Puerto Vallarta Squeeze (11 page)

Cholera—first from a traveler’s hand, then from water or fruit—blew north. It had taken Luz’s mother, then her father, then
one of the middle boys. Luz escaped the disease, and the decision was clear: stay or go. Two young men in the village had
needed wives, and everyone said Luz was a good catch; she not only had beauty but also knew how to work. Her only flaw was
intelligence coupled with a slightly rebellious nature, but a few good beatings and seven or eight children would smother
those qualities. As the men liked to say, “If they are pregnant, they will not wander.” And machismo demands they do not wander—always,
always, there is the fear of a woman giving favors to another man, for that is as bad as things get for
un hombre macho
married to the woman.

In the same gringo colony where he worked as a gardener, Jesús found Luz a maid’s position in an American’s house. She was
fifteen and worked as hard as she did at home. But there was more food, and she was given shoes and a uniform and a bed of
her own over the garage in a room she shared with two other young women. At night, she could hear the Pacific waves slapping
the shore only fifty yards west of where she lay.

When the American’s son had visited on holidays, he’d noticed Luz, noticed the fine legs and prominent breasts showing beneath
her uniform, the pretty face with only the slightest hint around the eyes and high-cheeked facial structure of Indian blood
left from generations back. The son was called David, and he was her first man. That he and Luz were swimming together at
night and doing other things was understood by all, understood and accepted. David’s father had worried about disease, so
the boy always used a condom.

David was seventeen and clumsy, but Luz hadn’t known any different and presumed such things lasted no more than the thirty
seconds the boy made them last until his breath came fast and he lay still upon her afterward. Her mother had said it was
the man’s prerogative and whatever the man did was the right thing. But that’s not what the images in magazines implied, not
what the television soap operas suggested. The magazines and television made it clear that wearing fancy dresses showing off
your woman’s body was permitted, that it was all right to smile and speak unafraid in the presence of men. The stories said
there should be moments of abandon in which the woman reached ecstatic heights of her own. It was all very confusing.

But David was a decent boy, and the family was decent overall, better than Luz had been taught to expect of gringos. They’d
tutored her in basic English, good English, American colloquialisms included. Everyone said learning English was the key to
better jobs in places where the tourists went. Climb the language hierarchy, get fluent, and you could become a hotel clerk
or work in a shop where the gringo women purchased beachwear and Mexican clothing they toted back home and wore at garden
parties.

At eighteen Luz had taken her things, become a gypsy for a day, and had ridden the bus to Puerto Vallarta. It was said a million
tourists a year came to that exotic place and work was available for those who could speak English well. It was also whispered
that once in a great while a gringo would take a young Mexican woman back to
el Norte
with him, back to the good life. From chambermaid at the Sheraton to assistant cook at La Plazita, that was the route for
Luz, living those days with five other young women in a hillside shack. She would have stayed longer at the Sheraton, but
the assistant manager would not leave her alone, saying if she wasn’t nice to him, she wouldn’t have a job much longer. He
was fat and ugly and had thick fingers that touched her when she walked by. La Plazita had a clean kitchen, at least.

The young gringo men who came in groups to Puerto Vallarta had money, more money than she could imagine. If you sat along
the Malecón and smiled at them, they sometimes stopped and talked, saying, “Jeez, your English is pretty good,” among other
things. They wore T-shirts with obscenities printed on them and other ones saying, “Life Is a·Beach,” a metaphorical word-play
Luz didn’t understand at first, and they wore floppy shorts showing off their hairy, muscular legs. But they had paid twenty
dollars for a night with a young Mexican woman, a cheap enough price for bragging rights back at Texas A&M.

Twenty dollars had been Luz’s top body-price, since other young women had the same idea. And in Puerto Vallarta a twelve-year-old
girl could be rented for only three dollars a night, cash paid directly to the girl’s mother, who handed over the girl or
brought her to a specified place. Guaranteed virgins ran a little higher. Danny eventually had told her about a bloated gringo
who bragged around Las Noches about being the first to take one of the young girls. The man had laughed when he let everyone
know she wasn’t large enough to handle him, how he’d torn her up and sent her back to her mother, who’d then had to find a
doctor to staunch the bleeding.

Luz had whored only when she saw a new dress in a shop window or a nice pair of shoes she wanted. Not that it was a question
of essential morality by this time, just that the whole business was fairly boring and not very refined, besides. There wasn’t
much to it, not all that different from the boy David, You played nice, drank a little something with them, and it was soon
finished in one of the little hotels south of the Rio Cuale. It was a practical matter, nothing more. They’d usually leave
as soon as they were finished, but Luz would stay in the room all night since it had been paid for and there was hot water
and a little privacy of her own for a while. None of them had said anything about taking her to
el Norte.

When she was twenty and working at La Plazita, one of the busboys was ill on a Tuesday evening. Along with her work in the
kitchen, Luz helped clean tables that night, something she ordinarily was not allowed to do. The gringo who came in was tanned
and carried only a little belly, not as tall as some of them—perhaps five ten or so—and he had a pleasant face and nice brown
hair hanging just over his shirt collar. She noticed the hair had a few streaks of gray in it.

He’d scratched his chin and ordered enchiladas, thinking she was there to take his order, but only men were allowed to be
waiters. Before the waiter came, she whispered that the chiles rellenos were better, so he’d decided on that and asked her
if she’d like to have an ice cream later. She’d said she would, and moved in with Danny Pastor two weeks later, heaven for
a village girl. His apartment was small, but it had running water and a bathroom and a bed and closet. All of that plus a
refrigerator and a stove.

Danny had known about making true love, more than Luz knew, but that didn’t lay claim to much. Still, he’d been married and
had read books on it. He told Luz he wanted to please her in bed, to bring her happiness, and taught her how to use her hands
and mouth on him. The first time he put his tongue on her she tore the bed apart with pleasure and learned to scream into
a pillow so the neighbors wouldn’t hear. If truth usually lies somewhere in the middle of all continuums, it seemed in this
case the magazines and television knew more than Esmeralda Santos and the other villagers about men and women and the things
they do with one another. Besides, Mexican men preferred that their wives remain ignorant of the erotic arts, afraid, as they
said, “she might get to like it too much.” Those were good things for mistresses or other bad women to know, but not wives,
who might then seek out even more distant frontiers.

Danny had bought her three cassette tapes by María Conchita Alonso, whose love songs were popular with the younger women.
He also had bought her two tapes by Pedro Infante to play on his battered tape player, since she still liked the old
música ranchera
she’d heard as a girl in Ceylaya. And also two tapes of salsa music by a guitar player called Ottmar Liebert, looking on
the album cover as very close to a young Marlon Brando and playing rhumbas with just a touch of Maríachi woven into them.
When Ottmar Liebert played “La Rosa Negra,” that one especially, was when Luz would dance a lickerish, naked rhumba for Danny.
Danny, grinning and lying back on the bed and spilling tequila on the sheets and shouting, “God, let it all run forever!”

In the evenings, if Danny had money, they would go uptown and listen to Willie and Lobo in Mamma Mia. María de la Luz Santos
had been born for this sweet life, and she wanted even more of it. Though it could get a little over the edge if you weren’t
careful. Such as the night Danny had been hanging all over a blond woman from San Diego. Just to show him, Luz went off to
someone’s yacht, where three men practically drowned her in tequila. She didn’t remember much about it, except she was very
sore in her lower parts for days. She never did that again.

The abortion had been a hard, hard thing for her, though it was common enough in Mexico among women of all classes, even those
who considered themselves good Catholics. There was, first of all, the idea of family, drilled far and deep into a young girl’s
soul by a mother who could not see beyond that. And the village priest had railed against abortion—murder, he said it was.
Above all, however, was the sense she wanted the child, wanted motherhood, and wanted Danny for a husband, even though he
was nearly twenty years older than she.

But, after her wild night on a harbor yacht, Danny wouldn’t hear of it, wouldn’t think about having a child in any case, and
she was afraid of losing what she had with him. So Luz had submitted to the abortion on a hot July day. She’d tried to forget
it and after a while did forget it most of the time, yet the thought of it sometimes would come back to her, dwelling within
her like a tack in the soul. Even after a year or two, she would cry when she remembered that summer morning. Afterward that
same day, Danny had bought her a new Panasonic tape player. He’d also made sure she had plenty of birth control pills and
made just as sure she took them.

Slowly she’d repressed thoughts of the abortion and got back to the way things were meant to be. When Danny’s checks had arrived,
they’d driven to Bucerias and eaten lobster and afterward driven out to Punta de Mita and swum naked in moonlit surf. Then
one evening a curious thing had happened in the bar of El Niño, and later on that same night she rode in the Bronco named
Vito, running hard with Danny and another man, running toward
el Norte,
where she’d always wanted to go and where Danny would never even talk about taking her.

I
n late afternoon, heading due north on Route 15, Danny, Luz, and the shooter came up a long, high hill in heavy traffic, heat
enveloping the Bronco as if they were riding through a brickyard kiln. At the top of the hill, Vito heated up and boiled over.
Danny pulled off and inventoried the water supply, cursing himself for not bringing more. They’d been drinking water at a
high rate, and there wasn’t enough left to get Vito cooled down and moving again.

A Buick with Iowa plates was coming south and stopped. Leaning out the passenger-side window, a brown dog with white markings
on her face panted and looked at them. An older gentleman with an “LSU Tigers” cap on his head leaned out the other window
and asked if he could be of help. Danny said he could use some water if the man had any to spare.

“Sure do. It’s in the trunk.”

The man got out to open the trunk, and the dog followed him. While Danny was topping off the radiator, the shooter squatted
down and petted the dog. “She got a name?” he asked of the older gentleman.

“Bandida. She’s not much to look at, but she’s got a lot of heart.” Pretty bad cut on the man’s face, he noticed.

“Bandida… that’s a good name.”

““tep. Found her in New Orleans. She was in bad shape, living down by the waterfront.” He glanced at the pretty Mexican woman
sitting in the back of the old Bronco.

“Thanks,” Danny said. “I think we’re all right now.”

“No bother.” The older gentleman grinned. “Think I’ll get on down the road. Retired a while back, and me and Bandida are visiting
all the little beach towns. Got a lady librarian friend flying in from Otter Falls, Iowa, to meet me in Puerto Vallarta in
a few days. If you ever need some good reading about travel, I’d recommend getting this.” He held a book out the window,
Collected Essays on the Road Life,
written by someone named Michael Tillman.

The shooter smiled, Danny smiled, and the Buick moved south toward little beach towns and whatever else lay farther down in
the belly of Mexico.

Relentless heat. Sun melting the highway tar patches and beating on the earth and reflecting off big water to the left, some
kind of estuary or lake. A few miles farther on, Danny had to pee and swung across the highway onto a graveled turnout, parking
Vito on the crest of a high bluff dropping off to the water below.

Danny went into the bushes, and when he came out the shooter was standing near the edge of the bluff. Luz was sitting on the
ground, leaning against the Bronco’s front bumper, long-billed fishing cap shading her eyes.

The shooter pointed out and down to the water, putting his other hand to his face, checking to see if the bleeding had stopped.
It had.

“They’re using nets,” he said.

Half a dozen small boats were working the estuary stretching a mile either side of them and as far as they could see in the
direction of the Pacific. One of the boats, the color of faded turquoise, was about a hundred yards from the cliff. A man
in the bow cast a net out in front while another sat in the rear, tending a small motor. Water clinging to the net caught
sparkles of sunlight when it fanned out.

“Fishing would be a good thing to do for a living,” the shooter said. He said only that and watched the fisherman tossing
the net and retrieving it in the old, old rhythms of fishermen everywhere.

Gravel crunched behind them, big-tire kind of crunch. The truck was a red Chevy Suburban, and Danny goddamn near fainted.
Federates
drove those vehicles after they’d confiscated them from dope dealers. That was his first thought, and he was right. Three
of them got out. Two had .45’s hanging from shoulder holsters outside their shirts; the other carried an automatic weapon
of some kind on a strap over his right shoulder. Danny didn’t know much about those things, but later the shooter said it
was an Uzi, vicious little Israeli machine gun.