Stuck Between a Mariachi and a Hard Place - Part 3
 Gil Gevins - PVNN
November 13, 2010
A moment later, our next-door neighbor, a retired jazz guitarist from St. Louis, limped on to the terrace. Harry, like Filiberto, was pushing eighty and though his vision was still pretty good, he'd been going deaf for years.
"What's going on?" he asked Lucy.
"Mr. Fixit got himself stuck in the water tank."
"A stick-up at the bank?" Harry gasped. "Do they know who did it?"
"Honey," Lucy called up to me, "maybe Harry can help."
I was in luck after all: with the dumb and the blind already on hand, all I'd needed to complete my rescue team was the deaf. "I'm going to grow old up here," I told Curly.
After some discussion, it was agreed that Filiberto, Harry and Curly would go up the beach to where they were building a new hotel and attempt to coax a bricklayer or two into coming back with them to chisel me out. I instructed Filiberto to do the talking, Curly to keep an eye on Filiberto and Harry to keep an eye on Curly.
"Keep Curly away from the ocean," I yelled to Harry, "he can't swim."
"Yeah," Harry agreed, "that sun is strong!"
Miraculously, Filiberto, Harry and Curly did indeed return a short while later with a pair of bricklayers in tow. Curly led the way up to the roof, repeatedly telling the masons, "This way," as if there were in fact a number of alternate routes one could take up a ladder.
I was relieved to see that my two saviors, whose names were, unbelievably, Cesar (like the salad) and Cesario (like the operation), were both on the exceptionally short side. Thus, with only half of me above ground level, I could still stand eye-to-chest with them.
"How much is this going to cost?" I asked.
Cesar and Cesario looked at each other and shrugged. "We've never chiseled anyone out of a water tank before," Cesar said.
"All right," I sighed, in no mood for haggling, "I'll give you four hundred pesos. Just be careful."
Before they could chip away a single chunk of cement, however, we were all stunned into immobility by the sound of a loud siren approaching the house. Moments later a trio of firemen came rushing onto the terrace carrying axes and buckets. "Where's the fire?" one of them shouted.
"It's not a fire," Lucy said calmly. "It's a rescue. I thought I made myself clear on the phone: my husband is stuck in the tinaco."
Wedged uncomfortably half in and half out of my concrete prison, my hips throbbing with pain, on the verge of sunstroke, I looked down at my wife and thought black thoughts.
"I'm not sure we're trained for that," the fireman said. "We're supposed to rescue people from fires, not from water tanks."
"Those are firemen!" Curly cried with astonishment.
The three firemen began to climb the ladder - apparently, they had been trained for that. Cesar and Cesario finally set to work. And, to my utter delight, a man carrying a camera strode purposefully onto the terrace and said to Lucy, "I'm with La Prensa. Where's the fire?"
"There's no fire," Lucy said, handing him a glass of lemonade, "my husband's trapped in the tinaco."
Moments later, a small group of curiosity seekers, attracted by the sounds of the fire engine, came pouring onto the terrace. Lucy, renowned throughout the state of Jalisco for her legendary hospitality, served each of them a tall glass of delicious, thirst-quenching lemonade.
"Batman, your bald spot's turning red," Curly said.
Curly, for what may have been only the second time in his entire life, was correct. In my anxiety over losing my lower limbs to gangrene, I'd forgotten all about the sun.
"Curly, go and get me an umbrella. There's one hanging by the backdoor."
"The backdoor?"
"Of my house."
Several minutes later Curly, umbrella held uncertainly aloft, appeared on the terrace, shouting: "Batman, is this what you mean?" The reporter from La Prensa, a paper not known for its high journalistic standards, appeared bewildered and began to scratch his ear with the blunt end of a pencil.
"Why did he call your husband Batman?" he asked Lucy.
"Because he likes to wear leotards when no one's around," Lucy replied.
"Leotards? What is he, some kind of pervert?" the reporter asked hopefully.
"Batman is no pervert," Lucy said, rising to my defense. "Plenty of perfectly normal men like to dress in women's clothing. Haven't you ever heard of Dennis Rodman?"
"I see," the reporter said, jotting it all down on his notepad.
Cesar and Cesario, chipping carefully away at the cement, had begun to make visible progress now, while the rubberneckers on the terrace had collectively transformed themselves into a full-blown party. Laughing, talking and swilling their lemonade, they were having the time of their lives.
Until, like a B-movie hallucination, four men covered from head-to-toe in what appeared to be Bio-Terrorism suits, suddenly materialized from out of nowhere. This was, I soon discovered, the African Bee Extermination Team, and what they were doing on my terrace, God only knew.
"You've got a swarm?" one of them asked Lucy.
"No, a jammed husband. Would you like some lemonade? I've got straws if you want to keep your face-guards on."
It must have been an awfully slow news day because the African Bee Extermination Team was followed closely by a TV crew from Channel Ten, who were in turn followed by a hydraulic engineer from the mayor's office and two delivery boys from Domino's Pizza.
I think it was then, when the man holding the video camera said to Lucy, "Are you the one who called?", that the question in my mind became not, would I kill her, but rather, how slowly was she going to die.
The hydraulic engineer climbed the ladder and entered into a discussion with the firemen as to the feasibility of "flushing" me out. He was of the opinion that if we filled the tank, the water pressure from below would eventually pop me right out of my predicament like the cork from a bottle of champagne.
"Don't mean to burst your bubble," I told the engineer, "but it takes a whole day to fill this tank and I wasn't planning on spending the night here."
Curly, holding the umbrella protectively over my person, said, "Me, neither."
As the minutes continued to crawl excruciatingly by, the party grew in both size and intensity. Dozens of happy-go-lucky visitors swarmed about the terrace now, merrily dowsing themselves with free lemonade and stuffing their eager mouths with complimentary slices of pepperoni pizza. All that was lacking to complete the festive mood was music. But this deficiency was quickly and providentially remedied by the unexpected arrival of an unemployed Mariachi band.
Wandering forlornly down the beach, the band had taken in the lively crowd of revelers and concluded, not illogically, that a party was in progress. And so, trudging onto the terrace, they asked if anyone wished to contract their services. In the process of polishing off her third margarita, Lucy raised a dainty hand and said, "I do."
Removing the last two hundred-peso bill from my wallet, Lucy paid the musicians to play one song, El Rey. And play it they did with great gusto, aiming their instruments and their voices up in the general direction of the tinaco (Lucy had told them it was my birthday). When they were finished with El Rey, they played Happy Birthday, pro bono, with everyone singing along.
The party finally broke up fifteen minutes later when Cesar and Cesario chipped the last few fragments of cement away from my hips and I was hauled out and carried down the ladder (both of my legs had gone to sleep) by two of the firemen, with an assist from the African Bee Extermination Team.
The next morning Lucy, all sweetness now, brought me the early edition of La Prensa. My picture was on the cover. It showed me, from the waist up, with an umbrella suspended surreally above my head (Curly had been Photoshopped out of existence) and two firemen, one on either side, hauling me out of the tinaco by my arms. The headline read: BATMAN RESCUED FROM WATER TANK - HE'S NO PERVERT, WIFE CLAIMS.
Lucy was a little disappointed that mine was not the only story to make the front page that day. Beneath my item were two others: WOMAN SET ON FIRE BY NEIGHBOR'S HORSE! and MAN SWALLOWS EMPTY JAR!
"Don't feel bad," Lucy consoled me, "at least you got top billing."
 Gil Gevins, named "Jalisco's Funniest Human Being," is a twenty-five year Puerto Vallarta resident. Signed copies Gevin's books are available for purchase at Lucy's Cucu Cabana at 295 Basilio Badillo (Restaurant Row) on the south side of Puerto Vallarta, online at GilGevins.com and Amazon.com, or you can attempt to pry one from the hands of one of his readers - but be warned... they won't give the books up too easily. |
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