Montezuma’s Revenge

“Mande?” he asked, as bereft of any knowledge of the English language as the simplest peon. His accoster, a man with an exceedingly blue jaw and an official look, responded automatically in Spanish.

“What is your name?”

“Juan Lopez, why do you ask?” Spoken with the most nasal of vowels and elongation of the final syllables.

“A mistake. I am looking for a North American.”

Tony shrugged and turned away, walked away with the other man’s eyes burning holes in his back. One pace, two, three, five, he was at the curb and the light was green, crossing, halfway over before the cry.

“Come back here! I want to talk to you.”

Tony ignored it, walking on faster and faster. The policeman was suspicious, his clothes probably; every stitch radiated gringo in opposition to his linguistic cover. A whistle blew shrilly and he ran.

There was a park here, between the road and the water, not large but filled with stands and stalls and vendors of souvenirs for the tourist trade, its alleys and passages forming a maze to faze any minotaur hunter. Tony plunged into it with the thud of heavy feet close behind. Left, right, squeeze between a counter laden with stuffed armadillos, frogs, snakes, deformed foxes, this standing beside a tin-sided booth of postcards, ashtrays, toy banderillas, bullfight posters. Out behind the stalls, then down another narrow way.

It worked. Pursuer and pursued were swallowed up in the crowds and stalls. But for how long? This was a limited area and already more whistles were sounding in the distance. Tony slowed to a rapid walk with sweat bursting from every pore, his jacket clinging to him like an overcoat. He took a moment to stop at a bench and remove jacket and tie and thrust them crumpled into his attache case, to roll up the sleeves of his shirt. This was a little cooler and altered his appearance slightly. The attache case could not be hidden, but more than one businessman carried this badge of rank even here. With a hunted animal’s cunning he circled back and emerged from the maze almost where he had entered, backtracking while the pursuit rolled on. A minibus stopped not ten yards away and disgorged police who rushed into the park. He tried not to look at them as he crossed back over the avenue and strolled away from the scene. Keep moving, a few blocks farther on. Steps led down from the crowded houses on the hillside above and he turned up them, past a tortilleria with its patient queue of customers, past an open doorway with an indefinable object hanging above it. He stopped to catch his breath, looking up at the thing. An elongated silver tank of some kind with valves at one end. It had been decorated with snout and ears before, a twist of wire behind in the form of a tail, and lettered in red long porker. This small mystery was resolved by a sign behind it that read long porker diving school, learn to scuba here.

“The class goes out soon, sir, why don’t you join us?”

The lounger in the doorway extended the invitation in English so apparently Tony’s northern antecedents were still showing.

“I don’t have my trunks with me.”

“That’s all right.” The young man straightened up and removed the toothpick he had been worrying, eager now with the possibility of a fresh customer. “We supply everything you will need. Tank, mask, fins, weights, a bathing suit if you want one, good instruction, just one hundred and fifty pesos for everything.”

“That’s a little expensive,” Tony said, completely by reflex.

“For the first time, to show you how much you will like it, we will make a special price of one hundred and twenty-five.” He stepped aside and waved entrance; Tony went in more for a chance to sit down in the shade than any desire to enjoy the subaqueous pleasures of the bay.

“I’ve never done anything like this before. I’m not sure I’m really interested.” Two policemen went past the doorway talking loudly. “But this is too good a chance to miss, so I think I will.” He was safe here for the moment, breathing time, thinking time until he figured out what to do next. Somewhere to the rear a small baby cried? He looked around. Tanks, masks and ancillary equipment in racks on the walls, photographs between them of the school’s owner diving with various improbable people, yellowed newspaper clippings pushed into the frames for the sake of verity. Vice President Johnson, Grace Kelly, Senator Bilbo. The lure of the sea draws us all. A buxom young woman with long red hair came out of the rear room buttoning her blouse, her other hand securing an infant in burping position at her shoulder.

“Underwater,” she said, “we cannot talk. Therefore we communicate with hand signals. When we want you to come up we put our thumbs up like this, when we want you to go down we put our thumbs down like this. Do you understand?” The baby blipped a milky bubble.

“It seems simple enough. But how do I breathe?”

“You have already paid?” There seemed a limit to free information.