Thomas McGuane - Panama

“Memories will assail you before you get to Key Largo.”

“Your brain is decomposing,” said Catherine. “I can smell it from here.”

“I want to garner kudos by manufacturing an artificial paradise of household materials.”

“Sit here.”

“Thank you. But won’t the bus stop for us?”

“This is no longer the stop.”

“It is now. Catherine, if you are positioning me for discourse, quit it. We’re tired.”

“Your father said to me that he should have never left you with the nuns. He should have handled things himself. He said that he let too many others do the things he should have done himself. He said he injured you and he wants a chance to make up for it.”

“I was just another snack to him and now he’s gone.”

“He’s not gone. Chet, you have to go back and repair these holes. You’re not getting anywhere.”

“He got me below the waterline. It’s a tribute to my durability that I’ve lasted this long. Jim didn’t. And it’s a family legend that my mother died terminally pissed off.”

A city bus pulled up and stopped. The driver said it was no longer a stop. I thought that was thoughtful and said so. I told Catherine that I was not keen to pursue this conversation, and that the wolf was at the door.

“Stop talking like that.”

“I have my version of events.”

“Which is what?”

“Tiny funerals.”

“Is that to say that if people don’t suit you, you simply decide that they’ve died?”

“No, Catherine—”

“What about me?”

“You’re still with us.”

“How much longer have I got?”

“You’ve still got some time left.”

Catherine got up and stalked into the blinding daylight. It seems I’m always saying the wrong thing. But when the birds of morning induce terror, no one is at his best.

* * *

Sometimes I wonder about box office. What makes good box office, you think. What if a depraved pervert throttled the weather girl, is that good box office? I don’t know.

I have experienced disagreeable side effects in all my endeavors. Sometimes I look at a situation and know they’re going to get me and I say to myself, I think I’ll just go ahead on out of here. I don’t want disagreeable side effects. It’s the additives. There has been a commotion among the impostors and they have introduced additives.

Jorge Cruz arrived late in the morning to discuss the orchestra. He was distressed at my choice of location. How was I to have an occasion at the Casa Marina, which had not been operating for a quarter century, when the grass grew to one’s waist, how was one to dance under such conditions, to his orchestra. How was he to explain this to his orchestra. Explain that they will get paid, I said. But how would they recognize that this was an occasion to which they were to give of their utmost. I would speak to them beforehand, I suggested, to see if they were of a mind to give of their utmost. No, no, there was no need of this. In this sense, an orchestra was a herd of animals who understood only the one vaquero; he would speak to them. Jorge, I said, do we have a deal? And Jorge promised me an orchestra which would give of its utmost in the deepest neglect and tick-filled grass of the Casa Marina. I said, thank you, Jorge; it sounds very much as if we shall have an occasion.

* * *

Around twoish the CBS news team appeared. I took out my teeth and with some forethought conducted myself as a screaming misfit, a little on the laid-back side. I explained that I considered that I represented not so much the middle of the republic that produced mass murderers but the part of the mass murderer who explained that he didn’t mean anything, that he just wanted to get out of town. I pointed out that poison dripping from a fang reflected the world around it as well as a virgin’s tear. It was basically a walk-through. The commentator said he thought that I was “sick” and that my “corruption” was surpassed only by the “corruption” which had produced me. At this point, I fell completely silent, which is hell on commentators. I got a bit of goading and then boy did he have to talk fast.

* * *

Catherine turned up with her bathing suit, a towel, a lunch pail, and Pale Horse, Pale Rider.

“Could I sunbathe here? The Pier House is full of kids pissing in the pool. — Here.”

She handed me a document in the Spanish language.

“What’s this?”

“A marriage certificate. It’s Panamanian.”

“I don’t get it.”

“You asked me to check if we had gotten married.”

“This is ours?”

“Yes.”

“Panama?”

“I don’t remember either.” She walked into the water leaving her belongings behind, pulling her elbows into her sides at the chill. “I’m going to swim out,” she said. “There’s a sergeant-major fish always at the bottom of the piling. Saw you on TV this morning, champ. You were cuter than a speckled pup.”

I walked inside to call Roxy. I was a married man. I walked back out and called to Catherine. “What year is that?” She couldn’t hear me; so I looked myself: 1970. I had been married for years but I couldn’t for the life of me remember Panama, though I knew it to be very warm and green, with a certain number of coconuts and a sleepy way of life. Panama. Many hats have been manufactured there. And there’s that canal!

I walked in once again to call Roxy and got her. She sounded like a bad day at Black Rock, gargling into the phone incomprehensibly. The housekeeper took the phone from her.

“What’s the matter with Roxy?” I asked.

“Her medication isn’t suitin her so good.”

“Is she okay?”

“Mister Peavey say he keep an eye on things.”

“Where’s Mister Peavey?”

“He livin in the front room by the radio. His secretary livin in the Flawda room.”

“There’s no bed in there, Mary.”

“She say she plenty comftable on the terrazzo. And thass the room we can’t get rid them palmetto bugs. Mister Peavey had his own phones installed and got a heap biness frins be’s here all hour the night. So Roxy not up to scratch way she do most the time.”

I hung up and turned around to Catherine dripping across the patio. “Flirt,” she said. “Who’re you flirting with?”

“Person named Mary.”

“Spread it thin, do you.”

“Spread it however I can.”

“Do you.”

“Yes.”

“Got anything to read around here?”

“Not much.”

“You flirting asshole.”

“Oh, stop this.”

“What’s to read? Anything on Jenny Churchill?”

“Science.”

“What?”

“Got some science books. Quasars, mound culture, stress in plastics, black holes in space.”

“Have you got anything human around here, flirt face?”

“Dog books close enough?”

“I’m going to hit you in the mouth, you fucking flirt pervert.”

“Oh come on, Catherine. Rinse your hair. It looks like linguini.”

“I’m sick and broke.”

“No more tears, we’re off that now, off tears, so stop. What do you mean, you’re sick?”

“I don’t know, everything, gee, I—”

“Oh come on sweetie my God what is this?”

“I told that marine biologist I wouldn’t see him any more. He was in Coconut Grove on sopers and not acting right. He said you have to. I said no. He said yes. Then he began to destroy a chair over the phone to prove he was serious. I said no dice and he started smashing and a piece of chair went through his eye. The one he looks into the microscope with. Is it my fault?”

“Absolutely.”

“What?”

“You produce these demonstrations as testimonials. It’s a mainline cunt caper.”