Home Run

by Paul Kropp

  “It’s her!” he shouted.

  “Who?” Scrooge asked.

  Kirk could barely spit out the words. “The girl from yesterday. The tall one. The perfect one.” He gulped and took a breath. “She’s in that bar. She’s there!”

  “Gentlemen, I thought this was going to be a cultural tour,” Scrooge sighed. “But if you can’t control yourselves, then Aiden and I will just have to go on by ourselves.”

  “Go,” Kirk told them. “Go on. We’ll catch up.”

  “Or not,” I said to Scrooge, punctuating my words with a wink.

  20

  So Much for Culture

  PEPE AND ROSA’S WAS identical to a dozen other bars that lined the eastern side of the Malecon. It was open to the Pacific on one side, with a view that took in the horizon and the ships bobbing in Banderas Bay. With its corner location, the north side of the building was also open to a side street so the patrons could watch strollers on the Malecon. At the back was the actual bar, constructed from a long piece of some kind of Mexican wood. The south side was closed by a wall in front of which the band performed—when there was a band—or a guitar duo when there wasn’t. There was a small dance floor in front of the stage area, but it was unused when we arrived because the guitar duo’s music didn’t really inspire dancing. Compared to the blaring music coming from other places on the Malecon, Pepe and Rosa’s was relatively subdued.

  But that’s where they were: the tall girl and her short friend from our afternoon scouting at El Paradiso.

  “Isn’t she fabulous?” Kirk asked.

  Indeed, the tall blonde was quite fabulous if you like that tall, flawless-face, perfect-hair, I’m-so-beautiful-everywhere-I-could-model-for-Glamour look. Actually, I’m quite okay with that look, but I know full well that such goddesses are not interested in me.

  “Yeah, sure.”

  “And her friend isn’t bad.”

  The shorter girl was a bit more my level. She had smallish eyes, a nose somewhat too large, streaked hair that was probably brunette, and a probably attractive body. I say “probably attractive” because it was difficult to tell. The fashion industry has come up with revealing garments that show large amounts of flesh, but also manage to push up, push out, pull in, and otherwise redistribute that flesh.

  “Not bad,” I agreed.

  “So how do we do this, Al? I mean, I think I’m interested, but I’ve never really talked to her so, well, maybe I’m just getting carried away.”

  “It’s Spring Break, Kirk. The lust is contagious.”

  He shot me a nasty look, which I probably deserved. I really had no way of knowing if Kirk was feeling lust, or simply admiring the girl’s physical beauty. Maybe it wasn’t fair to attribute my own base motives to my roommate.

  “So, look,” I said, “I’ll be your wingman.”

  “What’s that?”

  “It’s the guy who goes after the other girl so his buddy can get the hottie,” I explained. “Well, I suppose.”

  “Fine,” I told him. “So I’m your wingman, but after this you owe me one.”

  I took the lead, since that’s the wingman’s role, and walked right up to the table with the girls. I tried to look confident, which was actually much easier to do because I had so little investment in the outcome. I really was doing a favor for my roommate.

  “Ah, we meet again,” I said. I grabbed a seat so I could sit right beside the tall blonde. This position gave me eye contact with my target girl.

  “Ah, the freshmen return,” said the tall girl. “They never have heard a discouraging word.”

  “And the tequila keeps flowing all day,” I said, to complete the song lyric. “Lovely to see you again,” I said.

  “Hi, guys,” chirped the shorter girl. She was smiling broadly, probably quite thrilled when Kirk sat down beside her.

  “Hello again,” I said. “I’m Alan and this is my friend Kirk. You can call me Al, and Kirk, well, I guess you can call him, uh…” So much for my brilliant lines.

  “Kirk,” he jumped in. “Kirk Chamberlain.” Then he actually reached out to shake hands. Kirk is so uncool, but somehow he makes it work.

  “I’m Lacey,” replied the short girl, “and this is Nicole. She’s like my oldest friend.” Again the big smile. I was starting to like little Lacey on the basis of her smile alone.

  Nicole, however, remained an ice goddess. “So, Alan,” she said, ignoring my invitation to use Al, “what inspires you to barge into our little table?”

  I was ready for that one. “Curiosity, romance, and a personal fascination with girls who have butterfly tattoos on their shoulders.” This was a direct reference to Lacey, who giggled at being given the attention.

  This was the moment when Kirk should have said something, should have commented on Nicole’s wit or her eyes or her hair, but he seemed to be choking on any kind of speech.

  “Not just scoping the girls in the bar?” asked Nicole.

  “You have wonderful recall,” I replied. “But that was just a little afternoon silliness, and this…this is tonight. The sun is down, the Mayan gods of chance are at work, and they’ve brought us to your table at Pepe and Rosa’s. Surely that’s more than coincidence.”

  “My friend can get carried away,” Kirk said, his eyes fixed on Nicole.

  “Carried away!” I went on, obviously carried away by the sound of my own voice. “Kirk, look at that purple sky over the wonderful Pacific, listen to the waves crashing on the beach, smell the beautiful night air—this is like Matthew Arnold only better and warmer and more romantic!” Not bad, really. I’d managed to cover the landscape, make a literary reference, and throw in some romance. Pretty smooth.

  “Are you an English major?” asked Lacey. Her pronunciation of “English” came out a little slurred, perhaps by too much tequila: Englisshhh.

  “English poetry and women’s studies,” I replied. “So what do you study? I can tell you’re from the East, but where? Are you Ivy, Seven Sisters, Big Ten, Canadian, American? Exchange students? Tell us everything.”

  “Seven Sisters,” said Nicole. “But it should be sisters with brothers, now that they’ve let the boys in.”

  “Vassar, Wellesley, Sarah Lawrence?”

  “If you must know, it’s Sarah Lawrence,” said Nicole.

  I blinked. I was about to ask if she had met Maggie, but Lacey jumped in before I could get the words out.

  “I’m SUNY at Potsdam,” she said. “Nobody’s ever heard of that.”

  “We’re Burrard U,” Kirk added. “Equally obscure.”

  Kirk’s line gave me a moment to think. I remembered one of Maggie’s first emails to me from Sarah Lawrence, and decided to fling it at the ice queen.

  “So, Nicole, are you in the production of Lysistrata or the Simone de Beauvoir discussion group, or are you above all that?”

  The expression on Nicole’s face was one of astonishment. Perhaps I had been a little too nasty.

  Fortunately, a mariachi band chose that moment to start a version of La Paloma. Their blaring noise was enough to eliminate any conversation, so we just sat back in our chairs for the entertainment. The mariachi band had impressive costumes with silver studs and elaborate embroidery, like some Hollywood concept of a Mexican cowboy, but their music was pretty iffy. Still what they lacked in ensemble and pitch they made up for in volume. They moved from La Paloma to La Malaguena and seemed to play without a break until Kirk waved them over to our table.

  “Do you know Amor Prohibido?” he asked the leader.

  “Si, señor,” came the reply.

  Suddenly we were surrounded by the band. If their singing and playing had not been of the highest order on stage, it was even worse when we were in the middle of it. Still, there was a charm to the music that started to work after a while.

  Both Nicole and Lacey seemed impressed, if not by the music, by the easy way Kirk had brought over the band to play for us. In fact, I was impressed too. Where did he learn to do that?

&nbs
p; When the playing had finished, Kirk stuffed a tip into the leader’s hand and the group moved off to another table. We ordered another round of drinks and the ice, as the phrase goes, had been broken.

  There was a quick adjustment of chairs so I ended up in conversation with Lacey, and Kirk ended up with Nicole. As wingman, I had succeeded in my mission—hooking up my friend with his target girl. Unfortunately, this left me chatting with a half-drunk girl from upstate New York.

  I learned that Lacey was a history major, wanted to teach high school to disadvantaged kids, had two brothers and one sister, drove a Volkswagen Beetle, liked the Killers and Avril Lavigne but had never heard of the Thinkertoys.

  This last bit of information removed her from serious consideration, as far as I was concerned, but then the mariachi band started up again on stage and drowned out any conversation. So we talked in fits and starts all evening, the girls and I punctuating each fit and start with another drink—beer, rum, tequila, margaritas—they kept on coming. Kirk, of course, drank Pepsi.

  All that time, Nicole had my roommate fixed in those big blue eyes of hers. I believe she was actually batting her eyelashes, something I’d only seen in movies, and she kept finding ways to touch Kirk on the arm or the chest. By two in the morning, while Lacey and I still sat a dignified distance apart, Nicole had virtually glued herself to my roommate. Then again, Kirk had done nothing to resist. Who knew what might have happened if Lacey hadn’t broken the mood.

  “Nikki,” groaned Lacey. “I’m feeling just a little funny.”

  “You shouldn’t have had that last shooter,” Nicole told her.

  “Yeah, but…well, Al was buying so how could I say no?”

  “I agree, saying no is not one of your strengths,” Nicole replied. “But now you’re looking kind of green in the face.”

  Lacey giggled. “Me? Green? Can’t be green. Martians are green, not me. Green, no way! No green! I’m fine.”

  One thing I’ve learned about drinking is that anyone who says “I’m fine” has had at least one drink too many. In Lacey’s case, it was probably a half dozen drinks too many. When she got up to demonstrate her sobriety, she virtually fell over the Mexican man at a table behind us.

  “I’m sorry, Kirk,” Nicole said. “I guess we have to go.” Nicole sighed and grabbed Lacey to keep her from falling over.

  “We’ll take you back,” Kirk volunteered. “I’ll flag a taxi and we’ll get Lacey to the hotel.”

  “I’m fine,” Lacey kept repeating.

  Nicole looked at Kirk; he looked back. It was one of those frozen moments, when the cinematographer calls for a full-frame closeup.

  “That would be wonderful,” Nicole whispered.

  So the four of us climbed into another Volkswagen cab without a front seat, and once again I found myself sitting on the front floor pan. Kirk was between Nicole and Lacey, his arm around Nicole’s shoulders. Lacey was behind the driver so Nicole was directly in front of me. This left me staring, despite my best efforts otherwise, directly at Nicole’s legs. Given the scenery, it might have been a very pleasant ride. But Lacey had a problem.

  “I don’t feel so good,” Lacey announced.

  The erratic steering of our driver had not been the best thing for her green condition. She was looking, if it were possible, greener.

  A few seconds later, Lacey repeated herself with a little more emphasis. “Like, I really don’t feel good.”

  “We’re almost back to El Paradiso,” Kirk said, reassuring her.

  “I don’t think…” Lacey went on, but did not conclude her sentence with words. Instead she leaned forward and began to vomit. Massively. Explosively. The spew hit the back of the driver’s seat, then puddled down into the floor pan beside me.

  “Oh dear,” Nicole said.

  Kirk put his arm around Lacey’s shoulder to comfort her, but Lacey did not need comfort. She needed an oversized vomit bag. Her stomach was still churning with tequila, margaritas, and various unnamed shooters that were mercilessly bubbling inside her.

  “Are you done yet?” Nicole asked.

  “No, there’s more,” Lacey cried.

  This time Lacey managed to get the door open so she could vomit outside the car. I was grateful for such small mercies. The floor next to me was vile enough already.

  At last our taxi driver pulled off the road. He looked back at us and muttered a few phrases in Spanish that were lost on me. Only the last words had meaning.

  “One hundred dollars. One hundred dollars to clean.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding,” Kirk said.

  “One hundred dollars, not pesos. One hundred dollars. Cash. Pay or police.”

  “That’s highway robbery,” Kirk declared.

  “It was your driving that made my friend sick,” Nicole added. “We won’t pay a penny more than the fare.”

  “Then ees police!” shouted the driver. And once again we were careening down the twisting roads of Puerto Vallarta.

  21

  Lineup

  SO IT TRANSPIRED that four ordinary North American students ended up at a Mexican police station in the middle of an otherwise gorgeous moonlit night.

  There was much shouting and gesticulating from our cab driver, with pointing at the relevant evidence, and considerable head shaking from the machine-gun-toting police officers. I’m not sure whether it was the confusing Spanish, or the prospect of dealing with the Mexican justice system, or our general embarrassment at the situation, or the fact that Lacey was still sick and threatening to do further damage at the police station…but we settled. Fifty dollars cash, plus the fare: total of $66.75 or the peso equivalent, which seemed astronomical.

  This hit to our wallets and our pride put a damper on the romantic spirit of the evening, perhaps even more than Lacey’s explosive illness. We returned to our own hotels in a different taxi (another fifteen bucks), and with a plastic bag in case Lacey should feel the urge for further cab decoration.

  Scrooge and Fuji were already asleep. In seconds, so were Kirk and I. For me the evening continued through the night with dreams inspired by tequila, the Malecon, the girls, the taxi ride, and the police station. I awoke at one point in a terrible sweat, convinced that my body was covered in tequila and that I was about to be shot by a Mexican police officer who looked, in my dream, very much like Pancho Villa. In another, more pleasant dream, I was falling into the space between Lacey’s breasts, fighting for breath as I dived headfirst towards her tequila-laced navel. I mention these dreams because the second one, at least, turned out to be prophetic.

  At the noon buffet, we exchanged accounts of the night before. We told the others about our evening at Pepe and Rosa’s and the detour to the police station. Biff and Matt talked about their exploits at the Hotel El Paradiso. Goofball tried to remember how he ended up climbing three sets of balconies on the outside of our hotel. Fuji remained strangely silent, until we declared him “inscrutable” and forced him to tell us about an Asian girl he’d met. Scrooge and Aiden had found their own mariachi bar, said to be the best in Puerto Vallarta, and then gone on to further drinking at a place called Señor Giraldo’s. This establishment, by their report, offered more drinking contests and general debauchery than any of us had encountered so far. Naturally the others were eager to join in.

  “Later, gentlemen,” Scrooge concluded. “We have a heavy afternoon ahead of us with eating, drinking, suntanning, and siesta-ing. Alan, is siesta-ing a verb?”

  “Close enough,” I told him.

  “Then let’s get to it!”

  Most of us were exhausted that afternoon, so spent it alternately sleeping and jumping in the water at our hotel pool. These activities were accompanied by considerable slathering of suntan lotion, which, when your own supply has been used up, turned out to be very, very expensive at the hotel gift shop. The ordinary rhythms of life did not seem to apply to Spring Break, or perhaps they were turned upside down. We stayed up all night, slept through the mornings, dozed through
the afternoons, and didn’t become fully conscious until eight o’clock in the evening.

  For most of us. Only Kirk managed to keep some semblance of normal life. He still jogged two miles down the beach and worked out in the hotel before I woke up. That afternoon by the pool, while I was mostly comatose, Kirk actually did laps! No wonder the guy hadn’t an ounce of flab on his body. No wonder he had to fight off the girls with water wings and swim floats.

  Kirk, of course, was appalled at the idea of Señor Giraldo’s and told us, simply, that he had another plan. Naturally that plan involved me.

  “I need you as wingman again,” he told me mid-afternoon. I groaned.

  “Come on, Al. Lacey is a very nice girl and last night she was hanging on your every word.”

  “Last night she was almost dead drunk and simply trying to focus on my face,” I replied. “Besides, she’s not very bright. I never realized it before, but I really prefer girls who can think.”

  “Okay, she’s not like this Maggie you keep talking about, but Maggie’s not here and Lacey is. Besides, Nicole tells me that her friend is…what’s the nice way to phrase this?”

  “Easy?” I suggested.

  “Well, perhaps a girl who might not resist you as much as the other women in your life.”

  What a great euphemism! Sometimes Kirk’s verbal skills are truly dazzling.

  “And, Al, the bottom line is that Nicole won’t go out for dinner with me unless we go as a foursome. Lacey is her best friend and she promised to look after her. She can’t just dump her to go out with me…and this is their last night here in PV. Al, it’s my last chance.”

  “Last chance at what?”

  “Significant conversation,” Kirk replied. “You might not realize this, but Nicole was quite active in her church and she’s thinking of a minor in religious studies.”

  “Ah, ri-ight,” I said, trying not to seem too skeptical.

  “Please, Al, I’ll owe you.”

  “Big time,” I concluded. “You’ll owe me big time.”

  So that evening, while Scrooge led the rest of our group off to Señor Giraldo’s for an evening of drinking and wet t-shirt contests, Kirk and I headed off for dinner with a somewhat defrosted ice goddess and her friend, Miss Projectile Vomit. The sacrifices we make for friendship!