“A shame to disturb it,” she said. “Want to just look at it a while?”
“Sure.”
She studied the papaya halves, apparently fascinated by how beautiful and exactly alike they were. When she held them up for him to appreciate, it seemed she was being generous.
Wiley’s stomach growled.
She suggested they eat one half and admire the other. She scraped the seeds out and cut a chunk that she offered to Wiley on the point of the knife. He had to be careful. Hit a pothole he’d lose his tongue.
The papaya was bland, disappointing. No temptation to eat the other half. She placed it on the dashboard, propped against the windshield on its side like an exhibit.
“What will you do in Las Hadas?” he asked.
“I’ll find something.”
“Does that mean you’ll be hunting?”
“I suppose. How about you?”
“I’ve been invited.”
“Really?”
“In a roundabout way.”
She nodded as though she knew exactly what that meant.
Wiley decided it would be best if he told her the truth, no matter what. A good clean start, he’d keep it that way. He told her about Mrs. Gimble. He didn’t mention the new ambitions that lady and Las Hadas had brought out in him. Didn’t have to.
“There’ll be a lot of money there,” Lillian said.
“Probably.”
“For sure. A wonderful unhappy hunting ground.” She beamed.
“Are you hoping to hit it rich?”
“Aren’t you?”
“It never occurred to me,” he said.
“Bullshit.”
“Why bullshit?”
“You’re attractive … no, that’s a self-conscious understatement. You’re extremely attractive and even without trying you have a sort of charm about you. That’s exactly it, you’re charming. And here you are on your way to the gold mine in a rented VW.”
“You were hitchhiking.”
She thought about that. “I’m not denying anything.”
“Neither am I.”
“So, as it turns out, we’re both going to Las Hadas to take care of business.”
“Okay, Lil.”
“Not that kind of business.”
“That’s what it gets to eventually, doesn’t it?”
She shrugged. “No less for you.”
He was suddenly depressed again, further down than before, but now for an altogether different reason. Lillian. He had an impetuous notion to tell her to hell with Las Hadas, they could turn off before there or go on by. Together.
She seemed to sense his change in mood. “Don’t worry about it,” she said brightly. “It’s a nice dishonorable profession.”
They remained silent for a while. He lighted another cigarette, and she returned to looking straight ahead. The road was just barely wide enough, had narrow soft shoulders that dropped off into ditches on each side. A line of palms grew along there, and many of another kind of tree.
“Those are cork trees,” Lillian said.
“Most people think cork comes from the ocean.”
“And jellyfish come in flavors.…”
He didn’t even smile.
“You’re a mopish son of a bitch,” she said.
She was right, he thought, laugh it up.
He told an off-color joke, his all-time best.
She laughed so hard she got a side pain. Contagious laughter. He could hardly steer. They both ended up weak and teary-eyed.
They passed through a town. No sign of its name. It was merely a couple of small houses, a cantina, and, of course, a church. Not a person in sight, nothing moving until the speed of the VW caused some chickens to flutter up.
A half mile farther down the road a black car, a six-year-old Dodge, overtook the VW, came alongside. It was so caked with dust that the insignia and the word Policia were hardly visible on its door.
Wiley pulled over. The police car pulled up in front.
“Now we’ll find out who you really are,” Lillian quipped.
Wiley had lost his humor. He got a flash of himself in a smalltown Mexican jail, eating cucaracha sandwiches. He’d heard they locked you up for hardly any reason and forgot which key. He hoped to Christ it wasn’t a stash of grass Lillian had in that drawstring pouch.
Two policemen were coming toward the car. They looked very much alike, narrow-shouldered and fat-waisted. Both were out of shape, but they were wearing revolvers. In the States, as a measure of caution, one would have remained in the police car, Wiley thought. Why not here?
“Buenos días, señor.”
“Buenos días.”
One of the policemen had collar burn, the skin of his neck inflamed, a pimply rash. The other had hair growing out of his ears.
Sore Neck asked to see Wiley’s driver’s license.
Wiley handed it out along with his passport.
Lillian was amused.
Wiley hoped the policemen didn’t notice.
“La velocidad máxima es cincuenta kilómetros,” Sore Neck said.
Wiley gave the excuse that he hadn’t seen any road signs saying fifty was the limit.
“The wind blows them down,” Sore Neck said.
Wiley doubted that.
Hairy Ears went around the VW, thumping on it with the heel of his fist as though searching for a secret compartment. Meanwhile Sore Neck took another look at Wiley’s license and passport. And another.
Lillian began clicking her teeth.
Hairy Ears got down and examined the VW underneath.
“Muy malo, señor,” Sore Neck said, his lower lip over his upper.
It seemed to Wiley that Sore Neck was trying to appear grim. Trying.
Lillian was still clicking her teeth. Better that than an offending laugh, Wiley thought.
The two policemen stood side by side, their heads cocked a little, looking at Wiley with what he translated as a trace of expectancy.
Lillian clicked some more and nudged Wiley.
He thought he heard her whisper: “Hundred pesos.”
Did he dare? For trying to bribe an official, they might give him four life sentences to be served consecutively. He smiled weakly at the policemen.
They didn’t smile back.
He took out 100 pesos.
“Each,” Lillian whispered.
He held his breath as he extended the two 100-peso notes out the window.
Sore Neck took his. Hairy Ears took his. All smiles now.
Hairy Ears said the VW was leaking a little brake fluid underneath but—thumping on the fender—it was a good car.
Everyone said gracias five or six times.
Afterward, when they were under way again, Wiley asked Lillian why all that clattering of teeth?
“I thought you’d get it.”
“Get what?”
“La mordida.”
“The bite?”
“They were only putting the bite on you. They count on it as though it were part of their salary. Now they’ll go back to the cantina, stand drinks for everybody and probably won’t stop anyone else for at least three or four hours.”
“For a while there I thought maybe that’s how you got when you got nervous, or you’d suddenly developed an awful chill.”
“You’re not as sharp as I thought.”
“How come you know so much about Mexico?”
“I’ve been here,” she said ambiguously. “Besides, didn’t it give you a sense of power—not a big one, but at least a taste—buying those policemen off like that?”
“No,” Wiley replied too quickly.
Lillian’s glance told him she knew better.
“About ten miles to go,” he said.
It was midafternoon. The hottest part of the day was over, but the temperature was still hanging near ninety.
“We’re practically there,” he said.
They passed a man on a burro, slouched, hat down over his eyes, arms limp as though riding a
sleep. A woman, walking behind, had hold of the burro’s tail.
Lillian grunted.
“Only fifteen minutes more,” Wiley said.
“We might stop for a swim,” she said, matter of fact.
It was like a reprieve, but he said, “Maybe you want to wait until we get there. I mean, it’ll be more convenient and everything, won’t it?” Say no, he said inside, say absolutely not.
“Probably,” she said.
“Yeah.”
“But then there’ll be all that bother with getting settled in first … and everything.”
At that point the highway didn’t run right along the ocean because the coastline jutted out. Wiley slowed the Volks, found a side road. It was overgrown and rutted, but it took them within a few feet of the beach. Fine white sand, not a mark on it except tiny starlike tracks of birds. The Pacific licked up, slicked and darkened, then slid back into itself. On the shoulder of the beach was the deposit line, where shells and other little sea things had been washed up.
Lillian found a driftwood stick.
She removed her shoes, trousers, and shirt. All she had on then was a pair of white bikini underpants. She was neither shy nor shameless. Her attitude was one of unconforming independence, a confidence in herself that included her body. Hers was hers. Provocation wasn’t her intention, or at least it wasn’t uppermost in her mind.
Wiley managed not to look at her as she undressed, told himself he’d see her soon enough. He kept his undershorts on. He looked up to see her, faced away, walking toward the water. She had the stick in hand. She used it to scratch a line in the sand from the shoulder of the beach all the way to the reach of the surf.
She turned, told him, “That side of the line is your beach. This side is mine.”
Wiley nodded.
This was the first time he’d stood beside her. She was taller than he’d thought. About five-eight barefoot.
“And, remember, the line goes out for a long ways,” as she indicated the sea.
Wiley tried not to look directly at her breasts. Her skin was equally suntanned there. Pink nipples. He’d never known a brunette with such pink nipples. It made them look innocent, like the tips of a baby’s fingers.
She strode to the water. It came to meet her. She went right in, swam straight out until she was over her head, had to tread. She looked back to the beach. Wiley was still standing there.
“Can’t you swim?” she shouted.
He didn’t reply. He’d been caught up by the sight of her.
“At least you can wade.”
He ran into the surf, dove in and swam to within twenty feet of her. They treaded and swam and floated, keeping their distance.
“You’re a good swimmer,” she said.
“I guess.”
They swam to shore, dropped onto the sand, respecting the line she had drawn between them. She lay prone, her position like an embrace, one leg straight, the other angled up. Her arms and hands seemed to be hugging the warm sand, while one cheek rested upon it. She was looking at Wiley.
He lay face up, his forearm shading his eyes. He got a Jennifer thought—but only a tiny one. Surprising how much she was reduced now, to practically nothing, when just yesterday she had been so magnified. He blinked. Jennifer had become that easy to erase.
This woman, Lillian, Wiley thought, he had known her little more than an hour and the effect she was having on him was way out of honest proportion. He was just lonely, raw lonely, and badly in need of a refill of self-assurance. He wanted to cross the line, hold her, press full length against her, arouse her with his arousal, be mouth to mouth with her.… Perhaps not take it all the way, just to know the willingness was there.… It meant nothing really. By tomorrow he would see her differently. Timing was everything. She had just happened into his rawest moment.
He probably wouldn’t be seeing much of her once they got to Las Hadas. So, he might as well see as much as he could of her now. He stopped stealing, looked directly at her, wherever he wanted. Her, rolling over onto her back now, with her hipbones sharply defined and her stomach concave. Sand on her skin. It seemed cruel on her breasts, the sand. Through her soaked panties he could see the dark triangle.
“How long have you been a mercenary?” she asked.
Mercenary? It took him a moment to get it.
“Since yesterday.”
She thought he was being facetious.
She told him: “I might be able to help you in Las Hadas. Listen around, talk you up, steer some likely ones your way.”
“You’d expect me to return the favor, of course.”
He took her silence to mean yes. He detested the idea.
She sat up. “I suppose you know women are going for much younger men these days. Not even men, as a matter of fact. Boys. Seventeen-, eighteen-year-olds.” She shrugged, looked off down the beach, so he couldn’t see her grin. “I understand it’s a matter of stamina.”
“Nothing beats experience.”
“Still, there’s a lot to be said for naïveté;” She swished her hair back and forth so it could dry faster. “It’s refreshing, ego-nourishing. It’s …”
“Too fast and fumbly.”
She grinned right at him, a crooked grin, slightly higher on the left. The unevenness didn’t show when she laughed, only when she grinned. It gave her left cheek a commalike dimple, but it also conveyed the impression that she was a bit of a wiseass.
“You’ll do all right,” she told him. “You have a good body.”
5
Las Hadas.
Wiley had expected it to be the sort of resort hotel that qualified for its deluxe designation by being only slightly cleaner, roomier, better-furnished and more dependably staffed than ordinary.
Not so.
It was six hundred acres. A paradisaical village in itself, built from the ground up at a cost of 35 million. Dollars, not pesos. Situated on an easy slope at the merest indentation of coastline, it was protected by its own newly constructed breakwater. The quality of the original beach there would have been outstanding almost anywhere else in the world, but shiploads of even finer-grained, whiter sand had been brought in from Hawaii.
Two hundred white bungalows were placed modularly on and along the slope. Although they were clustered, they did not seem to be pushing one another for space. There was privacy and, at the same time, an intimacy created by connecting walls, terraces, and little secret walkways.
The architectural style was difficult to define, simply because, as pure and clean as it appeared, it was such a concoction. Part Monte Carlo, part Alexandria, some Mexican pueblo, of course, but mainly Moorish—like a mazy section of Marrakesh minus the babble and beggars. Minarets, onion-shaped spires, winding-staired towers, cupolas, gazebos, lattices, all sorts of twists and turns and surprising curlicues. As though the designer, given freedom to express any caprice, had put whimsy to service.
There were five restaurants, six bars, three nightclubs, eight tennis courts, numerous shops, a golf course, a cinema, and, for sudden pangs of piety or emergency expiations, a chapel.
A deep-water marina accommodated those who preferred to arrive privately by sea.
Three swimming pools. One was the largest in Mexico, perhaps in the world. Surely the most impressive. Right at beach-side, a free-form, lagoonlike pool holding two million liters of water that was purified twice and softened three times daily. So large a pool it was an obstacle. A bridge of woven rope was suspended across its middle to avoid the long walk around.
Cars were not permitted beyond the main entrance.
That rule was actually a convenience for Wiley, who felt self-conscious about the VW. Just ahead, a dark gray Daimler limousine was cruising in to unload, and ahead of that on the circular drive was a black Mercedes 600. All sorts of large, costly cars idled near the entrance and were parked around, their substantial composure hyphenated here and there by the incorrigible colors and lines of the smaller expensive cars such as Ferrari Dinos, Lotus Elites, E
xcaliburs and Maserati Boras. Off to the right of the entrance, parked in precise order like a fleet, were seven Bentley sedans, seven exactly alike, white with a family crest intricately handpainted on the left front door panel. The crest of Argenti.
Wiley drove past, around the drive and back out. No need to start with such a handicap. Lillian agreed. He parked the car well out of notice on the side road. They had to walk nearly a quarter mile. Lillian helped by carrying the smallest, lightest piece of Wiley’s luggage.
As they neared the entrance Wiley hesitated to study the situation. New arrivals were getting all the attention. He spotted a this-year’s Rolls Royce Corniche convertible, a deep-blue seventy-thousand-dollar beauty, parked in perfect position almost opposite the entrance.
He went to it, approaching from the blind side. Lillian followed. The car wasn’t locked. Wiley tossed the baggage in the back, got in and climbed over into the driver’s seat. Lillian got in and, following Wiley’s instructions, quietly closed the door.
The key was in the ignition.
Wiley started the car up, opened the window and pressed the horn. Three brief imperative honks, a shout, then three more honks that even the busiest porters could not disregard.
Wiley got out of the Corniche. Stood there beside it. He didn’t have to resort to words. His air conveyed impatience, and three porters hurried toward the car to look after the baggage as Wiley and Lillian strolled on in.
The reception area was crowded. About a hundred people. Many greats had arrived at once, and evidently not everything had been well enough planned in advance. There was confusion about where to put who. The manager was trying to please and placate just about everyone, because just about everyone was important and used to being treated accordingly. Adding to the disorder, the guests were greeting and gushing all over one another, with a lot of double cheek-kissing and insincere but enthusiastic embracing.
There they were, the powerful and the spoiled, the ones who enjoyed making news. Flaunting, narcissistic, they were already forming new erotic alliances with their eyes, with no more than a flick of a glance, agreeing.
There was a delicate intensity about most of the men, like tightrope walkers who out of habit were unable to take a solid stance. The women wore their assertiveness as though it were an accessory. They were quite blunt, flourishing their mental competence and physical advantages. Thus, an atmosphere of bisexuality prevailed. Their clothes, gestures, the quick-change artistry of their facial expressions and manner of speaking all contributed. Sexual chameleons. But not altogether evil. It was more a social way. Au courant to look in both directions for pleasure, if only for appearance—to keep in, not to be left out. Worst of all was to have a reputation for being dull.
Green Ice Page 5