CHAPTER 15--PUERTO PEÑASCO
June 1997
| W |
hen you're on an endless vacation, like me and bandit boy, you really don't understand the expression "take a vacation." Take a trip? I'm on a trip, always. I mean, we are on a trip always on our way to someplace else. So, when ol' Rooster said to me, "Why not take a vacation?" I was confused for a moment.
Oh, he means, don't get in the Dodge and head to Vegas just yet, which most people would consider a vacation (although for the life of me I don't know why).
He means: "go find something else to do, because I'm not quite ready for you yet." Guess most people would like my job, but I have to tell you, Queen, there are a million better places to take a vacation, than in a casino. So when Rooster said "don't come north," my reaction was to head south, like birds in the winter.
Louie and I were both fixed with fake IDs. OK, mine was fake-for years I'd been going by the alias of Jack Hart- but Louie, being the outcast that he was and all, had no I.D., no way of proving who he was, and so his actually said "Luis Carlos Mejia," but it wasn't real. It was about as real as Rooster's virtual sex. Worked fine.
"Ginny," I asked. "Still got your driver's license?"
"Yes. Why? Do I get to drive for once?"
"No, but we'll need to cross the border. How about it, you guys want to take a trip south of the border?"
They were game. Knew of a small resort town called Puerto Peñasco, situated on the gulf of California, about 60 miles south of the border. As it happened, when we passed through Phoenix on our way south, we drove past a group of pro-life protesters doing their thing outside a local chapter of Planned Parenthood.
"Oh God," I said. "The hypocrisy."
"Ginny sighed as well."
"Sorry guys, but I respect them," Louie offered out of the blue. "No way can you argue a fetus isn't life."
I had known, sooner or later, Louie's conservative Catholic upbringing would rear its head and reveal a rift. Just like the whole vegetarian trip.
"Have you ever seen how they raise those animals? Do you know what they do to veal to make it tender?"
Yes, I heard it all. Still got ganged up on for behaving and acting like the carnivore my father had raised. When I had enough of their bashing, I blurted out, "Meat is murder. So is abortion. So what?"
"What do you mean by that?" Ginny asked.
"We live in a big meat factory. We're all consumable. That’s just the way it is!"
"The big animals eat the little animals. Maybe one day an alien race with a taste for human flesh, just like something out of the Twilight Zone-who have fifteen senses, ESP, are highly evolved, and all that shit-and us to them, we're nothing except maybe an appetizer."
Live by eating meat. Die by eating meat. Meat is murder. So is abortion, so what. Deplored those fanatical right-wingers who shout "baby killers," gun down doctors, and bomb abortion clinics. I always wanted to shout at them, Queen. I wanted to say "Yeah, it's murder, but so what? Starvation is murder. The way we're thrashing the planet is murder.
Yet, in my heart Queen I always believed that when a man and a woman made love, they made exactly that. And when that love that they had made wanted to get up, walk around, eat, wear clothes, and be loved, well, the responsible thing to do was to clothe it, feed it, and love it.
But the way I see it, Queen, when a child's not the result of making love, but rather the end result of a wanton fuck, then the kid is just that, a fuck. And chances are he will grow up to be a little fuck, and, sooner or later, he might decide to fuck someone else over, and then society, especially right-wingers, would say "fuck you" and electrocute him or gas him, and cry "burn, baby, burn" like they did to Ted Bundy. Or he might be Tony Domenico. Said as much in so many words to Louie.
"Better to nip it in the bud," I said.
Louie was sullen in his response.
"Yeah, I used to think it was nothing, no big deal, but have to tell you I went through an abortion with a chick once, someone I really loved, and I wasn't ready for a kid, and neither was she. I went to my cousin and asked him for money for it, and he laid this heavy duty guilt trip on me about how abortion is wrong. My uncle gave me the money. That was probably, no, that was the nicest thing he ever did for me, and now I think it just sucks. And then when it was over it just dawned on me, like what we had stopped was us, our relationship. After the abortion all we could do was fight. And finally it was over. I wrote this poem about it, called "Slaughtered Love."
"I didn't know you wrote poetry. Who was that?" Ginny asked. "Who was the girl?"
"Nobody," Louie said.
"Oh, come on, if it was nobody then why was it such a big deal? Why'd you write a poem for her?"
"Look," Louie said, quite angrily I might add. "What do you care? It's not like you're my girlfriend."
That shut her up.
"Yeah, well, look at someone like me," I said. "When I was expecting a baby there was no thought of abortion whatsoever, and look what happened. Miscarriage. I chose life, and God chose death."
Louie replied, "The Lord works in mysterious ways."
"Oh, cut the crap, Louie! I mean, why is it murder when I do it, but when God does it, it's divine will, or the way he moves mysteriously, or some crap like that?"
"Do you believe in God, Jack?" Ginny asked.
Thought for a few moments before I answered her, Queen, because, while I do believe in God, it's more in that Alcoholic's Anonymous way, not that I've ever been a member, but it's the "God as I understand him" part. Really is a loaded question, that.
"Yes," I finally answered. "But in my own way." "What do you mean?" she pressed.
"Well, I don't believe in an old man in the sky, or a young hippie in a robe, or that God's a man, or any of that. But I strongly believe that I was created, and I can behold creation, right? So yeah, somebody made, someone or something is behind all of this; there has to be."
"What about the devil?" Ginny asked.
"No, there's no devil," I said. "It's just God when he's drunk."
The two of them looked at me as though I were absolutely nuts.
Not, maybe, twenty minutes later, a car in front of me stopped so suddenly I had to slam on the brakes, and came to a screeching halt. As this happened, one of doors to the upper cabinets fell open, and Louie's skin magazines fell from where he'd shoved them way in the back of the way-back when we first picked up the sugar-spun sister. Speaking of the sugar-spun sister, she picked it up.
"Oh, disgusting," was her reaction. "All guys are dogs," she declared.
Louie got this very embarrassed look on his face, took the magazine, a Penthouse, and chucked it out the window. It provided me with a chance to lay into what I always saw as double standard.
"Look, why don't you lay off us a bit?"
"It's just that that filthy rag reminds me of that asshole Larry. I thought you guys were better than him."
"Oh, because we have a Penthouse in the back of the van, we're on the same level as Larry the Lizard?"
"Maybe they should just outlaw the crap," she continued.
"What about all this talk about being pro-choice and a woman's sovereignty over her body and all? Yet a woman can't sell her body, put it on display. After all it's her body. It’s her right."
"Hey, Jack," Ginny said, changing the subject. "Can I drive?"
"No."
"Louie, tell Jack I can drive."
"It's his car, Ginny."
"Oh, you shut up you crippled freak. He lets you drive all the time and you got just your one arm."
It was the meanest thing I ever heard anyone say to Louie, and, judging from how quiet and withdrawn he became, I imagined it hurt him pretty badly.
When we finally settled down in Puerto Peñasco, it was late, and I was beat, so I headed straight for my room, giving the sister and the bandit each the keys to their respective rooms. Given the amount of bickering that had been going on the whole trip down here, I was looking forward to some peace and quiet. Must have slept ten hours, Queen, and damn, it felt good. Was abruptly awakened God knows when by a loud pounding on my door. Opened the door and there was Ginny, skinny and sexy, wearing a T-shirt with her bathing suit on underneath, the pink of it visible through a white T-shirt with a Rage Against The Machine logo on it.
She rushed in.
"Make yourself at home," I said sarcastically.
She took me seriously, and walked over to the dresser where my smokes were sitting, helping herself. She sat herself down in a chair facing the bed and lit the smoke with a pack of matches sitting on the table next to the bed.
"Nice underwear, by the way. Why don't you answer your fucking phone?"
"I had the front desk turn it off for a reason. And leave my underwear out of it."
I was wearing huge boxer shorts, the kind that doesn’t make you feel so uncomfortable when someone sees you wearing them. Pulled my jeans up over them, grabbed a smoke, and sat down on the edge of the bed facing her. Someone was missing from the morning breakfast ritual. And I needed a cup of coffee.
"Where's Louie?"
"I don't know. He doesn't answer his phone either. Or answer when I knock."
Wasn't unusual, I thought. Either he was sound asleep, or he was back to being is usual self.
"Nice shirt," I said. "Looks brand new."
"Louie bought it for me."
"Oh, he did?"
The room was filling up with smoke.
"Let's go get a cup of coffee before we both suffocate."
On our way, we knocked on his door. Figured Ginny's featherweight touch wasn't enough to stir the guy, who was usually a heavy sleeper. So, I pounded on the door as hard as I could, and when he still didn't answer, I figured he must not be in there.
"Oh my God, where do you think he is? You don't think he did anything stupid do you?"
Other than falling in love with you?
"What like kill himself because you called him crippled? I doubt it. No, he probably just stayed the night somewhere else."
And when it dawned on her what I meant by that statement, she acted like she didn't care. Or she really didn't care. One of the two.
Down at the cantina the two of us sat there, not really saying much of anything. I ate me some Huevos Rancheros, while Ginny had her usual bowl of fruit. Felt kind of awkward without Louie there.
"You know," she said, shattering the silence, "I'm real sorry about saying that to Louie."
I noticed she wasn't eating much of her fruit.
"Don't apologize to me. Apologize to him."
I shoved a mouthful of rice and beans into my mouth.
"It's just that, well, I started my period, and I'm ..."
My mouth full, I managed to mumble at her, "Ginny, I'm eating."
"I'm sorry."
She looked like she was about to cry. Of course, I'm thinking, he's just had it with her shit and decided to go out and get laid. On top of that, I figured it served her right. She came across as so vulnerable in that moment, in realizing she didn't quite have Louie wrapped around her thumb like she had assumed. He showed up at the table about 15 minutes later with a lovely, dark young native on his arm. "Hey Jack," he said, "I want you meet Maria."
Louie acted like Ginny didn't even exist. Ignored her completely. And in that moment I felt sorry for her.
"Buenos Días, Maria," I said. "Qué diablos? Me llamo Jack. Y tu eres muy hermosa."
Maria giggled, either at my compliment or at how bad I mangle Spanish. Over the years Louie had taught me little bits and pieces of Spanish. Shit, Queen, my English never was that good, and there I was trying to learn Spanish. Still, it was fun.
Maria Espinosa. Local girl. Spoke little, if no English. Figured she was maybe 20, Queen, but then seeing how far off I was with Ginny, it was anybody's guess. Speaking of Ginny, the look on her face was priceless.
And painful to watch.
She really did like the guy.
Never, since picking up Ginny, had Louie been so blatantly affectionate in front of her. Yeah, sure there were times early on when he'd split late at night and hook up with gals, but always out of sight of the sugar-spun sister. Now he was flaunting it. Shoving it in her face. Almost going overboard, I might add. And she didn't stay very long. Later that night I went for a stroll on the beach. A cool distant moon was perched in the sky, and a light breeze was blowing. And then there was a voice, a familiar voice, that of a young girl. Who else could it have been?
"Jack. Jack of Hearts."
Could see a shadowy figure up a ways on the beach, the red cherry of her cigarette glowing like a beacon from a lighthouse out at sea.
"Hey, Ginny," I said, sitting down in the sand next to her. "Stopped by your room, and you weren't there."
I took a cigarette out and lit it.
"Came out here to think. Where's Louie? Is he out with that girl?"
"Probably. Most likely," I said.
"Why? Does it bother you?"
"No."
She paused.
"OK, maybe a little, but not in the way you think."
"What is the way I think?" I said, questioning her omniscience.
"That I like him like a boyfriend. He is not my boyfriend."
"Than why are you upset?" I asked.
"Because he's my friend. You know, I left a lot of friends back in Austin to hit the road with you two. And I miss Brian."
"Who's Brian?" That was the first I'd heard of him.
"My old boyfriend. We stopped dating because my parents found out how old he is."
"And how old is that?"
"42. Same age as my mother."
Shit, to her age really didn't fucking matter. Was pretty beat myself so I asked her if she wanted to cruise back to the Playa Azul with me. She said no thanks, she'd rather just sit out on the beach by herself for awhile, wallow in her own misery, as she put it. Snuffed my smoke in the clean sands of Puerto Peñasco, got up, and walked back to my room.
Was about four hours later, middle of the goddamn fucking night, when I heard this pounding on the door. It was her, of course. She was drunk.
"You're drunk," I said.
"I know that," she said. "Drank a whole bottle of wine to my head."
What could I say? Lecture her.
"I lost the key to my room. Can I come in?"
She was already in.
"Make yourself comfortable," I said. I sat back down on the bed, lighting a cigarette. She followed my lead and lit one too as she tried to sit down on the bed. She slipped, slapping her ass on the floor.
"Oh, shit," she said. "I'm going to be sick."
She got up and ran to the restroom, and started puking. All I could do was sigh; pick up her smoldering cigarette from the floor, and ash it in the Playa Azul ashtray before we burned the fucking place down. She was in the bathroom a good long while. So long, I got tired and decided the light from the bathroom was enough for her to see her way to the bed, which I figured was big enough to accommodate two adults without any problem. Or she could sleep on the floor. Didn't really care at that point. Was just about to doze off when I felt something on the back of my neck. It was her warm breath still reeking like cheap wine.
"What are you doing?" I demanded.
"I'm sorry," she said, slurring her words. "I lied. I do have feelings for Louie, but I just can't figure them out."
"What do you mean?" I said, deciding to turn over and look her in the eye.
"Louie has such as big heart, he really deserves someone who can give him what he wants, and I just don't know if I can. You know what he really wants, don't you?"
"To be married, to live happily ever after and all that other stuff," I grumbled.
"Yeah, well he also wants kids," she said.
That was a given. I knew that.
"I don't know if I can give him kids," she continued. "That's the problem. I have these ovarian cysts, and in order for me to even find out if I can get pregnant, I'd have to have an operation. And I think I'm too scared to have a fucking operation, Jack. And I 'm scared about my dad.... "
Her words just drifted off and she looked at me, holding the motel pillow, with a look of longing in her eyes.
What could I say, Queen? It happened. Something about the fact that we were in
My body growled in hunger like it hadn't in years, devouring her precious shape as we rocked back and forth, locked tightly in a scandalous embrace, and filled this void we both felt as the moon hung dreamily over the
