Thomas McGuane - Panama

The instant coffee dropped in veils through a fathom of hot water and then a cockroach fell off a framed recipe into it and drowned. I flipped him out with a butter knife and bethought myself of change and a new life.

O Catherine, don’t leave your dead meteor! I’ll be better for you and the weeping will end. I’ll be better for you and the weeping will end.

* * *

Yet when I awakened, something still hung over me. I went over to Francis Street for bollos and coffee and was taken aside, right on the sidewalk, by a man who wanted to know if I had any angles on local attics. He was a collector of everything but especially of barbed wire and Orange Crush bottles. He had the world’s largest collection of early New Mexico burglar alarms and that wasn’t even an area of specialization for him. “No attics,” I said simply.

He said, “Take it easy, pal. I’m not gonna bite you.”

I ate the bollos and drank the coffee. Back out on the street, I noticed something: my shadow was pointing in the wrong direction. I was walking toward the sun and my shadow was straight out in front of me.

Then the police pulled the big cruiser up alongside of me and kept it at walking speed until I nipped up Lopez Lane and bought an aloe plant for a dime.

When I got to Roxy’s, all was not well with her. She was now engaged to marry Peavey and she was rolling around the floor, fully dressed, crushing a fine old straw hat with each revolution. I ordered her to her feet. She got into a kind of crouch and ran across the room into an armoire. That was the end of the hat. Then the phone book walked to the sofa like an octopus before it sloughed to a stop.

“What’s the matter with you?” I asked. She got up and began to march. Her diphthongs seemed to last forever.

“I’m never going to enjoy life,” she said. “I hate everything.”

I got out of there.

* * *

They are raising the contents of a wrecked galleon below Key West, Nuestra Señora de Atocha. There is distress; for, in addition to the numerous pieces of eight, they are finding coke spoons. There has been an attempt to describe these as spoons for ear wax. They won’t go in an ear. The divers knew what they were. They find jeweled rosaries and crosses; they find swords. The divers pay off bar tabs with pieces of eight. Where did all that coke go? And how much did this New World brain-raker have to do with the Golden Age of Spain?

They hauled two cannons up on the beach at the foot of Greene Street. Catherine and I went to look at them. The bronze was sea green and cast dolphins curved at the trunnions. The tops of the cannons were beveled flat and polished by sea turtles.

Catherine said, “Will they still shoot?”

“Where’d you come from?”

“I saw you standing here. I said to myself, ‘What’s he doing with those cannons.’ And I’d been thinking about you.”

“Let’s go someplace and get drunk.”

“It’s nine o’clock in the morning.”

“There’s more than one way to skin a cat,” I said. I wanted minestrone and Frankie Laine records, something other than this heat, the steady clangor from Mike Brito’s shipyard, and the thought of Roxy marrying Peavey. I had no sudden ideas for making Catherine fall in love with me again; on the other hand, she wasn’t leaving the key; and, given that she was out of work, I gathered I might, I said might, be part, I said part, of the reason she was staying.

I wandered into the street a little and Catherine motioned me to the curb. I suggested going to the bank and making a cash withdrawal and investing it in party drugs. She was very much opposed to this idea in all respects and, in fact, challenged the notion that I had any bank account at all. I thought to nip this one in the bud. She suggested that my short-term memory loss was getting to be a problem to me more than anyone else.

We went into my bank, a mozarabique mockery at the foot of Duval Street. Most of the staff was drinking coffee and arguing. One teller’s window was open and a line of more than twenty people wound around the inside of the bank to this teller. Catherine and I got in line and were there for a very long time. A Cuban immigrant, a woman in her fifties, carrying a plastic mesh bag with a can of Bustelo coffee in it, arrived at the window and said something to the teller in a soft voice. He looked out into the indeterminate space beyond her shoulder and said, “I can’t understand you.” He was resting the point of his pencil on the counter. He turned it carefully and rested the eraser while she repeated herself.

“I don’t speak Spyanish,” he said. She said in broken English that it was English. He said, “I don’t speak your English.” The coffee drinkers glanced over. “I can’t understand that, ” he said to them. Then he called down the line, “Any motel owners?” Two signaled. They came forward and he collected the take.

A heavy man in a plumber’s shirt said, “What’s going on?”

The teller said, “Banking.”

A short while later, I was at the cage.

“You don’t have an account,” he said. “We’ve been through this before.”

Catherine said, “We’re together. I’d like a current balance on my checking account.”

The teller said, “Well, which one of you is it?”

“You’ve just explained that he has no account,” said Catherine. “You answered that question. Here is my number. Get the account balance now and don’t be a tired old bag for another minute.”

“Oh, Miss California, are we?”

“No, you are.”

“How would you like this in your face?” He picked up a calculator tentatively and Catherine started screaming that she was being attacked. The manager came to the door of his office and curtly summoned the teller.

Catherine checked her account with the next teller and withdrew some money. We went back out in the street. She was already thinking of other things. “I’d like you to meet your birthday present,” she said and led me back to the La Concha Hotel. We went to the fifth floor and knocked on an unnumbered door.

“Come in.”

“We can’t.”

“Why?”

“It’s locked.”

“That’s why you can’t come in!”

“Where are these people coming from?” I asked.

The door opened and a young man in a kind of shiny suit you scarcely see any more stood there and said, “Oh.” And then said, “Come in.” He reached out, his arm angled up and his hand angled down, and said, “How do you do. Don Hathaway.” I shook hands. I would describe the contents of Don’s room but none of it’s of any interest. I know many people who would describe it anyway.

Don said, “I’ve been following your career for years and now I’m following you.”

“What’s this mean, Catherine.”

“Don is a private detective,” said Catherine. “I’ve hired him to follow you.”

“To what end?”

“He is going to report to you every day everything you did the day before. As time goes by, he will report every two days and so on until you can remember on your own. Happy birthday.”

“Your birthday was on Wednesday,” said Don.

“How old am I?”

“I don’t know…”

“Well, find out.”

* * *

Because I hadn’t spoken to the interviewer, they wild-tracked a lot of stuff from my old performances and played it over my frozen countenance, all with a mind to making me seem in bigger trouble than I really am. This had the effect of bringing idlers to the front of my house in hopes of seeing what was being peddled as the most sleazed-out man in America.

There was a kind of concrete fountain in front of the place with an iron egret rusting on a length of welding rod. I hung a sign on it that said: