Angels of Detroit (47 page)

Constance said, “I’m the one that’s going to feed them.”

The village was only two hundred miles from Mexico City, but to get there took eight hours on four different buses. With each transfer, the towns grew smaller. Each vehicle was worse than the last. The fourth and final bus was a metal skeleton stripped of anything soft—unpadded seats on unpaved roads. The windows were open to let in the breeze.

On that final stretch, all the other passengers were locals, peasants hefting cardboard suitcases secured with string. A few had even brought chickens, tough old birds, indifferent to the bumps. They were wiry and dusty and of no particular breed he could identify. Scavengers, able to survive anything.

Most of the time the bus seemed to be climbing uphill. But by the end of the trip, Michael Boni discovered he’d reached the coast after all.

Late in the afternoon, the bus dropped him off alone by the village square, a pale slab of cement sterilized by the sun. The place was
empty; it looked as if it had always been empty. Adjacent to the square was the intersection where the town’s two roads met. One of them was the road he’d come in on. Finding no one to ask for directions, Michael Boni picked up his bag and started up the other street, following the dense, heady smell of the ocean.

The road was wide and vacant, lined with brightly painted concrete walls. Over the top of the walls spilled the occasional spindly vine and the arm of a dusty tree. At regular intervals, the walls gave way to iron gates. Beyond the gates Michael Boni caught glimpses of private courtyards. A few potted plants, a leaning broom, a cracked, faded chair.

“A sleepy seaside town” was what the guidebook had called it. The book was ten years out of date, the entire entry only a paragraph long. But Michael Boni had liked the idea of a place that could be so easily summarized, containing only the barest essentials.

Up ahead the road rose slightly and then crested. At the top of the hill, a second-story balcony stood out against the blue sky. He saw something moving up there, somebody swinging almost imperceptibly in a hammock. The sign on the facade said
HOTEL
.

Michael Boni stopped in the shade of an open doorway and rested for a moment. He’d had no idea it could be so hot, especially in mid-December.

The guidebook had claimed there was only one hotel in town, a fact that didn’t seem to have changed in the years since it was written. The town was too remote for foreign tourists, for anyone not looking to get away from everything.

The dining room was an open patio separated from the sidewalk by a low plastic fence. Even with the breeze pushing through, a sour perfume of fried fish hung in the air. Through the doorway into the kitchen, he saw a stooped old woman and a girl with long dark hair standing at a table, chopping tomatoes and onions. The older of the two saw Michael Boni and came out to greet him.

At first the old woman didn’t seem to understand he spoke no
Spanish. The problem had been following him across the countryside. No one seemed to know what to make of a Mexican gringo.

But what he wanted now was easy enough to convey. The old woman pointed to a sign above the bar listing rates. There were two prices; the second floor, with its view of the ocean, was twice as much as the first. Michael Boni didn’t need to count his pesos to know which one he could afford.

The woman called to the girl in the kitchen, Marisol. Marisol appeared at once, pausing only to brush a few loose strands of hair from her eyes. He thought he saw her smile, as if she recognized him.

“
Bienvenido
.”

The words, appearing out of nowhere, sounded like a name: Ben Venida, garbled in Texas drawl. Michael Boni turned to find the source striding toward him down the corridor. The man was dressed in khaki cargo shorts and a white linen shirt. Fit and tanned, with tousled, sandy blond hair. A shark’s tooth dangled from a leather lace around his neck.

“
Me llamo
Shim,” the man said. He took Michael Boni’s hand as if he were bestowing a prize. “
Y usted
?”

“I don’t speak Spanish,” Michael Boni said.

“No kidding!” Shim looked delighted. “It’s nice to see a fellow countryman.” Shim motioned toward the empty street and the empty restaurant. “I was beginning to wonder if there’s some sort of plague here no one told me about.” His smile framed rows of bleached white teeth. “Well, people don’t know what they’re missing.”

Michael Boni nodded, turning away.

“The
señora
will take good care of you,” Shim said, aiming a grin at the old woman, who in turn regarded him with a complete absence of expression.

The girl leaned over one of the tables, wiping a circle on the plastic tablecloth.

Shim pointed to Michael Boni’s lone bag. “Traveling solo?”

He nodded.

“Too bad,” Shim said. “Such a romantic spot. The sunsets are beautiful.”

Shim was constantly moving. In an instant, he was behind the bar. “You pour your own here.” As Shim lifted a bottle from the shelf, the
señora
clenched the towel draped over her shoulder, narrowing her eyes.

Shim hoisted his glass. “Let me buy you a drink.”

Michael Boni picked up his bag. “Maybe later.” The
señora
was moving down the corridor, and he started after her, happy to have an excuse to get away.

When they reached his room, the
señora
opened the door with a bump of her hip. With a few waves of her hand, she revealed the room’s amenities: a shower stall without a curtain, a bureau with one drawer, the switch for the ceiling fan. The only decoration was a ceramic crucifix nailed to the wall.

They were in the bathroom, the
señora
pantomiming how to use the electric shower, when footsteps paused outside his door. Michael Boni heard the slap of bare feet going up the concrete stairs.

Michael Boni unpacked and washed the dust from his face. When he passed through the restaurant on his way to the street a few minutes later, the dining room was once again empty. The street was empty, too.

A familiar voice called out from above. “Change your mind about that drink?” Propped up on the hammock, Shim once again raised his glass.

“Later,” Michael Boni said.

Shim smiled and set the glass on his chest. “Don’t think I’ll stop asking.”

The beach was a block from the hotel. There Michael Boni saw just how unvisited the village truly was. By the water’s edge, two lone
children were playing, forming and crushing mounds of wet sand. Beyond the tide line, their parents were shaking out their belongings and cramming them into a large knit bag.

The beach was at least a mile long, far larger than the village itself. At the top of the dune, a boardwalk stretched a few hundred feet in each direction. Directly in the middle lay a stack of folded wooden beach chairs and a concession stand. Inside, an old woman was closing the shutters. A boy approached carrying more chairs up from the beach. Down by the water, an old man in rolled pants secured the last of the umbrella canopies.

Michael Boni headed north, and when the boardwalk ended, he continued along the dune. Soon the entire village was behind him. He sat in the sand and watched the ocean for a while, hypnotized by the waves. A breeze crept inland. The air had quickly turned cool. He untied his boots. The stain and varnish on the leather assumed a new brilliance against the sand. He dug his feet in, feeling the day’s heat buried like the coals of a dying fire.

The sun was setting into the ocean. Birds were singing in the trees along the shoreline, little black birds with streaks of yellow on their wings. Michael Boni thought of Priscilla, how happy she must be. Now she had the entire house to destroy, all by herself. And for the chicks, there was the garage and the yard and Clementine to watch them and all the garden scraps they could eat.

He wondered if any of them would even notice he was gone.

In the restaurant that night, the patrons were villagers, dressed in well-worn jeans and faded slacks. Shim had left his perch on the balcony. Michael Boni selected for himself an empty table by the sidewalk. No one seemed to notice him.

A loud, boisterous group had gathered in the far corner. In the center sat a heavy-set man in a wide-brimmed straw hat, face and arms a ruddy brown. He looked as though he’d just come in from the
fields. The others listened, occasionally laughing, as the man told a story. Michael Boni could make out only some of the words, not enough to follow along.

After a few minutes, Marisol came over and wiped off the tablecloth.

“How are you?” she said in halting English, smiling down at him.

“Okay.”

“You are from the United States?” When Michael Boni didn’t answer, she said, “I have a cousin in the United States.”

Michael Boni nodded, reaching for his water glass.

“I want to go to the United States someday.”

“Is this from a bottle?” he said.

Marisol took the glass and gazed at it a moment.

“I want to go to New York City,” she said. “Or maybe Los Angeles. I want to make clothes.” Still holding the glass, Marisol stepped back from the table and turned to the side. “You see?” she said. “I make this.”

A plain blue dress with a sort of gold brocade sash at the waist.

“It’s nice,” Michael Boni said.

“Are you from New York City?” She extracted a laminated menu from under her arm.

“No.”

“I return.” And she and his water glass disappeared into the kitchen.

He knew enough to be able to make his way through the menu. The names were familiar, but there was no pozole. The specialty here seemed to be fish. He wondered if that was what these people were, these locals—fishermen.

In a minute, Marisol was back, the water glass she set down in front of him identical to the one she’d taken away.

“Yes?” she said.

Michael Boni pointed to the
taquitos,
the cheapest item on the menu.

“Oh, no, no, no,” Marisol patted his arm and took his menu. “I bring you something better.”

“That’s okay,” he said, trying to stop her before she walked away.

“Okay!” she said happily.

She came back fifteen minutes later with an enormous platter, an entire fish, a red snapper, head and all, buried in mounds of tomatoes and olives and capers and chiles.

“Better?” she said, grinning.

He stared at the melted, milky white eyes of the fish, feeling suddenly nostalgic for vegetable stew.

After a dinner he barely touched, Michael Boni returned to the beach.

From the top of the dune, he looked down to find that the tide had nearly reached the line of umbrellas in the sand. The canvas canopies rustled in the breeze, the moon lighting them from behind, outlining them in pale yellow flames.

Unspoiled. Untouched. No wonder his grandmother had been so miserable in Detroit. How could she be expected to forget what she’d traded in? How could anyone? He wondered what Marisol imagined when she pictured New York. Skyscrapers and window displays and theater marquees. The same fantasy world as Darius.

From a block away, he could make out the vague thump of some kind of music. All that was left after the breeze were the bass notes, thick and indistinct. They could have been coming from anywhere. But where else was there other than the hotel? And somehow he knew that Shim was responsible.

The moment he reached the patio, Michael Boni saw him, swaying among the tables with a plastic rose between his teeth. Mariachi burst from a small tape deck lying next to a bottle of tequila on the bar. Shim was performing as if the entire village were his audience, but he was alone. The dining room was empty.

“Hey!” Shim shouted, reaching for Michael Boni’s arm.

In the kitchen, Marisol and the
señora
were pretending not to watch.

“Come on,” Shim said. “You’re on vacation. Dancing is good for you.”

Michael Boni pulled away.

“Let me buy you a drink.” Shim dipped his invisible partner. “You need a drink. You need to loosen up. I thought you came here to relax.”

Michael Boni went over to the bar and snapped off the tape deck.

Shim threw up his hands in disgust. “No wonder nobody comes here.”

Through the window, Michael Boni saw Marisol and the
señora
return to the dirty dishes.

“Don’t forget that drink!” Shim shouted as Michael Boni hurried away.

The sky the next morning was an unimaginative shade of blue, as monochromatic and depthless as if sprayed by machine.

Coming down the hillside on the final bus the day before, Michael Boni had caught his first glimpses of the ocean—the first ocean he’d ever seen. Even then, from that distance, the water hadn’t seemed quite real. People were always talking about the sight, but once he arrived, he realized how much more there was to it than that. There was the way the salt air gathered in his head and lingered there like alcohol. There was the ripe, living smell. He remembered once as a child going to the shore up near Port Huron with his family, but the sand there was gray and rocky, like standing on gravel. He’d never cared for the idea of things floating around down there that he couldn’t see.

All that day, there was no sign of Shim at the hotel. Not once had Michael Boni seen him on the beach.

Was it too much to hope that Shim was already gone for good?

That night in the restaurant, Marisol was gone, too. She must have been given the day off. Michael Boni took the same table as on the night before. Eventually the
señora
came over and nodded wordlessly that it was time for him to order. When he pointed to the
taquitos
, she grunted and turned back toward the kitchen.

Michael Boni glanced around the restaurant. The heavy-set, sunburned man from the night before was back. It appeared he had a regular table, too. And much of the same crowd was once again surrounding him.

While he ate, Michael Boni observed the lighted doorways along the street, where shadows came and went. A couple of old men had set up folding chairs on the sidewalk. There was a café of sorts at the corner, where a half-dozen people sat in a circle, talking. When the breeze died down, he could faintly hear their voices.