No Way Home by Andrew Coburn Page A

As he drew a chair the waiter, on cue, brought him a bottle of beer. Removing dark glasses, he said, “My name’s Chico.”
    She surveyed him. “You don’t look like a Chico.”
    His fair face beaten by the sun, he looked Yankee or German. His features were closely crafted, the planes precise and straight, the brow smooth, the nose shaved narrow. His weather-bleached hair, which had thinned, was combed straight back, which gave him a dated look, as if he too had watched the Esther Williams movies, though they were before his time. She judged him to be not much more than thirty.
    “Do you often stare at older women on the beach?”
    “When they look like you,” he said and lit her cigarette with a lighter that flamed high. Beyond them sprinklers bathed a bordering lawn already as green as it could be.
    “You’re still staring.”
    “Do you mind?” He drank his beer from a frosted glass. A Swiss watch consumed his wrist. He had on a silk shirt, powder blue slacks, and alligator loafers, no socks.
    “What exactly are you looking for, Chico, or should I assume the obvious?”
    The waiter, serving another table, dropped a tray of drinks. The sudden smash of glass startled her but not him. His lusterless eyes did not blink or swerve from her. Here was a man, she mused, incapable of fear, only of madness. A practicing psychiatrist, she sketched a profile of a loner, quiet, monosyllabic, mostly unknowable, with no women in his life except disposable ones. He did not frighten her, but he greatly interested her.
    “Are you staying here at the hotel?”
    “I have a room,” he said in a way that made it sound permanent. “What color was your hair when you were young?”
    “Sort of blond.” A hand supported her chin. “Why do you ask?”
    “When I imagine somebody naked I want to get it right.”
    Years ago she had had a patient who physically resembled him, a seducer who planted strawberries on women’s throats for their husbands to see. She interpreted the behavior as cruelty, but upon reconsideration saw it as a death wish and was not surprised when months later she read of his murder in the Miami
Herald.
Sipping her drink, she said, “That’s good, Chico, very good. That would thrill some women.”
    “I know a place, if you like, we could go swimming in private.”
    “Why would I want to do that?”
    “For the adventure.”
    “And do you plan to swim in the buff or keep on your underpants?”
    “I don’t wear underpants, never have.”
    She lightly crushed out her cigarette. “I’d think the material of your trousers would irritate your thing.”
    “I’m not circumcised.”
    “That would explain.”
    A boy in the uniform of the hotel came out on the patio, glanced about, and then wound his way to their table. “You have a telephone call,” he said, and Chico rose. The boy, Cuban, smiled at her.
    “Will you be here when I get back?” Chico asked.
    “Of course,” she said. “This is interesting.”
    She watched him stride into the hotel, shoulders squared, suggestive of the military, in which she could easily picture him serving. In his absence she smoked another cigarette and gazed off at flower beds in the shape of coffins, as if the hotel management had been killing off guests and burying the bodies. He returned with less of a stride and sat down without drawing in the chair.
    “I’m afraid I have to leave.”
    “The call must’ve been a woman,” she said with a smile. “Are you popular, Chico?”
    He finished his beer. “You haven’t told me your name.”
    “That’s true. Tell me something instead: what brought you to my table?”
    His eyes pondered her. Then he removed his wallet and produced a brittle snapshot, the colors dim, the edges smooth as silk from wear. The picture was of a woman, not old, not young, whose expression seemed set in the tragic tension of someone about to be hurt. She stared hard at it.
    “It looks nothing like me.”
    “To me it does,” he said and