never before known such happiness.”
Sally is crying softly. “Pobrecita. Pobrecita,” she says. “If only I could have been able to speak to her. If I had let her know how much I loved her.”
Me…I have no mercy.
Evening in Paradise
Sometimes years later you look back and say that was the beginning of…or we were so happy then…before…after…Or you think I’ll be happy when…once I get…if we…Hernán knew he was happy now. The Oceano hotel was full, his three waiters were working at top speed.
He wasn’t the kind of man who worried about the future or dwelt on the past. He shooed the chicle-selling kids out of his bar with no thought of his own orphaned childhood on the streets. Raking the beach, shining shoes.
When he was twelve they had started construction on the Oceano. Hernán ran errands for the owner. He idolized Señor Morales, who wore a white suit and a panama hat. Jowls that matched the bags under his eyes. After Hernán’s mother died Señor Morales was the only person to call him by his name. Hernán. Not hey kid, ándale hijo, véte callejero. Buenos días, Hernán. As the building progressed Sr. Morales had given him a steady job cleaning up after the workers. When the hotel was finished he hired him to work in the kitchen. A room on the roof to live in.
Other men would have hired experienced employees from other hotels. The chefs and desk clerk at the new Oceano were from Acapulco but all of the other workers were illiterate street urchins like Hernán. They were all proud to have a room, their own real room on the roof. Showers and toilets for the men and women workers. Thirty years later every one of the men still worked at the hotel. The laundresses and maids had all come from mountain towns like Chacala or El Tuito. The women stayed until they married or until they got too homesick. New ones were always fresh young girls from the hills.
Socorro was from Chacala. The first day Hernán had seen her she was standing in her doorway in a white dress, her braids plaited with pink satin ribbon. She hadn’t put down her rope-tied bundle of belongings. She was turning the light on and off. He was amazed by her sweetness. They smiled at each other. They were both fifteen and they both fell in love that very moment.
The next day Sr. Morales saw Hernán watching Socorro in the kitchen.
“She’s a little beauty, no?”
“Yes,” Hernán said. “I’m going to marry her.”
He worked double shifts for two years until they could marry and move into a little house near the hotel. By the time their first daughter Claudia was born he was an apprentice bartender. After Amalia was born he was a regular bartender and Socorro stopped working. Their second daughter, Amalia, was having her quinceañera party in two weeks. Sr. Morales was godfather to both girls and was giving the party in the hotel. A bachelor, he seemed to love Socorro and the girls almost as much as Hernán, never tired of describing them to people.
“They are so fine, so beautiful. Delicate and pure and proud and…”
“Smart, strong, hard-working,” Hernán would add.
“Diós mío…those women have hair…tan, pero tan brilloso.”
John Apple was at the bar as usual, looking out at the malecón above the beach. Trucks and buses rumbled by on the cobblestones outside. John nursed his beer, muttering.
“Smell those nasty fumes? What a racket. It’s all over now, Hernán. No more paradise. The end of our fishy little sleeping village.”
Hernán’s English was very good but he missed things like John’s remark. All he knew was that had been hearing it over and over for years. He ignored the sigh as John pretended again to drain his empty glass. Somebody else could buy him his next drink.
“Not the end,” Hernán said. “A new Puerto Vallarta.”
Dozens of luxury resorts were going up, the new highway was finished, the big airport just opened. Instead of one flight a week there were five or six international flights a day. Hernán had no regrets about how peaceful the town used to be, when this was the only good bar and he was the only one working in it. He liked having so many waiters to help. He was not even tired now when he got home, could have dinner with Socorro, read the paper, talk awhile.
More and more people were coming in. Hernán sent Memo to the kitchen to get bus boys to help out, to bring some extra chairs. Most of the guests at the hotel were reporters or cast and crew of The Night of the Iguana. Most of them were in the bar mingling with the “in” people from town, local Mexicans and Americans. Tourists and honey-mooners looked for Ava and Burton and Liz.
In those days one Mexican movie a week was shown on the plaza. There was no television so the town wasn’t impressed by the cast of The Night of the Iguana. Everybody knew who Elizabeth Taylor was, though. Her husband Richard Burton was in the movie.
Hernán liked them and he liked the director, John Huston. The old man was always respectful to Socorro and to his daughters. He spoke Spanish to them and lifted his hat when he saw them in town. Socorro had her brother bring in raicilla from the mountains near Chacala, moonshine mescal for Sr. Huston. Hernán kept it in a huge mayonnaise jar under the bar, tried to dole it out slowly, and to cut it as often as possible without Sr. Huston noticing.
Mexican lawyers and bankers were trying out their English on the blonde ingénue, Sue Lyons. Ruby and Alma, two American divorcées, were flirting with cameramen. Both women were very wealthy, owned houses on cliffs above the water. They kept on thinking they’d find romance at the Oceano bar. Usually they met married men on fishing trips or, now, newsmen or cameramen. No man that would ever want to stay around.
Alma was sweet and beautiful until late in the evening when her eyes and mouth turned into bruises and her voice became a sob, like she just wished you’d hit her and leave. Ruby was close to fifty, lifted and dyed and patched together. She was funny and fun but after she drank a lot she got mean and then limp and then Hernán had someone take her home. John Apple went over to sit with them. Alma ordered him a double margarita.
Luis and Victor stood at the entrance long enough to be noticed by everyone. They slid into the bar and sat down where they would be visible. Dark and handsome, they both wore tight white pants, open white shirts. Barefoot, with a bright bracelet on one ankle. White smiles, wet black hair. “Ratoncitos tiernos.” Tender little rats whores call the sexy young ones.
Hernán was already working in the Oceano kitchen when he had first known them as children. Begging from tourists, rolling drunks. They had originally come from Culiacán, called each other Compa, for compadre.
For years Luis and Victor had slept under petates in boats at night, hustled all day. Hernán understood them and didn’t judge them, not even for stealing. The way they treated women didn’t shock him. He judged the women though. One day he had seen Victor approach Amalia on the malecón. She was wearing the plaid skirt and white blouse from school, holding her books tightly against her new breasts. Hernán ran out from the bar and raced across the street. “Go home!” he said to Amalia. To Victor he said, “If you speak to either of my daughters again I will kill you.”
Hernán poured martinis into chilled glasses, put them on Memo’s tray. He left the bar and went over to the young men.
“Quibo. Why does it make me so nervous, seeing you two in my bar?”
“Cálmate,
