I jump into a ragtag assortment of clothes and race out the door.
Multiple voices scream in Spanish through the shadows of the open-air bar. Farther away a male voice yells, “Shut the fuck up, Shrödinger!”
After falling on my ass vaulting up the porch stairs, I slog over to Auntie M’s unit. The light’s on, but I can’t make out if anyone’s home. A tentative knock. “Uh, hello? Anybody there?” Silence. Then, frenetic breathing and a female scream.
What the fuck am I doing? Stepping back from the door, I shift my weight and deliver something that feels like if Chuck Norris taught Tweety Bird how to deliver karate kick. “Ow. Fuck!” I’m bouncing around in awkward circles on one foot and holding my throbbing toes when Auntie M screams. “Es unlocked. Remember?”
Oh, yeah. Turning the handle, I burst in. Auntie M’s panicked, wet as an otter with a white towel wrapped around her, holding a curling iron like a dagger.
She stammers, “Alguien…Eh-someone is in mi baño!”
What the hell?
Double dammit. Tossing down the piece of used tissue stuck to my hand, I look around, full of adrenaline. There’s a clothes iron in the closet. That’ll do! I rush over and brandish the iron-like overweight brass knuckles, before its cord slaps smartly against my left leg. “Ow!”
Time to be a man. My heart pounds as I rush into the bathroom, ready for battle.
“¡Cuidado!” Auntie M’s voice trails behind me.
Auntie M follows me in, ready to curl our intruder’s hair to the death, but no one’s there.
She points at the slats in the ceiling. “Aquí.”
I squint, trying to make out a figure. “You sure?”
“Sí. I saw these eyes.”
Somebody’s using the water heater room as their private pervert’s nest? I shudder at the thought of Auntie M taking a soothing shower, then looking up and locking eye-to-eye with a twitchy-faced reprobate tugging on his joystick. Jesus.
I rush to the living room. More voices outside, in Spanish and English. The stairs to the pervert’s nest must be out back.
With the reflexes of a mildly retarded jungle cat, I snatch Auntie M’s curling iron with my right hand and pull back the clothes iron like I’m getting ready to play Mike Tyson’s ‘Punch Out’ in a low-rent fashion salon.
Taking a deep breath. “I’m going in!”
“You means out?”
I think about it, then shrug. “Whatever.”
An explosion rattles my fillings and knocks both of us down. The hotel grounds appear to be awash in a pulsing, magical glow. I poke my head out the front door. The property next door, ‘Casa Serenity’, is engulfed in flames. The Peruvian familia rushes past me, mom and dad desperately dragging their offspring in tow like fleeing war refugees.
“We’re getting the fu — “ I turn to Auntie M.
She’s already packing her suitcases.
Looking down at my white-knuckled fist gripping the curling iron, I mumble. “Here, take this.”
She snatches it from me.
I turn, then hesitate. “Oh, and make sure to get the little bottles of shampoo.”
She zips up her smaller suitcase. One more to go. “¿Qué?”
I hold up my thumb and index finger like I’m sizing a shot glass. “The little shampoos and conditioners. We’re getting even.”
She hoists her other suitcase onto the bed, then looks at me like I should be put to sleep. “What es wrong with you? Es like you thrives on the loco.” She stuffs in more clothes from the closet and zips up the suitcase. “Where es you going?”
Giving a bold thumbs-up, I lift the clothes iron like a medieval mace. “Don’t you worry. I can take care of myself. I’ve got a mind like a steel crap. . . uh, trap.” I point to the bathroom like a man possessed. “Just get the shampoos and stay calm. It’s a Gringo thing.”
I bolt out and feel the heat of the flames against my face. People are screaming from the ‘Casa Serenity’ conflagration next door, but with the hotel grounds cloaked in black, acrid smoke, I can’t tell what the hell is going on. With one side of my brain coolly reciting This is stupid. and the other yelling Fuck yeah! I jump off the patio and start running, flicking falling embers off my arms.
Past the mermaid at the bar, I slow down, looking out the corners of my eyes for signs of movement.
“Fuck you, you fucking cock-a-roach! Waaaaak!” The parrot buzzes just past my face and flies away into the night sky.
“Shit!” Surprised, my grip gives way, sending the lethal clothes iron crashing onto my foot. “Ow!”
“Arg!” The familiar guttural voice. “Leavin’ so soon?”
A lit tiki torch outlines Pirate John’s silhouette. With my arm covering my nose and mouth from the smoke, I limp forward into the breach.
He’s shitfaced, sitting unsteadily on a bamboo stool with a joint wedged between his lips and cradling a shotgun. He’s snorted so many powdered donuts his face looks like an addled caricature of a kabuki actor. A rocket launcher lies on the artificial mini-putt turf behind him.
“I wouldn’ ‘ear a it. Ma lil’ party is jus’ beginnin’.”
A flickering glow. I wipe the floating orange-yellow embers away from my face, catching a glimpse of the palm tree above us. Its fronds have burst into flames.
Pirate John points his cleft chin to a bowl on the table. “Wan’ sum Ceviche?” He belches a guttural laugh..
Wait? Wasn’t his eyepatch on the other side this morning?
His crooked smile gives way to a sad clown frown, bursting into a sobbing fit. “Jus’ got back from da vets. Turns out da Miss whiskers is 1/16th lezbeen.”
The shotgun accidentally fires, jolting us both. “Arggghh!”
I want to back away, but my feet are frozen, both from fear and a bad bunion. This is it. I’m trapped liked a shithouse rat.
Dropping the weapon, he seizes at a fifth of Jack Daniels, lifting it off the table with his hooks, and pressing it to his lips. Before his first gulp, a hook cracks the bottle and it explodes on his lap. “Fuck! Oh Lawd, I shoulda seen dis a comin’. She’s par’ Scorpio ’n’ par’ Calico ’n’ anyone wit’ a whit a sense ‘bout pet astro-ology knows they are da wildest of da animal lovers.”
Pirate John gazes in anguish at the smoky stars, then starts singing a happy little ditty that sounds like it was ripped from a 1950s ad for extra-whitening toothpaste or an improved hemorrhoid cream.
“Molero. Molero. ‘ow you played ‘a’ mean bolero. But if catch ya’ fuckin’ ma’ wife agan I’m a-gonna rip ya’ guts out by da’ tree, split ya’s face wide open and cuts off ya’ fookin’ baaaaaalls.”
A voice from over by the ‘Serenity By the Sea’. “Goddammit Shrödinger! I’m gonna fucking kill you!”
Pirate John’s unfazed. “Na’ ya’ won’!”
His anti-Molero dirge keeps going, after expending his entire genital mutilation arsenal he starts doing combos such as bludgeoning while burning off.
Not an entirely bad performance, really. It was a shame I couldn’t make it to the last stanza, but Auntie M texted that our ‘TUK TUK esta here!’. All good songs must come to an end.
I make my way through the haze to the heavy front gate, when something brushes past my legs. The blur of a terrified Miss Whiskers darts past, followed by a shotgun blast from the bar patio.
What’s done is done. Coughing from the smoke, I pass the burning pirate effigy out front and see Auntie M waving me down from inside the tuk tuk parked in the gravel.
Climbing aboard, I pull my t-shirt collar over my mouth and nose and watch the embers fall around us as the brilliant-white flames from the fire bounce up and down with each pothole.
Auntie M snaps a pic on her cell phone, then looks at me. “You okay?”
I nod. “Yeah. You?”
The Queen looks at me, then at the tumult of the hotel workers trying to fight the inferno with tiny water buckets. “I’m quite well. Gracias, Mist-ah Dougito.”
A spectral, orange glow dances over Auntie M’s face. “You was right this times.”
I spit out an ember. “That’s a first.”
She looks back at the bonfire. “Even with the bugs. Even with my brother. Let’s go to Iquitos.”
“Really?”
We turn to each other.
“Claro. What else could goes wrong?”
An antiquated firetruck wheels past us on the narrow road, its ladder tearing off the side of a hotel gate.
Our hands gently clasp as we laugh. The cursing and chaos of the pyre fades in the distance. A brief, blissful moment, before she flicks a burning ember on her shoulder and breaks the reverie. Auntie M sighs, then daintily pulls out a roll of baby wipes, offering me one.
“Would you like to wipe yourself off, Mist-ah Dougito?”
I reach for her hand, wiping ash off my arms and face as I continue looking at the fading light. She pulls out a couple more wipes and starts cleaning the ash off her pink hard-shell luggage cradled on her lap.
“Alls this muck. I must clean. . . ”
She chuckles as she catches me looking at her. “. . . As’sid’u’ous’ly.”
Hope you enjoyed it.
Thanks for the read.
Cheers
Glad you enjoyed it.
Cheers