Hunger's Brides (196 page)

Hola
we are Fidelio and Alejandro, filmmakers from the capital. Fidelio will go soon to Canada. Dance with us but give me first your address.

Hello meet Glenda of the piercing eyes, mellow Enrique of the oily pompadour. We are artists. I am a muralist, my wife does
artes plásticas
. Come dance with us.

Slowdance with the twisted pompadour. Glenda waltzes off to nowhere. Come for a walk with me. My friends will worry. Please just for a minute. What about your?—My Glenda? No need to worry she likes her men younger. Do you remember my name still, it's Enrique. And yours?

Xochiquetzal.

Goddess of love. So happy to hear it, with tomorrow our
Día de los Enamorados
. I want to make love with you now.

Slip through the palms under the moon. Underfoot, palmshadows of burst umbrellas. No not on the sand Enrique, not in the sea. Do it standing up, if you're really a muralist. Against this tree.

I don't want to make this like dogs.

From behind or don't do it at all.

Why this way—?

Shut up and fuck.

Ridged palm trunk—plant pots stacked in a column—warm and harsh on the palms at the first rough thrust.

So you don't want to see my face—or are you watching for something?

Yes, Enrique, my ship to come in.
On this thin white flux, sad little ebb. One last jerkpush deathrattle and throb
. Finished already back there pompadour,
¿ya terminado?

Come back wait a minute I want to make it again for you. Properly.

Hey Enrique—you wearing a watch?

Two
A.M.

Not the time, how long was that—we get the new record?

Now run off and swap trophies with Glenda, make wigs of our scalps.

Walk a way up the beach, stand alone in this magic. Feel the seed draining like pus from a wound. Feel the slickness cooling. Squat to watch it bead on the sand … bright bent pearls running out of me, a flowing baroque.

Happy Valentine's, Donald
.

Quiet ride home in the truck cab. Diego's hot palm high on my thigh as he drives. Everyone hears everything here,
amiga
. You owe me now.

Take a long clean swim naked in the nightsea. Last refuge last stop. Night of obsidian, moon lost in cloud. Margo swims out alone, brings me safe to shore.

Her salt sex like a sea shell, my tongue lapped in candyfloss cloud. The festival of love goes on and on and on. Endlessly. Send in the clowns.

[14 Feb 95]
To do:

1) Apologize. To Brigit, about Margo … we couldn't help ourselves. We couldn't help me.

2) Walk to town.

3) Call home to Donald. Wish us a happy anniversary.

4) Wrap notes in red ribbons. Tie them in a bow, our correspondence on loss. Send it surface mail, send it slow very slow. At a snail's pace, crawling
back to you, Gentle Reader, Gentle Don, ready or not, here comes nothingness. Scarlet letter bombs with a two-month fuse.

Long walk back from Tulum town on trembling knees. Sun stuck high overhead. All the blondes are packing. Things are getting too crazy, Beulah. We were robbed last night—Margo and Brigit, anyway. Better check your stuff.

My notebooks
.

… Not you, Beulah? nothing lost? We can't figure this out. We two have cameras, you a computer, your Walkman. Nothing touched.

Beulah you should come with us.
Sweet sweet Margo. Brigit's rocket red glare
.

If you ask me, I think it's time she went home.

Maybe Brigit's right. You can be away too long.

Brigit come back, there's something I wanted to say … Wait, wait. Please. Tell Margo you love her still. It was meaningless, meaninglessness itself
.

S
ACRED
H
ARLOT
        

17 Feb 95

R
ED LETTER DAY
of days.

Wobble back to Tulum town. The last time. Too weak to walk it again.

Make a phone call. Post last message in bottle. Fill with kerosene and light. Little Molotov cocktail with festive parasol.
Soon we are done Don and if you concentrate, you may find that conquests no longer fascinate …
³

Happy Deathday, Donald. Three centuries my joy is a cataract still fresh and bright, filling my eyes. You too can be brought to bleed, you too can be brought to see.

Moonrise full from a pan of salt mist. Not full—its edge corroded, eaten through. Xochiquetzal has missed the full moon somehow. Learned Whore, how could you let this happen to you?

Night, a bonfire far up the beach. Here at the palm thatch parasol, my parody of home, our little family down to two. Mistress of flowers and alpha dog, her last new bestfriend. Fun for fetch and scavenger hunts. For wedding rites that rage on and in and up under this acid moon.
Collection time, Valentine, for all the free drugs, the sacred drink
. If you give it to strangers at discotheques,
preciosa
, you can give to me. If you won't tell your name if you say you only watch the sea—then take it like this. Feel the scorch and sear so familiar, nostalgia of fire. Up me. Hot skinny slide, enormous billiard balls, slapstorm of thrusts that lifts my feet off the ground makes me walk on my palms / wheelbarrow races of one—me the hod.

Scan scan furious scan the night sea for signs. Scanning the horizon. For her ship to come in. Rattling fronds, endless endless grunts, thud of falling coconuts in the sand near her head. And then again. When he's gone she squats to lick clean her bearclaws—curved, fastidious—from these battered hives boiling white amaranth. Ever ready for more she scans the night sea. Gently licking at the shore. All horizons narrow to this. Xochiquetzal is praying for oblivion, the Sacred Harlot prays for death. She writes She wants to die. Sacred Way #49—Death by Coconut.

She writes, If you cannot learn how to laugh here,
mi amor
, this place will kill you.

Hurry. I have laughed with you all I know how.

Bonfire ebbing down to coals. Empty bottles, music.

Ah good
amiga
, you have come for more. Meet these our new friends. María and Lydia. My friends have brought them from Cancún for this one night
of fiesta
.

Now watch miniskirted María and Lydia absent-mindedly fingered like peaches at a mini mart. Every now and then a disappearance back into the trees. A woman's laughter—see the sandjackal ears cock. But all eyes are on Xochiquetzal, dancing alone in her red flowerdress.

Billiard balls strokes his Tartar moustaches.
Amiga
, my friends say they are angry at me. We all buy our drugs together, we all share with you. They pay for prostitutes from the city while you give me everything for free.

To everything you must submit. Sacred harlot. To everything, Haetara. It is ancient, this work that you do, this sin of originality. Scared scarred nightslut of beauty, would you pull back now, so close to the end so far from Start? After all you've been through.

Slut, they know your name. Now they come for you.

Saved by the infantry
.

Soldiers arrive at the bonfire, flames glinting sparks in buckles and gunbarrels. High boots still gleam at the tops—stovepipes dipped in flourdust—bakers with truncheons, beachcombing welders, their visors up. Six hungry young Mexican faces, eyes dull under beetlebrow helmets. An older Maya sergeant a little apart, helmet under his arm, tough face under a bowl cut.

Pale officer in a legionnaire's cap steps out of the shadows.
Buenas noches, compañeros
. No don't stop the fiesta for us. We were just on patrol. Making sure no one needed our assistance.

No. No trouble,
Capitán Offalitch
.

Lieutenant
. As you know very well, Diego. Carry on. As you were. We will continue our work.
Hasta luego
. Yes, see you again very soon….

Don't worry about them
preciosa
, we will protect you. Our boss knows their Colonel very well. They play golf together in Cancún. The Lieutenant was just letting us know they are in the area. To be
discreto
.
Only when you don't see them you must worry. Sometimes looking for guns they find drugs by accident. That is embarrassing to all concerned. About guns one must be careful. Very patriotic, the Mexican Lieutenant and his boss. Both from Monterrey—bunch of cheapskates. They would make their mother pay for her own cocaine.

I have had an idea. Tomorrow night all my friends will like to fuck you. Unless maybe the Mexican lieutenant instead. I could tell he likes you. Think it over. It would be easier for you. And a favour to me. I will explain to him carefully where and how you like it. Watching the sea. And not to ask your name. If you like you don't even have to see his face….

S
ATURDAY
        

H
ER FIRST CALL
came February 14th. Then February 17th, then nothing for almost three weeks. But by Saturday, March 18th, there were two calls a day.

The date's set for Easter dinner, Professor. A meal fit for an epicure like you, for a king. Know you love barbecue…. RSVP…. Everyone's confirmed but you…
.

RSVP to what, to where? Where
was
she?

He tried to discuss it with Madeleine. She didn't want to hear. “Whatever it takes, Donald. Just make this go away.” He could unplug the phone and answering machine and hide. He could request an unlisted phone number. Friends and colleagues and contacts would have to be notified, and ways devised to explain why. To explain how.

Yes, how.

He could call Beulah's family. The surgeon and the socialite.
Your daughter is having some kind of crisis, right out of the blue, apparently. All these calls—why me? Well there were some … complications back when I was her advisor. Yes, just before your prodigy quit school. Sorry, and good luck. If there's anything else I can do …