“Calm down, Rey,” said Matilde to her husband, and the three of them — father, mother, and son — entered the vast Acapulco amusement park, but at the gate the guard told Pepito that the parrot was not allowed, that it was dangerous, an insane animal, and the little bastard gave him the finger and ran in anyway, even if Matilde and Reynaldo stopped for an instant to contemplate the entryway, whose arch was made up of gigantic plaster whales, Moby Dick ballerinas, which Matilde said were very cute and Reynaldo said he was shocked at her lack of ignorance since anybody knew that this was the posthumous creation of David Alfaro Siqueiros, his 3-D Acapulco polyforum, ah, said Doña Matilde as they walked into that implacable paradise unblemished by a dot of shade, all cement and still waters, completely dedicated to the cult of sunstroke.
They walked toward plaster islands decorated with pirate ships, squirting fountains, hoses, jungle slides reached by bamboo and sand ramps that rise to Tarzanish heights and from which you slide down, ass to the burning tin, here comes someone down said the kid as a vulgar girl cools her steaming backside in the pool where a young, thin, dark-skinned life guard wearing a racing suit and a cap decorated with bottle caps on his hairy head waits for her, he’s got to protect himself from the sun, poor guy, out here the whole damn day in the sun to help the kids who slide down, but Pepito is now running, followed by his breathless parents, to the gigantic pool, the sea in miniature, the Pediatric Pacific, which is calm one minute and the next, to the accompaniment of an air-raid siren, becomes artificially turbulent, full of waves higher than their heads, and Pepito is happy, that’s what he’s here for, Mati, yes it is, Rey, look how much fun our son and heir is having, it was worth all our sacrifices, don’t say it wasn’t, you didn’t go to the Laredos so the kid could come to Aca, right? oh Rey, don’t go on like that, you’ll make me cry, forgive me, honey, you’re right, you’re always right, don’t worry, Matilde, we’re going places, they’ll always need accountants, some because they’ve got dough, others because they don’t, some because they make a lot, others because they lose a lot, but I’m telling you they all need accountants. What’s that, Rey? What, sweetie? That noise, I mean it isn’t normal.
That’s exactly what the folks on the Sun & Fun Toltec Tour were wondering — go on cooperating out there, Reader — as they breakfasted in the Coastline Burger Boy, whose mercury vapor lights blinked and then darkened to the color of the omnipresent Log Cabin syrup: that noise is not normal, mused Professor Will Gingerich, lecturer attached to the tour, young and nervous, and eager to communicate his thesis, even at this time of smiling pancakes from smiling Aunt Jemima. We North Americans always try to get to the frontier, the West, that was the source of our energetic optimism, there will always be a new frontier, we joyfully look for it within the American continent, sadly outside the continent, and hysterically when we use both up: Isn’t there any other place left? Is the whole world California, the end of the earth, the shaky cliff over the sea, the San Andreas Fault? And the ground here in Acapulco is shaking too, but with a frisson the Richter Scale doesn’t register: That’s just how a herd of buffalo sounds, said a sleepy old man from the Wisconsin flatlands as he lit up his old corncob pipe: but what they saw first were not buffalo but three swift camels racing along the beach, mounted by an old man, a black, and a Chinese, all scattering golden nuggets and thick perfumes: oh, typical Mexico — fiesta, carnival, joy, but the Vogue model asked if she might wash her hands after four hours of posing, and when she pulled the chain at the beach club, a tide of shit came bubbling out of the toilet bowl. The model wrapped her green tulle around her, patted her nonexistent stomach, right, that shit was not hers, certainly not hers; she tried to open the door, the lock, naturally, did not work, a strange beach boy, fat and hairless, had removed the handle, the shit tide rose, gobbled up her beribboned, silver Adolfo slippers, wet her infinitely discreet Kotex blemish, her flat tummy, swirled in her belly button and her pursed asshole, she had no time to scream, to escape.
Mariano Martínez Mercado woke up in his room in the Mr. President Hotel wrapped in the arms of his rival, Decio Tudela, both extremely satisfied after a night of shared marijuana that compensated for Penny López’s refusal to leave with either of them. But Marianito wondered about the discomfort of his nightmare, the lethargic stench of his room, which was not solely the burnt-straw-mat stink of marijuana; he got up, dizzily untangling from between his legs the bottoms of the Brazilian tropical pajamas Decio had lent him — barely a suggestive loincloth — in order to feel his way blindly to the air-conditioner controls. “Shit,” he said to himself, “it’s busted.” Then he went to the window, but the window would not open, and a label stuck to the greenish glass informed him:
THIS SUITE HAS BEEN CLIMATE CONTROLLED FOR YOUR
C O M F O R T
DO NOT OPEN THIS HERMETICALLY SEALED WINDOW
and amid the growing cloud of smoke that poured out of the air-conditioning vents with an aroma of burnt mustard as suggestive as his carioca topless pajamas, Marianito fell to his knees, scratching the glass and recalling his not so distant childhood, as if he had lived it a thousand years before and not merely fifteen: he remembered the signs under European train windows, as though they were decal Madeleines: