Chapter Fourteen
The bathroom knocked Primo flat on his ass. He marveled at the whole place, padding around the kitchen while Doc unpacked, examining the bright red major appliances, the twin blenders, and the stainless steel sink set in bright white and yellow tiles. He tested the bed in the room Doc had left him by default, and inspected all the artwork and electronic entertainments in the living room.
But mostly he stood and stared at the huge blue-tiled shower with the pulsing head, the shining brightwork above the lush carpet and gay Oaxaca tiles, the intricate olinala patterns of the wash stand, the gleaming efficient toilet and matching cerulean bidet, the automatic fan and infra-red warming light, the stacks of colorful fluffy towels.
He examined the bidet closely, trying to divine it’s purpose. Foot lavage? Synchronous peeing? The only clue he found was the word, “Kohler”. Doc was probably waiting to snicker over some foolish question about it. He’d wait it out. He went out to the patio, where Doc had stripped to his shorts and was admiring a rich evening on Bahia Banderas.
Doc was looking down the beach noting that there was lot less jungle greenery these days and lots more building materials. But still… Despite his preference for lonely beaches and sleepy villages, Doc doted on Vallarta. He looked straight through the noise, the dirt, the three-shift tourism factory, the mondo condo sprawl, to the romance, charm, and beauty that was still there to be seen if he looked just right. The innocent little fishing village beneath the fattening, brassy whore of a city. It gave him a hint of how a man could still love a woman after she’d lost her looks, figure, and disposition. Of course, he still bitched about the changes.
“The Mexican Riviera, mi chavo,” he said, waving an arm at the palmlined coastline. “I might just sleep out here in the hammock. Unless you’d feel more at home on it.”
Primo looked at the wide white cotton hammock with its comfortable pillows, then at the hardwood table and cowhide-covered hairs. Not quite like home, he thought. He said, “I don’t understand. Is this a hotel with people’s books and records and paintings in it or somebody’s house with a desk and bellhops downstairs?”
“It’s called a condo hotel. I’m not sure I understand it myself. They tried to book us into a top room over at the Sheraton Bougainvillaeas,” Doc pointed north along the shore, where the glass walls of five hundred room hotels did away with any resemblance to the jungly fishing village of the fifties. “But no way I’d stay up there on Gringo Beach, even with somebody else paying three hundred dollars a night for it.”
One night in a glass tower for three hundred American dollars, Primo thought. I’d live on that for six months, and not have to go down an elevator to get to a beach full of sunburned pendejos. He said, “So you asked them for something here in Olas Altas.”
“Yeah,” Doc drawled, stretching his arms wide then taking a slurp of cold Modelo, “I like Playa Los Muertos.”
“Why do the call it ‘Beach of the Dead’?” Primo asked.
“Some shipwreck back in the sixteen hundreds I think. The chamber of commerce keeps trying to change it to Playa Del Sol, but everyone keeps on calling it Los Muertos.”
“Why?”
“Because that’s what it’s called. I usually stay in small, older places with overgrown courtyards, like the Yasmin or Pena. But I thought you’d get a kick out of something first class, so they came up with this.”
Primo looked back into the deep-carpeted living room with the heavy colonial furniture, bright Huichol artwork, and comfortable couches done in brilliant serape stripes. “So this is what ‘First Class’ means.”
“What it means is, he with the class goes first,” Doc said, kicking out of his shorts and heading for the bathroom, “But don’t worry. There’s plenty of hot water. By the way, you can’t drink tap water over here like you can in Los Cabos.”
Primo swung in the hammock sipping a Peñafiel and watching the Vallarta sunset starting to shape up, turning to look North, where the dim thrust of Punta Mita fronted misty hills across the Nayarit line.
“Your turn to clean up your act,” Doc said as he stepped onto the balcony with a fresh Modelo and a clean red towel around his waist.
Primo was as eager to try the bathroom as an American kid would have been to drive a Corvette. But as he stepped in, he felt the wet heat, saw steam hanging on the ornate bronze mirror and slick Oaxaqueno tiles. He called to Doc, “You just bathed in hot water, like you’d wash dishes in. Won’t that make you sick, give you the grippe?”
“Hell, no,” Doc answered from the hammock, “It’s great. Cleans the pores, loosens the muscles, lengthens the dingus.”
Primo, who’d never had a hot shower in his life, said, “It seems pretty unhealthy to me.”
“You’re gonna love the jacuzzi,” Doc called. “Get cleaned up and dress like a total idiot. I’m gonna show you my main town.”