Robert Butler - A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain - Stories

“Mismaloya Beach?” the driver said, turning his head alarmingly far around, a hundred degrees or more. He looked at Eileen, who I suppose had just told him where we were going. Then he looked at me and I was afraid he would force his head still further, a hundred and forty, a hundred and fifty, until he could see Vinh sitting to my left. But I guess I should have been more worried about the car than about the man’s neck snapping. He was rolling down the long drive from the hotel and not watching at all. He said, “You know that you are going to a very special place?”

“We know,” Vinh said firmly.

“You know about Liz and Dick?” the cabbie said.

“ We know, ” Vinh said, and I could hear in his voice how little my husband wanted to sit through this story again.

“It all put this town on the map, you know. I was just a teenage delinquent hanging around the beaches all day and trying not to work hard like I do now. We loved it when all the world started looking at our Vallarta.” By now, the man’s eyes were back on his driving and he turned onto the main road we’d taken in from the airport.

In making the turn, he stopped speaking for a moment and Frank said, “Hell, it must have been nice to be a teenager just goofing around the beaches. Living in a place like this. When I was a teenager all I cared about was turning myself into a goddamn soldier some day. That’s another kind of teenage dumb.”

I was a little startled at how far Frank had to reach to pull the conversation around to his military experience. I wondered if he was doing this for Vinh’s benefit, having picked up, too, on how my husband hated all the talk about Burton and Taylor. Vinh said, “When I was a teenager the beaches and the war were all in the same picture.”

He said this like he’d topped Frank. He could get wound up about the war, I knew. I’d heard him with our Vietnamese friends. But was this the kind of thing he and Frank had been doing together? Is this what I’d missed? Just the two of them jerking the conversation around to top each other? Or was this a little instinctive game that would keep our cab driver quiet and us two women out of the conversation?

I didn’t know. But our driver wasn’t picking up on any hints. “The airline, they tried to start it. This was some sleepy godforsaken place when I was a little guy, you know. Then Mexicana Airlines started landing a DC-3 on a dirt strip where the center of town is today.”

Frank turned himself half around in his seat. “You ever fly in a DC-3, Vinh?”

“Sure. They were using some DC-3’S as troop transports when I was a recruit.”

There was only the slightest of pauses after this, like Frank was just taking a little breath before he spoke an answer, but Eileen had wonderful reflexes — probably the key to her success on the buzzer of her game show — and before Frank could open his mouth, she said to the driver, “We know the basic Burton and Taylor story, but tell us something about it we might not know.”

Frank rolled his shoulders and turned to the front and I felt Vinh shift a little bit away from me, and the driver said, “Have you seen the house they stayed in?”

“No,” Eileen said. “Can we?”

“Sure,” the driver said, and to their credit, the men did not protest. “It’s in Gringo Gulch. That’s where all the rich people came when they found out about us. Leonard Bernstein, you know that man with the orchestra?”

“Yes,” Eileen said. “You know about him?”

“Sí, señora. I like good music. I lived in your country three years, in Los Angeles. That’s how I speak English like you. I listened to the radio all the time and I liked the good music.” The driver raised his hand like a conductor and sang, “Da da da dum,” the opening to Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, the Daily Double Audio Clue only last week on “Jeopardy.” “But don’t worry,” the driver added quickly. “I’m just a regular Joe. I liked the bad music, too, in Los Angeles.”

“Who else lives in Gringo Gulch?” Eileen asked, afraid, I suspect, that if our driver strayed too far, the men would reclaim the conversation. Not that I would have minded that, really. I wanted to hear them connecting to each other, though it was even very interesting to me just observing this shared silence between them. They were both looking out windows and I’m sure each man was conscious of the other.

The driver said, “There was some lord and lady from England. The Queen even came in her yacht and visited them. And also living in Puerto Vallarta is a very important American I bet you don’t know.” The cabbie paused for a moment, like we were supposed to guess.

“I bet it ain’t Westmoreland,” Frank said.

“Any clue?” Eileen said.

The cabbie made an exaggerated nod. “I will tell you his name and it will still be hard for you. Milton Gunzburg.”

Frank hooted at this. “The famous Milton Gunzburg is living in Puerto Vallarta? Hell, you remember him, don’t you, Vinh? He’s the guy who landed his chopper in the middle of Tu Do Street, got him about four bargirls, and took off again for Vung Tau and some Air Cav Rand R.”

Vinh grunted, Frank laughed, and the driver said, “That must be another Milton Gunzburg.”

Eileen leaned forward. “Don’t you pay any attention to him, señor,” and she dug her knuckle into Frank’s shoulder. He flicked at her hand but without any anger, just a casual little flick like a mosquito had buzzed him.

I started feeling disloyal to Eileen. I’d been happy just to sit back and watch all this, but she needed some help. So I asked the driver, “Who is this Milton Gunzburg of Puerto Vallarta?”

The driver turned his face way around to look at Eileen and me. “The inventor of 3-D movies.”

I pointed to the street in front of the driver, just to remind him that this was all in 3-D, too. He took my hint and looked to the front just in time to curve around a slow-moving pickup truck full of collapsed and bundled cardboard boxes. He didn’t even flinch.

“This was a very important invention,” he said. “My favorite movie is ‘The House of Wax.’ You know the movie?”

“Yes,” I said, “but I’ve never seen it in 3-D.”

“When I lived in L.A. I saw it there in a theater. Also ‘Spacehunter: Adventures in the Forbidden Zone.’ These are my favorites in 3-D. I hope Peter Strauss someday will move to Puerto Vallarta. He starred in ‘Spacehunter.’ I would like to drive him wherever he wants to go. He is my favorite actor. Did you see him in ‘Rich Man, Poor Man’? It was a wonderful thing from American television. Even without 3-D. But Peter Strauss is even better in 3-D.”

Vinh’s voice was suddenly in my ear, pitched low. “Do we have to go by the house? Isn’t the movie set enough?”

I glanced at him and he was looking at me with his head a little bit dipped, like he had glasses on and was peeking over them. This was the position he assumed when he was asking something that he knew he shouldn’t.

“It’s okay,” Eileen said, putting her hand on my arm. “Let’s skip it.”

I glowered at Vinh and he shrugged. “No, no,” he said. “I’m sorry. It’s just that we should have plenty of sunlight for the trip to the movie set.”

“It’s barely noon,” I said, not letting him wriggle away.

“Noon,” Frank said. “There’s a place to eat at this beach, isn’t there?”

“Good food at the beach,” the driver said. “They sell whole fish roasted on a stick.”

“Oh man,” Frank said, like he’d just heard about a plane crash. Eileen leaned forward and said to the driver, “You can skip the Burton-Taylor house.”

“No, don’t do that, driver,” Vinh said.