The walled city is in the throes of urban renewal. Lining narrow streets of flat, smooth blocks are row upon row of one- and two-story dwellings with ornate doors, wrought-iron balconies, and pastel stucco. Those that aren’t already spiffed up are getting the treatment, buckets of paint dangling from precarious bamboo scaffolding. The town’s being daubed in every jelly bean color except licorice.
Teresa’s is tangerine. Her front room is a mini museum. Descended from a longtime Campechano family — some great-great-greats of hers helped fight off the pirates, so she claims — she has old-timey portraits of them and bad dudes like Pegleg Pete and Blackbeard. In an armoire and mounted on a wall are a flintlock pistol, a cannonball, a blunderbuss, and a crossbow.
A gust from the storm has the wooden shutters clattering like drumsticks. Juan gets out of bed and secures them.
“I felt you were running from something, but you would never confide in me.”
She is on her side, her back to him.
“I don’t want to burden you,” he says, not completely lying.
“You can, Juan.”
“It’ll be fine.”
“Your name. Juan Gama. I know it is not real.”
“Would you like my real—”
“No. I want to know you as I know you.”
Juan Gama-John Doe, he thinks. He must have been out of his mind. Totally clueless. But he has gone through life treating life like a game.
He thinks she is asleep when she asks, “Have you seen Perez today?”
“No,” he lies.
“I did not hear him come in. El Norte, this awful storm, I hope he is not caught in it.”
Northers, the winter storms that occasionally blast through, the locals call them El Norte. “He’ll be okay. He’s a big boy.”
“He is not a big boy, Juan. He is a child.”
Juan pretends that he is dropping off.
“Sometimes, Juan, you remind me of Perez.”
Juan does not drop off. He does not sleep a wink. He knows that as good a dude as Charlie seems to be, there are limits to his good nature.
If only I had money to give him, Juan laments.
Charlie Peashooter sips coffee at La Parroquia well past Juan Gama’s breakfast time. He is disappointed in Juan, although not surprised. He cannot imagine greed clouding one’s survival instincts, but that’s human nature.
The storm has abated slightly. It is no longer curling eyelids inside out and raising tsunamis on mud puddles. It is not ideal flying weather. However, this is a blessing. Charlie overhears a taxi driver at the next table complaining to a waiter that nothing is landing at the airport because of high crosswinds and water on the runway.
The airport, Charlie thinks. On a hunch, he asks a waiter where Juan is and learns that Juan had told him that he was flying out of town this morning for a short trip.
Perez gazes out rain-streaked glass at the airstrip. A plane accelerates along the runway, its tires raising roostertails. It lifts off the ground just fine. His airliner from Mexico City could lift off just fine too to fly him to the capital on its return flight, but it isn’t here. You can take off in this stuff, but you cannot land, so it has been diverted.
Perez doesn’t understand flying, how you can go up but not down in foul weather. He orders another glass of whiskey from the bar. It would be just his luck if El Norte pours and blows for the three solid days. He feels at times like a big, black cloud hovers above him.
The gringo, his sister’s boyfriend, who has never offered him a peso, had given him an airline ticket to cash in and meals and barhopping and a hotel room he had reserved in Mexico City. The gringo said he had business that was cancelled, so why waste the trip?
The gringo has no business that Perez knows of and has not gone anywhere since he moved into Teresa’s bed, but Perez did not argue with him.
Perez drinks and he smiles. He suspects that Teresa is behind this. She wants her brother out of the way for a few days so she can be alone with the gringo and extract a marriage proposal. While Juan isn’t a terrible fellow for an Anglo, Teresa seems to like him more than he likes her.
Whether Juan stays or he goes, Perez has no strong opinion. He is rich like any gringo is rich, but no big money has materialized until this travel gift. The home belongs to Perez also, and Teresa is a hard worker. Due to a combination of bad luck and bad bosses, Perez has had no success holding a job, but thanks to Teresa, there will always be beans and tortillas on the table.
“Are we in for forty days and forty nights of this? If you see a boat floating by loaded with animals, head for the hills.”
Perez laughs at the corny joke by the gringo with the broken Spanish who is standing beside him.
“Of all the rotten luck,” the gringo goes on. “My girlfriend is waiting at the Mexico City airport for me.”
“Man, I know what you mean about bad luck,” Perez says.
“Two weeks in Campeche on a consultancy assignment, she is as ready to see me as I am her. If you catch my drift.”
Perez catches his drift. He is smiling broadly and winking. He is so suave and his voice is so perfect he should be a master of ceremonies on American television.
“You got my sympathy, man. I was going there on holiday. If you got money and I got money, you can find yourself a party anywhere.”
The gringo sighs. “Too bad about our plane. My girl’s sister is visiting us. She’s your age and is hot as a firecracker.”
Perez looks at him.
The gringo makes an hourglass gesture with his hands. Perez resumes observing airplanes spray water as they taxi. His last job was peddling wooden pirate ships on the street to tourists who did not want to buy them. Now that he finally has a wad of pesos in his wallet, the fates are depriving him of his fun.
The gringo snaps his fingers. “I have an idea. They say Mérida is clearing up. There must be outgoing flights. How far is it?”
Mérida, capital of Yucatan State, is an easy three-hour drive. Perez answers him and adds, “On account of the weather, it could take longer, but not much.”
“I have a car, but I don’t know the roads.”
“I know the roads,” Perez says.
“You’d be doing me a favor, taking the sister off my hands. You strike me as being capable of pulling that duty.”
Another grin and wink. He is a nice, friendly man and they have a mutual problem.
“Why not?” Perez says. “What do I have to lose?”
Next day, Sunday, is as bright and hot as Juan Gama’s mood is cool and gloomy. Teresa suggests that they take food and drink to the central plaza. There is a concert and big crowds. They can watch the people and listen to the music.
“You are troubled with the demons in your head and I worry about Perez. It will take our minds off these things,” she says.
Juan shrugs. “He met a woman. That’s all.”
“He packed clothes before he went out yesterday and did not say a word to me.”
“He’s a grown man, Teresa.”
“Only in years.”
Juan lets it ride. Despite his offer to buy their food and drink from vendors, frugal Teresa packs bread, cheese, and sodas. For the eight blocks to the plaza, he carries their picnic sack in one hand and holds hers with his other. Since this is the end of him and her, this moment is incredibly bittersweet.
Juan is certain that Perez is in Mexico City, eating and drinking and living it up. When he stood Charlie up at La Parroquia, there were bound to be repercussions. Juan pictures Charlie beelining it to the airport to cajole Juan Gama’s Mexico City itinerary from airline people.
If Charlie knew where he lived, he’d have come for him at Teresa’s, not the café. Juan estimates that he has a one-day window to escape. Today.