Dancing Aztecs (46 page)

But why? Just for a quickie in the grass? That made no sense at all, but what other reason was there? Hurriedly dressing, taking it for granted the son of a bitch had stolen her luggage—all of her clothing, all of her possessions, her harp—she was both relieved and bewildered to see her bag still here where she'd left it, with its cash and its credit cards and everything else still inside. Touching up her face and hair, checking her progress with the mirror in her compact she was astounded to discover tears on her cheeks. She was
crying
over the bastard?

No, over the betrayal. The leavings of their picnic lunch were about her, the crumpled papers, the nearly empty tomato juice jar, the melting ice cubes in their plastic bag. Giulietta Masina near the finish of
Nights of Cabiria
, when the guy runs away with her purse. God
dam
it! Why had he done such a miserable thing?

Partway down the slope she came across the harp and the suitcases, side by side. At that point his motivation utterly bewildered her, and it was due to her perplexity that she opened both bags and discovered the loss of the Other Oscar.

So the only question left to ask was
Why?
; but she didn't start with that one. She started with an irrelevant question, “Where's the statue?” (when of course it had just been delivered to a confederate somewhere) because she wanted to hear him lie. Get the first bunch of lies out of the way, and then keep at him until she got the truth. Flag down another driver if necessary, bring in the police if necessary, but get the truth. After the lies.

(It never occurred to her he might have returned to do her harm, or to murder her.
That
opportunity had come when they were isolated and alone—and when she was helplessly asleep—and if he hadn't done it then, he never would. No, he was here to lie her out of suspicion.)

“It's in the car,” he said “On the back seat, under a blanket.”

“What?” That was certainly a lie—he wouldn't have come back without getting rid of the evidence—but it was the
wrong
lie. It was a lie that admitted the theft, and what was the point in that?

Determined to get beyond bewilderment and obfuscation at
once
, Bobbi marched to the car, yanked open a rear door, flipped the blanket on the back seat out of the way, and found herself staring at the naked yellow ass of the Dancing Aztec Priest.

“Well, shit,” she said.

“Listen,” he said, less forcefully than before. “Let me tell you what happened, all right?”

Now there'd be some lies. Folding her arms, leaning against the side of the car, glaring at his face in the clear sunlight, she said, “Go right ahead.”

“In the first place,” he said, “that wasn't any accidental meeting last night. I followed you from New York.”

She took a deep breath. “You son of a bitch,” she said, “you're trying to confuse me.”

“I'm trying to tell you the truth.”

“That's what's confusing me. Go ahead, let's hear some more of it.”

“Okay.” He looked pained and uncomfortable. “I didn't know you, okay? All I knew about you, you were some half-ass broad throws her husband's clothes out the window and takes off.”

“What? Wait a minute, are you a friend of
Chuck's?”
No, not a friend. “Did he
hire
you?” A private detective, sent out by Chuck to get the Other Oscar. Was Chuck that crazy?

“You mean your husband?” Jerry shook his head. “
He
doesn't have anything to do with it. I met him once, that's all, and you were right, you shouldn't stick with him. But the thing is, I didn't know
you
, you know what I mean? So I figured you're this nothing broad, I'll just dance you around a little, cop the statue, and take off. Like, if I'd come up to your room last night, that's the way it would of been. No fuss, no trouble, you'd still have the Jag this morning, on your way to sunny Cal.”

“So you admit you vandalized that car.”

He shrugged, with the hint of an unrepentant grin. “Sure. I couldn't keep chasing any Jag forever with that beat-up clunker of mine. That's my sister's car, by the way, the cops towed mine away yesterday when you went into the building where your orchestra is.”

“Orchestra? How long have you been
following
me?”

“That's where I picked you up,” he said. “I was looking for you for a while before that.”

Now she narrowed her eyes, peering at him more closely and more suspiciously. “Have I
seen
you someplace before?”

“Well, a couple of times,” he admitted. “The first time was when you left your place, after you threw the clothes out the window. I was down by the street door, trying to get in.”

She had no memory of anyone there when she'd stormed out; she'd been pretty singleminded at that point. “Where else?”

“We went up in the elevator together, when you went to the auto transport place.”

“Right!” She pointed a finger at him, as though she'd finally trapped him in some clumsy falsehood.
“That's
where I saw you! So what in hell is it all about? What are you
doing
all this for?”

“To get the statue,” he said.

“The statue? The Other Oscar? But what
for? Why?
”

“Because it's real gold,” he said. “And the eyes are real emeralds, and it's worth a million dollars.”

THE COUNTRY COUSIN …

Pedro couldn't sleep. He had eaten, he had drunk vodka, he had showered, he had entered this clean bed with the cool sheets, and now he couldn't sleep. He lay here, and lay here, and lay here, and finally enough was enough. Up he got, dressed himself in the neat clean clothing Edgar had loaned him, and left the bedroom.

Rita was watching a soap opera on television when Pedro came out (Television!) Looking up, she said, “Can't sleep?”

“I got to go to the museum.”

“I understand. Your comrades need you.”

“Yeah,” said Pedro.

“Let me make you a cup of coffee before you go,” she said, getting to her feet. “Edgar had to go to his class.”

Pedro followed her to the kitchen. “His class? He still goes to school?”

“Part-time at Long Island University,” she said proudly. “He's going to be an accountant some day.”

Pedro sat at the kitchen table. “What's an accountant?”

“A man who counts money.”

“Sounds like a good job.”

She laughed. “It is.”

But why would anybody have to go to college to learn how to count money? If Edgar was still a schoolboy at his age, he couldn't be much of a man. Pedro look at his host's plump, friendly wife, and said, “You like to fuck?”

She knew country boys. She gave him an easy smile and said, “Only with my husband. He's very terrific.”

“Okay,” Pedro said, and when she'd made the coffee they sat at the table together and drank it, while she described to him how to travel on the subway to the Museum of the Arts of the Americas, which according the phone book was on 53rd Street in Manhattan, near Fifth Avenue. First she described it all to him, and then she wrote it all down, in large block letters that he could read. Then she also wrote down their telephone number (they had their own telephone!) so he could let them know what happened, and after that she gave him a couple of subway tokens (with instructions for their use), and two five-dollar bills, a loan he could repay once he'd rescued his companions. And at last she gave him a kiss on the cheek, and told him, “You've a very brave man.”

“Okay,” said Pedro, and left, and walked across a buzzing, cluttered, bewildering, overpopulated, deafening, and utterly alien dream landscape to the subway entrance. The only comforting touch was that posters and billboards along the way did some of their advertising in Spanish. That made it a little more like the real world.

The subway, on the other hand, wasn't like any world at all, and having a lot of instructions posted in Spanish didn't begin to help. Pedro managed to put his token in the slot and make his way through the turnstile, but after that he just stood there, stunned, unable to move in any direction. Vodka and ignorance had carried him this far, but now he could go no farther.

He couldn't even run when he saw the cop coming. He stood there, and the cop arrived, and the cop said something. Pedro stared at him. Then the cop said, in Spanish, “You don't speak English?”

Pedro shook his head.

“You speak Spanish, don't you?” (This cop was one of the results of the New York Police Department's campaign to find policemen who are at least fairly fluent in Spanish. New York City, since the Second World War, has become a bilingual city, with one third of its population Hispanic Subway notices are in both English and Spanish.
El Diario
is a major newspaper. Every public school report card is bilingual, and there are now
two
local Spanish-language television stations; the girls on Spanish-language soap operas are prettier, but more volatile.)

Pedro nodded. “I speak Spanish,” he agreed.

The cop said, “Where you headed?”

Pedro couldn't remember. He jerked his arm up and shoved Rita's instructions toward the cop, who read them, nodded, and said, “You want the F train to the city. Go over that way.” And he gave Pedro careful directions.

Once Pedro was moving again, things got better. He went to the concrete platform the cop had pointed out, and after a while an
incredibly
loud train came shrieking and screaming into the station, and when it stopped the doors all opened without anybody's assistance, and Pedro stepped aboard. Behind him, the door slid shut again, still without the aid of a human hand.

There were available seats, but as Pedro headed for one the subway jerked forward and Pedro found himself sitting on the floor instead. Two male passengers, both laughing, approached him from opposite directions, helped him up, brushed him off, and sat him down on a seat. Then they chuckled comments to one another, moved away in opposite directions, and left Pedro sitting there, clutching his seat with both hands.

Roar roar roar roar roar
went the train, past stations without stopping, and when it did stop the signs said
Queens Plaza. Fwip
, opened the doors, and
fwip
, they closed again, and the train hurtled on.

It was several stops before Rockefeller Center, and Pedro was so benumbed by then that he nearly missed it The words on the platform signs slowly sank into his culture-shocked brain, and when finally he realized he was
here
he pitched himself willy-nilly through the snicking doors and would have fallen if he hadn't run into a blue-and-orange trash barrel.

Sixth Avenue, when he climbed up to it, was—Well, there just wasn't any point trying to absorb anything any more. Pedro found a Spanish-speaking citizen on his fourth attempt and was given directions to 53rd Street. He walked, paying little attention to the traffic until a horn-blaring truck nearly drop-kicked him over the American Metal Climax Building. After that, he moved so cautiously that other pedestrians kept hitting him with elbows, shoulders, purses, attaché cases, shopping bags, rolled-up newspapers, and small children. He persevered, however, found 53rd Street, turned left, and came eventually to a gray stone building with its name chiseled into the stone over the massive doorway:

MVSEVM OF THE ARTS OF THE AMERICAS.

What would Pedro find in here?

Confusion compounded. There was a charge for admission, which he couldn't understand. Neither the woman at the desk near the entrance, nor the uniformed private guard standing behind her, could speak a word of the language Pedro shared with most of the artisans whose work was on display in this building, but eventually a janitor was found who could speak Spanish and who helped Pedro pay the buck-fifty. But when Pedro asked whom he should see about the payment for the Dancing Aztec Priest, the janitor got the wrong handle on the question, and it came out as, “He wants to see our copy of the Dancing Aztec Priest.”

Directions were given by the woman at the desk, via the janitor, and off Pedro went through the cool empty rooms filled with swag. But when he reached the right spot there was nothing there but a fake copy of the Priest, capering on a green marble pedestal. And not a very good copy, either; José's were a lot better than that.

As Pedro stood there, trying to figure out what to do next, a brown-skinned girl approached, took pen and notebook from her shoulder bag, and began to copy the information on a notice (English only) attached to the front of the Priest's pedestal. Pedro, pessimistic but not knowing what else to do, said to her, “Do you speak Spanish?”

“Yes, I do,” she said, turning a helpful face toward him. “I'm a teacher, you see, and many of my students have one or more Hispanic parents. I must communicate with them in the language they speak at home, if I'm to be really useful to them in any way. Can I help you?”

Pedro gestured at the imitation Priest. “I want to know where I can get my money for the Priest,” he said.

The girl frowned at him; she hadn't understood. “I'm sorry?”

Pedro looked at her. She was beautiful. She was like a movie star in the movies. She was the tallest, thinnest, cleanest, brownest, most incredibly beautiful and lust-making woman he had ever seen. He said to her, “You like to fuck?”

That
she understood. “Yes,” she said. Putting pen and notebook away in her shoulder bag, she grabbed Pedro by his thick-fingered hand. “My name's Felicity,” she said. “Come along, we'll take a cab to my place.”

THE FELLOWSHIP …

“You're driving too slowly!” Krassmeier insisted, and pounded the seat back next to Corella's ear,
ā
sight that would have done the long-suffering chauffeur Ralph a world of good to see. Let
Corella
find out what it was like to have the goddam seat back pounded next to your goddam ear. Let
him
see how much he liked it.