Iris said no, but she had been to Miami once and didn’t like it very much.
The tourist said, “You walk down the Boardwalk from Atlantic City you come to Ventnor and then Margate, but it’s like all one. You know what I mean? One city. I lived in Miami a while, I didn’t like it either.”
“I was going to live in Miami Beach,” Iris said, “but I change my mind. I prefer Atlantic City.”
“There’s way more to do there,” the tourist said.
Tell her what you want to do to her, Isidro said to the mirror.
“They want me to work as a hostess for the company,” Iris said. “They have many social functions.”
“A hostess,” the tourist said. “They got a few of those in Atlantic City, all right.”
“The position was offer to me by the boss himself, Mr. Tommy Donovan. He owns the big hotel in Isla Verde I’m going to. He’s crazy for me to work for him. He tole me that.”
Hurry, Isidro thought, someone. He was helpless.
They turned off the highway and soon came to the beach, to the casino hotel that resembled a mosque among palm trees. Part of it did. Three stories of arched Moorish Modern topped with a dome the shape of a spade, an inverted heart pointing to heaven. Signs in all sizes, everywhere, said Spade’s Isla Verde Resort. The tourist said, “Jeez, what a place, ‘ey?” The hotel, tan cement and dark glass, rose fifteen stories above the east end of the casino complex.
Iris said, “Is nothing compare to the much bigger hotel in Atlantic City, where I’m going to be a hostess.” Telling the tourist she was too good for him. She left the taxi, not even saying thank you.
“I can tell you where she lives,” Isidro said. “Number five two Calle del Parque. Close by your hotel.”
The tourist watched her go inside the casino before he moved into the front seat. He opened one of the envelopes, looked at the prints for a moment and said, “Let’s go for a ride.”
Isidro had his tourist again and felt so good that he could admit, “I pick up the pictures to give you so I could speak to you again and hope to be of service.” The tourist seemed content, gazing out at the countryside from the highway as they drove toward Carolina. “There is so much to see out on the island,” Isidro said. “All this use to be sugar cane here. Now, look, use car places. Way over there, apartment buildings.”
The tourist would look out his side window, turn his head slowly and Isidro would see his sunglasses, his serious expression. Interested, but not amazed at anything today. Not asking what’s that?… what’s that? Instead he said:
“Why’d you think I wanted to meet her?”
“Well, she’s a nice girl, very nice looking, I believe educated… We can go north to Loiza, my home where I was born. If you like to buy a famous vejigante mask, for your mother.” The tourist didn’t say anything. “Or we can go to El Yunque. You hear of it? The rain forest on the mountain, very beautiful…”
“Let’s go up there,” the tourist said, and Isidro relaxed; he had his tourist for at least the rest of the day and could show him the sights, show him some excitement on the way up there, some expert driving.
Blowing his horn, leaning on it through blind mountain curves, climbing through dark caverns of tabonuco trees a thousand years old, gunning it past the diesel noise of tour buses-everybody going to El Yunque, the showplace of the island. Look, what forests were like before men were born. Where frogs live in trees and flower plants grow on the branches. The tourist didn’t raise his camera.
“You don’t want pictures?”
“I can get postcards of this.”
Not in a good mood. He didn’t want to go in the Rain Forest Restaurant, he wasn’t hungry today. At the Visitor Center he said, “Let’s get away from these goddamn buses.” Isidro removed a barrier where the road was closed because of a landslide. It was slippery in places but no trouble to get through. Nobody working to clear the mud. This was more like it, not running into people everywhere. A jungle in the clouds. The tourist said, “Let’s get out and walk.” Okay-once Isidro found a place to put the taxi, off the road deep into a side trail, in case a park service guy came along. Park service guys liked to be important, Isidro said, yell at drivers.
The tourist led them along a footpath, following a sign that said El Yunque Trail. They left it behind, following side trails, and came to an open place that ended, fell away hundreds of feet to a sight of clouds like fog over the treetops below. Beautiful. It gave Isidro the feeling he could dive off and land down there in that soft green sponge. Now he saw the tourist bring his camera case in front of him and open it, take out the camera and hang it from his neck. The tourist looked out at the view, then at Isidro, then stepped away from the edge, raising his camera.
“Smile.”
Isidro posed, nothing behind him but clouds, trying hard to smile. He believed it was the first picture the tourist had taken of him.
“You want me to take one of you?”
“No, stay there.” The tourist snapped another picture and said, “Tell me what you’re up to.”
Isidro said, “Please?”
Something was wrong. It was in the tourist’s expression. Not a serious one but not a nice one either. He wasn’t happy, he wasn’t angry, he wasn’t anything. The tourist took off his sunglasses and slipped them into his shirt pocket as he said, “They ask you a lot of questions about me?”
It was as though a disguise was removed and Isidro was seeing him for the first time, seeing the man’s eyes as tiny nail points holding him, telling him he had made a mistake, failed to observe something. For a moment his wife was in his mind, his wife speaking to him with the sound of the washing machine and the television. He was confused and it made him angry.
“Who? Nobody ask me anything.”
“No? They didn’t pay you?”
“Mister, I don’t know what you talking about.” The only thing he knew for sure, the man was no longer his prize.
“Tell me the truth. Say the girl approached you?”
“Yes, she want to meet you.”
“Go on.”
“I said okay. See, I thought you like her, a lot.”
“You did, ‘ey? Why?”
“Man, all the pictures you took of her.” He watched the tourist stare at him, then begin to smile, then shake his head back and forth and heard the tourist say:
“Oh, shit. You looked at the prints you picked up this morning. Didn’t you?”
Isidro nodded. Why not? The tourist didn’t seem angry now. “But I didn’ hurt them, I jus’ look at them.”
The tourist said, “Jesus, you thought I liked Iris, so you were gonna fix me up. All this was your idea.”
Isidro said, “Is up to you. It doesn’ matter.”
The tourist was still smiling, just a little. He said, “You dumb fuck, I wasn’t taking pictures of her.”
Isidro saw the tourist’s hand go into the camera case and come out holding a gun, an automatic pistol, a big heavy one. The tourist-what was this?-he would have film and suntan lotion in there, not a pistol. If there was something wrong with him, if he was abnormal-it was okay to be abnormal, sure, act crazy for fun, wear masks… when it made sense to act crazy, want to scare people. This trying to scare him made no sense…
And he yelled at the tourist, “But she’s in the pictures!”
The tourist said, “So’s the guy with her.”
Isidro paused, still not understanding, then saw it, what was going to happen, and yelled out again, “Momento!”
The tourist shot him in the head, almost between the eyes. He listened to the echo and shot him again, on the ground, before rolling him over the edge of the mud bluff, into the clouds.
Teddy had a frosted Rain Forest Julep at the restaurant. It wasn’t bad. He bought a handicraft hand-painted parrot for his mom, wandered out to a Gray Line charter bus with a bunch of sightseers and was back in San Juan by six o’clock: in time for the evening traffic on Ashford Avenue. Jesus, but PRs liked to play their radios loud. This day had been a kick in the ass. It woke him up, told him to quit creeping around acting like a fool. Get it done and get out.