Michael who was a traveling salesman, a sad sack with an ugly brown valise, one of those lacquered boxes that seemed welded to his hand. His was regarded as the fate of a misfit. Now it's a badge of status to be away from home four nights a week. But on God's green planet is there anything more depressing than an empty hotel room at ten at night and the thought that work, privilege, economic need not only claim the daylight hours but have, however briefly, entitled you to these awesome lonesome instants in which you're remote from the people and the things, tiny, loved, and familiar, that sustain a life?
Listen to me. What was I missing but my easy chair and the TV set and bloviating moments interacting with Lyle? And I'd have Lena's youthful company. My briefcase and travel bag were between my knees. I'd packed light — underwear, a suit to do business, swimming trunks, and a few items I'd need: my passport, my Dictaphone, some TransNational Air stationery from the office, an old letter signed by Jake Eiger, and three copies of TN's annual report. Plus the memo I'd found in Martin's drawer, which was never going to leave my sight. Like Kam, I'd also taken a $2500 cash advance on my new golden credit card, which had been messengered to the office on Friday. I had been up most of the night scheming and I shut my eyes, imagining the wind on Pico, fragrant with sea salt and tanning oil as it rattled the palms.
'Yoo-hoo.' The voice was sweetly familiar, but I still jumped a little when I opened my eyes. 'Brushy Bruccia, as I live and die.' 'So,' she said, seeming perky and young. She looked happy and pleased with herself. Her bag was slung over her shoulder and she carried her coat. She wore jeans.
'Where you going?' I asked.
'With you.'
'Really and truly? What happened to Lena?' 'Emergency assignment. She'll be in the library all night.'
I got it then. I told Brushy I didn't need to ask from who.
'That girl has a lean and hungry look.'
'She's got a look,' I said, 'I'll give you that.'
Brushy punched me solidly in the arm, but I was too embarrassed to carry on in front of all these men. We walked over to the leather chairs. Neither of us said anything.
'You're supposed to be pleased,' she told me eventually.
'How could I not be?' I was feeling impinged upon. I had my plans for Pico, which depended on a traveling companion who was more credulous than Brushy.
'Let's try this again.'
She walked away and came around a handsome rosewood divider that sported CRTs listing arriving and departing flights.
'Mack! Guess where I'm going.'
'With me, I hope.'
'Now you've got it.'
I told her she was odd.
'By the way,' she said, 'what are we doing down there?'
''By the way' nothing,' I said. 'Forget 'we'. Remember our deal? No askee, no tellee. You're not on the team.'
A gal with a radio voice announced our flight, while Brush absorbed my rebuff lightly. She hung her head sideways; she fluttered her eyes.
'Oh dear,' asked she, 'whatever will you do with me?'
B. That Old Dance Step
This, the high season, was not my favorite time in Pico Luan. I had last been here years ago during the summer, when the capital, Ciudad Luan, was almost a ghost town, but in this season the homebound travelers, grownups and kids in their bright clothes, were crowded in the airport like the huddled masses from a steerage vessel. Their tanned faces were as surprising as the sweet breath of heat that greeted us as we descended the TN airliner staircase. Even in the long light, the tropical sun was compelling, so vital that winter at once was only a sad memory.
'God,' said Brushy, shaking her hands free in the mild air.
There was a rental car waiting. TN, as usual, had coughed up great accommodations right on the Regent's Beach, a nine-mile stripe of sand, white and uncluttered, that polishes the toes of the Mayan Mountains. Enormous and green, the foothills loom above the coast. In this season, with all the high-flyers and snowbirds down here, the narrow roads were crowded, and I found a back way out of the airport. Brushy opened the windows and took off her hat and let her short dark hair rise in the breeze. We whizzed along past the little lean-to houses with their metal roofs, the hand-lettered signs of occasional stores and stands offering local foods. Huge plants with leaves the size of elephant's ears grew in clumps at the roadside. The eternal Luanders strolled unmolested in the middle of the narrow roads, yielding for the car and then returning, pacing along down the center stripe, frequently barefoot.
The Luanders are pleasant people. They know they have it made, having mastered the white man through his greed.
They have been bankers since the Barataria Bay pirates began storing their gold in the caves above Ciudad Luan — C. Luan to the locals — and the Luanders today remain as casually indiscriminate about clientele. International narcotics magnates, tax cheats from many lands, and upper-crust bankers mingle congenially in this land of little restraint, sharing the tiny nation with its polyglot people in whose blood is mingled the DNA of Amerindians, African slaves, and a variety of runaway Europeans — Portuguese, English, Dutch, Spanish, and French. Pico has survived despots, Indian conquerors, and two centuries of Spanish rule, which ended in 1821, when Luan chose to become a British protectorate rather than be subsumed by the sovereignty claims of nearby Guatemala. In 1961, when Pico achieved independence, its parliament adopted the strict bank-secrecy laws of Switzerland and some of the BWI islands.
With the acceleration of the offshore economy and the vast riches of today's pirates in neighboring Latin nations, who trade in powder rather than pieces of eight, Pico has gone through startling development in the last three decades. All the dough that's stashed here goes untaxed, and for that reason is not apt to leave. There's a $100 airport tax, a $10 tariff for every wire transfer, and a flat 10 percent VAT on everything that's bought or sold. Burgers for the family in a restaurant in C. Luan can cost one hundred bucks. But the combination of no income tax and financial privacy means there is steady commerce and plenty of jobs. The Luanders remain remote, cordial, even, as British discipline made them, correct, but confident about the native way of wanting less. Fast-paced and ham-fisted, white people are regarded with whatever good nature as freaks.
Our hotel, at the far end of the beach, three or four miles outside C. Luan, was terrific. We had two little thatch-roofed cabanas side by side, self-contained units, each with a kitchen, a bar, and a bedroom that looked out on the water. Brushy had to reach her secretary at home to rearrange tomorrow's appointments, and I stepped outside on the small terrace of my unit as her voice rose in occasional frustration over the difficulty of getting a US connection.
The sun was heading down now, a great rosy ball burning away in the clear sky. We'd been traveling all day most companionably, doing crosswords on the plane, holding hands, gossiping about our partners and items in the Sunday
'All done.' Brush was off the phone. She'd put on a kind of sundress and we walked up to the hotel and had dinner on the veranda, watching the pink fingers take hold of the sky, the water licking down on the beach. With my blessing she had a couple of drinks while I knocked down iced teas. She was looking happy and loose. Halfway through dinner a native band started playing a few rooms away in the bar inside, and the music and laughter came
