Six Bad Things

Six Bad Things.

Charlie Huston.

PART ONE.

DECEMBER 4-11, 2003.

Four Regular Season Games Remaining I"M SITTING on the porch of a bungalow on the Yucatan Peninsula with lit cigarettes sticking out of both my ears.

I like to go swimming in the mornings. When I first came to Mexico I liked to go drinking in the mornings, but after I got over that I took up swimming and I discovered something. I have unusually narrow ear ca.n.a.ls. Go figure. I discovered this while I was trying to sober up, paddling around in the lukewarm morning waters, and found that my ears were clogged. I tilted my head from side to side and banged on my skull, trying to dislodge the water, but no luck. I plugged my nose, clamped my mouth shut, and blew until it felt like my brain might pop out of my a.s.s. No good. I crammed Q-tips up my ears, prodding at the blockage. That"s when things got really bad. For a few days I walked around half-deaf, feeling like my entire head was packed with waterlogged cotton. Then I went to a doctor. I have a habit of saving doctors for a last resort.

Dr. Sanchez looked in my ears and informed me of the tragic news: unusually narrow ear ca.n.a.ls. The water was trapped deep inside and my irresponsible Q-tip use had sealed it in with earwax. He loaded a syringe the size of a beer can with warm mineral water and injected it into my ears until the pressure dislodged the ma.s.sive clogs of wax and washed them into the small plastic basins I held just below my ears. He gave me drops. He told me never to stick anything in my ear other than my elbow, and laughed at his own joke. He nodded sagely and told me the solution to my problem was quite simple: When my ears became clogged, I must stick a cigarette into each one and light them. The cigarettes, that is. Then he handed me a pack of Benson & Hedges, told me they were his preferred brand for the task, and charged me a thousand pesos.

So. I am sitting on the porch of a bungalow on the Yucatan Peninsula with lit cigarettes sticking out of both my ears. The cigarettes burn and create a vacuum in my ears, sucking the moisture into the filters. I have a towel draped over each shoulder to catch the hot ash as it falls. I"ve been doing this a couple days a week for years and it always works. Of course, I do now smoke two packs of Benson & Hedges a day, but there"s a downside to everything in life.

The sun has dipped far in the sky behind my back and the reds of the sunset are reflected in the perfect blue sea before me. A soft breeze is caressing my skin and I adjust my sarong so that it can waft higher on my legs. The heat of the cigarettes has become intense. I reach up and pinch them out of my ears, careful not to squeeze so hard that the waxy fluid trapped in the filters leaks out. I dump them into an ashtray near my feet, slip the towels off my shoulders, stand up, and start walking toward the water. The beach is pretty much abandoned. A ways off to my right I can see a small group of local boys covered head to toe in sand, kicking a soccer ball around on their homemade field. In the opposite direction, the silhouette of a pair of lovers kissing. When my feet hit the wet strip of sand near the water"s edge I give my sarong a tug. It falls to the ground, leaving me naked, and I walk down into the gently lapping waves. The beach slopes away so shallowly that I can walk upright in the water for almost fifty yards before it will cover my head. I walk in the water with the sun sinking behind me, hearing the soft slap of the tiny waves quite clearly in my unclogged ears. I"ll probably have to do it all over again when I get out, twisting the cigarettes into my ears, lighting them, and waiting patiently while they burn down, but it will be worth it. I want to take one last swim today. I"m going home tomorrow and I don"t know if I"ll ever be able to come back here.

MACHINE GUNS wake me up in the morning, but they"re just in my head. I have my backpack ready by the door, the waterproof money belt draped over it. I go to the bathroom and stand under the showerhead. The water is a gentle warm sprinkle, not the thing to snap you out of a nightmare. Still sleepy, I close my eyes. Pedro explodes past me backwards, his torso st.i.tched open by a cloud of bullets. My eyes snap open. I walk out of the shower and drip water across the bungalow floor to the boom box. I search the CDs for something loud. Led Zeppelin? Something fast and loud. The Replacements. I put in Pleased to Meet Me, the opening chords of "I.O.U." blare out, and Paul Westerberg starts screaming. I turn it up.

I finish my shower, pull on a pair of cotton fatigue-style pants, grab keys, sungla.s.ses, my papers, and a hefty wad of pesos. I check the money belt, make sure the extra pa.s.sport and ID are where I can get to them easily, and strap it on. A tank top, short-sleeve linen shirt, a pair of trail sneakers, and I"m dressed. I grab the backpack and sling one strap over my shoulder.

--Come on, cat.

Bud leaps from the comfy chair, walks over to the kitchenette cabinet, and meows.

--Sorry, Buddy, no time. You can eat at Pedro"s.

He meows again. I walk over, grab him by the nape of his neck, and put him on top of the pack.

--Fresh fish at Pedro"s. Trust me, it"ll be worth the wait.

I turn off the box, take a last look around. Did I forget anything? I mean, other than not to f.u.c.k up my life again? Nope, all taken care of. Back door bolted, storm shutters padlocked. Good enough. I walk onto the porch and set Bud and the pack down next to the door.

I"m pulling the tarp off the w.i.l.l.ys when I see a white Bronco turn off the trail a quarter mile down the beach and come bouncing across the sand toward me. Could be they just have a few more questions, but I don"t think cops roll up on you at dawn to ask questions.

I drop the tarp, wave, and point to the bungalow with a big smile on my face. One of the Federales in the Bronco waves back. I walk to the bungalow, grab Bud and the pack, step inside, lock the front door, go out the back, and dash across the sand into the jungle that is my backyard. All I have to do is get to Pedro"s and I"ll be OK. Unless the cops are there too.

THIS IS how things get f.u.c.ked up again.

Once every three months you walk to the grocery next to the highway and use the pay phone to call a guy in New York. And this one time you call, and he tells you about a story everyone back there is telling.

--Say you"re a guy and you"re out taking a walk and you get thirsty and it"s hot, so what you really want is a beer. Thing is, it"s really hot, August hot in the City, with the garbage piled up and stinking, and the people with dogs that they don"t pick up the s.h.i.t after, so you don"t want a beer from a deli, not even one of those sixteen ouncers from the bottom of the ice barrel the places put right out on the sidewalk. It"s so hot and the street stinks so much from garbage and dog s.h.i.t and p.i.s.s, what you want is a cold beer in a cool dark room. So f.u.c.k the can from the ice barrel, you"re going in this bar right here that you know it"s a bar "cause out front is a neon sign that says BAR.

You tell the guy you get the point and wonder if maybe he can get to the payoff. You hear the gurgling sound of a bong over the long-distance line. Then he starts talking again, in the unmistakable voice of someone trying to hold in a gargantuan lungful of smoke.

--So you go in and it"s just what you hoped for, cool from the AC, dark "cause the window is tinted. There"s maybe something good on the juke like Coltrane, "My Favorite Things," but not too loud. And not crowded "cause it"s the middle of the day in the middle of the week; just the bartender and a couple regulars.

There"s a huge whoosh over the phone as the guy lets the smoke out, but he doesn"t cough. The guy you"re talking to hasn"t coughed on a hit since he was maybe twelve; he would consider it unprofessional at this point is his life. The thought of smoke knocks against something in your head and you dig in the pocket of your shorts for a cigarette.

--So you sit down and the bartender puts down the paper he"s looking at and he comes over and he"s never seen you and you"ve never seen him, but he gives you a little nod and you nod back "cause you know you"re each other"s people "cause he"s working in a bar in the middle of the day and you"re coming into one at the same time. You tell the guy, Bottle of Bud, toss a twenty on the bar, he opens the fridge, grabs your beer, pops the cap, sets it on the bar, takes your twenty off the bar, and walks to the register.

No cigarettes.

--Bartender comes back, drops seventeen bucks in front of you, which, three bucks ain"t too bad for a bottle of Bud in New York these days, so you feel pretty good about that. You guys do the nod thing again and he goes back to his paper. You wrap your hand around that bottle and take your first sip. It"s coooooold. Bartender reads his paper, bar hounds over there, one is doing a crossword, one is just chain-smoking and making his Old Crow last. You drink your beer, listen to the music and you"re having a pretty good day, figure you"ll stick around that place and drink the rest of that twenty.

You know what he"s talking about. You"ve had days like that.

--And that"s when the door bangs open, some dingleberry comes in, orders a f.u.c.king margarita so now the bartender has to work and he sits down right next to you and starts with the f.u.c.king chatter. There goes your mellow, right out the window.

You think about the pack of smokes sitting on the little table on your porch at home. Down the phone lines, the bong rips again, and you know this story isn"t getting any shorter.

--This dingleberry, he lives in the place, but you can tell by the way the bartender doesn"t give him the nod and the way the boozehounds turn their stools away from him a little that they all wish he would f.u.c.king move out. Right now he can"t believe his luck, a new f.u.c.king face in this place he can chew the ear off of. He starts right in with, Hey my name"s so and so and I do such and such and ain"t it hotter than a b.i.t.c.h out there and this bartender he can"t make a good margarita to save his life and here"s the secret to a good margarita. And the questions. What"s your name anyway? Ain"t seen you here before, you from around here? You never been here before, you don"t know about this place? Everybody knows about this place, how can you be from around here and not know about the old M Bar, the old Murder Bar?

You stop worrying about the cigarettes.

--Yeah, the dingleberry calls the place the Murder Bar. It"s that place, you know the one. They had it closed for a couple years? Well, now it"s open again. So he tells this story about the place, how it"s not really named the Murder Bar or even the M Bar, that"s just what people from the neighborhood, people in the know, call it "cause they were living here when it happened. He tells you, Feel around under the ledge of the bar, the wood there, you can feel the holes that are still there from when they shot the place up and killed all those people in here. And he"s right, the holes are there. They sanded them down so you don"t get any splinters, but the holes are there, man.

You hear the guy on the phone take a quick drink of something and you know exactly what it is. You can almost smell it, the warm bite of Tullamore Dew.

--Now the dingleberry starts telling you about it, how a guy that used to work in this place, when it was the bar before this one, got in some kind of money trouble or something and came in the place one night to rob his own boss and he went haywire and ended up blowing away everybody in the place, like twenty people in cold blood. How it didn"t end there and how you must have heard this story, how the guy went on a killing spree all over the city. G.o.d knows how many people he killed, including some cops. And then this psycho, this murder machine, this maddog, how he just plain disappeared. FBI put him on the Most Wanted list for awhile, but he got b.u.mped for some bigger names, Middle Eastern names. Cops got bigger fish to fry in the City these days. So, the thing is, no big deal right? It"s just a story and people tell stories all the time especially about the kind of s.h.i.t that went down in that bar, regardless of how this dingleberry may have the facts all f.u.c.ked up. This ain"t the first and it won"t be the last time you hear a version of this story. Except now, he gets all intimate with you, leans in close, "cause he"s got the real skinny, he says. Tells you, This guy, who did all this killing, he didn"t have money trouble, well he did, but the money trouble he had was how many people would he have to kill to get this big sack of cash that all these people were after. Tells you, There was this bag of cash and the killer was looking for it and some black street gang from the Bronx called the Cowboys and a whole precinct of dirty cops and the Tong, and the Russian Mafia and even this semipro professional wrestler called the Samoan Tower.

You think about things. A gun going off in a Chinese kid"s mouth. A big Samoan in the middle of a cafe, blood gushing out of his left temple. A cop on his back in the rain, waiting for you to finish him. The brothers who beat your woman to death, ripped open by your bullets.

--And the maddog is the one who came out on top, took all that money, like twenty million easy, and slipped off to someplace warm, south of the border, Mexico way. Out of sight. But that kind of cash? The guy says, That kind of cash, that"s like treasure and people want to hunt for it. And they do. Like It"s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World, if Sam Peckinpah directed it. People go hunting for this maddog and his loot. All. The. Time.

You think about being hunted. What that feels like. You think about going through it again, and curse yourself for forgetting the d.a.m.n cigarettes.

--Anyway, that bit about the money and Mexico and the treasure hunters is a coda to this particular story that you have never heard before, which is why you are hearing this story right now from me.

And that is how things start to get f.u.c.ked up again. That and the backpacker with the Russian accent.

THE BUCKET is right on the beach. It"s a small place, a thatched palm roof over a bar, no walls. Stools don"t work on the beach, so eight rope swings hang from the beams, and sets of white plastic tables and chairs are on the sand. There"s no electricity. Pedro hauls bags of ice down here every morning on his tricycle and dumps them into corrugated tubs full of bottles of Sol and Negro Modelo. If you order a c.o.c.ktail, you get the same ice the beer sits in. If you want to eat, Pedro has a barbeque he made by sawing a fifty-five-gallon drum in half. You can get ribs, chicken, a burger, or whatever the fishermen happen to bring around that day. Every now and then Pedro"s wife will come down with her comal, make fresh tortillas, and we get tacos.

I"m at The Bucket around nine, after my morning swim. Pedro gets the coffeepot off the barbeque grill, pours me a cup and drops yesterday"s Miami Herald in front of me. His wife gets the paper every day when she goes in town for the shopping or to pick up the kids from school. Pedro brings it to me here the next day. I glance at the sports page. Dolphins this, Dolphins that.

Pedro has chorizo on the grill and a frying pan heating up. He cracks a couple eggs into the pan, gets a plastic container of salsa from the cooler bag on his tricycle, and stirs some in, scrambling the eggs. He takes a key from his belt, unlocks the enameled steel cabinet beneath the bar, grabs the bottles of booze, and starts to set them out. I walk around to the grill, give the eggs a few more stirs, and dump them onto a plastic plate. The chorizos are blackened, fat spitting from the cracks in their skin. I spear them, stick them on the plate next to the eggs, and sit back down on my swing at the bar. Pedro brings me a folded towel and sets it next to the plate. I open it up and peel off one of the still warm tortillas his wife made at home this morning. I stuff a chorizo into the tortilla, pack some of the eggs around it, fold the thing up, take a bite, and sear the inside of my mouth just like I do every morning. It"s worth it.

Pedro is about my age, thirty-five. He looks a little older because he"s spent his whole life on the Yucatan. His face is a dark, sun-wrinkled plate. He"s short and round, has a little pencil moustache, and wears heavy black plastic gla.s.ses like the ones American soldiers get for free.

He tops off my coffee.

--Go fish today?

I look out at the flat, crystal blue water. Up in town the tourists will be loading into the boats, heading for the reef to go diving or to the deep water to fish. The local fishermen here have already gone out and Pedro"s boat is the only one still in, anch.o.r.ed to the sh.o.r.e by long yellow ropes tied to lengths of rebar driven into the sand. I could fish, take the boat out by myself or wait for Pedro"s brother to show up and go out with him for an evening fish. If he doesn"t have a job tonight.

--Not today.

--Nice day for fishing.

--Too nice. I might catch a fish. And then what? Have to bring it in, clean it, cook it.

No, no fishing today.

--Game on later?

--Every Sunday, Pedro. There"s a game every Sunday except for the bye week.

--Who today?

--The Patriots.

--New England.

--Right.

--f.u.c.king Pats.

--You"re learning.

I MET Pedro up in town a few years back when I first came to Mexico. I came to Mexico hot. Running. I walked out of the Cancun airport, got into a cab, and told the guy I wanted to get out of Cancun, down the coast somewhere. Someplace smaller. He took me about an hour down the road to a little vacation town. Small hotels along a nice strip of beach. It was OK for awhile. The tourists were mostly mainland Mexicans, South Americans, or Europeans. Not many North Americans at all. Then they started building this giant resort community on the south end of town and that was it for me.

I found this spot: driving distance to town, a handful of locals with vacation palapas, some expatriates living in bungalows, some backpackers and day-trippers looking for a secluded beach. But no bar. Pedro was working in the place I spent most of my time in. I knew he wanted his own business and he knew I wanted a place to hang out. We made a deal.

I"m a silent partner. I pay my tab like any customer and n.o.body knows I backed Pedro to open the place. I gave him half the bar for moving here to run it; he"s working off the other half. s.h.i.t, I could have given him the whole thing outright. I got the money. G.o.d knows I got the f.u.c.king money.

THE DAY-TRIPPERS are starting to drift onto the beach. They hear about it in town or read about it in Lonely Planet and come looking for unspoiled Mexico, but they"re usually pretty d.a.m.n happy they can get a cold beer and a cheeseburger. The expats will come around in the evening when they get back from fishing trips or working in town. The locals mostly show up on Friday and Sat.u.r.day evening to drink. Me, I drink soda water all day, haven"t had a real drink in over two years. It"s the healthy life for me now. I take another sip of coffee, light the first cigarette of the day, and get back to the sports page.

The Dolphins have a problem. Their problem is a head coach who happens to be an idiot. I have a problem. My problem is the Miami f.u.c.king Dolphins of the National f.u.c.king Football League. When I got down here, I found out I couldn"t give up sports. I tried to get into futbol, but it just didn"t click. A basketball season is like a basketball game, only the last two minutes count. And, unless I was ready to watch bullfights, that left football. Baseball? Yeah, I like baseball. I would have liked to have spent the last three years watching, listening to, and reading about baseball just like I did the thirty-two years before them, but that"s one of the things I had to give up. I got into football because I always hated football and n.o.body looking for me is gonna look for a guy who likes football. It makes it harder for people to find me and kill me.

And you know what? After three years of watching football, I hate it more than ever. But I hate the Dolphins" idiot head coach more than anything else, because I am a sucker who has developed a bad habit of caring about the Dolphins.

f.u.c.k me.

A cla.s.sic warm-climate team, the Fins always start fast and collapse come the winter. All reason and all past history indicate that the Fins should be sliding. But they are not. Their new rookie running back, Miles Taylor, is shattering first-year records left and right and, despite his gutless teammates and inept coach, he has them winning consistently.

I am not deceived. In the AFC West, Oakland, San Diego, and Denver have been playing out of their heads and all look play-off bound. Miami will need to edge past the New York Jets if they want to get to the post season. Right now, despite the teams" identical 9-3 records, the Fins are in first because they beat NY in an early season matchup at Miami. But even if they keep that lead for the next three games, it will be at risk on the last day of the season when Miami travels to New York for the finale.

Even my limited experience has taught me that you can always depend on Miami to do one thing: lose on the road against a division rival in December. Bet on it. So I will enjoy the wins they have now and not count on getting any more. Maybe if they miss the play-offs their coach will finally be fired. One can hope.

By noon there"s about twenty people spread along the half mile of beach and three more sitting at the bar with me. Pedro takes the radio from beneath the bar, clicks it on, and twirls the dial till the fuzzy sounds of WQAM Miami come through. He extends the antenna, alligator clips one end of a wire to it, clips the other end to the sheet of chicken wire that covers the palm roof. Suddenly the signal jumps in loud and clear.

I sit at the bar, sip seltzer and smoke, and listen to the game. Some pretty Spanish girls in bikinis stop at the bar to buy some beers. One of them smiles at me and I smile back. She asks me for one of my cigarettes and I slide her the pack. I watch as she and her friends walk off down the beach, and she glances back at me and smiles again. I wave. I like pretty girls.

The game drones on predictably. The Fins jump out early with three unanswered touchdowns, stand around while the Pats cut into their lead just before the half, and then come out flat for the third quarter. By the start of the fourth quarter, they"re hanging on to a three-point lead and the coach is calling plays as if they were still up by twenty-one.

A s.h.a.ggy backpacker wanders up the beach and over to the bar. He shrugs out of his pack and takes a seat on the swing next to mine. Pedro is poking at some ribs on the grill. The guy is sitting backwards on the swing with his elbows on the bar, looking at the ocean. He glances over his shoulder at the radio. The Pats have just pinned the Fins on their own two-yard line. He looks at me and nods his head.

--Football.

Nothing odd about that, a perfectly reasonable observation. Except that he says it in a Russian accent, which is not something we get a lot of around here. Me, I take it in stride, just spit-take my seltzer all over the bar. I"m smooth like that. The guy slaps me on the back while I choke.

--OK?.

I nod and wave my hand.

--Fine. Choke. Fine.

I point at the radio.

--f.u.c.king Dolphins.

He shrugs.

--American football. Too slow.

The Fins try to run up the gut three times, get one yard, and punt miserably to their own thirty-five. Pedro comes over and the guy orders a shot of tequila and a Modelo.

--Hockey, very fast, good sport to watch. You like hockey?

--Not really.

--European football, soccer?

--Not really.

--But to play, yes? Americans like to play soccer, but not to watch.

--I guess.

The game comes back on. New England tries a play-action pa.s.s down the sideline. It"s complete. The receiver dodges the cornerback and sprints for the goal line. I hang my head, ready for the inevitable New England game-winning touchdown. The Fins" strong safety hammers the receiver. The ball pops loose into his hands, and he"s running upfield. I jump off my swing and pound my fist on the bar.

--Go, go, go, go!

As he runs the ball all the way back for a touchdown.

--Yeah!

The backpacker guy nods his head, smiles like he approves of the play, takes a sip of his beer.

--What about baseball? You like baseball?

JUST AFTER sunset I walk back up to the north end of the beach. I pa.s.s the group of Spanish girls. They have a little overnight camp set up about a hundred yards from my bungalow. They"ve slipped shorts or baggy cotton pants on over their bikini bottoms in deference to the marginally cooler evening air. Two of them are walking in from the tree line that stretches the length of the beach, their arms full of deadwood for a fire. The girl with the nice smile is sitting cross-legged on one of the blankets they have spread on the sand, braiding the hair of the girl in front of her. There are five of them, none can be more than twenty-three. I try to remember what I was doing when I was twenty-three. I was still in college, studying something I never used. Christ, why wasn"t I camped out on Mexican beaches with girls like these?