by Perry R. Wilkes
Everybody in Playa Tiburones seemed to notice when Fabiola came to town, although it was hard to figure whether it was the women or the men who noticed her first. She was a strikingly good-looking woman, a bit younger than most of the retired ex-pat women in town, certainly too young to be 'retired' in the usual sense of the word, and everybody seemed to take an interest in her. The word on the street was that she was single, which seemed to generate a mostly negative interest on the part of the women. And among the men, the level of interest was something approaching the fascinated fear that a man might feel at the brink of a precipice where the mind is saying, "Crawl slowly back from the edge." while some primal bodily urge is screaming "Go ahead and jump! This could be your last chance ever to feel the exhilaration of living life to the fullest!"
"Flabiola" is what the women would have liked to call her, so they could cut her to the bone with a simple nickname, but they couldn't call her that since she ran about five miles every morning on the beach and resembled a gazelle more than she resembled any of the other women in town. So "Fabulosa" was the name a few of the women branded her with. The word was that Fabiola was half-Mexican and half-'American,' whatever that meant, since the Mexicans also considered themselves as part of the 'Americas.' Ruth Cosgrove came from Iowa farm stock, and she said the name and everything else about her was "... pure made up." in the way they say things like that on farms in Iowa so that it comes out sounding like the 'honest-to-God truth.' The truth is, Ruth didn't really know any more about Fabiola than the other women, but that's what they were all thinking and she said it first, so it stuck as one of those 'truths' that live forever in small towns and are the reason many people move away when they graduate from high school.
Fred Carson was one of the first of the men to notice Fabiola. He was a widower with a decent pension and enough money in the bank and his IRA to pretty much do what he wanted for the rest of his life, as long as he didn't waste it. He had a decent-looking house on the beach, although it wasn't exactly a mansion, and a older-model 28 foot fishing boat that he could take out to the islands for an 'overnighter' whenever he wanted to. He also tried to get down to the local 'Gringo Club,' as the Mexicans called it, for the morning "walking aerobics" session three times a week, when he wasn't out fishing, so he wouldn't be tempted to stay around in the house by himself for more hours than he should. He was determined to stay in decent enough shape to get the most out of his retirement years, and he enjoyed the company of his 'fellow-sweaters.' The majority of retirees in Tiburones did what they could to stay in semi-decent shape and make the most out of their final years.
The morning sessions at the Club were also popular because they were part of the informal 'Tiburones Telegraph,' where people passed on bits of information – call it gossip, if you have to – about the weather, other residents, changes in Mexican regulations, etc.. They also passed on tips about how to find Pancho the electrician, or Nacho the plumber, when you needed them, since neither one had a phone and they were usually working somewhere around town. The walking aerobics and the Club's friday night "Social Hour" helped Fred stay in touch with his fellow ex-pats.
He had seen Fabiola run past his place a few times while he was dressing for aerobics and he usually reached for his binoculars and watched her as she went by. Sometimes she would stop running and walk about a mile before running again. She looked to be in her late 40s to early 50s, as best he could tell from a distance. Fred had heard the old phrase, "There's no fool like an old fool," and she was at least ten years younger than he was. He knew that's what most of the women in town were thinking, especially a few of the single ones who'd invited him to dinner a time or two. He knew that many of the married women saw Fabiola as a threat to their husbands, and the widows would see her as unwelcome, and even unfair, competition for the few desirable men in town. But Fred hadn't met anyone else who had interested him as a partner in the four years he'd lived in Tiburones.
As he stood there by the window looking down the beach at Fabiola receding into the distance, Fred thought to himself, "I only just started collecting Social Security, so I'm really not all that old." "I'm a long ways from dead, yet." And, "If not now, when?" He also thought, "The hell with what those old biddies think!"
One Tuesday morning he walked down to the water's edge and tried to appear like he was just admiring the view. He looked up just in time to watch her race by and he just had time to shout, "Hello." She half-turned and said "Hi" over her shoulder as she ran onward on the flat hard sand margin along the waterline. He watched her race away for just a little longer than was probably decent as he admired the way her loose jogging shorts hugged her nicely-rounded body. He caught himself and looked away before any of the neighbors caught him staring. The whole beach was wide open and most people began their day with coffee overlooking the water, or going for long walks along the beach. He hoped he wouldn't already be food for the gossip mill, but he knew that was probably inevitable in this town.
Velma Parsons took a sip of her margarita and studied her cards. She was one of the regulars at the Tiburones Ladies Liquor League that met for cards, drinks, and a bite of lunch at Jose's Restaurante y Bar every Wednesday. It gave her something to do after her husband Bart passed away. The Ladies' weekly 'May I' game helped to keep her sharp. She looked up just as Carol Birch discarded.
"I'll take that one." she said.
"You're supposed to say 'May I?" said Rita Johnson.
"Oh, don't be so formal." Velma replied, "Anybody else want it?"
Glenda Thompson, the other player at the table, shook her head, so Velma pushed one of her chips to the center, pulled that fresh 7 off the top of the pile and drew two more cards. Now she had a group of sevens, a pair of eights, and a bunch of junk in her hand that she still didn't know what to do with. She took another sip off the margarita while Rita drew a card.
"Did anybody else see Fred almost throw his neck out of joint yesterday when Fabiola ran by?" Velma was Fred's next door neighbor and had been enjoying her usual morning coffee looking out at the ocean when she saw him appear on the beach. She'd thought it odd when she saw him walking toward the water, since he was rarely seen on that side of his house. When he wasn't out fishing, he was usually on the street side working on his car, or inside checking the internet weather on his computer.
The other three pairs of eyes at the table looked up briefly, and then went back to silently studying their cards. None of them wanted to appear too anxious, but all ears were now tuned toward Velma.
"Well, it looked like he said something to her, but she just blew on past him. He stood there staring after her for a while and I think I even saw him drooling."
"A lot of men at his age drool." said Carol, "And they're incontinent, too!"
"Are you talking about Joe?" asked Rita, referring to Carol's husband.
"Exactly!" said Carol.
"No really, from the look on Fred's face you'd think he was afraid he forgot where he stashed his Viagra." Velma pressed on, returning the conversation to where she'd started it.
"Oh, come on." Glenda chuckled.
"No, really. Then he turned around to see if anybody was watching him. He looked just like a guilty little kid caught with his hand in the cookie jar."
"Or someplace else, maybe." added Carol.
They laughed, and Glenda said, "Maybe this is why they call us the 'Beach Bitches.'"
"Yeah, probably." Said Rita as she discarded.
"I'll take that card." said Glenda.
Fred stayed inside his house the next few days, so he wouldn't look too obvious. But then, on Saturday morning, he saw Fabiola standing at the water's edge watching flocks of squawking pelicans and gulls diving into the water. From his porch, he could see the dark school of small fish that stretched for about a hundred yards in the water just off the beach. She was surprised when he appeared beside her and said "Hi."
"Oh, hi." she said, and glanced in his direction, "What's going on? What are the birds doing?"
"That's a 'bird pile.'" he said, "They're diving on that school of small fish you can see there in the water. It's that dark mass just below the surface."
"Really?" she said, "That just looks like the shadow of a cloud."
"Yes it does," Fred replied, "but there isn't a cloud in the sky."
Fabiola looked up into the piercingly blue and empty Sonoran sky, and then studied the water where the bird were crashing headlong, dozens at a time, into the surface. The excited squawking of a couple of hundred birds drowned out almost every other sound. It was difficult to understand why they didn't break their necks crashing into each other. Probably some did, now and then.
"We look for bird piles when we take the boat out fishing." said Fred. "Wherever there's a large school of small fish, it usually means there are big fish below. See that flash of silvery little fish over there, leaping out of the water? There's a big fish underneath feeding on them from the bottom and the small ones break the surface trying to escape. They're the basis of the food chain here in the Sea of Cortez. The big fish attack them from below and the birds get them from the top. Life's rough here if you're a little fish."
"You have a boat?" asked Fabiola.
"He took her out on his boat." said Velma, as she arranged her cards.
"Who took who out on his boat?" asked Brandy Hansen.
She was a new girl at the table this week, just in from Calgary, Alberta. In Canada. Velma wasn't looking forward to going through all the rules again. She'd also have to fill in all the background on that story too, so she sighed and looked a bit exasperated. Brandy looked startled as if she'd already said something wrong.
"Oh, don't worry about Velma." said Carol, "She's always glad to have a new audience. And anyway, you'll catch up soon enough."
"Harvey said he saw them at the boat ramp on Sunday." Velma continued, "They went out to the big island. He said they didn't catch much of anything."
"You mean he didn't catch nothin'." said Carol. "That's what Harvey actually said. He doesn't think they actually planned to do much fishing out there in the first place. But it sounds like she's caught herself a big one."
"Yeah," added Glenda, "Looks like that trap she laid worked."
"What trap?" asked Brandy. This was sounding too juicy to fall very far behind on.
"That phony running on the beach in the skimpy jogging shorts." said Carol, adding, "Anybody want that card?"
"Yeah," said Velma, "I'll take it."
"Why you little vixen. That's the one I needed." said Carol, as she waited her turn to draw.
"Too bad," said Velma, "Today's just my day. I can feel it already"
"So what are the odds on them showing up at the Club together for Happy Hour on Friday?" asked Glenda.
"Probably pretty good." said Carol, "If they can stay out of bed that long."
"Sounds like something I could use a little of." said Brandy.
The other three heads swiveled to study the new girl.
"Sounds like you're gonna fit in just fine down here." said Velma as she turned back to study her cards.
"How do you play this game, anyway?" asked Brandy, with a puzzled look.
It had been years since Fabiola had been in Tiburones. As she sat by the window looking out at the Sea she remembered her first visit when her abuelos brought her to the beach from the old adobe casa in a valley up in the mountains near Banámichi. She had been born in the Sierra and had always played around her grandparents' old adobe casa that had been in the family for generations. She had learned to feed the chickens and tend the garden, and she knew exactly where her food came from. She even remembered the day when she went to a tienda in town for the first time. There was so much food on shelves along the walls. Things she had never seen before.
Now she sat and watched the clean crystal clarity of the green-tinted waves as they curled and fell onto the beach, and she remembered seeing them for the first time. They looked like jewels, frozen for only a moment in mid-fall before bursting into shards of glass that scattered the light and foamed onto the sand. She was glad she had returned. It just felt simple. It just felt right.
For the next three months there wasn't much seen of Fred and Fabiola in Playa Tiburones. At least not in the usual places, like the Club. Some of the guys who go in to Hermosillo every Wednesday to play golf at the fancy Club Deportivo 'Las Palmas,' said they saw them on the course, and afterward at the Club restaurant. Others said they made several shopping trips to Tucson. And Frank Wilson, who works in Hermosillo running one of the machiladores said he saw them at Los Toros Steak House, where the wealthy of Hermosillo are often seen.
"How would Fred even know about Los Toros?" asked Carol, "Must have been her idea. I heard she cut a broad swath through Hermosillo before she settled here. Damn, I sure needed that card you just took."
"Too bad." said Velma, "You weren't quick enough."
"No, but she sure was." said Glenda, "Fabiola, I mean."
"Yeah, we saw them at the "Blue Marlin" the other night," said Carol, "And she looked like she'd just scored the Trifecta."
"You actually saw them?" said Velma. "They sure seem to find ways to use up their time. Well, if you're just gonna let that card sit there, I'll take it."
"Oh, damn." said Carol, "I need to pay more attention to this game."
"Harvey said that Fred seemed to spend lots of time nuzzled up to her on the golf course, helping her get her strokes right." said Rita.
"Oh, I don't think she needs any help getting her strokes right!" laughed Velma. "I think she probably does just fine in that department."
"And with all that running, she manages to keep the 'playground equipment' in good shape." said Rita. "That's why all the guys are always so happy to see her. They like to sneak a peak at the 'possibilities.'"
"Yeah." added Carol, "There's a lot of wishful thinking goes on in this town. As if any of the rest of them had a chance!"
"I think she's part Cherokee." Said Velma. "There's lots of them back in Oklahoma. That's where she gets her exotic looks." Velma always said that about any other woman who had "exotic looks."
"Who's turn is it?" asked Brandy.
People hadn't seen much of Fred Carson at the Gringo Club lately. He and Fabiola had taken a long trip, and spent a couple of months across the border, so the Regulars were surprised to see him show up at Friday's Social Hour. He was alone. Don "Harley" Jackson was leaning on the bar waiting for a gin and tonic when Fred appeared beside him and ordered a Tecate, in a bottle.
"Haven't seen you in a while." Harley said, "Where's Fabiola?"
"She's visiting her mother in La Paz for a few days." answered Fred. "She's thinking things over."
"Uh oh." said Harley, "Thinking things over?"
"Yeah, things started moving a little too fast for her. She just needed to slow down."
"Oh." said Harley. He figured he better just let Fred talk. If he wanted to.
Fred took a big sip off the cold bottle. "Yeah, she ran into a guy with a bigger one. Boat, that is. You remember that 80-footer that was anchored out here a couple of weeks ago? That's the guy. He keeps the boat at Cabo and flies down to use it. Got more money than all us put together. It's hard to compete with that."
"Yeah, our thirty-year-old 25- to 30-footers look a little musty up beside that kind of shiny Gold-Plater." said Harley. "Sorry to hear it."
"Yeah." said Fred.
Harley continued, "The girls was saying over cards the other day they thought she had been mixed up with that drug guy down in Sinaloa. The one in the papers about a month ago. The dead guy."
"She didn't talk a lot about that, but she seemed pretty shaken by the news." said Fred, "I couldn't tell whether he was her ex-husband, the abusive one she talked about, or maybe a relative. That's why we took that long trip up the West Coast. I wanted to show her some things she hadn't seen before."
"I bet you did." said Harley, with a grin. He took a long sip off his drink.
"Oh no!" said Fred, "She saw that long before we left. I mean a few of the museums around LA, the Bay Area, the Redwoods, picking raspberries by the roadside in Oregon. That kind of stuff. She really liked the art museums, and picking those raspberries, while we watched out for bears. She's a country girl at heart."
"Did you go to Vegas?"
"No, we avoided Vegas. Her ex-husband took her there a few times, and she said she never wanted to go back. Said it was an empty place. No values. No meaning." said Fred, "I have to consider that a mark of character."
Fred decided to continue, "Look Harley, overall, I had a good run. With a twenty year age difference for starters, I didn't really think it would last. As I got to know her, I realized she was coming out of a real bad spot, and I just tried to be decent to her. We had a great time together, and she's a really great lady. I didn't come out one bit smarter, and I don't regret a bit of it."
Harley nodded and studied his drink.
Fred took a long sip on his beer. "When you gonna replace that Born To Be Wild tattoo on your arm with something more age-appropriate?"
"Like what?" Harley asked with a sidelong glance.
"How about Born To Be On Medicare?"
Harley laughed. "Yeah, the 'wild' days are gone. I can't hardly walk anymore without this cane. Did you ever think it would come to this? A bunch of old guys on Medicare trying to live out their fantasies on a beach in Mexico? I thought we were gonna be "forever young.""
"I feel your pain, Harley. I have to go back up to the VA every three months for more heart medicine." added Fred, "Say, what's the weather report for tomorrow?"
"Seas are flat and the dorado are biting."
"I'll see you at the boat ramp early" said Fred as he finished his beer and turned to leave. "It's good to be back."
"I'll see you there." said Harley.
Mid-afternoon a month later, Fred was home after another good morning of fishing. It was Fall now and the water had cooled enough that the dorado had left, but there were a lot of hungry yellowtail out there now, and they were good fish, worth going after. He pulled a cold Tecate from the fridge and stepped out onto the veranda to look across the placid Sea of Cortez glistening beautiful, and yet still mysterious in the brilliant Sonoran sunlight. He knew the Sea would always be a mystery to him, and that seemed to make life worthwhile. He could see just a bit of the Baja way out there, now that the air was drier with less sea-haze above the water.
Fred really liked that about the Fall and Winter here, when the temperature dropped and you could turn off the air-conditioner, and just listen to the Sea. It just felt more meaningful than most of the babble of life. And in the Winter you could look all the way across the Sea at those distant headlands, and the islands out there stood in such crisp bold relief it was hard to believe they were so far away. He leaned on the railing and took a long cold sip from the bottle, and reflected on how good life had been to him and how lucky he was to have some sort of decent pension that would allow all this. Then the phone rang.
"It's Fabiola, " the voice said softly and a bit tentatively, "Fred, can we talk?"