brought him a draft from the bar and the honeymoon geeks gave me the evil eye. I believe they were Pentecostals, not that there’s a thing wrong with them, but they don’t like it when tourists and Mexicans fraternize over mind-altering substances poured from a keg and teeming with deadly parasites. They just wanted to get on their horses and pretend they were in a romance novel, the wind on their faces and in the armholes of their “I Love Cozumel” tees.
I, on the other hand, just wanted to drink a bit and escape my nose-blowing, mucusy husband who was probably sweeping the tile floors or making the beds. This is what he enjoys doing in fine hotels. Cleaning and pretending to be deathly ill from germs circulating on the plane rides. He is convinced airplanes are nothing more than petri dishes with wings.
The Mexican downed his beer in two gulps and led us across a dirt road to a patch of scrubby wilderness. He kept eyeing me because I had no mate, a slight buzz, and a snug swimsuit top paired with shorts. It was one of those padded push-up deals, part of a tankini, nothing slutty about it, but I was looking hot in that top. It might have all been an illusion, but it was working. Took me from a saggy B to a full firm D.
We rounded a corner and there they were, a group of swaybacked horses that looked as if they were ten minutes away from an Elmer’s conversion. The honeymooners got the horses with both eyes and at least three decent legs. The Mexican winked at me and said, “Los caballos son bonitos,” which I later learned meant the horses were pretty. I thought he meant my bonnet-style hat and thus I smiled.
He grabbed a set of tattered reins and handed over a snuffling horse that he called the “La Mula,” and I knew what he meant. It was a damned mule. A mad-ass mule. I threw a leg over its dipping back and the thing snorted and turned its head and tried to bite me, nostrils flaring and shiny. The honeymooners had already taken off through the brambled path strewn with litter and discarded auto parts, while I tried to get my la mula to take one step forward.
The Mexican, who had swilled his one beer much too fast, stared at me with wobbly eyes. He tried his best to speak perfect English and get the words out just right.
“I like a mature woman,” he said, his eyes going up and down my tankini.
Mature woman! What did he mean by mature woman? He must have been fifty himself, old geezer, and calling me a mature woman.
He trotted off with a wink, trying to catch up with the honeymooners, who were halfway down the path, viewing the scenic trash piles. Burning tires and stiff iguanas left the air redolent of reptilian death and toxic fumes.
I was trying to get my la mula to move. When I bit its neck and said, “La Mula is muy malo and I’m going to cook your haunch for dinner,” the blessed animal stumbled like an old woman with two new hip replacements.
After ten minutes of me trying to get my mule to make some progress, the Mexican leader returned, smelling of belches and lust. He rode his horse next to my mule and grinned.
“I like a mature woman,” he said.
“I know. You said that already.”
“You have nice breasts.”
“No, I don’t.”
Move, mula, move. I started to bite its neck again just to escape this man’s conversation and boozy perversions.
“They are beautiful. I like a mature woman’s beautiful breasts. Not like senorita Pamela Anderson’s soccer ball breasts. Muy malo. Comprende?”
“You wouldn’t like these,” I said and my mule took off running on its three good legs because I had removed an earring and jabbed the post in its hide. I would apologize later with a nice green apple, but for now, I needed to beat it.
The mule would start and stop, pausing over something nasty and decomposing in its path. I could hear the hoof steps of the Mexican catching up to us. Where were those pale-assed honeymooners? Gosh, this was the ugliest countryside I’d ever seen. I thought when I signed up for this all-inclusive we’d get to ride horses on the beach like in the movies. This was the equivalent of riding through a trail of Dumpsters.
The mule wouldn’t budge and I didn’t feel right biting or poking it again. The Mexican was on my tail and sighed so heavily I could smell his sated, fetid breath.
“I just want to see one,” he said.
I turned toward him. “One what?”
“I like a mature woman. One breast of a mature woman.”
“Well, trot on up the path and find one. I’m not mature. You got that? I’m only twenty eight. I look older because I smoked when I was young and drank too much in college. I had that disease when I was born where you look eighty by the time you are three. Very sad, but I make the best of it.”
“You are spirited and I like that in a woman. American women are like my horses. Spirited.”
Your horses are two gallops away from glue, I wanted to say, but did not because he was staring a hole through my tankini top with the built-in mega bra.
“Let me see just one. Only one. A mature breast, please.”
“I will not. They are ugly. I’m telling you.”
“They are so beautiful. And mature.”
I searched the ground for a big stick to hit him with, but all I could find were scrubby vines and old plastic cups. I was truly afraid by now. Not another person was in sight.
“Just show me one and I promise I will leave you alone. I promise.”
“You will go away? You will run on up the path after the others?”
“Sí. Yes.”
“Well, all right then.”
He began to salivate and sweat. I knew he was in for a shock and the “spirited” American woman in me couldn’t wait to see his face when he got a load of the goods this tankini was certainly boosting and plumping.
As he inched his old horse closer to my la mula, I began to have second thoughts.
“Just one,” he begged. “The left one.”
“Why the left one?” Oh, why was I even asking?
“It looks bigger. More mature.”
Thinking I would be raped if he didn’t get his peep show, I lifted the left side of my top and out flopped a long, eel-like tit that fell somewhere near the mule’s saddle. His eyes squinted. His mouth curved downward. He nodded, kicked his horse, and fled the scene like the Lone Ranger after a bad guy.
“Hey,” I yelled, offended to some degree. “What about the right side? Don’t you want to see it? The right one looks a whole lot better!”
By then he was gone. The trip was over. My mula eventually made it back, drank some water, and crunched the promised apple I had in my beach bag. I cut my eyes at the Mexican before crossing the road toward the hotel.
He stood there staring, as if he’d been hoodwinked and robbed.
“Things aren’t always what they seem,” I yelled.
