by Alice Adams
Observing that Oscar has just come into the room on some errand, she frowns to herself, and hopes that he won’t come over to speak to her.
It must have been Oscar who in some way got rid of the cats.
Oscar, of White Russian parents, is in his own view an aristocrat. No one much likes him. He is erroneously described as a Communist by certain guests; educated in Germany, he is labeled “that Nazi” by another sort of guest. He is very thin and sun-withered, inattentive except for occasional fits of concentrated and usually inappropriate emotion, often rage. He gives an impression of disliking all of Mexico, including the hotel and its guests.
For several years there was a Polish woman of a certain age, named Marya, always there with Oscar and assumed to be his wife. A lean, faded blonde, who simply seems to be no longer around, and no one has asked about her.
Oscar himself does not appear to know who is there from one year to the next, and he has been known to greet an already tanned mid-stay guest as though that person were a new arrival. Today he speaks to no one but a certain maid, who has done some wrong. Oscar scolds her at length, very sharply. He shakes one long finger much too close to her face, so that the girl shrinks and cowers.
“Oh, there’s the woman who used to feed the cats,” Zelda says to Abe as they settle into their stiff, uncomfortable chairs and look about the room.
“She must miss them.” Abe and Zelda have two dogs at home, whom Abe secretly misses very much. He would like to have children, but Zelda postpones even discussions of this possibility with vague remarks about how young they are (how young she is), plenty of time.
“She doesn’t took to me as though she missed anyone, or anything,” Zelda tells him. “Do you suppose she’s married, or what?”
“If she were married, she wouldn’t always come here alone, would she?” Logical Abe is often wrong.
“Oh, she might.” Zelda does not take trips alone, although she has thought that she would like to, especially now, with the presence of a lover in her life. In Toronto for the last few years she has managed a travel agency—no reason for her not to travel now. “I miss the cats a lot,” she says to Abe. “And there’s horrible Oscar. I wonder whatever happened to Marya?”
No newsboys come into the dining room that morning. Possibly they will be down on the beach later on.
• • •
Now, in midwinter, and because this bay is surrounded by high mountains, a range extending almost to Mexico City, the sun comes up late and slowly above the eastern ridge, a yellow haze, shafts of light that at last reach the sea.
By midmorning, though, beachtime, the sunlight is well established: heavy, powerful, almost overwhelming. The hotel guests sit beneath their thatched palapas, shielded and sunblocked, emerging occasionally to walk toward or run into the sea. To move through waves, in the warmcool caressing water.
On this particular day the waves are higher than usual, the undertow strong. Good swimmers, like Abe Hoskins, treat the water with some respect, gauging the sizes of waves, waiting before diving through. Deciding not to bodysurf that day.
Abe thinks he read about an odd, unusual conjunction of planets taking place just now, along with a full moon. All that would surely affect the tides?
Looking at the sky, at the unfamiliar thickening gray banks of clouds, Abe thinks that indeed it could rain. Even if it never does.
Zelda is up in their room putting the final touches to their unpacking. Or maybe talking to the room maid, by now an old friend.
Abe wishes he had a Mexico City News, the only available English-language paper.
And he wonders about Gabino.
Evelyn Fisk, several palapas away from that of Abe Hoskins, also wishes for a newspaper, but her wish is mild, and she manages to content herself for the moment with her thick paperback, a new Iris Murdoch.
On this first day, though, her attention wanders. In particular, her eye is caught by the vendors who trudge slowly up and down, barefoot, on the hot white sand. Selling their awful wares. It seems to Evelyn that this year their faces are longer and sadder than usual, which could well be the case, the Mexican economy being what it is: splendid for tourists, over two thousand pesos to the almighty dollar—and dreadful, punitive for Mexicans, especially of course for the poor.
Evelyn notices—or, rather, she thinks of something new today, which is that the women’s wares are generally much better than the men’s, and she ponders this fact: vending is women’s work, finally? (This might be something to include in a letter to Grantly; on the other hand, perhaps not. Grantly’s “liberalism,” of a somewhat old-fashioned sort, does not seem to extend itself to feminist issues.)
The shabbiest, saddest-looking vendors of all are those who sell peanuts. All men, mostly old. The younger and relatively more prosperous men have terrible carved birds for sale. Or, so unappealing in this heat, woven woolen rugs.
Many of the women wear a sort of costume: full dark blue skirts with layers of petticoats, and modestly ample white blouses with long sleeves and big floppy lace collars. Perhaps an Indian tribe? They are selling jewelry: armloads of colored glass or plastic beads, all in lovely colors, dark blues and greens, pinks and amethysts.
And silver, endless streams of silver. Necklaces, bracelets, earrings.
Later, Evelyn will buy presents for all her daughters and her daughters-in-law. Her female grandchildren.
Zelda Hoskins is neither talking to the maid nor unpacking, but writing a secret letter. One that she has written quite often before, and sometimes mailed but more often not. A letter in which she tells her lover, Evan, that they simply must break off. Seeing him makes her feel too terribly guilty with Abe, who after all is so nice. No more Evan, never again.
Evan is a computer salesman based in New York who occasionally comes to Toronto, to stay in the Harborfront Hotel, where Zelda has her travel office. These letters of hers never seem to affect him in the slightest; he shows up anyway, no more or less frequently than before. Looking shy, he comes into her office, saying couldn’t they at least have a drink in the bar? Maybe lunch? And there they soon are, back in bed again. In love.
Evan does not look at all the part that he plays with Zelda. A worried, chronically rumpled young man, light-skinned (well, sallow) and too thin, he looks more like the other things that he is, a husband and father, with a heavy mortgage in Douglas, Long Island. A salesman. With Zelda, though, as he has often told her, he is someone else, a strong, confident, often laughing man. “Lord, I even feel handsome,” he once half-jokingly confided.
“Darling, you are” was of course what Zelda said (with the odd thought that actually of the two men Abe is better-looking, just a little older).
However, today she is not getting far with her letter. “My darling,” she has written. And then she is distracted by a rustle of large black birds, just settling in the bush beyond her terrace. Three of them, a family. Their sleek wings shine, with hints of darkest blue, blue-black velvet. “This time I absolutely,” Zelda writes before crumpling up her paper.
Abe too has been watching the vendors, and he, like Evelyn Fisk, sees the peanut vendors as the saddest of all. Even their voices are sad, and their faces are so long. Trickle-down economics, Abe thinks. Poverty trickles down very fast to these poorest of the poor.
Just then, though, a group of small boys appears, bearing newspapers. Abe watches as Evelyn (whom he thinks of as the cat woman) buys a paper. But when the boy reaches him, Abe waves him off, saying, “No, Gabino.” Meaning, I’m waiting to buy a paper from Gabino.
The child looks puzzled, whether as to Abe’s meaning or the identity of Gabino, Abe can’t tell, and so he asks, “Gabino. Dónde?” (He does know a very few words of Spanish.)
The small boy shrugs and goes off, leaving Abe with no paper. With nothing.
He probably should have bought one, what the hell? A few pesos here or there won’t mean much even to Gabino. However, to the next boy with a bunch of papers who cries “English la
nguage! Mexico City News!” Abe hears himself repeating, “No, Gabino.”
This child, though, seems to understand. And he speaks some English. He asks Abe, “You wait Gabino?”
“Sí!” Enthusiastically. And then, “Gabino. Dónde?”
The small brown monkey face scrutinizes Abe’s much larger, paler face before he says, “Gabino está muerto. Dead.”
“No.”
The devil-child begins to laugh. “Sí, Gabino está muerto!” and he runs off after the others, down the beach.
There in the heavy heat Abe sits frozen, immobilized. Muerto. Does it mean just dead, or killed? Slain, murdered. How awful for there to be just the one word. And how plausible a violent end would be for Gabino, an artful, ambitious little boy, a Mexican street child. It is entirely horrible. Abe has no words, no way of dealing with this.
And should he tell Zelda? Such a shadow over their trip, and Zelda tends to be superstitious.
Easy enough not to tell her, Abe decides.
Perhaps she will buy all her silver presents today, thinks Evelyn Fisk. Get it over with and simply not consider presents again. She decides this as a very young, dark, Indian-looking girl approaches her palapa, a girl with lovely, luminous black eyes and terrible teeth, too large for her face, askew, protuberant. But a radiant smile.
Evelyn, whose Spanish is excellent, asks her name.
Lupe.
Evelyn. Eva.
Lupe has a small brown briefcase of silver things, plus the pretty glass necklaces held over her arm. In a random way Evelyn begins to choose. Later she will sort them out, considering their recipients. In the meantime she talks to Lupe.
Is this her first year on the beach selling silver? Evelyn does not believe she has seen her before.
No, Lupe came before with her mother, Carmelita. However, at that time she was still in school for much of the day. Next year Lupe will have for sale tapes, instead of these, and in a deprecating way she indicates her jewels.
Tapes? Evelyn at first does not understand.
Tapes! Music! All kinds of music. All the latest hits. Music, on tapes.
Zelda, passing the palapa of Evelyn Fisk to get to her own, to reach Abe, sees Lupe there with her silver, her bright glass, and on an impulse she stops. She smiles, and by way of greeting to Evelyn she says, “Oh, it’s all so pretty.”
“I’m afraid I’ve been very extravagant.” Evelyn Fisk smiles back. “But I have all these grandchildren. Not to mention daughters.”
“Oh, then you are married.” Zelda had not meant to say this. The words rushed out, unbidden.
“Oh indeed. Very much so. But I need a little time off, now and then.”
“Oh, really.”
“Lupe has been telling me that next year she’ll have tapes for sale,” Evelyn Fisk says firmly, putting an end to further personal conversation.
“You must miss the cats this year,” persists Zelda. Her curiosity has been intensely aroused by this woman, whom she sees close up to be much more interesting-looking than from a distance. For one thing, the white pants, dark shirt, and straw hat that across the dining room look like everyone else’s clothes are actually extremely smart. Unusual. Working within a hotel has taught Zelda something about such distinctions. She knows at a glance which guests at the Harborfront are rich, or European, or from the States, as opposed to Canadians, rich or medium rich, from Ottawa or Calgary. Evelyn Fisk is very rich, and from the States.
“I try not to think about the cats,” says Evelyn Fisk somewhat dismissingly, turning back to Lupe.
Abe, out in the water, has observed Zelda’s arrival at the beach, and he has noted with some surprise her stop at the cat woman’s palapa. He waves, but she probably can’t see him, can’t tell him from any other bather out there in the surf. Nearsighted Zelda is vain about her large dark blue eyes: no glasses. He watches as she settles down with her magazines and lotions in their own palapa, and he thinks, What a pretty woman. He decides again not to mention Gabino.
The quality of that water, in that particular bay, is amazing, extraordinary. Abe concentrates on his sense of the water, its lively, active buoyancy, its blue-green clearness. Its perfectly embracing warmth. It is quite unlike any other water, Abe believes. A unique experience of water.
Up on the beach, Zelda is talking to a young Mexican. A news vendor, but considerably taller than the rest. Abe watches as she buys a paper from this boy. She seems in fact to engage him quite unnecessarily in some sort of conversation; even at this distance, out in the waves, Abe sees them laugh, notes their friendly postures. And he experiences a flush of jealous blood—so ridiculous, a Mexican child. Still, there have been times with Zelda when she has given him good cause for jealousy. If not actual, at least approximate.
With a jaunty wave to Zelda, the boy heads down the beach with his armload of papers, and after a calculated minute or two Abe starts in. Swimming, not riding waves. Until he stands up and begins to wade.
He can see Zelda, now smiling and waving in his direction. It is probably the stripes on his new bathing suit that she recognizes.
What Evelyn Fisk absolutely must not think about, she now reminds herself, is just how Oscar got rid of the cats. No speculations along those lines. None. Never.
There were quite a lot of cats. Several families.
Oscar must have—
Someone must have—
NO.
“Well, of course it was Gabino,” insists Zelda, at lunch, over Abe’s continuing incredulity. “I told you, he wanted to thank you for the shoes. Only he’s outgrown them and he’d like another pair.” She laughs. “Some con man, that kid. I’m sure he’ll go far.”
“I can’t get over hearing muerto,” Abe tells her. “It just seemed so plausible for a kid like Gabino. For really any Mexican kid, these days.”
“But it wasn’t true,” Zelda reminds him. “I keep telling you, he’s fine. Just suddenly looking adolescent, not a cute little boy anymore. With acne, poor guy.”
Abe can less easily imagine Gabino with acne than he was able to imagine him dead.
“Some nerve he has demanding more shoes.” Zelda laughs. And she says again, “He’ll go far.”
“It seems to me that the prawns were better here last year, don’t you think?” Abe recognizes his own reluctance to talk about Gabino as he says this. As Zelda sometimes points out, he tends to avoid issues. A male characteristic, according to Zelda.
She now regards him somewhat narrowly, but she seems willing to leave the topic of Gabino. “Maybe,” she says of the prawns. “I don’t know, it’s all still so beautiful here. I don’t much notice flaws.”
“On the other hand,” says Abe, somewhat later in their meal, “why blame Gabino for trying to get anything he can? Lord knows what his life is like. Where he lives. In what. I may send him three more pairs of shoes. Why in hell not?”
By midafternoon, which is still beachtime for most people, between lunch and their long siestas, the color of the sky is a queer bright ocher, unnaturally intense. And the heavy hot still air is rippled by occasional small spasmodic winds. Out at sea, the color is dark and strange.
No one knows what will happen next.
Many guests start up toward their rooms.
Finding themselves together on the path, Evelyn Fisk and Zelda and Abe all smile, murmuring at the oddity of the weather. Abe insists on carrying Evelyn’s rather large book bag—at which they exchange a small laugh.
Pausing for a moment—the path is fairly steep—they turn, the three of them simultaneously, for a backward look at the menacing sky, the beach.
And down there beside the water is Oscar, striding along as though rain were out of the question, were expressly forbidden by himself.
Evelyn. “He really is dreadful.”
Zelda. “Horrible. I wonder whatever happened to his wife. Remember Marya?”
“Yes, actually I do. Well, it’s not hard to cast him as a sort of Bluebeard.”
Perhaps from some
automatic impulse of male solidarity (women tend to go too far, almost always), Abe demurs. “Well, come on now. But he is a mean S.O.B., that’s for sure.”
At the top of the path he hands Evelyn her books, they separate and go off to their own rooms, to bed.
And then the rains begin. A heavy roar of water, pounding down. Water slapping against the concrete walkways. Attacking the roof like bullets. A ferocious rain, that goes on and on, and on.
Believing Abe to be asleep, Zelda pulls the light blanket from the end of the bed to cover his shoulders and her own. And then, that small wifely task completed, she burrows down, breathing the unexpectedly new cool air. For her the sounds of rain are a summer sound, any winter rains in Toronto being muffled by snow. But of course it is summer down here, a perpetual summer. That’s why they come here.
Zelda then begins to think of a small trip alone somewhere. Maybe to San Francisco. Well, why not? This is something that women do all the time these days. She could get tickets through the agency, and she could see the city, San Francisco! (She notes with some interest that she is not thinking of New York, or Evan.)
Dozing off, Zelda dreams of freedom. Somewhere else.
Beside her, Abe, who is not asleep, is thinking somewhat resentfully of Gabino, who after all could have written a note when he got the shoes. Abe very carefully included his own name and address, both inside and outside the package. A postcard, any sort of acknowledgment would have done. And today he didn’t even wait for Abe to come up from swimming. Surely Zelda would have said that that was where he was.
Or would she?
The intensity of the downpour, the extreme heaviness of that deluge suggests that it won’t last long, the rainstorm. But it seems to go on and on, heavy water pouring from the sky.
It could cause some very bad flooding, Abe thinks next, as he envisions the dry riverbeds, the eroded sloping fields that they pass on their way from the airport to this hotel. And in his mind he can also see a cluster of shacks, the floorless dwellings of the very poor. Small and fragile, hardly shelters at all, precariously perched on the crumbling hillside earth.