The doctor?'
'The so-called doctor, yeah. I just want to run away, God...'
'Know how you feel.'
'Anyway, where are you?' she asks, blowing her nose.
'Acapulco.'
'Dirty dog. Lemme see the map—are you, like, by the beach?'
'Yeah, on the main boulevard.'
'That must be the Costera Miguel Aleman—there's a Western Union agent at a place called Comercial Mexicana.'
'I'll make it up to you, Tay.'
'But listen—it's Sunday tomorrow, and I can't get the cash till Monday. The agent's open till seven Monday night, so if you go at six …'
'No sweat,' I lie, watching the last credits drip off the screen.
'And babe,' she says. Beep. The line goes dead.
The fucken Love Boat is here. I swear to God, from those ole shows my mom watches, with the horny cruise director, and Captain Stupid and all. It has the Wella Balsam kind of logo on the funnel. Star-studded Acapulco, boy.
I pull my head into the cab as the bay falls away behind us. Pelayo's truck bangs over some hills, then heads north along this TV-movie coastline, with coconut trees, whole fields of them. The beach ain't as white as Against All Odds, and the water ain't as blue, but hey. A lagoon runs alongside us for part of the drive, right out of Tarzan or something. We even pass through a military roadblock, with a fucken machine-gun nest, no bullshit. My intestines pump, but they end up just being kids, these soldiers, like cartoon ants, in oversized helmets.
After a few hours, we leave the road and turn down a track toward the sea. The track ends with some logs sunk into the beach, and jungle backed up behind. It's a minuscule town, of slummy wooden houses, with pigs, chickens, and grizzly-looking dogs around. Not even slummy, more like out of National Geographic. Fucken paradise. Pelayo parks behind a store that's held together with Fanta signs, and a porch of dry palm leaves. Two men lay in hammocks there, sucking beer. A flock of kids gather as we pile out of the truck. You can tell Pelayo's the dude around here. He's probably like the Mr Lechuga of town, except human. Now I'm the alien in his world. He takes trouble to make me feel at home, snapping at the kids to get away, and calling up a beer from the store. I just stand quiet, nose up to the breeze, listening to a dictionary full of new bugs. Ungawa wakashinda, I swear. Pelayo opens the beers with his teeth, and proudly walks me to a covered patio on the beach. Two older men sit at a table, and an ole lady leans behind a makeshift bar.
A naked kid suddenly brushes past her, trying to spear a wounded crab on the sandy concrete. He finally stabs it clean through the back, 'Yesssss!' he says, stopping to pull back an imaginary lever with his fist. Pelayo kicks the crab out of my way, and sweeps me to a table by the beach.
A crowd of bottles gathers on the table. Toward evening, a young dude turns up who speaks some English; a lean, smart-looking guy called Victor, with braces on his teeth—something you don't see much down here. He tells me how important it is for him to get ahead in life, so he can bring wealth into the village and all. Makes me feel like the lowest fucken snake. He translates the words painted between the mud-flaps on the truck. 'You see me, and suffer,' they mean. 'Me ves, y sufres.'
When I first show signs of being loaded, the boys offer me oysters as big as burritos, right out of the sea. Fucken forget it. I ate one when I was a kid, and it felt like something I sucked down the back of my nose. They even offer me the oysters at a time when I have a booger-plug ready to suck down my throat. Without thinking, I point at my nose while I suck it down, then pull a face, and point at the oyster. They drop Acapulco-sized loads over that. They can't look me in the face for an hour after, for the fucken loads they drop. Typical of me to introduce slime to paradise.
After a tequila, as lions and tigers stir under this silicon-clear evening, I try to explain the beach-house dream, the mud-flaps, and Fate. I'm a little loaded. Fucken loaded, actually. But as soon as I start to talk about it, Victor and Pelayo take my arm and lead me up the beach, through the palms, where bats now orbit, to a place ten minutes away, where the jungle almost pushes you into the sea. Kids follow us, shining in and out of the surf. Then Victor stops. He points through the fading light, and I squint to follow his finger across the sand. There, all locked up, almost hidden in the jungle, sits an ole white beach-house. My place.
The boys say it's okay to camp here until Monday. Maybe longer. Maybe for fucken ever. After they totter home up the beach, I sit on the balcony of the house, let the evening filter off the sea and through my soul. Suddenly all the different waves inside me alloy into one tune, with feathers of my original dream dancing the edges of this new symphony; my ole lady down here, checking out the neat sanitation, reflecting on how good things got. I may have to change my name, or become Mexican or something. But it's still me, without any trace of slime around. I look out over the garden of this place, onto the beach, and see Taylor there running around in her panties, brown like a native.
I spend all Sunday in this Valhalla, lazing with my dreams. When I wake Monday morning, a hot, wet wind blows across me, and my boy is like fucken reinforced cement, like he's chipped off Mount Rushmore. My hand's nowhere near him, he's just being guest of honor at his own little parade. I look around to see the sky clouded over, and shabby gray pelicans swoop and dive into the surf. The heads of coconut trees swish and move around at the speed I wish my life would go, cool and smooth. For the first time in a while, there's that little edge of gladness to be waking up this morning. Today's my birthday.
Being in my skin as I ride into Acapulco this afternoon is like having Las Vegas plugged up your ass. I'm sixteen, and Las Vegas is plugged up my fucken ass. I'm on my feet before the bus even gets into town, buzzing with potentialities; tropical fish and birds, banana leaves, monkeys, and sex. The beach-house. Turns out it belongs to an ole fruit farmer behind the village, who doesn't use it at all. Victor thinks I could probably stay there for free, if I tended it.
The boulevard in Acapulco is sticky this evening, colored lights blare as big as ideas along its length. Victor loaned me a straw hat, to soften my coconut-tree hair, and oyster-shell ears. I catch my reflection in the window by Comercial Mexicana; Huckleberry Finn, boy. I put on my guns before entering the store, to compensate for the hat, I guess, then just strut around in a circle, like a dog deciding where to lay down. I eventually spot the Western Union counter, with folk waiting around it, including shiny red and white folk from home. An attendant sees me right away.
'Uh—I'm expecting a wire from Houston, Texas.'
'Name?' asks the clerk.
My face starts to calculate Pi. 'Uh—I ain't sure who she sent it to …'
'You have the password?' asks the guy. Fuck. I feel more people line up behind me.
'I better call and get it,' I say, shuffling away from the counter.
Folk look at me strangely, so I keep on shuffling, right out of the store; out of the freezer, back into the fucken oven. I have to get hold of Taylor. Maybe she didn't send it, once she knew about the password. I have no points left on my phonecard. I can't even call Pelayo. Vegas sputters and dies in my ass.
I walk up the boulevard until I find a phone. I don't know if it's like TV, where you can call anybody collect, from anywhere. I decide to call her collect. Sweat flows between my mouth and the operator when I talk. She speaks English at least. Then sweat runs between my ear and the operator when she tells me you can't call this mobile number collect. When I hang up the phone, sweat dammed on top of my ear crashes onto my fucken shoulder, then runs crying onto the road. Probably back into the fucken sea after that.