Under the Skin

head and shrugged and the expressions on their faces made me and Rocha laugh even harder.

Mrs. Avila’s aspect became a little anxious. “Ya, locos!” she said.

Daniela’s eyes on me were large. I waved a hand at her like it was nothing to be concerned about, and I worked to get myself under control. Rocha wiped at his eyes with a dirty bandanna and straightened up. And then we looked at each other and broke up again.

It took another half-minute but we finally got a grip on ourselves. Rocha had to dry his eyes again and he blew his nose and tucked away the bandanna. He looked at me and we grinned but didn’t go into another laughing fit. He cleared his throat and asked if I’d like a bottle of beer.

I thanked him but said maybe later. He nodded and raised a hand at me and went off to the kitchen, chuckling low.

Mrs. Avila said we were both crazy as goats and then kissed Daniela on the cheek and said she should have a good time but to be home by ten o’clock. She gave me a tight look of maternal warning and I nodded, which I thought was vague enough to keep from being an outright promise. The senora stood in the doorway and watched us go out to the Terraplane convertible I’d borrowed from the Club. It was a warm night and I’d already put the top down.

The road from Brownsville to Kingsville runs straight north and the sparse traffic moves fast.

They make good time to Corpus Christi before being slowed by one stoplight after another. The coastal lowland is a patchwork terrain of swamp and scrubland and grazing pasture, and Gustavo remarks that it looks the same as the gulf country in Mexico. Angel tells him this region was part of Mexico at one time, before the gringos stole it for themselves about ninety years ago. The information comes as outrageous news to Gustavo and he falls to a fit of low cursing of every gringo ever born, be he dead or alive.

They take turns trying to nap in the backseat of the car while the other drives but their sleep is fitful at best and both of them are left unrested and irritated.

At sundown the sky is the color of raw beef. They stop at a roadside cafe called La Mexicana to have an early supper. Angel orders pork tacos and Gustavo goes for the chicken enchiladas and both of them are greatly disappointed with the food. When they go to pay at the register, Gustavo tells the cashier that the food isn’t fit for pigs, but she is an Anglo woman who speaks no Spanish and only stares apprehensively at their hard brown faces.

Then they are on the road again, bearing into the darkness of the newrisen night.

I turned west at the seawall, away from the bright lights of the boulevard’s good-time joints. The sky was clear, the stars thick and blazing in the east, dimmer in the west, where the moon was gleaming like a silver egg high above the gulf. She laughed at the pleasure of her hair whipping in the wind and had to keep brushing it from her eyes. The radio was tuned to a big-band station and she swayed to the rhythms of “I Get a Kick Out of You.” The Hollywood Dinner Club’s big spotlight beam was revolving in the sky ahead of us and off to our right. She said the Avilas had told her all about the Hollywood, even though they themselves had never set foot inside. They had told her it was as luxurious as a palace, that it belonged to the man I worked for.

“Him and his brother,” I said. “Would you like to go dancing there sometime? They have swell dance bands.”

“Swell?”

“Very good. Excellent.”

She slid closer to me on the seat and hooked her arm around my elbow. I felt the light press of her breast against my arm, the touch of her thigh against my leg. “I think that is a swell idea,” she said.

I drove almost all the way out to the west end of the island before turning off onto a narrow hardpacked access road that connected to a stretch of beach hardly anyone ever used except for a few daytime fishermen. The Hollywood spotlight was far behind us now and we could no longer see the glow of the city lights. I parked alongside a row of dunes and cut the lights and motor. The tide was in, and we sat in the car, listening to a mild surf lapping along the beach. The gulf was almost placid, its waves low and gentle and gleaming bright under the moon.

“It’s beautiful,” she said.

“It’s the same water you swam in at Veracruz. But like I warned you, girl—it’s probably colder right now than what you’re used to.”

She slapped my shoulder playfully and said, “I am not so afraid of cold water as someone I know.” Then slid across the seat and got out of the car.

I stepped out and stripped down to my bathing trunks and tossed my clothes on the car roof. The Mexican Colt was under the driver’s seat. When she came around the car she had her dress in one hand and her bag in the other and she placed them both on the hood of the Terraplane.

The bathing suit she wore was a stunner—a black sleek thing that clung to her like a second skin. It rode high on her legs and was held up by a pair of thin straps and was cut so low in the front it exposed the tops of her breasts. She held out her arms and did a model’s pirouette and I saw that the suit was backless almost to her waist. If she’d worn that thing on a public beach she would’ve been arrested for indecent exposure. My dick swelled in my swimsuit.

“It was made in France. I bought it from a catalog but I have not worn it until now. If it shocks you I can put my dress on and swim in that.” She could probably read my face in the moonlight. Her voice was full of fun.

“No. It’s fine. It’s…I like it.”

She laughed. “I thought perhaps you would.”

She reached in the bag and took out a folded cotton bedsheet and handed it to me. “So we don’t have to sit on the sand,” she said.

As I spread the sheet out on the sand, she ran into the water, her legs flashing, her hair flying. She took long splashing strides until the water was to her thighs and then dove into a swell. She came up about ten yards beyond where she’d gone under, then stood in water as deep as her breasts, her hair plastered to her head and shoulders. She waved to me and yelled, “Come on, pollito—it’s not so cold! Don’t be afraid to get your feathers wet!”

I ran in. It wasn’t as cold as it could’ve been but was cold enough. I whooped and dove and came up sputtering. I trudged toward her through the waist-deep water and she laughed and began backstroking away.

I dove again and started swimming hard, but every time I paused to look ahead of me I saw that she had put even more distance between us, backstroking smoothly, moving through the water as lightly as a canoe.

I swam on in my clumsy fashion, forcing myself to breathe in rhythm with my strokes. The next time I looked in front of me she was treading water twenty feet away, watching me. I stroked on, then stopped and looked again and couldn’t see her. Then heard her laughter and saw that she had moved off to my left.

“What’s the matter, Mr. Youngblood? Are you lost?” I could see the whiteness of her teeth. She went into a smooth crawl, heading for open water. I swam after her.

She went out a long way before she finally stopped and turned around to watch me plodding toward her. When I got to within a few feet of her I stopped stroking. We were out farther than I’d ever been before. From way out here the beach was a thin pale strip in front of a vague dark line of dunes.

We treaded water, rising and falling on the mild swells. The moon was slightly behind me, its light on her face, her smile. I slowly sidestroked closer to her until we were within arm’s length of each other. Her foot lightly brushed my leg. She reached out and touched my face.

Then her eyes shifted past me and went wide and she said in a whisper, “Ay, dios…”

I turned to look—and saw a black fin standing high against the light of the moon and cutting toward us like an enormous cleaver.

Twenty yards away…fifteen…