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It did not take Paul long to unpack. He changed to a pale-gray wool shirt and dark-blue slacks. He sat on the narrow bed. It was made up with clean gray sheets, a blanket with two holes in it. The narrow window was open. He looked through the patched screening and between the bars and saw a stretch of baked earth between his window and the high stone wall. Broken glass of many colors topped the wall, gleaming in the sun. He turned and looked at the cane chair with a broken seat, the huge bureau that looked as if at one time it had rolled down a rocky mountain. He looked at the single bulb that stuck out of the wall, a big bulb made of clear glass so that he could see the filaments inside. He went over and turned it on by pulling the chain. He could look directly at the light without blinking. He could imagine how dismal the high-ceilinged room would be at night. The center of the narrow bed was a good five inches lower than the corners. And the mattress was stuffed with discarded truck springs and milk bottles. A cockroach strolled out from under the bed, paused and looked at Klauss with insolent appraisal, and went back under the bed. For the first time since childhood Paul Klauss felt like breaking into tears.

At ten o’clock on Friday morning, the little red bus toiled slowly up the mountains, from the fifty-five hundred feet at Cuernavaca toward the ten-thousand-foot pass a little beyond
Tres Cumbres. Fidelio Melocotonero sat gloomily grasping the wheel, sometimes urging the vehicle forward by bobbing back and forth.

Beside him sat Gambel Torrigan, equally depressed. When, at the Peninsular Art School and Foundation of Englewood, Florida, he had received the letter from Gloria Garvey, he had lunged at the opportunity. Englewood had been a fine place for a time. When they had hired him as instructor in painting, they had turned over to him a rickety but extremely private beach cottage on lower Manasota Key. Classes had started the first of October. He taught in the morning, and worked hard on his own stuff in the afternoon. He’d bought an elderly vehicle that got him back and forth from the school to the Key, and into town for groceries. He had decided that this was the time to turn over a new leaf. Get a lot of work done. Big paintings. Swim and sleep and work. Get in shape. Lay off the bottle, and don’t fool around with the students.

But by the time Gloria’s letter came, it had all changed, the way it always did. He would look at the paintings he had thought were so good when he was doing them, and they would be meaningless to him. By the time Gloria’s letter came he was spending the good working hours in a beer joint on the Key, with or without Arabella Boycie, the spoiled, rich, drunken, domineering bitch who had bitched up his plans and bitched up the job so that he was certain that when the school closed on the last day of April, he would not be invited back for the following fall.

It was a timely invitation and, in addition, he remembered Gloria Garvey with pleasure, remembered her untidy magnificence, and was quite certain that she sought a renewal of an all too brief affair. He had been Arabella’s house guest on Casey Key during May and June. After he had purchased his one-way airline ticket, he had nearly five hundred dollars left, some of which was from the sale of the old car, and most of which was a pseudo-loan from Arabella Boycie.

He had thought it would be a pleasant summer. But Gloria had made her lack of co-operation in some of his plans most painfully evident. The hotel was grim. The food was barely edible. Drummond was a tiresome little man. And fat Agnes and her work were equally unbearable. Also, the two students who had arrived, Klauss and Ardos, were unpromising.

The red bus came to the highest point and began to descend
to the plateau of Mexico, twenty-five hundred feet below. Fidelio sat tautly, brown hands grasping the wheel, the speedometer climbing as he pressed the gas pedal flat against the floor. Gam Torrigan had learned that Fidelio had no English. In a very short time the speed began to make Gam feel uncomfortable. He glanced over at Fidelio’s wide grin. The tires yelped on a corner and Gam had the feeling they had come close to turning over. The speedometer went only to sixty, and the needle was lying firm against the pin.

“Hey, you!” Gam yelled over the roar of the wind. “Take it easy!”

Fidelio gave a great roar of laughter. The wind had disrupted his ducktail and long strands of glossy black hair dangled in front of his face. He laughed again. Gam saw at once that there was very little choice. They were going too fast to risk jumping out. It was too dangerous to risk grabbing the wheel. The little red bus rocketed down the mountain, dancing and squealing on the curves, passing everything on the road. At one point there was a stone wall, a low wall, close to Gam’s elbow, and beyond the wall was a dropoff of hundreds of feet. Gam tried to wrench his fascinated gaze away from the drop, but he kept turning to look back at it.

Fidelio kept yelping, and his face was wet with sweat, his eyes wide and shiny, his knuckles squeezing white. From time to time he gave the horn button a quick bang with his fist. He was in a frenzy of ecstasy. Finally they whipped around a corner and ahead of them was a long straightaway with the toll booths at the end of it. Fidelio stamped on the brake. The bus slewed and rocked and yelled. They bounced wildly over the concrete ripples near the booths designed to slow traffic down, and after a final screaming skid, came to a grandiose stop directly opposite the window. Fidelio gave the man the toll ticket. He drove on, very slowly. He pulled over and parked. They both got out. Fidelio went over and sat on the grass, chuckling weakly. Gam leaned against the side of the bus and stared at Fidelio glumly. Gam felt as though his knees would bend either way.

When Fidelio at last stood up, Gam took three steps toward him, doubled his fists, and knocked him down. Fidelio lay flat on his back on the grass. He looked up at Torrigan and suddenly began to giggle again. Torrigan went to the bus and got behind the wheel. No key.

It took a considerable amount of sign language to establish
the status. If the señor did not get out from behind the wheel, Fidelio would walk away with the key and never come back. Fidelio would drive. But he would drive slowly. If he did not drive slowly he would get one more big thump in the mouth when they finally stopped, if they were alive.

And they proceeded to the airport.

At eleven o’clock on the morning of Friday, the thirtieth day of June, while Barbara Kilmer and John Kemp were sharing the same airliner over the barren lands some four hundred miles north of Mexico City, and while Fidelio was lying on the grass, giggling, and while Felipe Cedro and Rosalinda Gomez were having a deadly quarrel in the kitchen over the split of the morning kickback, and while Miles Drummond was sitting at the table in his apartment, adding up figures, and while Agnes Partridge Keeley was doing an opaque water color of Popocatepetl, managing to make it look like a huge oversweet vanilla cookie, and while Gloria Garvey was drinking beer at her table in front of the Marik, and while Esperanza Clueca sat in the sun behind the staff quarters studying and while Alberto Buceada was asleep in the shade, and while Pepe was abusing a stray puppy, and while Harvey Ardos was buying a straw sombrero in the public market, and while Paul Klauss was lounging grimly on his bed … Margarita Esponjar came into Klauss’s room without knocking, carrying a pile of folded sleazy towels.

Paul Klauss stared at her for a frozen moment and then came lithely to his feet.

“Buenos días, señor,”
Margarita said in her joyous and
piercing voice.
“Dispénsame, pero quiere dos de estas limpias? ¿Dónde están las sucias?”

Paul gave her expert inspection. Young, possibly too young. Gay and confident. Something pathetic about the unsuitable, slutty red dress and those too-large shoes. At her throat was a cross on a chain that could mean trouble. And, of course, there was a language barrier. The figure was pert and exquisite. The youthful joy of living made her very enticing. She would respond most quickly to a gay approach. So he smiled broadly and shrugged with a charming helplessness, and with his eyes squinched up, he said, “I’m sorry. I speak no Spanish. I haven’t seen you before.”

She returned his smile and clomped over to the bureau and put two towels on top of it. She took his two dirty towels from the back of his chair and started toward the door. He moved over and blocked her way and made himself tall and smiled down at her. He pointed at his chest and said, “Paul.”

“Ball,” she repeated, smilingly, dutifully. He pointed at her chest. “Margarita,” she said in her loud, clear, penetrating voice. He winced inwardly. Drop the rating from nine to eight.

“You are very pretty, Margarita,” he said softly.

She moistened heavy lips and looked at him with a smile of empty good will, of almost idiotic pleasure.

“¿Qué quiere?”
she said.

“I do not understand,” he said, and he was so encouraged by her smile that he reached out a wary hand and clasped her waist, narrow and supple under the sleazy red rayon, warm to his touch.

She looked quite startled for a moment, and then a broader smile of complete comprehension lit up her rather heavy face. She turned and put the towels on the chair and stepped out of her red shoes and, in front of Paul’s horrified eyes, made a series of gestures so unmistakably specific, so unbelievably crude, that Paul felt his cheeks grow hot with the first blush since childhood. Despite the range and diversity of his amatory conquests, Paul Klauss was, in his heart of hearts, a prude. During her gestures and gyrations, Margarita had not lost her broad delighted smile of inquiry.

“Sí
?
”
she said.
“Sí? ’Stá bien, horita, Señor Ball.”

And she reached down and grabbed the bottom of the red dress and started to yank it up off over her head. Paul lunged
toward her and pawed the dress back down and said, “No! No!”

She tilted her head onto the side and looked at him in confusion,
“¿No?”

“No.”

“Ah! Más tarde, creo?”

“I don’t know what you mean. But no.”

“¿Esta noche? ¿Después de la comida? ¿A las once horas?”

“No.”

“¿Qué falta, Señor Ball? ¿No le gusta amor? ¿Entonces, por qué las mano aquí?”
She touched her waist where his hand had rested, her dark brows knotted in bafflement. Her voice was so clear and loud he was certain it could be heard all over the hotel. By gestures he told her to leave. She left with the pile of towels and a look of hurt, red heels clumping.

Paul shut the door and went over and sat on his bed. He felt abused and cheated. Damned little slut. Probably a half-wit. No sense of decency. Didn’t mean a damned thing more to her than if I’d asked for two extra towels. Or wanted to shake hands.

After Margarita had delivered the rest of the towels, she wandered thoughtfully out into the back of the hotel looking for Felipe. Because he had worked for so long for Señor Drummond, Felipe, of all of them, would be the one most likely to be able to explain to her the odd behavior of the
Americano
.

She found Felipe Cedro sitting on the stone step in front of the doorway of the room he had appropriated in the staff quarters behind the hotel. He was languidly shining Miles Drummond’s black dress shoes. She leaned against the side of the building patiently until he was ready to take notice of her.

“¿Qué, tal, Margarita?”

“Felipe, a most curious thing has happened. I took the towels to the room of Señor Ball.”

“There is no Señor Ball. I have seen the list. What room?”

“Number eight.”

“Ah, that is Señor Ball Klauss. In English Ball is the same as Pablo in Spanish. What of this Señor Klauss?”

“When I started toward the door he stepped in front of me. He told me his name. I told him mine. He looked at me in that certain way. You know that way. And he put his hand here, on the waist. So … I knew what it was he wanted. And I was not very busy. And you know I am a loving person. And he is a
pretty little man with yellow hair. And I suppose I am curious. In a sense. So with motions I make certain it is what he wants and I can see from his face I am right, so I begin to take off the dress, and he stops me, and his face is red and he says no, no, no. From that moment, whatever I say, he says no, no, no, and he makes signs for me to go and I do so. I do not understand such a man, Felipe.”

Felipe mustered his thoughts while he scratched at a daub of black polish on the side of his thumb. “It is not an easy thing to have an understanding of them,
chica
. Their blood is cold. I swear by all the saints that in all the years I have worked for Señor Drummond, I have not known him to be with a woman. Yet he is not one of the others.”

“Incredible!” Margarita gasped.

“It is the truth of God. Here is what I believe about this Señor Klauss. I believe that he is shy and timid. I believe he is frightened of you. They are like that. He made a little gesture and he believed you would be alarmed, and with them it is a game without meaning. He could not know that you are a woman of warm blood and honesty. Maybe he has never been with a woman. There are thousands of them who have never attempted it, not even as a child.”

“Incredible. The poor frightened little man with yellow hair. What can I do to help Señor Ball?”

“They grow more bold at night, but still not bold enough for such a one as you. Let me make a plan.” She waited patiently, squatting on her heels, as Felipe thought. He reached into his pocket and took out a key, looked warily around and handed it to her. “Hide it away. Do not tell anyone you have it. And you must give it back to me. It will open every door in the hotel.”

“A valuable thing to have.”

“What you must do is go to the room of this Señor Klauss and let yourself in. Hide naked in the darkness in his bed. Before you do so, unscrew the bulb a little bit so that the light will not function. Then when he comes to bed he will be unable to help himself.”

She laughed softly. “Ah, then he will not say no, no, no. I will make him say yes, yes, yes.”