I drink for another hour or so, and there’s still no sign of Kafka or Twiggy. The Chief has made contact, however. He calls from reception. He was worried that there might have been a misunderstanding, so he’s brought Rosa on over, and they’re waiting in the lobby.
“Rosa is dying to meet you, Willie,” the Chief says.
“Tell her the dying’s mutual, Chief. I’ll see you in a bit.” Then I go back to my mini-drinking, and eventually Kafka returns solo. He’s even paler than when I left him at the jail. He’s found Twiggy, and from the way he flops down on the bed, she also appears to have broken his heart.
“She’s staying,” he says. “She’s going to take Catholic orders. It’s crazy, Willie. She’s like some other Twiggy now. She says she loves the little orphans and wants to devote her life to them, not to me. Che was over there too,” he says, and if it hurts him, it may hurt me more. “Although he’s not Che anymore. She let the orphans paint over the hood. I don’t know, Willie. It’s got this picture of the Virgin Mary now, but there’s nothing artistic about it. Her nose takes up half her face. It’s just sloppy.”
“It’s your car, Kafka.”
“Not really,” he says. “It’s ALF’s. We all paid for it.”
“Alright,” I say. “Go pack your bags, and I’ll work out something, but we may end up having to introduce ourselves to a cocktail singer named Rosa.”
Kafka manages to lift himself off the bed and slumps off to his room, at which point I figure I don’t have much choice but to go down and face the music, and I mean literally. Rosa and the Chief are sitting over in the waiting area doing some a capella. She’s got two suitcases at her feet, and when the Chief stands to introduce me, she throws herself into my arms. Comes up to about my chest, little Rosa, but what she lacks in size, she more than makes up for in pep. I mean she won’t let go. Gets to jumping up and down with the excitement of it all until I have to press my hands down on her shoulders to settle her a bit. She’s got big bright eyes and a little mouth that shows two front teeth when she smiles, which is more or less permanently. Her black hair’s cut short like a kid’s, but the body’s all cocktail singer, the curves all the more dangerous when they’re packed into five feet.
“We’ve got a little problem, Chief,” I say.
“She doesn’t take up much room,” the Chief says.
“I can see that,” I say. “Problem is, even if she did, we are unfortunately no longer in possession of an automobile to put her in.”
“This is no problem,” the Chief says with a smile as Rosa bounces up and down next to him. “In fact, this is perfect. A cousin of mine, also a cousin of Pepe’s, has a truck for sale. It could be obtained for a good price with the proper connections.”
The Chief, of course, is the proper connection, and the price, to put it mildly, is a handful of Hidalgos too much. Not to mention that the truck is Japanese, which is a fact I’m having trouble with but am choosing to ignore. In any case, it’s how I come to find myself on the Mexican highways accompanied by a lovesick Albanian named Kafka and a five-foot cocktail singer partial to belting out The Sound of Music at passing cacti. Drives me near insane, particularly the little vibrato she does for effect at the end of every phrase. Also she keeps substituting my name into the lyrics of the old favorites, like the all-too popular Heels are Alive with the Sound of Wee-Lee. And she can’t let a motel pass without making propositions in Spanglish to both me and the kid that nearly run us off the road on more than one occasion, and I’m not referring to the little lady’s grammar.
Keeps you on your toes, a little Rosa like this, which can also be a good thing when Kafka’s near comatose with misery, and when driving across the north of Mexico can probably only be surpassed in scenic boredom by one of your larger African deserts. I mean it’s really just dust and these poor serenaded cacti sometimes. Puts that nuclear Armageddon in mind again, a landscape like this, and I spend hours considering whether if the world were ending I’d stop off somewhere with Rosa and do my duty for the propagation of the species or just keep driving and let the world take its chances. By midnight I’ve come to the conclusion that the species was probably overrated anyway, particularly if you consider that it was the species who invented the Japanese truck.
Our first breakdown occurs about three hours north of Mexico City in the middle of nowhere. I pop the hood, and what they’ve got in there looks more like a lawn mower engine. Two cylinders, from what I can see, and we’re firing on one. We’ve passed maybe two sets of headlights in the last hour, and I’m foreseeing a long night of show tunes round the campfire, but Rosa gets out there on the road with her curves on display, and within three minutes we’ve got a traffic jam the likes of northern Mexico has never seen. Three brothers from Monterrey get us moving again and exchange numbers with Rosa, and before dawn the lights of Nuevo Laredo are on the horizon.
We find a cheap flophouse for the night, or at least for what’s left of it. Unfortunately flophouses are the financial state I’ve more or less returned to, even if you count the supposed deduction in Hidalgos I got on the lawn mower for taking Rosa along. In the morning, Rosa goes off to locate her coyote, and Kafka and I go up the street to a bar for a drink. We’ve got our own bottle of tequila and are set up under the awning watching people walk by when he turns to me and speaks for the first time in hours. “Do you think she’s pretty?”
“Twiggy’s a nun now, kid. Interesting to imagine, maybe, but let’s face it – she’s ancient history.”
“I mean Rosa,” he says. “She has a beautiful voice.”
“To each his own, Kafka. You thinking about offering some accompaniment?”
He stares into the bottle of tequila like maybe there’s a worm in there that’ll give him an answer. Then he turns to me and says, “They won’t let me into America.”
“What do you mean?”
“My passport,” he says. “And my visa ran out a year ago.”
“Then what the hell are we doing?”
“I don’t know. Maybe I could talk to Rosa’s coyote. I know America pretty well, I guess. Maybe I could help her out.”
“It’s better than nothing,” I say. “I imagine you’ll have to pay the coyote something, but I do have a few pesos left. I guess half of them are rightfully yours if we choose to ignore what I did to you at the poker table.”
“That was part of the plan,” he whispers.
“If you will recall, Kafka, the plan was for me to lose and you to win. But go on after Rosa, and we’ll work something out.” He downs his drink, and for the first time since he left prison, he’s got some fire in his eyes. He puts his hands to his head to adjust the Charlie Chaplin bowler he’s worn for the trip, and then he’s skipping off down the sidewalk into the distance.
I have another drink and get to watching the locals pass by on their daily business. To tell you the truth, there are quite a few mean-looking characters hanging around. It’s a rougher crowd than you find in Acapulco. Maybe that’s just border life. You come to cross over into the promised land, and then maybe you don’t get the breaks. I can see how it might make you meaner than you intended to be. Maybe you could have made a nice life for yourself back in the pueblo where you came from. Maybe you could have found yourself a señorita, had some kids, maybe planted a little garden out back. But once you’re near the border, I guess it’s tough to settle down. I guess you can’t help but looking off towards that other life you might have had if you were a bit luckier somehow, and I guess that’s what I’m thinking about too. My time is coming to an end again, but I don’t want to say that prayer just yet.
I drink a bit more, and a little while later Kafka comes back with Rosa. He’s brushing his hand up against hers as they walk, and both of them are grinning.
“We got it all worked out,” Kafka says. “We leave tonight.”
“I don’t like goodbyes, kid,” I say, “so I’m heading on. I’ll leave you some pesos in the room. Just remember a full house beats two pair, wh
ich I realize may come as a surprise.”
Kafka grins and shakes my hand. Hell, I’ll catch him down the road sometime. Then Rosa’s insisting on a little goodbye kiss, so I lean down to her face and get a little something supercalafragalistic on the lips which I’m guessing they don’t teach at the conservatory. Then it’s adios to Mexico. Hasta luego, see you soon.
27
I’m already at the border station when it occurs to me that I’m as illegal as Kafka and Rosa. When the uniforms ask me what the purpose of my trip was to Mexico, I start in telling them about Queso and Twiggy and Fernanda and the Chief, stalling for time while waiting on some holy miracle. The uniforms might as well be wearing white suits, however. They’re about that sympathetic. They ask me to step out of the Japanese truck, and a guy with a mirror on a pole starts looking up under it while I assure him it’ll be a shock to me if he manages to find even an engine up in there. I’m done for, I’m thinking, when a big dude who appears to be more senior starts moving towards us, and then I realize I’m really done for. The big dude is Ralph. Somehow the department’s gotten him undercover in a uniform, and he looks so happy to see me that he could just about kill me.
“Guess who,” he says through his teeth, a terrifying grin on his face.
“You got to help me out, Ralph,” I whisper. “I saved my souls, and I promise I’m heading straight back to the extraction point.”
“I’d give my right arm to throw you in jail and lose the key,” he growls.
“Technically you already gave the right arm, Ralph. Indirectly, I mean. Drop a barbell on your head, and that’s one of the unfortunate consequences. Now tell me how we’re getting out of this.”
His jaw goes so tight that he appears to be contemplating eating me. “May I please see your passport, sir?” he growls, loud enough for the other guards to hear. He knows perfectly well I don’t have one, but what I do have is a little gem of a book by a Dutchman named Erasmus, and it just so happens to be in my jacket pocket. I take out the Praise of Folly and hand it over. Ralph, who may or may not be literate, opens it and pretends to look at a page. Then his face contorts like he’s lifting six tons, and then he hands the book back with a nod for his fellow uniforms, who immediately lose interest in me and move to the next car.
“Keep the book, Ralph,” I say. “Given our natures, I realize this may sound crazy, but it’s never too late to get an education.” Then as Ralph mutters something especially ungodly, I hop back into the truck and drive off as fast as I can.
From there it’s just an easy ride over to Corpus Christi and up the coast, all the more easy when you consider that the truck will really no longer clear thirty. At this point I could just as well be working it with a hand pump, but all the same I have to admit that we’ve already been through adventures together, and I’m growing a little fond of the lawn mower. You spend years thinking you’re one of those fellas who’s just naturally made for speed, but then a truck like this comes along and shows you maybe you were nice and easy all along. So I’m cruising along in the emergency lane, waving at the big rigs as they blow past honking their horns. I’m giving out a look through the windshield that I’ve decided to call the Benevolent Elder. It’s just sort of a natural smile, smooth and easy on the edges. “Hi there, neighbor,” the smile says to passersby.
Soon enough I’m pulling into Galveston. Lots of memories there, and hopefully someday I’ll make a few more. Hopefully saving Fernanda will get me back in Saint Chief’s good graces. Of course I’d like to go over and see Caroline a little later. Hell, I’d like to stick around for another morning stack of pancakes at Pete’s, but I know my time is up, and I know they’ll be expecting me back at the Rancho Notorious. They’ll be waiting to beam me up, and so those other mysteries will have to wait until the next case.
One stop, however, it’s my duty to make. I came down as a detective, I had a case to solve. Best dot the i’s and cross the t’s, so to speak, on the off chance I might someday encounter Harry Shore again. Of course that still means getting a Madonna past him. I’ve pulled out the two I’ve still got at just about every rest stop between here and Acapulco and have managed to convince myself that one of them has darker eyes. Kafka wasn’t much help. Said it wasn’t like he painted the eyes exactly the same color every time. So I’m gambling again, taking my chances, which is more or less the story of my life, as well as my death.
Shore greets me at the front door in his wheelchair. He’s dressed in his tight black t-shirt and hasn’t changed a bit, although I guess it hasn’t been all that long since I last saw him.
“You’ve got some explaining to do,” he says, racing me into the living room, where I take a seat on a couch to catch my breath. “Now where the hell have you been?” he says. “When I hired you, I expected to be kept informed.”
“Believe me, Mister Shore,” I say, “my expectations had to be adjusted too. It was quite a ride.”
“The insurance company tells me you stole one of my files,” he says, flexing his arms at his sides like he’ll come at me if he needs to.
“I borrowed one, yes. All part of the investigation. A young man named Darling was a great help.”
“Well this Darling’s been let go,” he says, by which I assume he doesn’t mean released back into the wild. “Sheer incompetence if you ask me.”
I feel for the kid, but if you’re a movie man in the insurance business, I guess sometimes that’s the way it goes. I hope he at least gave Jean a good last line as he walked across that carpet and out the door.
“Well is that her, at least?” he says, looking at the canvas in my hand.
“It most certainly is,” I say, handing her over. “She’s a beauty.”
He takes the canvas and carefully rolls it out in front of him on the coffee table. Then he stares at her for what seems like a month. He studies her scarf, he studies her lips, he studies every corner of this masterpiece painted by either the school of Botticelli or an Albanian kid named Kafka. He studies the eyes longest of all, and then he looks up at me and smiles. I smile too. I mean I really put it out there. I don’t even know what to call it, it feels so good.
“The school of Botticelli,” he says, eyes gleaming with pride. And that’s all. He doesn’t ask about Fernanda, and he wouldn’t know to ask about Lulu. With his painting back, he’s got no further questions, and though I’m tempted to tell him the truth about his girls and their souls, he’s far too gone for that. He was never praying for them. He was praying for himself.
Before leaving, I make him write me out a check for the rest of my expenses, although I don’t guess I’ll ever get around to cashing it. I’ve got enough money to make it till midnight, when I intend to say adios to the Rancho Notorious in style. Tequila for everybody, I’ll be disappearing for a while. In the meantime, however, I’m thinking I’ll pay a little visit to this Galveston hat maker friend of mine who’s principally specialized in lizard skins. What I’m thinking is hand-tooled, hand-stitched, and I’m thinking of calling it The Kid.
Josh Shoemake was born in Richmond, Virginia and lives in Paris and Marrakesh. He taught literature in Tangier, Morocco and was headmaster of The American School of Marrakesh. His website and blog can be found at www.joshshoemake.com.
He is also the author of:
Tangier: A Literary Guide for Travellers
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