Home is the Sailor (9 page)

I kissed her finger. Gently. Smiling. With love. “O.K. That’s the first step. Now finish your drink and let’s go.”

Corliss looked from the diamond at me. “Go where?”

I told her. “Tijuana.”

The traffic on the road was even thicker than it had been. To make time, I cut back through Norfolk and Seal Beach on Alternate 101. After Newport we had clear sailing.

The ocean was a sheet of purple glass without a flaw or ripple in it. Out on the horizon a toy freighter sailed hull down for the Orient. Now and then a hardy bather splintered the edge of the glass nearest the highway, and swam effortlessly away from shore.

Corliss rode with her left hand on my thigh, sitting sideways. Her skirt crawled up over her knees. I could see her tanned thighs over her stockings. I tried not to think of her that way. There was more to marriage than sex. There was love, and trust, and respect. Corliss wanted it to be beautiful. Suddenly, so did I. Love was a will-o’-the-wisp, St. Elmo’s fire. A dream I’d stood watch with many times on oceans all over the world. And now it had happened to me.

“I love you, baby,” I told her.

Corliss’ fingers caressed my cheek. “I love you, Swede.” I slowed for the lights in Corona Del Mar. “You’ll be good to me?” Corliss asked.

“As good as I know how,” I promised. “But let’s get one thing straight. I’m not going to live on the money the Purple Parrot brings in. Maybe I won’t buy a farm. Maybe I won’t have enough left. If not, I’ll get a job shoreside until I do. What I’m getting at is,
I
support the family.”

Her hand dropped back to my thigh again. “You
are
sweet, Swede.”

I wished she’d stop squeezing my thigh. At least until I could do something about it. As we neared Laguna Beach I asked her if she was hungry.

“Not very,” Corliss said. “Let’s wait until we get to San Diego to eat.”

It was dark now. I was driving with the brights on. As we rounded a bend in the road the headlights picked up the Beachcomber Bar.

It was a big, unpainted barn plastered with soft-drink signs. Behind it the ocean was in motion again, rolling, surging, flecked with white caps. I thought of the rocks at the foot of the cliff and shuddered. The rocks and the waves had done plenty to Wolkowysk by now. I was foolish to worry about fingerprints. When the ocean got through with the Buick, there wouldn’t even be any wheel.

Corliss deliberately looked away as we passed the bar.

I began to sweat again. Wolkowysk had been missed by now. If he owned the bar, his employees were beginning to ask questions. If he had been an employee, his employer was beginning to wonder where he was.

I asked Corliss if Wolkowysk had been married.

She almost screamed the words, repressed hysteria bubbling in her. “Can’t we forget about Wolkowysk?”

I said, “I wish we could.”

We ate in San Diego at the best hotel, then drove south through the night, under the stars, with the windows up and the heater on and the smell of her filling the car. On my way to be married or not, I drove with only one thing on my mind, acutely conscious of Corliss, memory incubating the butterflies in my stomach. Maybe the respect and trust and other things would come later. Right now I wanted
her.

We had no trouble at the barrier. We were one of a hundred cars, possibly two hundred, filled with tourists, cheaters, gamblers. Down for the evening or a long weekend. Come to Mexico to buy a pair of huaraches for Aunt Bessie in Sioux Falls, to gamble, to grow horns on some trusting husband or wife who thought they were at a P.T.A. convention or a meeting of the Loyal Order of Moose.

The Mexican license bureau was closed. I’d expected that. There was a bar on the main drag with a faded sign that proclaimed it to be the longest bar in the world. I parked Corliss at a table and bought her a rum Collins to work on. Then I brushed off my rusty Spanish and buttonholed the first cop I met on the street.

“Puede recomendarme un abogado... que... comprende inglés?”
I asked him.

The policeman nodded. “Yeah. Sure thing, mate.” He pointed across the street to a lighted second-floor window. “Right over there. José Sánchez Avarillo. José is a graduate of Stanford and he speaks perfect English. Tell him that Nick sent you.”

I walked across the street and up a flight of stairs. Avarillo was young, good-looking, smooth. He looked like the kind of lawyer I wanted, one who knew all the local angles.

We gave each other the
“Buenas noches, señor”
routine. Then I counted ten ten-dollar bills on his desk. “For you,
señor.”

Avarillo eyed the bills.
“Si, señor.
What can I do for you?”

I said, “I want a marriage license.”

“Si?”

“For one Mrs. John Mason, a widow, and Swen Nelson, single,” I picked one of the pencils from his desk and wrote the names on a pad. “Plus a priest or a judge or a justice of the peace. It doesn’t matter, as long as whoever you get is legally empowered to marry us.”

Avarillo studied the names. “This must be done tonight,
señor?”

I gave it back to him in Spanish.
“Hoy.”

He counted the bills and put them in his vest pocket. “It shall be as you wish,
Señor
Nelson.” He leaned back in his swivel chair. “But, as you must realize, it is long after hours for such matters. I shall be obliged to contact the license clerk at his
casa.
Also the custodian of the courthouse. Then there is the judge.” His smile was bland. “So, while you have paid me my fee,” he rubbed his thumb and forefinger together, “there will be other minor expenses. Shall we say another hundred dollars?”

This after he had my money in his pocket. I named him. “You sonofabitch.”

Avarillo continued to smile. “Be that as it may. Would you disappoint the lovely
señora, señor
? And I am certain she is lovely.”

There was nothing I could do but go along. He knew it. I counted another hundred dollars on his desk.

Avarillo put it with the other bills.
“Muchisimas gracias, señor.
If you and Mrs. Mason will return to this office in half an hour, both the license you request and a qualified judge will be waiting.”

I walked back to the longest bar in the world. A dark-complected little drunk with a long, scraggly mustache was bothering Corliss. He’d plopped himself down in the chair across from her and was smiling in what he hoped was an ingratiating manner, meanwhile spitting a stream of words in some language with which I wasn’t familiar. As I came up behind him he reached across the table for her hand and tried to stroke it.

Corliss looked terrified.

I yanked the little drunk to his feet by his coat collar. He was stronger than he looked; squat, broad-shouldered, with the bulging muscles of a man who worked hard with his hands. He twisted out of my grip and, standing spraddle-legged beside the table, turned his stream of words in my direction. He sounded like middle or southern Europe to me.

“You got any idea what he’s talking about?” I asked Corliss.

She got to her feet white-faced. “No. Get me out of here, Swede. He frightens me.”

I started to walk her down the aisle between the tables and the bar. The little guy blocked our path. I couldn’t tell if he was mad or trying to be friendly. Then he reached out a work-gnarled hand and patted Corliss’ backside.

“N-i-i-ce.”

Corliss screamed as he touched her. I slapped him so hard he went to the floor.

The Mexican waiter came up to our table. “What’s the matter here?”

I said, “He insulted the
señora.”

The waiter was philosophic. “The man is dronk,
señor.”
He helped the man in the blue serge suit to his feet and propped him against the bar so he could get drunker.

I dropped a bill on the table and walked Corliss to the door. Sagging against the bar, blood trickling down his chin, the drunk continued to curse us through his mustache.

I walked Corliss the length of the business district and back on the other side of the street before she recovered her composure. By then it was time to go back to Avarillo’s office.

I tried to keep my voice casual. “It’s a long drive back to the Parrot. After we’re married, why not stay here tonight?”

Corliss was still upset by the scene in the bar, but she managed a smile for me. “Whatever you say, Swede.”

I called a hotel and reserved a room. Then I bought a bottle of rum and walked upstairs to be married.

It wasn’t much of a wedding. The judge was a dried-up little Mexican in a dirty white linen suit. He mumbled through nine-o’clock shadow with Avarillo interpreting for Corliss’ sake. The ceremony seemed short to mean so much. The pride of the bench was drunk and eager to get back to whatever Avarillo’s phone call had interrupted. But his words were just as binding as if we were being married by a priest in St. Patrick’s Cathedral.

When we finished we all had a drink, the witnesses too, a doe-eyed tart and a pock-marked cab driver, Avarillo graciously furnishing the glasses.

Then the tart and the cab driver signed the wedding certificate and left, supporting the judge between them. Avarillo folded the certificate and the properly filled-in license and handed them to Corliss.

“May God bless your marriage,
señora.”

“Thank you,” she said soberly.

He corked the still half-filled bottle of rum and put it in his filing cabinet. For a souvenir, no doubt. Then he shook hands with me.

“May you both be very happy,
señor.”

He looked very pleased with Avarillo. He had reason to be. Avarillo had just made Avarillo the best part of two hundred dollars.

Corliss and I walked back down the sagging stairs, the wooden risers squeaking under our feet like happy mice, my left arm around her waist.

Tijuana’s main drag was swarming with tourists and teen-aged sailors from the naval base at Dago. Most of the kids were a little high, their money burning holes in the pockets they wished they had, buying junk in the cheap stores, having their pictures taken on burros. Mixed in with the crowd were a few uniformed cops and a scattering of Mexican streetwalkers. With something else to sell. The cops kept their eyes on the streetwalkers. The streetwalkers kept their eyes on the sailors. The sailors kept their eyes on the streetwalkers. Everybody happy. Juke boxes and dance orchestras blared in every other doorway. No one paid any attention to us. No one gave a damn that we were married except Mr. and Mrs. Swen Nelson.

I walked Corliss for two blocks, just getting used to being married. I liked it. It was like walking on tiptoe over a cloud, a big white fleecy cloud stuffed with foam-rubber mattresses.

There was a bar at the far end of the block. I bought another bottle. Then we took a cab to the hotel.

The room was nice, big, old-fashioned, with a high ceiling and tall windows. It reminded me of the rooms in the old part of the Hotel Grande Ancira in Monterrey. Both hotels had been built when labor and materials were cheap. The tub in the bathroom was marble and almost big enough to swim in.

When the bellboy had left with my buck I opened the bottle of rum and half filled two water glasses.

“Happy, honey?” I asked Corliss.

“Very happy,” she said.

Both her smile and her voice were vague.

I took off my coat and loosened my tie. “What’s the matter? Something wrong?”

“No. Nothing at all,” Corliss assured me. She sat on the edge of the bed. She kicked off her shoes. She wriggled her toes for a moment in almost sensuous enjoyment. Then she unfastened and took off her stockings.

I took off my shirt and loosened my belt. “I’ll bet the folks back at the court will be surprised when we tell them we’re married.”

“I imagine they will,” Corliss said.

She stood up and pulled her dress over her head. Then she unhooked her bra, uncupping her breasts one at a time.

It was like watching a lovely strip tease.

I unlaced my shoes, looking up at her.

Corliss wriggled her lush white hips out of her black lace panties, then sat back on the bed and lifted her honey-colored hair away from the back of her neck. “How long do you think it will take the police to find out that Jerry is missing?”

I said, “This is a hell of a time to bring that up.”

Corliss sipped at the rum in the glass she’d set on the chair by the bed. “I’m sorry.”

I finished undressing and lighted a cigarette with shaking fingers. “I hope they never find him.”

“So do I,” Corliss said.

She lay back on the bed, one leg straight, one tanned knee raised and moving slowly from side to side. There was no passion in her eyes as she looked at me. There was only a mild, almost disinterested, speculation. Her smile seemed forced and false.

I felt suddenly sick. I didn’t know what I’d expected of marriage, but this wasn’t it.

Corliss’ smile grew even more false. “What’s the matter, honey? Why are you looking at me like that?”

I sat on the bed beside her. The mirror in the dresser was tilted so I could see our bodies. Even Corliss’ body seemed changed. It looked, somehow, used and worn. She said she loved me. She couldn’t wait three days to be married. This was our wedding night. But instead of being eager with desire, she was lying dully, passively, patiently.

“What’s the matter, honey?” she repeated.

“Nothing at all,” I lied.

She pulled me down to her. “Then love me, honey. Please.”

She was my wife. I’d killed a man for her. I wanted her. I took her. For a moment I hoped I was wrong. But I wasn’t. We were just two people in bed.

I glanced sideways in the mirror at the moving reflection. Corliss’ moans and pretended passion were as false as her sighs had been. All the new Mrs. Nelson was doing was going through the motions.

She might have been chewing gum or paying a grocery bill.

The magic of the madness on the cliff was gone. All there was between us was flesh.