Charlie Huston: Six Bad Things

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 glasses 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, anchored to the shore 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.

– Fucking 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 nobody 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. Shit, I could have given him the whole thing outright. I got the money. God knows I got the fucking 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 damn 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 Saturday 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 fucking Dolphins of the National fucking 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 nobody 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.

Fuck me.

A classic 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 shaggy 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.

– Fucking 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.