Angels in Heaven

we
slapped palms a couple of times and grinned at each other in the gloom.
    After a moment I said reflectively,
“That was a fun time, when the guard came through the door bringing the door
with him.”
    “Sure was,” he said, switching the
flash on and off a few times to see if it worked, which it did. He shined it on
Sara.
    “Sleeping like a babe,” I said.
“Dreaming of Gorgeous George, hanging on behind him as they cruise off into the
sunset at a hundred and twenty miles an hour.” I rummaged around in the smaller
of my suitcases until I found the fake leather bag in which I kept my toiletries,
and rummaged in that until I came up with a vial of aspirin and some Band-Aids
for Sara when she woke up, which I hoped she’d do soon, because when people
who’ve bumped their heads don’t wake up soon, then you worry.
    A few minutes later the truck swerved
to one side then stopped. A door opened and slammed shut.
    “Billy,” I said bitterly. “Gone to
see how his contraband that is illegal is making out. He’ll probably come back
with half of Chichén Itzá, including the well.”
    We waited.
    “He was a fascinating character,”
Benny said after a while, keeping his voice low in case of passersby who might
be justifiably startled at the spectacle of talking close-weaves.
    “Who was?” I said, doing likewise.
    “Georgeous George,” he said. “The
original one.”
    “Wasn’t he a wrestler?”
    “Was he ever. He more or less
invented the wrestler you love to hate. He was a practicing psychiatrist who’d
wrestled in college, and he figured out that back in those days the guy you’d
most love to hate would be some long-haired, dyed-blond, highly effeminate
sissy type all in gold kitsch who went into an absolute snit if anyone dared to
muss his golden tresses.”
    “I, too, get fairly aroused if anyone
messes up my tresses,” I said. “Except Evonne—she can do what she wants with
them, including a perm for all I care.” Funny what you talk about sometimes,
like when you’re waiting for the federales to collar you and throw you
in solitary for the rest of your days.
    “What happened to him finally?”
    “He became a professional wrestler,
he made a lot of money, then he went mad.”
    “Me too if Billy keeps us waiting any
longer,” I said.
    We heard the cab door open, then
close again.
    “Thank God,” I said. “Jorge, do your
stuff, get movin’!”
    We bounced off.
    “And so we say good-bye to exotic
Mérida,” Benny intoned dreamily, “where the old meets the even older, land of
the deer and the puma, the pheasant and the dove.”
    “You’ve been reading Rod McKuen
again,” I said.
    We bounced onward. We laughed a lot.
It was beginning to sink in that maybe we had gotten away with it after all,
and it was a heady feeling. Sara woke up about a half-hour into the trip. She
wanted to know why it was dark. I told her. She claimed she felt fine, aside
from a headache, so I gave her three aspirins with some water and a piece of
chocolate I found, and convinced her that no matter how fine she felt, she
should take it easy for a while, and if she felt at all faint or started seeing
double, to let me know. She said I’d be the first in line, and stop fussing. I
said I wasn’t fussing, I was merely showing the compassion due to any human
being I ran across who was bleeding all over the carpet. Then I applied a
couple of Band-Aids as best I could over her cut.
    I filled her in on what had taken
place while she was sleeping on the job; she of course wanted all the details,
and as we had nothing but time, I gave them to her, trying successfully, I
believe, not to take too much of the credit for the success of the operation
for myself. I asked her how she got KO’d. She said she’d tell me if I told her
how we got phone calls meant for the real Cul. Ass.
    “There is a state of mind,” I said to
her with appropriate solemnity. “We in the Zen Buddhists’ hierarchy have a name
for it, but we are not allowed to speak it aloud in front of neophytes.”
    “Baloney is the name I call it,” she
said.
    “Feeling your old self again, I see,”
I said. “This state of mind, of semitrance, achievable only after years of
vigils, self-flagellation and meditation—”
    “And shootin’ the shit,” she said.
    “—is one wherein one is able to pluck
brilliant and imaginative ideas out of a sort of information ribbon, an
ethereal data bank circling above our globe just this side of the