The father did the talking while the mother stroked her beard and stared into ceiling corners. He recited local business conditions, suggested bargaining attitudes when I went to see about buying the hotel. Casually I asked if he knew a Sandalio Fuentes. “Everyone in Merida knows Sandalio Fuentes,” he told me. “A man with connections!”
After everyone else went to bed, Abel’s father and I had chocolate. He told me how worried he was about his son. People confide in me constantly and completely.
Then he showed me to my room. We said good night. At the door he turned. “The room has just been sprayed,” he said. “So don’t worry about tarantulas.”
I said good night again. I dreamed nothing.
After breakfast Abel took me aside. He volunteered to lead me personally to Sandalio Fuentes. Quietly but firmly I said no. He said, “How do I know you won’t cheat me?”
I told him he had no way of knowing, that at his age hot blood stood in the way of clear judgment. “I’m twice your age,” I said. “Take my word.”
The residential district Abel directed me to exploded with tropical flowers. I didn’t appreciate them. Abel was headed for trouble. Adventure is the exclusive business of adventurers. It’s an art. It takes brains and discipline. All Abel had was the flourish. The itch to try. He needed scratching.
Sandalio Fuentes met me in a white shirt and slacks. In his study hung a diploma from Georgia Tech. Next to it was a photograph of himself with an arm around Jack Dempsey. He started to talk about the good times he’d had in New York during prohibition, shifted into an account of his chairmanship of the Yucatecan delegation to the last Mexican presidential convention, unfolded newspapers in which his name and picture appeared. Facts gushed like a river. I noticed though that none of the facts cost him anything. He knew how to keep his mouth shut. I’d come to the right man. “Now,” he said with confidence, “you want something from me.”
“Possibly.”
He made me a drink. He said that a liver condition kept him from drinking with me. He told me about his operation.
When he gave me a chance, I told him how the diamond came into my possession. I wasn’t dealing with a boy now.
“What’s this to me?” he said.
“I thought you might like to look at the stone.”
Sandalio Fuentes bit off the end of a cigar, mentioning that he had them imported specially from Cuba. “Who sent you?”
“A boy named Abel.”
He went through a filing system in his head. “I don’t know him.”
“I thought not,” I said. “Still, he sent me. Would you like to look at the stone?”
“Look?”
“Buy.”
Sandalio Fuentes lit his cigar. “You have it?”
As I laid the big diamond on the green desk blotter his eyes swelled. Fine hairlines webbed his brows. He blew smoke away. Without taking his eyes from the stone he reached into the drawer of his desk, took out a magnifying glass shaped like a chess rook. The kind jewelers use. He studied the stone a long time. Then he turned to me. “This is glass. Well-cut glass. It’s worthless!”
“Make an offer.”
He laughed in my face.
I left with the stone in my pocket. What I supposed was the opening shot of the negotiations proved to be his last word. The sparkling thing was worthless. Worse than that, I’d jeopardized an important connection in Merida.
Abel came down the path from his house to meet me. His eyes slitted with worry. “You came back!”
“Did you doubt me?”
“How much did you get?”
“He hasn’t paid anything.”
Abel threw bony arms at the sky. “How much did he offer?”
I said, “Eight hundred.”
“Exactly what I predicted!” He did a dance in the dust. “That’s four hundred for each of us.”
“No.”
“No? You’re backing out?”
“Listen.” I described Sandalio Fuentes’ passion for the diamond, a passion I supposed would’ve been there had the thing been real. “He’s a good man to know,” I acknowledged. “I’ll let him have it for a thousand dollars.”
“But he offered eight hundred!”
“Don’t underestimate me.”
“You should’ve taken the eight hundred! We’ll never get a thousand! We won’t get a peso now!”
The boy’s panic didn’t surprise me. It surprised him I’m sure. Showed him how ill-equipped he was for this kind of job. He needed the scare. I left him.
I walked toward the downtown district of Merida. I composed the telegram I’d send my uncle. I have an uncle. Everyone has someone. My uncle loves me with the love of one outcast for another; my father speaks to neither of us. In the telegraph office I wrote out the message: Everything as splendid as usual. Need five hundred dollars. Thanks. I’d repay, as I always do loans from my uncle, at the next good turn of my luck.
I sent the telegram, then walked to the Hotel Narcissus. Before introducing myself to the owner, I decided to observe the hotel’s business so I went into the bar. I ordered the drink Sandalio Fuentes mixed me. All wasn’t lost with him. He had style. He could appreciate style. A shrewd man. An artist.
All at once I recognized someone. I checked her clothes and the spray of jewelry on her well-formed wrist. I couldn’t mistake the smoky blonde hair.
The stone had to be hers.
Ice melted in my drink before she decided to reach into her purse for cigarettes. Then I constructed in my imagination the fall of the stone from her purse, I even recreated, for my own amusement since she looked the other way, an expression of surprise and decision I might’ve shown on discovering the stone. I marched over to where she sat. I pretended to pick up something. “This is yours?” I said.
Her large gray eyes matched the smoky blonde hair. “What?” She took the stone, turned it over and over. “Why! That’s astonishing! Astonishing!”
“I think it fell from your purse.”
“But, you see it’s been missing. I don’t know how I could’ve overlooked it. I’ve searched and searched. Thank you. But this is astonishing!”
I observed her cultivated features, the evaporation of boredom from her milky brow. Now I glanced at the stone in her hand. “You’re wise not to carry the original. That’s a convincing copy.”
A light blush ignited her face. “Then you know precious stones.”
“A trifle.”
The play in her eyes meant growing involvement. Her blush became something else, a glow of anticipation. I knew it would do me no harm. She said, “How charming.”
Where there is an imitation, there has to be an original. We compared the two in her suite.
The original stone now winks from my tie-pin. She insisted.
I told her the truth when I thought her ready for it. That is to say, I presented the facts about the stone as an insert into the larger truth about myself. My candor, as it always does, especially with women, delighted her. She had the artistry to comprehend. As I made certain she had beforehand.
I outlined Abel’s misguided greed and my attempt to educate him. She saw the wisdom of giving Abel a “split”; I mean, my claiming to have sold the stone to Sandalio Fuentes and making Abel a party to the pretended sale. Her laughter jingled like bells when I described Abel’s pitiful anxiety during the interval be feared I’d ruined the sale, an anxiety which proved to him finally he lacked the talent for this subtle work.
You ask why I bothered with Abel. True, I made no visible profit. Precisely here is where I differ from the millionaire and approximate the aristocrat. I did it because it pleased me to do it. My spirit and style of life require flamboyance. To me style is everything.