Outside the Gates of Eden

by Lewis Shiner

  The name did its magic and the violinist’s smile became genuine. «I didn’t think he was teaching anymore.»

  «Alejandro here,» Cole said, «is his nephew.»

  The guy who played the full-sized guitar pointed to La Pelirroja. «That’s one of his guitars, no?»

  «They both are,» Cole said. He held out La Pelirroja. «Please, try it.»

  They went a couple of rounds, the guitarist demurring, Cole insisting, and finally he took it and played a few chords. «Maravillosa,» he said.

  Alex made a ten-dollar bill appear on the table in front of the violinist. «Maybe,» Alex said, «you could play something for us? Do you know ‘Perfidia’?»

  By the time they were done, Alex had tried out the guitarrón, Cole had acquitted himself respectably on the requinto, the manager of the restaurant had joined them, beer had been served to the mariachis on the house, all the other diners on the patio had turned their chairs toward their table, and the party had spilled out into the surrounding plaza. The musicians told stories between numbers and pulled out songs they’d never played together—Argentine tangos, sones jorochos from Veracruz, Bolivian música folclórica, polkas, Cuban habaneras. Plates of food arrived without explanation, followed by more beer. Then the tan-uniformed mariachis with the eagles on their backs showed up, and at one point Cole counted 23 musicians playing “De qué manera te olvido” at the same time, and at least that many more voices singing along, the loudest, most beautiful thing Cole had ever heard, louder and more beautiful than the Mass at the Cathedral de San Diego, than Dylan at Moody Coliseum, a noise that was surely keeping people awake all up and down the surrounding hills, and he hoped they were loving it as much as he did, and if they weren’t, well, that was all right too.

  At two am he and Alex stumbled home, arms around each other’s shoulders, guitars waving in their free hands, singing the chorus of “Cielito lindo” over and over again. The song was still playing in Cole’s head when he finally passed out, fully dressed, in his bed.

  *

  Though Cole would rather have stayed in Guanajuato, he kept his feelings to himself when the whole family, three generations worth, took a bus to San Miguel de Allende the next afternoon. They checked in for two nights in the Hotel La Morada downtown, taking over most of a floor. The women spent hours in the market shopping for handcrafted jewelry, and the men sat around cafes and bars and got into conversations with the locals. Cole had brought La Pelirroja and spent most of his time on a bench at the edge of the Jardín Allende, the park in the center of town. Alex, restless, came and went, from the market to the bars to Cole’s park bench.

  The architecture was more Spanish than Guanajuato’s, full of wrought iron and tile and arches. The landscape was flatter and drier and the colors ran to browns and tans. The streets and shops were full of expats from the US, painters and sculptors and poets in ragged clothes and long hair, hanging out with each other and speaking English in loud voices.

  They returned to Guanajuato on the 28th, and Cole and Alex went out that evening with their guitars. It was a Wednesday and the town was hushed, as if recuperating from the excess of the holidays. Álvaro’s mariachis were elsewhere, and Cole and Alex didn’t get as much of a crowd when they played on the steps. When they finished and the rest of the audience moved on, the two gringo girls lingered expectantly. The one with the straight brown hair wore an embroidered sundress and the black-haired one wore a pleated dress in white cotton, very low cut. Cole, not wanting to be rude, and ignoring his better judgment, asked in Spanish if they wanted a beer.

  “Cerveza?” said the one with black hair. “Sure. I mean, sí.”

  “Would you rather speak English?” Cole asked her.

  “Only if you want us to understand you,” she said, giving him that I-dare-you smile again. “Of course you lose your mysterious Latin charm when you do.”

  Cole nodded seriously. “It’s a dilemma.”

  “Maybe,” Alex said, “we could speak English with a really bad accent, and you could pretend.” He was looking at the brown-haired girl, who laughed at him behind her long fingers, a trace of hysteria in her eyes. Just like that, Cole saw, they had paired off. The thought alarmed and enticed him in equal parts.

  They sat at an outdoor table and Alex ordered Bohemia. The black-haired girl was named Sharon and the other was Debbie. Freshman roommates at Swarthmore, here by themselves, flying home the next day. “Our parents are all in Gstaad together,” Sharon said, “so I wrote a check on Daddy’s bank account. I don’t imagine he’ll notice.”

  Alex had taken the lead, and before Cole could stop him he’d spun an elaborate story where Cole was half Mexican and Alex was a Guanajuato native, cousins who’d known each other from birth. Cole, according to the story, had been supporting himself as a musician in Dallas since he graduated from high school two years before.

  Cole was not sure that either girl fully believed it. The important thing was that it slotted into the fantasy that they were clearly in search of. They hadn’t been at the table for an hour when Sharon looked at her watch and said, “Can you walk us to our hotel?”

  «Claro que sí,» Alex said.

  They stood up. Cole, despite his difficulty concentrating, knew that he should beg off. He also knew that if he did, and it ruined Alex’s chances, Alex would never forgive him. The sight of Sharon’s cleavage had scrambled his neurons.

  Cole and Sharon took the lead. When Cole looked back, he saw that Alex had his arm around Debbie’s waist.

  At the hotel, Sharon said, “Can you walk us up? The light’s out on the stairs.” As they climbed, Cole heard Debbie giggle. At the end of the hall, Sharon unlocked the door and walked in, leaving the door open. Cole had no option but to follow.

  The room was spacious, two oversized twin beds, illuminated only by the light from the street. Cole saw a slip thrown on the dresser, a pair of panties on the floor, the tangle of unmade sheets, and his resistance began to boil away.

  Sharon turned and faced him, smiling expectantly. Cole took a step toward her, then one more, watching her lips open and her head tilt back. Behind him, the door closed and the lock snapped shut.

  He leaned his guitar against the wall and kissed her. The dark mass of her hair smelled of lavender. He’d always associated the scent with the elderly, though at the moment he found it overwhelmingly erotic. Her mouth opened under his and her hands moved over his body. Cole found buttons on the back of her dress and undid the top two without conscious intent. Then somehow he had undone them all and she stepped away to let the dress fall to the floor.

  Underneath, she wore a sturdy bra and a girdle with legs that extended down her thighs. It was a garment that Cole had never had to contend with before. She unhooked the bra and cupped her breasts in her hands. “You like?” she said.

  Cole nodded and stepped in again.

  “What do you call them in Spanish?” she whispered, taking the lobe of his ear in her teeth.

  Cole’s brain was out of service. He was fifteen square feet of epidermis, acutely sensitive to anything that touched him, from his clothes to her lips to the pressure of her naked breasts against his shirt. Still he understood the fantasy she wanted. «Las pechugas,» he said, running his tongue over the nipples. «Tetas. Chichis.»

  “Mmmmmmmm,” she said, and pulled him toward the nearest bed. Cole began shedding his clothes as she squirmed out of her girdle and panties. He could hear Alex and Debbie in the other half of the room and he didn’t care. He continued to murmur in Spanish, «Qué linda, qué guapa,» as he climbed into the bed.

  She was a vigorous and athletic partner and Cole let her call the shots. He held out for a good long while, slowing things down when he had to, but finally he erupted inside her as she straddled him, pumping hard. She slowly collapsed on top of him, pinning him to the mattress.

  As the floodtide of hormones slowly receded, guilt and claustrophobia took their place. He gently rolled Sharon onto her side and stroked her hair. Inside
he was in complete turmoil, unable to believe what he’d done. Alex was still going at it in the next bed. Cole didn’t want to see. The smell of lavender was overwhelming, nauseous. He forced himself to smile and give Sharon a lingering kiss. «Qué rico, qué lindo,» he told her. She was still smiling, happily, he thought. She got up on one elbow and looked at what was going on in the other bed, her eyes crinkling with silent laughter. Cole wanted nothing more than to be out of that room so that he could begin to forget what he’d done. Alex grunted, a barely human sound, and the bedsprings slowed to a stop.

  When Sharon had seen enough, she lay down next to Cole, with one hand resting lightly on his chest. They lay there in silence for a couple of minutes while Alex and Debbie disentangled themselves, then Sharon kissed Cole on the forehead and said, “We’ve got a very early day tomorrow. You boys need to run along now and let us get some sleep.”

  *

  They were dressed and gone in ten minutes. Cole made a perfunctory effort to get last names or a phone number or address, to which Sharon said, “Maybe we’ll meet again somewhere in the world. We’ll leave it to fate.” As she closed the door on them, Cole heard stifled laughter.

  Disheveled, carrying their guitars under their arms, he and Alex descended the stairs and exited into the chilly streets of Guanajuato. “That,” Alex said, “was my definition of a perfect evening.” When Cole didn’t answer, he said, “What the hell’s eating you?”

  “This didn’t happen,” Cole said.

  “It sure felt like it happened to me. Hallelujah, at last. And don’t tell me you weren’t into it. We were watching you two after we finished. It looked like a stag movie over there. It got Irene so hot and bothered we had to do it again.”

  “Irene?”

  “Yeah, she told me her real name, you know, in between. This whole thing was her friend’s idea, the seduction, the fake names, kicking us out after.”

  “Sharon’s not her real name?”

  “She wouldn’t tell me what Sharon’s real name was. Said she’d be pissed enough that Irene had told me her own name. What’s wrong with you, Cole? You thinking about Janet? You sure didn’t seem to be thinking about her half an hour ago.”

  “Well, I feel like shit now.”

  “Listen to me.” Alex stopped in the street and Cole turned to look at him. “We’ve got talent. You more than me. Girls like those two tonight, they’re just part of the reward for the long fucking hours we have worked at this. Hours when Janet was watching tv or trying on clothes or talking on the phone with her friends or whatever the hell she does. Entiendes? She doesn’t have to know about it, any more than how much we get paid for a gig or whether we get free Cokes or not.”

  “You sound like Raskolnikov.”

  “And you sound like somebody’s grandmother. Jesus Christ. Nobody got hurt, no consequences or entanglements. Those girls got to live out a harmless fantasy that they can tell all their friends about when they get back to Bryn Mawr—”

  “Swarthmore. Or was that a lie too?”

  “Swarthmore, Bryn Mawr, what’s the difference? Everybody had a great time. Except you, apparently.”

  They walked on in silence. Cole felt at odds with Alex on top of a post-coital hollowness that he’d never experienced with Janet. Back at the house, Cole took a hot bath to get the smell of lavender out of his nose. To his shame, he was aroused by the lingering essence of sex on his genitals and the memory of the girl’s wild stare in the twilit hotel room.

  1967

  “Tell the truth,” Janet said. “Did the Mexican girls fall all over you?”

  Their table was covered with a red-and-white checked cloth and a spattering of candlewax. The sign outside said The Egyptian Restaurant, though everybody called it Campisi’s. Despite the unassuming façade in a strip of run-down businesses on Mockingbird Lane, it was famous throughout Texas for the quality of its Italian cuisine and the rumors that it was a mob hangout. Cole, in blazer and tie, was trying for a little class on his first night back.

  “Au contraire,” Cole said. “It’s completely Catholic down there, and the girls are all vacuum-sealed until their wedding nights.” So far his only lies had been of omission. He had filed Sharon, or whatever her name really was, in the category of lessons learned, a locked room from which she only escaped for occasional late-night guilty reminiscences. Tonight, with Janet pressing the length of her lower leg against his, in full makeup and perfume, the top three buttons of her blouse undone, Cole couldn’t imagine ever wanting anyone else.

  He talked about their triumphant night with the mariachis, high again in the telling, and skipped the slow decline of the rest of the trip. He’d kept his distance from Alex for a couple of days after the business with the girls, playing guitar by himself on the patio and taking walks on his own. Then on New Year’s Eve they’d had another sing-along with Jesús and the family, and that had melted away the last of his annoyance. He and Alex had gone out on the town together the last two nights with their guitars and no further trouble had found them.

  As Cole held the door for her on the way out, she looked up at him through her eyelashes and said, “We can skip the movie if you want.”

  Cole had fitted out the hearse with a double air mattress and blankets against the January cold. Once they were parked in their usual spot and had moved to the back, Cole took one last look past the curtains and then took a small foil package out of his jacket pocket. His hands had a slight tremor as he opened it and showed it to Janet.

  “Is that what I think it is?”

  “Direct from Mexico,” Cole said, “at considerable personal risk.”

  The risk had been Alex’s. Cole had known nothing until they were in Dallas and Alex had shown him a half-dozen joints that he’d bought from Álvaro on the sly. “Are you insane?” Cole had said. “They could have thrown us all in jail for the rest of our lives.”

  Alex had shrugged it off. “We’re rich. They never look at our bags. And to tell you the truth, I dug bluffing my way through customs. It was a rush.” He’d given the fattest one to Cole. “Turn Janet on with this.”

  Cole’s initial reluctance had broken down when he thought about the load his conscience was carrying and how the dope might help.

  “You ever done it before?” he asked Janet.

  She shook her head, wide-eyed, the way she got when she was excited. This was bad boy stuff, like Woody’s motorcycle, and Cole saw that he had scored major points.

  They smoked it down, Cole taking small sips and letting Janet have the deeper hits. When it began to burn his fingers, he tried to snuff it the way Álvaro had and ended up with a hot coal stuck to his thumb. Janet wet her fingers and extinguished it before it did serious damage, and Cole swallowed the roach.

  Once the evidence was gone, Cole’s paranoia receded and he was able to concentrate on Janet’s finger, which was still touching his right hand. It moved slowly around the edges of his forefinger, then traced the abbreviated contours of his scarred middle finger. In the near-darkness her eyes shone with concentration. “Wow,” she said. “I like this.”

  Cole liked it too. The world had narrowed to a few cubic feet and each moment seemed bounded and discrete. In one of them, his finger touched the velvet skin over her collarbone. In another they both leaned forward, about to kiss.

  *

  Their first Studio Club gig was January 27, a Friday. Cole parked the hearse on Sherry Lane in front of the club at 6:25.

  Alex said, “Aren’t we supposed to park in the alley?”

  “I’ll move it if they tell me to,” Cole said. “I want everybody to see the name.” He and Alex had painted the band logo across the rear window the previous weekend.

  Mike and Gary had already arrived and they all began unloading the equipment. The club occupied a two-story space in Preston Center, the high-toned shopping village with Sanger-Harris and Preston Record Center, on the northern edge of University Park. University Park was where the rich smu professors lived, and it mer
ged into Highland Park, the old money part of Dallas. The Studio Club was appropriately ritzy. Red velvet curtains, a balcony, tiny tables around the edge of the dance floor. Jackets and ties required for boys, dresses for girls. The bar sold only Cokes, and the kids who did smuggle in a flask or an airline bottle knew to play it very cool.

  Band morale was high. Wednesday had been their first rehearsal in nearly a month, and everything had clicked so well that they’d worked up a couple of brand new songs, the Buckinghams’ “Kind of a Drag” and “Let’s Spend the Night Together” by the Stones. The Studio Club was a top-forty place, and they’d packed the list with hits.

  They’d updated their stage outfits, keeping only the blue blazers. Cole was in a black shirt with nickel-sized blue polka dots and a tie to match that he’d found at Penney’s, and Alex had a red shirt and black tie that made him look diabolical. Mike had a paisley button down with no tie and Gary wore a black turtleneck.

  They carried the gear through the foyer and across the dance floor to the long, narrow stage. Emptied out, with the high ceilings and the velvet and the chandeliers, the place looked like a whorehouse set from a Western movie. Cole was wearing his Fryes, as always, and they banged like gunshots on the hardwood dance floor.

  Gary ended up front and center because the stage wasn’t deep enough to put him in the back. The rest of them stood directly in front of their amps. Fortunately Cole’s amp didn’t come up past his knees, or he would have been deaf before the night was out.

  They set their own levels, with the help of Alex listening from the middle of the room and playing through an extra-long patch cord, and when they were satisfied, Cole switched his amp to standby and put the guitar on its stand. Gary was still stamping on his bass drum. “Do you hear that?” he asked Cole.

  “Sounds fine to me,” Cole said.

  “No, man, listen.” He stomped again. “Listen to the sound of this room. The acoustics are amazing.”