After You've Gone (5 page)

Abe thinks he read about an odd, unusual conjunction of planets taking place just now, along with a full moon. All that would surely affect the tides?

Looking at the sky, at the unfamiliar thickening gray banks of clouds, Abe thinks that indeed it could rain. Even if it never does.

Zelda is up in their room putting the final touches to their unpacking. Or maybe talking to the room maid, by now an old friend.

Abe wishes he had a Mexico City
News
, the only available English-language paper.

And he wonders about Gabino.

Evelyn Fisk, several
palapas
away from that of Abe Hoskins, also wishes for a newspaper, but her wish is mild, and she manages to content herself for the moment with her thick paperback, a new Iris Murdoch.

On this first day, though, her attention wanders. In particular, her eye is caught by the vendors who trudge slowly up and down, barefoot, on the hot white sand. Selling their awful wares. It seems to Evelyn that this year their faces are longer and sadder than usual, which could well be the case, the Mexican economy being what it is: splendid for tourists, over two thousand pesos to the almighty dollar—and dreadful, punitive for Mexicans, especially of course for the poor.

Evelyn notices—or, rather, she thinks of something new today, which is that the women's wares are generally much better than the men's, and she ponders this fact: vending is women's work, finally? (This might be something to include in a letter to Grantly; on the other hand, perhaps not. Grantly's “liberalism,” of a somewhat old-fashioned sort, does not seem to extend itself to feminist issues.)

The shabbiest, saddest-looking vendors of all are those who sell peanuts. All men, mostly old. The younger and relatively more prosperous men have terrible carved birds for sale. Or, so unappealing in this heat, woven woolen rugs.

Many of the women wear a sort of costume: full dark blue skirts with layers of petticoats, and modestly ample white blouses with long sleeves and big floppy lace collars. Perhaps an Indian tribe? They are selling jewelry: armloads of colored
glass or plastic beads, all in lovely colors, dark blues and greens, pinks and amethysts.

And silver, endless streams of silver. Necklaces, bracelets, earrings.

Later, Evelyn will buy presents for all her daughters and her daughters-in-law. Her female grandchildren.

Zelda Hoskins is neither talking to the maid nor unpacking, but writing a secret letter. One that she has written quite often before, and sometimes mailed but more often not. A letter in which she tells her lover, Evan, that they simply must break off. Seeing him makes her feel too terribly guilty with Abe, who after all is so
nice
. No more Evan, never again.

Evan is a computer salesman based in New York who occasionally comes to Toronto, to stay in the Harborfront Hotel, where Zelda has her travel office. These letters of hers never seem to affect him in the slightest; he shows up anyway, no more or less frequently than before. Looking shy, he comes into her office, saying couldn't they at least have a drink in the bar? Maybe lunch? And there they soon are, back in bed again. In love.

Evan does not look at all the part that he plays with Zelda. A worried, chronically rumpled young man, light-skinned (well, sallow) and too thin, he looks more like the other things that he is, a husband and father, with a heavy mortgage in Douglas, Long Island. A salesman. With Zelda, though, as he has often told her, he is someone else, a strong, confident, often laughing man. “Lord, I even feel handsome,” he once half-jokingly confided.

“Darling, you are” was of course what Zelda said (with the odd thought that actually of the two men Abe is better-looking, just a little older).

However, today she is not getting far with her letter. “My darling,” she has written. And then she is distracted by a rustle of large black birds, just settling in the bush beyond her terrace. Three of them, a family. Their sleek wings shine, with hints of darkest blue, blue-black velvet. “This time I absolutely,” Zelda writes before crumpling up her paper.

Abe too has been watching the vendors, and he, like Evelyn Fisk, sees the peanut vendors as the saddest of all. Even their voices are sad, and their faces are so long. Trickle-down economics, Abe thinks. Poverty trickles down very fast to these poorest of the poor.

Just then, though, a group of small boys appears, bearing newspapers. Abe watches as Evelyn (whom he thinks of as the cat woman) buys a paper. But when the boy reaches him, Abe waves him off, saying, “No, Gabino.” Meaning, I'm waiting to buy a paper from Gabino.

The child looks puzzled, whether as to Abe's meaning or the identity of Gabino, Abe can't tell, and so he asks, “Gabino.
Dónde?
” (He does know a very few words of Spanish.)

The small boy shrugs and goes off, leaving Abe with no paper. With nothing.

He probably should have bought one, what the hell? A few pesos here or there won't mean much even to Gabino. However, to the next boy with a bunch of papers who cries “English language! Mexico City
News
!” Abe hears himself repeating, “No, Gabino.”

This child, though, seems to understand. And he speaks some English. He asks Abe, “You wait Gabino?”

“Sí!”
Enthusiastically. And then, “Gabino.
Dónde?
”

The small brown monkey face scrutinizes Abe's much larger, paler face before he says, “
Gabino está muerto
. Dead.”

“No.”

The devil-child begins to laugh.
“Sí, Gabino está muerto!”
and he runs off after the others, down the beach.

There in the heavy heat Abe sits frozen, immobilized.
Muerto.
Does it mean just dead, or killed? Slain, murdered. How awful for there to be just the one word. And how plausible a violent end would be for Gabino, an artful, ambitious little boy, a Mexican street child. It is entirely horrible. Abe has no words, no way of dealing with this.

And should he tell Zelda? Such a shadow over their trip, and Zelda tends to be superstitious.

Easy enough not to tell her, Abe decides.

Perhaps she will buy all her silver presents today, thinks Evelyn Fisk. Get it over with and simply not consider presents again. She decides this as a very young, dark, Indian-looking girl approaches her
palapa
, a girl with lovely, luminous black eyes and terrible teeth, too large for her face, askew, protuberant. But a radiant smile.

Evelyn, whose Spanish is excellent, asks her name.

Lupe.

Evelyn. Eva.

Lupe has a small brown briefcase of silver things, plus the pretty glass necklaces held over her arm. In a random way Evelyn begins to choose. Later she will sort them out, considering their recipients. In the meantime she talks to Lupe.

Is this her first year on the beach selling silver? Evelyn does not believe she has seen her before.

No, Lupe came before with her mother, Carmelita. However, at that time she was still in school for much of the day. Next year Lupe will have for sale tapes, instead of these, and in a deprecating way she indicates her jewels.

Tapes? Evelyn at first does not understand.

Tapes! Music! All kinds of music. All the latest hits. Music, on tapes.

Zelda, passing the
palapa
of Evelyn Fisk to get to her own, to reach Abe, sees Lupe there with her silver, her bright glass, and on an impulse she stops. She smiles, and by way of greeting to Evelyn she says, “Oh, it's all so pretty.”

“I'm afraid I've been very extravagant.” Evelyn Fisk smiles back. “But I have all these grandchildren. Not to mention daughters.”

“Oh, then you are married.” Zelda had not meant to say this. The words rushed out, unbidden.

“Oh indeed. Very much so. But I need a little time off, now and then.”

“Oh,
really
.”

“Lupe has been telling me that next year she'll have tapes for sale,” Evelyn Fisk says firmly, putting an end to further personal conversation.

“You must miss the cats this year,” persists Zelda. Her curiosity has been intensely aroused by this woman, whom she sees close up to be much more interesting-looking than from a distance. For one thing, the white pants, dark shirt, and straw hat that across the dining room look like everyone else's clothes are actually extremely smart. Unusual. Working within a hotel has taught Zelda something about such distinctions. She knows at a glance which guests at the Harborfront are rich, or European, or from the States, as opposed to Canadians, rich or medium rich, from Ottawa or Calgary. Evelyn Fisk is very rich, and from the States.

“I try not to think about the cats,” says Evelyn Fisk somewhat dismissingly, turning back to Lupe.

…

Abe, out in the water, has observed Zelda's arrival at the beach, and he has noted with some surprise her stop at the cat woman's
palapa
. He waves, but she probably can't see him, can't tell him from any other bather out there in the surf. Nearsighted Zelda is vain about her large dark blue eyes: no glasses. He watches as she settles down with her magazines and lotions in their own
palapa
, and he thinks, What a pretty woman. He decides again not to mention Gabino.

The quality of that water, in that particular bay, is amazing, extraordinary. Abe concentrates on his sense of the water, its lively, active buoyancy, its blue-green clearness. Its perfectly embracing warmth. It is quite unlike any other water, Abe believes. A unique experience of water.

Up on the beach, Zelda is talking to a young Mexican. A news vendor, but considerably taller than the rest. Abe watches as she buys a paper from this boy. She seems in fact to engage him quite unnecessarily in some sort of conversation; even at this distance, out in the waves, Abe sees them laugh, notes their friendly postures. And he experiences a flush of jealous blood—so ridiculous, a Mexican child. Still, there have been times with Zelda when she has given him good cause for jealousy. If not actual, at least approximate.

With a jaunty wave to Zelda, the boy heads down the beach with his armload of papers, and after a calculated minute or two Abe starts in. Swimming, not riding waves. Until he stands up and begins to wade.

He can see Zelda, now smiling and waving in his direction. It is probably the stripes on his new bathing suit that she recognizes.

…

What Evelyn Fisk absolutely must not think about, she now reminds herself, is just how Oscar got rid of the cats. No speculations along those lines.
None.
Never.

There were quite a lot of cats. Several families.

Oscar must have—

Someone must have—

NO.

“Well, of course it was Gabino,” insists Zelda, at lunch, over Abe's continuing incredulity. “I told you, he wanted to thank you for the shoes. Only he's outgrown them and he'd like another pair.” She laughs. “Some con man, that kid. I'm sure he'll go far.”

“I can't get over hearing
muerto
,” Abe tells her. “It just seemed so plausible for a kid like Gabino. For really any Mexican kid, these days.”

“But it wasn't true,” Zelda reminds him. “I keep telling you, he's fine. Just suddenly looking adolescent, not a cute little boy anymore. With acne, poor guy.”

Abe can less easily imagine Gabino with acne than he was able to imagine him dead.

“Some nerve he has demanding more shoes.” Zelda laughs. And she says again, “He'll go far.”

“It seems to me that the prawns were better here last year, don't you think?” Abe recognizes his own reluctance to talk about Gabino as he says this. As Zelda sometimes points out, he tends to avoid issues. A male characteristic, according to Zelda.

She now regards him somewhat narrowly, but she seems willing to leave the topic of Gabino. “Maybe,” she says of the prawns. “I don't know, it's all still so beautiful here. I don't much notice flaws.”

“On the other hand,” says Abe, somewhat later in their meal, “why blame Gabino for trying to get anything he can? Lord knows what his life is like. Where he lives. In what. I may send him three more pairs of shoes. Why in hell not?”

By midafternoon, which is still beachtime for most people, between lunch and their long siestas, the color of the sky is a queer bright ocher, unnaturally intense. And the heavy hot still air is rippled by occasional small spasmodic winds. Out at sea, the color is dark and strange.

No one knows what will happen next.

Many guests start up toward their rooms.

Finding themselves together on the path, Evelyn Fisk and Zelda and Abe all smile, murmuring at the oddity of the weather. Abe insists on carrying Evelyn's rather large book bag—at which they exchange a small laugh.

Pausing for a moment—the path is fairly steep—they turn, the three of them simultaneously, for a backward look at the menacing sky, the beach.

And down there beside the water is Oscar, striding along as though rain were out of the question, were expressly forbidden by himself.

Evelyn. “He really is dreadful.”

Zelda. “Horrible. I wonder whatever happened to his wife. Remember Marya?”

“Yes, actually I do. Well, it's not hard to cast him as a sort of Bluebeard.”

Perhaps from some automatic impulse of male solidarity (women tend to go too far, almost always), Abe demurs. “Well, come on now. But he is a mean S.O.B., that's for sure.”

At the top of the path he hands Evelyn her books, they separate and go off to their own rooms, to bed.

And then the rains begin. A heavy roar of water, pounding down. Water slapping against the concrete walkways. Attacking the roof like bullets. A ferocious rain, that goes on and on, and on.

Believing Abe to be asleep, Zelda pulls the light blanket from the end of the bed to cover his shoulders and her own. And then, that small wifely task completed, she burrows down, breathing the unexpectedly new cool air. For her the sounds of rain are a summer sound, any winter rains in Toronto being muffled by snow. But of course it is summer down here, a perpetual summer. That's why they come here.