Warriors in Paradise Read online

  “The fourth level has my bedroom and a guest bedroom, where Valentina will be staying. As I am a gentleman, there will be no need to lock the connecting door. The next level down, the fifth level, has the kitchen, living room, dining room, poolroom, and my mother’s bedroom. Below that, there are three very-little-used guest rooms, a tool shed, a swimming pool, a bar, a little beach, a jetty, and a sea pool. From top to bottom, there are 350 steps.

  “The house was built in the fifties by a famous Mexican comedian. He was very talented and liked smoking pot, to the extent that he built a chimney to ventilate the room where he smoked his Acapulco Gold.

  “The house is located in old Acapulco, or what they politely call Traditional Acapulco. We are in the area where artists and politicians would get together during what is still called the Golden Age of Acapulco. We are just two houses away from where Jacqueline and John F. Kennedy stayed for their honeymoon in 1953.

  “My mother became the owner twenty years ago, when she took it in lieu of payment for a long, protracted law suit against some wealthy local politician. And that’s all, folks,” I said with a sigh.

  “It must be very expensive to maintain,” said Valentina.

  “Yes, it is. That is why it looks in so dire need of repairs. But, one of these days, I will get my big sexy rear in gear, and we will restore it to its original glory.”

  We left the other guests in their rooms, and I walked down the stairs to show Valentina her room. “Valentina,” I said, “please feel at home. If you need anything, just call me. I am next to you.”

  As I was leaving, she took hold of my arm, got close to me, and said, “Thank you,” while reaching behind my head with her right hand and kissing me full on the lips. She tasted good.

  It was a short but sweet kiss, but, as I didn’t want to push my luck, I withdrew and walked away to my room. I said, “I will see you down in the dining room in twenty minutes?”

  “Great,” she said. “I will see you there.”

  I went to my room feeling childish, cowardly, and stupid. I should have probably been a little more forceful and assertive. I felt she liked me, perhaps as much as I liked her. Would she have been insulted or upset if I had pushed things further? Probably yes, and it would be better to let someone as strong willed as Valentina take the initiative.

  I took my clothes off and went into the bathroom. As I was taking a long and glorious shower, I opened my eyes to see the most glorious sight human eyes had ever seen: Valentina in her birthday suit, watching me with a smile on her face. There was a God, after all, watching for me in heaven!

  Shower heaven

  I got out of the shower and encircled her with my arms, lifting her up to my waist and kissing her long and passionately. My fullness found its way into her without guidance. I was into her deep, moist, and hot interior. We were completely connected. I walked her to my bed and lovingly placed her below me without letting go.

  I started kissing her eyes, lips, nose, chin, ears, neck, the inside of her elbows, her fingers, her lovely brown nipples. She started trying to move her waist, but I held her down with my weight, pressing her against the mattress. She started moaning. I could feel the contractions within. With both my hands, I grabbed her cheeks, and, in a sudden movement, I turned her on top of me and let her go. My hands were already on her breasts, back, ears, thighs. She started to move with increasing speed, sliding up and down aggressively on my manhood. We were sweating. Our bodies slid easily against each other. I had never had sex like that: tender yet explosive. We came at the same time. She suddenly looked at me, and her eyes clouded over as she fell on top of me, trembling, and I embraced her with incredible force.

  We were like that, breathing hard and caressing each other for at least fifteen minutes. I was lying on a sea of sweat and inner juices. She seemed oblivious.

  I heard Sandra shouting that the food was ready. “Santi, I even have some food for you. So come down before I change my mind.” I had absolutely no energy to respond.

  I heard Charlie, Caleb, Juliette, and Camille walk down the stairs.

  Valentina got hold of my face with her long fingers and said to me, “Amigo, after this, I need somebody to walk me to the shower, soap me, dry me, and dress me. I don’t trust my legs.”

  “Mi Cielo,” I responded, “and who is going to walk me? My legs too are all wobbly and shaky.”

  “OK,” she said, “we will help each other. But let us hurry up; I don’t want to start off on the wrong footing with Sandra.”

  I was happy to hear that. It sounded long term!

  Food and lies

  Ten minutes later, we were all sitting around the dining room table while the storm was pounding unmercifully on the bay. It was cold, but we were all scantily dressed, not letting go of the illusion of being in a tropical paradise.

  Sandra, as usual, had outdone herself. She had made pozole, a traditional soup from pre-Columbian times with several garnishes to pick from. The soup was hot and brothy. We all loaded it up quickly with shredded cabbage, sliced radishes, chopped avocados, chicharrón (pork rinds), cilantro, onions, lime wedges, and chile piquín.

  Everybody liked it. Charlie, as usual, ate more through his eyes, so he dusted his soup with several spoonfuls of chile piquín. His face got red, and he started to sweat profusely. I opened a bottle of red wine.

  Valentina said, “Beer goes better with pozole.”

  “Yes, you are right,” I said. “That’s what everybody says. But I say that whatever you like to drink goes better with whatever you like to eat.”

  “OK, Mr. Know-It-All. You do make a point.”

  Juliette and Camille asked for red wine, and so did Caleb. Charlie stuck to the beer, while Valentina asked, “Do you have white wine?”

  “Yes,” I said. “There are two bottles in the fridge.”

  We had just met, and we were already acting like a couple. It felt good. It felt normal.

  The three manly men went to the kitchen for a third serving while the girls remained at the table sipping wine and watching the storm. There is something wholesome and comforting about a storm raging outside while you are inside in a cozy environment surrounded by people you feel comfortable with. I imagine it’s a primal feeling going back to when we were cave dwellers, sitting in a cave with the family and tribe members around a fire, with a full belly, while the bad weather raged outside.

  The electricity went off. It was already getting dark. I asked the girls if they would like to stay over. Taxis would be difficult to come by. “If you want, I could try calling one, but it is going to take a long time for it to get here and a long time to drive you to your hotels. I would suggest staying overnight, and tomorrow, during daytime, we can take you to your hotels.”

  Camille and Juliette readily agreed, while Valentina said she would like to call the hotel and leave a message for her dad. The landline was down, and the storm was interfering with the cellular signal. We could not make outside calls. For all intents and purposes, we were in the dark and incommunicado. We were back in a cave with the primal satisfaction of being inside among good company and good food.

  Sandra came out with two boxes of candles and flashlights. We lighted a few candles around the living-and-dining-room area.

  “What about playing a game?” I asked.

  “What kind of a game?” asked Juliette, who sat very close to Charlie.

  “We call it mentirosa,” I responded.

  “It is the lying game, or liar’s dice,” said Valentina. “We play with five poker dice in a leather cup, which we call cubilete. The dice go from ace to nine. A player starts by shaking the cup and bringing it down onto the table. He lifts the cup and peeks at the dice without revealing his hand to the other players. He can announce, ‘I have a pair of fives, or a full house of whatever.’ It does not matter whether he has that hand or not; bluffing is encouraged.

  “The next player to his right can call his bluff or believe him. If he calls him out, the original player mu
st open the cup and reveal his dice. If he has the hand he called, or a better one, he wins. The caller—the player who called him out—loses the round and has to take a sip of his drink, pay money, or whatever penalty we agree upon. If the player has a lower hand than he called, he loses and has to take the agreed penalty. The round is over, and the winner begins the next round of play.

  “If the player to his left believes him, he has to play the dice himself and announce something better than his predecessor. And so it goes, until one of the players calls the previous player a liar.”

  I was surprised. Valentina was as good a didactic explainer as she was a lover.

  I said, “I am sure you will get the hang of the game after the first couple of rounds. I propose that the penalty should be a shot of tequila. What say you?”

  “No way, José,” said Camille. “I could agree with a glass of wine, but not tequila. Too strong for me. You know the saying, ‘One tequila, two tequila, three tequila, floor.’”

  Charlie said, looking at Caleb and me, “Why don’t we drink tequila, and the women can drink whatever they want to drink?”

  I looked at Valentina. She nodded imperceptibly. I said, “Sounds good to me.”

  Everybody else agreed, and we started the game.

  The first couple of rounds, Valentina and I won with ease. However, suddenly, temperaments, charismas, personalities, and acting abilities started prevailing as everybody got more and more familiar with the game.

  The best liars by far were the women, and among the women, Camille was by far the best. She was born to the game. She had that oriental ability of inscrutability. Among the men, I was the most creative. I would call, “I have a triple,” when I had full house; or I would call a full house when I had only a pair. Caleb was the more believable. He, like Camille, was a natural-born liar—or a better actor, whichever way you want to see it. Made for each other! Charlie was Charlie. What you saw was what you got: a single block of American spirit—tall, strong, good looking, loyal, brave, and naïve. He just couldn’t bluff even if his life depended on it. Every time he tried to bluff, he was called out. At one point, Juliette grabbed his tequila shot and drank it in one go and then kissed him full on the lips while saying, “My poor baby.” Of course, Caleb and I were not so forgiving, filling his glass again, and in a stern-school-principal kind of voice, we said, “Drink, you loser.” But what Charlie lacked in bluffing abilities, he had twice over in drinking abilities—all those English and Irish genes tempered by centuries of mead, beer, and whiskey. He could easily drink us all under the table.

  Juliette said, “I’d rather be lucky than good.”

  I responded, “I’d rather be good than lucky, because you can be lucky once, twice, or three times, but you can be good all of the time.”

  Charlie turned to her and added, “Luck depends on conditions outside your control—on the weather, the position of the stars, and other esoteric and physical phenomena—while being good depends on you. I’d rather depend on me than on the gods of Olympus.”

  Juliette just looked at us and said with a big, sweet smile, “From now on, I want to be both.”

  We went to bed late and a little tipsy, accompanied by the sound of the storm and the ghost shadows thrown by the candles’ flames. None of us slept alone that night.

  A memorable day and a more memorable night.

  So there it was, as fortune would have it. Charlie and Caleb struck gold with the girls who had snubbed me, and I was with the girl who had led me to fight Charlie.

  Life is about balance: the joy and the pain, the good and the bad, the highs and the lows, the limes and the tequila…

  You can’t have sunshine without a little rain.

  Chapter 4: Independence Day Party

  Noon’s morning

  I woke up with an uneasy feeling of dread in the pit of my stomach. My first thought was that I had dreamed Valentina. She was not real. She was just a dream. I turned around and saw her breathing shallowly with a little smile on her lips. I felt relieved, but I couldn’t shake off the dark sense of foreboding.

  I was being stupid. Nothing terrible was going to happen. I kissed Valentina softly on her lips. I put on my university T-shirt, baggy shorts, and flip-flops and went down to an empty dining room.

  Even Sandra was very quiet that morning. She always had a sixth sense. It must have been the Indian in her. She could read the mood of the house.

  I had a sweet taste in my mouth, Valentina’s last kiss.

  It was ten o’clock.

  The rain was still falling at full force. I could see a nightmarish view of it hitting the ground and steam rising up. There were some infrequent glimpses of the sun, which, when they appeared, turned the sea to a platinum color and the rain into a billion silver arrows coming down from heaven.

  It was a cold day by Acapulco standards—about twenty-four degrees Celsius—but I was basking in the glow of yesterday’s memories, the morning’s sense of dread forgotten.

  I turned on the TV and listened attentively as the host of the news hour solemnly advised that Tropical Storm Manuel might be turning into a hurricane.

  I think the craziest months in the year in Acapulco are March and September. I was born in March, and I hoped I wouldn’t die in September. At least not this September, especially after meeting Valentina.

  Charlie and Caleb appeared next. They had these ridiculous grins on their faces. I guess the three of us looked somewhat silly, but it was so difficult not to be grinning in paradise found. We all knew that yesterday had been special. Nobody spoke a word. Our eyes did all the talking. After a couple of minutes of looking at one another, we started laughing.

  Charlie then shouted, “Yahooooo, what a night!” He added, “Fuck the sun; I love the rain!”

  The three of us started laughing again. Caleb, a man of few words, said, “Acapulco rocks!”

  As if by magic, Sandra appeared out of thin air, and, looking at us, she said, “You look like children at a candy store! Here are juice and coffee. I will wait for the girls before serving breakfast.”

  “Who mentioned breakfast? I’m famished,” said Valentina, coming down the stairs.

  “Oh my, what a crazy house,” said Sandra, walking back to the kitchen.

  Valentina pecked Charlie and Caleb on their cheeks and kissed me full on the mouth. She tapped Caleb’s shoulder, suggesting that he vacate the chair next to me. Hell, I thought, I am in trouble with this woman! She has claimed me, placed a flag in me: I was here first, he’s mine, mine. It felt nice to be her territory.

  Shortly after that, we heard the voices of Juliette and Camille before seeing their shapely legs come down the stairs and then make an entrance into the dining room.

  Breakfast in Paradise

  We all had this inner glow of fulfillment and self-satisfaction, of a mission well accomplished.

  As everybody found their seats around the table, Sandra appeared with a large plate of cut fruit with mangoes, papaya, and piña. We all dug in, and while Valentina, Charlie, Caleb, and I were squeezing the limes and dusting our fruit with chile piquín, Juliette and Camille asked, “What is that?”

  “This is something that you should try,” said Charlie.

  Camille was the first to lift her fork and grab a diced mango soaked in lime and dusted with chile from Caleb’s plate. As she tried it, she lifted her gaze from her plate and thoughtfully said, “This is good! We have a similar red pepper in Chinese cooking. What do you call this?”

  Caleb told her.

  Juliette said, “I don’t think I like the idea of chile on my fruit. It is like having chile for dessert, sweet and spicy hot. That is crazy!”

  Charlie turned and looked at her and then kissed her. He moved back and said, “Did you like that?”

  “Actually,” she said, “it doesn’t taste half bad at all.”

  We all started laughing.

  After the fruit, Sandra brought an immense plate of maize sopes, each covered with a thin bean pa
ste and topped by a slice of ham and a fried egg with grated melted cheese on top. She brought a separate plate of sliced tomatoes with provolone cheese in olive oil, dusted with oregano; a bowl with shredded lettuce; a bowl with sour cream; and a bowl with freshly chopped onion.

  Valentina and I went to the kitchen and brought back chipotle sauce, a mild green sauce for the unadventurous at heart, and a fresh pot of Veracruz coffee. Charlie, Caleb, and I had three sopes each, with slices of tomatoes, topped with lettuce, onion, and sour cream. Valentina, Camille, and Juliette had two sopes each with a few slices of tomato, provolone, and the rest of the toppings. We all had coffee, except Camille, who preferred chamomile tea. When it comes to food, I believe that the entire plate should be covered with food before you start to eat and that it is very poor manners not to have an empty plate when you finish. I was happy to see that Charlie and Caleb shared the same views.

  As we were finishing, the man of few words, Caleb, said in Spanish, “Esto es vivir!”

  ***

  We talked about the hurricane warning. I was a little concerned, and I told them that the confluence of hurricanes Ingrid in the Atlantic and Manuel in the Pacific was causing too much rain. I told them that we could expect flooding in Acapulco today and tomorrow.

  I asked my foreign guests, “Would you like to go to Mexico City or back to your own countries?”

  “What? You want to get rid of us so soon?” said Juliette in mock distress.

  “No, not at all! It is just that conditions here might get progressively worse. The roads might become flooded and unusable, the airport might close, food and water might become scarce. Look, I am just telling you this. You are welcome to stay here for as long as you want to. We have a large cistern with enough water for all of us for a whole week. We also have enough food and drink for several days.”