Chapter 2
Mister Two-Forty’s got at least sixty pounds on me. Fifty-eight and a half of it’s muscle, and most of that’s on his biceps and his chest. He’s tan the way golfers get, with the little stripe at his sleeve that says he’s got shoulders like snowballs. His hair is sprinkled with memories of chestnut, but he hasn’t been able to check the “brown” hair color box at the DMV for a decade. His mischievous face is boyish, but smilers can only stay so smooth. If he hasn’t had fifty birthdays it’s cuz he was born on February 29th. One of those guys where you think to yourself, I hope I look that good when I’m his age, knowing it’s a long shot considering you got ten years to go and you haven’t looked that good since your twenties.
Which isn’t to say I look that bad. I get half a smile and a raised bottle of Loro Locofrom across the bar, which I return with a friendly-enough wink and a companionable quaff before I look away. The window in my rented living room looks directly down the hill and across a gully of parrot-peppered trees to the harbor, and I’d spent half an hour this morning with my coffee watching a boat the size of my hometown drop anchor and send a series of motorboats ashore. Granted, he’s farther afield than most cruise passengers venture, and is in fact the first I’ve seen stray from the main streets of town, but I ambled down the hill tonight for a couple of beers and to listen to Carlotta work the jukebox, not to the story of how some Midwestern middle schooler’s hot dad swung an unbelievable last-minute discount on his family’s Christmas cruise.
The bar’s not exactly jammed, but it’s bumpin’, and visual distractions are no problem. I could watch Milton behind the bar all night, for one thing. Could and have. Of the endless parade of sons and sons-in-law and cousins who adhere to a complicated schedule of cooking, waiting tables, tending bar, and lounging around seemingly designed to ensure a minimum of ten family members in the bar at any given time, Milton is not only the sexiest and shirt-openest, but also the most eager to give away free beer, which quickly cemented me as a devoted fan. He speaks a spectacularly colloquial brand of Spanish that prevents me from understanding more than ten percent of what he says, but that sure doesn’t stop him from recounting long and apparently hilarious stories every time he shakes my hand welcome or slaps my back goodbye.
His sister Carlotta knows exactly what pieces to push, jiggle, and turn to loosen up the jukebox so she can dance all night on the same one-balboa coin. She’s in a merengue mood tonight, and her boy Elvis Crespo is on heavy rotation. The air is thick with horns, drums, and backup singers, but she slices through it on rolling hips and teetering heels, as happy to swirl around the nearest of her cousins as she is to sway across the floor with her fantasies of whirling, with snap-wristed flair, in and out of the arms of Elvis himself.
Mister Two-Forty is the only person in the bar I haven’t seen at least three nights a week for the last few weeks. While the regulars eat, dance, banter, and booze, he’s leaned back in his aluminum chair with his hands crossed over his broad, flat belly, taking it in. He’s unhurried, unworried about his ceviche. When he does look away from Carlotta, it’s not toward the swinging doors to the kitchen, but rather toward the bar, appraising melon-rumped Milton in his tell-all linen pants. He catches me catching him and throws me a wink. Not bad, eh? That explains why he didn’t tow his wife and Two-Forty Junior up the hill with him, I figure; I laugh when I nod my agreement across the room.
As Carlotta swirls by, she sets another Loro on my little table. She loves dancing with me—well, teaching me to dance. She says I’m better than I think I am. I tell her I couldn’t be worse—but she knows I’ve gotta be at least four beers in before I’ll get up, and it takes at least one shot to unlock my hips. I don’t think of myself as rigid and self-conscious, at least I never used to, but apparently my long line of Russian and Finnish ancestors were not of the booty-shaking variety. I vaguely remember attempting the Macarena at an uncle’s wedding, and my grandmother was real big on Lawrence Welk reruns on PBS, but otherwise I hadn’t exactly been raised up by a band of dancing fools. Had it ever piped out of the radio in her Town Car, my mother would surely have taken The Rhythm Is Gonna Get You as a War of the Worlds-style threat and sped home to bar the door against such tomfoolery.