Espionage in Tijuana

After they parked the car, they strolled down Avenida Revolucion, the main shopping street in Tijuana, walking up an alley to see tiny taco storefronts lined with patrons waiting to get in. Robin was flighty, her eyes darting to every nook and cranny of this exotic city.

Beggar children caught her eyes more than the clustering of pungent leather saddles, wallets, and handbags that hung from the awnings of the open shops.

“My, how inexpensive these leather goods are,” remarked Renee who had been there before. “This is the place to go if you want to buy any leather goods.” Renee explained that there was no sales tax in Mexico and led them to a few shops, but Robin kept turning, her eyes upon the little brown children who seemed to be following her in particular as the three strolled through the market.

Johnny was fascinated by a box of jumping beans on a stand outside one of the colorful shops. The sign above them read, in English, “These beans do not jump while in your hand, so please do not pick them up.” His compulsion was to do just that. He had never seen a real jumping bean before, only the little plastic capsules with buckshot inside that made the little buggers stand up in the five and dime stores back in Brooklyn.

“But how do these beans jump so?” he asked a paunchy mustached shop keeper who kept guard waiting for a simple question such as that.

“De ben ha ensie little worm. De worm jump frm de het and de ben hop.” He was being nice to the Americano with the de green dollars. He kept pointing to the embroidered English saddles though. Johnny was regretful he had no horse.  

Robin had given a quarter to one of the dark eyed children who, much to her dismay, didn’t say muchas gracias or anything.

“Maybe they can’t talk,” she said alarming to Renee.

“Nah, they have nothing to say. They probably are used to getting coins from sympathetic tourists like us.”

An attractive dark lady, wearing a dull maroon shawl approached Johnny from behind and inched her way to his side picking her way around other tourists as he walked.

“Can you lend me three dollars, sir?” Johnny stopped to think for a moment. Perhaps she was the mother of the child Robin had given the quarter to. He reached down toward his pocket but his hand got stuck on his belt buckle. He took the opportunity to reconsider his generosity. “She isn’t going to pay me back,” he realized. "She’ll just buy tequila." He caught sight of the children. “She needs the money for tortilla and milk,” he thought, and again he reached towards his pocket convinced by her look of earnestness. She would be enjoying an infrequent meal to share with her child, but then he thought he saw her wink at him and gesture to a back alley; that’s when he knew for sure what the three bucks would be for. Why, of course she would be paying him back, soon enough.

Renee and Robin were tugging at his sleeve to leave. It was well past noon and Robin was getting hungry. After stopping at a fruit cart laden with watermelon, papaya, and oranges covered in crushed ice, they walked back to Avenida Revolucion. The street had become more crowded. Robin noticed and pointed out more dirty children tagging after other tourist on the strip. A pack of young boys ran in the street along the line of parked cars and into a lot that looked like it emptied into a desert beyond town.

“They’re so much like the children in America; so brisk, so lively, so athletic,” Renee remarked. Robin was in agreement and pointed out their swift little bodies as they skidded out of sight. Johnny noticed a sting of shiny bright objects hanging out of one boy’s back pockets.

They had stopped in front of a few eateries and deliberated. Some were too filthy to patronize; no décor, unwashed front windows, no signs or if so, in Spanish. Renee was almost swayed by his suggestion that a place with the worst décor sometimes has the best food, but Robin had her eyes on bigger and better things. Across the street from the Woolworth de Mexico stood the International House of Pancakes; today’s special- Pic-Pac burritos.

“It looks so clean inside there. Let’s go there to eat,” said Robin with a gleam in her eyes, the first gleam Renee noticed on her since their restaurant hunt began, and moved to oblige her only daughter, but Renee knew better.

“What is the sense of coming to Mexico to eat food prepared in America?” she said. “There must be something more authentic.” But Robin thought it was authentic. After all, there were two plaster cast donkeys on either side of the plate glass doors and the blue and yellow awning had the restaurant’s name done up in wood-cut lettering.

“”The lettering looks more like Chinese brush strokes to me,” Johnny joked loudly so they could hear it. “Maybe they have burrito chow mein.”

Johnny hadn’t been with his aunt and cousin more than two days after saying adios to Richard and Jain, and hadn’t seen them in five years since they left Queens, but they could easily tell he was joking; he had his father’s sense of humor, Renee remarked.

The three decided to eat in a local restaurant which looked clean but had the air of Old Mexico. They observed the exiting middle-class patrons in flowered shirts, with cameras around their necks. They saw the menu in the window with English-Spanish translations. Robin could practice her junior high Spanish when ordering. They both had excellent knowledge of the varieties of Mexican cuisine; Johnny was lost in translation. He spoke French and Mandarin.

After lunch, before they returned to the bustle in the street, Johnny went to the restroom. When he was pulling down his zipper in the one sink, two urinal, three stall room, a squeaky ceiling fan above a blue and white hexagonal tiled floor, he noticed someone entering in the reflection of the wet porcelain. The man dropped a piece of paper and it drifted to the floor settling near Johnny’s shoe, an inch from a drip that didn’t make it to the basin. He finished and picked it up:

“Meet me here at four o’clock. You could make a fortune,” written on a dry cleaner store receipt. Johnny folded it and put it in his black t-shirt pocket, and then walked through the restaurant to the street where his aunt and cousin waited.

“Is the bathroom clean?” Aunt Renee wanted to know. “The ladies room was filthy; absolutely filthy, flies everywhere.”

“I’m holding it in until we can find a clean one. Let’s go to IHOP; I bet theirs is clean.” Johnny held upturned hands, the universal Yiddish sign of “Whatever you want.”

“I’m not going to eat there; just pee.”

“We’ll be over there getting drinks,” said Renee pointing at a curbside café.

As soon as they were seated, Johnny started noticing the time on random clocks; clocks against his wishes. Even the wristwatches of seated tourists nearby caught his attention, their arms stable long enough for him to see what time it was, that four o’clock was quickly approaching. Even the shadow of a parking sign pole, shaded to the northeast, was a sundial. He took a deep breath in the darkening sky. Though he had no intention of meeting his connection, he wondered how much wealth waited for him at the cleaners and what he would have to do to earn it. Would he be a mule for marijuana, cocaine, or perhaps pharmaceuticals?  

“Johnny, are you okay? It looks like something is on your mind." His aunt caught him staring past the portico at a churro stand. There was a drug store window with a large clock under which it read, “Time for a remedy?”

“How bizarre,” Johnny thought. “Maybe I should go and find out what it’s all about. I’ve got nothing to lose.” He took out the receipt and located the address; it was nearby on Avenida Revolucion. They had passed it earlier near the parking lot. “I could just say ‘no’ if I don’t like the deal.” Johnny wondered.

“Where are you off to?” said Robin upon returning seeing Johnny looking around in some agitation.

“Sit. Relax. Finish your soda. We have to leave soon,” Renee added. “I made a dinner reservation for us in Old Town San Diego for six o’clock. You’ll love their baby back ribs.”

“I wanted to look at those leather belts and wallets again that we saw near the restaurant. I need a new wallet.”

“Well, don’t be long, and don’t you come back with any mescal or tequila; not in my car.”

“Don’t worry, Aunt Renee; I don’t drink that,” he said with a wink, and dashed away. He was away for a while. They finished their drinks. His cousin and aunt were starting to be concerned.

“Should I go look for him?” Cousin Robin suggested.

“Nah; give him a few more minutes. Maybe he met a nice senorita on the way.” They both chuckled at the thought of any woman being attracted to their sloppy long-haired hippie relative.

“Johnny is so handsome,” chided Robin. “Why would he want to do that to himself?”

“His mother must be heart-broken,” Renee added. She thought of his mom, the scandalous divorce before it became common, and from her own brother no less. Johnny’s mom later became a role model of strength in adversity, but how could she stay in Brooklyn and take the gossip, Renee wondered? She herself had fled to the farthest reaches of the United States after her divorce, to get away from ridicule, and start her life over, fresh. How could Johnny’s mother have stayed?

“Johnny, where did you go so long?" said Renee when he came back, a bit perturbed. "Come on; we’re leaving.” Robin held his hand to make sure he wouldn’t get away again. “So did you get your wallet?”

Johnny held up his backpack as if to say the wallet was inside.

“The car’s this way, I think. Ah, all the streets have strange names!”

“It was near the store with the big snake on the sign next to the parking lot. Over there! I see it!”

The drive back to the border took minutes. San Diego is just fifteen miles from Tijuana. But when they got to the border crossing it seemed like every car from California was heading north. The three lanes were backed up five cars deep. Renee caught Johnny in her rear view mirror.

“What are you fidgeting about back there, Johnny?”

“Ah nothing, Aunt Renee; just looking for some gum.”  

“I have a Life-Saver if you’d like,” said Robin twisting to see him with outstretched hand..

“It looks like we’re next,” said Renee. “We don’t have anything to declare, do we?”

“Nothing, unless you mean the pound of Acapulco Gold I have in my satchel.”

“Yeah, right!”

“Well, I do have something to declare.”

“Johnny Emerson Davinsky, what have you done?”

“Well,” said Johnny as he reached into his bag. “I do have this." Johnny took out a classic silver stapler. "An Ace Pilot Model from 1938."  

“Now where did you get that?” Johnny was mum.

“Come on, Johnny. Come clean. Where did you get that?”

“I’m embarrassed to say,” Johnny lowered his eyes. Robin grabbed the stapler by its round plunger top as Renee showed the passports and was whisked through. She held it such that it looked like she had her finger on a trigger of a gun, the slender staple cartridge pointing at Johnny.

“Tell me where, or else?”

“Remember that parking lot we passed on our way to the car?” He hesitated to go on until prodded. “There was a service booth there with a slightly opened window. The stapler caught my eye.”

“Johnny, you didn’t!”

“I’m afraid I did,” said Johnny unsure of how severe his punishment would be.

“Johnny Davinsky, I’m ashamed of you!” said Renee.

“I’m telling your mother,” said Robin, but she was smiling when she said it. Johnny knew she wouldn’t really tell, or would she?

Relatives don’t ever age. He and Robin were still eight and ten years old watching "Peter Pan" with Mary Martin on a color TV in Corona, Queens.

“That’s it, Johnny. When we get back, go straight to your room. No dinner for you tonight.”

 The silence made Johnny feel ashamed. From behind, he wasn’t sure how they looked. But the beautiful old staple gun in his backpack would never be missed as an antique; only as a stapler, a simple stapler that would be replaced by the management of the parking lot. Johnny could just imagine seeing it glittering under the lamp on the desk he would have one day when he was a famous author. Then, he could tell the story in his own words.

They seemed to get over it soon enough. Though a pale hung over the baby back ribs, the farewell from San Diego was amiable. Renee drove Johnny to the airport the next morning for his two hour flight back to San Francisco. Robin hugged him goodbye not knowing when she and her cousin would meet again. 

San Francisco 1978

Revised Sept. 2016