The Orange Blossom Express

by Marlena Evangeline

  “We’re gonna make a bunch of money,” Hank said as he followed her into the kitchen with his plate in his hand.

  “We’ve got enough money,” she argued.

  “We’ll have more than enough now. We could buy this place. For Christ’s sake, Maggie. People need money. Here,” he handed his plate to her. “I’m finished.”

  “It’s a hassle. The whole thing is a pain. And we don’t know half the people that come here anymore.” Maggie slammed his plate on top of the others.

  “You don’t. Patrick and I do.”

  “What if you get popped or something?” She flipped her head with the little way she had of doing when she was annoyed and right.

  “You’re not being realistic,” said Hank, pacing up and down in the long kitchen. “You know those vibes aren’t here.”

  “We aren’t gonna get popped,” said Patrick coming in from the patio too. He smiled. His cosmic demeanor annoyed her. Sometimes she wished Patrick would just get lost. She wanted a knock down drag out fight.

  “Why don’t you guys ever tell me about this shit?” She took more dirty dishes to the kitchen and slipped them into the sink and went back to the patio and leaned against the wall.

  “We weren’t sure how you’d react,” Patrick said.

  They had excluded her as usual, making the important decisions without her. The frustration and powerlessness of the situation was beyond her. She was overruled.

  “Just think, Maggie. A cord. A cord of marijuana. Now that’s my kind of stash,” Hank said getting up. “It’ll be this high,” he laughed, raising his hand to his waist. “Ass-deep in stash.” Patrick laughed. They both ignored her anger.

  “I’m sick of this stash shit.”

  They both looked at her like she’d really lost it. Then Hank moved to her and kissed her on the cheek. She pulled away and he kissed her ears and she turned and he kissed her hair and she angrily let him.

  Eight days a week …

  CHAPTER 11

  Las Canas, Costa Rica

  BEACH SAND TRAILED OVER THE cottage stairs, falling into the cracks of the dried wood, and tracking inside the house over the faded tile floors and scattering under the furniture. Lucy took a broom, moving it under the table to gather the wayward grains, then scooted it over the floor, losing some sand against the rough grout, and then pushed the sand outside again. The windows were open to the ocean breeze and the lullaby of palm fronds rocking against each other mimicked the slapping sound of sea on sand. The gentle wind was constant, stirring the smell of the salty ocean and seaweed throughout the house, as if the cottage were part of the beach and the Costa Rican breeze. She watched the silver slick of water receding over the sand to the sea, to the sea again; and beyond, the thick salty water heaved in rows like freshly turned earth, settling, suddenly, turning gray and thin and quiet. Her pregnancy swelled inside her like the waves, tumbling and tossing, pushing against her body, turning her mind, erupting in tiny squalls and swaying to quiet again. This unsettling rhythm spilled into the little rhyme she began to know as her baby, inscribing Lucy with a new reality. This little rhyme beat with new rhythm.

  Lucy forgot sometimes why she’d come to Costa Rica. Her mind would skip to home, to seeing Gary again and her mom, and her dad, and hopefully her brother. And she would think of the baby and how it would be and how the baby had already changed her; just having this child inside her had changed her immensely, she thought, for the good. She liked the feel of this baby twirling inside her, spinning her into a new and different reality than the one she already knew. But the one she knew was still with her because she wasn’t home yet, physically on American soil, and she tried to ignore the obstacle of getting there, the thing she had promised, and thought about not doing it, but then it wasn’t much, was it, none of her friends had ever gotten caught doing it, and everyone was doing it, weren’t they? Smuggling a little of this and a little of that here and there.

  Concealing an ounce of pot, hash or cocaine. It was going to be easy money and she surely needed money now. She knew it would take money to get home and Jackson wouldn’t be giving her money unless she were hauling cocaine. It was as simple as that now. She really had to do it or be there forever, not that it would be bad, she loved the beach and the cottage and it was an easy place to be for her, and she could go to the marketplace to shop and she loved the people and the easy life and the sea. She loved the sea. It was easy for her to ignore Jackson and what it was she had to do because Jackson was rarely there. He’d arranged the cottage, given her money and disappeared. She put up her broom, and straightened the small canvas hanging in the living room over the bamboo couch and she thought about calling her mother and having her send money so she could come home, but she liked being there on the beach with the breeze and the sun and she liked how foreign she felt and exotic and wonderful with this idle life, and the baby growing inside her made her feel exotic too. She liked her brown skin and the brown belly she tanned every day as if the sun would seep through inside to the baby and fill the baby too with the Southern sun and warm the baby like she too was warmed. Maybe she would do it, call her mom, but it took so long to call, and she wondered if she could get through and how long she would have to wait, sitting next to the phone at the Pharmacia waiting for the call to go through. Yes, she could call from there, and Mary could send her money, and she could go home and be safe and have her baby there, at her mom’s house, and then, then everything would be okay. She began to feel better, having decided not to do for Jackson what it was he wanted her to do. Yes, things were better already and the breeze that swept through the little house was lovelier, much lovelier, than she had ever thought even the moment before when she thought it was almost perfect, but now it was perfect and the lightness of the breeze and the sound of the ocean and the giddy feeling in her tummy when her baby flipped and somersaulted inside her filled her with only the loveliest of thoughts. The thoughts of going home.

  The little canvas, the seascape, was sweet and painterly, she thought, not like Gary’s work. Very different. What was it, she thought, in Gary’s work, that was so unsettling? Frustration? Anger? Despair? All of the above. All the frustration of his life erupted into his oils, the colors became stronger with his growing sense of dissatisfaction. Reds and oranges dominated the later work, bold, raw colors that could find no rest, colors that trembled and lay unsettled because life kept falling out from under his feet everytime he tried to pull a strong bold color to life. And she was part of that frustration. She knew that he had not been happy with her, but now on the beach and far away she wondered if maybe he loved her anyway, and that perhaps, she even loved him more than she had ever thought, and that the life they had lived was just not what they had wanted and that they both wanted something different and more settled and less experimental than all this experimenting that seemed to be going on. And perhaps if they’d ever done anything sensible like simply be together that their life would have been entirely different and not like it was now, all fragmented and splintered. Gary’s need for structure was deeper even than her own, she thought, and when things were good for them was when they were distinct and apart from the crowd. But of course, they, her friends, herself, they were all pretending they needed none of it, but didn’t they, she thought, didn’t they need more than they ever wanted to admit, that when the structure was there, somehow things felt safer, and better, and not like this unsettling feeling of almost doing the wrong thing thinking it might not be right but that it wouldn’t be so wrong because other people were doing it when you knew all along that that shouldn’t really make the difference and that you should do what was right because it was right and that was it. Plain and simple. But Gary hadn’t been able to do anything right for so long, she thought. Not that she was judging him, she wasn’t judging him, but she knew he was unhappy with all the things he found to do, and when his very own art failed him, he failed to find any hope within himself, and everything, everything around him, fell to desolation and ble
akness, and because Lucy was there, she too, became desolate and bleak. Although Gary tried in his way to be kind sometimes, most often he was not because he was self-absorbed and in his art world that demanded from him all of his thought and passion and energy. So they both had languished in the darkness of his artistic catharsis, and she had suffered because he suffered and he suffered because it was in his nature to do so and he found his suffering his only comfort because nowhere else could he find any, and certainly, certainly, he found no comfort anymore in Lucy’s arms and because of that they were lost from each other because before, they at least had the comfort of each other and now they had none, none at all. And if she’d had his comfort she wouldn’t be in this mess and that much she knew. Because if Gary had been there, Jackson would not have been. She would have never looked twice, well, maybe so, maybe twice, he had been so nice, Jackson had, when Gary wasn’t around. No wonder. She frowned and looked to the sea and knew what a horrid mistake it all was but she could do nothing about it all because like the rest of her life her impulse had carried her along to this place, this spot where she was just now, and it would take another big impulse to get her out of this one, and she knew that as much as she knew anything, that the impulse now had better be a big one, and so she cradled the thought of that impulse and calling home and thought about doing the right thing to get out of this wrong thing that had happened for the last time but the worst thing was that out of all the things that had ever happened this was the worst one.

  Hearing a car coming over the drive, she turned her head slightly to see Jackson driving the jeep over the sand and up to the front of the cottage and cutting the motor and swinging out of the jeep casually and comfortably and looking, she thought, to be a far easier person and kinder than he was.

  “Time to go to work,” said Jackson. He pulled a teddy bear from the passenger side of the jeep and strode up the cottage stairs thinking about that it would be good for the scam to have this pregnant woman carrying a teddy bear and that no one would look twice at someone that fat and pregnant even though he supposed some people might still think her pretty but he knew the difference so he couldn’t possibly think she was pretty now.

  “Work?” Lucy questioned, leaning the broom against the wall and wondering just what he meant by work but knowing exactly what he meant and wondering how long that phone call would take to her mom and knowing it could take days to get through especially since her mom worked and was never in the same spot for two seconds. Never. Not Mary Pointer. Mary Pointer was a dynamo, a regular one- woman show. A mover and shaker. That woman never sat in one spot for more than a second or so and Lucy felt her safeness shrinking away from her. Oh mom, she thought, I need you to be at the other end of the phone when I call, but you won’t be there because I can’t call now.

  “Yeah. Time to go home. Your plane leaves tomorrow.” He pushed the teddy towards her and she took it. “There you go.”

  “I was beginning to feel like this was home.” she brushed the hair out of her face.

  “After three months I would think so,” he said, moved by her, and looked around the cottage. “Maria, Maria, are you here?”

  “She’s in town. She should be right back.”

  “Good,” he said. “I’m starving.” He sank down on the couch and stretched his long legs out in front of him.

  “This is cute, thanks,” said Lucy and she brushed her hand over the soft toy and noticed how the wind had picked up as it blew a shutter against the house annoyingly. She went to the window and secured the shutter, and another gust rippled in through the house and she leaned out and saw a storm swell quickly in the distance, stirring the waves to white caps and moving quickly over the water. She pulled the window shut and went to another.

  “That’s your package,” he said. “Hey, leave the window open. I like the fresh air.”

  “What?” She wasn’t certain she’d heard him, at least, a part of her thought that, the part that wanted to ignore this whole thing, the part that wanted to run crying out of the house to call home, the part that knew the storm on the horizon belonged only to her.

  “The cocaine’s in the bear.” He took out a cigarette and lit it.

  “I see.” She put the bear down on the coffee table as the smoke from his cigarette rose in the room, nauseating her.

  “The smoke makes me sick,” she said, swishing the air with her hand to diminish the smell.

  “You’re getting fat,” he said, looking up at her stomach and ignoring what she said by blowing a smoke-ring directly at her and thinking her stomach looked far bigger from this particular angle.

  “I know. It feels good,” she put her hand on the lump of stomach and smoothed her hand over it.

  “Good?” he asked. He blew another smoke ring and put his legs on the coffee table and pulled her to him and put his hand on the side of her stomach but felt appalled with the size of it and what it meant and all of it. “Jesus, Lucy. It feels like hell.”

  “Thanks,” she said. The bitterness for this man shriveled inside her and she felt her stomach and she knew that she couldn’t call home and that she had to go through with it. Just to get away from this jerk she had to go through with it. Her dark eyes clouded.

  “Here,” he said and pulled a package of airline tickets from his back pocket and threw them on the coffee table. “You’re all set.” He got up and went to the window to look for Maria and saw her walking up the way with groceries. “She’s here. Good. Now someone will feed me.”

  Lucy picked up the plane tickets and looked at the departure date. Tomorrow, she sighed, running her hand over the front of her stomach and down; the baby thumped, kicking, making her drop the tickets to the floor.

  Lucy in the sky with diamonds …

  CHAPTER 12

  IF SHE HADN’T HANDED THE STUFFED TEDDY to the air-captain, Lucy might not have been caught, but that’s only speculation since Lucy always attracted attention and unsolicited interest and the interest she roused in the air-captain may well have erupted elsewhere. And regardless of what Jackson Swackhammer had thought about how she looked, to all other eyes she looked stunning. She carried her pregnancy well, her tall frame and slim hips cradled her tight brown stomach nicely; Lucy by all reasonable accounts was elegantly pregnant and more beautiful because of it. And that day in particular, she knew how very beautiful she was. She had spent extra care in getting ready for the trip, her hair clean and braided, its thick rope cascading over her shoulders. She had taken care and put on just the right shade of coral lipstick to flatter her summer brown skin, and the embroidered blouse she wore almost hid her pregnancy, but not quite, instead it hinted, joyously, at the wealth of the stomach beneath the blouse. The intricate embroidery set a lovely frame against her stomach; the hand-stitched flowers bloomed in bright colors, as if in festive celebration. Her silver-earrings almost reached her shoulders and bounced as she walked decidedly into the airport. She wore several small silver-bracelets, and as she moved the slight jingle of silver seemed like the clink of chimes. She moved through the airport like a sweet breeze, decidedly ignoring the task at hand, pretending in fact that she was indeed simply a beautiful, wonderful, pregnant tourist on her way home. She moved the other thoughts away, the dark thoughts of Jackson, she moved them out of her mind like trespassers.

  Decidedly, distinctively, she knew her direction and she moved forward hoping to get there soon, hoping to be home, and over this, and she moved herself forward through the crowd, entirely aware of her beauty and the eyes that turned to admire as she moved.

  In manner of someone rarely delighted with his job or his customers, the air-captain, Ibarrio Manuel Vasquez, noticed Lucy move through the wide doors of the airport carrying two purses full of embroidered blouses, a soft leather suitcase, and the stuffed toy. This was the kind of woman that would appeal to him, he thought, if he were other than he was. This beautiful American. He himself intended to make his way to America, and Lucy could be recognized as an American at first glanc
e, but he knew she was beyond him, that this position, this temporary job, made him invisible. He watched her move, mesmerized with the rhythm of her walk, her comfortable easy manner, the decided forward motion that set her apart from the crowd of people milling confusedly in the airport. He moved directly in her path and offered his help. There was no reason for Lucy to suspect he had any feeling for her. In the fashion of beautiful women who are used to being watched, and caught in the whirl of the illegal moment to come, Lucy had barely a thought for the man. She had decided upon sophistication before she left the cottage. Sophistication and plenty of it was on her agenda for this particular day. The cocaine stuffed teddy was scrunched underneath her arm and felt sweaty and uncomfortable in the heat.

  “Do you need help?” he asked. He could barely keep his eyes from ardent approval, and he fought with himself, lest he betray himself, anxiously appraising her long delicate arms and slim neck.

  “Thanks,” Lucy said, absently handing him the heavy suitcase and the teddy. She casually flipped her braid over her shoulder and realized she was grateful to be relieved of the burdensome luggage. A man bumped into her, pushing her against Ibarrio who had just taken the teddy. The stuffed animal squished between them. Ibarrio felt the unusual lump in the toy, and the glow in his eyes changed from adoration to the satisfied glint of suspicion and his mind raced wondering what it was inside this toy and who this American woman was and why she had something concealed inside this toy and just what might it be. Jewels. Yes. He thought jewels, something exotic, something to match her great beauty. Surely it was jewels.

  “I can barely breathe,” she said. The crowd of travelers generated an uncomfortable heat and the two, the woman and the air-captain, pushed towards the gate. Liberated from the bundles of luggage, Lucy moved assuredly through the crowd looking all the while for Jackson; even though she didn’t want to see him, she knew he would be there, somewhere, while Ibarrio moved behind her. As he watched the back of her blouse move underneath the braid, he pressed against the lump inside the toy, and as they walked, his fingers walked carefully over the stuffed animal. He pushed the toy against his side using the pressure to assure himself that there was something amiss inside it. Suddenly, he found himself pleased. This woman was in the realm of his power; he could destroy her.