Angels in Heaven

him who his tattoo artist was.
Wouldn’t Evonne be surprised when she got her first sight of them as I disrobed
to slip into something more comfortable. I might get the back of my knees done
as well.
    And what he saw was six feet seven
and a quarter inches of male splendor, albeit studded with the occasional scar,
burnt patch, bullet-wound pucker, dent, and old stitch mark, which, like a
beautiful woman’s one small birthmark on an otherwise flawless face, merely
served as an alluring—nay, intriguing—contrast to the overall perfection. At
least that’s what he would have seen had I, like him, been vain enough to walk
around in a pair of shorts little bigger than a weightlifter’s cache-sexe.
    “Jeffrey, a word, please,” Dan said
when we’d finished eyeballing each other. They strode out of earshot, then Dan
came back and Jeff went off on a little amble down the pier. Dan squatted down
on his heels in front of us but in profile— so he could keep one eye out to
sea, I guessed.
    “So what’s on your mind, Victor?”
    “A sea cruise,” I said, “is what is
sort of on my mind. A healthy sea cruise.”
    “Where to?”
    “Anywhere but here,” I said.
    “Here being Mexico, I take it,” Dan said.
    “You take it right.” I said.
    “Brown pelican,” he said as a large,
foolish-looking bird flapped by us and gave us the once-over. “Well. Anywhere
but south presents problems. Considerable problems. If you follow the coast all
the way up Mexico to, like, Matamoros, planning to walk across to Brownsville, first of all it takes forever and second of all you’ve got continual hassles
from both the Mexicans and the U.S. Coast Guard.”
    “Yeah,” I said. “Big Jeff mentioned
something on that subject.”
    “And it is a long run, too, to Miami
or Key West,” he said, “unless you hop off somewhere like the Dry Tortugas,
where something really fast is waiting for you. I doubt you particularly want
to go to Cuba, and both the Caymans and Jamaica have their problems, or to put
it another way, I have in the past had my problems with both of them.”
    “For shame,” I said.
    “So,” he said. “That leaves south,
meaning that way.” He gestured off to our right with one thumb.
    “And what’s there?” Benny asked.
    “Belize is what’s there,” Cap’n Dan
said. “Frigate bird,” he said, pointing up at a long-winged, forked-tailed
feathered friend who was trying to steal a fish dinner right out of the mouth
of a gull. “Largest wing span in proportion to body weight of all species.”
    “Why doesn’t it catch its own fish?”
Sara asked. “Too lazy?”
    Dan grinned at her. “Not waterproof
enough,” he said. “If it gets too wet it sinks.”
    She gave him a disbelieving look. She
wasn’t the only one. “Belize,” I said. “Speak to me of Belize.”
    “Once British Honduras, now
independent,” he said. “Bounded on the north by dear old Mejico, the west by Guatemala, the east by the ocean, and the south by the never-was-British Honduras.”
    “Hmm,” I said. “Let me ask you this,
Cap’n Dan. Would it be possible for one to slip into Belize quietly some eve
without having to be bothered with all those utterly tiresome customs and
immigration formalities?”
    “More than possible,” Dan said.
“Extremely probable.” He stopped for a moment when the cantina owner emerged
from his hut to chuck a bowl of scraps into the water. “One has several
choices, one has. One could simply take a bus or drive down to Chetumal, last
town on the Mex side, and look around for an Indian guide there to take you up
the river until you can ford it. If this ‘one’ you keep referring to is more
than one—”
    “Four, actually,” I said.
    “Ah,” he said. “Then one of you
crosses legally into Belize, if that’s possible, and picks up a guide there
where it is both easier and safer, they tell me. Once in Belize, there’s a bus that goes to the capital, and from there you can even hop the mail boat as far
as Livingstone in Guatemala, if you’re crazy enough.”
    “I don’t know if I’m crazy about
fording that river,” I said. “I suppose that means the whole African Queen number, with leeches and barracudas and eels and they’re the good news. I don’t
know if Sara could take it.”
    “What a sissy,” said Sara.
    “Or,” Dan said, shifting his weight
slightly, “you find some amiable seadog with a suitable boat and he drops you
off on the Island of Belize, where you wait