The Scared Stiff (3 page)

Easy; we'd worked that out. Arturo told him, more or less, "You tell him what line to read, and he'll write the letters down."

"Oh, okay."

The clerk found a scrap of paper and slid it over to me, with the same pen as last time. He said something too fast for me to catch, and I looked at Arturo's left hand. He was to my left, leaning forward, forearm on the counter, left hand dangling down, now showing four fingers, the thumb tucked in out of sight. So: fourth line of the eye chart.

I looked at it. I wrote A F D E P G, turned the paper around, and pushed it and the pen back to the clerk, who looked at the letters, turned to look at the eye chart, nodded, and made a notation on the form.

There were a few questions, which Arturo mostly dealt with. Twice he turned to let me know I should answer, the first time nodding just slightly (I nodded), the second time not nodding (I shook my head).

Now all that remained was the road test, and for that, we were told, the wait would be between two and three hours. We could reserve a place without waiting on line, so we went and had lunch and then returned to the same building, where Arturo led me to a different room, a waiting room lined with uncomfortable green plastic chairs screwed to the floor.

And here, the worst of it was, I couldn't read. Arturo had bought a newspaper on our way back from lunch, but that was no help to me. So I just waited it out, and eventually Arturo stood up, which meant my new name had been called. I hadn't recognized it.

Apparently, in Guerrera, the job of road test inspector is given to policemen when they're too old to be policemen anymore. This fellow was ancient and leathery inside his brown uniform and looked mostly like an old saddle. He was also short-tempered, maybe because his shiny teeth were so ill-fitting or maybe because it had been too long since he'd had a rubdown with saddle soap. He seemed to believe that one symptom of laryngitis is deafness; once Arturo explained my problem, this guy yelled every instruction directly into my right ear, with a great clacking of those teeth, which up close sounded like castanets.

We rode in the Impala, in which I'd already done some driving to acclimate myself. The inspector sat beside me, Arturo in back, leaning forward in a companionable way, forearms crossed on top of the front seat. His right hand rested on my left shoulder, to give me the signals we'd worked out. A tug to the left meant turn left, to the right meant right. A push down meant stop, a pull back meant park. Four fingers tapping on my shoulder meant go faster, a smooth sideways caress meant go slower.

It worked very well, except that my right ear would never be the same. It was a short road test, eight blocks or so, and there we were back at the admin building, where I angle-parked with such smooth savoir faire that even the inspector was impressed. Most Guerrerans park by ear.

Armed with the inspector's form, back we went to Motor Vehicles, where we were led through the opening in the main counter and back to the fellow with the camera, where once again Arturo explained my disability. The guy shrugged, not caring; as Arturo told me afterward, what he said was, "So what? This isn't a sound camera."

Impatiently he gestured for me to stand with my toes on the white line on the floor. I did, and faced the camera. Arturo stood behind the cameraman, who gave me instructions, and Arturo did whatever he said: Step forward, lift his head, brush back the hair on the right side of his head. I echoed Arturo's movements, and
flash!
the picture was taken.

Now it was another half hour on the same line in front of the same counter, but when we finally got to the same clerk there was nothing to it at all. We handed over our documents, he handed back a temporary driver's license consisting of thick blue paper folded in half to make a little book, and we left.

Outside, Arturo said, "We had our choice. Either they'll mail it to us, or we come back in two hours and pick it up."

Two hours would be four-thirty; not long from their closing time. I said, "What did we decide?"

"Hermano,"
he said, "if you mail something in this country, that means you don't care if you ever see it again. I said we'd come back in two hours."

Two hours and five minutes later, I walked out of the Motor Vehicle Department for the last time, with my brand-new laminated driver's license in my pocket. "Shall I drive?" I said.

Arturo stared at me. "My car? You kidding me?"

I was, actually. I got into the passenger seat, and as we drove out of town I took out the driver's license and looked at it. That face. That signature. That seal of official approval.

It was so easy. And already I looked like somebody else. Already I
was
somebody else.

I liked that fake mustache, in the picture, and I was very reluctant to remove it; I'd already grown used to having a little furry pet under my nose.

Until about halfway to Sabanon, that is, when heat and sweat and wind finally did their job, and all at once the mustache fell like a woolly caterpillar into my lap. It was about to blow out of the car when I grabbed it and put it in my shirt pocket.

I could hardly wait to grow my own.

On Tuesday, the day after I got my new driver's license, I reverted to tourist mode; Lola and I got into the back of Arturo's Impala, he became the cabby, and off we all went to San Cristobal again. Yesterday I'd worn my scruffiest old black chinos, a white open-collared short-sleeved shirt that had seen better days, and heavy black sandals without socks, because yesterday I was Felicio. Today I wore a bright red San Francisco 49ers cap, a lavender Ralph Lauren polo shirt, brand-new khaki shorts with a tan leather belt, high white socks, and black-and-white sneakers the size of apartment buildings. I'd started growing my mustache but had disguised the fact by not shaving at all, which is what tourists do the first two days of vacation, before it starts to itch.

Lola, beside me, was an edible vision in a white sundress, white sandals, white turban, large gold hoop earrings, deep red lipstick, and very dark large sunglasses. When she laughs and shows those sparkling teeth, strong men have been known to faint.

For much of the trip, Lola regaled Arturo with the local gossip she'd picked up yesterday. She was just the visitor, but he was male, so she would learn more dirt in a day than he would gather in a year. For my benefit, they did all their dishing in English, but I knew none of the people involved, so it hardly mattered. The basic idea seemed to be that people cannot keep their hands off each other.

There was one woman in the stories, named Luz, apparently one of the cousins, who appeared in so many of the adventures, causing so much mischief in so many directions, that I finally asked just how many Luzes there were in the family, which made both Arturo and Lola roar with laughter.

"Just
one
!" Arturo assured me.

"Just one too
many
!" Lola cried.

In San Cristobal, on Avenida del Liberación, a too-narrow parallel street just one block east of the main Avenida de los Americas, we had our choice of four American car rental agencies, one Brazilian agency, and two locals. They all offered the same basic VW Beetle (or bigger cars if you wanted, which cost more and don't fit anywhere), and the prices varied depending on how much the companies spent on advertising back home. The local agencies, which barely had advertising budgets big enough to include an appearance in the San Cristobal Yellow Pages, were the cheapest, and of them Arturo thought Pre-Columbian Rent-A-Car was the most reliable, so that's where we went. Arturo dropped us off in front of the office, I made a show of paying him — it was a show, but he never gave me the money back, so I'm glad at least I underpaid — and the two of us opened the sparkling glass door and went inside.

Air-conditioning, since the customers are tourists. The office was a tiny cubbyhole in a street of narrow storefronts. In this front room, there was barely space for the old wooden desk, the nice but chubby girl behind it, and the two wooden chairs in front of it. A bulletin board on the side wall contained charts, keys, folders, and all sorts of things that I'm sure were meaningful to the girl, if to no one else. The rear wall contained filing cabinets, calendars, a clock, rather forlorn color photos of Guerreran tourist attractions, and a closed wooden door.

The clerk gave us one look, smiled, and greeted us in English. We responded in kind, told her what we wanted, and sat down. And now my old ID was possibly being used for the very last time: my driver's license — the American one — my passport, my VISA card. I filled out some forms, signed
Barry Lee
with my usual flourish, and the girl asked if Mrs. Lee would also be a driver.

"No," I said. "My wife doesn't like to drive away from home."

"I get nervous," Lola said, with her sunniest smile, and it seemed to me obvious that nothing on earth could make this woman nervous.

When I slid back over to the girl the form I'd filled out, she turned to the closed door behind her and yelled, "Jorge!" and almost immediately the door was opened by a dark sweating man in a dirty undershirt and dirty work pants. He also had a droopier, scragglier version of my mustache.

The girl rattled off some directions at this fellow with the brisk bark of a drill sergeant. He listened without any visible reaction, and when she was finished he shut the door again.

She turned back to us, smiling sweetly, and said, "He'll bring the car to the front."

"Thank you."

But we weren't quite finished; she still had the VISA card authorization to go through. But enough juice remained in that account so there wasn't any problem. She got her approval number over the phone and wrote it on the slip. Then I signed the slip, she stapled a bunch of papers together, put the resulting stack of documents into a folder, pressed the heel of her hand down onto the folder to establish the crease so it might stay shut, handed the folder to me, and said, "Enjoy your stay in Guerrera."

"I'm sure we will," I said.

"Your first time?"

"Oh, no," I told her. "We've been here before."

"Well, enjoy it anyway," she said, which I thought cryptic, and the front door opened behind us, to show the same undershirted man, just as sweaty and dirty as before.

This time, he was the one who barked out the remarks, while she listened poker-faced. She nodded when he was finished and said to us, "The car is here. The gasoline tank is full. If you bring it back full, there's no additional charge; otherwise we charge three dollars and fifty-one cents U.S. per gallon."

Which was, in this particular case, not going to be an issue. But that was hardly a point I'd mention, was it? So I thanked her and gripped my rental contract folder, and Lola and I got smiling to our feet.

The undershirted man held the front door open for us, then held the passenger door of the Beetle open for Lola. The little mounded vehicle was white and gleaming, like her outfit. It looked like an igloo that had skidded south.

I got behind the wheel in the slightly cramped space and put my hand on the ignition. Before I started the engine I looked at Lola, who was looking at me. We were both very solemn. "Well," I said, "looks like we're gonna do it."

"Looks like," she said.

The next day, Wednesday, I was back in the Impala with Arturo, this time headed for Rancio, way up north, and once again I was in my Guerreran clothing.

The reason for this trip? There would soon come a time when I shouldn't be in Sabanon but would still need somewhere to stay in Guerrera. Up in Rancio, it seemed, there was Cousin Carlos, extremely trustworthy. "You remember him from the wedding," Arturo assured me.

"No, I don't."

"He was there."

"Arturo,
everybody
was there."

"He's Tia Mercedes's son, a big guy, great big belly on him, long mustache that droops down next to his mouth."

"That's half the cousins who were there," I said.

So finally he gave up. "You'll remember him when you see him."

"Fine."

Well, I didn't, but it hardly mattered. He remembered
me
from the wedding. "You put on some weight," was the first thing he said to me.

"I think you're about the same," I said, gazing at all that stomach in a formerly white T-shirt.

What Cousin Carlos mostly looked like was a pillow that was trying to stand upright. From a thick balding head with a face even more stubbly than mine (plus that droopy mustache and ocher teeth), he proceeded downward and outward through meaty sloping shoulders to a virtual ski slope of a body. Tree-stump legs supported this mass of flab, so he looked both powerful and extremely out of shape. If you ran, he probably couldn't catch you, but if he caught you, watch out.

Cousin Carlos was in the auto parts business. He had a long low tin-roofed building that was one-sixth shop and five-sixths garage doors. Two of the garage doors were open when we arrived, with trucks and truck parts scattered inside and out and half a dozen grease monkeys — and never had that phrase seemed more appropriate — roaming over the mess as though trying to remember what the trucks had looked like when they were all in one piece.

Rancio, being the smallest and poorest part of a three-nation border with Colombia and Venezuela, mostly supports itself by smuggling, and I had no doubt that Cousin Carlos's auto parts business was more or less a front, but it did look like an active and prosperous one.

Once Arturo had introduced us and we'd admired each other's form, Cousin Carlos squinted at the huge sun high in the sky and said, "Let's go eat."

"Good," I said.

He turned to yell what sounded like dire threats at his crew, who blinked at him and scratched their behinds with their screwdrivers. Then he walked off down the dusty street, and Arturo and I followed.

The chief characteristic of most Guerreran towns, it seems to me, is dogs, but the chief characteristic of Rancio is motorcycles. Also mopeds and motorbikes. Everywhere in Rancio you can hear them, a block away, on the other side of the house, zipping past, or just idling in front of a bodega. And the ones that aren't in motion are usually upside down in the roadway, being worked on by the owner and half his family.