II

Let Him Sleep

Baldo rolls over without falling out because he’s rolled over in his hammock since time began. Now that he’s bigger the mesh presses more, leaving its woven pattern along his flank, his arm and leg. He sleeps like the dead, not a care in the world, heavy as bricks with no concern for the mortar. Let him sleep. The rest of the staff won’t care if Baldo is late. For all we know they won’t care if Baldo doesn’t show up at all. Of course they would make timid reference to the missing drinkboy. He makes them nervous, and they would rather have drinks served in glasses with napkins on trays, as drinks should be served. Perhaps he is colorful; but would the tips not accrue to them if he didn’t show?

That’s okay. Antonio cares about Baldo’s punctuality and performance, because he’s bringing Baldo along on the way up. He first introduced Baldo as his assistant, his compadre, and his vaquero, necessary to herd the tourists into line. The managers relent, knowing the value of Baldo and that of his brother, Antonio, the rippling one, the golden boy, as it were. Antonio brings the guests back in droves for his brand of laughter and carrying on, so Baldo is okay until the cows come home. Just never you mind whom Baldo makes nervous.

At the little table under the family shrine at Casa Garza Antonio empties his pockets of two hundred per day to Baldo’s twenty or sometimes twenty-five, and this too is okay for brothers taking care of each other as best they can. They care for Lyria too, as their girl and their woman, whom they love like a sister and whom Antonio will soon take as a wife.

This sibling love going to romance is not what you could call incestuous, because Antonio is waiting as men have waited through the ages, if a prize is worth waiting for and embodies the ultimate purity of womanhood. A weak man doesn’t wait; he takes, insisting that his beloved stoop to the ficky fick before wedlock.

What pure woman ever wanted that kind of thing without the commitment? What can the act of love become if it’s rushed to occur outside the eyes of God?

Of course Antonio is not her brother by blood, and her father died long before Gustavo, so the brother-lover concept merely describes a love that will roll over in time to reveal its brightest side. She merely needs time to allow the roll to occur naturally, to wed as a fully developed woman.

Then comes the ficky fick.

Antonio spreads his T-shirt across the table and irons it with his hands, careful not to crease his panther. He can wear it two more days without washing if he wants to, because today is Saturday. Tomorrow turns over with mostly new tourists who won’t play along anyway their first day, and even so, his shirt comes off in the first five minutes to get things warmed up, to get the women going, which invariably brings the men along. Well, sometimes it brings them along, unless they’re self-conscious of their own poverty of ripples. Or maybe it’s their wealth of dimpled rolls that makes them scowl at him. He pulls the T-shirt on and decides to wear it to the last minute before buying another one, which may be today and may not be today.

Besides, if Mrs. Mayfair stays another week, as she threatens, she might buy him a new T in spite of his resistance. These and other potentials accompany thoughts for the afternoon and evening shifts, beginning with pool aerobics, pool volleyball, and then bingo again. Bingo tensions will be relieved with a round of float walking, in which a string of small floats is stretched over the pool, and we see who can walk to the end without falling off. Some of us already know whom, and it’s not because he’s had so much practice. Antonio Garza is an extreme physical specimen with extraordinary skills in many, many areas.

Okay, we’ll wrap up the daylight hours with beach volleyball. That should sustain the lively spirit of float walking and will include everyone, even those with much less skill, for they are only here to have fun. Twilight will begin with good cheer all around, with good mingling and recalling the highlights and hijinks of both the winners and losers, blending to general schmooz and quick inventory of the blessings we share.

Beach bar revenues are rarely discussed between Antonio and the managers, because he works the guests into a thirst, then massages them toward the perfect quench. Oh, let a day pass with no drinks; then they’d let him know the score. He knows instinctively that a good lead from the beach to the bar means forty patrons ordering forty drinks. At twenty pesos each, it’s a pretty peso from one sundown to the next. Nobody says boo, but such economic stimulation does not go unnoticed. A career path in most cases depends on cohesion such as this exercise in clockwork timing and maximum resource utilization. Antonio has the knack. The afternoon shift waits for the rising curtain no less than a play on a stage. Overture, dim the lights. This is it, the night of nights. Maybe it’s only Bugs Bunny who sings that one, but it fits so well.

Prepping for the show, Antonio poses and flexes, checks his teeth and his nose for strays and goes in close for quick scrutiny of his face. With a little pluck here, a little pinch there, a scrape and a squeeze, but not so hard as to make a red spot, soon all is well. He stands back for the big picture.

Ay, perfecto.

For the afternoon shift he rolls his T-shirt sleeves to the notch between his biceps and deltoids. He rolls a cigarette pack in one side as seen on TV. He poses again in the mirror and takes the pack out. He doesn’t smoke, for one thing. He only brought this empty pack home to see if he should. It crushes too easily for another thing, so maybe the new crush-proof box would be better.

But it seems foolish to interrupt the beautiful curvature from bulging biceps to definition deltoids with a lumpy box.

These things are simply known by what the mirror says, though an outside admirer might think him immutably perfect.

Antonio practices a few moods in the mirror, moving between a great big smile and a grin. Between the two is a vast difference. One is warm and fuzzy and the other is greedy and perverse.

He practices stern authority, anger, and, of course, amusement. He feels the cliff edge of his high, angular cheekbones. He puckers up, not with vanity but to better apply the sunscreen to his lush Latin lips. He wonders with amusement how much his lips weigh, and how much insurance they warrant from Lloyds of London at a hundred fifty pesos per tender kiss with so many years ahead. He sweeps his frizzled hair back. It springs forward again, so he bulges his eyes and gapes his mouth to match the voltage in his hair. He smears a double dab of hold ’em into his stubborn frizz, gives it a half-minute to set up and brushes it back to its proper wave. Each wavelet crests with a shimmer of light as he slowly turns to profile to see how big his beak really looks.

It’s big, but who cares? It balances his face. That’s character. Of this, we can be assured, because it is often said in a whine and a whimper. Oh, Antonio, you are the most handsome man in the world. Oh, oh, oh.

Antonio smiles at the man in the mirror, seeing what they see. He thinks he is surely not the most handsome man in the world. But who can know for sure?

He relaxes, daubing scent on either side of his neck and under each arm, and along his inner thighs in case Mrs. Mayfair wants to see him after cocktails, before dinner. He feels that she will stay another week, which should be good for another six hundred pesos plus gifts. If she weren’t planning on staying, then why would she go these last two days with no needs?

No, she would not. She is most demanding on her last two days. She calls it her storing-up time. But when does she expect her stud stallion to store anything up? This would be good to know. Never mind, a rich gringa calls the tune if she’s willing to pay the fiddler for a private performance like no tomorrow.

In a minute he’s quaffed, scented, unruffled, and ready to go. He turns to Lyria in the door. Only just wakened and shuffled over from next-door, she looks sleepy as a child in her rumpled dress. She is staring at Baldo’s floppy pinga but hardly sees through her glassy eyes. Antonio plucks Baldo’s baggy pants from the hook on the post and chucks them across what should be covered.

He steps deftly between Baldo and the open door and closes the distance to Lyria. He stands before her, not so much hovering or honing in but merely sensing her. In this intimate but safe proximity he senses as well the exquisite agony of romance and hopes she feels it too. He wants to tease her on his own terms, wants to flirt with what he knows is waiting under the soft, cotton rumples. But he is careful here too, lest he rumple the prospects nurtured for so long. Lyria will be his in a year or two, when he has the money, and his own sons will view the world in dollars instead of pesos.

So instead of playfully squeezing her breast like it’s a bicycle horn that may not beep but will surely wake her up, he merely watches her gentle breathing, and he waits. In a rare moment she responds like she does sense the sweet agony. Would he like to meet later for dinner, if he’s not working? This last is reference to his side job, but he notes with pleasure that her reference is civil, deferring politely to his efforts toward extra income, as she should. After all, he fully intends to share.

“Yes, I would,” he says. “Saturday night.” Baldo stirs with a guttural groan, proof of vocal chords. “Baldo will come too. Okay?”

“Okay. I will make …”

“No! No make. Tonight we celebrate. Baldo will take us out. For dinner and dancing!”

Baldo drags his legs over the side, swinging the hammock perilously to the vertical. He sits as if in pain, holding his head, groaning lowly. Lyria goes to the sink, where she moistens a towel and spreads it over his shoulders. She rubs his head and tells him to wake up. With playful petulance she demands to know why a boy so young can’t wake up. Antonio watches, wishing the playful petulance could be applied to him from time to time rather than the stern criticism she most often gives him.

Then again he is the elder, and Baldo is only a boy.

She rubs Baldo’s head vigorously, admonishing him to rise, to go and serve the thirsts, to split enough coconuts with great flourish to pay for dinner and dancing. He no longer groans but rises to the stimulation on his scalp like a pup who wants more.

She turns away so Baldo can wiggle into his pants. She asks Antonio, “Celebrate what?”

Antonio shrugs, secretly relieved that she does not suspect his motive for dining out, which is to have dinner apart from Rosa, mother of Lyria and matron as well to Antonio and Baldo. Antonio loves Rosa, but she is too fat and worried for him to relax. “We celebrate what not. Celebration is important, you know. Baldo. Come.” Baldo adjusts himself, ties the draw string, and rises to follow, not yet fully awake but shuffling his feet, dragging his ragged camp shirt in one hand, holding his machete loosely in the other. Passing Lyria, he glances up sideways with a shy smile like the same pup who suffers beatings for peeing inside, yet who can’t tell what he did so wrong. Perhaps this shy apprehension is also Gustavo Garza’s legacy to his second son. With a wistful sigh Antonio smiles too.

Lyria tussles Baldo’s hair.

Antonio waits, then steps to her for a hug. They touch cheeks but not groins, because this is the abrazo conveying warmth among family members with a commingling of spirits. He lingers in her scent to convey his intention, which is forever. She stands for it briefly but then enforces punctuality. It is time for the second shift.

What? Do you want to be late?

She watches them go, her boys; no, her men.

She has not forgotten Antonio’s cruel request of only a week ago, to know if Lyria had a photograph of Rosa as a girl. “But why would you want to see such a thing?” Lyria asked, but feared that she knew what Antonio wanted to see. Rosa’s beauty is in her heart, not her body. Lyria sees it and knows that Baldo sees it too and Antonio would if he had a brain in his head, which she sometimes doubts. Rosa is, in a cruel word, gorda. But she is only as fat as her heart is big and her arms are open and her table is set for giving.

“That’s an easy question,” Antonio said. “I want to see if she looks like you.”

“You mean to see if I will look like her!”

“No, Lyria. You accuse me wrongly yet again. I did not think of that.” But he let it go and will not ask again to see Rosa’s picture. Of course he was guilty of such fear, which may be the shape of Lyria to come, because twenty years roll around before you know it. She easily gains two pounds per year, which become six or eight pounds in a few years, because such things gain momentum. And forty or sixty pounds will make her very fat if the wondrous process of filling out has no end. He fears her failure in beauty, and she knows it, because Antonio thinks of everything, and everyone knows it. He lets it go but ponders the mysteries of love and fat.

Lyria wonders why he presses relentlessly what has no importance except to convenience or impressions on others or money, money, money. Why does he treat her condescendingly but then respect perfect strangers? Why must he distance himself like a father to a child? She is not Baldo. Maybe Baldo needs restraint and discipline, but she does not. What keeps him from the tenderness every woman craves? Why must he feel her intimate parts so brusquely with a grab and a forced laugh instead of a caress? The gringa bitches by the pool believe him to be the real man of Mexico. So why must his machismo melt down like yesterday’s queso in her presence?

Is she not a woman?

Yes, she is a woman, with a woman’s needs and a woman’s awareness of the modern world and its changing ways. Well, en casa del herrero, cuchillo de palo. The blacksmith’s mare and the shoemaker’s children are the worst shod. How can he remain so blind to that which would trigger any blacksmith to fan the flames and bang the anvil?

He treats her like a novitiate even though they’re practically betrothed and have been since before they stopped sharing a bathtub, and everyone knows that too. And if those who comprise their community were to be surprised, it would not be that she had lain with Antonio or even that she swelled with his child but rather that they had never lain together at all, that he had not even attempted to share her inner warmth.

Oh, that would surprise them.

She watches Antonio stride boldly for the hilltop at the same hurried pace in which he strides for the future. Baldo never exactly wakes up, but he catches up at the crest. He straightens with a rhythm in his lanky gait, not a swagger, really, but a lope. Hardly the showman his older brother is, Baldo is merely graceful and silent with a certain unknowable quirk bespeaking happiness on his very own terms.

As Baldo approaches, stretching another inch here and there to maximum lank, his feet and hands swinging to the ends of their natural arcs, Antonio advises that a man should take care with his machete. A man doesn’t let his pinga dangle for all to see. And a man absolutely doesn’t swing a machete near his dangling pinga.

Baldo laughs short, perhaps at the imagery of pingas harvested by machete. At the main road he looks not left or right but strides boldly across, such as an uprooted tree in a swollen stream might enter a greater flow. Antonio shakes his head, wishing his brother a greater arrogance and a lesser stupidity, for one can be cured and the other is a tale of a different telling. As it is, Baldo emotes the happiness of a tree, pure and dumb.

Across the road they wait for the bus, which is full. Once squeezed in they give in to its hypnotic effect that lulls them to sleep on their feet for the ten-minute ride down the road to the world of progress, development, and hot and cold running dollars.

Milo, the pool and beach manager, waits for the Garza brothers with anticipation. Antonio has seen it too often to respond. Some returning woman has asked for the maestro, or maybe two guests have sat for thirty minutes with no coconut juice. He nods steadily to indicate resolve, so Milo can calm down and the show can go on, once these critical problems are remedied.

Antonio scans the pool deck for familiar faces but sees only Mrs. Mayfair, who stares back intently as if to lock his gaze with her own. This afternoon she wears her grasping-hands bikini, the one with nothing between her breasts, so her sternum is exposed between the lift and spread of her sizable melones. The cups of this bikini are scalloped on the edges and remind Antonio of hands grasping the breasts from behind as he sometimes does. He smiles dismissively; he is not behind her, he is working. So please.

This morning she wore her red bikini that allows her breasts to hang close together with dramatic cleavage and dramatically heightens the reds in her dramatically red hair. The red is fetching and suggestive, but the grasping hands hold the breasts higher and spread them apart, so they’re more spherical and not so oblong. He has examined the grasping hands she now wears to see what magic is in this simple black fabric that elicits such buoyancy in her tetas. The cups look soft and natural but, alas, are stiff with fiberglass beneath the fabric.

She watches and plays along with his preference for lift and spread by sitting up with a deep inhale, until the bottom part of her chichis cannot be contained by mere fiberglass and won’t go back in the cup, until she exhales and tucks them back in. She well knows that the bottom part sticking out drives him wild.

But this is not the time or place. He’s working. He shakes his head and looks away, so she relaxes and tucks back in, because he’s right, public displays with hungry eyes can disrupt the reverie around the pool, which can threaten a livelihood.

With new intuition he thinks now that she is leaving. She must be, with this flagrant display of receptiveness. He can do without the display but is willing to fill her need as long as she understands that it must be quick, because he has plans with the family. Well, not that quick, but not more than an hour, or two on the outside.

Baldo gathers six coconuts for a group slash for the happy hour rush. But Milo intervenes again, after taking a call and making small talk to a guest. Today is very important, he tells Antonio. He waits for the meaning of ‘importance’ to sink in. Baldo grasps the importance before him, hacking coconuts. Milo moves to stop him and make him pay attention but then moves back. Baldo swings effortlessly with an impressive resolve that no man could absorb and tell about, especially Milo, who flinches in the line of fire. Only a fool would step farther in to such a swing.

Anyway, it is very important, today. By the power vested in him, Milo, under the auspices of El Secretario Pesco and the Mexican Navy, Baldo is hereby promoted.

Stepping forward, Antonio asks, “Promoted?”

Baldo replaces the hacked cap of his second coconut and seeks its proper fit. Once all six are cut and the caps are set neatly in place, he will prepare the straws; two straws in each with the paper wrappers bunched up at the top. This presentation appears fresh and sterile, which purity is very important to a hotel guest who wants a refreshing drink and no more. The ice cubes will be added prior to serving by the bartender, whose hands are on a higher level of purity. Otherwise, they would melt too soon, allowing the drink to water down and warm up, which is not acceptable to anyone and would generate no tips. The liquor too is dispensed at the bar if the guest wants liquor. Baldo is not allowed to handle the liquor. Liquor is valuable.

“Yes, a promotion. As of today—make that tomorrow. No, today. As of today, Baldo will be …” Milo steps up as Baldo fiddles with the caps. He sets a stubby hand on Baldo’s shoulder and announces in a harsh whisper, “El Capitán de las Tortugas!”

“Captain of the Turtles? Do the turtles need a captain?”

“¡Ay, sí! Not just any tortugas. ¡Las chicas!” With a spurious grin and the marginal flourish of a chubby man, Milo turns to the six plastic tubs now lining the low wall beside the steps leading down to the beach, or up to the pool deck if you’re going the other way. A parasol has been installed overhead, and, peering into the shade over the rims, Antonio squints to adjust his vision. In the tubs are baby sea turtles, just hatched, maybe twenty to a tub. He comes back out to the bright light and asks what is expected here of Baldo.

Milo explains that all of Mexico is now changing.

Antonio nods in compliance.

Milo goes on to say that El Secretario Pesco of the Federal Government of all of Mexico has decreed, and the Navy will enforce the law, that anyone taking or tampering with turtle eggs will face fines and imprisonment. The Navy has taken what eggs it can find and secured them for safe incubation. These babies are part of the seasonal hatch, distributed to hotels on appropriate coastlines for safekeeping for ninety days. In only ninety days these small turtles will grow big enough so that ninety percent of them may survive instead of merely two percent. The time has come to restore the turtles: no more turtle steaks or turtle soup or turtle oil or turtle shells.

No more.

Just look: a swimming pool lined with guests who are willing to pay four dollars—four dollars!—for a simple drink by the pool. Willing to pay six dollars for something fancy. Willing? Nay, they are happy to pay and looking forward to paying again and again. With tips! Does Antonio realize what this means?

Hey, to whom does Mister Milo think he speaks? Who knows better or stimulates more paying for more drinking? Who profits more from the happiness of Hotel Oaxtapec guests than Antonio himself does?

But Milo is a bump on the proverbial log, so Antonio merely nods once more as if to confirm comprehension, as if to say, Oh, so that’s how it is.

Baldo hacks his sixth and final coconut. He glances up briefly at the dialogue and determines that he will not be missed for a brief run to fetch the straws, two each, which makes twelve straws in all.

“What can Baldo do? He is very busy serving coconuts. He is very conscientious with his work. He makes them happy. They love him.”

Milo nods condescendingly. “He is the man for the job. He will now be part of Hotel Security. He will wear a uniform. There.” Milo points to the khaki pants and matching shirt with official sleeve patches. It hangs on a wire hanger from a low limb of a nearby tree. “He will be proud to serve the turtles and the hotel, and we will be proud of him.” Milo shifts quickly here from pride to confidence. “Antonio, I have seen your brother walk the beach. No other man I have known—and I will call him a man now that he is grown; no other man takes such effort to return the boxfish to the waves whether they are alive or dead. He gathers rubbish with no regard for hotel boundaries. He throws dinner scraps to los pelicanos when they have nothing else to eat because the small fish have not appeared. He swims alongside los cocodrillos! Who but a crazy man would do such a thing? I will tell you who. A man who walks with God is who. A man who is touched by St. Francis himself. Antonio, do not doubt the wisdom of this promotion. Today we are blessed. You are blessed. Baldo is blessed. We are all blessed. And so. It is late. You must prepare for bingo. No?”

“But what of tips? He makes tips with coconuts. The turtles will be happy, but will they pay tips?” He pokes his head into the shade again for a display of the antics that make him invaluable poolside. “Hey, chicas! You got some money? Hey! What you got in there?”

“Antonio, I am told from on high that it is no longer acceptable to have Baldo near the pool, near the guests. Do you now see how much we are blessed?”

Antonio feels the sting of this uppercut but shrugs it off as a true champion must and presses his case. “You want to affect the livelihood of my family here?”

Milo nods and opens his mouth to speak but cannot, for first he must calculate the amount of money required to make Antonio happy without straining the budget. After all, how much can anyone be expected to pay for a babysitter of turtles? It wasn’t Milo’s idea. Nor does El Secretario provide a budget but rather advises the hotel that it will be good for business, just you wait and see, and don’t forget the fines and imprisonment.

Baldo finishes prepping the last of his twelve straws so that anyone desiring their thirst quenched with a cool, refreshing drink can now be served by adding ice cubes, garnish and liquor if necessary. A simple slice of lime will do for garnish, this late in the day, because the evening hour is less playful and more serene and calls for less garnish than the midday drinks. Midday drinks get two slices for eyes and a pineapple wedge for a nose and a little paper parasol for a hat. Oh, they do like the midday garnish. He scans his inventory and nods, set to go, recalling the days not so long ago when he would need fifteen or eighteen straws to get it right. Not anymore; twelve up with no mistakes, and though this isn’t exactly the same as Antonio’s unique skill at float walking, it is a proficiency resulting from diligent practice and establishes his rightful place as one of the two Garza brothers.

He stands straight and turns to where Antonio waits and Milo stutters over this and that. He looks up at the new parasol over the wall beside the beach steps as if it didn’t exist before his preparation was done. He too steps into the shade with a squint and then leans into it.

Milo and Antonio turn together at the sound of Baldo’s gasp and the high-pitched, eerie squeal of a mute in undeniable ecstasy. Baldo reaches into the shadow and backs out grinning, his brow wrinkled as if in anguish, holding a baby turtle gently near his face with both hands. The little turtle flaps all four legs briefly, then stretches its little neck up to Baldo, practically touching him nose to nose.

Milo nods and grins. “So. You see?”

“Milo. You are right. No man is better than Baldo at many things. Las chicas among them. How much does it pay? He makes thirty, sometimes thirty-five pesos a shift now.”

“That’s too much.”

“Too much for what?” Antonio waits while Milo ponders what. “Milo, I know what we can do. Baldo can watch the turtles while serving coconuts.”

Milo shakes his head. “No. It is decreed. Twenty-four-hour security for the turtles. The other is decreed as well. No more Baldo by the pool or the guests.”

“Twenty-four hours? How can he work with no sleep?”

Milo nods. “He will take time off to sleep. And to eat. And to take care of the rest. You will see that he is clean and groomed.”

“Milo, has he yet to be unclean or failed to groom?”

“He will be paid … Two pesos per hour. No. Twenty pesos per day.”

“You said two per hour.”

“But he needs time off. Antonio, this is best. Besides, nobody really knows what the hotel guests are willing to leave tips for. Or how much. Eh? Do you not think they will love the man who loves the turtles? Do you not know how our guests most often express their love?”

Antonio knows what makes the world go round. He cannot refute Milo’s logic, but he also knows that a bird in hand is often worth more than the murky whim of hotel guests. They tip to ensure continuing comfort. But to tip simply for the love of turtles? This is highly conjectural. He sighs audibly, factoring twenty pesos times six days times four weeks. Well, times seven days, really, if this is only a ninety-day promotion. Baldo will be here and so will be paid. And make it times four point three weeks, really, because Mrs. Mayfair’s husband is in business and always insists, she says, on factoring four point three weeks to the month. Otherwise you take it in the shorts, she says he says, which is okay if the shorts is where you want to take it, but not okay if you’re out to make some money.

Antonio further understands the importance of initial agreements. Now is the time to bump twenty pesos a day to twenty-five, or at least to twenty-three, but no sooner does he turn to speak than Milo’s waddling rump is all that’s left to see as it bounds for the lobby. Milo beat him to the punch with urgent distraction. Well, it’s true; Baldo is the best, already counting, inspecting, observing, checking for life and viable turtle spirit; in a word, nurturing.

A new guest approaches. Petite in a classy one-piece with a gold chain and a suitably expensive watch and long, blonde hair, she lets her eyes drop to Antonio’s abs. He watches and waits and lets the electricity ripple its magic arc to her lovely orbs. He fixes her gaze, then stops, subtly facilitating a lifting of the eyes with a gentle flex of a perfect pectoralis major. His shirt is still on, but she sees and blushes and asks in delightful confusion if today will be bingo.

“Ah, yes! Bingo!”

He bounds for the head of the pool, leaving the new blondie flushed in his wake. They love the rejection; she’ll be along for more. Plugging in his little amplifier and testing for sound with a spicy salsa disco number that challenges all stillness, he gyrates shamelessly side to side, in and out. He smiles warmly as the Latin lover of your dreams, and soon poolside attention is all his. At least the attention of the women is his; this is a given. He holds the microphone provocatively and says, “Testing, uno, dos, tres … Hey! Wake up! No more siesta! Time for bingo! Wake up! Er! Er-Er! Er-Errrrrr! Wake up! Bingo! We play for twelve beers today. Not all at once, because it’s too early to be drunk. Maybe later. Okay, amigos y amigas. Doce cervezas hoy día! Wake up! No more siesta!”

He stacks his bingo cards behind his jar of dried beans. He preps his music and glances up to see that Milo is back and yakking at Baldo, who towers over the short, fat manager with a simmering glower. Each grasps the handle of Baldo’s machete, causing Antonio to grab the mike again and hurriedly announce once more to get ready and hold the fort, “Er! Er-Er! Er-Errrrr! Wake up! Bingo! Come up for your cards and your beans!” And he bounds back around the pool to see what’s up.

“You don’t need a machete to guard the turtles,” Milo insists.

Baldo grumbles and reddens and easily tightens his grasp beyond the limited strength of Milo.

“Why not, Milo? Let him have the machete. Who ever heard of a security guard with no weapon? What? You want to give him a carbine? That would not look very nice.”

Milo scowls. “He needs no weapon! It scares the guests.”

“No, they think this is colorful. They think we all carry these things around, just like our fathers did. Just as they think the coconuts are colorful.” Now Milo reddens at the mention of his unskilled father and lets go of the machete with a scowl. Turning squarely to face Antonio and stepping forward, he huffs and puffs but doesn’t say that enough time has been wasted already on this half-wit brother who has passed for too long as an “assistant” and makes far more money than he should. But such is understood; Antonio reads the prevailing sentiment as though it was written and says, “Milo. Make it twenty-five.”

“What? Make what twenty-five?”

“Twenty-five pesos a day. Here. Here is the machete.” Antonio takes the machete from Baldo easily, as only he can do.

Milo turns and walks, shaking his head. “I better not hear,” he says but doesn’t say what he better not hear.

Antonio hands the machete back to Baldo, who sets it down on the top ledge or the wall because he needs two hands to properly care for the small turtles. Milo has left a fish fillet, which Baldo now tears to small bits. Antonio watches briefly and taps Baldo on the arm. He tells Baldo to wash his hands, miming the act of washing with emphasis on rinsing all the soap and never allowing suntan lotion into the turtle water. Baldo stares with a grimace and a nod, first imagining the awful potential of poisoning by suntan lotion, then comprehending the remedy. “Where will we be with buckets of dead babies?” Antonio asks with brutal practicality. The idea is drawn in pain across Baldo’s face as he’s off to clean his hands.

Antonio bounds back, scans the pool, and asks the microphone, “Is everybody ready?”

“Sííííí,” they reply.

“Okay.” He spins the basket with his biggest, warmest smile, which is not a grin, and pulls out a ball. “B twenty-three. Bay vente tres.” The game is on. “For two beers we play this game. Dos cervezas. Up, down, diagonal. Any which way, one line. Okay. G-seventeen. Hey, diezy siete.”