Robert Jones - Blood Tide

“Why’d you do that?” Culdee had asked after a while.

Dan laughed, briefly and bitterly. “I knew his immoral soul was for sure in hell. I guess I figured the boiler of a sunken battleship was the closest thing to that for the rest of him.”

Sea stories. The old navy had a million of them.

FOURTEEN

Curt tied off the Avon to a cleat at the head of the pier and walked toward the harbormaster’s office. The wind was down and big, blue-black rain clouds were piling over the mountains to the east. He turned and looked out to the Seamark , where she rolled sluggishly at anchor. Will one hook be enough if it comes on to blow? Maybe he should run back out and drop the other anchor. But the holding ground seemed good—thick mud and sand. To hell with it. She looks nice out there in her new blue hull paint and yawl rig. Her new name shone in gold on the transom— Sea Witch . Memories of Miranda.

He could see the dog standing on the wheelhouse. Please release me, let me go. . . . It was the first night in port after the long run up from Palawan. But Curt didn’t trust the harbormaster. He didn’t trust the harbor. He surely didn’t trust the Philippines. The whole place breathed a kind of ball-stomping menace—the heat, the tattered palms, shit and oil on the water, the dead-meat stink of flowers mixed with wood smoke and burning garbage and traffic exhaust. It’s like Colombia all over again, or Panama, or Jamaica. Better to leave Brillo aboard to guard the boat. He might even get a chance to bite someone—his favorite sport.

There was a kid in the harbormaster’s office, lying back in a rickety card chair and scratching his balls through his cutoff Levi’s. He kept on scratching while he stared up blankly at Curt. It was as if Curt had walked into the boy’s bedroom and caught him jacking off. He wasn’t about to be interrupted.

“Can I use the phone?”

“Five peso,” the kid said. He smiled wide. Filipinos smiled a lot.

Curt gave him five pee. He thumbed through the metro Manila phone book on the desk and dialed a number on a wall phone that looked as though it had been used to beat a carabao to death.

“Military Air Transport,” said a chirpy voice that sounded almost American.

“Major Chalmers, please.”

“Who calling Major Chalmer, please?”

“Tell him it’s Mr. Curtis. Jim Curtis from, uh, Phisohex in Barranquilla.”

“You call long distance, please?”

“No, I’m here in Manila, please.”

“Just a moment, please?”

Curt flipped a Filipino Marlboro from the pack in his shirt pocket—awful smokes, they burned as hot and fast as a firecracker fuse. He lighted it with a nicked old Zippo, one of the chrome jobs that clanked when you snapped back the lid. The paint was nearly worn off the etching of a battleship on the lighter’s front: the USS Wisconsin BB-64. It was an old lighter of Miranda’s, or rather her dad’s. Miranda was a good chick. Damn shame to fuck her over that way. Still, chicks are cheap.

“Mr. Curtis? Major Chalmer busy right now, please. He would call you soon. Where is your number?”

“How long will that be?”

“I’m sorry, please, we don’t know already?”

Curt looked across the road. Beyond the whizzing traffic there was a neon sign on a low, tin-roofed stucco building: BE-BOP-A-LULA BAR & GRILL. He looked up the number in the phone book and gave it to the Please voice. He still wasn’t sure whether it was a boy or a girl.

“Where is that, please?”

“Ermita, I think. Near the yacht basin there.”

“Major Chalmer will call you certainly I think, Mr. Curtis, please.”

The kid in the chair was still scratching. By now he’d gotten half a hard-on under the denim, fat as a Polish sausage. How’s it comin’, kid? Mostly by hand.

All the waitresses and most of the hookers in the Be-Bop-a-Lula Bar & Grill were wearing red jeans. Very tight red jeans. It was cool in the bar, dark and funky with the smell of stale beer and tropical dry rot, all blended by the big wood-bladed whap-whap fans on the ceiling. The bar was real wood, too—rich, dark, fine-grained wood with a lot of oil rubbed into it. Philippine mahogany, right? Right. The Filipino bartender had very square shoulders under a faggoty embroidered shirt and scars like thick white worms around his eyes, the kind of scars fighters or kick-boxers get. His grin was about as wide as his shoulders.

“What’ll it be, Joe?”

“I’m new in town. What’s your good beer?”

“San Mig. Made right here in Manila-by-da-Sea. MacArthur’s old brewery, hey? San Miguel. Old Dugout Doug. He mighty rich guy.”

“Gimme a San Mig, then.” Curt looked at the glasses standing upside down on a shelf behind the bar. A cockroach about the size of a Havana cigar was crawling over them. “No glass.”

But it was good beer, all right. Curt nodded his approval to the bartender.

“How’s come all the ladies are wearing red pants?”

“From da song, Joe. You know da song?” He sang it in a wobbly falsetto, grinning. “‘She da gal in da red blue jeans, Be-bop-a-lula she ma queen.’ Someting like dat.”

“Yeah, sure, I can dig it. They work for the bar. But what about the ones in skirts?”

The bartender laughed. “You try one in skirts, Joe, you find out quick enough.”

He spun away like a karateka —pow pow kick pow—and battled his way down the duckboards laughing.

It was a challenge.

Curt sipped his beer and sized up the girls. Cute, the lot of them—some in a darkish, peppery Mexican way, some longer-boned and darker still, with a hint of Africa in their frizzy hair, others delicate, hollow-boned like birds, almost flat-chested but not quite—tiger-eyed Asia in babydoll faces. Buy me one of those, Mommy.

He nodded to one in a slinky black dragon-lady skirt. She smiled, tiger-eyed, sultry, and snaked her way to the barstool with a fanny waggle that was bound to leave her in a wheelchair with lumbar arthritis by the time she reached twenty.

“Hi, Joe,” she said in a throaty voice. Eyes up from under, lashes like spider legs—what you’d find in a load of bananas. “You wanna good time? Buy me a drink.”

“What’s your name?”

“Carlotta, but you can call me Lotta.” She leaned back and licked her lips, slow and juicy, eyes locked with Curt’s. “Lotta Tung . I’m Eurasian girl, you know?”

Curt laughed and bought her a drink—bar Coke and two ice cubes, eighty pee. That was four bucks American, twice as much as the San Mig. Ah, well. He gave her a Marlboro and lighted it with Miranda’s dad’s Zippo. She dragged deep, leaned back again, and started blowing smoke rings—red lips, wet tongue, perfect circles. The famous Tung Sisters. You find them in every bar, all over the world.

“Hey, Joe, you wanna dance? Come on, let’s dance.”

They went over to the jukebox in the far, dark corner. It was an old Wurlitzer, like from the fall of Corregidor, all pulsing pastel lights, throbbing round curves. Curt handed Lotta a fistful of change and leaned over her shoulder while she made her selections. Bent over, she pushed back against him and worked a slow, hot, silky fanny waggle against his crotch. The juke was a time machine—a monument to the fifties—Buddy Holly, Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis, the Platters, Dion and the Belmonts, Ritchie Valens, the Chantels. Lotta picked something slow—Patsy Cline, “I Love You So Much It Hurts Me.” She turned and smiled. “Or, Who Put the Sand in the Vaseline?’” Lotta laughed . . .

They danced in the dark corner, belly to belly. Or rather, Curt’s dick against Lotta’s belly—she was tall for a Filipina, but still pretty short. In the light of the jukebox her lipstick looked almost black. She stared up at him breathing hard, moaning, doing her tongue number. She picked the wrong song, Curt thought. Sheb Wooley’s “Purple People Eater” would have been more like it. It was all so false, it was almost true. He wanted to laugh and get out of there, but his dick’d been at sea too long, it had a mind of its own.