Kiss The Girls and Make Them Die (17 page)

“No,” she shook her head. “I don’t have it all yet. Tell me about our meeting in the bar. Tell me it was an accident.”

“It was an accident—”

“Bullshit.”

“An accident—you didn’t let me finish—in the sense that all human encounters are a triumph over phenomenal odds, like the collision of atomic particles in an orange. But actually—you aren’t going to like this.” He ducked his head in a coy grin. “I saw you at the trial.”

“Oh,
really?”
Anger, confusion, curiosity fought for control of her mind. The anger came out first. “Well then why didn’t you say, in Mexico City, ‘Hi there, I remember you from the trial.’ Why didn’t you
say
that?”

“Because I’ve lost my Zen. Listen—” He put his hand on her arm. “All this will I explain, and more. But first—I have somethmg to give you.”

He walked to his mat and came back untying a strand of hemp from the top of a paper sack. He shook the contents
out on the rock. She stared at her key pouch, tape, passport, the blank folded cover of her checkbook …

“They glommed the coins.” he said. “I didn’t think they were worth a hassle.”

She looked up at him. “Did you know those two beach-boys?”

“Well of course. How else could I get your stuff back?”

“You probably set them on me.”

“I knew them, but not as friends. They’re just beach scum, without a thought in their heads. I found out they’d ripped you off, and I sent word I wanted your stuff back.”

“Thanks. I said the same thing. You know what I got? Zilch.”

“Well …” He smiled, fingering the stubble on his chin. “You could say I have connections—a hateful necessity. Part of protecting the family.”

She picked up the black folder, riffled through the checks, and noted that two were missing. The paper seal she’d stuck over the end of the flat yellow box containing the tape had been torn open, then resealed. Her grease-pencil marking was smudged almost to illegibility:
Patient #437 – Bo 1 nger – Int: ? dac
. She slanted her eyes up at him. “Did you play it?”

He nodded.

“What for?”

“I was curious. I wanted to find out how much you knew.”

“From the questions I asked?”

“No. From the answers that Danny gave you. I could tell how much bullshit he felt compelled to give you, know what I mean?”

“No.” She frowned as she put the items in her pack. “How much
did
he give me?”

“About as much as you could swallow.” He laughed, picked up her pack, and slung it on his shoulder. “I’m only kidding. Come, I’ll find you a place to throw your bag.”

She had no choice, since the way was only a narrow footpath, but to dog his footsteps down the rocky slope,
across the spongy soil of the coastal plain, beneath the arching branches of the coconut palms. The path angled sharply up the steep cliff, past an old stone well with a bucket and windlass. Several dark-skinned Indian girls smiled shyly. A tall lean blonde girl with an earthen jar on her outflung hip looked at Liza with frank, hostile appraisal.

“Lona, this is Liza.”

“Hello,” said Liza.

The girl nodded but said nothing. The Learned Doctor chuckled and walked on. A sense of strangeness prickled Liza’s scalp. She had a definite feeling that the girl knew Danny, yet she hadn’t been one of those he’d mentioned. It made her wonder what else he’d left out.
As much bullshit as you can handle, Liza
. Oh yeah?

She stopped to catch her breath as they topped the cliff. Now she could see that it was the headland of a plateau that stretched far to the north, dropping off to the sea in dozens of jagged little bays. About twenty rectangular huts were scattered at haphazard angles among the outcroppings of rock; footpaths wound among them, a deep rutted track twisted through the village and dropped into the next valley. The only sign of commerce was a round white-and-red sign nailed to the porch post of a hut near the road: TOME PEPSI—FRIO. Off to her left, next to a hut silhouetted against the white-capped sea, stood the black Honda she had last seen churning up sand beside the lagoon. And in the doorway of the hut, with a beer bottle clenched in his fist, his belly bulging over his belt, was the Frog himself, grinning like an ape.

She stopped and turned to the Learned Doctor. “I think I deserve an explanation.”

He shrugged, smiled. “You came down here to rummage around in Danny’s past, right? He’s part of it.”

She felt the heat rise to her cheeks. “Don’t expect me to share the same roof with that Neanderthal.”

“Suit yourself. Lona’s his chick, so don’t worry about
that
. You know he had to push his bike all the way back
to Playa. Rewards of lust—look, why don’t you throw your bag down? I’ll fix us something to eat.”

He broke two anemic eggs into a cast-iron skillet and set it on a charcoal brazier made of earthenware. Frog fanned the coals lackadaisically with a folded banana leaf, while the Learned Doctor chopped some spicy Mexican sausage (he called it chorizo) into the skillet. Liza ate sitting on her pack, with the tin plate balanced on her knees. The hut held no furniture, just a few shredded straw mats covering the packed-earth floor, and a wooden sleeping platform strewn with several wadded sleeping bags. Liza sniffed the rank pungent odor and wondered if she was in for another sleepless night …

Lona came in, swung down her water jug, and lowered herself cross-legged to the mat. Her sleeveless yellow dress barely reached her hips. Her pale straw-colored hair was pulled back tightly and tied at the back of her head; she had a long narrow skull and large gray-blue eyes. Her skin was a mosaic of sun freckles. Looking at Liza, she opened a leather draw-string bag and took out a short, gleaming pipe of red soapstone. The Frog sat down, packed it full of green flakes, lit it, and passed it to Elizabeth. She felt tempted, sensing that it was the only, way she could put them at ease, but passed it on to the Learned Doctor. Silently, the pipe went around the circle. A large parrotlike bird with iridescent green plumage perched on the roof pole, pecked corn off a cob and crunched the grains in his beak. Liza felt a deep lethargy from the rhythmic thrump-crash of the surf outside; part of it was the soporific effect of the
mota
wafting up her nostrils. She got up and dragged her pack to the edge of the sleeping platform, climbed the short ladder, spread out her sleeping bag, and slept

It was dark when she woke up. She walked outside and saw a bonfire blazing on the seaward side of the hut. Seven young men and four women, all tanned to a shade of mahogany with sun-whitened hair, sat in a circle around the fire. The Learned Doctor beckoned to her, moved
over to make room, but said nothing as she sat down beside him. The pipe made its endless round. A blond-bearded young man picked out an a-rythmic tune on a guitar; a man and woman got up and embraced swaying to the music, then walked off into the shadow. A wine bottle was put into her hands; Liza consulted her queasy stomach and passed it on. Gradually she became aware that the women were studying her from the corner of their eyes; the men faced her with a calm glitter, as if waiting for her to prove … what?
Why should I have to prove anything?

She got up finally and went back inside the hut. She felt an odd, tingling euphoria mingled with a sense of dread Something was about to happen—that was her feeling, yet she couldn’t be sure it wasn’t just the uncertainty of being in a new place, with strange new smells and new life rhythms …

She dreamed that she was trapped in the slime-glistening coils of a gigantic sea creature. Reptilian tentacles enwrapped her, smothered her, penetrated her body in its most intimate places. She fought herself free and discovered that each tetacle was a phallus tipped with a leering, malevolent human head.

She sat up and looked over the edge of the platform. On the floor writhed the creature of her dream. Men and women writhed with naked limbs intertwining, wet mouths groping, fingers probing, white buttocks humping, twisting, turning. A yellow flame curled from a rag stuck in a beer can, casting a flickering smoky light over the slithering mass. She tried to locate the Learned Doctor, failed to find him—which for some reason pleased her—and settled back to watch. The movement became hypnotic, the fountains of her own desire began to flow, she trembled with an urge to throw off her clothes, climb down the ladder, and surrender her body to the sensual beast. The desire became irresistible, so she moved her sleeping bag to the rear of the platform and lay down with her face to the wall.

She stayed for three days without turning on. Each night she watched the Learned Doctor pass the pipe around the little group, felt the silence descend like a mist while their faces took on an inward quality. Then Frog would rise and lurch back into the hut. Soon Lona would follow, leaving Liza and the Learned Doctor sitting alone, watching the dying fire, wriggling their bare toes in the warm sand.

She couldn’t figure out what sexual arrangement prevailed between the Learned Doctor, Frog and Lona. The needs of the Learned Doctor were not great, she assumed—at least judging from the thoughtful reflective way he looked at her, she deduced that he was not being torn apart by unrequited desire. Of course he could be sending signals she didn’t pick up. She wasn’t sure yet what sexual customs prevailed among expatriates living in the tropics. So much of courtship in the temperate zones involved finding a place where you could take off your clothes and be alone with somebody. You needed an apartment, or a car, and that’s how economics got into it. Here it was simple; Lona dropped her shorts and lay down, Frog kicked his off and lay down beside her. Bang-bang, nothing to do but have another joint, eat a mango or a bully-beef torta, and sleep.

Across the fire the Learned Doctor got up, coughed, threw another chunk of driftwood on the embers, and sat down again. Liza stretched out her legs and felt the warm sand lumping between her thighs. It would be simple for her too. She had given up trying to keep her underwear clean by washing it in the river. Now, like Lona, she wore nothing under her shorts.
Simple, and a foregone conclusion, therefore dull …

She realized he was watching her across the fire, but when she looked up his gaze shifted to some distant horizon. The Learned Doctor—now that she knew him she felt the term to be ludicrous, a putdown of himself in order to avoid trouble—wore his usual look of puzzled perplexity, as if he were trying to locate some distant object once glimpsed, then lost. A prophet whose religion
had become … not successful, but popular—and profitable.

She chuckled softly, and he turned his eyes to her slowly, like sliding oil. “What’d you pick up?”

“You—the guru. It doesn’t wash.”

“What does?”

“I don’t know. You don’t seem to belong in this century. I don’t know what you are, actually. A decadent aristocrat—not that exactly, possibly an alienated intellectual.”

“Lotta words,” he grunted.

“What else do we communicate with?”

He walked over and sat down beside her, held out the pipe. She shook her head, and for several minutes there was silence. Then he began talking, in a bored, school-masterish manner …

“Time is the killer, Liza. You can defeat disease, injury, you can avoid the big waves, you can watch where you put your feet, you can stay away from violent people—but you can’t avoid getting old. What
you’re
into is suicide, killing yourself by following rules. You’ve got to find you own way, Liza. You follow somebody else’s pattern and you’ll never find out what you are because when it’s over you’re just like anyone else.”

Feeling uncomfortable, she chose to be flippant. “You think there’s still a chance for me?”

“Oh yes. You’re trying to understand our scene instead of flushing it all out of your mind. But what are you really looking for?”

“I don’t know. What?”

“Your lost innocence.”

“I don’t recall that I ever had any.”

“Come now.”

Into her mind came a vision of a lawn sprinkler going
brrrp-brrrp-brrrp
, shooting out gouts of spray … herself and a neighbor boy running through the icy downpour, their play suits tossed on the sandpile, unaware that they were naked until his moma came out and reminded them, with the sharp slap of palm against buttock …

“A long time ago,” she said musing. “Tell me, is that what Danny was doing down here, Looking for his innocence?”

He was silent a minute, dipping up handfuls of sand and letting it drift down into little cones. “What Danny was doing … what we were all doing at that time, was pushing back the border of human consciousness. You know? Cracking the nut of the ego. Freeing the Self from the prison of the self. It was the only frontier we had. So we threw ourselves against it, and a lot of us died. I remember one single month in ‘66 I had three friends wiped clean off the board, and a lot of others who wigged, and a few who got thrown in the slammer and wound up playing a lifelong game of cops and robbers. It all seems a long time ago. I took my first acid trip when I was a psychology professor, and I haven’t been inside a classroom since. I turned into a purist, a moralistic sonofabitch. I was a peyote saint before Castenada ever pulled the fuzz off his first button. Then the whole drug scene started going pop, and all this young gash with itchy clits started trooping south of the border, and some of it got blown my way. At first I went complete ape and built myself a nice little private harem, it was easy, but the care and feeding of even one chick seemed like too much hassle, let alone three or four. Also it was too damn easy to see where it was leading given the fact that I’ve dedicated my life to being uncommitted to anything. A dude with three chicks and no bread is eventually gonna hit on the fact that the quickest and easiest way to make it is pimping, but I dunno, seems like you get hung up with losers, female type, and I wasn’t cruel enough to make it work. I mean, what do you do when they get a little bit spavined? Boil ‘em down for soap? Or you get one that’s a little obese, so you gotta control her diet. I could even see myself feeding ‘em aphrodisiacs so they’d enjoy their work more … well, anyway I didn’t do it, but I sure as hell fantasized it out all the way. So … what were we talking about? Oh yes, Danny. You know we never used given names, we always laid on one of
our own, and sometimes we’d try several before we got one to stick. Danny went through a couple, but these were related to the changes he was going through. When he came he was Savage, a distinct case of post-combat paranoia. I never expected him to take to psychedelics. He was like a man who’s trying to sit still with a hot wire up his ass. Carry the ball from here to there, and take it back again. Impatient with talk, hadda have action. First time he dropped acid he sat like a stone for six hours, then he jumped up, wild-eyed, grabbed a knife and ran off into the jungle. I pictured him going berserk, hacking up women and kids in the bush. Two days later he came out of the jungle with a glow around his head. He gave me this walking stick.”