Angels in Heaven

himself. I politely introduced him to Doris in case he
hadn’t recognized her, and then after fond embraces all round in the Latino
style, we loaded up the last year’s Chevy Benny had hired and headed demurely
eastward into town, which turned out to be no more than ten minutes or so away.
    The tremendous charm and appeal of
this “Old Mexico” village, I discovered later while idly leafing through the
local yellow pages, reside in its picturesque Colonial homes, horse-drawn
carriages, beautiful parks, and old marketplaces, which all create the
atmosphere of a Mexico almost gone. True, true, all too true, but it also
unfortunately gives the sad impression of a people who are not only broke—and I
mean on the tortilla line—but from what Benny said, only too likely to remain
so. He mentioned to Doris on the drive in that the day before, he’d read in the
English-language newspaper printed in Mexico City that the basic daily minimum
wage had just been increased to a whopping $3.75 U.S. a day, and it was even
being rumored some lucky workers were actually getting that much.
    Our hotel, the San Carlos, was in the
southwest corner of a small square called Plaza Hidalgo, on the corners of 60th
and 49th streets, and it was a proud example of Mexican Colonial, which
basically means your tiles, your dark woods and greenery, and your heavy, even
darker wooden furniture. I signed in as Sr. John R. Wood, and Doris as Doris
Jameson, as per instructions. I left a hundred-buck deposit with the Pretty
receptionist to obviate the necessity of giving her the number of a credit card
as security, which item I did not have, at least not in the name of John R.
Wood. There was a real John R. Wood somewhere—at least there was once, because
John R. Wood used to play fullback on the mighty Parker High Panthers with me
and Billy Baker, aka Gray Wolf, Presently aka a name that was all numbers. Then
we toiled UP two wide flights of stairs to our rooms. We were all on the top
floor in a row right next to the tiny pool, rooms 333, I 332, and—you guessed
it—331.
    It was late in the afternoon but it
was still hot, so I turned on the overhead fan, unpacked and hung up what had
to be hung up to get the creases out, washed up, took some diarrhea medicine
preventatively—and there’s wishful thinking for you—carefully combed my curls,
then rejoined the others out on the tiled patio next to the pool where Benny
had already managed to produce six bottles of ice-cold local beer. We were not
alone al fresco—there were two elderly ladies in the water doing timid
breaststrokes and a young blond couple who, we found out later, were students
from Lund in Sveden, so we kept the chatter away from serious topics and
generally tried to look and behave like ordinary Yankee tourists, which we did
by complaining loudly about the prices, the weather, the exchange rate, the
water, the cupidity of the local trades- ' people (waiters, taxi drivers, and
such like), and the impossibility of finding an edible hamburger anywhere in
the country south of the Mexico City McDucks.
    One had a good view of Mérida from
where we were, even though we were only three floors up. Almost without
exception, the whole city was—and needless to say, still is— I laid out in a
symmetrical grid, and thus it was that all even-numbered streets ran north and
south and all odd-numbered ones east and west. All were one way, with every other
street running in an opposite direction—all other cities in the world please
copy. Looming up one block to the west of us was the enormous Cathedral of San
Ildefonso, circa 1598, which made it even older than the pretzels at the
Two-Two-Two, but not by much; next to it a brick-red museum; and in front of
them the main square, the Jardín de los Compositores. I do find travel
broadening—there’s so much dam culture in other countries.
    After a half-hour or so, when we’d
finished up the last of the beers (me, three and a half out of the six), we
moved into Benny’s room for a more private conclave. He spread out on one of
the two beds the local version of a Rand-McNally (Asorva Ediciones) map of
Mérida and its surroundings, as well as a bunch of Polaroids he’d taken, and
pointed out to me and Doris the items of particular interest to us, but not
before Doris had reminded me I’d better put my specs on, even though she could
see I was already fumbling for them.
    “If you strain your eyes, they’ll
only get worse,” she said with