I stepped out of range and thought over what she’d just said. It could explain a lot, the warning she had expected to give some poor boob in this suite, and the warning she didn’t give when she saw that the boob was me.
The way she’d reacted when she knew it was I who had made the date with Maria was just feminine enough to be compatible with linking me pretty well.
All at once, bill started that wind-sucking sound in the living room again, a truly frightening sound. Zita grabbed the dress away from me, brushed past me, and went in there.
It wasn’t more than a minute before Bill went staggering out, and after him Maria, zipping up the dress in back and crying.
Zita came out of the living room and walked up to me slowly. She apologized then for having slapped me, and I apologized for having spoken so roughly to her, and she nodded at me and I nodded at her.
Pretty soon we were both smiling, and there didn’t seem to be much point in doing any more apologizing.
And so that was that. Starting from that moment, things moved along very smoothly, and Zita’s Hungarian accent never gave me a minute’s trouble.
It didn’t, that is, until a few afternoons later when we were faced with the novel situation of the bridegroom having to ask the bride what he should fill in under: WOMAN’S FULL NAME — PLEASE PRINT.
Death on the Beach
His name was Diego, and he was bound for Playa Washington, a beach in Northern Mexico, partly for a Sunday’s outing, partly to drum up business for the “taxi” he was driving. He was a good-looking Mexican in his late twenties, a bit taller than average, and of the café con leche color, lightly flushed with cinnamon, that bespeaks the mestizo, or mixture of Spanish and Indian. He wore khaki shorts, sport shirt, two-toned shoes, and brown cloth hat with eyelets. He whistled Cielito Lindo and glanced occasionally at the tremendous afternoon sky, but his attention was on his gauges, especially the speedometer, for the road, through improved, was rough, and tended, at too fast a clip, to heat tires and explode them. His car was a sedan, and though he operated it for hire around Matamoras, a little city on the Rio Grande, there was nothing about it that was different from any family bus.
After 22 miles from Matamoras the road ended, and he pulled off to a field, parking with other cars and leaving the road clear for the special buses that are a feature of fiestas in Mexico, and often run on rough-and-ready principles. To the boys who swarmed over him, he amiably passed out coppers, Mexican coins the size of half dollars, and to a character in snuffy cottons, who professed to be in charge, twenty-five cents American. Then, after locking up, he headed for the dunes which give this coast its special character. They are 8-10-12 feet high, of sand so bright it blazes under the sun and sends up shimmering refractions of light. The result is, the land is screened from the sea, the sea from the land, so Diego didn’t see the beach until he popped through a break in the dunes, and was in the middle of it. It was well worth the smile it brought to his face. It was a riot of color, from rugs, robes, rubber animals, and gaudy beach umbrellas; and thousands of people lolled, joked, flirted, and snoozed on it. Also, many swam, especially girls in infra-Bikini suits, with the eager zest for water that is the immemorial heritage of these people. When they went out too far, so far the porpoises offshore took an interest, the nearest Gendarme blew his whistle, calling them in. they came, but not meekly. Volubly they expressed their opinion, and volubly he answered them back. Lately, proper lifeguards have been provided for Playa Washington, with pulmotors and fancy equipment, but at this time the Gendarmes were the only supervision it had, and if they overworked their whistles, the danger, as we shall see, was real.
Diego brushed off some mariachi singers, and made his way through comestible vendors to the soft-drink stand, a tiny thatched thing on pilings, the only actual, nailed-together structure that Playa Washington had. He bought a Bimbo. As he stood swigging it from the bottle, his eye fell on a boy in red trunks who dashed through the crowd, yanking women by their shoulder straps, men by their pant-legs, boys by their ears, and girls by their hair, interspersing these pranks with challenges to wrestle. Through no more than four, such was his strength that several bigger boys got dumped on their backs in a minute or two. After each such triumph, he ran to a girl, who was seated at the foot of a dune and who seemed to be his mother. When she gave him admiration, he ran out to find more victims. “That boy,” said another customer at the stand, “is a pest. He needs treatment on his backside. He needs it tanned up good with a belt.”
“Oh,” said Diego, “he’s little.”
“So’s a goat. But I don’t like him.”
“He has his points. Sure.”
“Name me one. Name me a point.”
“Hey,” Diego called to the boy. “Hey, you.”
The boy, running over, chose a Jippo, and when Diego bought it for him, grabbed it, stuck out his tongue, and ran off. “Gil!” cried the girl on the dune. “You must thank the gentleman. Say gracias.”
“You win, she’s a point. O.K.”
The other customer surveyed her enviously as Diego strolled over lifting his hat, and she got up to smooth her skirt. She was tiny, with something doll-like about her figure, though it didn’t lack for voluptuousness. She was the color of dark red mahogany, and her features were delicate, showing little of the flat, massive moulding that goes with the Indian. Her eyes were a mischievous, flirty black, matching her hair, and her teeth, against the mulberry of her lips, looked blue. Her dress was pizen purple, but considering the form it covered, no dress could really look bad. Her shoes were red, as her bag was. At her throat were big red wooden beads. She was possibly 20 years old.
“Fine boy,” said Diego. “Quite a lad.”
“He must thank you,” she said. “—Gil!”
But Gil paid no attention, and Diego told her: “It’s nothing, let him be... He’s yours?”
“But of course.”
“And his — Papa? You’re married?”
“... Not now.”
“Perhaps you’ll have a Jippo?”
“Please, for me, Orange Crush.”
He got her Orange Crush, and they sat on the dune together. She confessed she had seen him parked, in front of the cafe where she worked, in Matamoras. He expressed surprise he hadn’t seen her, as he was in the cafe quite often. She said she didn’t serve in the dining room, but worked in the kitchen. “I am only a poor galopina,” she added, but in a flirty, provocative way. He then told her his name, and she said hers was Maria.
“You live in Matamoras?” he asked her.
“In a little jacal, by the river.”
“You and your boy?”
“I and Gil. My little Hercules.”
They had considerable talk about Gil, his exuberance, his strength, his skill at swimming, acquired in the river, which he swam several times daily, “... across to Fort Brown and back.” It was clear that if Gil was a pest to others, to her he was wonderful. However, after Diego prodded with inquiries, she admitted that if Diego would buy the boy his supper, perhaps a snack from the vendors, she had neighbors who would keep an eye on him, so they could tuck him away in the jacal, and have the evening to themselves. He mentioned he might have passengers going up, but she said that was all right, “as I can ride front with you, and hold Gil in my lap.”
“Wouldn’t mind holding you in my lap.”
“Ah-ha-ha.”
With various such sallies from him, and suitable parries from her, the discussion took a while, during which Gil outdid himself, presently arousing a gang which meant to thump him, and running into her arms. Then he darted for the sea, waited for a wave to smash, waded in, and was out, swimming, before the next one rolled in. When the Gendarme screeched his whistle, he waved derisively and kept on. The Gendarme screeched again, and Maria ran out like a little hornet to tell him off. She said Gil swam better than anyone, and it was up to stupid Gendarmes to let him alone. The Gendarme said regardless of who he swam better than, she could get him in or she’d spend the night in the carcel. Diego called “Jippo, Jippo, Jippo,” and this had the desired effect. Gill came in on a comber, ducked past the Gendarme, and ran to the stand for his Jippo. Diego led Maria back to the dune.