When do we go? Andy asked.
We leave Saturday, Fergal said, excitedly.
What if your passport’s not in order? Andy moaned.
Then you can’t fucking go, Scotchy snapped.
Andy looked at us gloomily.
I’m not sure I’m allowed to leave the country while my INS status is being investigated, he muttered.
Andy, of course, had been silly enough to enter the system while all the rest of us had let Sunshine get us passable work permits and visas.
Don’t go, Andy. More girls and booze for the rest of us, Fergal crowed.
Andy looked on the verge of tears. Last week and this morning and now this.
Don’t worry, you’ll go, Andy. Sunshine’ll sort it, won’t he, Scotchy, I said, giving Scotchy a look.
Oh, oh aye, aye, don’t worry, Andy, only joking. ’Course you’ll go, can’t do it without big And, Scotchy said, hurriedly.
Really, we’ll fix it? Andy asked me.
We’ll fix it, And, I said, and he smiled.
We all looked at one another and grinned, and then we started to laugh. We were getting out of town. Getting away from the daily grind. Going to bloody Mexico. We were laughing, and the tears were running down our faces. It would be such a relief. The timing couldn’t have been better. All the tensions evaporated and we drank and talked, and even when Bob showed up, he couldn’t dampen things, and we bought the bastard a round and stayed so late Pat had to throw us out so he could get his weary arse bones to bed.
5: WE GO TO MEXICO
N
ew York City. The abiding blue of the Atlantic. The sweeping curve of coast. Woods, fields, cities, great spits of land given up by rivers. Swamps. Islands. Keys. The Caribbean Sea. Jungle. Down.
Our place was a villa on the lagoon side of the Cancún strip. Large and white, ringed with palm trees. It had a veranda and a swimming pool under an overhang. The pool had leaves floating in it, but not that many. I guessed that the last occupants had left a week earlier. The bedrooms sprawled over the top floor, big and airy with watercolors of local girls. The beds themselves were huge wooden affairs with eiderdowns.
I picked a room, lay down on the big bed, and closed my eyes. There were birds and the sound of a bell, and if you imagined just a little you could hear the ocean. I slept for an hour or two and got up and showered. The boys were down at the pool, passing around a bottle of rum. Scotchy was dressed and ready to go out and was urging them to hurry the fuck up.
I read Bernal Díaz’s book about the conquest of Mexico until they were all ready, a cheap Penguin edition but a great plane book. Cortez had just appeared and the Spanish were getting their shit together. They came close to Cancún and stopped at an island nearby. Isla Mujeres. I went out to the balcony on the east side of the house to see if I could get a glimpse over to the ocean and spot any islands, but you couldn’t see through the trees. In any case, the boys were all set. I got changed and splashed some water on my face.
After some confusion we got through to a taxi service on the phone and went to a restaurant that Sunshine had recommended, though how he knew we’d no idea.
The restaurant was near the bullring and served Mayan food and Mexican food and all of it with lime and all of it hot. Excellent stuff. We all enjoyed it except for Fergal, who loaded up with tons of chili sauce and could barely eat it. We had about a six-pack of Corona each and tequilas afterwards.
It was a nightclub next. We took a bus to the resort area. Scotchy paid the cover for us, and we went in.
I was too beat to dance or drink, so I just found a quiet cushioned place in the corner. The music was ten years behind the times and consisted of New Romantics and disco. They kept playing some Bowie song from 1981 over and over as if it was the latest thing. If it hadn’t been too loud, I might have slept again over my cocktail.
I lay on a couch and drank and watched the boys make eejits of themselves. Scotchy joined me and I raked him about the aftershave he had poured on himself, stuff that, were it released into the wild, would make Rachel Carson weep. Scotchy had no idea who Rachel Carson was and called me a pretentious wanker. We both got margaritas, but before the conversation got maudlin, big And came over. He’d got himself a girl and wanted advice. She was a skinny-looking lass of perhaps dubious virtue, which Scotchy and I agreed was a good thing.
I told him to say nothing, but to hint at great depth. Scotchy told him to ask her if she had any Irish in her. Whatever tactic he took seemed to work because soon he was snogging her in a corner.
I tried to ask Scotchy what we were going to be doing down here, but he explained it had to stay secret until tomorrow. And with Scotchy such a big blabbermouth, it really must have been a secret, so I didn’t press him.
Around midnight the place started to fill and the tempo picked up a little. More Yanks came in. Bob cried off home, saying his belly hurt, and we were all glad to see the back of him. Scotchy was having a spastic attack next to a group of girls, but he didn’t seem in much distress, so I assumed that this was him dancing. I was doing my own low-key moves near the bog in case Montezuma got me as well as Bob. But I was ok. Fergal had been bringing me things with umbrellas in them, and they’d given me a second wind. Everything was in a haze and speeded up, and before I quite knew what was happening I was in a bus with a blond girl wearing cutoffs and a University of Kansas T-shirt. We were kissing. She looked like she could be Bridget’s pudgier, blonder, slightly younger sister. She talked a lot about nutrition.
She said her hotel room overlooked the water, and when you got up to it, seven floors, you could believe her because it was as black as pitch out there. She took the blankets off her bed—one of three beds in the room—and went out onto the balcony and laid them down. It seemed a very foolish thing to do, because the place was crawling with ants, but she explained that it was so we’d be private when the other girls got in.
The thought of two other girls showing up conjured interesting visions in my brain for a while, and my focus was elsewhere. She went back inside and brought us beers, and we sat and looked at the party boats cruising past in the darkness. I kissed her and pulled her down onto the blankets, but I had a very hard time getting hard. I hadn’t seen Mrs. Shovel or Bridget or any girls, for that matter, for four days, and you’d think a healthy young man, on only his second ever holiday abroad, would have no problems getting into the swing of things. But the booze, the girl, the flight, the anxiety, all played their malicious little parts, and it took an incredible amount of concentration just to stay in the game. Finally, and heroically, I managed to get it together just long enough for her—but not actually long enough for me—and the girl yelled loud enough to let most of peninsular Mexico know that she was adequately fucked. My head was spinning and, but for my innate Irish politeness, I would have thrown up over the balcony. I breathed in the sea air and asked her where she was from. I’d never heard of it, so I said that that was nice and she asked me where I was from. I told her, and it came to pass that she had a whole host of relations from County Cork. We talked about the multifarious delights of the southwest of Ireland and a little about The Wizard of Oz, the only thing I could think of that involved Kansas. My gaffe with Danny the Drunk had already demonstrated my shaky knowledge of the film and, unfortunately, she had seen it and had strong opinions about it; she explained that she, you know, despite appearances and everything, had been brought up right and her folks hadn’t held with making light of devilry and witches and such. I said that from what I remembered the whole thing was a dream, and she told me that that was besides the point and that she was good folks and her grandpappy from Tennessee had been a juror in the famous Monkey Trial. Neither of us quite knew what the Monkey Trial was, but I imagined it was some antivivisection thing and praised her grandfather for his civic duty.
We sat up and drank some more beer, and there was a lighthouse. I counted the flashes, and I lay down on the blankets while she talked about some famous University of Kansas f
ootball team and then some more about nutrition. My diet, apparently, was completely wrong; indeed, everything I ate came from the top of the food pyramid rather than the bottom.
At four in the morning it began to rain, and we moved into the bedroom, where I was introduced to two other girls who, in fits of giggles, demanded to know my name and what college I was from and whether I had used protection.
She whispered to them that for most of the time I had been unable to perform; at this stage I pretended to be asleep.
The pretense transformed mercifully into reality. I slept on the floor and woke with the dawn.
I dressed and slipped out. I had no idea where I was, and I was still a little drunk and looking ragged. I pissed against a wall, and a copper slowed down; he would have booked me if I’d been a local. He saw that I didn’t have the lingo and was some kind of Yankee bastard. It could have been the luckiest fucking break of my life if he had lifted me. But he didn’t. Instead, he swore and spat and drove off muttering. Under a huge Mexican flag, a nasty little boy threw a stone at me, and it hit me on the back of my head. I chased after him and ended up even more lost than before. A Mexican man and woman out for a walk saw that I was in some distress and tried to help, but we couldn’t communicate. They insisted on walking me at least part of the way to the shoreside hotel strip and then gave me change for the bus. The bus didn’t come, however, and from there I wandered around Cancún for another two hours before eventually finding the airport road and, by a process of reverse geography, the villa. The front door was open. Scotchy was fully dressed and on the phone with someone.
There you fucking are, you fucking get. I thought you’d bloody fallen under a bus or something, he yelled at me.
Morning to you, too, I said.
I suppose it was some wee tart, lucky bastard. Find yourself a coffee and a bun and get your shit together, we have to go pronto, he said, remembering this time to cover up the receiver on the phone.
She was a very nice girl, actually, I muttered.
Fergal and Big Bob were in the kitchen making eggs. Andy was upstairs having a shower. When he came down, I could see from the glow off him that his night hadn’t been unsuccessful.
Tell you, Michael, I’m quitting this thieving game and getting into higher education. All these girls at college. Don’t know what we’re doing with ourselves, he said to me over coffee.
She was all right then, was she? I asked him.
Andy was insulted. This wasn’t some piece of stuff, this was a real girl with whom he had bonded and joined souls and reached dizzy plateaus of intellect, all of it in her hotel room for almost forty-five minutes.
All right? My God, she was wonderful, wonderful, Andy said, protesting a wee bit too much, I thought. Andy must still have been freaked out by my observations on sexual preference, and I considered for a moment messing with his head but decided against it.
That’s great, Andy, I said.
Yeah, Michael, it really was.
So you pulled. Well done. Took my advice, kept your mouth shut, then, eh? I asked him.
I didn’t say much, but I didn’t need to. She was so interesting, Michael. She was studying history. There’s so much history, you know, there’s a whole stack of it, all this stuff out there, Andy explained.
I looked at him to see if he was being funny, but his face was expressionless.
So you want to pack in the life of the highwayman and turn to academe. Andy, my lad, it’s funny you should say that. Actually, I was having the same thoughts just—
You want some eggs? Big Bob asked from the kitchen.
Aye, what type?
Scrambled with stuff in them.
What sort of stuff?
Onions.
Aye.
Fergal came over. He was grinning with jealousy at me and And.
Aren’t you the boy too, Michael. Jesus, Scotchy says she was a real looker, Fergal complained.
Did he? Was she? I said, and we all laughed.
The eggs came, and they were fine. Andy pontificated about possible majors he could undertake, and I assured him that with his large frame and youthful exuberance he would be sure to get an American football scholarship at some university. I told him that Kansas had a good program.
He slapped me on the back and started telling me further about his new philosophy of existence and the delights to be had in the life of the mind, and he kept on about it even though he could see I was in no fit state to listen to his bollocks. Scotchy came in to save me, telling me to shower and get changed. I went upstairs. The back of my neck was all bloody from something. I remembered the stone. Wee bastard. I showered and pulled on my boxers, button jeans, and an old brown T-shirt. I grabbed some sandals. Everyone else was wearing shorts, and I would have gone back upstairs and changed had we had the time.
The rental car came, and Scotchy tipped the delivery driver. He asked for a lift back with us, but Bob told him to fuck off. Scotchy got in the front with Big Bob; the rest of us got in the back. Big Bob had a map and for the next forty-five minutes they argued about directions before figuring out the place to go. I only noticed then that Bob was carrying a large shopping bag from Zabar’s. It was odd, you couldn’t imagine a less likely person to shop in Zabar’s. I thought for a minute and then I got it. Sunshine went to Zabar’s. It was Sunshine’s bag. It contained money. We were swapping the money for something. Either drugs or guns. Drugs. What drugs? I was never to find out.
I started to giggle and couldn’t stop.
Andy poked me in the ribs.
What’s so fucking funny? he whispered.
We’re smuggling knishes, I said, pointing at the Zabar’s bag. Andy laughed because I was laughing, but I don’t think he got the joke.
Would youse shut up back there and act your ages, Scotchy said angrily.
We drove on for a bit and when we were close, they stopped the car.
Here, boys, Scotchy said, and reached round and gave us each a pistol. They were huge, old-fashioned things from World War I.
Where did these come from? Fergal asked.
Need-to-know basis, boys, Bob said, annoyingly.
Scotchy, what’s the job? I asked, pretending that Bob didn’t exist.
The job, Bruce, for you is just to stand there and look menacing. Me and Bob are taking care of everything, Scotchy said, soothingly.
How are we going to get drugs back into the States? Smuggling is like ten years, you know, I said.
Ten years? Fergal sputtered.
Who said anything about drugs? Scotchy growled and looked angrily at Big Bob.
I never said a word, Big Bob whispered, unsure of himself.
Don’t you worry, Bruce, it’s all been thought of. This is going to go smooth as silk, Scotchy said, looking at Andy and Fergal in the mirror the whole time.
Bob was sweating but Scotchy looked calm, so maybe it would go ok.
They drove for another five minutes and stopped again.
We’re here, Big Bob muttered up from his map.
We’d halted in a poor neighborhood in the north end of town, right on the edge of a marsh. The road was a track and the houses were finished only on one side. They were two stories and seemed as if they’d been built in the last few months. Maybe they would look ok when they were painted and the marsh was drained and the road was better and Cancún got a planning board and Mexico got sustainable growth, improved infrastructure, and an end to one-party rule.
Are you sure this is it? Scotchy asked.
Aye, he’s drawn a wee bit in pen where the map ends. This is it, Bob said.
We all got out of the car. There was no one around. The houses didn’t even look occupied. They had no electricity or phone lines.
It’s a fucking slum, Fergal moaned.
It’s not, it’s a new development. Expansion, that’s what it is. They all start like that, Scotchy insisted.
It’s the wrong place, there’s nobody here, Andy said.
I think it’s the wr
ong place too, Fergal agreed.
Let me see the map, Scotchy said and grabbed it out of Bob’s hands.
It’s the fucking place, Bob said, sure wasn’t I in—
Whatever Bob was in was not to be discovered, because the aluminum house door opened and a voice said:
Señores.
Scotchy looked in triumph at Fergal and Andy and marched down the dirt path to the house. Bob turned to us.
Ok, boys, weapons in your trousers. You won’t need them; don’t do anything stupid. Be super cool. These boys don’t want any fuss. You hear me?
We nodded, and Andy said: I hear you.
We walked down the path to the house. There were tire tracks from several vehicles in the clay soil, and at the time I thought this was a bit odd. Tire tracks but no sign of a car. I didn’t think about it too much, though. We went inside the house. Dust was everywhere, and it smelled of resin, wood sealant, and tobacco smoke. Scotchy was in the front room with three Mexican guys in jeans and T-shirts. They were talking in English. Scotchy presented Big Bob, and they shook hands with him. We weren’t introduced. I leaned up against the wall. My throat ached from last night and all the dust in here wasn’t helping. Big Bob opened the shopping bag and brought out bundles of twenty-dollar bills. One of the Mexicans opened a satchel and gave it to Scotchy. He looked inside. There was white powder inside plastic bags. He gave it to Big Bob to check, but before Bob could do anything the side door burst open and two men in ski masks appeared with pump-action shotguns. They were yelling:
You are under arrest, you are arrested.
The Mexicans all produced guns and screamed at us to lie down on the floor.
A man appeared behind me and I tried to shove past him and make a break for it, but there was no chance. With infinite patience he blocked me and hit me on the head with his rifle butt.
The cell was very nice: new and concrete, and if you stood up and held on to the bars you could see out over Cancún and towards the sea. It contained an iron bed, a plastic-covered mattress, thin black woollen blankets, and a stainless steel toilet without a seat that lurked in the corner but worked well when I flushed it. It was all a bit dark, but clean. I paced twelve feet by eight feet, which wasn’t too bad at all.
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