Читать книгу Give It To Me - Ana Castillo - Страница 16

10

One day she got a call from an editor at Greene & Gaye Scholarly Publishing in London. They knew Palma Piedras from having translated a few César Vallejo poems for an anthology on twentieth-century Latin American poets. Would she be willing to translate the text in a coffee-table book on new Spanish artists? Spanish to English? Sí, que yes. You had to go with the flow as a Recessionista. Hopefully you weren’t being pulled down the river but upstream and one day you’d wake up from the nightmare and tell yourself it was okay to make plans for your life again. They paid decent. It was a start back to financial independence or at least paying a few bills. A week later la Miss Resourceful, practical when she wasn’t being extravagant, had a copy of the Spanish version of the book along with other materials. She usually worked on the translations at night when the heat went down and she could think.

Early one Saturday morning the obnoxious racket of a chainsaw and a lot of male yelling back and forth woke her. It came from next door. She knew her neighbors, avid golfers, were always gone on Saturdays. Palma threw on the flimsy, thigh-high, cheetah-print robe she’d bought for Chicago and went to the backyard. (She had thought leopard before but Palma wasn’t a zoologist. It could go either way.) Pulling over a short ladder she peeked over the six-foot-high adobe wall. Two small men were up in her neighbor’s mulberry like a pair of spider monkeys. One was holding a power saw as they prepared to knock off a big branch. The jefe below gave directions. A couple of others were carting wheelbarrows of gravel to lay out and flagstones for steps. One lugged a huge sack of what else? Mulch. Someone might’ve been planting corn while another hammered out the calendar. It was a scene out of Apocalypto. Does the owner know you’re doing that? Palma called out. Female sighting. Production halted. Yes, el Jefe said, or rather, jeah. El Sr. Armijo fue a jugar el golf, one in the tree shouted.

Come by, a couple of you, she said, when you are done. If you want to earn a few extra today. I have work for you, she said. Palma got off the ladder and went back to bed. Late that afternoon when two showed up through the backyard gate, el jefe and Talking Spider Monkey, the sun was still high and aching for a sacrifice. She was lying on a lawn chair sunbathing in a bikini. Her top was off. All the tools are there, she said, indicating with her nose toward the shed. The hedges need trimming. Ursula had kept up with the rose bushes. Palma loved roses but not when still alive. Thorns, pruning, watering. That was what FTD was for.

The two spoke low as they picked up the clippers and sheers. Do you want us to mow? The chief said. Palma lifted the towel that was over her face covered with SPF-50 sunscreen lotion and shook her head as if annoyed. (Actually they did annoy her but there were some things one had to put up with to get certain things done.) More low talk and then Chief said, I’ll go, señora. He can take care of whatever you need. He left and she lay there listening to a plane go by overhead and the decisive snip-snip of the spider monkey at work on the hedges trying to think if she ever saw a Dateline mystery about a woman being mutilated in her backyard by a dehydrated Mayan. She was baked on one side and as she turned herself over, she slipped out of the bottom. Her booty was almost white since it hadn’t seen sun since the summer before. It was as ripe and fuzzy as two peach halves. Palma stretched out her legs so that her feet hung over each end of the lawn chair.

Spider Monkey hauled off all the cut leaves and branches and took them to the trash. They did a thorough job those Mesoamericans, she thought. They had built Tikal. Some believed they’d come to earth on spaceships. Rodrigo and Palma once took a trip to Ecuador to see the Nasca Lines. They boarded an eggbeater and were taken over a large expanse of desert or semi-desert, which everyone knew was one of the aliens’ favorite places to land, and saw their humungous drawings. One, in fact, was of a spider monkey.

The sunbather was dozing off with depleted ozonosphere deadly rays roasting her flip side when she felt a pair of coarse paws slowly moving over her back in a pretense of a massage. Foreplay. They were rougher than bark, and along with the hurt the sun was doing to her skin, Palma cringed. The massage stopped and she heard sneaky activity like a zipper going down and pants being dropped.

The neighbors on the other side were out, hickory smoke and kids splashing in the kiddy pool. If they heard Palma, they would surely pop their bobble heads over the wall to invite her over. She didn’t know why Ursula had made friends with them, most supreme of Mulchdom. Turkey patties from Sam’s that came in a lifetime supply and box wine.

He lifted his random employer by her hips, straddled the chair, and stuck his weenie in from that slant where she could feel it. Sonofaprimate, it felt magically delicioso, wiggling around in there like a leprechaun at the end of a rainbow. The most earnest of elvin topping the morning to you. The heat on Palma, her ass in the air, Hank from next door yelling at his kids, birds chirping (she liked birds, just not eating their embryos), it was a good time. Slowly, slowly, sweet peloncillo going in, out, wiggle-wiggle. His cell phone rang, killing Palma’s concentration. Her interior gallery show was featuring an ivory cameo with a silhouette profile of Pepito, which had her about ready to come. The monkey’s cell had a loud banda ringtone. Hay viene la migra . . . The breakfast sausage removed from the warm oven, she covered her head with the towel. Even Palma’s scalp felt sunburned. Sí, sí, ya voy pa’lla, Spider Monkey said to his monkey lady. She could hear her screeches, irate over the fact that he had not shown up with the rest on the truck. He clicked off and stuck in the Bob Evans link to finish up. It had gone south from talking to his wife. His naked lunch gave a low phony moan to encourage him and it grew hard. She did not count on the monkey giving out a victorious yelp and then a whimper as he pulled out and came on her butt. Ew. Take that home to your wife and propagate, chango cholo. Silence next door. Then whispering or maybe it was patties sizzling on the grill. Palma Piedras was getting hungry. The spider monkey scrambled back into his scruffy jeans and mumbled something. If he thought he was getting paid for trimming her hedges he was mucho mistaken. No, he was apologizing for having fucked her. As if he had been a guest and dropped his pupusa on the carpet, he gently took the towel off Palma’s head and wiped off her warm ass. She looked up and told him as softly as she could to scram. What? He said, putting his diminutive monkey ear to her lips. Vete, cabrón, she said, before my husband gets home and catches you. Mi marido te mata.