Westlake, Donald E - Novel 43 (9 page)

 
          
He
found Luz and Tommy together, and joined them, and that was when the
conversation turned to the heritage of the Maya Indians, and the mystery of
their past. “At least,” Tommy said, “you fucked your own self—”

 
          
“With
Innocent St. Michael’s help,” Kirby said.

 
          
“Still,
you were there.
We
were screwed out
of our rights by our ancestors. A thousand years ago, our people lived in some
really class cities. Duded themselves up with gold and jade and all that
stuff.”

 
          
“Human
sacrifice,” Luz said, and grinned like a wolf.

 
          
“Then
our people left,” Tommy said. “Property values went to hell. You got to
maintain
a temple, or pretty soon it’s
just a pile of rocks.”

 
          
“Especially
in the jungle,” Kirby said.

 
          
“That’s
right. The dirt piles up, things grow, die, rot, more dirt, more things grow.
Rain eats out the mortar between the stones, the whole thing goes to hell. Used
to be a temple, now it’s just a hill, you can’t even
see
it any more.”

 
          
“Listen,”
Kirby said, “you guys both used to live in cities, you gave all that up,
remember?”

 
          
“Madison,”
Tommy said, with curled lip. “Houston. I’m talking about
our
cities. Lamanai. Tikal. Colorful places.”

 
          
“Colorful
ceremonies,” Luz said, with that grin again.

 
          
“I
don’t know,” Kirby said. “Not to insult your ancestors, but I don’t think I’d
like to live in places where they do human sacrifice.”

 
          
Luz
frowned at him: “Why not?”

 
          
“I’m
a human.”

 
          
“Hmmmm,”
Luz said, and they grew quiet for a while, silently comtemplating the various
functions of spectator and participant.

 
          
The
next day, Kirby sobered himself up and kissed Rosita and flew away to become a
cargo pilot again and start to dig himself out of the hole Innocent St. Michael
had walked him into. And two weeks later, eyes shining, he had flown back to
his dried-out land and carried two more Glad Bags up into
South Abilene
, and told Tommy and Luz his scheme.

  
 
          
“Rosita
says hello,” Tommy said, tired of waiting for Kirby to catch his breath. “She
says is your wife any better,” he added solemnly.

 
          
“Alas,
no,” said Kirby. “She had two more violent spells, they had to put her in the
strait jacket again. It’s looking pretty bad.”

           
“I’ll tell Rosita,” Luz said,
straight-faced. “She’s very interested in the condition of your wife.”

 
          
“Yes,
I know.”

 
          
Tommy
said, “Those two customers from yesterday; they making trouble?”

 
          
“No,
no,” Kirby said. “They bought the story all right. I’ll see them this
afternoon, make the final arrangements. The problem is the next
guy.”

 
          
“Yeah?”

 
          
“I
got a message yesterday. He isn’t due till next week, but all of a sudden he’s
coming in
today.”

 
          
Tommy
translated this for the others, and everybody looked distressed. Luz said,
“Asshole.”

 
          
“Exactly,”
Kirby said. “But it’s too late to stop him, he’s on his way. So I’ve got to
stall him somehow in Belize City, and keep him from meeting the other two, and
then bring him up here tomorrow. So you’ve got to get the place ready by then.”

 
          
“Not
much to do,” Tommy said. “The last guys didn’t dig around a lot, like some of
your people. Just the jaguar stela, basically.”

 
          
Luz
said, “They didn’t even find the stone whistle.”

 
          
“The
main problem is the field,” Kirby said. “The place shouldn’t look as though it
gets a lot of traffic, but you can really see Cynthia’s landing tracks there.”

 
          
“So
we’ll mush them up a little,” Tommy said.

 
          
“Right.”
Kirby looked serious. “And, Tommy,” he said, “don’t do your little
peeking-out-of-the-bushes number any more, okay? If one of those guys had seen
you yesterday, he’d have had a heart attack right there. It’s bad business to
kill the customers.”

 
          
“I
never have any fun,” Tommy said.

 
          
“Do
you like the conch?” Innocent asked, pronouncing it conk, as in
conk on the head
_y
and Valerie
said, “Very much.” Innocent smiled. “I take all my girlfriends here,” he said.
“Before sex, after sex. They always like the conch. They like it better after
sex.”

 
          
Valerie
didn’t quite know how to answer that, nor did it seem possible to eat the firm
white conch immediately after such a remark, nor drink some more of the Italian
white wine, so she filled her mouth with salad instead.

 
          
Delicious
salad. Very nice restaurant at the back of a private house, more outside than
in, the widely spaced white tables surrounded by the flowers and plants of a
nursery, that being the proprietors’ other business. Hanging plants, lengths of
tall picket fence, moist dirt floor beyond the tiled part, areas roofed with
sheets of translucent plastic.

 
          
Tropical
flowers are so much more
blatant
than
the flowers of southern Illinois. In southern
Illinois
, the flowers aren’t all in hot, hot oranges
and yellows and reds, and they don’t all look like human genitalia. Idealized
male and female parts hung in the air and protruded from clay pots and peeked
with false modesty out of veils of shiny green leaves.

 
          
The
waitress came over to see how they were doing, and Innocent put an arm around
her hips, his hand caressing her leg. “So you’re working here now, huh?” he
said.

 
          
“Just
for a little while.” She was short, plumpish in a jolly way, with a very pretty
face and reddish-brown flesh. She seemed not to mind Innocent’s hand on her
leg. “I got tired being cooped up in an office all day,” she said. “Maybe I’ll
go back to Belize.”

 
          
They
were, of course, already in Belize, and it took Valerie a minute to realize the
girl meant Belize City. (In just the same way, people in Mexico say they’re
going to Mexico, not Mexico City, and people in New York State say they’re
going to New York, not New York City.)

 
          
Innocent
grinned at Valerie. “Susie liked the conch after the sex.” Squeezing her leg,
he said, “Didn’t you, baby?”

 
          
Susie
giggled. Innocent winked at Valerie. “But she liked the sex better. ”

 
          
Susie
gave Valerie an arch look, woman to woman. “These men,” she said. “They all
think they’re the best, right?” Imitating a little boy, pressing one fingertip
to her cheek, she said, “Wasn’t I great, honey? Ain’t I the best you ever had,
honey? Don’t I beat all the other fellas, honey?” Then she became a
schoolmarmish sort of woman, humoring the little boy: “Oh, you were wonderful,
dear. Such a great
big
thing.” As
Innocent guffawed, she held up her hands, palms facing each other, like a
fisherman describing an extremely small fish.

 
          
Valerie
had to laugh. She also had to eat conch. The question was, did she have to go
to bed with Innocent St.Michael?

 
          
Not
have
to, that wasn’t the word. It wasn’t
as though sex would be his kind of bribe, the gift to the Third Worlder to gain
cooperation. That wouldn’t be Innocent’s way. Valerie wasn’t too awfully wise
in the ways of the world, but she did understand that Innocent was merely
permitting the subject of sex to float in the air all around them, giving her
the opportunity to decide whether or not to go to bed with him, and suggesting
without too much blatancy the reasons why she should.

 
          
Generally
speaking, Valerie was confused about sex. The gropings and kissings and sweaty
fumblings of her early teenage years had seemed somehow off the mark,
irrelevant to the hunger that certainly did exist. The idea that these nervous
jackrabbit boys might have the solution to the problem, might be able to guide
her into understanding and contentment, was absurd on the face of it. And when,
at 16, she had finally “done it” on the floor of a living room where she was
babysitting, the boy had been so nervous, so overly eager, so inexperienced and
gawky, that in some ways it had been worse than learning to dance.

 
          
Her
experiences since then had been infrequent, but varied. Most of the time, she
hardly thought about sex, and on those occasions when it did become a part of
the agenda she mostly just tried to retain some dignity. She did learn
something nearly every time, but many of the lessons were depressing. She now
knew there
were
self-confident and
capable young men in the world, who could stop thinking about themselves long
enough to think about the girls they were with, but there were dam few of them.
On the other hand, older men could sometimes be just as jumpy and inept as any
callow youth. It was impossible, doggone it, to tell what a man was going to be
like in bed just by looking at him.

 
          
Or
was it? Here was Innocent St. Michael, deliberately and smoothly filling her
head with thoughts of sex, then actually bringing out a previous girlfriend to
give him a reference; which she had done, too, even though in a backhanded way.
He would not be the first dark-skinned person she’d gone to bed with—if the
previously unthinkable were actually to occur—but he would probably be the
oldest. And maybe the heaviest; would that matter much?

 
          
He
has me
considering
the idea, Valerie
thought, astonished at herself. And he knows it, too; look at him there,
smirking and winking across the table, smacking Susie’s behind, telling the
girl, “You just want to keep me for yourself, that’s all.”

 
          
“Keep
you?” Susie slithered out of his grasp; moving away toward the kitchen, she
said, “I caught you once, and threw you back.” He can be kidded about sex,
Valerie thought as she drank more wine, because he’s so very sure of himself.

 
          
Innocent
beamed at her. “You like the conch, Valerie?”

 
          
She
giggled, like one of his women.