Angels in Heaven

on doing was what I always
did when the need arose—ask Tony and Gaye to take her, and then I would keep
her whatever extra days were involved when my turn came around again, my niece
and nephew didn’t mind, they liked their old gran, but my brother and
sister-in-law, especially Tony, always made me pay for the favor somehow. I put
it down merely to a younger brother’s jealously, but I could be mistaken, I
suppose.
    Anyway, when I told Mom it looked
like I’d be going away for a few days, she said, “That’s nice, dear, so am I.
Where are you going?”
    “To Mexico,” I said. “But down south
this time, not where I went with Evonne last year. Where are you going» to
Feeb’s sister again, the one who lives in that mobile home outside San Diego
that you thought was so cute?”
    “Maybe,” Mom said with a little
smile.
    Maybe? What did that mean? I knew
what “maybe” meant when I said it; it meant forget it, not a chance, except
when I said I was maybe going out for a drink, in which case it meant I was
going out for a drink unless large lumps of sky fell on my head and prevented
me. But what did “maybe” mean issuing from the sweet lips of Mummikins?
    “Want to eat Vietnamese with me and
the girls tonight?” I asked her then.
    “No, thank you, Vic,” she said,
bending over suddenly and picking up some lint from the carpet. She did a lot
of lint picking, and most of the time I couldn’t see any lint. I kept
forgetting to ask her doc if it was another symptom of what she had. “I’m
cooking Feeb something. I forget what, but I thought I might, so I left the
cookbook open to the right page to remind me.”
    “That makes sense,” I called out from
my room where I was donning a clean shirt, a slightly garish but nonetheless
striking Hawaiian number featuring many of the same hues Doris’s hair had been
over the past year.
    The phone rang; I jumped for it, but
it was Evonne, not Benny. She just wanted to confirm the time we were to meet.
I was watching a pretty good thriller on TV with Mom, sipping a weak brandy and
ginger and nibbling from a box of awful cocktail snacks when the phone rang
again, and thank God, this time it was Benny the Boy. I asked him to hang on a
minute, turned the sound down on the TV, got a pad and felt-tip, told Mom to
shush, then picked up the phone again and said, “OK, Benny, shoot.”
    He shot.
    Considering he’d only had one working
day down there, he’d done wonders, and I told him so more than once. He’d found
a safe phone. He’d found a car and truck rental. He had rooms provisionally
reserved for us at his hotel. He had verified precisely what documentation was
required for an American citizen to cross the border into Mexico. He had eased the airport. He’d cased the jail and the collection of huts across from it.
He’d found two American concerns in town, the consulate and something called
the U.S. Cultural Association. He’d located an office equipment rental, also a
jobbing printer, also a sign maker. He’d been directed to a restaurant that
served good French chow. He’d bought maps of everything we’d possibly need.
He’d picked up airline schedules and bus schedules. He described the jail and
the surrounding terrain. No one had ever heard of anyone escaping from it
although plenty had tried. The rumor was that the one gringo prisoner had been
smuggling something, but no one was sure what. The guesses ranged from cocaine
to guns to young girls.
    I made notes furiously as he talked,
and did he ever. When he was finally done, I told him I figured I’d need two
working days to get everything together at my end, which would bring us up to
Saturday, and that I’d try to book me and Sara on the same flight he’d taken,
which would get us into Mérida late that afternoon, so book us into the hotel
starting then. “Under what names?” he said.
    “Did you need an ID when you checked
in?”
    “Nope,” he said, “ ’cause I paid in
cash, in advance.”
    “Doris,” I said. “Doris ... Jameson,
and me, something neutral like, what the hell, John R. Wood.”
    He said, “Consider it done. Love to
everyone,” and hung up. I said, “All right!” to myself and hung up.
    All right! Now we can move. Hang on,
Billy, the A-team is a-comin’.
     
    Plane. Dirigible. Flying carpet.
Water wings. Boat. Bus. Car. Dune buggy. Pogo stick. Levitation. Time machine.
Skimobile. Rule out the silly ones, but that still left land, sea, or air, which
was hardly