Angels in Heaven

town
please.
    “Is he always this hard to meet?” I
said.
    “Yep,” Jeff said.
    “I wonder why,” I said. “Fear of
crowds mayhap?”
    “Probably fear of fuzz,” Sara said.
    “Perhaps he’s merely a man who values
his privacy,” Benny said. “Much like you, Vic.”
    “Oh really?” I said, surprised. I
didn’t know I valued my privacy all that much, maybe ten bucks’ worth, but
that’s all.
    Jeff kept his silence on the subject,
but he rattled on about everything else under the sun, including girls, boats, Costa Rica, and how to avoid the runs in hot climates. Wash your hands a lot is what he
said. His monologue continued until the cabby deposited us at the port. Jeff
asked him if he could find something to do for an hour or so, then he could
take us back to Cancún. The driver said there was not the slightest problem and
see you later. He took off one way, we took off the other, down to the narrow
beach, where I washed my hands thoroughly, and then out a wooden pier past a
few old-timers and some kids who were fishing. At the far end some enterprising
local had erected a bamboo hut out of which he sold drinks and last week’s
tortillas and rented fishing rods; he also had a couple of leaky-looking
rowboats for hire.
    So we sat on a bench on the seaward
side of the hut and waited. The crescent-shaped port area looked busy, at least
to a landlubber’s eyes. Two commercial vessels of a fairly good size were
unloading at the pier next to ours, and sailboats were doing what sailboats do,
and down at the public beach a handsome stripling was giving a windsurfing
lesson to a plump lady who’d had too much sun the day before. Every once in a
while a motor boat pulling a water-skier arced across the bay in front of us.
Jeff pointed out a fiberglass-hulled boat off to our left that he said was
something like his, only on his the cabin was farther aft and that his wasn’t a
stem-dragger.
    “Nor is Sara’s,” I said.
    Time passed.
    More time passed.
    Finally I said, “Jeff, being hard to
meet is one thing, but this is ridiculous. Are you sure he’s coming, or should
I just forget about him and work on my tan?”
    “Relaxez-vous,” said Jeff. “He’s comin’.”
So I immediately relaxe’d and got up to buy soda pops all round, spying, as I
did so, someone who looked suspiciously like Alfredo flimsily disguised as a
fisherman, back near the beginning of the pier. I regained my seat on the bench
beside Benny without saying anything.
    A few minutes after that, one of
those boats that look like they are made out of rubber tires, and probably are,
with an engine stuck on the back (or stem), and which had been meandering
lazily back and forth in the bay changed directions and began heading straight
for us, but not before I’d detected or thought I’d detected sunlight reflecting
from some brightly polished surface such as the lenses of a pair of highly
powered navy binoculars. I suppose it could have been from a sardine tin.
    The boat pulled up smartly at the
foot of the pier right below us; the pilot cut the motor, lashed his craft
securely to one of the wooden supports, then speedily climbed the few rungs of
a small ladder I hadn’t noticed, doffed the worn captain’s cap that was the
only other garment he was wearing aside from a bleached-out set of once-blue
denim cutoffs, took a beautiful conical seashell out of a pocket, and presented
it to Sara with a mock bow.
    “Foah the ladah,” he said. “A Conus
delessertii, moah commonly known as Sozon’s cone.” (My attempt to try and
reproduce his “honey-chile” accent stops here.)
    “Muchas gracias,” said Sara.
    “Cap’n Dan, I presume,” I said.
    “The one and only,” he said, with a
brief but wide grin of whiter than white teeth. “Howdy, Jeff.” Jeff gave him
one of his rib-crushing embraces.
    “V. (for Victor) Daniel,” I said. “My
associates B. (for Benny) and S. (for Sara).” We took a minute to size each
other up. What I saw was a man pretty much Jeff’s physical opposite, as Dan was
short, wiry, and almost completely hairless except for a quarter of an inch of
blond crewcut. His eyes were small and blue; his ears tucked in neatly close to
his head. He was sunburned almost black except for the tattooed bits—mermaids
on each upper arm, and crossed anchors and skull and crossbones below. And, not
least, strap hinges tattooed on the inside of both arms right where they bent.
I made a mental note to remind myself to ask