by Grant Buday
“You like my parrots?”
They smiled.
Cyril judged that all three were in their late teens. He wasn’t sure, but the eldest might be married, for he’d seen her with a baby. He dreaded the thought of Gilbert scoring with Remedios. It would make him unbearable, cock-walking around, that maddening self-confidence bolstered yet again. Cyril tried ignoring it all by focusing on his drawing, a man in a straw hat with two long strings of garlic bulbs slung over his shoulders. His face was in shadow, his straw hat frayed, his hands long and sinewy. Hunched over his work detailing the fibres of the hat, Cyril couldn’t ignore the three shadows that suddenly darkened the pale sandy dirt. He looked up. The girls stood at a respectful distance, intrigued by what he was drawing but too polite to intrude. He held it up. They murmured.
Remedios nodded and said that the garlic seller’s name was Angel. Ang hell.
Cyril wrote the name at the bottom of the page.
Gilbert approached, grinning, proprietorial, as if to gather up his harem.
“You can draw me?” Remedios asked.
Cyril could see the pride and yet hesitation in her manner. Her long black hair framed her face as if she was peeking through dark curtains. She was risking rejection. But why would he draw Angel the garlic seller and not her? “Okay.”
“Bueno.”
The women turned to leave.
“When?” asked Cyril.
“Tomorrow.”
“Here?”
She waved her forefinger side-to-side and clucked her tongue once. “No. My house.”
Cyril and Gilbert watched the girls depart. Gilbert wasn’t angry or jealous at Remedios’ interest in Cyril. He was so genuinely surprised it was as if they’d witnessed a quirk of culture, on par with the Chinese regarding live monkey brains as a delicacy.
Cyril showed up at Don Antonio’s the next morning at ten, shaved, showered, in a shirt still damp from having washed it at dawn. Don Antonio Smolenski’s house was simultaneously elegant and haphazard. Some walls were wood, some breeze block, others palm thatch. Parts of the roof were baked ceramic tiles and others corrugated aluminum sheeting. The fence was cement with broken glass on top, though there were gaps big enough to step through. Dogs howled heralding Cyril’s approach.
Remedios met him at the gate, which had a leather strap for a hinge and was flanked by two cement dolphins heavily pitted by the wind-blown sand. Just inside the gate were two enormous nopal cacti on which were snagged scraps of paper, shreds of cloth, and hen feathers. Two carved wooden chairs waited in the dirt courtyard where chickens pecked and laundry dripped. Remedios was wearing a lemon yellow dress that tucked tightly under her bosom and fell to just below her knees. The collar, cuffs, and hem were black ruffles and the buttons on the bodice were copper coins.
“Que linda,” he said.
She nodded and then sat in one of the chairs, crossing her legs and presenting him a three-quarter view.
“Don’t make her too beautiful,” said Don Antonio, joining them. He was barefoot and bare-chested and smoking a cigar. “It will go to her head.”
“Papa,” she scolded.
The older man directed a look at Cyril that was an appeal for sympathy as well as a warning to him to behave himself, then he turned and departed, smoking his cigar.
Cyril got busy with his pad and pencils and then positioned the other chair. Then he stepped closer, studying her. It seemed strange that she kept so much of her face hidden within the curtains of her hair. He reached out—she flinched. He hesitated, looked at her, and slowly, with his forefinger, folded her hair back behind her ear: and that’s when he discovered her scar. It ran like a thin, pale, upturned sickle from the corner of her right eye to the edge of her right nostril. It wasn’t huge or even unsightly, rather it was dramatic and intriguing.
She turned to the left, giving him a full view. In a hard voice she asked, “Do you like my mark?”
“Muy bonita. How did you get it?”
“A duel. With my sister Magdalena. We were twelve. She insulted me.”
“You insulted me,” came a voice.
Magdalena’s face appeared in the window of a blue cement wall nearby. Some rapid Spanish was exchanged, then Magdalena went away.
“She is a bitch.”
“You are a bitch,” came the retort, this time from another window.
“She is my best friend in the world,” called Remedios.
“You are my life!” cried Magdalena.
“You have family?” Remedios asked Cyril.
He described his family and she regarded him with what might have been a smile.
She called him Señor Picasso. “Mi ojas aqui,” she said, indicating her eyes in their proper places, “no ahi,” she added, indicating the side of her head.
“Su ojas muy bonita,” he said.
“Y usted muy guapo.”
“Gracias.”
“Are you famous?” she asked.
He barked a laugh. “No.”
She frowned. “Why not?”
He was about to say he was young, but he was ten years older than her.
“Are you rich?”
“Do I look rich?”
“Are you a hippie?”
“No.”
“Of course not,” she said with deep satisfaction, “hippies are godless drug addicts. You are an artist.”
On the day Cyril showed the finished portrait the entire family gathered. He’d managed to find a sheet of window glass, have it cut to size, framed it with thin strips of split bamboo on a panel, and presented himself at noon Sunday in a white shirt that he had not only washed but pressed by laying his Da Vinci book on it and weighing it down with bricks.
Don Antonio Smolenski, his wife Josefina, married daughter Conchita and her husband Fidel and their two daughters, plus Magdalena, Palma, Esmerelda, Gustavina, and Remedios were all present. The unveiling took place in the yard with the hens and dogs and a table laid with a white cloth and a buffet of goat and fish and chicken served in platters and bowls and pots all of baked red clay. No such ceremony had accompanied the drawing of don Antonio himself. At one point Remedios appeared at Cyril’s side and hip-checked him lightly and whispered, “Tranquilo.”
Still, when he slid the pillowslip from the portrait everyone, including Remedios, was silent. During this silence Cyril’s heart thumped so ominously that he wondered what his chances were if he had a stroke here in such a small town. His gaze moved from person to person starting with Don Antonio and ending with Remedios. She was expressionless. Then, as though returning from an out-of-body experience, her lidded eyes blinked and the corners of her mouth curled upward in a smile and she nodded. “Muy bueno. Mucho gusto.” Don Antonio shook his hand then poured drinks.
During the ten days Cyril had worked on the portrait, Gilbert had continued amassing birds. He now had twelve parrots, a few large and wrinkled, most small and green, three toucans, three macaws, and half a dozen brilliantly coloured creatures whose names he couldn’t get straight. The rainy season was approaching, and the next step was to arrange the transport and deal with the paperwork, tasks involving tortured discussions with various officials of vague authority. Cyril, whose Spanish was better, accompanied him.
“You must pay the mordida,” one sympathetic jefe informed the gringos with a deep sadness at such a state of affairs as he held out his hand for money.
Gilbert rated himself too worldly to be shocked, and informed Cyril that was the price of doing business when he borrowed yet more money from him. So absorbed was Gilbert in the complexities of his project that he had forgotten about biting Remedios’ ass and was indifferent to how close Cyril was getting. Remedios had taken to passing by their hut two and three times a day on her way to and from the market, nodding and occasionally deigning to converse.
Don Antonio sent a message inviting Cyril for a talk. Smolenski’s study was not an example of baronial splendour, but it did aspire. The floor was made of broad planks of oi
led mahogany, there were blue and white ceramic candlesticks in the shape of nymphs, there were sea shells the size of footballs, a rack of pool cues though no pool table, an old clock, black and white photographs dating to 1880s Krakow, one showing a boy on the shoulders of a man in front of a small stone church. Smolenski indicated that Cyril should sit in the chair matching his own. They were carved wood and cracked leather, with ball and claw feet and high backs. Between them was a three-legged table on which sat a decanter of smoky liquor and two small glasses with gold trim. Smolenski poured, raised his glass, “Nostrovia amigo,” drank it in one go then set the glass down with a rap. Cyril dutifully followed. He managed not to gag even though it felt he’d gulped a burning coal directly from a forge. Smolenski gazed out the glassless window. The sea glittered in the late afternoon sun. His eyes were half shut as though he was either falling asleep or meditating on some deep subject. Eventually the old man directed his formidable attention upon Cyril. “You love her?”
Cyril stared at the seamed and striated face so bluntly confronting him. The nostrils were long and dark and the whites of the blue eyes as yellowed as old piano keys. Cyril found himself nodding.
“She loves you.”
Again Cyril nodded.
Smolenski refilled their glasses and again they drank. He pointed to the oldest photograph, “My great great-grandfather as a child.”
Cyril nodded a third time. He tried imagining the journey of that boy from Poland to Mexico and the many crises and adventures that must have occurred en route. What had made him leave? What had made him choose Mexico? Or had it all been an accident, a stumble from one side of the world to the other? Cyril looked at the decanter on the table. “What is this stuff?”
“Mezcal.”
It tasted like motor fuel.
“There won’t be much dowry,” warned Smolenski. “There are four sisters.”
Cyril swallowed.
“A small house. A small piece of land. Goats. A boat. It leaks but you can fix it. You can work with wood?”
“Yes.”
“Good. And you can do your other work. Your real work.”
Cyril saw what was being presented: a life with a beautiful woman in a beautiful place where he could pursue his work. He settled into his chair and shut his eyes feeling a deep relief. He thought of Gilbert and his birds, of his mother and the cemetery, and of Paul and his numbers, and all the while the mezcal warmed his blood and his heart beat to the tick of the old clock and his gratitude was immense. I’m here, he thought, I’ve arrived. When he opened his eyes he turned to Don Antonio Martin Smolenski and with great solemnity put his right hand over his heart and said, “You do me a great honour, but I cannot marry Remedios.”
Smolenski frowned.
Cyril stood.
“Is it her scar?”
“No. She’s beautiful. I’m sorry. I have to go.”
He didn’t go straight back to their hut but walked off along the beach, hands deep in his pockets and shoulders hunched. The sun was setting and birds shrilling in the jungle. The waves washed up the shore and then hissed back down leaving the sand seething. His mind was blank, stunned, as though deafened by an explosion. A wind gusted up and while it kept the evening rush of mosquitoes at bay it spat sand in his face. He didn’t care, he kept walking.
Long before he returned he heard Gilbert’s shouting and saw parrots swirling into the red sky and burning pages tumbling past. There was Gilbert chasing back and forth. He lunged and missed and fell to his knees and stayed there, exhausted, defeated. Cyril didn’t even take his hands from his pockets. He watched his scorched drawings scud away into the night. Resting a consoling hand on Gilbert’s back he tried to think of something to say but no words came.
Gilbert had plenty to say the next morning on the bus north.
“It’s your fault.”
“I’m sorry.”
“You could have bit her ass.”
Cyril nodded.
“What’s his nuts liked you,” said Gilbert, a bewildered emphasis on the word liked.
“Yup.”
“Fucking up your stuff, okay, I get it, you insulted him, but why screw me around?”
Cyril felt bad.
Gilbert leaned his head in his hands.
Gazing out the window at the green wall of gnarled and impenetrable jungle sliding past, Cyril wondered what lived in there? Snakes, bugs, lizards? Maybe some of Gilbert’s birds?
They flew from Puerta Vallarta to Los Angeles. Cyril had enough money left for one bus ticket to Vancouver. He gave it to Gilbert.
Calmer now, Gilbert said no, they could hitchhike.
Cyril insisted. “Go. Please. I owe it to you. Besides, I need some time.”
Gilbert studied him. “You’re an idiot.”
“I’d say we’ve pretty much established that fact.”
“Does she know you’re coming?”
Cyril shook his head.
“My idea was sound,” said Gilbert, meaning his birds. “It was.”
“There’s real money there.”
“You can try again,” said Cyril.
They shook hands.
Wrought iron letters were bolted to a troweled arch that opened onto a quadrangle of parked cars, withered shrubs, and long-stay motel rooms. At each corner ravaged palm trees looked as though they’d been used for target practise. Some sort of flying beetle motored past his face and struck a lamp pole, reeled and then continued on. He assembled the facts: at the age of seventeen Connie had known what she wanted and had gone after it; she’d dumped him twice and now here he was about to knock on her door, an act of admirable tenacity or foolish thickheadedness. But he reminded himself that he was merely passing through town and popping in to say hello, which was the truth, sort of. He turned around. A panhandler sat cross-legged on the sidewalk; Cyril turned and faced the motel. He’d phoned but there’d been no answer, he’d written from San Vicente but never heard back. A hint? A sign? Or merely the Mexican postal system?
Scanning the second floor he spotted room 209 at the far end. His mouth was dry and his pulse pounded. Los Angeles was gritty and arid in contrast to the syrupy humidity of San Vicente. There was the racket of radios and car horns instead of the cries of gulls and throbbing of cicadas. He’d bought her a bracelet of Taxco silver, no big deal, a token, and he touched his shirt pocket reassuring himself it was still there and then reminding himself that she probably wasn’t home anyway—who was home on a Wednesday afternoon? He’d slip the bracelet under the door with a note, or maybe without a note, just let it lie there mysterious and intriguing, and when they next met, for they would meet, of that he had no doubt, he could ask her casually about her silver bracelet and tell her the story of how he took a trip from the Mexican coast up into the mountains to Taxco with its steep streets and silversmiths and bought it for her.
Leaving Connie’s, Cyril dropped the bracelet into the panhandler’s hat. At the end of the street two guys stepped from some bushes wielding sharpened pencils.
“Fuckin’ pay up, cocksucker.”
Cyril raised his hands palms outward. “I haven’t got anything.”
“Fuck you, pay up.” The mugger was lean and sunburned and grubby and his nose was running. He wiped his forearm across his upper lip then thrust the sharpened pencil upward like a knife fighter. Cyril stepped back. The other guy was big though swaying as if drunk. He made an overhand stab. Cyril raised his arm and fended off the blow and the guy stumbled past on his own momentum. The other thrust again but the pencil slid between Cyril’s ribs and elbow and Cyril found himself nose-to-nose with him, his arm clamped under his own. The guy smelled of pee and sweat. A moment passed during which neither knew what to do. Then Cyril hoistedupward on the guy’s arm hyper-extending his elbow. The guy howled and stood on his toes. They stayed this way, as if in some strange dance. The one yipping while his partner got up and advanced.
Cyril hoisted higher. “I’ll break his arm.”
The littl
e one shrieked and the other halted.
“Get going,” said Cyril, and held on until the big guy was down the street by the panhandler who was just sitting there watching. The big mugger halted and said something to him—then grabbed the guy’s hat and ran. Cyril released the little guy, who dropped to his knees cradling his arm.
“I should have stayed in San Vicente,” said Cyril.
“What? Are you fucking nuts?”
“I must be,” he admitted.
He’d looked through a gap in the slats of Connie’s venetian blinds and seen that they were shooting a film—there was a cameraman and a sound man—and there was Connie in bed with two men, one black, one white.
THREE
CYRIL ACCOMPANIED GILBERT to the cab depot where he met Lemuel, the dispatcher, who was eating the third of five hotdogs that were laid in a row on his desk. On Gilbert’s advice, Cyril had brought along a bottle of Ballantyne’s. He gave Lemuel the whisky, Lemuel gave him a set of keys, and Gilbert led him to a car.
“I got something for you,” said Gilbert conspiratorially. Reaching into the black leather briefcase in which he carried his racing forms, his Wall Street Journal, and his Hoagie, he shoved a .38 into Cyril’s hand. “Keep it here.” He indicated a spot under the left side of the driver’s seat. When Cyril pointed out that he was right-handed, Gilbert said to start practising with his left.
“Why would I want a job like this?”
Gilbert counted on his fingers. “Be your own boss. Meet interesting people. Have time to read, draw, cogitate, harass women, whatever you want. Anyway, I’ve never had to use mine,” he said. “Consider it a guardian angel.”
Guardian angels hadn’t proven too effective as far as Cyril could see, so he didn’t put much faith in the gun. Nonetheless, he had to admit that driving was diverting, and even if he wasn’t really his own boss but more like a dog on a long leash, he enjoyed the pleasing delusion of independence, and it made a welcome change from construction. Most of the trips were short and many people were content to ride in silence which was fine with him. He thought often of Connie and felt naive at his shock at what he’d seen. He imagined the financial desperation that had driven her to it. Had her acting career tanked? The theatre tour bombed? Maybe that was why she’d never responded to his letter from Mexico. He considered driving the cab all the way down the coast to her motor court, parking right there beneath her door and honking the horn and when she stepped out asking if she’d called a cab, charming her with the sheer unabashed whimsy of the stunt.