Under the Skin (28 page)
Then I thought of Daniela, and the idea of leaving town for a
while lacked its usual spark.
I was at the door when he called out, “Say, Kid,” and I turned.
“Next time we’re in the gym, teach me that move with the knee.”
“Sure thing, Don Rosario.”
S
he answered my knock on the Avila’s door at exactly sixthirty—and her smile fell away when she saw my face.
“Ay, dios. Qué . . . What happened?” Her hand started for my face
pain.
“Sparring at the gym,” I said, clarifying the word for her by raising my fists and tucking in my chin. “Boxeando. I should’ve known
better than to spar with a pro.”
“Pro?”
“Professional.” I told her the sparring had gotten a little too intense, that an amateur should never get intense with a pro. I said I
had used bad judgment. “It looks worse than it feels,” I said.
She gingerly touched the mouse under my eye. When she put a
fingertip to my bruised lip I kissed it. Her eyes widened—and then
she drew her hand away when Señora Avila called from the kitchen,
asking if I was at the door.
The señora came into the room, drying her hands on a dish
towel—and then saw me and said, “Ay,
hijo
—pero que te
paso
?”
I had to explain again about the sparring. She shook her head and
said men should not fight for fun, that there was already too much
real cause for fighting in the world. She asked if I would like something to eat, if my mouth did not hurt too much. I thanked her and
said I’d already eaten. I’d seen her husband at the Casa Verde before
I left. Gregorio was having his weekly neighborhood poker game in
the kitchen, the radio tuned loudly to a Mexican station out of
Houston, the icebox packed with beer, the counter full of bowls of
fried chiles and chicharrones. Back during my first weeks in La Colonia, I’d accepted the group’s invitation to sit in on the game, but
right from the start I sensed the other men’s nervousness and I could
tell that none of them was playing his best—except for Gregorio,
whose best wasn’t worth a damn anyway. They weren’t raising me
when they should’ve, they weren’t calling my bluffs. After an hour of
play I made some excuse and took my leave, and although I was invited to the game every week for weeks afterward, I always begged
off, and finally they were able not to ask me anymore.
Daniela went to the sofa to fetch the straw bag containing her
towel and other things. I was wearing my swim trunks under my
pants and my towel was in the car. Just then, Rocha entered from the
hallway, his head bandage freshly changed but still held in place by
the sillylooking ribbon. He paused when he saw me—his eyes running over my beat-up face—and then busted out laughing.
“Felipe!” Señora Avila chided him for his amusement in my disfigurement. “No es cosa cómica. No seas tan bruto, por amor de dios!”
He just laughed harder. For a second I had an urge to go in there
and bust his nose for him, see how funny he thought
that
was. He
slumped against the wall and bumped his head slightly and winced
and put his hand to the ridiculous bandage but kept on laughing.
And then I just couldn’t help it and started laughing along
with him.
The women looked at us like we’d lost our minds. Daniela gawked
at the señora and the woman shook her head and shrugged and the
expressions on their faces made me and Rocha laugh even harder.
Mrs. Avila’s aspect became a little anxious. “
Ya ,
locos!” she said.
Daniela’s eyes on me were large. I waved a hand at her like it was
nothing to be concerned about, and I worked to get myself under
control. Rocha wiped at his eyes with a dirty bandanna and straightened up. And then we looked at each other and broke up again.
It took another half-minute but we finally got a grip on ourselves.
Rocha had to dry his eyes again and he blew his nose and tucked away
the bandanna. He looked at me and we grinned but didn’t go into another laughing fit. He cleared his throat and asked if I’d like a bottle
of beer.
I thanked him but said maybe later. He nodded and raised a hand
at me and went off to the kitchen, chuckling low.
Mrs. Avila said we were both crazy as goats and then kissed
Daniela on the cheek and said she should have a good time but to be
home by ten o’clock. She gave me a tight look of maternal warning
and I nodded, which I thought was vague enough to keep from being
an outright promise. The señora stood in the doorway and watched us
go out to the Terraplane convertible I’d borrowed from the Club. It
was a warm night and I’d already put the top down.
he road from Brownsville to Kingsville runs
straight north and the sparse traffic moves fast.
They make good time to Corpus Christi before
being slowed by one stoplight after another. The coastal
lowland is a patchwork terrain of swamp and scrubland
and grazing pasture, and Gustavo remarks that it looks the
same as the gulf country in Mexico. Angel tells him this
region was part of Mexico at one time, before the gringos
stole it for themselves about ninety years ago. The information comes as outrageous news to Gustavo and he falls
to a fit of low cursing of every gringo ever born, be he dead
or alive.
They take turns trying to nap in the backseat of the car
while the other drives but their sleep is fitful at best and
both of them are left unrested and irritated.
At sundown the sky is the color of raw beef. They
stop at a roadside café called La Mexicana to have an
early supper. Angel orders pork tacos and Gustavo goes
for the chicken enchiladas and both of them are greatly
disappointed with the food. When they go to pay at the
register, Gustavo tells the cashier that the food isn’t fit for pigs,
but she is an Anglo woman who speaks no Spanish and only stares
apprehensively at their hard brown faces.
newrisen night.
I
turned west at the seawall, away from the bright lights
of the boulevard’s good-time joints. The sky was clear,
the stars thick and blazing in the east, dimmer in the
west, where the moon was gleaming like a silver egg high
above the gulf. She laughed at the pleasure of her hair whipping in the wind and had to keep brushing it from her eyes.
The radio was tuned to a big-band station and she swayed to
the rhythms of “I Get a Kick Out of You.” The Hollywood
Dinner Club’s big spotlight beam was revolving in the sky
ahead of us and off to our right. She said the Avilas had told
her all about the Hollywood, even though they themselves
had never set foot inside. They had told her it was as luxurious as a palace, that it belonged to the man I worked for.
“Him and his brother,” I said. “Would you like to go
dancing there sometime? They have swell dance bands.”
“Swell?”
“Very good. Excellent.”
She slid closer to me on the seat and hooked her arm
around my elbow. I felt the light press of her breast against
my arm, the touch of her thigh against my leg. “I think
that is a swell idea,” she said.
I drove almost all the way out to the west end of the island before
turning off onto a narrow hardpacked access road that connected to a
stretch of beach hardly anyone ever used except for a few daytime
fishermen. The Hollywood spotlight was far behind us now and we
could no longer see the glow of the city lights. I parked alongside a
row of dunes and cut the lights and motor. The tide was in, and we
sat in the car, listening to a mild surf lapping along the beach. The
gulf was almost placid, its waves low and gentle and gleaming bright
under the moon.
“It’s the same water you swam in at Veracruz. But like I warned
you, girl—it’s probably colder right now than what you’re used to.”
She slapped my shoulder playfully and said, “I am not so afraid of
cold water as someone I know.” Then slid across the seat and got out
of the car.
I stepped out and stripped down to my bathing trunks and tossed my
clothes on the car roof. The Mexican Colt was under the driver’s seat.
When she came around the car she had her dress in one hand and her
bag in the other and she placed them both on the hood of the Terraplane.
The bathing suit she wore was a stunner—a black sleek thing that
clung to her like a second skin. It rode high on her legs and was held
up by a pair of thin straps and was cut so low in the front it exposed
the tops of her breasts. She held out her arms and did a model’s pirouette and I saw that the suit was backless almost to her waist. If she’d
worn that thing on a public beach she would’ve been arrested for indecent exposure. My dick swelled in my swimsuit.
“It was made in France. I bought it from a catalog but I have not
worn it until now. If it shocks you I can put my dress on and swim in
that.” She could probably read my face in the moonlight. Her voice
was full of fun.
“No. It’s fine. It’s . . . I like it.”
She laughed. “I thought perhaps you would.”
She reached in the bag and took out a folded cotton bedsheet and
handed it to me. “So we don’t have to sit on the sand,” she said.
As I spread the sheet out on the sand, she ran into the water, her
legs flashing, her hair flying. She took long splashing strides until the
water was to her thighs and then dove into a swell. She came up about
ten yards beyond where she’d gone under, then stood in water as deep
as her breasts, her hair plastered to her head and shoulders. She waved
to me and yelled, “Come on, pollito—it’s not so cold! Don’t be afraid
to get your feathers wet!”
I ran in. It wasn’t as cold as it could’ve been but was cold enough.
I whooped and dove and came up sputtering. I trudged toward her
through the waist-deep water and she laughed and began backstroking away.
I dove again and started swimming hard, but every time I paused
to look ahead of me I saw that she had put even more distance between us, backstroking smoothly, moving through the water as
lightly as a canoe.
I swam on in my clumsy fashion, forcing myself to breathe in
rhythm with my strokes. The next time I looked in front of me she
was treading water twenty feet away, watching me. I stroked on, then
stopped and looked again and couldn’t see her. Then heard her laughter and saw that she had moved off to my left.
“What’s the matter, Mr. Youngblood? Are you lost?” I could see
the whiteness of her teeth. She went into a smooth crawl, heading for
open water. I swam after her.
She went out a long way before she finally stopped and turned
around to watch me plodding toward her. When I got to within a few
feet of her I stopped stroking. We were out farther than I’d ever been
before. From way out here the beach was a thin pale strip in front of
a vague dark line of dunes.
We treaded water, rising and falling on the mild swells. The
moon was slightly behind me, its light on her face, her smile. I
slowly sidestroked closer to her until we were within arm’s length of
each other. Her foot lightly brushed my leg. She reached out and
touched my face.
Then her eyes shifted past me and went wide and she said in a
whisper, “Ay,
dios
. . .”
I turned to look—and saw a black fin standing high against the
light of the moon and cutting toward us like an enormous cleaver.
Twenty yards away... fifteen...
Daniela grabbed my arm and yanked me to her and swirled us
around so that she was between it and me. I tried to get back in front
of her but she held me off balance with an arm around my neck, pinning my head against her shoulder. She ordered me to pull my feet up
under me as high as I could. She had the physical advantage over me
in the water and I couldn’t have broken loose of her except with a
struggle that wouldn’t have helped matters at all, so I drew my feet
up and her legs pulled up against mine and she clutched me tightly
to her, one arm still around my neck, the other around my chest.
The thing barreled past us, its rush so strong and close that the
wash lifted and pushed us aside and I saw the white scars of buckshot
and bullets in the monstrous fin. Its wake had a fiery sparkle and the
tailfin hissed by like a scythe blade.
Daniela held me fast, turning us so we could see the phosphorescent streaks as it bore away.
Then it swung around and started back.
“Levanta los pies!” she said, nudging my leg—and I pulled my
feet back up under me as high as I could. Her legs clamped up around
mine and she held us in a tight bobbing tangle of arms and legs as
the shark came at us again.
Daniela kicked at it as it bumped us. I saw grooves along the front
of its wide flat hammerhead and saw the eye on its outer edge—black
as a shotgun muzzle and twice the size. It knocked us aside as lightly
as a ball of cork.
The high fin trailed its glimmering fire toward the moonbright
horizon and then vanished under the surface.
“Vete!”
Daniela said, pushing me off toward the distant beach.
I swam—fighting down the fear that surged at the thought of the
thing turning around and coming for us again, this time from underneath and with its jaws wide.
She could’ve made it back to the beach in half the time it took me,
but she stayed at my side, swimming easily and slowly and with
hardly a sound, while I stroked as hard as I could, busting up the water
and gulping mouthfuls of it and huffing like a bellows. I had no idea
how long it was before we were in water shallow enough to stand up
in. I hacked out some of the water I’d swallowed and we slogged out
of the surf and staggered over to the bedsheet and sprawled onto it.
I lay on my back, panting, staring up at the stars. She hugged my
chest and pressed herself against me, her face on my neck, her breath
rapid and warm on my skin.
When I was finally able to talk, I said, “Jesus
Christ
!”
“I have never seen a martillo so big.”
“
Whooo!
It had to be that Black Tom bastard they tell about. They
say it’s been around here forever. They say it’s eaten more than a dozen
men over the years. They say it once ate a goddamn
rowboat
—and the
two guys in it.”
“Then we must thank God we were not in a... goddamn rowboat,” she said.
My laughter started me coughing again. I propped myself up on
an elbow and got the fit under control.
“What made you think,” I said between hard breaths, “of pulling
up our legs?”
“My father was a fisherman. He knew very much about sharks.
But he said the trick does not always work.”
Her eyes were bright and wide, her breasts pumping. I’d nearly
pissed at the sight of that monster. And she’d kicked it.