Angels in Heaven

Famoso Trupo Argentina de Tango hoy al Teatro José Peon
de Camara.
    The tango ... now there was a dance.
If I could dance at all I’d choose the tango. Someone once said something
meaningful about the tango; I know it was Valentino but I cannot remember what
it was.... Was it something about a tango being a sad thought that is danced?
    Buenos noches, amigos.
     
     
     

CHAPTER
NINE
     
    “Ambrose Bierce,” said Benny.
    “I beg your pardon?” said V. Daniel.
    “Ambrose Bierce once wrote something
to the effect that a consul is a person who can’t get a job in the U.S. but who finally given one by the administration on condition that he leave the
country.”
    “Screamingly amusing,” said Doris Jr.
around a yawn.
    It was the following morning. Benny
was in the front seat, me and Doris in the back, of a Mérida taxicab, an
ancient Impala that had been decorated with an attractive slice of a thickly
napped orange carpet which was spread over and dangling down from the ledge on
top of the instrument panel, as featured in a recent issue of the Mexican Home
& Garden.
    A small plastic chap in a red Santa
outfit, with a long gray beard and green sunglasses, swung merrily from the
rearview mirror.
    It was nine forty-five a.m. We had breakfasted on toast,
marmalade, and Nescafé. (Marmalade in Mexican means “jam,” not “marmalade.” I
don’t know what means marmalade.) We had just turned left off 47th onto the
main drag, the Paseo Montejo.
    The paseo boasted two one-way
highways separated by some wilting greenery, and it contained branches of the
major banks, cafés, a movie house or two, old mansions, the local offices of
Xerox and the like, and the new Consulado de America, which we drove slowly
past, eyes agog. It was a low white structure, well fenced, with a pair of
guards out front and a couple more around the back. To one side of it was a
large private home and on the other a traffic circle. A block or two farther
along, the paseo ended at something? called the Memorial de la Patria, a stone
wall bas-reliefed with various incomprehensible Mayan symbols.
    We circled the memorial, then circled
the consulado, then drove back down the other side of the paseo, then
had the driver take us back to the hotel, having seen all we wanted to see, unfortunately.
    It is now perhaps time to reveal an
inkling of the V. Daniel master plan.
    And the inkling is ... the setting up
of an office (as soon as possible, as days are long, amigo, in stir, and nights
are even longer) with some sort of quasi-legal or official front for us to work
out of, an absolute necessity no matter which of the many variations of the
master plan I decided to go with. For reasons that I won’t inkle at the moment,
I would have preferred the office to be in an edifice next to the consulado or
across from it—or at least nearby, or over or under—but that now seemed to be
impossible because, as just recounted, on one side was a private home, on the
other a traffic jam, behind it a small park, across from it a school, and
nowhere near did I spy an Office for Rent sign or indeed note any unoccupied
buildings. That seemed to leave our old amigo the Cultural Ass., which was
obviously not the consulate but did seem to have some sort of official
connection with the U.S., if in name only. So after paying off the cab and
telling Doris to take a walk for a while or a swim or to visit the hotel
hairdresser and have something done to her split ends, Benjamin and I retraced
our steps the few blocks to the Cultural Ass. building.
    After a few words together regarding
procedure and a few more about which lies we would be using and which we
wouldn’t, and then a handing over from me to him of assorted business cards
(courtesy M. Martel, Stationer) up the stairs we went and in we went. The portero (“doorman-guardian”), seated at a minuscule desk in the lobby, informed us that
the rental agent for the building had an office on the premises; it was down
the hall and to the left. I noticed on the board listing the building’s
occupants that the U.S. Cultural Ass. was on the third piso.
    The agent turned out to be a
diminutive hombre sporting a spotless white guayabera and what looked
suspiciously like a classic shiner, which he was unsuccessfully attempting to
hide behind a huge pair of shades.
    We presented ourselves—Sr. Blackman
and Sr. Keith. We presented our calling cards; mine read “V. Blackman,”
followed by a nonexistent address but a real-