Untamed Shore

by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

  “Sounds nice, no?” Chong said.

  “Sounds fine. Listen, are you carrying any makeup?”

  “Sure. Check the little box on the passenger’s seat.”

  “What about skirts?”

  “Skirts? Try this suitcase,” he said patting a brown suitcase by his feet.

  Viridiana unzipped the suitcase and pulled out a short skirt. She changed inside the truck, shimming out of her jeans and putting on the skirt. Then she opened the box with the makeup. Inside she found an assortment of lipsticks, face powder, eyeshadow and mascara. Her mother sold such items, but Viridiana had never bothered using them, their abundance perhaps numbing her. She sat in the passenger’s seat and pulled down the vanity mirror, applying eyeshadow and lipstick.

  She looked at herself carefully, tilting her head.

  She looked strange.

  She went back to where Chong was sitting. Alejandro Esparza and Paco Ibarra walked by. Alejandro was the other translator in town. His main talent was in cheating on his wife with whatever hotel guest he could get close to. Paco was his best buddy, owner of the only taxi in town which he used to drive tourists around, and man of all trades. Both lived a comfortable life because Alejandro was married to the hotel owner’s only daughter. This assured them work during the tourist season. Off season, Alejandro borrowed money from his father-in-law, and Paco borrowed money from Alejandro.

  Neither of them were friendly with Viridiana. She was Alejandro’s competition. They thought her stiff, haughty. There had also been some small offense her father had committed against their parents, which they remembered. They steered themselves from her path on most occasions, in great part because she was Manuel’s girlfriend. That was the measure of most women in town: who they were connected to.

  But now Viridiana wasn’t with Manuel.

  They were lured to her side by the sight of a short skirt, which, like any good macho, they took to be an invitation. This coupled with the beers they had imbibed that afternoon emboldened them.

  “Looking good, Dianita,” Alejandro said. He was toying with a toothpick with one hand and grinned at her.

  Viridiana raised her head and stared at him. She didn’t like it when people called her that.

  “Good afternoon,” she said, her tone frosty.

  “What you got there?” Alejandro asked, grabbing the radio which she had been about to stuff in her backpack. He turned it between his hands.

  “Hey, you be careful with that.”

  “I ain’t going to break it,” he said, frowning, offended that she would speak to him like that. He flipped the radio upside down and handed it to Paco for him to inspect.

  Viridiana crossed her arms, leaning against the folding table.

  “That can’t be cheap,” Alejandro said. “It’s American contraband.”

  Maybe it was. When it came to electronics not everyone wanted to pay sky-high tariffs, so yeah, maybe that little radio had been stuffed in someone’s suitcase and taken across the border, but it was no big deal. It was ant trade, small-scale smuggling, like used clothes, boxes of powdered milk and other minutia which could be resold on the other side of the border.

  “So?” Viridiana asked. “Are you a judicial now?”

  “I’m making conversation. You’re always jumpy, Dianita. Ain’t she jumpy, Paco?”

  “She’s jumpy,” Paco agreed.

  “Can I have my radio back?” she demanded.

  “You’re working with those gringos on the cliff, ain’t you?”

  “You know I am,” Viridiana said, clenching her jaw. She’d taken her hat and her sunglasses off and she wished she hadn’t because she knew he was evaluating her lipstick and the blue eyeshadow she’d put on.

  “Headed back there?”

  “I’ve got stuff to do,” Viridiana said, reaching forward and snatching the radio from Alejandro’s hands. She stuffed it in her backpack. Both men chuckled.

  “Want a ride back? We don’t mind the detour. Gives us a chance to appreciate the scenery,” Alejandro said, smirking like he’d told a dirty joke.

  “No, thanks,” she muttered, zipping the backpack closed.

  “I was going to ask you if you wanted to help me with a group of Frenchies who are coming over this month, but I won’t if you’re going to be rude,” he said.

  “French?” Viridiana said, as if considering the offer.

  “Yeah.”

  “They realize you don’t even know what ‘bonjour’ means?”

  “Fuck you.”

  Chong, savvy to human behaviour like any peddler must be, recognized the beginning of a violent conflict. He rose from his stool and took his cigarette from his mouth, pointing at Alejandro with his free, whole hand.

  “Hey, you going to buy something?” he asked.

  “Shut up, old man.”

  “You going to buy something?” Chong repeated, unperturbed by the young man’s aggressive tone of voice.

  “Yu go tu bye someting?” Alejandro said, in a high-pitched, mock voice that was probably supposed to approximate Chong’s slight accent.

  “Exactly,” Chong replied.

  Alejandro gave Chong one look, Viridiana another, then motioned for Paco to follow him. They walked off, laughing, as if they had witnessed a very funny performance. Chong took another drag from his cigarette and shook his head.

  “Assholes,” he muttered.

  “Sorry about that.”

  “Not your fault, sweetheart.”

  Viridiana handed Chong the money for the merchandise and he carefully placed it in a pouch which he carried at his waist. He had another pouch for coins and a small notebook in his back pocket for the people buying on credit.

  “Ah, I almost forgot,” Viridiana said. “Cigarettes.”

  “Smoking?”

  “They’re not for me.”

  Chong nodded and handed her a package. When Viridiana attempted to take out her wallet, he shook his head.

  “It’s on the house.”

  “Thanks,” she said.

  When she got to The End she went upstairs to see if Gregory was around, but he had not returned from the beach. She slid a note under his door telling him she had something to show him. Then she went to her room. He did not stop by to see her until late. She had reapplied the lipstick and eyeshadow, but lost all hope that he might come down, by the time he knocked on her door.

  He was suddenly there, smiling at her like a matinee idol ready for his close-up, and as she looked up at him she forgot the cheeky greeting she had rehearsed. A witty line, to assure him she was not a small town nobody. As if the lipstick and the skirt could prove her sophistication.

  “I’ve brought an offering. It’s half a bottle of rum,” he said, bottle in one hand, glasses in another.

  “Thanks.”

  She wondered how many doorsteps he’d graced with similar gifts in hand. Flowers, chocolates, wine. Manuel had no need of such courtship, and high school dalliances were different, anyway. They used to hang out together so quite naturally, one day, he turned to her and simply said, “I’m like your boyfriend now, right?” and Viridiana figured sure, he was like her boyfriend, so they took it from there. He gave her small presents, but she thought them banal and unromantic. One time he’d won a goldfish for her. She’d heard that goldfish grow as big as their tank. Her goldfish, though, had a tiny bowl, but she sometimes wished to toss it in the sea so it could grow as big as a whale. Then the fish might swallow her whole.

  “What’s this thing you wanted to show me?” Gregory asked.

  “It’s right here. It’s a radio.”

  He walked towards the desk were she’d placed the radio and set his bottle and glasses down.

  “Will you look at that,” Gregory said. “Does it work?”

  “Sure. Give it a try.”

  He turned the radio on and switched through stations until Olivia Newton-John started singing. Then he opened the bottle of rum a
nd filled their glasses.

  “Where’d you get the radio?”

  “A guy I know sold it to me.”

  “A guy? Are you fooling around with someone else?” he asked with a mock shocked face.

  Viridiana chuckled. “He’s a million years old.”

  “Who knows what kind of wild perversions you may have.”

  She sat on the bed, he sat by her side. They drank. She felt cozy and comfortable, as though she’d known him for a long time. Maybe it was the alcohol that made it seem so.

  “Ambrose said you’re headed back to Mexico City,” she told him.

  “When did he tell you that?”

  “Today. He says he wants to go back there to be with his nephew.”

  Gregory grimaced and shook his head.

  “I know. It’s a horrifying idea. One of the only good things about puking my guts out while I was there is we didn’t socialize with Ambrose’s nephew except for a single breakfast we had together. Which was more than enough.”

  “What’s wrong with him?”

  “He’s a pompous asshole. And he doesn’t like Daisy and me.”

  “Why not?”

  “Ambrose, he’s old money. Not on his father’s side, but on the mother’s. The nephew, he’s from that branch of the family, and boy does he know it. Daisy and I, we are definitely not old anything.”

  Parasites, Ambrose had said. Was that true? Gregory had alluded to business investments involving him and Daisy, so they must have their own money. Perhaps it was not enough money or the investments had gone badly, or Ambrose simply disapproved of Gregory’s lack of a profession and his photography hobby. Did Ambrose’s nephew work in Mexico City? The letter she’d posted had been addressed as in care of a law firm, but she did not think him a lawyer since she recognized the address from other correspondence. It was the firm that handled all of Ambrose’s matters and where, presumably, all his mail was delivered and then rerouted as appropriate.

  Ambrose, she knew, was in real estate. Daisy had once mockingly said he turned orange groves into condos. She had no idea about the nephew. He could be a trust fund boy, blissfully traveling South America aboard a yacht.

  “Perhaps he might change his mind once you spend more time together,” Viridiana said.

  “That would be a neat trick. Anyway, we might not go. Daisy is trying to convince the old goat that we ought to stay.”

  “Really?” she said turning her head and looking at him hopefully.

  “He’s a stubborn asshole, but who knows. Hey, I definitely don’t want to have to go anywhere far from you.”

  In her imagination, the one on the yacht was now Gregory, sunning on distant beaches, accompanied by a bevy of young women. Viridiana knew she was a little coarse, unvarnished, try as she might you could see her ragged edges and there would be other, worldlier women who could catch Gregory’s attention. She didn’t want to voice these thoughts, to express her doubts, but she found herself speaking too fast, too earnestly.

  “You mean that? There’s probably lots of girls in Mexico City and there’s—”

  “If there’s a million girls, who cares?”

  “I thought perhaps you didn’t … I’ve hardly seen you this week.”

  “That’s Daisy’s doing. She’s got me carrying her parasol and sun tan lotion,” he said rolling his eyes. “What else am I good for, right? But it doesn’t mean I’ve forgotten you. I came downstairs with my offering, right? There’s only one girl for me now.”

  He touched her chin, playful.

  She looked at him but did not speak and he let out a sigh. “You don’t believe me, do you?”

  “People come, they come through town and then they leave,” she said, looking at her glass. “You’ll leave too.”

  “Don’t say that. Wait, wait right here.”

  He got up and rushed out of the room. Viridiana waited, sitting in the center of the bed, afraid that she had scared him off, but he came back soon, a Polaroid camera in his hands. He gave it to her.

  “Here, I can’t get a bouquet right now so this will have to do. It’s yours.”

  “You can’t, it must—”

  “Yes, I can. It’s my camera. Now it’s yours. Have you ever shot one of these?”

  “Point and click.”

  “That’s right.”

  Viridiana held the camera tentatively, looked through the view finder aiming it at him and pressed the proper button. The camera spit out a photo and she held it up, watching it develop before her eyes.

  “Who’s that handsome chap?” he asked sitting next to her.

  “Are you terribly conceited?”

  “Of course,” he said and then he lay back and pulled her down so that she was also laying down next to him, side by side, both looking at each other.

  Viridiana set the camera down and held the picture up, tracing its white border with a nail. Her nails were not pretty like Daisy’s, but the woman had promised they could paint them together one evening.

  “Why did you decide to take pictures?”

  “That’s a funny question. Most people ask me ‘how’ I started taking pictures.”

  “How did you and why?” she asked.

  “Daisy and I met these people in New York. Artsy types. Models and film directors, Daisy likes that crowd. They shot experimental films in Esperanto in warehouses around Red Hook. Things like that. One of them took pictures and I became interested in them. Got a camera and started snapping pictures myself.”

  “What do you like to photograph? Aside from the sharks.”

  “The sharks are a novelty. I shoot a lot of people, a lot of cityscapes. Cars caught in traffic, women waiting in line to get into a club.”

  “There’s none of that here.”

  “That’s fine. Maybe I’m supposed to be a nature photographer. I know it my bones, you see, that I have to do something with photos. There’s nothing else for me.”

  The pictured had dried and finished developing but the scent of its chemicals still lingered in the room.

  “I have this tape recorder my father gave me and I like talking into it,” Viridiana said. “And I like learning other languages. So sometimes I think I’d like to be some sort of radio correspondent. But whatever I’m supposed to be, I know it my bones, I won’t find it here.”

  He took the photograph from her and flipped it around to look at it, grinning, and then set it aside on the night table where their glasses waited for them. But he did not grab a glass and resume drinking. Instead, he kissed her.

  She twined her arms around his neck.

  Everything was nice, everything was perfect, the radio playing love songs for them.

  “Well, now,” he said, “ever give a blow job?”

  Viridiana frowned because that didn’t sound terribly romantic. It sounded like the kind of thing the village boys might ask, and the answer was to say “no” every time, lest they think you easy, like poor Paloma Pineda, who no one ever invited to parties anymore.

  Then, again, Viridiana thought, no one invited her anywhere anymore, either. Another idea popped into her head.

  “Is that why you gave me the camera?” she asked, sitting up.

  “No, no,” he said. “I didn’t mean it like that.”

  “But you’ll get mad if I don’t…”

  “I won’t get mad, but it’s not like I’m a school kid. Neither are you. Come on, it’ll be fun.”

  She thought of the women in town who took up with the occasional tourists. Poor women, women who drank with the outsiders and danced with them, and sometimes slept with them.

  Nobody thought much of these women. They were a few notches above the mistresses of the fishermen and the two prostitutes of Desengaño. Easy virtue, easy living, her mother had always said. It didn’t look that easy to Viridiana and she wondered what separated her from someone like that. Perhaps it was a matter of the size of the transaction.

  “You said no c
ondoms and no pills, what am I supposed to do?” he asked with an exasperated sigh.

  Manuel had asked that, once, when they were hanging out at the beach. But then they almost got caught and they were too chicken after that. Besides, Viridiana didn’t want to do anything serious with Manuel because then he got that look in his eye, and she could tell he was figuring out what was the best date for their wedding and the price of a honeymoon suite somewhere in Acapulco.

  No sense in giving fuel to that fire.

  But Gregory was another story and she had no idea what to do. She remembered how he’d said it was almost Victorian. He was referring to the town, but soon enough, he’d think the same of her. That she was nothing but a mochita—or worse, a cheap tease. Neither description had much to do with reality because the only reason why she made it to church each week was her family and she was not in the habit of flirting with boys, but rather of shutting them down.

  She wanted to be… she wanted to be bold, she wanted to be interesting, she wanted to be the kind of girl who doesn’t get left behind when the guy packs his bags and heads out of town.

  “All right,” she said, smiling a quick smile and she remembered this thing Manuel had said before they’d broken up. “You’re all bluster.” But she wasn’t. Just because she thought things over, just because she let them rest and form and rise, that didn’t mean she didn’t dare.

  That’s probably what did their relationship in, the defining piece. That he had never understood the boldness she had deep in the marrow of her bones.

  “All right,” he repeated.

  Gregory unzipped his jeans quickly, perhaps assuming she’d rethink it. But she didn’t. Not that she found the activity terribly interesting, what with him digging his fingers into her hair a little too hard and the numerous instructions he provided, as if he was one of those filmmakers he’d known in New York directing a movie.

  But the films she’d watched on the small TV set didn’t have a woman bending over a man to swallow his cock. Liz Taylor and Montgomery Cliff didn’t go behind the bushes so she could swirl her tongue around his penis, and he didn’t grunt at her and then come in her mouth, even though she had said she didn’t like that idea, and he tasted horrible.