The Middleman and Other Stories Read Free

“He kills everything.” At least, that’s the drift.The language of Cervantes does not stretch around the world without a few skips in transmission. Eduardo’s litany includes crabs, the chemicals, the sulfurous pool, the dead birds and snakes and lizards.
    â€œYou have my promise,” Maria says. “It’s going to work out. Now I want you to go to your room, I want you to rest.”
    We hustle him into his room but he doesn’t seem to notice his surroundings. His body has gone slack. I hear the word Santa Simona, a new saint for me. I maneuver him to the cot and keep him pinned down while Maria checks out a rusty medicine cabinet.
    He looks up at me. “You drive
Doña
Maria where she goes?”
    â€œIf she wants me to, sure.”
    â€œEduardo, go to sleep. I’m giving you something to help.” She has water and a blue pill ready.
    While she hovers over him, I check out his room. It’s automatic with me. There are crates under the bed. There’s a table covered with oilcloth. The oilcloth is cracked and grimy. A chair by the table is a catchall for clothes, shorts, even a bowl of fruit. Guavas. Eduardo could have snuck in caviar, imported cheeses, Godiva candies, but it’s guavas he’s chosen to stash for siesta hour hunger pains. The walls are hung with icons of saints. Posters of stars I’d never have heard of if I hadn’t been forced to drop out. Baby-faced men and women. The women are sensual in an old-fashioned, Latin way, with red curvy lips, big breasts and tiny waists. Like Maria. Quite a few are unconvincing blondes, in that brassy Latin way. The men have greater range. Some are young versions of Fernando Lamas, some are in fatigues and boots, striking Robin Hood poses. The handsomest is dressed as a guerrilla with all the right accessories: beret, black boots, bandolier. Maybe he’d played Che Guevara in some B-budget Argentine melodrama.
    â€œWhat’s in the crates?” I ask Maria.
    â€œI respect people’s privacy,” she says. “Even a servant’s.” She pushes me roughly toward the door. “So should you.”
    * * *
    The daylight seems too bright on the patio. The bashed shells are on the tiles. Ants have already discovered the flattened meat of ocean crabs, the blistered bodies of clumsy toads.
    Maria tells me to set the table. Every day we use a lace cloth, heavy silverware, roses in a vase. Every day we drink champagne. Some mornings the Ransomes start on the champagne with breakfast. Bud owns an air-taxi service and flies in cases of Épernay, caviar, any damned thing his friends desire.
    She comes out with a tray. Two plates, two fluted glasses, chèvre cheese on a bit of glossy banana leaf, water biscuits. “I’m afraid this will have to do. Anyway, you said you weren’t hungry.”
    I spread a biscuit and hand it to her.
    â€œIf you feel all right, I was hoping you’d drive me to San Vincente.” She gestures at Bud Wilkins’s pickup truck. “I don’t like to drive that thing.”
    â€œWhat if I didn’t want to?”
    â€œYou won’t. Say no to me, I mean. I’m a terrific judge of character.” She shrugs, and her breasts are slower than her shoulders in coming down.
    â€œThe keys are on the kitchen counter. Do you mind if I use your w.c. instead of going back upstairs? Don’t worry, I don’t have horrible communicable diseases.” She laughs.
    This may be intimacy. “How could I mind? It’s your house.”
    â€œAlfie, don’t pretend innocence. It’s Ransome’s house. This isn’t
my
house.”
    I get the key to Bud’s pickup and wait for her by the bruised tree. I don’t want to know the contents of the crates, though the stencilling says “fruits” and doubtless the top layer preserves the fiction. How easily I’ve been recruited, when a bystander is all I wanted to be. The