The evening leans forward from its many seats. Betty Blum begins to take blame and croon apologies in the familiar catty pussyfooting of one browbeaten señora coming to the defense of another. The unseen audience starts to sigh, disappointed. But before the Tranny Man can begin his grumpy forgiving, the Tranny Man's wife hears herself speaking in a voice stiff with care at the delivery of each syllable, telling her husband to let go of her arm, to lower his shouting, and to never treat her as though she were drawing a wage from him – never again speak to her like she was one of his broken machines.
"If you do I swear I'll kill you, and if I can get to him I'll kill Donald, and if I can get to them before I'm stopped I'll kill Terry and the grandchildren and then myself, I swear it before God!"
Both her husband and Betty stare dumbstruck at this outburst. Then the two of them exchange quick small nods: shoulda seen something like this coming… woman this age… all those rum-and-Cokes. The Tranny Man's wife is no longer paying attention. She knows she has been effective. For a moment she feels as though the intensity of this effect will set her aflame, that her flesh will melt and run off her bones.
Then the pulse of the street begins to rush again. The kids on the roof whisper excited reviews. The chickens gather in the lobby of shade under the mango branches. The accordionist doesn't resume his practicing, but, the Tranny Man's wife feels, this is out of a kind of consideration, as one musician in the twilight to another, not criticism.
The Tranny Man stalks back into the hacienda; Betty Blum gives his wife a ride back to the Hotel del Sol. When she returns she has a bottle of Seagram's, a pack of cold Seven-Up and a warm smile that hints she can be as sympathetic to misunderstood husbands as to browbeaten wives.
Wally shows up with two yellowtail and the Tranny Man accepts their invitation for supper. After fish and white wine he borrows a pair of trunks from good ol' Wally and a safety pin from bountiful Betty to keep them from falling off his skinny ass, and they all go for a midnight swim. Then they come back and drink some more. He tells Wally it's always the kids that keep a marriage together, but with these kids these days! Is it worth it? Then he confides to Betty – who is still wearing the bikini that looks damned decent for a woman her age – how one thing the kids these days do have on the ball is getting rid of all those old-fashioned notions about sex being evil. It's natural! Betty could not agree more.
When he figures it is late enough that his wife has been adequately disciplined, he borrows their car to drive back to the hotel with old Chief. "I bet she's there by now," he bets.
He wins; she's asleep on the couch. It will be the last time he'd win such a bet.
Things can be trusted. Things do not break. Things are not gyps. Pull chains on light switches are not manufactured to snap off inside the fixture just to force a poor sucker to shell out dinero for a complete new rig-up that isn't fair.
"Ten pesos for a rum-'n'-Coke? They only cost five pesos two blocks from here!"
They have been drinking at the hotel all afternoon. "This is the beachfront," his wife reminds him. "Besides, these have straws."
The waiter rewards her logic with a grand denture display. Betty and Wally order. The drinks arrive. Betty sips her margarita like a bee choosing a blossom from acres of clover.
"Feh," she drawls. "Not great but feh-uh."
"I love the way you Miami women talk, Betty." The Tranny Man is drunk. "In fact I love all women. From the young uns with papaya titties to the old uns with experience!" He spreads his arms. "I love all people, actually; from these -"
He stops short. He has seen something that nips his declaration in the bud. The Tranny Man's wife follows her husband's gaze to see what has stymied this tribute. Across the beach she sees the reason in the shade of a canvas-covered icecream pushcart, wearing lime green barely to the crotch, as provocative as a Popsicle. Busted, her husband leaves it unfinished. He turns his scrutiny to the cover of the Mexican edition of Time that Wally has bought from a newsboy. There's a picture of Clifford Irving on the cover. He reads over Wally's shoulder, lips moving.
His wife continues to stare at the young morsel at the icecream stand, not out of jealousy, as she knows Betty Blum is silently supposing, but with a sense of sweet wonder, as one stares at a pressed flower discovered in a school annual, wondering, What had it meant when it was fresh? Where did it go? Feeling herself suddenly on the verge of finding some kind of answer she rises from the shaded table, no longer in the mood for oyster cocktail, and walks across the sand toward the surf.
There is a silence as the Tranny Man frowns after her. When he looks back, Betty Blum extends him brown-eyed condolences over the salty rim of her margarita, as if to advise, Don't let her mess with your mind.
"Time," declares Wally Blum, "is one of those things you can trust because you know just how much to allow for political bias."
The Tranny Man regains himself with a robust "Right!"and turns back to the question of nevermind who's Clifford Irving who's Howard Hughes?
The three of them walk back to the hotel restaurant and order Lobster Supreme, picking at the shells till nearly ten. Finally the Tranny Man yawns it's his bedtime and excuses himself, letting all present know by the twinkle in his roguish eye that he is far too much a man to let some menopausal bitch mess with his sleep let alone his mind! Over Wally's protests he peels two hundred-peso bills from his wallet and places them beside his plate. To Betty's request that they buy a bottle to drink up on his balcony he graciously explains that ordinarily he would be more than happy to oblige, but tomorrow is the day his new transmission should be coming in from the States, and he likes to get on these things while they're hot. Another time. He squeezes Betty's hand and turns and mounts the stairs, giving them his most erect exit.
Here it comes again: the turmoil, the chaos, the hubbub and howls – the nightdogs again – the pre-dawn yapping that starts in the hills south and sweeps across the town, just when you were sure the sonofabitches had, at last, exhausted the shadows and were going to settle down and let you get some rest.
Old Chief whimpers. The Tranny Man burrows under his pillow cursing the night, the dogs, the town, his crazy wife who had suggested in the first place coming to this thorny wilderness, goddamn her! Why here, he demands of the darkness, instead of Yosemite or Marineland or even the Shakespeare festival in Ashland? Why this goddamn anarchy of thorn and shadows?
A fair question. I had been forced to deal with it there once myself. You see, one day, not long after Betsy had announced we were finally broke, we all finally knew that my father was going to die (of course I am reminded of him by the Tranny Man – not by the person himself but by certain things particular to this type of American: the erect exit, the wink, the John Wayne way he spoke to machinery and mechanics… many things). The doctors had been telling us for ages that he only had so much time, but Daddy had continued to stretch that allotted time for so long that Buddy and I secretly believed that our stubborn Texas father was never going to succumb to any enemy except old age. His arms and legs shriveled and his head wobbled on his "goddamn noodle of a neck," but we continued to expect some last-minute rescue to come bugling over the horizon.