Then all our fastenings from Mexico City "disappeared." The paint got delivered but it disappeared after we put some on a dinghy.
Who’s "we"? Lila asked.
Me and my boat-carpenter.
While she peeled the potatoes the Captain came down the ladder. He lit the kerosene lamp, then turned off the electric lights, then took out some glasses from a shelf, then opened the icebox. He filled the glasses with ice, opened the mix and poured it. When he poured the whiskey he held up her glass and she told him when to stop.
Then he said, Here’s to Pancho Piquet.
Lila drank. It tasted fine.
She showed him the peeled potatoes. I’m so starved I could eat them raw, she said, but I’m not going to.
She found a cutting board and started to cut the potatoes, first the long way, making them into ovals, then cutting them again into pencil-thick sticks. Beautiful knife. Really sharp. The Captain stood watching her.
Who is Pancho Piquet? she asked.
The carpentero de ribera. He was an old Cuban. He spoke Spanish so fast even the Mexicans had trouble understanding him. Looked like Boris Karloff. Didn’t look Cuban or Mexican at all.
But he was the fastest carpenter I’ve ever seen, the Captain said. And careful. He never slowed down, even in that jungle heat. We didn’t have any electricity but he could work faster with hand tools than most people do with power tools. He was in his fifties or sixties and I was twenty-something. He used to smile that Boris Karloff smile watching me try to keep up with him.
So why are we drinking to him? Lila asked.
Well, they warned me, "El tome." He drinks! And so he did, the Captain said.
One night a big Norte, a norther, blew in off the Gulf of Mexico and it blew so hard… Oh, it was a big wind!
Almost bent the palm trees to the ground. And it took the roof off his house and carried it away.
But instead of fixing it he got drunk and he stayed drunk for more than a month. After a couple of weeks his wife had come to begging for money for food. That was so sad. I think partly he got drunk because he knew everything was going wrong and the boat would never get built. And that was true. I ran out of money and had to quit.
So that’s why we’re drinking to him? Lila said.
Yeah, he was sort of a warning, the Captain said. Also, he just opened my eyes a little to something. A feeling for what the tropics is really like. All this talk about going to Florida and Mexico brought him back to mind.
The potato sticks were growing into a mountain. She was making way too many. But it didn’t matter. Better to have too many than too few.
What do you want to go back there for? she said.
I don’t know. There’s always that feeling of despair down there. I can feel it now just thinking about it. "Tristes tropiques," the anthropologist, Levi-Strauss, called it. It keeps pulling you back, somehow. Mexicans know what I mean. There’s always this feeling that this sadness is the real truth about things and it’s better to live with a sad truth than with all the happy progress talk you get up here in the North.
So you’re going to stay down in Mexico?
No, not with a boat like this. This boat can go anywhere — Panama, China, India, Africa. No firm plans. You never know what’ll turn up.
The potatoes were all cut. So how do I turn this stove on, then? she asked the Captain.
I’ll light it for you, he said.
Why don’t you teach me? said Lila.
It takes too long, the Captain said.
While the Captain was pumping up the stove she finished her drink, freshened up his and poured another for herself.
He went up on deck to watch the Hibachi and she set the pot on the stove and filled it with the entire bottle of oil they purchased at the supermarket and then put on the lid. All that oil would take a while to heat up.
She took the steaks out of the supermarket wrappers to sprinkle them with salt and pepper. In the golden lamplight they looked gorgeous.
The pepper worked but the salt shaker was clogged. She took the lid off and whacked it on the chart table, but the holes still were clogged, so she pinched a hunk of salt with her fingers and dusted it on that way.
She handed up the steaks to the Captain. Then she got to work on the salad, shredding piles of lettuce on to two plates, and using that sharp knife to slice a tomato. As she worked, she stuffed some hunks of lettuce into her mouth.
Oh! Oh! Oh! she said.
What’s the matter? he asked.
I forgot how hungry I was. I don’t know how you can stand it, going on like this without any food all day long. How do you do it?
Well, actually, I had breakfast, he said.
You did?
Before you got up.
Why didn’t you wake me up?
Your friend, Richard Rigel, didn’t want you along.
Lila looked up through the hatchway at the Captain for a long time. He was looking at her to see what she would say.
Richard does that sometimes, she said. He probably thought we were going to have lunch somewhere.
He really had it in for Richard, she thought, and he was trying to get her mad again. He wouldn’t leave it alone. On a nice night like this you’d think he’d leave it alone. It was such a nice night. She could feel the booze coming on.
If you want me to go to Florida with you, I’ll go with you, Lila said.
He didn’t say anything. He just poked the steak with a fork.
What do you think? she said.
I’m not sure.
Why aren’t you sure?
I don’t know.
I can cook and fix your clothes and sleep with you, Lila said, and when you’re tired of me you can just say goodbye and I’ll be gone. How do you like that?
He still didn’t say anything.
It was getting very hot in the cabin so she lifted her sweater to take it off.
You really need me, you know, she said.
When she got the sweater off she could see he’d been watching her take it off. With that special look. She knew what that meant. Here it comes, she thought.
The Captain said, What I was thinking about this afternoon while you were sleeping was that I want to ask you some questions that will help me fit some things together.
What kind of questions?
I don’t know yet, he said. About what you like and don’t like, mainly.