Cinnamon Skin (26 page)

Meyer said, "It offends my sense of neatness. Shouldn't we go to the house? Look for… I don't know. Proof? Money?"

"You couldn't go there, either of you. The servants wouldn't let you in. I could go there. Ramуn would let me in. I could look around, I suppose."

"Maybe we should tell the authorities where he is," Meyer said.

She stared at him. "Shot in the leg and buried alive? Both of you wounded? Do you want to spend two or three years here answering questions, living on tortillas and beans?"

"No," I said. "No Way."

"Nor I," she said, with her habitual little air of formality.

Right at that moment I began to feel uncommonly hot and strangely remote. All colors were too bright. The sun hurt my eyes. I didn't start having the chills until we were halfway out of the jungle. Meyer had to drive.

Meyer headed back three days later, very nervous over taking back into the States the items Barbara had collected in Pittler-Hoffmann's house: a few thousand in U.S. currency, a stack of Mexican old fifty-peso pieces, several diamond rings, and two expensive wristwatches. We had agreed among ourselves they should be sent to Helen June in upstate New York. No need to include any kind of a note. We believed she would understand from the contents that there would probably never be any more packages from her brother.

I thought I was recovering and would soon be well enough to travel, but the day after Meyer left the illness came back. Barbara Castillo moved me to her place, the better to look after me.

She had found no proof in the Hoffmann house. She had found no clue to where the rest of the money might be.

We didn't need the money, and we didn't need any more proof than we had.

"Isn't it pretty early there, kid?" I said.

"Sort of about eight. Morning on Sunday is my best office time. Catch up on stuff. Who was that who answered yesterday when I phoned?"

"Kind of a Maya princess type."

"A what?"

"A nice person. Barbara is a nice person. She's up here from Mexico on sort of a vacation. I keep talking her into making it a little bit longer."

"I'm glad you have a nice new friend, Travis."

"I'm glad you're glad. Neat weekend we are having the great Meyer chili festival. On an empty sandspit way down Biscayne Bay."

"Gee, I wish I could make it."

"Wish you could too."

"How is Meyer?"

"In the very best of form. He has enlisted the services of a troop of young handsome women. They follow him around, helping him carry the provisions back to his new boat. Which, by the way, is a dandy. The Veblen. Built-in bookshelves, and his colleagues are helping him replace the library he lost."

"Did you really stop looking for Evan Lawrence?"

"Meyer and I had a moment of mature consideration when we wondered what we would do if we caught up with him. So we gave it up."

"That doesn't sound like either of you!"

"We're learning discretion late in life."

"Travis, there was a little paragraph in the Advertiser about the HooBoy sinking. Wasn't that the name of Hack's boat? What happened?"

"Dave Jenkins waited until one of the people who had contacted him finally showed up to claim the boat. They'd paid a lot of money to have it made much faster, and they'd had a verbal contract with Hack about what they would pay for it when it was done. Dave thought it might be something like that. He'd alerted the Coast Guard and their friends, and they came and put an automatic beacon in the hull that would broadcast for a long long time. So the men came and claimed it, paid off Dave, and arranged the title transfer, and three weeks later they caught it loaded with pot, hash, and coke. They had to make a hole in the hull before it stopped. And after they saw the load, they took the men off and let it go down."

"And you had nothing to do with that?"

"Annie, I don't want to have anything to do with anything like that. Boats sinking. People getting hurt. It's all behind me. Meyer is delighted that now we're both sedentary."

"Sedentary? You?"

"We're settling down a little, that's all."

"I don't think I like it."

"Well, Annie, you are out there in Hawaii earning your battle ribbons, and I am here admiring this year's crop of beach bunnies and dipping into a little Boodles on the rocks from time to time. Everybody seems in good form. We have a few laughs."

"You're going to make me homesick."

"How is it out there?"

"Same as last time. There's an awful lot of work. It isn't as much fun as it was in Naples. But… it's a bigger challenge. There are some chauvinists in the company who are hoping I'll fall on my face. I won't give them that little satisfaction, dammit. I just wanted to hear your voice, dear."

Barbara came in from the beach and came striding across the lounge to give me a quick kiss beside the eye before heading for her shower.

The conversation with Annie was soon over. It might be the last one, I thought as I hung up. There was a little edge of loss, but it had softened. It no longer bit.

I got up and stretched and wandered into the head, where Barbara was in the giant shower, singing. She has a nice voice but absolutely no sense of pitch or rhythm. Consequently whatever she sings sounds like "Home on the Range."

"Good swim?" I called.

"Just beautiful! Say, did you turn off the oven at the right time like I told you?"

"Of course."

"Who was that on the phone? The woman from yesterday?"

"Same one."

"I don't think I like her calling you. Her voice is too pretty. Is she as pretty as her voice?"

"She is in Hawaii, Bobs."

"Then okay. She can be pretty if she wants."

She had the shower turned high. I kicked off my sandals, dropped my shorts, peered cautiously around the curtain, then slid in behind her and grabbed her around the middle. She squealed and fought in a very satisfying way. So we had some good old scrubbing and soaping fun, and then some good old rinsing fun, and then outside the shower some great big towel fun before I picked her up and carried her off to bed, giving her head a slight thump on the doorframe in passing.

And once again, after love, I had the marvelous pleasure of burying my snout in the soft and fragrant texture of the side of her throat. In dusty tan tint and in taste and fragrance it reminded me of something, always had, ever since that night when in her apartment at La Vista del Caribe, my great shuddering and gasping and chattering of teeth had awakened her and she had come in from her bed nest on the couch to put more blankets on me. She called it a little jungle fever. I do not ever want to have a big jungle fever. When all other warming efforts failed, she had slipped in there with me, under all the blankets, to hold me tightly until all that kind of fever went away and an entirely different one began, over her dwindling objections. I did not mind when, later, after her breath had caught several times during one long audible inhalation, she cried "Weeeeleee." I did not mind being his surrogate that night, or having called him back to life for her for that one instant on the edge of release. But it never happened again. She never called his name again.

So suddenly I knew what was at the back of memory as I snuffed at her throat, eyes open to see the odd dusky-dark coloring.

"Cinnamon!" I said.

"What?"

"You smell like cinnamon and you have the right color. Cinnamon skin."

"My God, McGee, can't you come up with something more original?"

"I thought it was."

She laughed. "It's a song, you idiot. Piel Canela: Cinnamon Skin. They sing it all over Mexico. A love ballad, quite tender. You can ask any group of mariachis, and they will play it and sing it for you. Like this."

She sang it softly to me, but it sounded like "Home on the Range."

She dropped off to sleep and came awake with a start. "Oh!" she said. "I dreamed about that man again."

"Bad?"

"Not too bad this time. All that dirt and stone that came falling down, it made a pyramid, a perfect little pyramid, with him under it. Which makes sense."

"Sense?"

"Of course, McGee. That pyramid we climbed at Coba? It is all a big tomb. There is somebody buried in there, maybe more than one. But they may never get to excavating, to looking inside."

"Why not?"

"For the same reason the Spanish left us all alone in Yucatan, why they didn't care to conquer us and civilize us and turn us into little brown Christians."

"Which is?"

"McGee, lovemaking must dim your wits. Because the Maya had no gold!"

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23/08/2007

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