Magic (The Remarkable Adventures of Deets Parker Book 2) Read online

  Magic (The Remarkable Adventures of Deets Parker) is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner.

  Copyright©️2020 J. Davis Henry

  All Rights Reserved.

  ISBN-13: 9798629987956 (paperback)

  Imprint: Independently published

  Cover Art by J. Davis Henry

  This book is dedicated to the people of Venezuela.

  My soul will always speak to the mountains. I still hold so many dear friends, from our adventurous and youthful days together, in my heart.

  “God has entrusted me with myself.”

  ~ Epictetus

  Chapter 1

  Venezuela, May 1967

  The uniformed customs agent looked at my passport and, gesturing at his chin, conveyed that my beard had made his job of identifying passengers more difficult than he cared for. His eyes burned with disdain as he handed the booklet back to me.

  Another agent riffled through my suitcase. He flipped over a pair of jeans, revealing my sketchbook and colored pencils. Smiling and waving his hands on either side of his cheeks in reference to my facial hair, he said, “Aha, artista?”

  I nodded. “Si.”

  Hmm, beards seem to be a novelty in this country.

  Two soldiers with rifles slung over their shoulders gave me a cursory look-over as I stepped past the airport’s front doors.

  Outside, the air rippled with a heat that distorted the myriad of colors and shapes around me. A bobbing olive-brown spot slashed though by a white glimmer coalesced into the face of a man who wore a broad grin. I knew when he spoke and the grin remained, that it was a perpetual smile, not of joy, but meant to assure his friends and disarm his opponents.

  “Deets Parker. You are Deets, no? I’m Johnny Matamoros.”

  “Hi, Johnny. Nice to meet you.”

  “I’m to drive you to your hotel and be your guide. Do you speak Spanish? Habla Español?”

  I waved my hand shakily. “A little bit.”

  “Ah, no problem. I speak your language with ease.” A gold tooth lit up the far left side of his mouth.

  Gliding lithely towards me, he slipped my suitcase from my hand. His movement, so smooth and graceful, had me wondering belatedly if I had been conned by a pickpocket.

  “Who do you work for, Johnny?”

  Just the grin for an answer, yet it conveyed all life was a riddle, that everything had a hidden message.

  He wore wraparound sunglasses. Not being able to see his eyes was disconcerting and forced me to read him through his teeth and cat-like movements.

  “We’ll get to know each other. We have a month to ask each other questions. Right? Tonight, you stay at the beach. There are pretty women there. Relax and enjoy yourself at the bar and the swimming pool. I’ve got something scheduled for you tomorrow, but the devil dance festival isn’t for another week.”

  Everyone in the hotel seemed spooked at the sight of me. Besides the occasional snicker, I was greeted with cautious stares by the staff, curious glimpses from the women, and outright hostile glares by men. My long hair and beard, green sneakers, and array of peace buttons on my vest were obviously an unusual sighting, more so than back in the U.S.

  Chapter 2

  After dinner, I went out to the pool. Johnny was there in a Speedo bathing suit, cigarette and drink in hand, grinning and flirting with a bikini-clad, laughing woman. Although he was wet from a recent swim, his hair was perfectly combed, his ducktail and pompadour held in place while repelling water with a slick of some substance closer to Vaseline than Brylcreem.

  Johnny told me to get my bathing suit on, then rattled off a string of incomprehensible chatter to the woman. She turned her attention my way, her eyes meeting mine. Her smile was flirtatious as she spoke to me in halting English. “Americano? Artist? I want… Pintar. Ay, how you say? Paint me.” Johnny gave me a “look at what I’ve done for you” grin, and I guessed he had charmed her into accompanying me back to my floor. She touched my arm continuously as she talked, and her hips bumped into mine a number of times as we walked to my room. Once inside, she leaned forward to give her tits a blast from the air conditioner as she giggled and wiggled and sighed rapturously.

  But when I slipped her bikini top off and laid her back on the bed, I became frantic. I kept thinking of Sam having my baby and me struggling for my life as Brenda’s knife slashed at me. The unbidden thoughts kept me from staying hard. And though her kisses were passionate, I recognized my bed partner was wrestling with some inner turmoil herself. Her caresses became noticeably hesitant the more my hands wandered. When I ran my hand over her bikini bottom she tensed, and as I slid my finger along her cunt, she asked me nervously in broken English what I was doing. I answered with a slow deep rub continuing down between her legs. She shuttered and arched herself into my cupped hand as she confessed, “I no do… with… my boyfriend.”

  “You feel so good.”

  “He do… aqui.” She held a hand on one of her tits. “Mis tetas.” She was wide-eyed, apologetic with an enchanting mix of fear and curiosity. “He no do...”

  I was in bed with another virgin, and again, another woman talking about her boyfriend.

  However, she didn’t stop me as I finished removing her bikini and caressed between her legs. Her nervousness gave way to heavy breathing, and her eyelids went dreamily half-closed as she relaxed into the rhythm of my stroke. She cooed and moaned, and I sucked on her cream-colored tetas as I brought her to orgasm.

  “I want with you.” She bent her arms, resting her hands palm up by her shoulders in a surrender and invite position, while spreading her legs slightly.

  But when I climbed onto her, my cock just flopped half-heartedly, and I strained in frustration as I tried to enter her. I kept crumpling and shrinking and finally, totally humiliated, gave up. Trying to re-establish my crushed pride, I stuck my finger in her again, and she surprised me by grabbing at my hand to stir it to her needs. She stiffened, gasping in a succession of quick orgasms. Her pleasure fascinated me and helped sooth my ego, but I still hung lame.

  Afterwards, she asked me if she was still a virgin. I wondered if I was being teased by this enthusiastic and not-so-shy woman.

  “Well, maybe half a virgin.”

  “I… oh, como se dices? Marry boyfriend in dress. It… blanco… white and pretty.”

  We heard loud voices in the hall. A hysterical, demanding woman was speaking with two men.

  My lover sat up, sudden alarm directing her movements. She looked at me wide-eyed, holding her breath. “Es mi madre. Mamá.”

  “What?”

  She pointed at the door. “They look. Papá call police.”

  We jumped out of bed and got dressed quick.

  “Oh, no, son las nueve. Clock is nine.”

  Our situation didn’t look good. We couldn’t sashay out of my room with her in her bikini to present ourselves to her mother and father.

  The voices moved further away. She pushed me closer to the door. “Look to go.”

  I peered out and saw the hotel manager, two middle-aged people who had to be her parents, and Johnny.

  I closed the door. Her mother squawked, threatening the apologetic manager. The father spoke reassuringly in a measured pace.

  “Papá say go look restaurante y bar.”

  There was a quick rap on the door.

  “Deets, open. It�
��s Johnny.”

  I peeked out. He slipped a key into my hand.

  “This is for her room. Tell her to move now. Quick. And to think of a good story for her parents—like she took a walk on the beach, got the key from the front desk.”

  I gave her the key, relaying Johnny’s instructions to her as best I could. Communication with clothes on was more difficult then without.

  She grabbed a pen from the night table and scribbled on a nearby notepad. At the door, she shoved the paper in my hand and gave me a deep kiss.

  “Me llamo Cecilia. What your name?”

  “Deets.”

  When she spoke rapidly in a half-whisper, I had trouble following her thickly accented mixture of two languages. “Me birthday vacación. Soy veinte y uno, twenty and one.... Ya no necesito un chaperón. Mamá y Papá...” She stammered trying to find the right word. “Bad think at me.”

  “They worry.”

  “Si, exactamente. Worry.”

  “You better go. Tell them you walked too far down the beach.”

  She looked perplexed. “I live mountain. No walk. Es muy lejos. Mucho kilometros. Please visitame. We good.” She smiled and looked at the bed, gave me another kiss as she slipped past me, then bounced and jiggled hurriedly down the hall to her room.

  I closed the door and leaned my back against it. Taking a well-deserved breath after the fiasco and confusion of the evening, I looked at the paper she had handed me. Cecilia Gutierrez, Quinta Toro Bravo, Calle Amelia, Merida.

  Calle Amelia. Amelia Street. I felt a space open in my head and a piece of some unknown puzzle slide into its place.

  Chapter 3

  In the morning, I answered a knocking on my door. A short bullfrog of a man stood in the hallway.

  “Hello. You are the American artist?” His English was heavily accented and formal. His voice, gruff and aggressive.

  “Uh, yes.”

  “My daughter informed me you painted a picture of her yesterday on the beach. I would like to see it. Perhaps, if it meets my approval, I could purchase this painting.”

  “Your daughter?”

  “Yes, Cecilia. The young woman you walked back to the hotel last night after painting her portrait.”

  “Oh yes, Cecilia. Um, I haven’t finished it.”

  “I would like to see it.” His eyes challenged me, inferring I had better show it to him or explain what I was doing with his daughter. He stepped into my room.

  I picked up my sketch pad and flipped the pages as a burgeoning panic threatened my ability to dream up an imaginative excuse. Skipping past a sketch of my mother kneeling in her vegetable garden, I muttered feebly, “No, that couldn’t be her.”

  How am I getting out of this mess?

  On the next sheet was a very loose rendering of my sister, Stephanie, looking thoughtful, her head bowed as sunlight streamed in a window, the details of half of her face washed away by the glare.

  “Is that her picture? No, of course not. That is a young girl. My daughter said you painted. This is pencil on paper.”

  “Uh, you said her name is Cecilia? I think that was the portrait that... a wave, I mean, there were so many people that… uh... I guess, yeah, that was the one a wave washed away.”

  “A wave? A water wave?”

  “I dropped it on the sand, and it was getting dark and uh… a water wave…” I looked out my window at the ocean and scratched at the top of my head. “I’ll gladly start another drawing of your daughter. She was the one with black hair, right?”

  I knew he had just classified me as an idiot. “You do not paint?”

  “No, I’m in Venezuela on a job. My client wants illustrations.”

  “Interesting, you are being paid.”

  He sat down in a chair and lit a cigarette, offering me one.

  I shook out one my Kools, nervously spilling half the pack onto the floor. What story did Cecilia tell him?

  “So tell me, young artist, who has hired you to come to Venezuela?”

  “Esso Petroleum hired me to draw the devil mask dancers of, um… uh, I forgot the—”

  “You are referring to San Francisco de Yare.”

  “San Francisco?”

  “Yes, it is a very popular festival. You will enjoy it. You must be an exceptional artist and very famous for Esso to hire you.”

  I shrugged. The conversation was steering in a safer direction. “They also want me to do some wedding scenes, any interesting sights, and a ceremony for a saint that’s near here, I think.”

  He flipped open the sketch pad on his lap and nodded. He studied the first page, grunting, clearing his throat. He slowly went through the five drawings in the tablet before coming to the blank pages.

  Taking a long drag and blowing out an even longer stream of smoke, he closed the pad and stared thoughtfully at me.

  “You are very good. The woman and the young girl—who are they? Perhaps your sister and mother?”

  I nodded.

  “It is a shame about this big wave that washed away my daughter’s portrait.” He tapped his fingers on the arms of the chair, spilling an ash on the carpet. “Everybody else you drew last night in the dark, I suppose you gave them their drawings, or their portraits were all washed away too?”

  Oh man, did he say in the dark? I raised my cigarette to my lips, sucked in deeply, realized I had never lit it.

  “Well, it is a shame. My daughter is a very beautiful girl.” He inhaled more smoke, and held it in like he was a superior man, as he stared through me for a very long, uncomfortable moment. I touched a match to my cigarette in an attempt to jump-start the freezing of time and the paralysis of my heartbeat.

  Didn’t hot-tempered Latin Americans shoot people for looking at their unchaperoned daughters?

  “I think you finish this lost drawing. It will be a very nice birthday present for her. She will be in the lobby in a half hour. Bring your art equipment.”

  Cecilia’s mother sat next to me on a deep sunken couch as I drew her daughter. Mister Gutierrez sat at a table on the veranda drinking Bloody Marys with Johnny. After about ten minutes into my drawing, as I rounded out the general placement of the facial features, Mother Gutierrez got up and placed a vase of flowers next to Cecilia. Cecilia plucked a large red hibiscus blossom from a stem and placed it in her hair. She smiled at me with her eyes, which drew a stern rebuke from her mother. I couldn’t understand a word, but Cecilia snapped off an angry reply that instigated a harsh, back and forth, vocal bombardment between the two of them.

  “Whoa, cool it.” I held a finger up to my lips to silence them. Pointing at my drawing, I said the only word of my high school Spanish that came to mind, “Bonita, pretty.”

  They settled back into their seats, mother eyeing me with her mouth downturned, not sure if an artist was within his bounds to hush her. A few minutes later, she was nodding in approval as I added the flowers to the sketch.

  The drawing came together quickly. I filled in a creamy, light-caramel skin tone, deep dark-chocolate eyes, midnight hair, pink blush on her lips, cheeks, and the flower. Cecilia couldn’t contain herself and, squealing in delight, grabbed the drawing from me. She bounced up on her toes, then settled slowly back down, mesmerized by the image.

  “I show Papá.”

  My eyes lingered on Cecilia’s swaying hips as she crossed the lobby. Mother Gutierrez lit a cigarette and eyed me sternly—“Where was my daughter last night?” written all over her face.

  Papa Gutierrez peeled off a few pink and purple bills, handing them to me with an appreciative nod. Cecilia nudged her father, and the family talked for a few minutes. Aiming his grin at me with a “See, I’ll always do you right” look, Johnny joined them.

  Cecilia smiled excitedly and said, “Papá y Mamá… say… visit my house.”

  Johnny smoothly interpreted the situati
on to me. “The Gutierrez family has a farm in the interior of the country. There will be a wedding and dance in a nearby village that may fit perfectly into your assignment here. I think it would be a good idea. An adventure—once we finish with the devil dancer festival.”

  “Okay, sounds cool.”

  “Chévere.”

  He chatted back and forth with the family, planning details. Cecilia looked embarrassed as her mother kept stressing something with an emphatic negative shake of her finger.

  Johnny’s grin broke its mold and became a lopsided caricature of itself as he said to me, “Señora Gutierrez says you must shave off your beard if you stay at her house. Her daughter won their argument about your long hair. That, you can keep.” As his lips eased back into shape, his eyebrows twitched, communicating, “It’s simple, if you want to see the girl, you shave off the beard.”

  I nodded at the family and said, “Si, gracias.”

  Everyone beamed, hands were shaken, and I realized we were all saying goodbye. Cecilia managed to bump her ass and press it invitingly against my hip as she slid herself between me and a chair. Johnny led me out to his Plymouth Barracuda, and I waved at the Gutierrez family, not quite comprehending where I was going, when I would see Cecilia again, or how much money I clutched in my hand.

  Johnny chuckled, punched me lightly on my shoulder. “You really impressed that girl’s father.”

  “No kidding, really? I thought he was going to kill me.”

  “No, Mister Deets. He’s a very rich businessman. He owns a cattle farm in Barinas and an engine manufacturing plant in Merida. Esso is the biggest and richest company in Venezuela. He’s very impressed with your talent and your connection to the oil company.”

  “Me? What? I’m just doing some illustrations for a promo book, a calendar, and a few postcards.”

  “Doesn’t matter. If Esso picked you and brought you here, you must be very respected. That’s why he didn’t kill you.” He laughed and his teeth looked whiter and larger. “In reality, he’s probably not considered to be very sophisticated by the more cosmopolitan business leaders in Caracas who he deals with. If he can boast that Esso’s famous American artist stayed with him and included some pictures from his farm in their promotional project, then he’s scored many, many points with his associates.”