Planet Willie (18 page)

22

Back at the
hotel, making my preparations, I am pleased to find that there’s still a cape
in my suitcase, which should give the performance that extra something. I try
it on in the mirror and like what I see. Makes you feel near invincible, a cape
like this, and although it may end up being sacrificed to the deep waters of
the ocean, sometimes you can’t always meet the rigorous standards of the code you
live by. Sometimes you’ve just got to dive from the cliffs without worrying too
much about the cape.

I double-knot
it around my neck, put on my snug swimming trunks beneath the suit and head
towards town again. The whole ensemble draws quite a crowd as I walk, but I pay
no mind to the crowd. I’m busy visualizing the perfect swan dive, as I’ve heard
professionals like Rock Lightford do. You want to jump out far enough to clear
the rocks below, and you want to hit the water at the perfect vertical. I try
to visualize the perfect vertical, but it’s been a while since I did geometry
and a while since I dived. The last attempt I remember was over five years ago while
cleaning the pool at Harry Shore’s, which got me fired, but then again, I
wasn’t wearing a cape. Admittedly I’m also hoping that the angel bit will prove
to be some kind of advantage once I’m in the air, but I’m not counting on it
like I’m counting on that cape. It’s just simple aerodynamics.

The afternoon
show has started by the time I arrive at the observation platform. I make my
way over to the concrete barrier and find Pepe, who’s already stripped down to
his Speedo and is preparing to make his way up to the top. He looks more
anxious than I feel, but then he’s probably had the good sense not to spend the
night in jail and the morning drinking bourbon.

“Thanks for
coming out, Willie,” he says. “Is that a cape?”

“That it is,
Pepe. I figure I may fly around a bit up there before I hit the water.”

“What are you
talking about?” he says, as I start stripping down to the swimsuit. I hand the
Italian threads over to one of Pepe’s lady admirers and bestow the boots upon
her friend, who seems only too pleased. As for The Kid, I want him to
experience this too. He wouldn’t want to leave Acapulco without catching the
view from up there, so I’m taking him with me.

“What I’m
doing, Pepe,” I say as I strip off the shirt, “is called water sports. It may also
be called a Double Willie With Cheese, depending on how I feel when I get up
there.”

“You can’t go
up there, Willie.”

“Come on,
Pepe. How did you get your start? I mean you can’t very well practice jumping
from the cliffs of Acapulco. You can’t practice flying through the air like
some magnificent bird. You just have to get up there and fly.”

“You’re
drunk,” he says.

“
Focused
is the word, Pepe. So how about we focus on giving these fine people the kind
of show they came out here to see.”

“I can’t let you
go up there, Willie,” he says.

I pull him
close to whisper in his ear. “At this point it’s really out of your hands, Pepe.
You’ll understand later. I promise I won’t get killed.” He looks at me
suspiciously. “And if I do, you can have the boots,”  I say, which gets me some
cursing in Spanish, but he lets me follow him over to rocks. The crowd starts up
a bit of a cheer, which I’m only too happy to acknowledge with some
matador-like swoops of the cape. Pepe’s focused on the climb ahead and pays me
no mind.

The rocks have
been smoothed by the hands and feet of all the divers who have come before us,
including, I assume, Mister Elvis Presley. It’s a momentous occasion, and
looking up at the rocks above us, I realize for the first time that if I manage
just the climb, it’ll be a near miracle. Not that I’m dissuaded in the slightest,
but it does make you think, which at this point is exactly what I shouldn’t be
doing. Pepe is moving on all fours like a mountain cat. There’s a pattern to the
footholds and handholds, which he knows how to navigate. I attempt to follow
his lead but get tangled up a few times and have to step back down a few feet
to find the trail again. Divers plunge down past us, blurs out the corner of my
eye, such that it really brings home the awesome force of gravity. My fear of heights
has got me near paralyzed by the time we make it up to the top, and I’m sorely
regretting that Botticelli’s school ever painted anything.

You may tell
me that a hundred feet is not a long ways, but measure it from the top of a
cliff and you start to appreciate the significance of a foot, much less a
hundred of them. I stand there looking out over the city with Pepe, the
observation platform far below us, the water even further down. A few other
divers are crossing themselves at a little shrine they’ve got set up, and
across the way are the windows of the Mirador restaurant, where I’m hoping
Queso sits. The channel down there looks to be about the size of a hot tub, and
the blue sky all around us seems so vast that it’s easier to imagine jumping up
into it instead of down, not that I really want to be going that direction
again anytime soon.

“You hombres
are loco, Pepe,” I say, as one of his pals moves from the shrine to the ledge,
rises up on his toes, and stretches his arms in the air before jumping off out
of sight. The crowd cheers down below, their voices distorted by the wind, and
I edge over to the drop to see how they look down there. Pepe’s amigo is coming
up out of the water, and they’re all clapping for him. After a moment the
clapping dies off, and they start looking up for the next dive.

Maybe it’s The
Kid. More likely it’s the cape, which is whipping around like it’s got
superpowers. Hell, maybe it’s the swimsuit, but whatever it is, they do appear
to love it. I mean they’re just roaring down there. Makes you wish you weren’t
sheer terrified so you could appreciate it a bit more. I notice a few
attractive looking ladies waving their hands in the air. At least they’re attractive
at a hundred feet, which like it or not is as good as it’s going to get for the
moment.

“You can’t do
this,” Pepe says behind me, though at this point that may just be jealousy.

“I know,” I
say, my stomach feeling like it’s already taken the plunge, “so let’s get it
over with. Any last words of advice?”

“You’re
joking, right?” he says with a tight smile. “First of all, since we’re still
pretending, the cape. It will probably rip your head off.”

And I don’t like
it – man I don’t like it – but I take off the cape and retie it around my
waist. Like a little mini-cape, or a cape for your nether regions. It’s not how
I visualized the dive, which is worrisome, but at least it’s still attached. “Anything
else?” I say. The crowd’s getting a little restless and is starting to chant
something I can’t quite make out.

“Go in feet
first,” he says. “Jump way out and keep your arms in tight.”

“Come on,
Pepe,” I say. “I need to make an impression.”

“I think
you’ve made an impression,” he says.

“Alright
then,” I say, and step out to the very edge, where the wind’s whipping around
even harder. Then I take a quick glance down at my target area and wish I hadn’t. My heart gets going like a Mexican jumping bean. I’d say a prayer, but
another minute up there and I’ll die by heart attack, and if I’m heaven-bound
once again, I’d rather it be a little more memorable for us all.

Pepe’s saying
something behind me, but I’m rising up on my toes and swooping my arms into the
air like I saw his amigo do it. “Your hat,” Pepe’s saying, but before this can
register, a gust of air has come along and whipped The Kid off my head. It
tumbles out into the blue, hovers up there over the water for a moment, then
starts to fall. I may yell out something here, but then instinct takes over,
and I mean that God-given instinct natural to every man that leads him to
defend his own, specifically his own hat. I reach out for it, teetering on my
toes, until I lose my balance and start falling. I push off the best I can, and
then like it or not, I’m out there in the blue, too.

They say that
in situations like these, a man’s life will flash before his eyes. For me it’s
just nothingness. I’m conscious of being alive, and that’s both terrifying and
wonderful, but that’s all I am. I don’t see the water and I don’t see the sky.
All is silent until I make my splash, and then the only sound is my own
heartbeat. Water fills my nostrils and stings my brain as I struggle up towards
the light. My cape swirls around me like some kind of exotic jellyfish. But I’m
floating, I’m rising up, and faster than I expect, I’m bursting back out into
the planet as we know it again, where the noise is just overwhelming. The light
and the colors, too. I am like a newborn babe. What can you make of the crazy
world out there? Baptism in the Bay of Acapulco. Every angel needs to feel this
just once. The crowd goes wild.

Bobbing on the
surface for a moment or two, I try to clear my head of water. Then I wave for
the little ladies, who seem intent on making me feel like Elvis himself, but
even a growing fan club and what may have been the most exceptional dive ever
executed in the history of man can’t bring back a hat called The Kid. It’s
flown out over the Pacific, apparently, where it will find its rest. On the
bright side, there are other hats, but there will never be another dive like
that.

I pull myself
out of the water and up to the observation platform, where I accept
congratulations all around. The cape has slipped around front of me and is
looking more like a skirt, so I adjust it back up around the neck again and
pose for a few photographs with a group of fraternity brothers from Montana. As we’re posing I catch a glimpse of a couple of nuns in the distance, and dammit
if it isn’t Lulu and Twiggy. From the looks of things, they now appear to be
together. I watch as Lulu turns to say something into Twiggy’s ear, or at least
into her wimple, before I lose sight of them in the crowd, at which point I
make a note never to work with partners again. I mean one’s in jail and the
other’s socializing with the principal suspect while you’re out making the real
sacrifices. These thoughts are interrupted by one of Queso’s white-suited goons,
who’s pushed his way through the crowd to offer his congratulations. He tells
me his boss would be pleased to meet me, which pleases me even more. Any way
you look at it, this is just sheer brilliant investigating. Chalk up one point
for Willie E. Lee, that E as in Elvis for special occasions.

The goon leads
me up and around the cliff and into the Mirador, where the names of famous stars
of the fifties are carved into the walls and Queso sits at his table by the
windows accompanied by half a dozen white suits. He’s more or less like Kafka
described him, but even fatter than I imagined, so fat that it’s impossible to
imagine he ever fit into a Speedo and plunged from the cliffs. I mean, I’d pay
an entrance fee just to see him attempt getting out of his chair. One of the
suits pulls a chair over next to the boss, and I take a seat. Queso grins at me
like he’s sustained some serious damage to his head, and I don’t mean the
toupee, which is sitting crooked like it’s trying to break free. Queso’s
drinking beer and asks if I’d like one too. I tell him nothing would taste
better, and a suit goes off and brings us back two cold bottles of Dos Equis,
which he sets on the table in front of us. I take a sip, and it’s like the
first sip of the first beer I ever drank. Everything’s fresh and new after a
baptism. I’m feeling so good it may be weeks before I’ll need to imagine myself
a death scenario again. I’ve done it for real this time, and nothing makes the
beers taste better.

“You are super,
Mister Lee,” Queso says, laughing from his belly and nudging the suit beside
him, who laughs and nudges the suit beside him, and so on. They’re like the
Rockettes except they’re big and ugly.

“I just try to
give people their money’s worth, Mister Queso,” I say. “And you can call me
Willie. Everybody does. I think it’s important to remain accessible in this
business.”

Queso does some
more laughing for Los Blancos, and they all laugh back. His laughter’s got an
edge to it that gives an employee a pretty clear idea of what might happen if
he didn’t join in. “This business?” he says. “Are you a professional cliff
diver, Willie?”

“Not like you
were, Mister Queso,” I say. “Believe me, I’ve heard the legends. But while
maybe I haven’t yet acquired the more subtle techniques of the sport, I do like
to think I make up for it in presentation.”

“You mean this
cape and that hat of yours.”

“Did you see
the hat?” I say, looking around to see if maybe one of Los Blancos got it.
They’re all just dying with the sheer humor of it, which I don’t take too kindly,
but then I don’t imagine anybody takes anything too kindly from Los Blancos.

“My men find
you very amusing,” Queso says under his mustache. “I could use a diver with
your…
presentation
. Sometimes even I find my show a bit boring. You have
seen one dive, you have seen them all, no? So tell me, Willie – would you ever
consider staying here in Acapulco and working for me?”

“That’s deeply
flattering, Mister Queso,” I say, “and I do feel I was born to entertain a
paying public, but I’ve got to be honest with you here. I’m a businessman
myself. I happen to have a very sizeable fireworks operation up in Arizona that I just don’t think I could abandon at this time. I mean it’s quite profitable,
and I just don’t think I could make my partner understand how cliff diving
might ultimately be more fulfilling to my higher self. The summer season’s
approaching, and we’ve got a lot of big events lined up.”

I watch Queso
go real serious as I’m talking. Then I watch him set his elbows down on the
table, almost bringing it down with his weight. “You disappoint me, Willie,” he
says, “but then I am hearing you talk about fireworks. This might be very
interesting.”