes set close to the bridge of an enormous nose. His hair was a kinky mop of steel wool, and his mouth was Negroid.

“Meet Captain Schumann, Mr. Cameron,” Flores said. “Captain Schumann arrived during the night by dinghy, with his mate. He’s leaving the Flora anchored well out, and we’ve put the dinghy out of sight. Tonight when the men left aboard bring the Flora in closer, Captain
Schumann will take you aboard. See how I keep my end of a bargain?”

I felt an instinctive dislike for Schumann. He kept his bright blue eyes on me every moment.

“What time?” I asked.

“Midnight,” Schumann said in his curious nasal voice. He wore the white cotton trousers of Mexican laborers, the trousers that look like pajamas. A white peaked cap lay on the floor beside his bare brown feet. He was naked from the waist up and the small patch of hair on his chest was also the shade of steel wool.

“Is it a long trip?” I asked.

“It’ll be over before you know it,” Schumann said blandly.

“Forgive us, Mr. Cameron,” Flores said. “We have other matters to discuss,” I left like a quiet, obedient child. As I reached the steps Flores said, “And by the way, Mr. Cameron.”

“Yes?”

“I thought our Adela might make your visit here more pleasant. Is it quite fair of you to propagandize her? She has been talking to the kitchen staff, and I have found myself with a disciplinary problem.”

“That’s a shame,” I said.

“You make it remarkably easy for me to dislike you, Cameron.”

I left without answering him. I went back to my room. Adela was sitting on her heels in her corner. She stood up eagerly. “Now you eat?”

“Please.”

She scurried off and came back with my breakfast. Papaya, and eggs, Mexican style, and bitter black coffee, and tiny sausages. As she served it, I saw the purpled bruise on the underside of her arm, just below the short sleeve of
the
pale blue uniform.

“What’s that?”

She looked at her arm, gave me a brilliant smile. “Nothing, señor. I am talking to the cooks about this thing of one person not owning another person. They are laughing. But the Señor Flores does not like such
talk. This is a mark of his hand only, while he is talking to me. Very angry.”

“But you don’t mind?”

“What?”

“You don’t care? You’re not angry?”

“Was it a whip? Was it a club? A hand, only.”

I ate silently for a time, puzzling over her attitude. When she moved the sugar closer, I said, “So now you think I’m wrong?”

“Oh, no, señor.”

“Then what?”

“I am a stupid girl. I have no school. If I say to myself, Adela, you are a thing owned by the Señor Flores, then it is easy for him. I see that. I think about what you say. No, I am not a thing. But I let him think I am as before. And that is easy for me. Because one day I can leave this place.”

“Where do you want to go?”

She looked sad. “I cannot go to Sola de Vega. Finding me quick. To another village, perhaps. There is more laughing in the villages. You would know that if you could come to
mi tierra
.”

I finished breakfast. While she was gone with the dishes, I put on the trunks and went out across the beach to the water. I could not see the Flora. After I swam in the tepid water, I lay on the packed, damp sand where the tide had receded and let the sun stun me. Later it would be too hot to be in the sun. Some tone was coming back to my muscles. And something had dulled regret. As though, back in Mexico City, when I had looked into that mirror, some part of me had died.

Now Emily and I would be separated forever. She had entered her private hell. She had spent her life schooling herself for that hell. When I rolled onto my back the sun came crimson through my closed eyes. Surf drummed heavily, near at hand. I thought about Schumann. Flores’ scruples might be highly developed. But Schumann looked as though he could be purchased for one hundredth the amount of money I would be taking out to the dinghy. Midnight. Maybe, by one o’clock, sea
creatures would be tearing at my body. I tried to feel fear. I reached down into myself, seeking apprehension. There, in the sun’s blazing heat, it didn’t seem to matter.

I tried to solve the riddle of Flores. Certainly he could sense Schumann’s unreliability. Possibly, with Flores, it was an odd trick of conscience. He would fulfill his portion of the obligation scrupulously, and from then on, it was up to the gods.

On the other hand, possibly Flores had some hold over Schumann that guaranteed that Schumann would take me to the promised destination.

I had a lazy daydream. Very vivid. With a gun in my hand and Emily slung over my shoulder, I was shooting my way across the beach to the dinghy. Somehow, in the dream, Emily turned into Jo Anne. I turned into Errol Flynn. With a hardy, enigmatic smile on my manly lips and a fierce gleam in my eye, I saved the day, saved the lady, rode off into an honorable sunset. Virtue triumphed. Honesty was the best policy. I didn’t really rob a bank. I was an undercover man, assigned to Emily, hoping she would lead me to the crooks who had pulled the Brinks job in Boston.

Now I could go back and ride in the back of the open car, sitting on the top of the back seat, waving to all the people who lined the sidewalks. Paper streamers floating down out of the bank windows. Brass band strutting and thumping away behind me. Sure, that’s good old Kyle Cameron. Hell, he sat next to me in junior high. Always said he was going to amount to something.

And the daydream changed. Another crook was avenging those I had brought to justice. With a telescopic sight on his rifle, he shot me off the back seat of the open car. I was laid out in state in the middle of the bank floor. Mounds of white flowers. Slender tapers. Grinter snuffling and knuckling his swollen eyes. Jo Anne, white-faced, kneeling, weeping.

Adela touched my shoulder gently and broke the dream. “You are burning, señor.” I opened my eyes. She knelt beside me. My chest was turning an angry pink. I got up and went back to the room. It was very dim
after the blazing beach. The sun had made me feel weak and dizzy, as though I had come back from far places. I sat numbly on the edge of the bed. She went away, came back with a bottle of oil.

She pushed me back gently. I lay on my back, my eyes half closed. With lips pursed in concentration, she poured oil into the palm of her hand, spread it gently over the red burn on my chest, on the tops of my thighs. She had wound the heavy red braids around her head, pinned them in place in coronet fashion.

She padded gently over to the windows, closed the blinds against the harsh light, came back to me, and began to rub the oil into my skin.