The Ordinary Seaman (31 page)

“I don’t usually have to come in this early,” Joaquina is saying, “but I have a customer coming in for a special appointment.”

“Ajá,” he says softly, not looking at her. He reaches for one of the pastelitos, crescent shaped, glazed, and sugar sprinkled, bites into the chewy crust, jam squirts into his mouth. Dismally, he watches himself chewing in the mirrors.

“So you’re a nÿufrago, güey,” she says. “De veras?”

A shipwrecked sailor—that’s true enough. “Sí pues,” he says, “it’s true. But my name isn’t güey, it’s Esteban. Our capitán always calls us güey.”

“He’s a chilango?”

He asks what a chilango is, and she tells him it’s someone from México, el Distrito Federal.
“May-ksee-koh Ceetee,”
she says, trying to imitate a gringo accent.

“No, I don’t think so. Bueno, he’s a pendejo, wherever he’s from. Americano. Inglés. Griego. Las Amazonas. I guess he’s from all those places.” He shrugs. “Is that where you’re from in Mexico?”

“Sí. No. Zacatecas. But I lived there for a few years, that’s where I went to beautician school, and worked awhile, before I came up here to live with my brothers. We all lived there, for a while.”

“It’s a big city, no?”

“Sí güey, it’s a big city. Much bigger than this one, they say, though it doesn’t seem like it.”

“Is it difficult to live here as an immigrant?”

For some reason this makes her laugh, a brief, airy giggle. “Más o menos. Bueno, es bonito…
Esteban.”
She sips her coffee, eyes beaming as if she’s said something funny; holding her cup with her little finger out, chin up, gazing off with a tight-lipped little smirk, as if she’s savoring the taste of whatever it is she thinks is so funny and not just the coffee.

They fall into a silence while she holds the cup up to her lips in both hands, taking steady little sips. Her fingernails cut short, neat, glossy. She sits, bent over her coffee, with her legs straight out and a little apart, her feet pointed up in her high heels and gently rocking, the fabric of her tights wrinkled around the straps over the ankles. He lets his eyes coast quickly over her slender, curving calves. He inhales with his mouth closed, slowly drawing in her perfume and faint soapy scent, along with the coffee, all the salon smells. In a nose full of
Urus,
no? Corroded nostrils that by now must be like portable bits of the
Urus:
rust and paint, old diesel oil from the depths of the ship, his unwashed compañeros. No wonder he’s a little dizzy, perspiring from the cold, frothy ache in his bowels. And her perfume is beginning to affect his breathing, making his breathing passages feel wooly.

He’s finished his coffee, sees that there’s more in the pot. Should he ask for more? Doesn’t think he wants any more. Can’t think of anything
to say. Shouldn’t he ask to use the toilet? Doesn’t dare, what if he stinks the place up. Golden curls partly tucked behind her ears, falling down around her thin neck and lacy collar, a fine silver chain dangling over her small chest, disappearing under the sweater; she has one of those little stars on both lobes. She has a surprisingly low, chesty, womanly voice that goes shrill when she’s excited. Kind of a baby face, for all her haughtiness and mouthiness. How old is she? Maybe even younger than he, because all that makeup must make her look older than she is. Hair must be dyed. Decides not to like her, much. Compared with la Marta, he decides, she seems stuck-up and artificial.

“So you like it here,” he says.

“Siií. ’sta padre, ’sta chingón.”

Uses too much strange slang.

“So what are you going to do?” she asks.

“When?”

“On your
boat,
güey.”

“Maybe I’ll leave,” he says. “Try to get a job here in the city. Of course, I’ll need a haircut first. Some clothes.” Wonders if he can find some way to sell all those Parcheesis, and the swimming goggles too.

“Claro,” she says.

“But I think I should try to find the United Nations first. See if they can do something to resolve our situation. Do you know how to get there?”

“I think it’s somewhere in Manhattan,” she says, seemingly unimpressed by this bold, new plan. “I’m sure you can get there by subway. Claro, you can’t go there looking like that, though, they’ll think you’re a terrorist. I’d lend you some clothes, but—My brothers have clothes, but they’re shorter than you, and wider, and I don’t think they’d like me to be giving away their clothes.”

“Bueno,” he says. “Thanks for thinking of it.”

“Por nada,” she says. “Anyway, there are places that sell very inexpensive clothing, secondhand, sometimes you find some nice things … Ah! Here’s my customer! Esteban, you have to go now.”

He looks up and sees a broad-shouldered, tall, yet squarely built man in a bright red, white-trimmed jogging suit outside the door; ebony
hair slickly smoothed back over a broad, sharp-featured indio face. Joaquina opens the door for him, and he bends down to embrace her, they give each other kisses on the cheek, she says, “Chucho, corazón, cómo te va, eh?”

“Joaquina, ángel de mi alma,” his voice a gruff singsong. “I haven’t made you get up too early, I hope. In this pinche cold.”

“Sí, ’sta friolín, no?”

Chucho looks down at Esteban, his briefly puzzled glance resolving into an unfriendly stare through narrowing eyes, his chin seeming to pull back into his brawny neck. He is wearing shiny black ankle boots tucked up into his sweatpants; three gem-studded gold rings on one hand, a big, gold-banded gold watch peeking out from under a red sleeve.

“This is Esteban,” says Joaquina, glancing over at him and scoldingly widening her eyes. “He’s a shipwrecked marinero. Imagine.”

“Ah,” says Chucho. “Don’t tell me.”

“Mucho gusto,” says Esteban, rising from his seat.

“Sí pues,” says Chucho, and he looks over at Joaquina.

“Really, it’s true,” says Joaquina, flustered, taking Chucho’s arm in two hands and tugging him lightly across the room—she walks, thinks Esteban, as if her shoes are both too heavy and loose fitting for her, yet with a certain elastic rhythm and grace—and starting to explain how she found Esteban outside.”… He wanted to know how a cat could be green like an olive. Isn’t that cute? When he said that I knew I didn’t have to be afraid of him. He cleaned the doorway”—laughing, guiding Chucho to a leather-backed metal chair with leather armrests, next to a footstool, and a small, wheeled cart loaded with bottles of nail polish and other potions, delicate, silvery tools laid out across it, and a cup holding emery board files that remind Esteban of tongue depressors in a doctor’s office. And when she has him seated she breathlessly says, “Chucho, un momentito y ya,” and Chucho says he’s in a hurry, guerita, and she says, “Sí, sí, corazón, I just have to let Esteban out,” and she glares at Esteban and walks towards the door and he turns and says good-bye to Chucho and follows her out the door, which she holds open with her shoulder. She gives Esteban her hand.

“Oye, gracias por todo,” she says. “And good luck with everything, eh? If there’s anything I can do to help? Órale?”

“Gracias a vos!”

“Por nada, güey. Órale?”

“Órale.”

“Papas!” a quick smile, and then she’s already turned back into the salon. He watches her hurry back to Chucho, pulling the little stool in front of him, sitting down on it as she smooths her skirt around her, pulling the little trolley cart to her side while Chucho lifts his hand, extends it towards her; he can see them talking as she takes his hand in both of hers. Chucho glances over at him. He’d better go; he goes. Thinking, Qué cosa, qué cosa. That macho prepotente getting a manicure first thing in the morning!

Feeling elated and then bewildered and then a little less elated as he strides down the sidewalk. Wishes he’d asked to use the toilet. Total mandona, though. Mouthy! She and Chucho, y qué? What’s so great about how
Chucho
was dressed? She’s one of those chicas plásticas. Not the type that sees into your heart, your values, sees who you really are.

CEBO, THE SWEET-NATURED ADONIS, THE FORMER LOBSTER DIVER, SWEARS
he once saw a golden-haired mermaid at the bottom of the ocean, beckoning to him just as, already out of breath, lungs aching, he was about to push down through the water to pluck a lobster from between the rocks the mermaid hovered over. But Cebo knew from other divers that the blonde mermaid only appears when she wants to draw you down a bit farther, just far enough to give you a possibly fatal attack of the bends. So he resisted, and swam up, and up, so far up that he was almost unconscious and feeling torn apart by invisible sharks when his head finally popped above the surface. That’s how close he came to the bends. He quit lobster diving after that. He never wanted to see that beautiful blonde mermaid again. That’s why he started looking for a job on a ship. Though it does seem, Bernardo has often reflected, that all that deepsea diving must have affected Cebo’s brain anyway. Not that Cebo seems feebleminded. It’s just that someone always so sweet natured and uncomplaining, even in a situation like this one, has to be a little
slow
in the coco.

So Cebo—of all people!—punched Canario in the mouth early this morning, before dawn, in their cabin, bloodied his lip, woke everyone with their shouts, and now neither of them is saying why. Only Bernardo knows, because Cebo came to speak to him alone, and they’ve agreed to keep it a secret. Cebo told him that Canario came stumbling in from sniffing rags soaked in paint solvent with Pínpoyo and El Tinieblas in their cabin, out of his head and giggling like a ghoul, so disoriented that he even tried to get into bed with him. Cebo has promised Canario he won’t tell anyone why as long as Canario never sniffs paint solvent again. This is bad news, claro. Santísima Virgen, that’s all they need now, a ship full of paint solvent sniffers. Bernardo has agreed to have a private conversation with the pretty boy and the tattooed former prisoner about
it if they keep it up. But he feels reluctant. He’s afraid he won’t have any influence. Somehow, he lacks the energy, the
ganas.
A part of him thinks, Let them get high if they want, destroy their own brains if they want. El Tinieblas probably already has, long before he ended up here. But he will, Bernardo decides, he’ll try to talk to them. Especially if they keep it up, if the disgusting habit starts to spread.

Then Capitán Elias came out to the ship and called them together for a meeting. Several of the crew were still asleep, including Canario, Pinpoyo, and El Tinieblas; they had to be roused from their cabins and staggered out like drunks. Bernardo noted José Mateo suspiciously watching, as if wondering how they’d gotten their hands on alcohol and why they hadn’t shared it. Esteban wasn’t there either: he left last night—and still hasn’t returned. But el Capitán didn’t seem to notice that he was missing.

El Capitán made another of his speeches. Said it was time to start working long and hard hours again. Canario listened with his hands over his face, and Pínpoyo sat on the deck cross-legged, his head nodding downwards, downwards, and then he slumped over sideways. Though El Tinieblas seemed his usual opaque self, his small-featured face expressionless as a snail’s. Apparently, the circuit breaker problem will soon be resolved. And next week there’s to be an inspection. Then el Capitán turned on the generator and compressor and the ordinary seamen went back to work welding the ballast tanks in the hold; el Capitán went down into the engine room. Later he came up, fuming about the engine crew, mocking Pínpoyo and Canario as a pair of drooling idiots. Then he descended the steel ladder into the hold and saw the muchachos welding ballast tanks in swimming goggles. What could he say? After all, he’d neglected to bring them goggles. Where did you get those? el Capitán asked. Bought them, said Tomaso Tostado. And what could el Capitán say to that?

But
then
he noticed Esteban was missing. Where’s Esteban? el Capitán asked. And supposedly everyone just said, No sé, mi Capi. Saber, mi Capi. Don’t know where he went. Not here today, mi Capi. Claro, el Capitán seemed angered over the insolence of everyone’s tone.
But what could he say, that they’re all slaves? That Esteban’s fired? Instead he said to Panzón, If Esteban doesn’t want to be paid for today, it’s his problem, no? And soon after, el Capitán left. He didn’t bring food today.

Then Tomaso Tostado and El Buzo brought the carton of Parcheesis out of Tomaso’s cabin, where he’d been storing them, carried them all the way to los proyectos. They came back about an hour later, without the carton. Told how they’d just put the carton down on a sidewalk in front of los proyectos and started yelling in English,
“Wan dólar! Wan dólar!”
They sold eight very quickly. But then a group of those delinquents came and chased Tostado and Buzo away, and kept the rest of the Parcheesis, though they didn’t do them any physical harm this time, nor did they take away the eight dollars.

Of course everyone was worried about Esteban, wondering why he hasn’t come back, hoping he’s all right, wondering what he might bring.

Sí pues, an eventful day. There are changes in the air, some ambiguous, others ominous, muses Bernardo, mopping in the darkened steel corridor outside the cabins on the second story of the deckhouse. But then he smells cat urine again. He goes out on deck and sits against the base of the deckhouse, near the gangway, feeling hollowed out by apathy.

He’s still sitting there, with his knees up and his hands on his knees, when Esteban comes back. The crew gathers. Of course everyone is happy to see him safe and well, but their expressions can’t hide their disappointment that he hasn’t brought back anything to eat. After shrimp, blueberries, and duck, it’s hard not to get carried away with expectations, harder still to go back to sardines. Even Bernardo has let himself hungrily fantasize about what Esteban might bring back.

About this, Esteban is tersely unapologetic. Why should he apologize? He’s been away all night, well into the day. Knowing Esteban, he tried hard to find something, and simply had no luck, and is feeling tired and frustrated now.

So, claro, El Barbie has to open his bocón and say, “Nada? Gone all this time, y nada?”