Six Bad Things (3 page)

—Hockey, very fast, good sport to watch. You like hockey?

—Not really.

—European football, soccer?

—Not really.

—But to play, yes? Americans like to play soccer, but not to watch.

—I guess.

The game comes back on. New England tries a play-action pass down the sideline. It’s complete. The receiver dodges the cornerback and sprints for the goal line. I hang my head, ready for the inevitable New England game-winning touchdown. The Fins’ strong safety hammers the receiver. The ball pops loose into his hands, and he’s running upfield. I jump off my swing and pound my fist on the bar.

—Go, go, go, go!

As he runs the ball all the way back for a touchdown.

—Yeah!

The backpacker guy nods his head, smiles like he approves of the play, takes a sip of his beer.

—What about baseball? You like baseball?

JUST AFTER sunset I walk back up to the north end of the beach. I pass the group of Spanish girls. They have a little overnight camp set up about a hundred yards from my bungalow. They’ve slipped shorts or baggy cotton pants on over their bikini bottoms in deference to the marginally cooler evening air. Two of them are walking in from the tree line that stretches the length of the beach, their arms full of deadwood for a fire. The girl with the nice smile is sitting cross-legged on one of the blankets they have spread on the sand, braiding the hair of the girl in front of her. There are five of them, none can be more than twenty-three. I try to remember what I was doing when I was twenty-three. I was still in college, studying something I never used. Christ, why wasn’t I camped out on Mexican beaches with girls like these?

I watch her quick hands weaving hair as I walk past. She looks up at me, smiles again.

—Buenas noches.

In that Spanish Spanish accent.

—Buenas noches.

She tilts her head toward my bungalow.

—Su casa?

—Mi casa.

—Bonito

—Gracias.

Tossing the strands of hair between her fingers the whole time, slipping a rubber band from her wrist when she gets to the end of the braid, cleverly twisting it into place. The girls with the wood arrive and dump it in a pile next to the blanket. She hops up, starts digging a hollow in the sand for the fire and gives me a little nod as I continue on to the bungalow. Behind me I hear Spanish chattered far too quickly for me to follow. There’s a great deal of laughter and I get the distinct feeling I’m being talked about. But it’s nice to be talked about by pretty girls, no matter what they might be saying.

THE BUNGALOW really isn’t much, but she’s right, it’s bonito in its way. Wood walls up to about waist level, topped by screen windows that circle the one-room building, with heavy storm shutters. The whole thing is set on pilings that lift it a foot above the sand, and topped with the same palm thatching as The Bucket. I step up on the porch, past the canvas-back chair, small wooden table and hammock, and dig the key from the Velcro side pocket of my shorts. In the normal course of things, if I was just a guy down here living on the beach, I wouldn’t really need to lock my door. But I’m not that guy and I do need to lock my door. I have secrets to hide. I open the door and secret number one says hello.

—Meow.

I GOT into some trouble when I lived up in New York. I did a guy a favor and I got into some trouble for doing it. The favor he asked me to do that led to all the trouble, to me being on the run in Mexico, was he asked me to watch his cat. I said yes. And here I am three years later, still watching his cat.

BUD JUMPS down from the bed and limps over to say hi. One of his front legs was pretty badly broken in all that trouble. And some of the fur on his face grows in a weird little tuft because he has a scar from the same encounter that broke his leg. The guys that did the leg-breaking and the scarring are dead. Someone felt bad about that, not Bud. He rubs his face against my calf and I bend down, scoop him off the floor, and drape him over my shoulders.

—Jesus, cat, you’re getting fat. You are a fat fucking cat and no two ways about it.

I walk to the low shelf that holds my boom box and CD collection. I rummage around until I come up with Gram Parsons’s
Grievous Angel.
Gram and Emmylou’s harmonies twang out of the speakers. I open one of the kitchenette cupboards, grab a can of Bud’s food, scoop it into his bowl, and he leaps off my shoulders and digs in.

—Enjoy it while it lasts, cat. You’re going on a diet.

It’s pretty dark now, so I light a few candles. Like The Bucket, my place has no electricity, just batteries for the boom box, and candles and lanterns for light.

I take off my shirt and sit in my comfy chair. My face, arms, and legs are a deep, reddish brown from my years here, but my torso is white. Just like I don’t follow baseball or talk about my cat, I don’t take my shirt off in front of other people. They would kind of notice the livid scar that starts at my left hipbone, wraps around my side, and stops a couple inches from my spine. I took a bad beating up in New York and my kidney almost ruptured and had to come out. Later, some guys wanted some information from me and got the clever idea that I might be encouraged to tell them what it was if they started ripping out my staples. It was a really good idea because I would have told them anything, except that I didn’t know anything. Yet. Anyway, I keep the scar covered around people because if I didn’t, and anyone asked them if they knew anyone with a big kidney scar, they could happily say yes and I’d be a step closer to dead.

I leave the music on and walk down to the water. I usually do this naked, but I keep my shorts on tonight because of the girls right over there sitting around their fire. The water is perfect. It’s always perfect. I wade out, lean back, let my legs drift up and my arms float out until I am bobbing on the surface of the Caribbean, looking up at the stars. And for half a second I almost forget the Russian backpacker who set up his tent at the opposite end of the beach. The one who might be here looking for me and the four and a half million dollars that the New York Russian mafia thinks is theirs.

I have that money.

But it’s mine.

I killed for it.

BACK THERE at the bar, he sat and waited, the baseball question floating between us while I took another sip of seltzer.

—No, never got into baseball much. Just the football really.

Pedro comes over with some ribs for me. The backpacker is mostly quiet while I listen to the Dolphins actually hold onto a fourth-quarter lead and win the game. Of course, the radio tells me that the Jets have just beaten Buffalo, so we’re still locked in a death march to the last game of the season. But hope springs eternal after every win. And next week the Jets have to go to Green Bay, where come December the Packers treat opposing teams the way Napoleon got treated once the Russian winter hit him. Meanwhile, Miami gets to play 2–11 Detroit, at home. So you never know. God, I’m such a sucker.

I light a cigarette. The backpacker points at the pack.

—Benson Hedges.

—Want one?

—No. Don’t smoke. You know, only Russian doesn’t smoke in whole world.

—Huh.

—Father smoked Benson Hedges.

—Oh.

—Died, lung cancer.

—Yeah, it’ll get ya.

—No smoking for me.

—Good call.

It’s late afternoon. People are packing up on the beach after baking all day. Pedro is sitting on the far side of the bar with his guitar, strumming almost silently, whispering a song to himself. No one else is at the bar. I take a paperback from the rear pocket of my shorts, bend it open till the spine cracks a little, and lay it flat on the bar in front of me. The backpacker turns around on his swing to face the ocean again, still sitting right next to me. I read the same sentence a few times. He cranes his neck and tries to see the title of the book printed at the top of the page I’m staring at. I hold up the book, show it to him.
East of Eden.

—Good book?

—Yeah.

I flatten the book on the bar again and stare at the sentence, waiting.

—Vacation here?

I surrender, flip the book facedown, light another cig, and turn to face him.

—Nope, live here. That’s my place up at the end of the beach. What about you, been on the road long? Doing the whole vagabondo thing or just on a quick vacation?

Which is how I end up spending the next hour chatting with Mikhail the Russian backpacker who really likes to be called Mickey.

He’s in his early twenties and has a round face and the kind of patchy beard and scraggly hair that all backpackers aspire to. He tells me that his family is originally from Armenia, but was in Russia for five generations, how his father was an importer/exporter of some kind who moved the family to America in ’95, which is where the Benson & Hedges caught up with him. He tells me about his four years in Jersey City and the four he spent at NYU in the film department and how he’s been on vacation since last May, but he has to be back after New Year’s to start graduate work in the second semester. And as he’s sucking on his ninth or tenth tequila since he first sat down, I’m thinking that if he really is a Russian gangster hunting me, he has the best cover act ever. Then he leans closer to me, shaking his head.

—I say my father was importer and exporter of goods, but truth is different.

He does another shot of tequila and chases it with
sangrita.

—Truth, he was “business” man.

He says it so I hear the quotation marks.

—Wanted me in “business” with him. Mother was actress, married him for money. Big fucking deal, you know. Everybody in Russia married for money if they could. Mother was so happy I wanted to be artist like her. Pissed father off, pissed him fucking off. But I go to film school. Make film about dancer marries gangster. He dies before he can see film. Fucking “business” man.

I nod my head.

—Businessman, huh?

He’s crying now, big Russian tears.

—Big-shot “business” man.

He slips off the swing, almost hangs himself on the ropes. I steady him and get him standing. He wipes the tears from his eyes.

—Thanks you. Got to put up tent. Sleep.

He stumbles away from the bar.

Pedro comes over.

—Didn’t pay his tab.

—Get him tomorrow, he’s not going anywhere.

—Russians. Can’t drink tequila.

—But don’t get in a vodka-drinking contest with one.

“Business” man.

I chew on that for awhile, until Pedro’s brother buzzes up in his dune buggy with Rolf. They take fuel cans and fishing gear out of the buggy and start hauling it all down to the waterline. I go over and lend a hand.

—Hola.

Rolf bumps fists with me.

—Que pasa, dude?

—Nothing.

He grabs one end of an ice chest, I grab the other and we lift it out of the buggy. Rolf is an American expat: a dreadlocked, nipple-pierced, surf bum vagabond from San Diego who washed up on the Yucatán about ten years ago. He mostly works up in town as a diving instructor for the tourists. He got into business with Pedro’s brother because he likes the action.

They do actually run night-fishing excursions, but I can tell from the amount of fuel I’m now shouldering out to the boat that they won’t be catching anything tonight. Pedro’s brother, Leo, is up in the boat. He has the same flat face and short round body as his brother, but the roundness covers muscles made hard by hauling fishing nets. He easily one-hands the fifteen-gallon fuel can I’ve carried to the boat and tucks it away in the stern. Rolf splashes up, pushing a sealed plastic tub that bobs low in the water. I boost up onto the gunwale and help Leo pull it aboard. Through the translucent plastic I can see a GPS rig, a high-power halogen spotlight, battery cells, and the AK-47 they bring along for these trips. Leo nods his thanks as we clunk the tub down in the bottom of the long-hulled, open fishing boat. I jump back into the water and head for shore. Looking back at Leo, I give him a thumbs-up.

—Via con Dios.

—Always, man, always.

Then he’s yanking the engine to life. I pass Rolf on his way to the boat with a six-pack, the last of the supplies. I bump fists with him again.

—How many?

—Just two. Supposed to be offshore in a raft. We’ll see.

—Luck.

—Fuck that, dude. See you in the morning, you can buy me a beer.

—You got it.

At the bar Pedro and I watch the boat grind off into the surf.

American policy says that any Cuban who can reach U.S. soil legally or illegally will be granted residency, but they’re sticklers on that “soil” part. Get stopped in the water a foot from dry land, and forget it. And since 9/11, those Coast Guard gauntlets around Florida have become a bit more intense. The average Cuban peasant will still get in his raft and cross his fingers. But if you have a couple bucks, you can get guys like Leo and Rolf to help you out. They’ll shoot out to Cuba, pick you up, and bring you back to Mexico, from where, the thinking goes, it’s a lot easier to get to America. And if you fail, it’s still a hell of a lot nicer than Cuba. The money usually comes from a relative here or in the States, because, let’s face it, nobody in Cuba has a pot to piss in, and if they do, they don’t really need to leave.

Pedro watches until the boat disappears from view, shaking his head. Leo is his younger brother and Pedro worries about him. I could tell him they’ll be fine, but that’s no sure thing. It’s around two hundred miles from here to Cuba, a long haul in open water for a boat like that. And they don’t bring that AK along just for the sharks. Anyway, nothing I can do about it. I push away from the bar.

—Hasta mañana, Pedro.

—Hasta.

And I head off to take my swim.

I LIFT my arms out of the water in a slow backstroke, then roll myself over and start to swim in earnest. I swim long and hard, making sure to look up at the girls’ fire on the beach from time to time so I don’t end up bobbing halfway to Cozumel. When I’m good and tired, I swim in to shore. I can see that the girls are passing around a couple bottles of something and I think I can smell a little hash on the breeze.