Adrian McKinty - Dead I Well May Be

No, I don’t think so. There was some talk of a girl, but anyway you’re missing my point, Andy, my point is-

Jesus, you don’t think I’m fucking queer? Andy interrupted, but before I could reply Scotchy and Fergal appeared on the stairs, both of them grinning like a couple of banshees. They went to the bar and came back with four pints and chasers.

Pick up your Bushmills, Scotchy said, sitting down and giving us one each.

We picked up our shorts dutifully. Scotchy took a breath for what promised to be a long-winded toast:

Gentlemen, raise your glasses and listen up. Because of our recent good works and our years of dedicated service (in your case, Bruce, nearly a year of dedicated service) and our recent near brushes with death and the forces of law and order, we have been given the fucking plum of fucking plums. Drink.

We drank, and Scotchy sat there grinning at us. He filled our glasses again and winked at us. I wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction, but Andy cracked.

Well, what is it? Andy whinged, desperately.

Andy, my boy, you are lucky you are off the sick because, my young friend, you and me and young Fergal here and even Bruce (and unfortunately Big Bob too) are all off to the climes south of the border to the sunny Republic of fucking Mexico.

Mexico? Andy said.

Ayeup, Mex-eee-co. Girls, tequila, beaches, music, more girls, you name it, we are there, boys. Sun, sand, and fucking R &R. Glasses up and down the hatch, Scotchy yelled.

I brought the glass up, but I couldn’t drink.

Sometimes, occasionally, now and again, a hint of the future will leak into the present. Not often, but it happens once in a while. You feel it in the back of your neck or your toes or fingertips. At that institute in Princeton that Andy’s not getting invited to, they’ll tell you that events take place at the quantum level and the light cone from these events extends backwards as well as forwards along time’s arrow. And sometimes, if you’re attuned, sensitive, you get a hint. This was one of those times. As soon as Scotchy finished his toast, a shiver like Baikal ice went down my spine, as if in premonition.

Scotchy shoved me.

Drink up.

I looked at him, ignored the message from the future, and drank up.

Somebody walked on my grave, I muttered.

Aye, well.

What’s the job? I asked him, to cover any embarrassment.

Job, nothing. The job is the smallest part of it. The job, Bruce dear, is your proverbial slice of pie, forget talk of the job. Think rather of long walks on the golden sandy beaches of the Caribbean Sea with charming señoritas and a room of your own in a luxury villa to take her back to. Think of booze and pot and swimming and lasses by the score. Uncle Scotchy has fixed us up.

When do we go? Andy asked.

We leave Saturday, Fergal said, excitedly.

What if your passport’s not in order? Andy moaned.

Then you can’t fucking go, Scotchy snapped.

Andy looked at us gloomily.

I’m not sure I’m allowed to leave the country while my INS status is being investigated, he muttered.

Andy, of course, had been silly enough to enter the system while all the rest of us had let Sunshine get us passable work permits and visas.

Don’t go, Andy. More girls and booze for the rest of us, Fergal crowed.

Andy looked on the verge of tears. Last week and this morning and now this.

Don’t worry, you’ll go, Andy. Sunshine’ll sort it, won’t he, Scotchy, I said, giving Scotchy a look.

Oh, oh aye, aye, don’t worry, Andy, only joking. ’Course you’ll go, can’t do it without big And, Scotchy said, hurriedly.

Really, we’ll fix it? Andy asked me.

We’ll fix it, And, I said, and he smiled.

We all looked at one another and grinned, and then we started to laugh. We were getting out of town. Getting away from the daily grind. Going to bloody Mexico. We were laughing, and the tears were running down our faces. It would be such a relief. The timing couldn’t have been better. All the tensions evaporated and we drank and talked, and even when Bob showed up, he couldn’t dampen things, and we bought the bastard a round and stayed so late Pat had to throw us out so he could get his weary arse bones to bed.

New York City. The abiding blue of the Atlantic. The sweeping curve of coast. Woods, fields, cities, great spits of land given up by rivers. Swamps. Islands. Keys. The Caribbean Sea. Jungle. Down.

Our place was a villa on the lagoon side of the Cancún strip. Large and white, ringed with palm trees. It had a veranda and a swimming pool under an overhang. The pool had leaves floating in it, but not that many. I guessed that the last occupants had left a week earlier. The bedrooms sprawled over the top floor, big and airy with watercolors of local girls. The beds themselves were huge wooden affairs with eiderdowns.

I picked a room, lay down on the big bed, and closed my eyes. There were birds and the sound of a bell, and if you imagined just a little you could hear the ocean. I slept for an hour or two and got up and showered. The boys were down at the pool, passing around a bottle of rum. Scotchy was dressed and ready to go out and was urging them to hurry the fuck up.

I read Bernal Díaz’s book about the conquest of Mexico until they were all ready, a cheap Penguin edition but a great plane book. Cortez had just appeared and the Spanish were getting their shit together. They came close to Cancún and stopped at an island nearby. Isla Mujeres. I went out to the balcony on the east side of the house to see if I could get a glimpse over to the ocean and spot any islands, but you couldn’t see through the trees. In any case, the boys were all set. I got changed and splashed some water on my face.

After some confusion we got through to a taxi service on the phone and went to a restaurant that Sunshine had recommended, though how he knew we’d no idea.

The restaurant was near the bullring and served Mayan food and Mexican food and all of it with lime and all of it hot. Excellent stuff. We all enjoyed it except for Fergal, who loaded up with tons of chili sauce and could barely eat it. We had about a six-pack of Corona each and tequilas afterwards.

It was a nightclub next. We took a bus to the resort area. Scotchy paid the cover for us, and we went in.

I was too beat to dance or drink, so I just found a quiet cushioned place in the corner. The music was ten years behind the times and consisted of New Romantics and disco. They kept playing some Bowie song from 1981 over and over as if it was the latest thing. If it hadn’t been too loud, I might have slept again over my cocktail.

I lay on a couch and drank and watched the boys make eejits of themselves. Scotchy joined me and I raked him about the aftershave he had poured on himself, stuff that, were it released into the wild, would make Rachel Carson weep. Scotchy had no idea who Rachel Carson was and called me a pretentious wanker. We both got margaritas, but before the conversation got maudlin, big And came over. He’d got himself a girl and wanted advice. She was a skinny-looking lass of perhaps dubious virtue, which Scotchy and I agreed was a good thing.

I told him to say nothing, but to hint at great depth. Scotchy told him to ask her if she had any Irish in her. Whatever tactic he took seemed to work because soon he was snogging her in a corner.

I tried to ask Scotchy what we were going to be doing down here, but he explained it had to stay secret until tomorrow. And with Scotchy such a big blabbermouth, it really must have been a secret, so I didn’t press him.

Around midnight the place started to fill and the tempo picked up a little. More Yanks came in. Bob cried off home, saying his belly hurt, and we were all glad to see the back of him. Scotchy was having a spastic attack next to a group of girls, but he didn’t seem in much distress, so I assumed that this was him dancing. I was doing my own low-key moves near the bog in case Montezuma got me as well as Bob. But I was ok. Fergal had been bringing me things with umbrellas in them, and they’d given me a second wind. Everything was in a haze and speeded up, and before I quite knew what was happening I was in a bus with a blond girl wearing cutoffs and a University of Kansas T-shirt. We were kissing. She looked like she could be Bridget’s pudgier, blonder, slightly younger sister. She talked a lot about nutrition.