It’s not every day you return to your hotel and find fifteen corpses floating in the pool.
The bees. Sometime after the ‘We are in their environment so don’t hurt them’ speech, the insects had all been mercilessly slaughtered. Well, almost all. One’s still clinging to life, buzzing a defiant left wing as it makes pathetic backstrokes in ever-tightening circles inside the jacuzzi’s chlorinated tomb.
Auntie M and I stare at the carnage, bemused at the bodies spinning on the ground like tops, while the ice cream in our cones melts on our hands.
Why the change of heart? My hardly-earned betting money is one of the Peruvian familia’s kids got a thrill playing too close to the ball of stingers. After that, the parents grabbed a couple of cans of Raid! and declared an insecticide. After all, there’s a hierarchy in all things in life, and the bees clearly flouted the golden rule: Thou shalt not fuck with the family vacation!
The horror of the carnage quickly wilts to irony after I look up at the sign above the pool hut:
“BE HAPPY/love one another/help others/BE SWEET/keep your promises/laugh a lot/Work Hard/but play harder/think before speaking/SMILE/say please and thank you/eat your veggies.”
And another sign below that: “Happiness/IS TIME/spent with/Good Friends/.”
Scanning down from the red sunset to see the platoon floating dead in the drink makes it all feel staged. A sickly, artsy-fied insect diorama preaching about the folly of man against nature.
I point in dismay. “You see. This is another bad — ”
“Say Cheeeese!” Auntie M takes my picture right as I turn around. She grins, clearly happy to have caught me off guard.
“ — omen.”
It’s quiet and we enter the bar compound warily. Miss Whiskers lazily pokes her head up, yawning from the comfort of the crook in the mermaid statue’s tush.
I whisper, “I wonder where ‘Here’s Johnny!’ is?” with visions of him hunched over in some dank trap door basement, eyes crossed as he snorts an entire family-sized box of powdered donuts up his nose.
Auntie M wipes melted lucuma ice cream off her hand with a bar napkin. “I don’t know. And why es we whispering?”
“Shhh.”
I’d like nothing better than to guzzle seven or eight Cuba Libres and get blottofied. Something to cave my mind in from the image of that psychopath gussied up like a goitered Captain Morgan. But, there’s this voice screaming out from somewhere deep inside the primitive lizard side of my brain, “Stay sharp!”
And who am I to defy the lizard man, dispensing all that pent-up survival knowledge throughout the ages?
Even Auntie M feels the vibe, an unspoken force sagging our energies. So, we slog to our rooms, ascending the patio steps carefully, avoiding any undue noise.
Until Auntie M’s eyes grow wide as saucers. “Colorado kid!”
“Colorado?”
“Es means red. You es sundburned, Dougicito.”
I look down at my arms. “Aw, crap!”
Yep. The four-plus hour walk has done me in. I look like I’ve been sauteed and ready to join the flea market circus as The Amazing Lobster Boy.
Auntie M looks at me and giggles while she whispers. “Does it hurt?”
Inspecting my beet-red arms, I murmur. “No pain yet. That’ll come later.”
She gets to her room door, looks at me, and smiles. “Well, this es it.”
Maybe a kiss? But no, maybe not. I look at my door, then back at her. “Yep. Just remember, we’re in this together.”
“Good night.” A tremble then a pause. “Dougito.”
We both chuckle like schoolchildren. I turn the door handle to my room. “Good night, Auntie M.”
Great intro.
Such a gripping first sentence. And then the way it turned out to be bees was brilliant.