She Went of Her Own Accord

Shampoo Jerry’s Bar ‘N Barbeque is located smack dab in the festering epicenter of broken and smoky peppermint-colored streets constituting what there is of a tourist scene in Manchioneal, Jamaica.  The joint makes no bones about not being much in the way of a local haunt and testimonials explaining as much are right there in all your standard guidebooks.  So, you won’t find many snobby tourists there — or, anyway, not that kind of snobby tourist — and when Gabby Kendricks heard about it from her boss as a place she might want to check out on her upcoming vacation then she knew that something was up.

Gabby Kendricks is a secret agent for the CIA, and Milo Lorentz, her boss, is not really one for recommending tourist traps in places like Manchioneal if something isn’t up.

But what?

Gabby wondered idly, smiling widely, elbows bent, as she sat in a booth over a plate of lamb shish kebab and a beer.  Jerry’s was half full and just beginning to buzz, pockets of laughter poking out here and there like bits of flesh from people’s bathing suits in American and French and occasionally Italian accents.  Gabby’s suit for bathing, and just about everything else in Manchioneal, was dark, sparkly, purple, a one-piece number that had over its bottom end a plastic grass skirt she’d bought from a spunky little gal with wrist-thin thighs.  Gabby’s sturdy, suntan lotion-smelling thighs swayed slightly as like a dog gnawing from a bone held by a human she tugged free chunks of lamb and vegetable from the metal skewer she was holding like an ear of corn or a rod of uranium to be inspected.

“Would you like another?” she heard, her waiter striding by and nodding at her nearly empty glass.

“Hmm”—maybe!  No — no! — not just now!” she said, and grinned, and her hands were palms up as he coasted past and she brought them in and sipped at a small slug of the yellow beer that was cold and tart while her smile was warm and glossy and salty warm winds rolled in from the black evening sea and brought in sour fish flesh carted along by topless, short-pantsed men; the secret agent had curly red hair like a dark orange-brown and a nose that was slim and eyes that were fine and twinkly like sand that turned away just then from the men and dark sea both — both seen from the enormous glassless window by the wall of her booth — and now focusing her gaze squinting with the caution of a cat around the corner from catnip she caught the loud sight of two boisterous Irishmen: brick-colored curvy eyebrows bounced with flare.  Earlier, automatically, like a substitute teacher or a cop, she’d clocked the big red pokey pair being led by Shampoo Jerry back through this, his theme park dive’s back wall — a kind of crude corrugated structure curtaining the kitchen — and now the shambling pair were again being escorted through the ruin-like wall, this time coming out.  All three smiled and bristled bug-eyed as one of the Irishmen with a shock of orange hair even brighter than his ruby cheeks and the huge plumed caged parrot squawking and amazing on the counter of the bar’s faux bamboo structured bar delicately, vigorously, rubbed his big blocky teeth and gray gums too with the tip of an index finger; Gabby saw stars, signs, felt their purpose in her innards like a big pink crawling crab.

“Ah-ha,” she thought, and, “Here you go,” her waiter was saying as he plopped down a beer by the side of her now really nearly almost empty glass of beer.

“I didn’t — “ she began, and he cut her off with: “Compliments of the, uh, fellas over there,” as his bobbing-up tray and chin pointed casually but exactly towards the two teenaged boys who, like a cop or a substitute teacher, she’d clocked twenty minutes earlier as harmless as they came in and she was strolling back from the bar with a handful of napkins (Jerry’s lamb was greasy) and the two of them were slack-jawed with awe and glee, freely checking out her muscular, wide, skirt-striped thighs.

Now, eyeing the pair again — casually flashy clothes and uncomfortable, comfortable struts had, the first time around, given them away as American, their noses that they were brothers — this time they delightedly aware that she was — the edgy and tubby boys (one each) nudged each other and after she’d ginned and raised her beer in toast with them — hoisted glass higher than her head — then as she waved them over they were wobbly, frisky lambs at a shaggy, craggy pass; they rose and wood squeaked and Gabby said, softly, “What groovy boys—Yeah!“

They staggered hesitantly but with a certain swagger closer.  They got closer and disclosed for Gabby their glaring and absurd youngness — she must, she saw, her eyes internally widening, be roughly two decades their elder — and she looked around and kind of giggled.  Then, recalling the two men only roughly a decade her junior who at lunch out by the beach it had taken over three beers before they even had the guts to try and catch her eye, she smiled widely at these two brave lads — Caucasians almost brown (but not from being here — these dudes, she was sure, were newbies) limbs no more than her shish kebab skewers.
Crooked like bad handwriting that is happily scribbled they smiled and Gabby said, “Thanks for the beer,” as like sacks of laundry chucked in a corner they settled in across from her while bringing in thin limbs bending like hinged toys collapsing and puffing out huge spumes of cologne: dusty smooth amber distilled and ketchup mixed with lotiony Gabby skin and orange-brown curls salty from sea and dried by sun.

“No problem — our pleasure.”

“That’s sweet of you to say.”

“Don’t mention it.  Really, don’t mention it,” said the younger kid, who looked, maybe, fifteen.  He was hard and skinny, this kid, like a monkey, and he rubbed at his chin like a deep-thinking pimp and sniffed in air like an athlete from his diamond-shaped nose taking up close to most of what little available acreage there was on his soft circle of a face.  He flicked his face like somebody cocky about to ask you out and Gabby, excitedly preemptively interrupting, nodded towards the stout glasses both boys seemed incapable of not fiddling with, and said, “What do you guys got there?”

“Brandy Alexanders,” said the older brother, slowly, like a gorilla; and also like he were caught off guard by her question, only now noticing the muddy and milky liquids.

“Oh yeah?” she said.

“You ever had one?”

“Yeah,” she said.  “They’re really good!  Cheers!”

They touched glasses and the younger brother laughed like he’d just done a secret handshake with his substitute teacher or a cop as Gabby saw squinting that the older brother — laughing less and more defensively — body chunky like a kitten’s scruff — appeared to have what you might call a goatee.  An impulse to reach across and tickle this only barley went unrealized as she said, “So I’m Gabby — what about you guys?”

“I’m Nick,” said the younger brother and “Jerszy” said the other. 

“Jerszy — that’s a nice name.”

Jerszy shrugged and touched his somewhat hairy chin.  Nick raised his hands and like he were finishing her sentence said, “We’re from Chicago.”

Gabby turned to Jerszy and said, “Chicago’s a nice town.  They have a lot of nice restaurants there, if I remember correctly!”

“Okay, the truth is, we’re from this really dinky suburb that’s like really close to Chicago — but we go there all the time,” said Nick, quickly, quickly fiddling with the glinting golden necklace dangling down his chest like the sun.  The Chicago Cubs logo shone and Gabby, looking at him and putting on a smile not meant to seem entirely sincere, said, “You guys Cubs fans?”
Jerszy said slowly, “Yeah.  You?”

“Not really.  But I like baseball.”
           

The brothers” eyes pointed inward on each other like magnetized marbles and Nick said, “Yeah?”
           

“It’s okay.”
           

“Who do you like?”

“No one.  But I like watching games, going to the ballpark.  It’s fun, you know!  A few beers—“
           

Nick yelled, “Come on, who do you like?  White Sox?  You can tell us.”
           

“Well,” she said, and one eye squinted; her head tilted, “I once had this boyfriend and him and his family were like insanely into the Red Sox — so I guess I sort of got into them.”
           

“Yeah, and what happened when you broke up?  You became a Yankees fan, right?”
           

“No!”
           

Jerszy touched his brother and his chin; thoughtfully, he said, “It must have been a—a whaddayacallit?  An amicable spilt?”
           

“Not exactly,” said Gabby, and her eyes rolled as if As if!  “But it’s not like I liked the Red Sox organization any less because of what had happened.”
           

“And what exactly had happened?” said Nick, his head cocked, a salacious reporter’s just-licked pencil.
           

“Nothing,” she said, a waitress grinning and giving you your truly fabulous dessert options. 

“Just—you know—didn’t work out!  It was like our auras weren’t in sync!  He was very—vague.  I remember it raining one day when he was out of town and I took this really long walk—and I felt so washed!  I knew then it wouldn’t last!”
          

  “I know what that’s like,” said Nick, sagely, rabidly nodding.  “And sometimes it’s like—what can you do?”
           

“Yep,” she said, “Exactly!  I don’t know!”  She smiled and sipped from her beer and saw again the boys nabbing what she assumed they assumed were not indiscrete peeks at her breasts.  Already darkening from the Jamaican sun and stretching her swimwear with their roundness, they felt bigger than the boys.

“Also,” she said, “my astrologist did a chart on him and she totally told me there was no way it was gonna work—we were just totally incompatible.  So I probably shoulda never even—but you know, sometimes, you just gotta give love a shot!”

“Totally,” said Nick and “What’s an astrologist?” said Jerszy and Gabby felt like a substitute teacher or a cop, like one of them often reviled but now having overcome an entrenched skepticism and invested with an utter and unthinking love, trust, and a bright white flush rushed into her spongy blood-red heart as, crisply over their heads, black and fuzzy, two twiggy snow-white Belgium women in outrageous and conservative swimming costumes started walking back behind Jerry through his kitchen and Gabby said, “So, how’d you find out about this place?  Any special reason you decided to pop in here?”

Jerszy, hesitantly, smacking lips that had just sipped from his Brandy Alexander, said, as if she had said nothing, “So, what do you do — for a job?”

“Oh me?” she said, unthinkingly and looking back to where the Belgians had gone: “I’m in the importation business,” she said, a lie told for the thousandth time if told for the first and coming easy to her lips as beer; but, sensing from her periphery a curious, incredulous — spasmodic — immediate — reaction on the part of her teenaged interlocutors, Gabby shifted again her eyes to the boys.

“Whoa,” said Jerszy.

“What?“

“So, uh—you gonna be doing any special importing from here?” said Nick, smirking, making a circle with his thumb and forefinger and bringing their tips to his lips that puckered as he sucked.

Gabby, after a second, laughed like the sea clapping; bared small white teeth flashing foam-like and leering.  “I might be!” she said, “I might be!”

Then, after making a noise that was both a hum and purr at once: “What about other stuff?  What about girls?”

“We don’t got any girlfriends just now.  I’m taking a break — I don’t know what his excuse is,” said Nick, and he shook his head; his brother, simultaneous with this, shrugged, as if an over-worked oxen accepting the day’s yoke.  Like his jowls were half stuffed with half chewed meat he half heartedly started saying something about having had some chances before they’d left — Nick smirked when he heard this, jerked his thumb up at Jerszy — but that he didn’t want to start anything before coming to Jamaica — “You know what I mean, right?” he said — and Gabby let him finish before saying that that wasn’t exactly what she’d meant.

“You know,” she said. “Girls?“

Again their eyes drew to each other like marbles.  Eventually, Nick said, experimentally, “No, we’re not—the guy at the hotel, he was kind of hinting about something like that, I think, but that’s just—that’s not cool, you know?”

“Right on,“ she said, to herself, and then, aloud, “I know.”

She knocked back the last half of her beer bought by these boys and was trying to find their waiter — a tall man with almost no kneecaps and dreadlocks thinner than your pinkie — when (as across from her, from out of nowhere, the boys started casually exasperatedly arguing about whether or not some baseball player who had died long before either of them were born belonged in The Hall of Fame or not, and staring at her chest) the large flattened noses of these boys seemed to, in a metaphorical sense, float up and into her brain’s database — an often jumbled potpourri, a supermarket bulletin board of clipped horoscopes overlapping with Top Secret files, mack and cheese recipes — and blossoming around these metaphorically floating noses were faces like those of the boys but these were bigger, bolder, older, bloated, and she knew she had seen them before in a mug shot looking grim and condescending and names she didn’t know but did danced tantalizingly close and she could just, almost, barely begin to see what they were and what was going on, how these faces fit (if indeed they did, which she was pretty sure they did) in with the boys and with the stars and with Milo’s advice and then her eyes were freezing agog (and then quickly moving away!) as her burning brain was frantically processing the charming but decidedly disturbing face of a man a few booths away who she had seen not two days before and even talked to down at the airport; and he was a dangerous customer, this character, she saw that in a flash — how could she have missed it before! — and there was no way — no way! — that this was any sort of a coincidence at all.

“Holy shit,” thought Gabby.

“Gabby,” she heard, Nick drawing her back to their table, their world, their waiter awaiting her order.  He took it and their empties and her plate of done grub and trotted off and she shook her big and red-haired hairy head and some dandruff dropped down and she looked at it and said, absorbed fully in the observation, “I swear to—I think I could just keep shaking this stuff out until my whole head disappeared!”  Then, snapping gradually out of that train of thought, squinting as the boys continued arguing intensely, Gabby began to replay all she could of her earlier encounter with the suited, silver-haired man.  Back at the airport she had quickly surmised he was Swiss as they were collecting their luggage from the miniscule airport’s dinky carouse; and he had tried, after accidentally-on-purpose bumping into her, hitting on her, but not very hard, she thought, like, maybe, she thought now, he hadn’t really wanted to pick her up at all, had wanted only just the chance to size her up; or, maybe, she hypothesized further, staring concentratedly into space, what had really happened was that he had wanted her to get a good look at him!

He was, as she took pains to discretely eye him up — as if a celebrity she was dying to spy on while also wanting to be respectful! — for all the world engrossed in conversation with the dark chocolate-skinned and skinny woman sat across his table whose long strong back to Gabby plunged down like a tiger’s tongue that’s just licked mouse.

Then, in the next flushing rush of gushing blood beating oceanically out of her heart unstoppably like waves of an orgasm filling her full three notions came to Gabby and she knew like she knew that her ex who was such a rabid Red Sox fan was a really special guy and would one day make a really lucky woman — definitely not her! — supremely happy — that all three were bang on the money.

(The sensation was fairly unorgasmic in other respects.  She felt, although tapping into a higher, chaotic, plain, also a clinical precision, a feeling like her intellect was working full throttle.)

The first of the three notions was obvious, this suit was a secret agent working for some government not the U.S. Government; the second was that the brothers were the sons (or maybe the nephews) of one of the two heads (brothers themselves) of a minor (but growing) organized crime family operating out of Chicago and known on occasion to do dirty dealings from the Caribbean; and, thirdly, Shampoo Jerry was an internationally known and loathed, feared, fearless, relentless and remorseless art forger.

Or, perhaps, was MI5?

“Hey Gabby,” said Jerszy, “do you think we shoulda gotten extra guacamole for the nachos?  Maybe we can still — “

“Oh shut up, it’s too late!” said Nick, and he threw up his hands with furry.

“I could so eat guacamole forever!” said Gabby, and, rising mumbling, “Scuse me,” picked up her little purple purse and, burping hot lamb flab sizzling on the back of her tongue her armpits were torrents of flaming black marshmallows rimmed in all sorts of crazy colors while the tops of the boys’ heads were swirling, darling, abandoned nests; also, somehow, a baby’s still bathwater; and she felt — in her mouth, her core — their grubby, gummy, crusty, ketchup breath; felt it also in her ears and on her skin, this inside and also outside sensation like when you need a shower because you haven’t had one for days or like you’ve just pigged out on fries or really need to shave your legs; and her strong smooth legs grunting along like she’d been dancing for hours were numb and legless but they kept on chugging her towards the women’s restroom and then, inside, it was cold and had white tiles, solid, and a basket of potpourri on a counter between two sinks spreading out odor dry and sweet, muted, a sugary sickly lipstick unstoppably kissing your brows, ostensibly sparklingly clean but really kind of swampy like your mouth after the dentist.

Gabby, inhaling, coughing, looked about the room empty lit glaringly with not a whit of consideration for her vanity and heard a drip; then, considering the logistics involved in her peeing, shook her head.  Looking straight back at her mirrored face her mirrored face spoke to her of blemishes and blotchiness and also a totally dorky vertical slanting line where on one side she was ridiculously sun-burnt but on the other she seemed if possible even whiter than normal; and, on the bottom right side of her rabbit-belly neck was a now fading, two-day old brown hickey shaped like a penny that you pay fifty cents to have smushed and it made her smile: in retrospect, she saw, the boys had spied this love bite and had even made eyes with each other over it; then, turning and grinning and catching herself profiled her tits looked just fantastic, like someone else’s, like someone’s she wanted to be, and she grinned again and, hitching up a thigh like a fly fisher’s flick — tensing buttock twitching like a magical moving stone — undid the little hook at the top of her skirt, and, holding this big weird a-little-sticky wig and after trying to work out something better to do with it just tossed it like a slob’s keys on the floor when they’re home on the counter with the sinks.

Her stall’s door creaked and the drip she’d heard with her ears was seen by her eyes while a small white bucket caught cool wet water not overflowing from the back of the toilet’s dank water tank into a still small growing puddle.  “Oh great,” she said, eyes rolling, and then, after stepping out and into the other small stall and checking it out — it would do! — and locking its door she began to peel down like suspender straps the straps of her bathing suit.  Quickly uncovering her skin, removing what little second skin had pressed against her flesh, her purple nylon suit lost what stretched-out taut it had, a rubber band ready to shoot slapping back with its prick, and this, this stripping off of her suit for Gabby was as when a superhero peels away their citizen-clothing revealing a daring, attention-grabbing costume underneath that was for her her whole body and she giggled.  Bending, stepping her small sandaled feet out of the holes of it, her fingers were closing in on the lifeless garb and her big round bottom bumped the door — bland and sweaty, like the floor (the door!) and that’s when the door to this Jamaican women’s bathroom opened and someone else came in.

“Fuckity fuck,” thought Gabby, nude, tightening, and her head like a swimmer’s head like a tadpole’s tail shuffled up for air.  Droopy, her unfilled suit fell from her clutching hands like a hanky past her bosoms and swayed and her pubes felt blown on and her nipples perked like a deer’s ear from a wolf.  Tinny clattering tourist laughter mixed with the twinkly gait of a lackadaisical waiter with spoons — or, anyway, silverware — and these sounds were then smotheringly drowned out like your freedom and confidence to be yourself by a bad relationship as steps a woman’s in high heels clitter-clattered towards Gabby over tiles and then finishing its suctiony muffle the outer door with a prison’s cell clang banged shut.  Gabby, with the white and weird-to-focus-on partition slab close to her eyes, inwardly and then outwardly, contorted, softly, swiftly, raising a leg as if doing tai chi and hoping to avoid a security system’s crisscrossed beams but, though she creatively and silently contorted thusly she could not so much as catch a glimpse of the legs of this woman coming towards her.
“Gabby,” she heard, spoken in a German accent.

“Hellloooo?” she said, and after a second the little silver gun from her purse was drawn and cocked.

“I think we need to talk.”

“What’s up?”

“Did I catch you at a bad time?”

Gabby paused, breathing heavy, was a spongy nude woman in a bathroom with a shiny gun and a camp councilor just dying to make out with one of the kids.  She looked down and then up and said, “Well—a little!”

“Sorry!”

“Oh — not really!  But I just took off my bathing suit, so I’m going to go ahead and pee!”

“Me too,” said the other woman, who, stepping into the first stall said, “Achu du lieber!”

They peed together and she who had started first finished second.

She, Gabby, who had, since seeing the small puddle and drip in the other stall, totally forgotten about these things — and so not knowing what had prompted the “Achu du lieber!” — shook her head briefly because of this and raised a brow; then, still sitting and streaming urine as the other woman was finishing she snorted and pinched her naked belly and shook what she’d pinched and shook her head and then amid the whirling sounds of her flush she heard a rummaging with plastic and pulled back on her stretchy purple suit and stepped out her stall to smells of potent smoke and red sweet potpourri.  

And her eyes caught the sight of a shining black back she’d seen before and now a mirrored face to match.

The German was the woman who Gabby had thought before was the Swiss agent’s blatant professional escort!  (It turned out that he was the pro, a Miami Beach-based gigolo she’d heard good things about and sent for!)  Now, in their shared mirror, Gabby saw the German daub on lipstick, kiss the air; also, that the front of her outfit was no less daring than its back!  Its second plunge, another tongue, bared slices of breasts bordered in a tight white synthetic fabric hugging them and shaping them like oranges sliced-in-half: disembodied wings like orange splots spotted the dress as if a cheetah.

“That is such a glamorous outfit,” Gabby said.

Turning, the German, adjusting an orange earring and her at-least-a-head-higher-than-Gabby’s head, said, “Thanks.”  Then, looking her up and down as she looked down, “I love your bathing suit.”

“Really?  Thanks!  I have a two-piece I brought along, too, you know, but I just wasn’t feeling—you know?”

“With that body of yours?” said the German, appalled.

“Thanks,” said Gabby, touching her shoulder.  Then, moving rabid and unthinking fingers to her new friend’s wrist, “What’s going on?  This whole place is crawling with intrigue!  I mean—I’m just on vacation!”

This prompted a double take.  “This is so typical of Milo, don’t you agree?” the German said.

“You know Milo?”

“Do I know Milo?  Yes, darling, I know Milo.”

“Ha!” said Gabby, and she snapped.  She snapped again and the bathroom’s outer door cracked wide again and again the sounds of Jerry’s world were heard to be creaking in.  Singing briefly sounded and a red squawk pierced the night as the spies like synchronized swimmers flipped to see a sloppy Italian woman in red mince heavily slowly forward.

Gabby, silently, as this woman like a magnet for sidewalk-leering men moved, turned back to the mirror and snatched up her plastic grass skirt as she, their new arrival — no secret agent she, no way — smiled glassily towards the pair, squeezing in congenially but a little proprietarily as she ruffled her flabby elbows in a claim for mirror space.  Her face was plush and round, leathery, and she had rings like an insomniac’s; the spies, meanwhile, astride this Italian in red, this tourist not licensed to pack heat nor privy to the knowledge they would forever pack within of the erotic chaos forever bubbling within this world, filling it and indeed (like a bosomy body a bathing suit) actually creating from its shape the shape — the lovely shape — the life — of this, our, entire world—these two were, as all three continued to tweak themselves, making the best of it, the most, winking without winking in code.