He picked the clean clothing off the floor and went into the bathroom and slammed the door. Enelio said, “The shock yesterday opened him up. He talked pretty good, remember? So now he closed the doors and locked them. I don’t know if he’ll talk to you. I know damn well he won’t talk if I’m here. The chemistry is not good. I better go. You know, one funny thing. You types from the Estados Unidos, too many talk about dirty Mexicans, right? Okay. Those little huts over there on that hill. Poor people. Carry water a hell of a distance. And take a bath every day, and the women wash that long hair every day. Clean, clean, clean. So we talk about dirty heepies. There is an old dirty heepie in there, showering. But I have had the pleasure of knowing some of your little heepie crumpets, and they have been, my friend, deliciously fresh and sweet and clean. Clean and shining as the beards on some of their boyfriends. So, big conclusion. There are dirty Mexicans and dirty heepies. But it is not a characteristic, hey?”
“Thanks for getting him out.”
“Use your judgment. If there’s a chance he’ll make trouble, we better stick him back inside fast. He looks to me as if he wants to take off.”
“The bathroom window has bars on it too.”
“I noticed. If you decide he’s trouble, take him in yourself and give him to Sergeant Martinez, okay?” We thanked him and he left.
Room service, as a concession to the standard issue American tourist, has hamburgers with everything all day, long. I phoned up for two for Nesta, and a pot of coffee. He showered for a long time. At last he came out. My stuff was big for him, except around the waist. He had to turn the bottoms of the slacks up. He had wadded his old clothes up. Meyer told him to stuff them into the wastebasket and put the wastebasket out on the porch. Nesta looked guarded and selfconscious. Before he had come out, anticipating problems, I had told Meyer we had better go into the good-guy bad-guy routine if he seemed too uncooperative.
“Sit down, Jerry,” I said. “I want you to start at the beginning. How did the five of you get together originally and decide to come to Mexico?”
“Maybe we answered an ad.”
I glanced at Meyer. We’d have to try the routine. The hotel waiter arrived with the tray, and that gave me my opening.
“Did you order this stuff, Meyer? For him?”
“When you walked out with Enelio. Yes.”
“Out of the goodness of your heart? Your motherly instinct? You want gratitude from this dreary bastard?”
“I don’t imagine he got much to eat in jail, Travis.”
“That’s one part of the hotel bill we don’t split down the middle. That little gesture is all yours.” Nesta took a small, tentative bite, and then wolfed the two hamburgers down. He was taking a gulp of the coffee when I asked him the same question again.
“Maybe we had this real great travel agent,” Nesta said.
I waited until he set the cup down, then took a long reach and backhanded him across the chops. It was quick and substantial. It rocked his head and emptied his eyes.
Meyer jumped up and yelled at me. “What are you trying to do? You’ve got no right to do that! Give him a little time. He’ll explain it all.”
“I know he’ll explain it all. Because somewhere along the line the message is going to get through to him. He’s going to talk it all out or I am going to keep bending him until something breaks. And he is going to tell it straight because he doesn’t know how many ways I have to check it all out. I know this slob beat a possession indictment three years ago. I know he was inside the Bowie house at Cricket Bayou on several occasions. I know they all crossed in on the tenth, from Brownsville into Matamoros, and I know exactly when the Bowie girl got the money in Culiacan, and exactly how much. And I know a lot of other things that better match with what he says, and if they don’t match, you’d better take a long walk Meyer, because there are some things you don’t like to watch. They upset your stomach.”
“That’s no way to talk to him!” Meyer said.
“Look at him! Look at the expression. It’s the only way to talk to this pot head.”
“I think you better take the walk McGee,” Meyer said.
“I’ll be right on the porch, because you’re going to need me, my friend.”
I slammed the door. I sat in one of the porch chairs and put my heels up on the brick railing. Meyer would take it as far as he could, and then it would be my turn, and between the two of us we had a chance of whipsawing him.
From the porch I could hear the tone of their voices without being able to hear the words. I heard Meyer mostly, and then I began to hear more and more of Nesta’s voice. It was the Meyer magic at work. I looked through the window. Nesta sat on the end of Meyer’s bed, leaning over on one elbow. Meyer had turned the desk chair around and he sat facing Nesta.
They say that only a small portion of personal communication is verbal, and that the rest of it is posture, expression, gesture, those physical aspects of man which antedate his ability to speak. Meyer constructs somehow a small safe world, a place where anything can be said, anything can be understood, and all can be forgiven. We are all, every one, condemned to believe that if we could ever make another human understand everything that went into any act, we could be forgiven. The act of understanding bestows importance and meaning, encouraging confession.
After a half hour I knew he was going to get all of it, and so I went for the walk. I went up to the hotel and picked up a cold beer at the bar, which had just opened, and carried it out onto the porch overlooking all the cottages and the summer city beyond. The scent of flowers was heavy. Gardeners were working on the green lawns. Sprinkler heads were clicking their big slow circles, and birds hopped and preened in the falling mist. A lithe lass, deeply sunbrowned and wearing a vivid orange bikini, stood alone on the diving tower, using the railing to practice the standard exercise of ballet. She was moist with her efforts, smooth skin gleaming in the sun. Her hair was tucked into a plastic swim cap clustered with plastic daisies.
The cold dark beer stopped halfway to my lips, and even before I could make the mental association-yes, that is the kind of swim cap Elena wore yesterday-there was such a violent surge of desire for the girl from Guadalajara that it startled me. Becky diminished need. Elena compounded it. Elena had, with a splendid earthiness spiced with innocent wonder, so emphatically superimposed herself on the memories of Becky, I would have to carry those memories into a bright light to see who the hell they were about. After those dedicated decades striving to become the very best, thinking she had attained it, it would have crushed her to find out a sweet Latin amateur was, in the light of memory, by far the better of the two, more stirring, more fulfilling, and far more sensuous.
So make a note, McGee. There are some things which practice does not enhance: Thunderstorms never practice. Surf does not take graduate lessons in hydraulics. Deer and rabbits do not measure how high they have jumped and go back and try again. Violinists must work at it and study. And ballerinas. And goalies and shortstops and wingbacks and acrobats. But that business of acquiring expertise in screwing turns it into something it wasn’t meant to be.
Beer finished, I went back to the cottage to see how Meyer was doing. I was amused at Meyer and at myself. We were very formal with each other today. Remote, thoughtful, and formal. I had bought Elena a late dinner the night before at the hotel and sent her home in a cab-at her insistence on not being a nuisance. Meyer had arrived as I was getting ready for bed. Yes, he had eaten in town. Not had, actually. Car had run fine. Margarita had found the shawl. Sleep well. Good night.