Last Flight of José Luis Balboa

by Gonzalo Barr

  Maylin is lying on her stomach, looking at me. One hand lies on Jasmine. The other is under her chin. Her fingers caress her lips. Watching her unsettles me. I want her. I want Jasmine too.

  The sun has started to drop behind me. The sky is a deeper blue. The clouds look like they glow from within.

  The ultralight comes around and climbs again, more steeply this time.

  MARÍA ISABEL COSTA

  I jumped on him. He fell back. We rolled on the Persian rug. He pushed me off so hard that my head hit the edge of the coffee table. I must have lost consciousness because when I opened my eyes again I was lying down.

  He pressed a cool towel to my cheeks and my head. I told him that it stung.

  “I think you broke the skin.”

  He said he would get some ice and left. Maybe it is a good thing that he goes, I thought. Maybe we are too passionate, and if we stay together we will kill each other.

  I heard him move about in the kitchen, open the freezer, close it.

  Maybe he will kill himself. Or I will. Passions this strong always find a way to express themselves. They have their own imperatives.

  Like when he crashed his ultralight into the ocean last year. I was on a chaise longue on the beach, under an umbrella, reading a paperback novel. I read a page, then put it down to watch José Luis take off. A slip of paper marks the page I was reading when it happened, when I heard a man yell. Check it out! I looked up in time to see the crash. It was so quiet that if it hadn’t been for the man yelling, I would never have seen a thing.

  I took care of José Luis while he was in the hospital. At home, I handed him the pills that the doctors gave him for the pain. He swallowed them with cognac, even though his doctor told him to avoid alcohol.

  When he could walk again, when he was ready to go back to work, he came up behind me and embraced me, whispering in my ear how much he loved me, how much he appreciated that I had cared for him. He kissed me.

  “You could have killed yourself,” I told him.

  Not long after that, he bought another ultralight. He flies it on Sunday afternoons, after our late breakfasts, after we make love and go back to sleep and lie in bed talking. I do not go to the beach with him anymore. I know he will crash again and I do not want to see it when it happens. Instead, I He on the sofa in the living room and read or watch movies. I like old American movies from the forties. The characters seem so mature, so different from today. Someone will tell me when he crashes, I’m sure.

  He came back from the kitchen with a bag of ice. “Try to sleep,” he said, putting the bag against my head.

  “Where are you going?”

  “You’re not hurt badly. Just the skin. That’s all. You’re OK.”

  “I think I scratched you, on your cheek.”

  “It’s nothing.”

  He went to the study and closed the door. He talked on the phone. I could hear his muffled voice. I could have walked over and listened, but I did not want to. I didn’t want anything, just to he in the dark and quiet, to close my eyes. It wasn’t that I didn’t care. To say that you do not care is itself a declaration of some feeling.

  When he returned, he faced away from me as he changed and dressed for the beach.

  “Where are you going? You can’t—after everything that happened today.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because—”

  “Nothing has changed, Isabel. I go flying on Sundays, you know that.”

  “Don’t you care about me?”

  “I do,” he said, standing in his closet on the other side of the room. “But nothing has changed. I’ll move out this week.”

  He finished dressing. I turned my head away when he leaned over to kiss me. Then he left.

  That’s when the phone started to ring. I would have ignored it, except that the caller hung up every time the answering machine came on and called again. After the fourth time, I picked up the phone next to the bed.

  Everyone knew that José Luis was leaving me. Reporters from TV, magazines and newspapers, friends, associates from the talk show. Even my competitor called to stick the knife in deeper. “Do you know that she made over fifteen million dollars modeling last year?” she told me about Miss Austrian Pastry. I slammed down the phone and disconnected myself from the rest of the world. I did not want the rest of the world anymore. All my life I wanted to project myself into hundreds of thousands of TV screens, into the minds of millions of people. My show is still the best and most watched. I’ve worked very hard and done what no other woman on Spanish-language TV has done. I’ve opened doors. Now I want quiet. And dark. Nothing.

  I take the glass and the bottle with me and walk carefully out of the kitchen, into the long hall that leads to the main bathroom, and put the bottle and the glass on the marble top, so I can open the medicine chest. I see the pills that the doctor gave José Luis when he crashed his ultralight, the ones that he mixed with cognac because he said that otherwise they did not work. And I think that if he wants to kill himself that’s his problem. He already crashed once. People like that do not learn. They do not care about the pain they cause others. It has always been about him.

  RICHARD JOLICOEUR, PH.D.

  The driver behind me blows his horn. I speed up, keeping my eye on the beach. When I catch sight of the glider again, it is stuck in the sky. For a second, it doesn’t move. Then it falls straight into the ocean.

  “Did you see that?” I yell and slow down. The driver behind me blows his horn, and the American who speaks Spanish says that they have an appointment downtown, that they would appreciate it if I would please take the quickest and most direct route. Then he says something to the other one, and he laughs. I can’t hear what he said, but I don’t like the sound of it.

  PETE BURGER

  The thin man with the Labradora is talking to the girls when the ultralight crashes silently into the water. The dogs bark, but the man does not look and neither do the girls.

  MARÍA ISABEL COSTA

  I try to stand, but I cannot. Maybe I took too many pills. I shook them into my palm and did not count them. Then there were so few left in the bottle that I swallowed the rest.

  I want some more champagne, but my wrists feel as if they are ringed by weights. With my fingers I find the remote control and rewind the tape on the VCR. I am watching a concert José Luis gave a year ago. I am watching him sing “Isabel.”

  “But Maria’s too common a name,” he told me the first time we went out. He took me to Costa Brava, and we sat on the second floor so we could be the center of attention. I met Enrique Iglesias, who was sitting at a table on the other side of the room. José Luis walked over there to say hello and waved for me to join them.

  “What’s your middle name?” José Luis asked me after dinner on the way home.

  “Isabel,” I say to the stilled image of José Luis bringing his mouth close to the microphone.

  Two weeks after that dinner, he played the song for me. We were at the poet’s apartment. He told me that it had been a difficult song to write, that it had tested him as an artist. “How do you capture beauty?” he said. I blushed and started to say thank you, but he put his finger on my lips. Then he played the song. “Isabel.”

  RICHARD JOLICOEUR, PH.D.

  My head snaps forward, then back against the headrest when I hit the brakes harder than I expected. The driver behind me blows his horn angrily. I look in the rearview mirror, but my trunk lid is up.

  “OK?” I ask the Americans. One of them nods. Out of my side-view mirror, I see the driver behind me getting out of his taxi, so I get out too.

  “What is happening?” the American asks me, still in Spanish.

  “No problem,” I answer him in English.

  I know the other driver. His name is Ronny. He is from Cap-Haïtien.

  “Ronny,” I tell him, “I am sorry.” And I point to the glider, which now looks like crumpled paper floating in the ocean. A traffic cop shows up and tries to listen to Ronny and me expl
ain what happened, but the cop waves his hands in the air and tells us to stop, stop, he cannot listen to both of us speaking at once, so he takes my documents, which I have ready to show him how cooperative I am, and he pulls Ronny aside. I look back at the glider. The heads of half a dozen people bob in the water around it. I turn to my cab and see the Americans getting out with their briefcases.

  “Wait!” I yell.

  “We do not have time,” the one who speaks Spanish yells back at me. I am about to say something else, like, This will only take a minute, or tell them that I would cut the fare in half or to a quarter, anything not to lose them, but they are too fast. They wave down another taxi, get in with their briefcases, and drive off.

  That is when I feel the traffic cop standing next to me. I tell him about the glider crashing, but all he does is nod as he writes the ticket. “Do you think the pilot is hurt?” I say. The cop ignores me, so I look out at the water. A helicopter is over the glider, flattening the water, sending concentric rings out. The cop hands me the ticket, something to do with my license, and my documents, and tells me to move my car before he arrests me and sends me back to where I belong.

  I apologize to the cop. Then I try to close the lid of the trunk, but each time I slam it down, it pops back up. I do this several times. Ronny brings some rope and together we tie the lid shut.

  “I am sorry, Ronny. Really I am,” I tell him.

  “I am sorry too,” Ronny says, shaking my hand.

  I get into my taxi and drive off. The meter is still ticking. I flip the flag down harder than I should.

  I have no place to go. I can return to the hotel, but no one is going to want to ride in a car that looks like this. And I’ll have to think of an excuse to tell the cab company. This is my only accident in all the years I have been driving. No one has ever complained about me. The company will be mad, perhaps, but it can’t overlook all my years of service.

  I take the causeway inland and drive past Fisher Island, past the entrance to the island where Gloria Estefan lives, past the cruise ships, past all the sights I would have shown the two Americans, if they had not run off without paying me. On Watson Island, I turn off the causeway.

  PETE BURGER

  I overhear that the guy in the ultralight is a celebrity, some Latin singer. Soon after the crash all the TV stations are out on the beach pointing their cameras at the water. But by then the rescue people have taken the guy and the ultralight away, and there’s nothing to see except a lot of people dying to get on TV. The word is he’s dead meat. Kind of stupid, I think, to die like that.

  MARÍA ISABEL COSTA

  The video is on pause. Frozen on the screen is a close-up of José Luis’s face, his lips almost touching the microphone. I close my eyes. My head drops on the pillow. I do not dream.

  PETE BURGER

  The funny thing that happens is that while we’re watching the coast guard and the police pull the body out of the water, Maylin and Jasmine stand next to me. Each takes an arm and stands close, as if we’ve known each other forever. Maybe it’s part of their culture. I’ve heard that Latins are affectionate, so I’m fine with it.

  Then Maylin lays her cheek against my arm, and Jasmine puts her arm around my waist, and before I know what’s coming out of my mouth, I’m inviting these girls to my room.

  The beach is still crowded when the girls pick up their things and we walk toward the dunes, holding hands. Jasmine says she’s hungry, and Maylin says she wants something to drink. Yeah, like rum and Coke or something. Jasmine says. They know this liquor store that’s on the same block as the hotel.

  We pass other couples, and I can tell the men and even the women can’t believe their eyes when they see me between these two lovelies.

  We get a liter bottle of white rum and a liter bottle of Coke and take it back to the room, where Jasmine prepares the drinks. Maylin throws herself on the bed and plays with the stereo on the night table. I’m looking at Maylin when Jasmine hands me a glass. It’s a little strong, but I drink it. Why spoil the party?

  She hands me another, and I drink that too. Then Jasmine’s kissing me, putting her tongue in my mouth.

  Maylin says something, so I sit on the bed next to her, and we kiss. I don’t know how long we do this because by the time I look again, Maylin’s naked, Jasmine has her top off, and I’m stripped to my shorts.

  Like I said, I’m a beer guy. Rum’s not my drink. I’m starting to feel the room turn. I tell Jasmine this, when she hands me another drink, but as I’m getting the words out she takes my hand and places it over her breast. Then she kisses me some more.

  Maylin pulls off my shorts and takes me in her mouth. I’m drunk by then and can’t feel a thing.

  I don’t hear the door open. Maylin and Jasmine pull away. I try to make my mouth form the word “hey” when I’m wrestled to the bed, face-down. My hands and feet are tied. Someone stuffs a rag in my mouth and ties another rag around my face. I can’t make a sound.

  Ponytail turns me over while Hi-Lo examines me.

  “He’s a little fat,” Ponytail says.

  “So what if he’s fat?” Hi-Lo says. “So long as he has all his parts, he’ll be fine.”

  Ponytail and Hi-Lo carry a large trunk into the room and place it by the bed. They lift me off the bed and put me in the trunk.

  “Aren’t you going to throw his clothes in too?” Ponytail says.

  “What for? He won’t need them.”

  Then they close the lid.

  RICHARD JOLICOEUR, PH.D.

  I turn off the air conditioner and open the windows. I drive to the end of the road, to the small parking lot next to the fish market and the docks. The market is closed, but the stand is open. I buy a beer from the surly woman with beefy arms who tends the stand. I drink my beer and look out at the water and the city beyond it, trying to forget about the glider.

  I get another beer. The surly woman tells me to make sure I’m not caught driving drunk and nods in the direction of a police car that is parked at the end of the lot. I smile. I like to be polite to everyone. I walk back to my car and drink and watch the sun set, the sky change color, and the buildings light up. The lights shine on the bay, restless yellows, blues, and whites.

  I wonder if the pilot of the glider got out all right. It would be a real tragedy to fall out of the sky like that and die. It would make no sense.

  I turn on the music, the Pastorale from the beginning, and listen to it with my eyes closed. I put things in perspective: I am a taxi driver, not a philosopher or a professor or even an assistant librarian. I am a small-time taxi driver who got into a small-time accident this afternoon and lost a small-time fare because he was distracted by a glider crashing into the water. I should have been paying attention to the road. That is what I am paid to do.

  When I open my eyes again, the music has stopped. The surly woman is closing the shutters of the stand. I sit up. The surface of the bay is calm.

  Maybe the newspaper will say something about the glider tomorrow.

  I drink the last of my beer. I drive home.

  PETE BURGER

  When I wake it is dark, but I hear voices and the sounds of an engine and traffic. We’re moving, and I have the worst hangover of my life.

  “How much’d he say?” a woman says.

  “Fifty big ones,” Hi-Lo says.

  “We’re splitting it, right?” another woman says.

  “Four ways, after expenses,” Hi-Lo says.

  I try to move, but my legs and arms won’t respond, like they don’t belong to me.

  “Wait a second, what expenses?” I recognize Jasmine’s voice. Her accent is gone.

  “Whad’you think you used to paralyze him, Nyquil?” Ponytail says. “That stuffs expensive.”

  “Yeah, plus the travel and such,” Hi-Lo says.

  A rag is stuffed into my mouth and tied securely in place. I cry out, but whatever sound I make is smothered by the rag.

  “Guys, sounds like he’s awake,” Mayli
n says in perfect English.

  She opens the trunk lid. I am in the back of a van. Headlights shine in through the rear windows and illuminate Maylin’s face.

  “Hey there,” she says. “Sorry we had to pack you up like that. It won’t be long.”

  “Why are you talking to him?” Ponytail says.

  “Just being nice.”

  “Leave him the fuck alone,” Hi-Lo says.

  “Hey there,” Maylin says, putting her finger on my face. I can barely feel it. “Can’t we get him out of there?”

  “No,” Hi-Lo says. “He stays in the trunk. We’re almost there. Close the lid and leave him alone.”

  “What are they going to do with him?” Jasmine says.

  “They’re going to cut him up and film it,” Ponytail says.

  “No fucking way,” Jasmine says.

  “Market’s huge. People pay thousands per copy. They get off on the stuff.”

  “But it’s all fake, right?” Jasmine says. “It’s not like they really cut him up or anything.”

  “Yeah, sure.”

  “They use a chainsaw,” Hi-Lo says. “You want the maximum footage you can get from every subject. You don’t want them bleeding to death right away.”

  An unrelenting coldness begins in my stomach.

  “Nobody ever told me nothing about that,” Jasmine says.

  “Whad’you think we were going to do with this geek, adopt him?” Ponytail says.

  “The arrangement I made,” Hi-Lo says, “was to deliver one male, preferably under thirty years, of any race, height, or weight, with all his parts and appendages. They were very clear about that. They said he couldn’t be missing anything.”

  “I don’t know about this,” Jasmine says.

  “Yes, you do know,” Ponytail says. “Bitch, you knew it all along. Nobody’s ever paid you this kind of money for a little sex. You knew what this shit was all about.”

  “Don’t fuckin’ disrespect me.”