Peaceable Kingdom (17 page)

Beth hands me the container. I don’t want to take it, but I can’t say no. It feels very light, it feels empty. I shake it, tentatively, tilt it back and forth. Then very slowly I open it. I look at Beth and she smiles at me, a smile I cannot read.

There is nothing inside.

A
FTER THE FUNERAL, LINDA
and Toby went straight from the cemetery to La Guardia. Toby said, “One reason to take the boat to Mexico is to not have to go through Queens.” Linda didn’t know how to reply; after all, she had grown up in Queens and just buried her brother there.

The cabdriver’s name was Hamid Ali, and he took some very weird side streets. Changing lanes, he twisted around, and his sullen glittery eyes raked the back seat like bullets. It took all Linda’s self-control not to say something to Toby that would somehow let the driver know her brother had just died; perhaps then he would hate them less. Then maybe she could ask him where Muslims believe the spirit goes immediately after death. She wasn’t religious or superstitious, but right now she wanted to know. She dreaded the thought of Greg’s spirit lurking nearby, shrieking with laughter because on the day of his actual funeral she was taking off for the Yucatan with Toby, who, Greg had always said, had guacamole for brains. If she asked Toby, he would just tell her what the Inca priests believed, and Toby wasn’t Inca, so how could he really know? Moving nearer Toby she said, “Are you sure this is okay?”

“There is no okay or not okay,” he said. “All you have to do is get through it.”

According to Toby, what Linda really needed was a week on top of Machu Picchu. But when they’d totaled their savings, there wasn’t nearly enough. Besides, he’d explained, Peru was dangerous now. A guerrilla group called the Shining Path was stopping tourist trains. Linda visualized this so clearly—the screeching brakes, the masked guerrillas emerging from the darkness, the chill of a gun muzzle on her scalp—that she felt certain it would happen, and was relieved when a New Age travel-agent friend of Toby’s arranged an amazingly cheap six nights and seven days on an isle off the Yucatan coast.

Though Toby had never been to this island, he’d been almost everywhere else. Toby managed Record Bazaar; it was he who had hired Linda. He knew about all kinds of music—once, when Linda was mad at him, he filled the store with a full day of country-Western begging-and-pleading songs. But the international section was where he could usually be found, picking out CDs to play on the PA. Toby had such great taste that heavy-metal kids were often surprised to find themselves buying the expensive Moroccan joujouka imports he stacked by the cash registers.

On Linda’s first day at work, Toby led her through the imports section, past the Greek singers with the Buddy Holly glasses, the colored photos of belly dancers, past the polka bands and the paintings of balalaika players, and put on a CD called
Music from the Andes
. The flute sounded like someone breathing raggedly in your ear. Toby leaned very close and told her that once, in the Andes, he lay awake in his sleeping bag picking out bats with his flashlight, and the next day he overheard some Shirley MacLaine types saying they’d seen the sacred fire birds of the Incas. Later, after they began living together, Linda heard Toby tell this to other people. He had been to Machu Picchu three times.

At the airport Toby grabbed Linda and rushed to the head of the line. The attendant—who could see that their plane wasn’t leaving for hours—glared at them, but checked them in anyhow. Linda knew this was wrong, yet laughed and felt proud of Toby, prouder still when he looked so relaxed while the security guards X-rayed their baggage. Linda fully expected the screen to show the guns and grenades that of course they didn’t have.

The last time Linda flew—to her grandmother’s funeral in Miami—she was too young to be nervous. But now fear came easily as they boarded the plane. She felt that if she smiled and was appreciative, the plane wouldn’t crash, so she thanked the man who checked her boarding pass so profusely that he gave her a funny look. “He thinks you’re a hijacker,” Toby said.

When the liquor cart came around, Toby bought them each two tequilas. He seemed put out at the cost of the drinks, and complained so loudly that Linda hoped no one heard. In the row behind them, three college girls were painting their fingernails on the tray tables. They giggled and fluttered their coral-tipped fingers as if Linda were a restless child peeking at them through the seats.

La Hacienda del Sol was a clump of thatched adobe huts and one larger hut separated from the beach by a wide patch of oily scrub vegetation. Toby said, “Is this a joke? I thought I was through with this. I thought I’d stayed at my last hippie hammock joint. I’m going to kill Zack. When we get back to the city I’m putting out a contract on him.”

A slight, morose-looking man came out of the central building and tipped his straw cowboy hat with an ironic smile—a gesture spoiled somewhat by the way his hat had bunched up his hair so it wound around his head like a turban.

“I am Señor Ramón,” he said. “Your host. From where are you coming?”

“Nueva York,” said Toby.

“Ah, yes,” said Señor Ramón. “New York. I took fifteen credits toward my master’s at Columbia.”

“What in?” asked Toby, but Señor Ramón had picked up their luggage and set off toward a tiny hut. Inside, the walls were painted a milky poster-paint blue.

“Very cheery,” Toby said, but after Señor Ramón left, Toby said, “Hacienda del
Soil
.” When Linda didn’t answer, Toby said, “Well, I’ve stayed in worse.” After a moment he added: “The Señor looks like he could be pretty bizarre.” Bizarre, from Toby, was a term of great approval. It was how he described almost every place he had been.

The bathroom floor was cement, with water pooled in the low spots. Linda got out her flip-flops and went in to take a shower, but Toby stopped her. “Why shower with the ocean outside?” he said. Linda put on her two-piece suit, Toby a pair of trunks in which he looked more vulnerable than he did naked. Linda, too, felt exposed—they’d never seen each other in swimsuits. They put on T-shirts and jeans. “Take your purse,” Toby said, and handed her his traveler’s checks, passport, and a frayed hotel towel.

In front of the largest hut was a thatched ramada and a Coke machine. Half hidden in the dappled light, Señor Ramón sat reading. He looked up and waved them over, asked if they were going swimming and told them about a quiet cove down the beach.

“What’s the shark situation?” Toby said, laughing.

Señor Ramón laughed, too. “They visit from time to time,” he said. “No problem.”

Toby set off with Linda trailing several steps behind. It was a pace they often fell into in the city. There was a privacy in it Linda liked. They passed some tall empty-looking hotels, then a fishing village. Some women called out to them in Spanish. Toby smiled and waved, but the wind from the ocean was blowing, and Linda forgot to ask if he understood what they’d said. Linda found a beautiful shell—pearly, striped yellow and pink. She picked it up and held it, but when she saw identical shells everywhere, it no longer seemed worth keeping.

The water was a transparent pale green, slightly rippled by waves. Linda stared at it a long time, then waded in up to her ankles. “It’s cold,” she said, though it wasn’t. “Let me think about this for a while.”

Toby swam way out, though never out of sight. Linda lay down, but each time she closed her eyes, she pictured watery, blossoming flowers of blood, like in
Jaws
. When she saw Toby heading back, she took off her jeans and shirt and, as he emerged from the water, ran and hugged him. The drops of cold salt water felt wonderful on her skin.

The next day was cloudy and cool. Linda and Toby walked into town. The town was one narrow street which got more crowded with shops selling straw bags and Kahlua as it neared the zócalo. They passed several restaurants at which Linda would have liked to stop, but Toby crossed the zócalo and kept walking till the street got less fancy again. He led her into a place with no front wall and a damp, outhouse smell. The girl who waited on them was so young the child on her hip could only have been her brother. Toby ordered two coffees and many things they didn’t have until the girl nodded yes.

“
Huevos rancheros
,” Toby told Linda. “These places are where you get the really fresh tortillas.”

After breakfast, they headed toward the far end of the island, where a French couple they’d met the night before had said they could find Mayan ruins. The French tourists were skinny and pale—not entirely well-looking. It turned out they had been traveling for eight years and had been to many of the same places as Toby. During an animated conversation about hepatitis, Linda had gone off to bed.

Linda and Toby overshot the ruins by half a mile till they realized that the pile of stones they’d passed could once have been a lighthouse to guide the Mayan ships.

“We should have gone to Chichén Itzá,” Toby said. “Maybe we still should. A real ruin would do you good. The thing about ruins is, you stand there thinking those people were actually here, you feel it, and then you think how all those civilizations have come and gone, so many people have died, that’s just the way it is, and it isn’t only you. I mean, isn’t only
Greg
. Should we go on to Chichén Itzá?”

Linda hadn’t been thinking of Greg right then—ever since they’d left New York she’d been trying very hard not to—and now she was a bit startled. She said, “This is fine. Really, Toby. This is perfect.” Toby looked at her scornfully. There had been many times when Greg looked at her like that. Remembering this surprised her. She’d imagined that after someone died you’d forget the nastiness and just recall the love, but with Greg she remembered the nastiness, too.

A grassy path led away from the water and along a lagoon. After a long time they stopped for a Sprite and tortillas. Toby showed Linda how to eat tortillas rolled up with white sugar, and a man told them about a bus that would take them near Señor Ramón’s.

As soon as they got back, Toby lay down and took a nap. Linda read the guidebook, three pages on the island—mostly descriptions of hotels and restaurants where she now knew she would never eat. She thought, disloyally, that for someone who spent his life in the imports section, Toby showed no interest in tracking down the local mariachis. Perhaps he was worried that music might cost money. She’d never really seen it before, this streak of stinginess in Toby. He’d told her how, in the old days, you could keep traveling as long as you could make your money last. But this clearly wasn’t the case—no matter how much money was left, they had to be back Monday. That this should seem comforting made Linda unhappy, and she lay there watching a lizard appear and vanish through a hairline crack in the wall.

Around five, they got up and dressed with vague plans of wandering into town. But as soon as they stepped outside, Señor Ramón came over and asked if they cared for a drink. It was clearly a social invitation, but Linda worried that Toby might misunderstand and ask the Señor how much.

Toby said, “Thank you, we would.”

Señor Ramón came back with a tray, three glasses, ice, a bottle of tequila and a bottle of Coke. He mixed drinks—tequila and Coke on ice—and gave them to Linda and Toby. “Mexico Libres,” he said. “My invention.”

The drink was strong and sweet, and as Linda finished the first and took another, she felt very focused and at the same time very blurred. For once it didn’t worry her that she wasn’t contributing to the conversation; she liked the low rumbling voices of Toby and Señor Ramón. Toby was saying that they had found the ruins on the beach.

“Oh,
las ruinas
.” Señor Ramón laughed. He said these ruins were nothing; he used to work as a tour guide at Chichén Itzá.

“What a great job that must have been,” Toby said. “I’ve been to Chichén Itzá.”

Señor Ramón said, “Great? I have a doctorate in Mayan languages and archaeology, and I worked as a tour guide and now I am managing a hotel. This is a shitty country.”

Linda and Toby nodded vigorously. How odd, Linda thought, to be so quick to condemn a place they were paying money to vacation in. Toby said, “What about the U.S.? With a degree like that, you could teach…”

“The U.S.,” said Señor Ramón, “is a shitty country, too.”

“It’s a shitty world,” Toby said, and the three of them clinked glasses.

All evening, the talk kept circling back to Chichén Itzá, and maybe it was the tequila, but several times, as Señor Ramón described the ruins, Linda wanted to go there, to just get on a bus and go. When she awoke the next morning, she was still thinking of it. But before she could speak, Toby put his arm around her and, settling her head on his chest, said, “Honey, I am hung over. This man needs a day at the beach.”

Linda recalled how, when they’d planned this trip, it was all about what
she
needed, the next-best thing after Machu Picchu to help her get over Greg. She, too, felt a little queasy; last night seemed hard to recall. One thing was clear: Señor Ramón had told them it was simple to get to Chichén Itzá—a pleasant ferry trip and an easy bus connection in Valladolid.

“I don’t know,” Toby said. “I mean, there are ruins and there are ruins. You can spend the day tripping around Chichén Itzá, taking in the beautiful pyramids and the ball court. And then you get to the cenote they threw all the Mayan virgins down, and you look down into the deep black sacrificial well, and it hits you that the entire place was basically about that. It is not for nothing that this whole culture is about panthers and human skulls. Sweetheart, that is
not
what you need.”

Linda couldn’t quite put this together with what Toby was saying last night to Señor Ramón, or with what he always said about ruins, that the point of them wasn’t that something good had happened there, but that people had lived and died there.

“What about Machu Picchu?” she said. “No one got sacrificed there?”

“Those are two totally different stories,” Toby said. “For one thing, getting thrown into a well is totally different from getting pitched off the side of a mountain.”