DARK BLISS (Dangerous Games,) (9 page)

“The Spanish killed captives too.”

“I don’t mean they were any better than the Aztecs. Both sides were bloodthirsty, but they believed that the sacrifice of Jesus had abolished all need for human sacrifice.”

“
So how is this connected to the real Mexico?”

“Mexicans are half Spanish and half Indian.
We talk and act like we believe in free will, but scrape a Mexican and underneath you’ll find a beating Aztec heart – a heart deeply connected to earth and blood and a half-Indian that devoutly believes in fate. What that means in a focus on fully living the moment rather than building the future. After all, what will happen will happen. On the surface that looks to an American like ‘
mañana
.’ Deep down, it’s a fatalism more ancient than Christianity.”

He fell silent, staring down at the peaceful valley below. Of course it looked peaceful from this distance but at ground level the
creatures of the forest followed their wild natures, hunting and mating. They devoured or were devoured. Males fought each other for females. Babies were born in blood. The old and weak died. I wondered if the bird caught by the hawk was the victim of chance or fate.

Rock stood beside me, lost in his private thoughts. He wore an earring in his left ear, a smal
l circle of gold that underscored his pirate-like good looks, the hawk nose and stern black eyebrows that arched his piercing blue eyes. It was easy to imagine him on the bounding main at the wheel of a ship flying the skull and crossbones. Easy also to imagine him a brave but brutal
conquistador
or, for that matter, Aztec warrior. And supposing he was any of these and supposing I was a lady on a captured ship or an Indian girl bought for his pleasure, how would he treat me? With the gallantry he’d shown me since yesterday? Or with fierce, greedy passion, taking me again and again until his lust was slaked? The fantasy made my skin prickle. He’d said the Indian in the Mexican lives for the moment. I could easily spend my whole life living for the moment with a man like this.

I turned to him. “What do
you
believe in? Fate or free will?”

“The Indian in me
believes in fate. But most of the time, I’m a modern Mexican –well, I’m half Anglo, but whatever side of the border, I’m like everyone else. I believe in free will. You make your future. Unfortunately, in my case that’s mostly involved violence in one way or another. That wakes up the Aztec, who gets excited when he smells blood and wants more. Vicious circle.”

Tío
Luis tapped his head.
“La cabeza de Miguel Roca,”
he said,
“está llena de pensamientos,”
Rock laughed.

“What did he say?” I asked.

“Said I think too much.”

“
Miguelito
fue criado católico
, raised Catholic,” said Tío Luis. “For two thousand years,
la Iglesia Católica
has, uh, come up with… made… I don’t know the word.”

“I think what you want is ‘produced,’” said Rock.

“Sí,
gracias. Para dos mil años
, it has produced thinkers. Famous thinkers, deep thinkers, foolish thinkers. They write, they talk, they teach but most of all they think.
Tanto el pensamiento!
All that thinking! They think so hard they forget to eat, to feel, to love. Now the Baptist Church has
never
produced a famous thinker.
Nunca!
We don’t believe in thinking. We believe in Jesus. For me,
todo Domingo
I go to church in Ciudad Jardín and hear a good Baptist sermon about how Catholics are going to hell.
No necesito más
. That’s all I need. I’m an empty-headed old man and that’s why I’m so happy.”

“
Quite a speech from an empty-headed old man,” said Rock. “One who saved my life.”

“
Mentira
,” muttered Tío Luis.

“What did—”

“He said ‘bullshit.’ Trouble with Tío is he won’t take responsibility for anything, not even good things.”

“Largo camino,”
said Tío Luis. “Long way to go. Come on.”

We got back in the truck and descended the
serpentine, precipitous road, then took a modern turnpike with toll booths to the coast, driving past the tourist beaches and high-end resorts. After a while, we left the turnpike and followed a regional road past smaller beach towns, the bright green sea on the right, the looming, dark green mountains on the left.

I
t wa
S late afternoon when we came to Parajito. “Where do you live?” I asked Rock.

“Not in the town proper, on a
small island connected by a causeway.”

“You live on a Pacific island? How romantic!”

“Well, I don’t know about the romance but it’s a nice house. Let’s stop in the plaza and have a beer.”

We
sat at a tin table outside the cantina,
El Cangrejo Rojo,
next to the town’s palm-lined central plaza. In the center of the plaza was a statue of a forgotten presidente of the republic who gestured to the future in bird-spattered bronze. A mild breeze whickered in the palms and the fringes of the umbrella overhead, smelling of the sea and, more faintly, some of its deceased inhabitants. A big gray cat sunned itself in the cantina window under the neon depiction of a red crab, which gave the cantina its name.

A man on a bike passed the cantina.
“Entrenador!”
he called. Rock waved. Around us surged the human life of the plaza: children playing, women shopping and gossiping, teenage boys flirting with teenage girls, cackling men playing dominos.

“What do you think?”
he asked as he pulled on his beer.

“I love it
,” I exclaimed. “Is this where you spent your summers?”

“No, that’s farther north. I came here because of
Tío. He let me stay with him. I did odd jobs here and there, fixed motorcycles, made myself useful. The town took me in. They’re very generous people.”

We walked back to the truck, taking a shortcut through
a small park. Several boys playing with a soccer ball yelled,
“Entrenador! Hola, Entrenador!”
One kicked the ball to Rock and he adroitly returned it.

“What do they call you? ‘Entrenador?’ What does that mean?”

“Coach. It’s just a nickname.”

Tío
Luis chortled loudly. “Coach
de los pistoleros!
” Rock looked annoyed.

“
Coach of what?” I said suspiciously.

“Oh hell,” he groaned. “Y
ou won’t give me peace until I tell you. When I came here, the town was having trouble with a local drug operation that was expanding into extortion. Not gangsters exactly, just a bunch of toughs that took advantage of an area too poor and small to interest the cartels.”

“What about the police?”

“First thing the gang did was buy the police, not that they had to pay much.”

“
So you scared them off?”

“No, there
were too many of them for one man to tackle. I organized about a score of young men into a militia, the
Parajito Guardia
. Trained them, taught them tactics and how to shoot something more than hunting rifles. It took several months and we had to do it on the sly or the gang would have come after us before my guys were ready. Our cover was that Parajito was going to join the regional soccer league. We voted on a name for the team and they became
Los Tigres
. They loved that so it was good for morale too.”

“So what happened?”

“We took the gang by surprise one night, raided their headquarters. Killed a few; some got away. The rest we took prisoner. We tied their hands and I had their pictures taken. The next morning we marched them through town in their underwear so people could have a good look. By then we’d taken over the police station too. I put them and the cops—”

“
También en su ropa interior,”
chuckled Tío Luis.

“
Also in their underwear. We herded them into two trucks with armed guards, drove them and a third truck full of
Tigres
to an isolated part of the coast. We lined them up against the wall of an abandoned building. My sergeant marched a dozen
Tigres
in front of them and had his men raise their rifles.”

“You
shot
them?” I said, aghast.

“I
let ‘em sweat and pray and blubber for a couple of minutes, then I told them this was what was waiting for anyone who came back to Parajito. No trial, just an execution. We cut their bonds, gave each of them a hundred peso note—enough to buy clothes and a couple of meals—and drove off. That was two years ago. Haven’t seen any of them since.”

“Why did you give them money?”

“If we hadn’t, they just would have robbed the first people they met. I doubt any gave up crime but at least they did it by choice and not need.”

I turned to
Tío Luis. “What’s the word for champion?”

He grinned.
“Campeón.”

“C
ampeón.”
I said to Rock. “You’ve never stopped being one, have you?”

He shr
ugged. “Oh no. I’ve dropped the champion business any number of times. But every time I do, somebody makes me take it up again.”

By then we were out of the park and back on the street. I put my arms around him and gave him a hug.

“Qué dulce!”
trilled a voice behind us. I turned to see a dark-haired young woman carrying a bag of groceries. She grinned broadly.
“Qué hermoso cabello que tiene, señorita!”

I smiled at her and turned to Rock. “What did she say?”

Rock looked ill at ease and said nothing. “She says you have lovely hair,” said Tío Luis.

The woman came closer and touched one of my blonde curls. She sighed,
“Si sólo me veía tan bien.”

I looked to
Tío Luis, who was as amused as Rock was uncomfortable. “She says, ‘If only I looked so good.’”

“What’s she talking about? Is she making fun of me?”

“Oh no!” he smiled. “You see it’s
her
hair.”

“Mi nombre es Lola,”
said the woman, only inches from my face. She seemed to have no sense of personal space.

“She says—”

“I understood that much, Tío.” I turned to her. “My name is Aurora. Thank you very much for the loan of your hair.”

Tío
Luis translated and the woman beamed,
“Oh, de nada. De nada.”
She had on big loop earrings and wore heavy mascara with bright red lipstick and rouge that was laid on thick. She was in good shape but this close I could see she was at least five years older than I thought.

“Pues,”
she trilled.
“Tengo que ir a casa. Adios.”

“Adios, Lola,”
said Tío Luis politely.

“Pleased to meet you,” I said.

She planted a kiss on my cheek, then affectionately squeezed Rock on the arm.
“Adios, entrenador!”

“Adios,” he mumbled.

We watched her walk away, swinging her hips as she passed a middle-aged couple. The wife glared at her. The husband was preoccupied with the contents of a drugstore window.

I turned to Rock. “Wears it for parties and festivals, huh?”

“Lola’s a very nice girl,” said Tío Luis loyally. “And happy to help the friend of a friend.”

“
Is she a friend of yours too, Tío?”

He
smiled without embarrassment. “
Pues, sí,
sometimes.”

“Well, at least I can take
this off now.”

“I’d just as soon you wear when you’re outside,” said Rock. “Even here in Parajito. It’s a short drive to
the house. You can take it off there.”

“And there we can
eat
,” said Tío Luis. “You have not eaten till you have tasted a meal by Lucía. Already,
yo tengo hambre!
”

W
e drove
through town, following
Avenida Jaramillo
until it crossed a bridge over a sluggish estuarine stream, the Río Sonotoya, after which Tío Luis turned left toward the sea. Before us was a low bluff with a cut through it, which led the red dirt road past a broad white beach to a short causeway build on pilings and rough boulders. This in turn led to a humped, green-clad island, on the top of which, through the thick vegetation, I could see the white terrace and red tile roof of a large
hacienda
.

I was unprepared for
the magnificence of the setting and the palatial dimensions of the house. There was a high whitewashed stone wall around it with an open steel gate, the gatepost bearing a ceramic sign that read CASA PARADISO. Past the gate was a garden with fruit trees and flowering bushes, hibiscus and oleander, and then a graveled courtyard before the house itself. It was two stories tall, capped by a little square tower at each of the four corners of what appeared from below to be a roof terrace. I could see the tips of folded umbrellas above the terrace wall, or parapet.

“
This
is your house?” I said, stunned.

“It’s not mine really but I live here, with some other folks.”

“Whose is it?”

“Well, I guess you could say it belongs to the town.
It was built by a fellow named Bustos. He was going to make the island into a resort and that was to be the centerpiece. He’s dead now.”

“What happened?”

“The gang shook him down. He was brave but foolish and when he refused to pay protection money, they killed him and took over the island. The house was sort of my reward for getting rid of them. It comes with a live-in housekeeper and a cook.”

“You have servants?”

“Don’t know I’d call them servants. Town pays their wages. They know what to do better than I do, so I leave them alone unless I particularly need something.”

We got out of the truck.
On the left of the house, separated by a low adobe wall, was a less imposing structure of concrete-block stucco, and beyond that was a line of what appeared to be smaller houses. “What are those?” I asked.

“The garage and about a dozen small houses. Like I said,
this was going to be a resort. Folks live in them now. Got a little community here.”

We
entered the main house through the front door. There was a small entrance hall with a door to the left and one to the right and in the center a rounded archway. We went through this into an enormous room, with a staircase in one corner leading to a gallery that ran around three sides of the room. Through the rails of this I could see the doors that must lead to the bedrooms on the upper floor. Great windows opened on a view of the sea, flickering palms, and the sky. Overhead was a black wrought-iron wheel chandelier of the type that Zorro liked to swing from. The place was spotless. Servant or not, Rock’s housekeeper knew her job. His cook did too if the aroma that wafted from the kitchen was any indication.

“Señor Roca!”
exclaimed a thin woman of about forty in a peasant blouse and bright blue skirt at a doorway.
“Bienvenido de nuevo.”

“Thank you
, Carmen,” Rock replied. “It’s good to be back. This is a friend of mine, Rory Constable. She’ll be staying here for a couple of days. Will you see she gets settled? Also, I think she could use some clothes. Maybe she could borrow some of Christina’s things.”

Carmen looked at me and smiled. “But of
course,” she said, effortlessly switching to English. If she wondered why Rock’s guest was short of clothing, she didn’t show it.

A plump
woman with bright rosy cheeks appeared, wiping her hands on an apron.
“Hola, Lucía!”
said Rock.

She beamed at
him.
“Te echamos de menos, Señor Roca.”

“And I missed all of you. And I
especially
missed your cooking. Is there enough for three more for dinner?”

“
Sí
,” said Lucía. “Tío Luis said you’d be back today with a friend. I made more than enough.” She spoke good English, though heavily accented. I wondered if the two women had been part of the resort staff.

Rock turned to me.
“Carmen has a daughter about your size. She lives here too and I don’t think she’d mind you borrowing something if you need to. I expect you’d like to shower and so on before we eat. Is half an hour enough time?”

I said it was.
Carmen touched my arm. “Señorita, if you will come with me?”

I followed Carmen upstairs to a
white-walled room full of light with windows looking out at the sea. The bed was a brass item that looked antique, and the rest of the furnishings were Mexican provincial: light-colored, carved, painted, and distressed with dents and wormholes.

“Will this do, señorita?” said Carmen.

“Do? It’s beautiful! And please call me Rory.”

“
Bien
, Señorita Rory,” she said with a polite smile. I could see that was her compromise between the deference due a guest of Rock’s and my American urge for everyone to be on first-name terms. “Christina is visiting her grandmother but let me take you to her room and we can see what she has that might fit you.”

We went down the hall to a smaller room
plainly occupied by a girl in her late teens. I was uncomfortable inspecting Christina’s wardrobe without her permission but I decided to leave that worry to her mother. The girl was a size larger than me but I found a sleeveless, full-skirted blue dress with white polka dots that I liked. It fit well enough and would do for tonight. Tomorrow I could get someone to take me into town for other items.

Back in my room,
someone had brought in my pillowcase of spare clothes and the wig box. I took off the wig and carefully set it on the styrofoam head to keep its shape. The thing wasn’t to my taste but it was important for Lola’s livelihood. Though she was forever excluded from polite society, she provided a valuable public service to Parajito. Men needed relief and boys needed education into the mysteries of sex. This wasn’t the US. Standards in Mexico had loosened but girls were still expected to be virgins until marriage – or at least pretend they were.

I sh
owered and shampooed and changed. I came downstairs in Christina’s blue dress and my own hair. Carmen and Lucía gave me brief but baffled glances. I could tell they were wondering why a girl with such pretty hair had been wearing a gaudy blonde wig, one with a notorious association.

We ate at
a long oaken table that like everything else in the house was on a grand scale. The women and Lucía’s two children ate with us. It amused me to think of Daddy or Richard dining with the help. The idea would shock them. Come to think of it, before today it would have shocked me, good little Boston Brahmin that I was.

It was a
delicious meal, built around a tasty corn soup. “This is wonderful,” I told Lucía. “What do you call it?”

“Posole,
Señorita Rory
,”
said Lucía. “I make it out of the parts of a pig. The hardest thing is the corn. You have to work each kernel so it will blow up like popcorn and give it…” She paused, searching for the English word. “You know,
textura
.”

“Texture?”

“
Sí
, texture.”

“You said parts of a pig. Which parts?”

“The head and the trotters.”

I was sorry I’d asked but I pressed gamely on. “And what are trotters?”

“The feet.”

“Is this your recipe?”

“Oh no! It is a very old Indian dish.”

“An ancient dish
actually,” said Rock. “Aztec.”

“Pero ellos no lo hacen de la carne de porcino,”
said Tío Luis. Everyone laughed.

“What did he say?” I asked Rock.

“Well, ah, he said they didn’t use pig meat.”

“What kind of meat did they u
se?” I asked. Rock hesitated and suddenly it came to me. “Oh, my God,” I exclaimed. “You mean…”

Rock nodded. “The Spanish made them substitute pork. By accounts, they tasted pretty much the same.”

I must have looked a little green because one of the children asked if I was all right. If I had been back in Boston, I would have pushed the plate away, maybe even left the table, but I was a guest and the soup
was
good and filling and I
was
hungry and this
was
made from a pig and not a person. I tried not to think about which parts of the pig and took another spoonful.

We had
coffee and
flan
for dessert. The flan was light and sweet, the coffee strong and bitter. Lucía, who apparently was practiced at reading the faces of diners, said that at breakfast she would make American-style coffee for me. I politely declined. During my stay in Mexico, I’d done what every novice tourist does, stayed in hotels where the meals and accommodations were reassuringly like home, with just a dash of foreignness. Now that I was with Rock, I’d gotten to see something of the real Mexico and wanted to discover more.

Lucía
and her two young daughters firmly refused my help in clearing the table and I reminded myself that while she wasn’t treated like a servant, this was her job. I’d grown up with uniformed maids around. I was taught to be polite and respectful but it never occurred to me to help them dust or change the bed. I shouldn’t do that here.

T
ío Luis rose to go. As I hugged him goodbye, he said, “Rory, your true hair was worth the wait.
Muy hermosa!”
Rock told him we needed someone to drive us to Hermosillo and he provided the names of several men who he thought would be available. Then he was gone.

Rock turned on the
television and we watched a popular Mexican sitcom with Lucía’s children. I didn’t understand the jokes but the kids gaily provided explanations that were more entertaining than anything on screen. When it was over, their mother told them it was time to finish their homework and go to bed. A little later she and Carmen together came in to say goodnight and welcome me again to
Casa Paradiso
. I stood and thanked them both. I would have hugged them but both had kept a careful social distance from me that I gathered was appropriate to their stations.

For the first time since the night before, when we’d made our hasty
departure from the motel, Rock and I were alone together. Though I hardly knew anything about him, I felt I knew him well, better than many people I’d known for years.

And
every time I saw another aspect of him, I wanted to find out more. He was more complex and sociable than the taciturn, scary fellow who’d saved me. If you were a criminal or a thug or even just a bully, he was someone to fear. If you were little or weak or in need of protection, he was someone to count on. A natural fighter, he’d learned how to kill in the army. After that, he’d done something else – exactly what wasn’t clear to me. Whatever, he wanted to leave it behind, so much so that he’d moved to Mexico. The man had more layers than an onion.

I wondered what
he
thought of
me
. There was a certain disdain in the way he’d dismissed me as a “rich girl,” as if that explained and encapsulated me, as if I had no layers of my own. Yes, I aroused him, but did his interest go any deeper?

No, that was unfair.
Despite his frequent brusqueness, Rock had been more than courteous; he’d been kind and respectful, careful not to take advantage of my fear and my dependence on him. He probably assumed that once I was back in Boston, he’d be no more than an anecdote to entertain my friends at college. Even if he wanted to know me better, the gulf between us might seem too big to overcome. A proud man, he wasn’t going to embarrass himself by trying.

Maybe I was young and naïve
but I believed same-souled people could surmount barriers like money and class. They overcame others that were even deeper. People from different races and religions fell in love and got married every day. I’d been brought up to believe that breeding mattered, was in fact almost
all
that mattered. The people I’d met on my journey—the García family, Tomás, Tío Luis, Carmen and Lucia, even truckers like Juanito and Jorge—had no breeding the way upper-class Boston defined it, but they were as well-bred—gracious, capable, stalwart—as anyone in my circle.

“Penny for your thoughts,” said R
ock, looing at me with interest. We were still on the sofa, sitting apart since the kids had sat between us.

My thoughts? Oh, nothing really. Just thinking about same-souled people and falling in love and
getting married.
“Uh, I was thinking about all the wonderful people that I’ve met since yesterday.” I slid across the sofa next to him and he put his arm around my shoulder. I shivered at his touch.

“
They’re pretty special all right. What you’re seeing is what I think of as the real Mexico.”