Her eyelids lowered, and she seemed to grow vacant, as if listening to an inner voice. ‘Well, a minute, maybe.’ She set her hymnal on the sand beside Mingolla and perched on it, careful not to soil her dress. She snatched a peek at him, then looked away, gone stiff, her breath quickening. ‘Tully,’ she said, ‘he tell me you be leavin’ soon.’
‘Did you ask him ’bout me?’
‘Oh, no… well, I did. But dat was for Nancy. She took wit’ you.’
‘Uh-huh.’ Mingolla tracked the purple riding lights of a shrimper inching across the horizon. ‘Yeah, I’m leaving.’
‘Dat’s too bad… you miss de carnival at French Harbor.’
He looked at Elizabeth’s beautiful face, her broad symmetrical nose and haughty mouth and sculpted cheekbones, a face that—if he were to draw it—would come off as registering an adult sensuality, but now seemed entirely youthful, eager yet under restraint; and he realized that he didn’t want her, that he wanted to mark her, and by so doing to mark Tully. He wasn’t sure why he wanted this. Despite their months together, Tully was an unknown quantity, hidden behind a front of braggadocio and crudity… though Mingolla suspected that the front was designed to disguise a simple and ingenuous self that Tully had long since rejected. And perhaps, Mingolla thought, what he really wanted was to establish his superiority by dismantling that front, revealing the fact that Tully cared about more than he would like to admit. It didn’t matter. His wanting was reason enough.
‘Elizabeth,’ he said, shifting, half-turning, resting a hand on her belly. She tensed, but didn’t pull away, and as his hand moved to her breast, slipped up to finger loose a button, then two, she held her breath and arched against his palm. But when he began to slip the dress from her shoulders, she clutched at the material, holding the halves together. I don’t know ’bout dis,’ she said. I don’t know.’ He whispered her name, making it a charm, urging desire upon her, and grazed her neck, her cheek, with his lips. She threw back her head, released her hold on the dress, let his mouth find the upper slopes of her breasts.
‘Ah, dat such a sweet feelin’, Davy.’
He lifted one breast free of the lace, its heft like a full wineskin, and admired its blackness agleam with sweat and starlight, tasted blackness on the nipple.
‘Davy, oh Davy.’
He was growing distant from her, distant even from his own desire. The stars, the mash of waves, this nubile island sophomore, it all smacked of some mixture of movie romance and high school follies, and he was beginning to get bored. More than bored. His very conception of evil mischief was at risk.
‘Oh, God… Davy! You do dat so nice…’
‘Davy!’ She tried to draw him back, but he eluded her, gliding farther away, until she was invisible against the dark wall of the reef.
‘I don’t know ’bout this,’ he said. ‘I don’t know.’
‘Davy!’ Panic in her shout.
He dived and stroked hard away, surfaced fifty feet away.
‘Where you at, Davy! Don’t be ’larmed!’
His laughter was drowned out by the surf, by a phosphorescent spray of water rising up like the teeth of a gigantic comb. He let the current carry him to the base of the reef and hid in a volute of rock, gripping a barnacled projection.
‘Davy!’ She was moving toward him. ‘You don’t gotta be ’fraid, Davy! I love you!’
She passed within a few feet, calling, searching, and with the stealth of a shark, he ducked beneath the surface and swam underwater toward the shore. He could still hear her calling out to him as he dressed. Before long, fearing that he’d been swept out through the channel, she’d chance searching beyond the reef. ‘Davy, Davy!’ she’d cry, bobbing off to Africa, her dark head sliding down the troughs between the waves, buoyed by love. Passing ships would toss life preservers, but she’d ask, ‘You seen my Davy?’ and when they said no, she’d tell them to sail on, she wasn’t going to stop until she found her man. He saw her washed up on Arab shores, wandering the deep forests, haunted, driven, ravished by terrorists, worshipped by multinational executives and sheikhs. ‘Who,’ they’d ask her, ‘is this Davy?’ And she would sigh, she would weep, stare listlessly toward the Angel of the West, and the sheikhs would fume, knowing they could never really possess her, that this mysterious Davy had ruined her for all men, that one perfect moment had been marbled and set pedestal-high in memory, overshadowing all others, and that true love would never die.
CHAPTER EIGHT
The Avenida de la Republica in La Ceiba was a night street, wide and potholed, divided by a railroad spur belonging to the United Fruit Company. It ran along the waterfront between rows of stucco bars and rundown hotels, most of the latter painted a dark green, as if during some long-ago season of painting that color had been on special. The hotels had peaked roofs and rickety side stairs and interior courtyards where fat concierges held court at Formica tables, drinking Salvavida beer, joking with their friends, and bawling insults at the prostitutes who slept away the afternoons in the stuffy rooms. By day, the street was a scene of unparalleled torpor. Bits of cellophane and paper trash blew in the gutters, and there was little traffic apart from dogs, the occasional beggar searching for a doorway in which to sleep, and black-clad widows with corroded-looking skin, who would perch on the curbs, holding trays of cigarettes on their laps. From the docks beyond the seaward row of hotels came the constant grinding screech of metal under stress, and the heat was oppressive, every breath of wind filled with grit, rasping the skin like an animal’s tongue: Mingolla noted with amusement that the prices in the hotels were five lempira for a room without extras, ten for a room with a woman, and twenty-five for one with an air-conditioner, thus firmly establishing the value placed upon coolness by the citizenry.
He chose an inexpensive third-floor room and spent the afternoon going over the layout of the Barrio, which was situated several miles to the north, itself the size of a town, rumored to contain more than forty thousand souls, and studying photographs of Alvina Guzman and his target, Opolonio de Zedegui. The Nicaraguan was a thin fit-looking man of middle years, with black hair, a high forehead, and skin the color of sandalwood. His sensitive features made it difficult for Mingolla to think of him as a formidable adversary, but then he doubted that his own photograph would strike fear into anyone, and he cautioned himself against overconfidence. At dark, he stowed these materials in a drawer and sat by the window, watching the street come to life. Prostitutes swarmed into the bars, packs of merchant seamen and dockworkers hard on their heels. Pushcart vendors sold ices and roasted shishkebobs of meat and onions on portable grills; children hawked candy and windup toys and necklaces of black coral. The pockets of the pool tables in the bars were blocked off and their felt surfaces used for dice games; the jukebox music seemed to be bearing up the shouts of winners on rich clouds of melody and rhythm. The entrances
