Demon Box

“Well, you remind me of my kid, whatever. Why don’t you join me in the Hotel Sol bar after your call? We’ll see if I remind you of your old man.

He winked again and left, roguishly tipping his fishing cap to the rest of the tourists waiting to contact home.

I found him under a palapa umbrella by the pool. His look of confidence was already a little faded, and he was wondering if maybe he shouldn’t’ve also had a good U.S. mechanic come with the transmission—pay the man’s way now, fight it out with the Dodge people later. I observed some of these Mexican mechanics were pretty good. He agreed they had to be pretty good, to keep these hand-me-downs running, but what did they know about a modern automatic transmission? He pulled down his sunglasses and drew me again into that abrupt intimacy.

“You can take the best carburetor man in the whole country, say, and turn him loose in an area he isn’t qualified in, and you’re going to have troubles. Believe me, numerous troubles…”

This truth and his drink made him feel better. The grin returned and the ungreased whine of panic was almost oiled out of his voice by his second Seagram’s and Seven-Up. By the bottom of his third he was ready to slip ‘er into whiskeydrive and lecture me as to all the troubles a man can encounter along the rocky road of life, brought about mainly by unqualified incompetents in areas where they didn’t belong. Numerous troubles! To steer him away from a tirade I interrupted with what I thought was a perfectly peaceful question: How many did he have with him? One eye narrowed strangely and slid over my backpack and beard. With a voice geared all the way back into suspicion he informed me that his wife was along and what about it.

I gaped, amazed. He thinks that I meant how many troubles meaning his wife or whoever meaning I’m trying to cast some snide insinuation about his family! Far out, I thought, and to calm him I said I wished my wife and kids were along. Still suspicious, he asked how many kids, and how old. I told him. He asked where they were and I said in school—

“But if I have to wait much longer for these jumping beans I’m going to have them all fly down. Sometimes you have to skip a little school to further your education, right?”

“Right!” This brought him close again. “Don’t I wish my woman’d known that when my kids were kids! ‘After they get their educations’ was her motto. Right, Mother, sure…”

I thought he was going to get melancholy again, but he squared his shoulders instead and clinked his glass against mine. “Decent of you and your brother to take a trip with your old dad, Red.” He was glad I had turned out not to be some hippy rucksack smartass after all, but a decent American boy, considerate of his father. He twisted in his chair and called grandly for the waiter to bring us another round uno mas all around, muy goddamn pronto.

“If you aren’t a little hardboiled,” he confided, shifting back to wink at me, “they overcharge.”

He grinned and the wink reopened, but for one tipsy second that eye didn’t match up with its mate. “Overcharge!” he prompted, commanding the orb back into place.

By the time the drinks arrived the twitch was corrected and his look confident and roguish again. For a moment, though, a crack had been opened. I had seen all the way inside to the look behind the looks and, oh gosh, folks, that look was dreadful afraid. Of what? It’s difficult to say, exactly. But it wasn’t of me. Nor do I think he was really afraid of the numerous troubles on the rocky road ahead, not even of getting stranded gearless in this primitive anarchy of a nation.

What I think, folks, looking at the developed pictures and remembering back to that momentary glimpse into his private abyss, is that this guy was afraid of the Apocalypse.

His Wife

The Tranny Man’s wife is younger than her husband, not much, a freshman in high school when he was a football-hero senior, at his best.

She’s never been at her best, although it isn’t something she thinks about. She’s a thoughtful person who doesn’t think about things.

She is walking barefoot along the stony edge of the ocean with her black pumps dangling from a heel strap at the end of each arm.

She isn’t thinking that she had too many rum-and-Cokes. She isn’t thinking about her podiatrist or her feet, spreading pudgy over the sand.