T. Boyle - T. C. Boyle Stories

The first time Lester had read it, he thought it was kind of funny, in a grim sort of way. But now he wasn’t so sure.

Gina was waiting for him at the bar when he came down at quarter to nine. The place was lit with paper lanterns strung from the thatched ceiling, there was the hint of a breeze off the ocean, the sound of the surf, a smell of citrus and jasmine. All the tables were full, people leaning into the candlelight over their fish and margaritas and murmuring to each other in Spanish, French, German. It was good. It was perfect. But as Lester ascended the ten steps from the patio and crossed the room to the bar, his legs felt dead, as if they’d been shot out from under him and then magically reattached, all in the space of an instant. Food. He needed food. Just a bite, that was all. For equilibrium.

“Hey,” he said, nudging Gina with his shoulder.

“Hey,” she said, flashing a smile. She was wearing shorts and heels and a blue halter top glistening with tiny blue beads. He was amazed at how small she was — she couldn’t have weighed more than a hundred pounds. April’s size. April’s size exactly.

He ordered an Herradura and tonic, his forearms laid out like bricks on the bar. “You weren’t kidding before,” he said, turning to her, “—about boxing, I mean? Don’t take offense, but you’re so — well, small. I was just wondering, you know—?”

She looked at him a long moment, as if debating with herself. “I’m a flyweight, Les,” she said finally. “I fight other flyweights, just like in the men’s division, you know? This is how big God made me, but you come watch me some night and you’ll see it’s plenty big enough.”

She wasn’t smiling, and somewhere on the free-floating periphery of his mind he realized he’d made a blunder. “Yeah,” he said, “of course. Of course you are. Listen, I didn’t mean to — but why boxing? Of all the things a woman could do …”

“What? You think men have a patent on aggression? Or excellence?” She let her eyes sail out over the room, hard eyes, angry eyes, and then she came back to him. “Look, you hungry or what?”

Lester swirled the ice in his drink. It was time to defuse the situation, but quick. “Hey,” he said, smiling for all he was worth, “I’d like to tell you I’m on a diet, but I like eating too much for that — and plus, I haven’t had a thing since that crap they gave us on the plane, dehydrated chicken and rice that tasted like some sort of by-product of the vulcanizing process. So yeah, let’s go for it.”

“There’s a place up the beach,” she said, “in town. I hear it’s pretty good — Los Crotos? Want to try it?”

“Sure,” he said, but the deadness crept back into his legs. Up the beach? In town? It was dark out there and he didn’t speak the language.

She was watching him. “If you don’t want to, it’s no big deal,” she said, finishing off her drink and setting the glass down with a rattle of ice that sounded like nothing so much as loose teeth spat into a cup. “We can just eat here. The thing is, I’ve been here two days now and I’m a little bored with the menu — you know, fish, fish, and more fish. I was thinking maybe a steak would sound nice.” “Sure,” he said. “Sure, no problem.”

And then they were out on the beach, Gina barefoot at his side, her heels swinging from one hand, purse from the other. The night was dense and sustaining, the lights muted, palms working slowly in the breeze, empty palapas lined up along the high-water mark like the abandoned cities of a forgotten race. Lester shuffled through the deep sand, his outsized feet as awkward as snow-shoes, while children and dogs chased each other up and down the beach in a blur of shadow against the white frill of the surf and knots of people stood in the deeper shadows of the palms, laughing and talking till the murmur of conversation was lost in the next sequence of breakers pounding the shore. He wanted to say something, anything, but his brain was impacted and he couldn’t seem to think, so they walked in silence, taking it all in.

When they got to the restaurant — an open-air place set just off a shallow lagoon that smelled powerfully of seawrack and decay — he began to loosen up. There were tables draped in white cloth, the waiter was solicitous and grave and he accepted Lester’s mangled Spanish with equanimity. Drinks appeared. Lester was in his element again. “So,” he said, leaning into the table and trying to sound as casual as he could while Gina squeezed a wedge of lime into her drink and let her shoe dangle from one smooth slim foot, “you’re not married, are you? I mean, I don’t see a ring or anything—”

Gina hunched her shoulders, took a sip of her drink — they were both having top-shelf margaritas, blended — and gazed out on the dark beach. “I used to be married to a total idiot,” she said, “but that was a long time ago. My manager, Jerry O’Connell — he’s Irish, you know? From Cork City? In Ireland? — him and me had a thing for a while, but I don’t know anymore. I really don’t.” She focused on him. “What about you?”

He told her he was a widower and watched her eyes snap to attention. Women loved to hear that — it got all their little wheels and ratchets turning — because it meant he wasn’t damaged goods like all the other hairy-chested cretins out there, but tragic, just tragic. And needy. She asked how it had happened, a sink of sympathy and morbid female curiosity, and he told her the story of the kid in the Suburban and the wet pavement and how the student volunteers were supposed to have a monitor with them at all times, but not April, because she just shrugged it off — she wanted an authentic experience, and that was what she got all right. His throat seemed to thicken when he got to that part, the irony of it, and what with the cumulative weight of the cocktails, the reek of the lagoon, and the strangeness of the place — Mexico, his first day in Mexico — he nearly broke down. “I wasn’t there for her,” he said. “That’s the bottom line — I wasn’t there.”

Gina was squeezing his hand. “You must have really loved her.”

“Yeah,” he said, “I did.” And he had loved her, he was sure of it, though he had trouble picturing her anymore, her image drifting through his consciousness like something blown by a steady wind.

Another drink came. They ordered dinner, a respite from the intensity of what he was trying to convey, and then Gina told him her own tale of woe, the alcoholic mother, the brother shot in the face when he was mistaken for a gang member, the way she’d excelled in high school sports and nowhere to go with it, two years at the community college and a succession of mind-numbing jobs till Jerry O’Connell plucked her from anonymity and made her into a fighter. “I want to be the best,” she said, “number one — and I won’t settle for anything less.”

“You’re beautiful,” he said.

She looked at him. Her drink was half gone. “I know,” she said.

By the time they were finished with dinner and they’d had a couple of after-dinner drinks, he was feeling unbeatable again. It was quarter past eleven and the solicitous waiter wanted to go home. Lester wanted to go home too — he wanted to take Gina up to his room and discover everything there was to know about her. He lurched suddenly to his feet and threw a fistful of money at the table. “Want to go?” he said, the words sticking to the roof of his mouth.

She rose unsteadily from her seat and leaned into him while she adjusted the strap of her right heel. “Think we should take a cab?” she said.

“A cab? We’re just up the other end of the beach—”