“Good lord, it’s the invasion of the body snatchers,” Glo said. “You’re beginning to sound like Buho.” Glo had been looking somewhat blank-eyed herself of late, less ebullient — but the tension of waiting for Cardinal to return with a response from Operación Libertad was causing strain to everyone.
“Without the house keys, he is nothing,” said Benito, who had sidled up to her and was squinting at Halcón over the rims of his glasses. Maggie had succeeded so well in her efforts to befriend him that she had won the role of honourary coconspirator. “He is afraid to be exposed as a fraud; that is why the television was removed. Only he, the usurper, is permitted to hear the radio.”
But Maggie could appreciate Halcón’s point of view: the government had taken a sly offensive, a propaganda blitz intended to divide and discredit Cinco de Mayo. “Let them think we are listening to this nonsense,” he had said.
Glo was standing outside by the table, trying to interest Halcón in a game of casino, but he shrugged her off, still sky-gazing. “There is something going on between them,” Benito said. “I can see this by the way they avoid to look at each other. How can you be sure she is your friend?”
Buho joined them, extending to his uncle a glass of water and two of the pills he was required to take every several hours. Getting them into him was always a task, but they did seem to soothe him.
Benito declined the offering with a brusque shake of his head. “Why always do you follow me?”
“Lo siento, tío,” Buho said with a sigh. Also afflicting him was his burden of disappointment in the martyr of Cinco de Mayo.
Benito called out to Halcón; Maggie could not follow their brief exchange and asked Buho to translate. “My uncle asked, why does not our list of demands include to fire the minister? Halcón responded that it is an excellent idea.”
“He is trying to humour me,” Benito said.
Halcón was studying the sky as if expecting answers to come with the rain. From the south came a tendril of lightning, followed by a throaty low roll of thunder. A gust of wind caused the chimes to tinkle. A flock of parakeets swooped and chattered above the house, then settled onto a tree, battening down for the storm.
“Soon will come another earthquake,” Benito said.
“How can you be sure, uncle?”
“I am cursed with a third eye that sees the future.” He ignored Buho and bent to Maggie’s ear. “They plan to assassinate Jacques Cardinal; I have seen this in my mind’s eye. Did you write in your book that Archbishop Mora is working with the fascists?”
“You are bothering the señorita.” Buho led Benito away, and Maggie lay back in her hammock and picked up her Spanish text. Ana and Carlos go to a restaurant. Qué quiere usted? Huevos revueltos, por favor. Scrambled eggs described her brain; she wondered if there was a translation for a fool in love.
Halcón was standing now, drawing Glo’s attention to a curled grey shape in a balsam tree. What at first appeared to Maggie to be a termite nest revealed itself as a sloth when it began inching along a branch.
She watched it for several minutes; its lethargy induced drowsiness, and soon she fell asleep.
She awoke to grunts of thunder followed by a loud crackle, then a great crashing of cymbals. Rain was falling, slanting in the wind, and the chimes were loudly lamenting. Tayra was moving about the house, sliding shutters closed.
“Leave mine open,” Maggie said.
“You will get sopping wet,” said Tayra. She called to Zorro to help. “You, the lazy one.”
Still disoriented from sleep, Maggie listened to Zorro and Tayra feuding, then sat up and looked outside. The concrete table was deserted, and the wind had spilled the playing cards onto the patio.
“Where are they?” said Buho as he came beside her at the window. “They have been gone for an hour.” It took Maggie a moment to realize he was talking about Glo and Halcón, and then she reacted with concern; she hoped Glo had not dared a risky escape down the river.
The house suddenly began to shake violently, the roof clanging, jars falling from shelves. “Oh, my God,” she exclaimed, concerned that this could be a major shock. She tried to flee the hammock, but her feet became tangled and she fell to the floor. Just as she freed herself, calm returned, and there were only the sounds of chimes and swishing branches.
Buho assisted her to her feet; his face was pale and his words were halting: “This was predicted by my uncle. Do you think it is true that he has a sixth sense? They have truly altered his brain patterns with their tortures.”
As Tayra and Zorro untwisted from their paralyzed embrace beneath the stairs, Maggie went about the house picking up. Benito was sitting on a chair, unworried. She hoped Coyote was safe in his tilting bodega, but she was more concerned about Glo and Halcón. She grasped the wrought-iron grill and looked up into the thick grey sky, waiting, feeling inexplicably numb. The rain became a downpour: a tumultuous hammering on the metal roof that drowned all other sound.
Finally they appeared, racing up the path from the river, both of them laughing, Glo clutching Halcón’s hand but releasing it as they came into view. As Halcón sifted through his keys, Glo composed herself by the doorway; her dress was pasted to her like cellophane wrap.
Inside, they parted with haste that seemed contrived. Glo passed by Maggie without a glance, and walked quickly up the stairs. There were mud streaks on her bottom, on her thighs.
“This rain, it caught us by surprise,” Halcón said as he peeled off his wet shirt. “Did everyone feel the temblor?”
Maggie hastened to the bathroom, feeling nauseated, her body shaking. She put her head under the shower, and let it run cold upon her face. Leaving, she collided with Halcón, who was waiting to change into dry clothes. “Excuse me,” she said, shouldering past his bared brown chest.
Then suddenly everything went blank for her. She whirled on him and swung her hand hard against his face, a slap that cracked like a whip. “You bastard!”
She marched down the hall in a searing rage, pausing only to pick up The Complete Annual Horoscopes from a table and hurl it at him as he stood staring at her, his mouth agape. “You lying shit! Both of you!”
Buho emerged from the kitchen with a plastic pail of slop for the compost. He put it down and extended a restraining hand, but she batted it away, shoved him to the side, picked up the pail, and emptied it on Halcón’s mattress: plate scrapings and grease, pineapple skins and chicken bones cascading over his clean sheets and his maps and papers. She hurled the pail at the wall, and a streak of brown scum splattered across the Star Trek poster.
Benito, still sitting, spoke calmly, “I am sorry, but did I not say? All the time they have been plotting, and now we know they were screwing each other.”
“Shut up!”
“Yes, uncle, please,” said Buho, “you make matters worse.”
She strode up to Buho, fists balled. “You want to get it on with Gloria-May Walker? Go ahead! She’s ready for all comers! Maybe she’ll teach you a few tricks!”
She strode toward Tayra and Zorro, who had been watching raptly from their station by the stairs. “Get the hell out of my way.”
Upstairs, she stood for a few minutes at her door, taking deep breaths. Her world slowly came into focus, but she had only a blurred memory of the last few minutes. She realized her hand was stinging fiercely; dribbles from the compost were running down her legs and arms. Waves of nausea were still rising, and she steadied herself against the wall, willing her head to clear.
She entered Glo’s room to find her taking a deep draw on a cigarette, staring out the window, still in her wet clothes. Glo turned to her startled; a smile froze on her face as she saw Maggie’s sparking eyes. But she pretended nonchalance. “That was a hell of a shake. I did a total Maggie Schneider, fell on my ass into the river. What was all that commotion downstairs?”
She began disrobing. Her bra strap was twisted, a hurried job of dressing.
“You lying, false-hearted slut,” Magg
ie hissed. “Who made the first move?”
“Now, honey, don’t get into a snit.”
“Snit? I’ll show you a snit! I’m livid! You hypocritical bitch!” She banged the window shutters closed so their voices could not be heard below.
“My God, little miss ray of sunshine shows she has a darker side. You are in a most disagreeable lather.”
Maggie fought off an impulse to strike her, kick her, throw her damned stinking ashtray at her. But all her strength suddenly went; she felt sick to her stomach and slumped against the wall. “Damn you. You’re the one who kept saying, ‘Watch yourself.’ ”
Glo took her time to answer, stuffing her wet clothes into a bag, picking up a bath towel. “Because I don’t think you can handle it. I can.”
“You were protecting my innocent heart — what sheer bullshit.”
Glo spoke defiantly. “Damn right I was thinking about you. Nothing else was going to wake you up.”
“Where did you screw him? On that sandbar by the river?”
Glo raised her arms, as if in surrender. “Oh, Christ, I don’t know what came over me; maybe I’ve gone stir crazy. Penned up here for six weeks, even Zorro was starting to look good.” She wrapped the towel around her. “I have to get my head together about it. Let’s talk later. I’m going down for a shower.”
Maggie followed her into the hallway. “You’re nothing but a cheap whore and you always were.” Glo didn’t respond, and Maggie kicked at the doorjamb, sprinted to her own room, and dove onto her bed.
– 4 –
Maggie was unable to sleep that night, or most of the next day, dozing only in fits and starts, jolting awake in confusion, then sitting up and staring blankly outside into the sadness of the rain. Yet another night and day passed like that, the clouds grunting their displeasure, Maggie rarely leaving her room, hugging the window bars, her hair dripping from windblown rain, drops rolling down her nose.
Cutest upturned nose this side of Dixie, Glo had told her. Maggie, y’all are looking more fetching by the day, so tanned and lithe. Glo had ridiculed the notion that Maggie lacked physical appeal, insisted she must grow more confident with men. You’re gorgeous, honey.
She developed a fever, and Tayra tended to her with soups and herb concoctions, not raising embarrassing subjects, maintaining a pretence that Maggie had the grippe.
Benito was her only other visitor. “I am telling you, when two people do not look at each other they are in league. Halcón and his lover, they are scheming to take everything. For a writer, you do not observe well what is going on.” Clairvoyant Benito had been right: How can you be sure she is your friend?
During trips to the bathroom, she would see her fellow inmates of the Darkside staring and whispering. Maggie was not alone in heartbreak; Buho seemed gripped by a powerful depression, his lanky figure huddled over his guitar, an image from Picasso.
The rain finally relented on the third day of her torpor, and by early evening the clouds were dispersing. Her fever had relented and she was even feeling a little sadness lift with the clouds — and then spotted Glo and Halcón slipping off together: walking toward the rear of the house so that they might creep unseen down the river trail.
Maggie lay down and stared at the orange wall. When she next looked out, forty minutes later, they were on the patio, Glo whirling through her routines with elaborate nonchalance, Halcón ignoring her, playing solitaire.
As the clouds began to break apart, there came a brilliant rainbow, arcing over the distant hills from the rose-tinted sky: a scene of such unanticipated beauty that Maggie found herself smiling; it seemed corny, out of a bad movie. A slate-coloured robin trilled for vespers; a red squirrel scampered among the branches of an inflorescent mango tree. She strained to think positively: all beauty had not disappeared from the planet; her wounds were not mortal — she had been forced to come spinning back into the real world, saved from a humiliating emotional disaster.
Then, with a stabbing pain, came his mellifluous voice: You are, to me, a woman not merely of outer beauty but of great inner beauty. How smooth he was, how patronizing; his eyes had always been set on Glo. We cannot allow this to happen. I have problems with my emociones. Bright-eyed, self-deluded Maggie Poppins had dared to think she, not Glo, had caused such problems.
How could she possibly render this sickening true-life twist onto paper? My Highly Embarrassing Story, by Margaret Schneider: the gullible writer of romances, having surrendered her chance for freedom, has the rug pulled from under her by Ms. White Trash of Tuscaloosa. She envisioned people lining up for book signings with smirks on their faces; they had read the hilarious reviews. I just loved the book, the way you let it all hang out.
She should just do that, display her wounds for all to see.
This evening, I am unable to set down my thoughts in rational order. Events have occurred which I am almost incapable of describing. But if I am to be loyal to my readers, I must now admit to a most awkward plight: I am caught up in that state lamented by all those syrupy country songs. I am miserable in love.
Though the issue will no doubt be bruited about, I am not suffering Stockholm Syndrome, that quirky empathy captives feel for their masters. Surely only the weak succumb to such self-enslavement, currying to a protector for safety. What I feel is untainted by any instinct for self-preservation, though it is warped in its own way, misshaped by anger, by powerful feelings of betrayal.
Logic – never mind the stars – had destined what was unthinkable, unrealizable, to end in heartbreak. It was a love that should never have been, could never have been consummated. I have to swallow that, but it is a bitter tonic nonetheless, and I can only pray that the jolt of recent awareness will help repair mind and heart.
How damnably fickle is friendship …
Maggie stowed her notes as the door opened and Glo peeked in, grimacing. “Upe. Can I come in?”
“If you must.”
Glo closed the door behind her, and lay back on Maggie’s bed and shut her eyes. “Sorry.”
“I’ll survive.” For a few minutes Maggie played with her pen, waiting for Glo to state her business, but finally broke the silence. “It’s the callousness, the deceit, acting as though he didn’t interest you in the least.”
“At first he didn’t, not at all. I thought he was a phony snob, a dilettante playing a game of Robin Hood. When he turned out to be a gambler by the name of Johnny Diego, it just hit me what a damn classy character he really was. What a hustle, what a brilliant play, conning the Popular Vanguard like yokels at a carnival.”
“I suppose it’s been going on for a while.”
“We thought we were just teasing each other. I don’t know what happened. That earthquake … Honey, the earth actually moved; it was too profound. I’m real sorry, baby. I didn’t know how to break it to you.” Another harsh silence fell between them. “I rationalized. I told myself I was saving you from the heartbreak he would cause you.”
“I’m toying with putting it in the book. Or do you want me to hide your dirty laundry?”
“Spill it all. You know what? I don’t care. You have to write the truth because that’s the way you are: honest. You’re a heap of work, honey. You’re so damn guileless and generous and straight, so fucking good and loving, that I want to scream. What’s with this broad, I ask myself. I, on the other hand, am not an honest woman – write that.”
“Good, I want to.”
“Go ahead, I’ll take it as a favour — Chuck won’t get to be president and I’ll never have to be first lady. Can you see me serving tea in the White House to the Pro-life Ladies’ Guild of Podunk, Oklahoma? Hobnobbing with bank presidents and slumlords at fundraisers?”
“Then that’s what you deserve. I don’t feel good or loving; I’m angry and I’m jealous. I had a chance to leave here; I didn’t because I was worried about you, I cared for you.”
“I truly am sorry, sweetheart.”
“I’d like to be alone.”
Chu
rning dreams scattered as Maggie was woken by an altered pitch in the night: an approaching sound, low and guttural. Sitting up, she saw headlights blinking through the trees: the white delivery van, Gordo at the steering wheel, alone.
Muffled voices came from below, then she heard the clank of keys and saw shadowy forms on the patio: Halcón’s crew carrying bags to the truck.
Now she heard Halcón and Tayra conversing outside her door. She opened it, and was able to make out Tayra descending the stairs, Halcón clinking his keys. “It is time,” he said.
“Why is it so dark?”
“I have cut the power. We are abandoning the Darkside for the Caribbean coast. Are you feeling well enough to travel?”
Maggie just shrugged.
Outside, Zorro was pumping air into mattresses with a foot pedal, then throwing them into the back of the truck. However tempted she was to ride off on one of those mattresses, she knew that if she remained in the pull of Halcón’s gravity she would crash again.
“I will leave while you get dressed.”
“Come in for a minute.”
He hesitated, then entered.
“I won’t be going with you, Halcón.”
“I do not blame you for being angry at me.”
“I’m more angry at myself.” She sat on the edge of the bed.
“This is not how you planned to write it.”
“Actually, I haven’t got the ending figured out yet. This isn’t fiction; I can’t control reality. I can only hope for you, Halcón. I’ll even pray for you — though I’m not that firm a believer.”
She felt the bed shift as he sat at its end. “I believe. The universe is too strange and wonderful to have happened by accident. There must be meaning; otherwise there is nothing to hang on to, only anarchy. What am I carrying on about? Have I heard you right? Of course you must come.”
“I will stay here, Halcón.”
He sighed. “But you would not be alone; Benito Madrigal must also stay. He needs medical help. That cannot be denied.”
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