On Mexican Time by Tony Cohan

Author:Tony Cohan [Cohan, Tony]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-56799-4
Publisher: Crown
Published: 2000-03-15T00:00:00+00:00

I lie awake in the dark on our new cama matrimonial con cajones (nice Spanish wordplay: a marital bed with “drawers”—the word cajones dangerously, or fittingly, one letter away from cojones, “balls”). Masako is asleep, exhausted from the day's work. I'm still on L.A. time, two hours earlier. I feel little tiredness, only tension, uneasiness.

I sit up, fumble for a book of matches, light a small candle by the bed. The house is full of candles, velas, she bought at the funeral parlor on Calle Mesones for power outages, a regular feature of San Miguel life. I blow out the wax match. On the matchbox cover is Chac Mool, the Mayan god who reclines on his elbows, like me—though I don't feel very godlike right now.

We've ruined our Arcadia, I think. We'd been happy here; now we are irritable, we quarrel. Misgivings flood me. I wish we were back in our simple room at the Ambos Mundos above the empty swimming pool.

Candlelight illuminates the ceiling's recesses—the dark pine beams eighteen feet up, the unpainted bricks between them. It's a dramatic colonial room, its height allowing mind and eye to range unconstrained. Looking up into the space becalms me.

Along the north end of the room, twin sets of windows run the full height of the wall. Outside, white moonlight splashes the patio where mounds of cement harden on the slate. I can see up into the avocado tree, and the domed cupola atop the casita's second story. A night bird sings—a brief, tweeting question, repeated.

Suddenly: “Thwock!”

I sit up, startled. It sounded like a gun going off.

“Somebody's in the patio,” I whisper. Mentally I inventory a defense. Knife? Candle? The interior doors are unlocked. Where to run? Who to call for help?

Masako stirs. “It's just one of those hard avocados hitting the stones,” she murmurs. “They do it all night.” She turns away, pulls the sheet up.

I lie back on the pillow, feeling foolish. Church bells wash over the house, soft and reverberant. New neighborhood, new church, new bells. It must be straight up on some hour. Eleven? No, there's the twelfth bell. Midnight.

I lie back on the pillow. We'll deal with problems in the morning, mañana. Forget ahorita. I blow out the candle, close my eyes.

I hear a scraping sound nearby, like rustling paper. I sit up, relight the candle. A dark brown cockroach, bigger than my thumb, freezes in the light a few feet from the bed. I stretch out my arm slowly, fishing for my sandal. The cucaracha skitters crazily across the tiles, nestles against the wall.

I stand up, take a single barefoot step, and flatten him with my huarache.

“La cucaracha, la cucaracha, ya no puede caminar.”

Now you can't walk anymore. Tomorrow I'll go to Lucha's pharmacy and get that Chinese chalk she sells. Draw a white line, the roaches eat it and die.

Keeping the candle lit, I lie on my side gazing at the floor, listening to the night's sounds, on cockroach alert.

It's either them or us. I'm ready to do battle for the house.

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