Toucan Whisper, Toucan Sing

by Wintner, Robert;

  Baldo wants the lights out and silence so a bird can get some rest, because a bird as glorious as Toucan needs neither disco dancing nor sour drinks with cheap whiskey. This is not the life that was promised when Baldo was told that sooner or later a man and a bird must work. This is not the life for a man or a bird.

  But Jaime Ruíz came with an offer.

  Jaime’s friends once knew him as Jaime the Weasel but only because of his long, skinny nose and long, sparse mustache and not because of any bad characteristics. Now he actually calls himself Jimi Changa and is fairly famous in the region. The Weasel promised that such a bird and such a place were a natural match. Moreover, Jaime poured two hundred pesos into the can and promised more if Toucan survived the year, thus proving the progressive nature of beneficence.

  Baldo dreams of revelers and wild diners and wonders in his dream: why is Toucan caged, when I already smashed it for him?

  II

  Let Him Sleep

  Baldo rolls over without falling out because he’s rolled over in his hammock since time began. Now that he’s bigger the mesh presses more, leaving its woven pattern along his flank, his arm and leg. He sleeps like the dead, not a care in the world, heavy as bricks with no concern for the mortar. Let him sleep. The rest of the staff won’t care if Baldo is late. For all we know they won’t care if Baldo doesn’t show up at all. Of course they would make timid reference to the missing drinkboy. He makes them nervous, and they would rather have drinks served in glasses with napkins on trays, as drinks should be served. Perhaps he is colorful; but would the tips not accrue to them if he didn’t show?

  That’s okay. Antonio cares about Baldo’s punctuality and performance, because he’s bringing Baldo along on the way up. He first introduced Baldo as his assistant, his compadre, and his vaquero, necessary to herd the tourists into line. The managers relent, knowing the value of Baldo and that of his brother, Antonio, the rippling one, the golden boy, as it were. Antonio brings the guests back in droves for his brand of laughter and carrying on, so Baldo is okay until the cows come home. Just never you mind whom Baldo makes nervous.

  At the little table under the family shrine at Casa Garza Antonio empties his pockets of two hundred per day to Baldo’s twenty or sometimes twenty-five, and this too is okay for brothers taking care of each other as best they can. They care for Lyria too, as their girl and their woman, whom they love like a sister and whom Antonio will soon take as a wife.

  This sibling love going to romance is not what you could call incestuous, because Antonio is waiting as men have waited through the ages, if a prize is worth waiting for and embodies the ultimate purity of womanhood. A weak man doesn’t wait; he takes, insisting that his beloved stoop to the ficky fick before wedlock.

  What pure woman ever wanted that kind of thing without the commitment? What can the act of love become if it’s rushed to occur outside the eyes of God?

  Of course Antonio is not her brother by blood, and her father died long before Gustavo, so the brother-lover concept merely describes a love that will roll over in time to reveal its brightest side. She merely needs time to allow the roll to occur naturally, to wed as a fully developed woman.

  Then comes the ficky fick.

  Antonio spreads his T-shirt across the table and irons it with his hands, careful not to crease his panther. He can wear it two more days without washing if he wants to, because today is Saturday. Tomorrow turns over with mostly new tourists who won’t play along anyway their first day, and even so, his shirt comes off in the first five minutes to get things warmed up, to get the women going, which invariably brings the men along. Well, sometimes it brings them along, unless they’re self-conscious of their own poverty of ripples. Or maybe it’s their wealth of dimpled rolls that makes them scowl at him. He pulls the T-shirt on and decides to wear it to the last minute before buying another one, which may be today and may not be today.

  Besides, if Mrs. Mayfair stays another week, as she threatens, she might buy him a new T in spite of his resistance. These and other potentials accompany thoughts for the afternoon and evening shifts, beginning with pool aerobics, pool volleyball, and then bingo again. Bingo tensions will be relieved with a round of float walking, in which a string of small floats is stretched over the pool, and we see who can walk to the end without falling off. Some of us already know whom, and it’s not because he’s had so much practice. Antonio Garza is an extreme physical specimen with extraordinary skills in many, many areas.

  Okay, we’ll wrap up the daylight hours with beach volleyball. That should sustain the lively spirit of float walking and will include everyone, even those with much less skill, for they are only here to have fun. Twilight will begin with good cheer all around, with good mingling and recalling the highlights and hijinks of both the winners and losers, blending to general schmooz and quick inventory of the blessings we share.

  Beach bar revenues are rarely discussed between Antonio and the managers, because he works the guests into a thirst, then massages them toward the perfect quench. Oh, let a day pass with no drinks; then they’d let him know the score. He knows instinctively that a good lead from the beach to the bar means forty patrons ordering forty drinks. At twenty pesos each, it’s a pretty peso from one sundown to the next. Nobody says boo, but such economic stimulation does not go unnoticed. A career path in most cases depends on cohesion such as this exercise in clockwork timing and maximum resource utilization. Antonio has the knack. The afternoon shift waits for the rising curtain no less than a play on a stage. Overture, dim the lights. This is it, the night of nights. Maybe it’s only Bugs Bunny who sings that one, but it fits so well.

  Prepping for the show, Antonio poses and flexes, checks his teeth and his nose for strays and goes in close for quick scrutiny of his face. With a little pluck here, a little pinch there, a scrape and a squeeze, but not so hard as to make a red spot, soon all is well. He stands back for the big picture.

  Ay, perfecto.

  For the afternoon shift he rolls his T-shirt sleeves to the notch between his biceps and deltoids. He rolls a cigarette pack in one side as seen on TV. He poses again in the mirror and takes the pack out. He doesn’t smoke, for one thing. He only brought this empty pack home to see if he should. It crushes too easily for another thing, so maybe the new crush-proof box would be better.

  But it seems foolish to interrupt the beautiful curvature from bulging biceps to definition deltoids with a lumpy box.

  These things are simply known by what the mirror says, though an outside admirer might think him immutably perfect.

  Antonio practices a few moods in the mirror, moving between a great big smile and a grin. Between the two is a vast difference. One is warm and fuzzy and the other is greedy and perverse.

  He practices stern authority, anger, and, of course, amusement. He feels the cliff edge of his high, angular cheekbones. He puckers up, not with vanity but to better apply the sunscreen to his lush Latin lips. He wonders with amusement how much his lips weigh, and how much insurance they warrant from Lloyds of London at a hundred fifty pesos per tender kiss with so many years ahead. He sweeps his frizzled hair back. It springs forward again, so he bulges his eyes and gapes his mouth to match the voltage in his hair. He smears a double dab of hold ’em into his stubborn frizz, gives it a half-minute to set up and brushes it back to its proper wave. Each wavelet crests with a shimmer of light as he slowly turns to profile to see how big his beak really looks.

  It’s big, but who cares? It balances his face. That’s character. Of this, we can be assured, because it is often said in a whine and a whimper. Oh, Antonio, you are the most handsome man in the world. Oh, oh, oh.

  Antonio smiles at the man in the mirror, seeing what they see. He thinks he is surely not the most handsome man in the world. But who can know for sure?

  He relaxes, daubing scent on either side of his neck and under each arm, and along his inner thighs in case Mrs. Mayfair wants to see him after cocktails, before dinner. He feels that sh
e will stay another week, which should be good for another six hundred pesos plus gifts. If she weren’t planning on staying, then why would she go these last two days with no needs?

  No, she would not. She is most demanding on her last two days. She calls it her storing-up time. But when does she expect her stud stallion to store anything up? This would be good to know. Never mind, a rich gringa calls the tune if she’s willing to pay the fiddler for a private performance like no tomorrow.

  In a minute he’s quaffed, scented, unruffled, and ready to go. He turns to Lyria in the door. Only just wakened and shuffled over from next-door, she looks sleepy as a child in her rumpled dress. She is staring at Baldo’s floppy pinga but hardly sees through her glassy eyes. Antonio plucks Baldo’s baggy pants from the hook on the post and chucks them across what should be covered.

  He steps deftly between Baldo and the open door and closes the distance to Lyria. He stands before her, not so much hovering or honing in but merely sensing her. In this intimate but safe proximity he senses as well the exquisite agony of romance and hopes she feels it too. He wants to tease her on his own terms, wants to flirt with what he knows is waiting under the soft, cotton rumples. But he is careful here too, lest he rumple the prospects nurtured for so long. Lyria will be his in a year or two, when he has the money, and his own sons will view the world in dollars instead of pesos.

  So instead of playfully squeezing her breast like it’s a bicycle horn that may not beep but will surely wake her up, he merely watches her gentle breathing, and he waits. In a rare moment she responds like she does sense the sweet agony. Would he like to meet later for dinner, if he’s not working? This last is reference to his side job, but he notes with pleasure that her reference is civil, deferring politely to his efforts toward extra income, as she should. After all, he fully intends to share.

  “Yes, I would,” he says. “Saturday night.” Baldo stirs with a guttural groan, proof of vocal chords. “Baldo will come too. Okay?”

  “Okay. I will make …”

  “No! No make. Tonight we celebrate. Baldo will take us out. For dinner and dancing!”

  Baldo drags his legs over the side, swinging the hammock perilously to the vertical. He sits as if in pain, holding his head, groaning lowly. Lyria goes to the sink, where she moistens a towel and spreads it over his shoulders. She rubs his head and tells him to wake up. With playful petulance she demands to know why a boy so young can’t wake up. Antonio watches, wishing the playful petulance could be applied to him from time to time rather than the stern criticism she most often gives him.

  Then again he is the elder, and Baldo is only a boy.

  She rubs Baldo’s head vigorously, admonishing him to rise, to go and serve the thirsts, to split enough coconuts with great flourish to pay for dinner and dancing. He no longer groans but rises to the stimulation on his scalp like a pup who wants more.

  She turns away so Baldo can wiggle into his pants. She asks Antonio, “Celebrate what?”

  Antonio shrugs, secretly relieved that she does not suspect his motive for dining out, which is to have dinner apart from Rosa, mother of Lyria and matron as well to Antonio and Baldo. Antonio loves Rosa, but she is too fat and worried for him to relax. “We celebrate what not. Celebration is important, you know. Baldo. Come.” Baldo adjusts himself, ties the draw string, and rises to follow, not yet fully awake but shuffling his feet, dragging his ragged camp shirt in one hand, holding his machete loosely in the other. Passing Lyria, he glances up sideways with a shy smile like the same pup who suffers beatings for peeing inside, yet who can’t tell what he did so wrong. Perhaps this shy apprehension is also Gustavo Garza’s legacy to his second son. With a wistful sigh Antonio smiles too.

  Lyria tussles Baldo’s hair.

  Antonio waits, then steps to her for a hug. They touch cheeks but not groins, because this is the abrazo conveying warmth among family members with a commingling of spirits. He lingers in her scent to convey his intention, which is forever. She stands for it briefly but then enforces punctuality. It is time for the second shift.

  What? Do you want to be late?

  She watches them go, her boys; no, her men.

  She has not forgotten Antonio’s cruel request of only a week ago, to know if Lyria had a photograph of Rosa as a girl. “But why would you want to see such a thing?” Lyria asked, but feared that she knew what Antonio wanted to see. Rosa’s beauty is in her heart, not her body. Lyria sees it and knows that Baldo sees it too and Antonio would if he had a brain in his head, which she sometimes doubts. Rosa is, in a cruel word, gorda. But she is only as fat as her heart is big and her arms are open and her table is set for giving.

  “That’s an easy question,” Antonio said. “I want to see if she looks like you.”

  “You mean to see if I will look like her!”

  “No, Lyria. You accuse me wrongly yet again. I did not think of that.” But he let it go and will not ask again to see Rosa’s picture. Of course he was guilty of such fear, which may be the shape of Lyria to come, because twenty years roll around before you know it. She easily gains two pounds per year, which become six or eight pounds in a few years, because such things gain momentum. And forty or sixty pounds will make her very fat if the wondrous process of filling out has no end. He fears her failure in beauty, and she knows it, because Antonio thinks of everything, and everyone knows it. He lets it go but ponders the mysteries of love and fat.

  Lyria wonders why he presses relentlessly what has no importance except to convenience or impressions on others or money, money, money. Why does he treat her condescendingly but then respect perfect strangers? Why must he distance himself like a father to a child? She is not Baldo. Maybe Baldo needs restraint and discipline, but she does not. What keeps him from the tenderness every woman craves? Why must he feel her intimate parts so brusquely with a grab and a forced laugh instead of a caress? The gringa bitches by the pool believe him to be the real man of Mexico. So why must his machismo melt down like yesterday’s queso in her presence?

  Is she not a woman?

  Yes, she is a woman, with a woman’s needs and a woman’s awareness of the modern world and its changing ways. Well, en casa del herrero, cuchillo de palo. The blacksmith’s mare and the shoemaker’s children are the worst shod. How can he remain so blind to that which would trigger any blacksmith to fan the flames and bang the anvil?

  He treats her like a novitiate even though they’re practically betrothed and have been since before they stopped sharing a bathtub, and everyone knows that too. And if those who comprise their community were to be surprised, it would not be that she had lain with Antonio or even that she swelled with his child but rather that they had never lain together at all, that he had not even attempted to share her inner warmth.

  Oh, that would surprise them.

  She watches Antonio stride boldly for the hilltop at the same hurried pace in which he strides for the future. Baldo never exactly wakes up, but he catches up at the crest. He straightens with a rhythm in his lanky gait, not a swagger, really, but a lope. Hardly the showman his older brother is, Baldo is merely graceful and silent with a certain unknowable quirk bespeaking happiness on his very own terms.

  As Baldo approaches, stretching another inch here and there to maximum lank, his feet and hands swinging to the ends of their natural arcs, Antonio advises that a man should take care with his machete. A man doesn’t let his pinga dangle for all to see. And a man absolutely doesn’t swing a machete near his dangling pinga.

  Baldo laughs short, perhaps at the imagery of pingas harvested by machete. At the main road he looks not left or right but strides boldly across, such as an uprooted tree in a swollen stream might enter a greater flow. Antonio shakes his head, wishing his brother a greater arrogance and a lesser stupidity, for one can be cured and the other is a tale of a different telling. As it is, Baldo emotes the happiness of a tree, pure and dumb.

  Across the road they wait for the bus, which is full. Once squeezed in they give
in to its hypnotic effect that lulls them to sleep on their feet for the ten-minute ride down the road to the world of progress, development, and hot and cold running dollars.

  Milo, the pool and beach manager, waits for the Garza brothers with anticipation. Antonio has seen it too often to respond. Some returning woman has asked for the maestro, or maybe two guests have sat for thirty minutes with no coconut juice. He nods steadily to indicate resolve, so Milo can calm down and the show can go on, once these critical problems are remedied.

  Antonio scans the pool deck for familiar faces but sees only Mrs. Mayfair, who stares back intently as if to lock his gaze with her own. This afternoon she wears her grasping-hands bikini, the one with nothing between her breasts, so her sternum is exposed between the lift and spread of her sizable melones. The cups of this bikini are scalloped on the edges and remind Antonio of hands grasping the breasts from behind as he sometimes does. He smiles dismissively; he is not behind her, he is working. So please.

  This morning she wore her red bikini that allows her breasts to hang close together with dramatic cleavage and dramatically heightens the reds in her dramatically red hair. The red is fetching and suggestive, but the grasping hands hold the breasts higher and spread them apart, so they’re more spherical and not so oblong. He has examined the grasping hands she now wears to see what magic is in this simple black fabric that elicits such buoyancy in her tetas. The cups look soft and natural but, alas, are stiff with fiberglass beneath the fabric.

  She watches and plays along with his preference for lift and spread by sitting up with a deep inhale, until the bottom part of her chichis cannot be contained by mere fiberglass and won’t go back in the cup, until she exhales and tucks them back in. She well knows that the bottom part sticking out drives him wild.