Love Ain't Nothing but Sex Misspelled (8 page)

Cars were being passed through one after another.

They stopped us, and the inspector leaned in, asked if I had anything to declare. I figured we were a shoo-in. "Not a thing, sir," I said. "We were just down looking around, didn't buy a thing."

He started to pass us through, when his eye caught the steel-rim bongos I'd bought. He looked from them to me. I looked into the back seat and saw them there. My laugh was as phony as a work of Art by Joseph E. Levine.

"Oh, except those, of course ha ha."

That was our undoing. He asked to see inside the trunk. I opened it and it was empty. Then he tried the glove compartment, under the back seats, and then the girls' handbags. Nothing. Just a bottle of pain-killer pills Jenny had had in her purse for weeks, labeled in Beverly Hills and signed with the name of her family doctor.

The inspector took the bottle, put it under my left windshield wiper, and directed me to pull out of line, into an inspection slot. I was hacked. Jenny was about to fall out. But I did as I was told.

I could hear a guy somewhere playing a soft lick on a guitar. It struck me how strange it was: all day in a land where music is supposed to be second nature, I hadn't heard any live music made by the people. A few bastardized notes out of a car radio, some organ background for a quiz show emanating from New York, and silence from the happy, smiling natives of this warm Valhalla. Now, as we were about to leave, a sound of reality from the other world. It was odd.

The inspector came out of his cubicle and examined us. He examined the bottle. Then he asked whose it was. Jenny said it was hers. He asked her to come into the station for a moment to talk to the head man. She looked at me. "I'll come with you," I said.

We followed him across the concrete walkway to the big glass-fronted office. I had to support Jenny very surreptitiously. She was white as the sun at midday.

It went fast. The inspector knew what was happening. One look at her, and you could tell she had been aborted. She was sweating like a shower, hard and hot. He took her in to talk to her. I waited. After half an hour, I got worried. They told me I had to wait.

Rooney came in; she wanted to ask if there was trouble, but I motioned her to wait, I'd tell her later. An hour went by, and suddenly we heard a crash from the next room. The head man came out, panic on his stupid face, and yelled at his aide. "Call the hospital. Miguel Aleman. Have them send an ambulance. Quick!"

I was screaming at him, and was halfway over the counter, my hand tangled in his tie. "You bastard, you stupid fucking bastard! You could see she was sick, you had to pump her, you had to use her all up, didn't you? You bastard!"

Youth was not his attribute, intelligence was not his attribute, but strength was. He whipped his hands up between mine, breaking my hold, and gave me a fast one in the mouth. I went down, and he rushed back into the interrogation room to help Jenny. I crawled off the floor and Rooney helped me up. Through the open door, we could see Jenny's legs kicking as she lay on the floor.

The ambulance came and we rode along to Miguel Aleman Hospital. The waiting room was very clean and very white and Jenny died about four hours later. Blood loss. And it had been on its way to peritonitis.

I stood in the center of the waiting room when they came and told us, and suddenly all the memories I'd wanted to bury in the mud of my subconscious came back. Fran and the baby, sending my wife to the abortionist because I'd been "ill-equipped to handle a child right now, honey." The operation, the fear, and Fran growing to hate me, leaving me, the divorce. It all came back, and I knew then what Jenny had meant to me. Blackness pressed into my eyes.

I ran shrieking out of the hospital, a madman whose passage was unimpeded. They leaped out of my way. I may have been frothing at the mouth, I don't remember.

Then I was back in a dusty Tijuana street. and finding a taxi, and pointing up the hill toward Caliente track, saying, "Vamonos, vamonos!" I was waving bills under his nose and pointing, and he went ...

Fast ...

I directed him through a haze that was thick and red and whining with a high-pitched keen. When I saw the construction of steel and concrete, shaped like a geodesic dome, one of the landmarks I'd carefully noted on my first trip to Dr. Quintano's home, I made the cabbie pull over. Cab fare from any point to any other point in Tijuana is a flat fifty cents. I gave him four dollars, all the bills I had in my hand.

He sped away and I stood looking at the dome, at the sky, at my hands, and for the first time in my life I came to know sin.

I ran down the road, and down a side street, as unerringly as a hound on scent. I found Quintano's home without difficulty. It was one of the most formidable in that neighborhood, and the high fence surrounding it meant nothing to me. I don't know why I was there, what I wanted. Perhaps to hit him, or to get the money back for Jenny at the hospital--but she was gone, she was dead now, wasn't she? I didn't know.

I scaled the fence and hung at the top for a long moment, watching. The rickets case was down the line, near the gate. The door to the house opened and a man came out; he was tall with salt-and-pepper hair, and I thought he was Quintano. I climbed to the top, poised there, let myself go and caught the top of the fence with both hands. I hung for a second, then dropped. The two men saw me, and there was consternation on their faces.

"She died! She died! The baby and she died!" I yelled, and charged them. The older man stepped back, as though to flee into the house, but I went at him in a long flat dive and caught him around the ankles. He went face-forward into the side of the building, and slid sidewise, with my arms still locked around his calves. He was screaming in Spanish, and the rickets case wasn't about to help. He ran past us where we tumbled together on the ground, and into the house. The door was still open and I could hear him yelling for someone, but I was too busy trying to get at the older man's throat. I slid up his body, and locked one hand under his chin. He tried to fight me off and I pummeled him with my free fist. I was choking him, but not very well, and he was glaze-eyedly trying to fight free. I hit him as hard as I could on the side of the head, but he rolled with it, and then he dug his hand into my mouth, catching the soft flesh of my check, and he literally pried my head back. I lost my hold on his throat, and he jacked his knee up into my stomach. All the air went out of me and I flopped back, gasping like a heart case. Then, before I could defend myself, Luis was running through the anteroom, out the door, and was kicking me. His feet were big, and I saw each ripple-soled shoe descend, first right, then left, and he was stomping on my face as if I were a bug. I tried to grab his leg, and caught one pants cuff. I pulled him across and tumbled him, and managed to crawl up his front and hit him once before someone grabbed me from behind, locked his hands around my face and yanked me forcibly back against a knee. My back cracked like an arthritic knuckle and everything bobbled, weaved, swam, dipped in front of me. I started to gray out, and stayed with it just long enough to see Luis and the older man and the rickets case bending down to work me over good.

I was lying on my back, my right hand was loose in a puddle of mud, and I was staring up at a wall that held a bullfight poster. I saw the colors, and the word ARRUZA, and then read the sign very carefully three times before I fainted again.

When I came up the second time, someone was going through my pockets. I didn't stop him. Not even when he pulled my watch off my wrist. I went under again, and when I came back the third time I was very cold, and shivering. I tried to get up, let my legs slide down the wall, where they rose above my head lying in the dirt, and tried to gain purchase on the brick wall. It turned to rubber and peanut butter.

I kept at it, and finally got to my feet.

The world was nowhere to be seen.

Then I realized both my eyes had swollen almost completely shut. I stumbled forward, my hands out before me like a blind man, and came out of the alley into the street. It was noisy and full of people. The lights hurt my eyes. I stared up, and caught a vista of the town, and it was an eye-numbing horizon of neon. I groaned.

A pair of overweight Mexican girls swinging huge purses went by, and tittered to each other, saying something gutty but soft in Spanish. I called them whores, putas!

I walked the streets for hours, seeing nothing, only feeling a pain far worse than the ache that threatened to split my head open. I must have looked hideous, because I came around a corner suddenly, and came face to face with a heavyset Mexican whose eyes opened wide in amazement. He got a sick look and walked around me. I didn't turn to see if he was still watching.

My pockets were empty, of course. All I knew was that I had to have a drink. My mouth was sandy and my stomach ached. Not entirely from the stomping I'd gotten. Oh, Jenny, oh, Fran!

I wandered into the Blue Fox, and there was a naked girl doing a nautch dance on the bar. Sailors in civvies were trying to grab her crotch. She kept twisting away from them. Then someone announced dinner was served and three broads came out, undressed, and lay down on the bar. Hors d'oeuvres. Three sickies jumped off their bar stools and went to fall down on the goodies. A bouncer tapped me on the shoulder and I left. I was sick.

I went into an alley and puked. Twice. When I was as empty as I was ever going to be, I tried to straighten myself up. I brushed off my clothes, raked my hair back out of my face with a hand, and went in search of a job.

There was a hustler looking for handbill boys at the Rancho Grande, a spieler for one nightclub told me, and I went over there. Three dollars and fifty cents for two hours' work handing out handbills, putting them under the windshield wipers of parked cars. I asked for a half dollar advance and was handed a stack of handbills instead. I went off down the street like a trained monkey, handing pieces of paper to people, pressing them into the hands of strangers. I was giving of myself. It felt wonderful. I wanted to puke again, but that was ridiculous. I knew I was empty.

Finally, all the handbills were gone, and I went back to get paid. The man was gone, and the people at the club didn't know where he could be found. I went looking for him. It took a long time, but I found another handbill-giver, a kid with wide, dark eyes, and told him the man was gone. He told me that was only because I was gringo. He grinned and told me where to find the man. I went to the Bum-Bum and there he was, hiring more boys in the service of his cause. I approached him and said pay me. He looked like he didn't want to do it, but I started to make sandpaper noises and my hands became claws and l swear I'd have killed him right then if he'd refused. He'd have gone to his grave with my teeth in his throat. I was more than a little mad.

He pulled out a wad and started to peel off three singles. I reached in and took a ten, and walked away. He started to follow, and started to motion to another man, but I turned my bloody face to stare at them, and he shrugged.

I took the ten and went drinking. I bought a bottle of tequila. It seemed only fitting to drink the wine of the land. I finished the bottle almost by myself. The last dregs were taken by an old Mexican woman sitting in a doorway. She had her legs tied under her so she looked crippled, and her five-year-old son was selling pencils and switchblade knives just down the street while she begged. At one point a well-built but slovenly fifteen-year-old girl came hipping by, and the old woman told me in broken English that it was her pride, her daughter. "She make doce, twelf, doce doe-lahr night," she beamed. They lived good. I shared some chili beans with her, and went away.

I was in another place, I think. It was a club. There was a fight and sirens and I ran away. Then I was in the Mambo Rock, and someone was yelling FIRE FIRE FIRE and I turned to see the whole wall blazing. An electrical short, and the whole block was in flames. Twelve feet in the air the flames ate the night sky, and I was helping a shopkeeper pull his bongos and wooden statues of Don Quixote and bead-shirts and serapes out into the street, and then there was a Mexican soldier, a member of the National Guard, a rurale, something... and he was spinning me around telling me to go away. They'd called in the army and half the town was on fire, and I was pulling a woman out of the flames, and her dress was on fire, and I gave her a feel as I beat out the flames with my bare hands. And then they were taking me to the infirmary, and swabbing my hands with cool, moist salve.

Then another place, and I was very drunk and sick and very tired. I walked up Avenida Constitución and saw 287 HOTEL CORREO DEL NORTE and bought a pack of Delicados for seven cents in the booth on the corner, and went back to the hotel.

My room was seventy-five cents for the night. The walls were plywood till they reached five feet, then chicken-wire to the ceiling. I slept with my shoelaces knotted together, so my shoes wouldn't get stolen. I'd have put them under the end-legs of the bed, but I was so tired I knew the bed could be lifted off the shoes and I wouldn't have known it. Someone tried to get in during the night and I screamed about death and snakes and they went away.

I dreamed of jackasses painted like zebras, and turistas getting their pictures taken in a cart pulled by the zebra-ass, on street corners, wearing sombreros with the name CISCO KID scrawled on the brim. It was a nice dream.

The sign said TELÉFONO PÛBLICO, and I stood on Avenida Revolución.

I called the hospital, and somehow they found Rooney. She had been looking for me all the day before. I told her where I was, and she came and got me. I was crying, I think. They released Jenny's body, and her parents came down to get it. I don't think I could have borne carrying it back in the Magnette ... not to Los Angeles. That was forever.

Rooney kept asking me where I'd been, but I couldn't tell her. I wasn't purged, for Christ's sake, but I was tired, and that was almost as good.

Jenny was gone, and Kenneth Duane Markham was gone, and soon enough Rooney would be gone from me. All I wanted to do was get back to Los Angeles and try to be someone else. The taste of tequila was still strong in my throat, and I knew that would help a little.