C A N T A M A R, Part 1, A novella by Jacques Poirier

Note: Part 2 and Part 3 are to be sent directly as an eBook to those who were pleased with Part 1

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Chapter 1 - Desirée

Werner was locked up in a bookstore, an obvious accident when the owner had to leave the premises in a hurry, not having noticed the self-effacing middle-aged man crouching in the psychology section. This man’s life was going nowhere as he was looking for that magical self-help book to give it meaning, down on one knee to scan through the titles on a lower shelf. The unusual silence soon made him realize his peculiar situation, but that did not seem to disturb him the least. He was into a recurrent depression that made him shun all contacts with other people. He was probably incapable of mouthing three words into a spoken sentence. There was no question of calling anyone on the phone, of course. And the idea of gesticulating for help to a passerby filled him with horror. His defeatist mind had made him a prisoner till morning. Had he looked around he would have seen the panic bar on the back door. He would have been out with a simple push.

Werner had spent his adult life pondering things from every possible angle. This had left him with no direction of his own, no clear personality. He would tend to agree with every point of view, understanding its genesis, empathizing with its author. If the latter was a candidate in an election, he would want to vote for him. But then he would give his opponent the same consideration, ending up in a personal quandary with nagging migraines. Ever since Werner was old enough to carry pocket change, he would need to flip a coin to make decisions. Any decision, choosing a breakfast cereal, job hunting, dating… or choosing a book to read as he was presently doing. These habits had darkened his spirit and ruined his life to the point that he contemplated ending it. Earlier on that same day he tossed a coin. Heads, he would hang himself, tails he would see a shrink.

The outcome saved his life, but then just thinking that he would need to make an appointment and verbalize what his problem was gave him a giant headache. He chose the bookstore. He was surrounded with the best collection of books in the entire town of Eureka, northern California. He had the time, the quiet space and the will to draw a new course of action. He intended to use the opportunity to give his miserable existence meaning and direction.

At around midnight, he had scoured through thirty books from which a dozen were chosen and neatly stacked on the table next to a dozen girl scout cookies found by the cash register. He had set up the table and chair in an area hidden from street view but well lit nonetheless. He already knew that he was about to perform a magic trick, one that would produce a new synthesis, the decisions for a new life, the creation of a vastly improved Werner Finestone. He removed his vest while elaborately taking a ballpoint pen from its pocket. At last, he could feel actual words gurgling back into his throat, the depression receding like a dirty tide. Good books had often had that effect on him, but this moment had an ecstatic quality to it.

In a soft but excited voice, almost ceremoniously, he wispered: "My new life will be...in the town of …." In front of him was a large Rand McNally's World Atlas open to the index page. His eyes tightly shut, he raised a fist tightly wrapped around the ballpoint, spearing the page with a blue smudge tapering off from the word Cantamar MX. He would go there on the next train, bus or plane and he would start a new life, one free of all past connections. That would constitute the best possible suicide, terminating his past life once and for all. But then he would need a new different and better life.

And he would need a new name. So he then opened Who's Who In America. Again with the help of the hovering pen he first extracted the name William (Bill), and then the surname Trusset . He liked Bill Trusset immediately and decided it was time to clothes that fellow properly. What better book to do that than "The History of Clothing and Fashion" by Leon Vuitton . After the smearing the book on several pages, Bill was satisfied with a red scarf, an aviation leather jacket, a pair of short safari-style pants with multiple pockets, tan colored boots and a simple black cotton T-shirt. Two coffees later, at the crack of dawn, Bill Trusset had a full identity, a lexicon, a set of clothes and a mission. In the span of a few hours, his state of mind had gone with a vengeance from regressive/analytical to aggressive/synthetic. The jargon of psychosomatic medicine was now useless, the cure had worked its magic. Bill stood straight as he walked gingerly to the back of the store. The plastic skylight looked promising if he could dismantle one of the three steel bars. Climbing there using steel shelves was a cinch. Grabbing the central bar to test it, he wondered how they were attached. A good job to saw it off having no appropriate tools, he thought, … unless of course he could loosen a fasterner” He then removed a tile to peer inside the suspended ceiling cavity. There he caming nose to nose with a canvas bag. Finding it strangely out of place, Bill slid a hand inside it to retrieve a small part of its content, a pile of one hundred dollar bills. Thanking his angel, he stared happily into the sky while stuffing his coat with the entire stash, still balancing himself by hanging on the skylight bar. Lowering his gaze, he saw the rear steel door and its panic bar. The latter clicked open with a gentle push of his excited hand, revealing a back alley fragrant with magnolias. He walked away gingerly to Eureka’s Main street, crossing a few horny cats.

The street was bare and the bus terminal had a defective neon that flickered reyhound into the pink fog. On a wall map, the lone cashier plotted the route to Cantamar MX, proposing:

"We can take you to San Diego. Then you're on your own since our bus line takes the inland road to Mexico City through Mexicali. It's not covering northern Baja where you are heading. I suggest you check it out with our people in San Diego. They're bound to find you another carrier ". Bill paid the ticket with a hundred dollar bill. "Keep the change, but tell me if there is a clothing store near your San Diego Greyhound depot?" Bill loved the sound of his voice, assertive with bold tones.

The soft whirr of the diesel engine put Bill into a sleep so deep that five hours later the driver had to shake him gently by the shoulder: "Sir, you need to transfer to another bus. This is San Francisco". It was late afternoon. Bill had time to buy his complete new accoutrement before his connection. He was happily stuffing a red ascot around his neck in the depot's rest room when a young man with a lisp volunteered with an envious voice: "This looks zooooo good on you". But Bill had already defined his new program through a random search in "The Sexual Dictionary" by Doctor Ruth Wurtheimer. This slick stranger was certainly the wrong sexual object at this time.

The right object however did materialize in the next bus link to San Diego, an attractive brunette whose name Desiree probably offered a hint as to why her gaze was fixed on Bill's muscular thighs, the safari pants bulging where she appeared to be trying hard to not look. Bill was in seventh heaven, a new life ahead of him with no ties to his easily forgotten troubled past. When she asked him questions, his recent reading spree provided him with all the fiction he needed to build great conversation. By the time they reached Los Angeles, Desiree knew all about Bill's career moves, his love of a specific type of sea algae, his passion for complex Margarita recipes ...and his amorous moves in tight quarters. Not that they were the first to make love in the tiny bathroom a Greyhound bus, but they probably had been the first to enjoy the thrill of orgasm over a specific railroad crossing two miles south of Fresno.

At that happy moment Desiree had one foot in the stainless steel lavatory. Bill was pushing hard on the ceiling with his free hand to insure the stability of the configuration. The reader is free to imagine the other details of that arrangement. Werner used to say that love is better in its very beginning, the overwhelming reason why one has to start all over often. He had lost count of how many new loves he had lived through, just remembering that they all felt wonderful in their infancy. Depressions and migraines always sprouted after two years with the same partner. However Bill had already forgotten Werner, so very happy to be the new lover, with Desiree the new love and Greyhound the new facilitator. Cantamar would be the new nest, full of promise. Under his aviator jacket pulsed the heart of a very new and charismatic human being, one so charming that Desiree just melted like butter under the San Diego sun.

It was rather hot and the bus to Mexico was not a good idea. Somewhere in his recent memory was the word Woodie , those station wagons favored by surfers in the fifties, with their quaint wooden side panels and smiling front chrome. The used car lot had one for sale, corner of 5^th St. and Boardwalk. Desiree liked that car, eying the space inside where they could fit a foam mattress. That purchase took a bigger chunk of cash than expected. But soon they were sailing through the border crossing while singing Guantanamera to the top of their lungs, happy lovers in transit with not a care in the world… except perhaps to find a nice side road with no prying eyes. Life was good for Bill Trusset and Desiree Minsky, a French-Russian expat with a taste for adventurers. She was originally headed for the Los Angeles Boat Show, hoping to find a wealthy sailor with a port of calling in the warmer latitudes. Desirée was very happy with her own memories, spending a lot of energy mostly trying to replicate the better ones. Fifty-foot saiboats with electric furling jibs and handsome captains provided many of those.

She did not expect what came up next. Bill's face had darkened when he suddenly made an abrupt turn towards the Tijuana Airport. Parked in the departure section, he looked at Desiree in the eye, handing her three crisp one hundred dollar bills. Slowly he said "Quand on aime, il faut partir". Then in halting English, unsure of her French, he translated: ”When in love, one must leave!” Desiree had understood the first time, recognizing the famous Blaise Cendrars maxim. Love does go downhill from day one. So why not cut it off when it is still good, manufacturing wonderful chest expanding memories. She lowered her gaze and took the money. The Boat Show tomorrow with a slow cruise to Bora Bora, Hell! why not!. With the change from the purchased plane ticket to L.A., she would get drunk and eat an entire pollo asado.

Other women would have burst out cursing or crying. This girl was different, thought Bill with a tinge of regret when starting his car. He drove westward to the Cuota, the toll highway to Rosarito following the scenic coast to Rosarito, Cantamar and further south, Ensenada. How would he have explained to her that not only did he not have a house there, but he had actually never been there and knew nothing of the place? There was no need to flip a coin. The woman had to go. Besides, he was already enjoying the evanescent perfume of lost love, rolling in it as pleasurably as he could, the vintage Woodie throttling down the four-lane highway used by American surfers and retirees wishing for wide open spaces .

Boy I think love that Desiree like the Pacific, endless and open on all sides, sensitive to all breezes like a good sail. And what a typhoon she was with her tight little white leather skirt raised up to her waist. The passion in the bus over the tracks had already been sealed in the mason-jar of his mind, labeled like precious jam, to be savored for years. But still within reception of the San Diego radio, he was distracted by the sordid news of a decapitation, that of a police chief who had dared threatened the Tijuana drug cartel. Even in distant Eureka he had heard of the border zone troubles, the hijackings, the robberies, the murders, the hostage taking. All of that fueled by US guns shipped to Mexico added to a seemingly unending American appetite for drugs, mostly crystal meth and cocaine. He needed to source out a Glock 17 self-loading handgun for his own personal protection, an item his hovering ballpoint pen had smeared just a day ago. But he 2008 Gun Almanac did not list sources in Baja California. Mexico does not allow its residents to carry handguns. Bill went back into Desirée and felt so much better all of a sudden.

Chapter 2 - Trudy

Trudy had graduated just a month earlier from the Sacramento Police Academy, Magna Cum Laude, the only woman in a class of 17 cadets. She could deal with all flavors of male arrogance, including that of her new boss Clarence. When she chose the Eureka Police Force as her first employer, it was more for the great outdoors around that town than for the dour face of Captain Clarence Hornsby, a throwback to very ancient times before the Internet. Hornsby drove the patrol car at precisely 60 mph, city or country, night or day, whether going to a crime scene, a funeral or a donut shop. “We need to get noticed. They need to see we’re working hard for their taxes…” he told the baby-faced girl sitting across the propped-up rifle between the bucket seats. “…taxes for this new patrol car… your salary…(biting on a toothpick)…Sausage MacMuffins…”

Noticing no effect on the woman’s face, he changed the subject to the job at hand: “This citizen claims his bookstore was vandalized overnight. No break-in traces, no robbery, just a bunch of books defaced and what not. We get some weird shit in this town!”The brakes screeched in front of the bookstore. He walked in with Trudy following with the attaché case, his unlit cigar gleaming with fresh saliva, eyebrows twittering as they did at the onset of any new job. Those were few and far apart in the quiet northern California town. When the owner rushed forward with new details of the break-in, Clarence declared with some satisfaction: “I think I did mention to you over the phone that in our Police annals, no one robs a bookstore for ideas. They do it for the money. The fact that you just found out to have money missing proves my point. Where was that cash sitting anyway?”

The owner pointed to the rear of the store and motioned them to follow. There, with a strange grin, he pointed to a suspended ceiling tile sitting askew. “I had stashed there $20,000 over the years. You know how it is. Banks go under. Life is hard.” Pivoting slowly towards Trudy, the Chief pontified slowly, in an educated monotone:

“An obvious inside job. No thief would dismantle an entire suspended ceiling looking for money. This bad guy knew what he was doing. He went for the jugular. He knew exactly where the money was”

Then abruptly turning towards the owner: “Who knew about this except you?”.

“No a soul..” answered the victim with sad conviction “No employee, no family….I just can’t believe I lost my life savings!..” There was a long silence to respect his pain, after which the owner went on: “And I don’t talk in my sleep. I only puta little money there about once a month, when I pull in a good day, usually after my older clients get their Social Security checks”.

The cigar rested dead center under his mustache. Clarence had the whole crime scene figured out, standing back for all to appreciate his uniform-clad majesty:

“This is really very simple, Sir. You see, you have a skylight right to the left of your hideout. Someone had been spying on you from the roof, possibly looking for a way to cut through the steel bars below it. Upon seeing you place a wad of bills there, a freaky piece of good luck for him if you ask me, the robber decided to go for the prize money. He hid in your store Monday night, did his dirty deed and fled through the back door, not even bothering to put the ceiling tile back. Let’s do fingerprint work and catch that bad boy before all the money is spent.”

Grabbing the case from a disbelieving Trudy, Clarence had the tools of the trade neatly spread on a table, like a mother showing her daughter how to bake a pie crust. That table was the same one that Werner/Bill had used. The bookstore owner was holding up the twelve books: “You might want to fingerprint these too”. Clarence looked dreamily at the blue ballpoint smear of the first book, not interrupting the deployment of the fingerprinting kit.

The new recruit’s head was spinning. To herself: “That’s just too much fluke for a robber!. And why did he spend all that time inside the store…the cookie crumbs…and those defaced books?!? And how will we catch him? Where is he? With a loot like that why would the robber stay in boring old Eureka when he could sail the seven seas?”

Chapter 3 - Rita

Rosarito. “A sombrero of golden lights” thought Bill excitably as he watched the western sky, a central orange sun glow with jutting on each sides the brightly lit roads leading into town. In the back the electric night blue of the Pacific with a Mexican moon was smiling to the south, seemingly right above his ultimate destination, a small coastal town with the singing name of Cantamar. It felt good to have made it to safety, crossing the border on a green light with the word Pase across its face. A random red light means you have to stop for inspection. He had no paper. The car title had Desiree Minsky as its owner. But he was free, as free as thousands of other refugees from justice living in Mexico.

Bill thought a decent Margarita should seal the deal. The bartender did not agree with the recipe, mostly because there was not a trace of melon extract in the entire town at this time of the year. Bill settled for a Hemingway with 3 full measures of Cuervas, 3 tablespoons of Triple-sec, a splash of Mexican Cointreau (called “Contro”, the contraband passing the taste test only if one already reaches over .17 in blood-alcohol). The rest of the sixteen ounce glass was filled with orange juice and sour mix. Bill added the splash of lime juice from a pitcher that a young lady pushed in his direction. The bar was decorated by four similar young ladies, but this one took the prize for latin beauty. Rita mouthed her first question before Bill had raised the gold colored concoction to his lips. “Americano?”

“I guess you could say that, young lady. And what gives me the pleasure of your company”.

Rita, her lovely breasts heaving as she spoke, looked as though she was indeed having a lot of pleasure with this new company. Three other girls standing behind her were ready to take over if she was to show a drop in her pleasure with the gentleman wearing a red scarf around his neck. “I am here for your pleasure”, she said through a smile. “Well Cheers, then” responded the smiling man as he downed a good third of his glass. Then with a flourish of his hand over his chest, he added for the young woman’s enlightenment:

“I am an ex-American, an ex-husband and also an ex-policeman. You could say I’m a triple-ex, like your beer!”

Rita giggled “You meeennn…Dos Equis… only TWO-exes”

“ OK OK… I was not a real policeman, just a private investigator. So I qualify for Do Equis.”

At that point the barman was peering into everyone’s glass, stopping at Bill’s own fast emptying mug. Bill looked him in the eye and said:

“Hey amigo. Did ya ever do Cervezas Margaritas, y'know, with a coupl’a beers thrown in the pitcher? Make it a large one with Dos Equis”. The bartender knew that one. He proceeded to prepare it as Bill turned to the young ladies, looking them over thoroughly as if they were four pastries at a local Panederia. He imagined himself making love to each one of them as most men do without thinking, then he tried all four at once as much fewer men do. This does require thinking. But he was not getting excited. Something was amiss, not working.

His love for Desirée was probably too recent, still glazing his eyes, trivializing those Mexicans hotties to the point of irrelevance. Dropping a hundred dollars with the bartender, Bill walked to the smelly caballeros where the plumbing was whining loudly . While staring at the mothballs in the urinal, another dark thought had entered his mind: what if after carefully redefining himself with the random attributes, what if he fell into a pattern that very soon all the polices in the world could smell out, the dumb dogs that they are with their big wet noses. The boozing and womanizing would help do that, creating witnesses that have a chance to mount a full inventory of birthmarks and twitches. On the way out, he slipped out unseen through a back doorDesirée had just saved him from a first step in that direction.

He needed to fade out of Rosarito, which he did in spite of his blood-alcohol level. He did not expect the roadblock on the south edge of town. The militarios were inspecting for drugs, letting him through as a Yankee surfer that was good for the local economy. But Bill was now so affected he stopped the car by a beach to let his heart rate drop. Tijuana is where one can get a fabulous face-lift for $1000. Maybe an extra $1000 could give him the nose of Cyrano and the chin of Kirk Douglas. Cantamar was now only minutes away to the south. Should he drive in with his existing Finestone face, or better should he drive the 40 kilometers back to Tijuana, get a face-lift. Only later would he introduce himself to the Cantamar crowd with his new face, after spending a month in a cheap motel for the scarring to subside. This problem decision appeared so insoluble to the newly depressed Bill Trusset that he felt the need to toss a peso in the air. Head he would get a face-lift. Tail he would drive on. The coin twirled under the moon and fell to the ground… sticking vertically in the sand of Popotla beach. Bill did not pick it up, but walked back to the car where rolled himself up in a ball on the passenger side, comforted by fresh sensations of Desirée. She might not like a Kirk Douglas chin, he thought. Then a first migraine in two days: how the devil could he possibly get in touch with her again? The man was souring slowly, a Werner recurrence to be sure, one that Bill dreaded. Sleeping with Desirée could have cured all that, biting his lips in disgust.

Chapter 4 - Maxine

Eighteen years operating the only labeling machine at the local garment factory. This was a record that Maxine Goodman was proud of. As the oldest employee, she was also the prettiest, often asked to model the elegant chemises that her employer sold all the way east to Neiman-Marcus and Ralph Lauren. With stability, strength and snobbery on her family crest, assuming she it such a crest, Maxine was not popular with the girls, and she took great pride in that fact. Those peasants could not comprehend her greater aesthetics and sensibilities. Brand names were her mantras, her smallish salary well invested in a few clothes that were all of the best cut, all fancy labels that were mostly meaningless to the average local woman. She had lived alone for several years with her Chanels, Dona Karans and John of New York, sitting between a stack of fashion magazines and a pile of Woman’s Wear Daily . She subscribed to this newspaper but also to the local theatre where she would take herself and her beautiful clothes for their periodic airings.

At one of these theater première she was sitting near a man who was laughing at all the right places. Maxine knew that this can be difficult to accomplish with Shakespeare. So she tagged along for security, laughing with him with barely a noticeable delay. The experience made her feel good, ‘with it’ as they say. The man complimented her for the costume she was wearing. No male had done that before, except perhaps Mister Goldstein at Purchasing. The old fart had wanted to get it on with her since day one. But this theatergoer had class, thought Maxine, good hair and good pants, also wearing a great tie, all silk, probably French. They had fixed seats for the entire season, a chance to meet again and have several glasses of wine together during intermission. Werner did not have a car, lived at a hotel like a transient, had an obscure job as an agent for some government agency. But they looked good together, enough for several rumors to float around town. Old maid Maxine had a live-in boyfriend, probably a CIA agent. He had been seen wearing a gun belt by Clara, the receptionist of a local doctor. Werner had severe migraine attacks. His past was muddy. He read strange books and watched the History Channel on TV. But Maxine just adored him, buying him a bicycle for his birthday since she needed the Nissan Sentra to go to work. The seamstresses giggled behind their industrial sewing machines when Maxine paraded to the front office, carrying a batch of newly embroidered labels, her head high in total self-esteem. Werner could not decide on marriage, creating a slight cloud in the house that Maxine had bought and paid for years ago with her small salary. Werner could not decide on anything anyway, always fussing over everything including the kitchen sink. He did dishes well. Almost too well, re-rinsing and wiping until bedtime.

But they looked so good together entering the theater every month. Or even shopping for veggies at the supermarket, the tall man pinching and probing for the perfect lemon while she scanned the horizon for noteworthy labels rarely worn by other shoppers. That she could handle well, her companion’s fussiness and alien tastes. The dark cloud only became a full-blown thunderstorm when she found the note on the fridge:

“My darling, I need to make some deep changes in my life and unfortunately, you are one of them. My headaches need addressing before they drive me insane. I need to find my soul. Please do not wait for me but be happy”

After downing what was left of a Grand Marnier bottle, she pursed her lips and said out loud:

“The fool, the fool! He’ll come back. How far can he go on a bicycle anyway?”

The anger went away in a few days. No one was to know of his disappearance. She even bought herself a nice ring, telling everyone at the plant that she was engaged.

Chapter 5 - Harold

The 60-foot boat was magnificent, a modern schooner with radar and polished mahogany throughout its interior, twin staterooms and marble tiled galleys with gold plated faucets and trim. Twin Bubbles had an immaculate teak deck with blue canvas director chairs, the European good taste that Desirée prided herself with. She had chosen a boat at the boat show. Not a captain, and to her that was beginning to look like a costly mistake. At the Marina, Harold had told her that he had made his fortune in the first Internet bubble, doubling it in the recent housing market bubble. But something was wrong for Desirée. Her experience of rich guys did not click with this 35-years old dude who tended to brag too much. She was slow to strip down to her bikini, already planning her escape at the Galapagos Islands. She would make it to the Marquesas on another boat, with a captain that did not give her the creeps.

She was at the helm while Harold showered, the auto-pilot on the blink according to one of the crew. The Mexican coast was visible and the sun shone brightly. Billy Billy where are you mon amour? All of a sudden all the men still hanging in her Rolodex were of the anal retentive and phony kind. Only Bill Trusset had charmed her without putting handcuffs on her. He had let go of her like a fish too small to eat, the ones you drop overboard with compassion. My kind of guy, she thought as her eyes filled with tears and her breasts heaved with aching love. Then she saw it, the boat’s manifest, the photos of it’s christening, an older man breaking champagne and younger Harold holding on to a mooring. Then she saw the Post-It note, handwritten by the owner Jeb Spadafora, an Exxon executive:

Show the workings of the boat to Harold. He’s my driver and a good sailor. He might captain to ship from time to time.

The crewman to which the note was addressed was a likable sailor she had noticed as he was repairing the auto-pilot on the rear deck. She called him and asked: When do you think we’ll make it to Galapagos?

The man gave her a pinched look and a strange grin: We’re just sailing to Ensenada for a spin. On the way back we’ll stop at the Marriot Marina in San Diego to pick up the boss. Then it’s back to L.A. before nightfall. There's a party tomorrow for the top management.

It was 9AM and Harold cried out through the ceiling hatch in the shower:

Désirée, come shower with me baby!