Blood and Oranges by James Goldsborough (top 50 books to read .TXT) 📕

A photo showed a hotel’s long arching veranda rising up amid palm trees and white sands stretching to the ocean. Tanned couples sunning themselves.

ROSARITO BEACH HOTEL

SO CLOSE AND YET SO FAR

ROSARITO: OUR NAME IS DISCRETION

“That’s my hunch.”

“Why?”

“Now look at the bottom, at the ad for the Temple of the Angels. Those ads run every day. Hard to see one without the other . . . the word ‘discretion.’”

His eyes moved between the ads, up and down, up and down. “You might have something.” Reaching in his desk, he pulled out some forms. “Get five hundred dollars from the cashier—take fifties and twenties. Discretion can be expensive but try to bring some of it back. Take Luis Ortega with you, good photog. He speaks Spanish.”

“I speak some Spanish.”

“Perfect. You can practice all the way down.”

With a stop, they made the border in three hours and turned south onto the coast road, direction Rosarito. She liked Luis, a cheerful man whose family had been in Los Angeles for a century, before California was a state. They took fishing trips deep into Baja. “No Rosarito Beach Hotel in those days,” Luis said. “Just adobes. Hotel went up in the twenties.”

A twenty at the reception desk bought them a supercilious smile and lecture from an assistant manager that the hotel never showed its register, never gave out information on guests to anyone, including the Los Angeles Times.

She asked for the twenty back.

“What twenty?”

The dining room was empty, too late for lunch and too early for dinner. Drinks were being delivered to the pool. They chose a table by windows, overlooking beach and ocean. They ordered sandwiches and beer.

“I still have a feeling Uncle Willie saw that ad. How could he have missed it?”

“You really think he would do that—a preacher?”

She trusted Luis. Anyway, photographers don’t blab. “Have you ever been to the Temple of the Angels, Luis?”

“I’m Catholic.”

“I went one time—curiosity. A Sunday show.”

“And?”

“Angie was playing Mary Magdalene. I kept thinking—poor Uncle Willie.”

“That bad, eh. Look, they left L.A. late, probably hit the border at dawn. That puts them at Rosarito at six or seven. Maybe they just stop for breakfast. Gringos—they wouldn’t take a chance with a street café. A place like this, chance to clean up. Say, I have an idea. Peel me a couple of twenties from your wad.”

He motioned to the waiter lingering by the kitchen door. They whispered in Spanish, a bill was passed and the waiter disappeared. “Now, we’ll see.”

After a while a different waiter came over. Another bill was passed. He might have seen them he said, thought they were Mexican, spoke Spanish, didn’t think a thing of it, why would he—just a man and a girl on their way somewhere. He remembered because they came in early, had to wait for the kitchen to open. Never saw them again.

Luis finished his beer. “You know, if they stopped for breakfast but didn’t stay, then they were heading south, which means Ensenada. Not much south of that. I’ve been down there.”

Chapter 18

“Buenos dias.”

Wearing Levi’s he’d bought in Ensenada and an old shirt, Willie shuffled into the kitchen, waking her from her reverie. With the beard and his Spanish she could put him on any fishing boat and he’d be a native. Here I am, she thought, just like my poor mother, living with a middle-aged preacher. The thought stopped her. Did this have something to do with Papa? She looked at Willie, smiling, barefoot in their little house, sweet man, so different from Papa. Willie was good at making love and she could not imagine her father with her mother at all. He would have been like Gil—short, ouch, bang-bang.

“We should go to the isla today,” she said, “catch some fish.”

“I mean to read my Bible today, my sweet. Sit with coffee and oranges in a sunny chair—like Jesus in Jerusalem.”

“Where does the Bible say that?”

“You have to imagine it.”

“You read your Bible and ate oranges yesterday.”

“Yes. I’ve been doing some thinking.”

The house was on a bluff, and to reach the ocean they had to climb down a steep cliff. They had no electricity, only gas lamps and butane for the stovetop. Water and groceries came from the tienda three miles away around a headland. Beyond the headland, the hills fell down to a small bay, home to a dozen adobe houses and the tienda. Below them, a rock promontory shielded the beach and formed a small cove. To the south, Isla San Martín was partially blocked by the promontory. To the north they saw fishing boats far out to sea off Ensenada. Exploring the cove, they found tidepools where water was warmed by the sun. She would slip in naked and bask like a water nymph until Willie could stand it no longer and go in after her. Then back to the house for fish, tortillas, wine, sex, and naps. And every day it grew closer to the end.

He’d escaped into the wilderness and now, like Moses, purified, must find his way back again. Renunciation. Had not Augustine made it clear? It is through the sexual act that original sin is passed. “If not now, lord, when?” To be a missionary—that was to be his life again, as in China, as in the San Francisco slums, before money poured over him, befouling him, money from his poor mother’s death. Ah, Mamá! He knew now. The temple was not built by God’s little people but by Eddie who had let their mother die and stolen from Henry Callender. He, Rev. Willie, was the accomplice. He had agreed to everything along the way.

“We will turn in the keys and drive to Tijuana,” he said at breakfast the next morning. “We will leave the car, cross the border and catch the bus to Los Angeles. We are returning to the path of the Lord. If He chooses to punish us for having loved, we will do our penance.