Repent at Leisure

Exuberant on the plane, Amanda flipped open a journal she’d bought for the trip and wrote down David’s quick history of Mexico City. “Mind you, it’s very touristy,” he said, “but we can’t let that dissuade us.”

They took a taxi to the Presidente InterContinential, where he had booked a suite overlooking Chapultepec Park. In Amanda’s opinion, the driver overcharged them, but she managed not to say anything.

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As it turned out, “as fluent in Spanish” as David undoubtedly was, the Mexicans couldn’t understand him. So he kept repeating his instructions louder and louder. In a momentary lapse, Amanda rephrased a question. The desk clerk grinned, saying, “Sí,” he’d gladly make their dinner reservations.

Why hadn’t she admitted she spoke “Mexican?” David spoke Castilian Spanish. Amanda took his hand and waited to answer. For their honeymoon, she had skimmed a few travel books and “Spanish for Gringos.” This last she had hid to spare David’s ridicule. But that didn’t explain how easily she could converse.   

It had surprised her, too, but she recalled a high-school friend, Maya, who had arrived in tenth grade from Morelia. Obviously, unaware, Amanda must have absorbed certain expressions from the big, friendly Gonzalez family. “Maya and I were never best friends,” she said.

“Yes, well,” David said, striving for patience. “Chit-chat.”

When Amanda said, “Mucho gusto,” for hello and good-bye as her friends had, David asked her to stop. “We can’t honestly tell if they’re just being nice, responding to you or not.”

He ordered dinner: pozole for her and scampi for himself. The San Camilito served pulque, too good to miss. Amanda couldn’t stomach it, though. After excusing herself and inadvertently staining a new summer dress, she sipped tea. David finished her drink after his and ordered himself two Mexican coffees. They stopped at two different cantinas where he drank tequila. Inside a small plaza crowded with people, they watched flamenco dancers until David said, “¡Vamanos! Back to the hotel.”   

To settle her stomach Amanda was sucking a tamarind popsicle—delicious. Hearing urgency in his voice lifted her slightly. Was he impatient to be alone with her? Possibly, but he stumbled toward the TV, grabbed the remote, and found a movie with English subtitles. She soaked in a huge jacuzzi while he slept dead drunk on the sofa. A situation she decided was comical.

Less amusing, however, was his irritability the next day, when they hired a car to Teotihuacan, the towering Aztec pyramid.

Staring up, she said “Awesome!” The tiresome word he hated so much he issued demerits to any high-school girl stupid enough to say it.

But under the crystalline sky, the ruins brimmed with such wild antiquity that she listened for spirits. Not hearing any, she ran heedlessly to the top, and saw him far below, taking every step slowly. The altitude bothered him. He had claimed this at breakfast; insisting that any difference in their energy level was unrelated to age.

Finally reaching the summit, he discovered Amanda smiling for an Asian businessman’s camera, her arms wrapped around two other Asian businessmen whose head barely reached her shoulders. Her honey-colored hair flew in the breeze.

To hear David tell it, the Asians were posing there as an excuse to marvel shamelessly at Amanda’s round breasts, which her outstretched arms and flimsy summer top emphasized like a cartoon. “Madame Anime. It’s unseemly,” he said. “You’re first off a married woman, and second, the mother of two.”

So what? The bitterest quarrel occurred outside the Anthropological Museum. A guide led them with a group toward a playing field with protruding stone circles set at either end. The Aztec warriors, the guide said in Spanish, had played a game similar to basketball. After which, one warrior team was offered in sacrifice to the Sun god. The guide led them to a nearby stone sink mounted about waist level. The sacrificial warriors lay supine while priest cut out each young player’s heart.

Amanda remembered this. Maya had told her that the amazing thing was, “The winners were awarded the honor of being sacrificed.” David scoffed at her little folk tale. But she swore it was true. The idea had shocked her and still did. 

“Because, I mean, that’s faith! Gives a whole new meaning to ‘throwing a game, doesn’t it?’”

“What nonsense!” Were it true, David would have read about it. Besides, their guide had said nothing of the sort.

Their honeymoon unraveled from there. On the plane home, without thinking, she asked if he could at least agree on a proverb, attributed to Mexico. “Marry in haste…”

Drinking scotch, not champagne, David swirled the liquor in his glass and nodded. “Marry in haste, repent at leisure. For once, Amanda, you’re right.”

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