Cave of Little Faces. Aída Besançon Spencer
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wholesale from anywhere and tell the suckers we got ’em from the hill.”
“That’s right, we could! So, what are you thinking, set up a little shop nearby and sell ’em? You don’t think the locals would see through this?”
“Right now, I’m just thinking,” said Star. “We gotta find the angle to it.”
“That’s my girl!” said Basil, proudly.
That encouragement was all she needed. The next morning at a supermarket in town, standing next to the magazine rack at the checkout where they had bought a meager amount of lunch supplies (and surreptitiously slipped a few other items into their pockets or big tote bag), it suddenly came to her almost completely full blown.
She was glancing at a woman’s magazine while she waited for the checker, who was leisurely servicing a friend buying a basketload of baby items, when she flipped a page and discovered a horoscope in the back. Automatically, she searched for Virgo and translated that “something big was about to happen to you, so keep your eyes open.”
“Horoscopes, new agey stuff—magnetic jewelry!” she cried, and then, “I got it!” The two women looked at her and then the clerk picked up her speed checking out the baby food jars. Basil, who was standing there holding some ham and cheese and bread and sodas and wondering if there was still enough room for one of these to disappear in his pants pocket, leaped an inch into the air and almost dropped everything.
“You got what?”
“The angle!”
“Wow! Really?”
“You bet!”
Out on a bench at the local central park, as they sat with the food between them, awkwardly brushing off flies while trying to cram some ham and cheese into little white rolls, she unfolded the plan before him. “Something new-agey,” she said.
“New-agey?”
“Yup.”
“That’s not a little passé?”
“Nope.”
“You sure?”
“They got it in the women’s magazines, so it’s still hot enough.”
“Okay,” said Basil, knowing this was turf he did not ordinarily trek. “So, what’s the angle? How’s it work?”
“We find a cheap little place somewhere nearby we can renovate.”
“We got to have a partner for that, because you know we’re broke,” cautioned Basil.
“Of course,” said Star. “That goes without saying. Some place people can stay. The angle is the healing power of the pole—see?”
“It’s got healing power?”
“It does now!”
“Oh, right!”
“Then we come up with a name and a slogan.”
“Like the ‘magnetites?’”
Star glared at him. “No!”
“Okay,” said Basil, “the Magnetic Healers, uhh, the Healers of no—no—something to do with the pole . . .”
“The Polarians!” cried Star.
“The Polarians! Oh, that’s good! That’s really good!” said Basil, gazing at her proudly. “I really, really like it.”
“Make it like a quasi-religion.”
“Yeah, yeah—like people could orient their lives around it.”
“Or with it!”
“Of course! We could come up with a slogan like ‘May the Pole orient you!’”
They both broke up with laughter.
“This is great!” said Basil. “These kinds of religions are popping up all the time. You can’t lose. It’s better than a real estate scam—it’s like a heavenly real estate thing. Who’s to say if you’re right or wrong? I mean, look at all those motivational speakers. What sounds like a load of positive thinking proverbs gets a new twist and suddenly they’re speaking at convention centers and making money hand over fist. We could even write a book: How the Pole Oriented My Life, by Basil and Star Heitz.”
“Who needs a book? You commit yourself to too much in a book. It takes too long to write. You use our real names? Do you remember how many people are looking for us?”
“Right, no book.”
“What we need is some capital.”
“That’s right and to develop the angle.”
“But above all,” said Star, “we got to find a sponsor.”
And that was the moment Ismael Balenzuela, scion of ancient Spain, rose from a first-class seat on an Iberian Airlines flight from Madrid to Santo Domingo and strode regally down the ramp to customs. This was, in fact, his first time in La Republica Dominicana, but absolutely no one watching him would have guessed. As he entered, he sized up the tourist card situation and was among the first in line. He signaled to a porter and had his bags—first-class bags so they came out at once—picked up and carted to customs. He bantered lightly with the female checking his tags, smiled with a self-confident air at the gentleman at the checking booth, and paused at the first set of rental car booths. Within an hour, with a marked map, he was on the road.
Delighted to see an announcement for Valenzuela gasoline just outside of Santo Domingo, he counted it as a sign of inevitable progress as well as an omen: the natural world and its dead denizens fueling the world of today and tomorrow that Man (he always used the exclusive term) had created.
As he drove, he gazed with a proprietorial air at everything around him. It was poor, yes, he expected that. But something was stirring deep within him. Some kind of inherited memory, he decided. He had learned about the Tainos and how they were all exterminated by his ancestors, though he laid as much blame on the Italian Cristóbol Colón as upon the soldiers and adventuring third sons, as he was himself. Offered only a place—even if it was a vice presidency—in the family business, while his elder brothers were made president and chief executive officer respectively, he preferred to take a job with another, non-family-based development firm of worldwide resorts—one in which he could prove his worth and rise to the top. The assignment was Barahona and its environs on the western shore of La Republica Dominicana in the Caribbean. The company already was involved in the machinations going on in the Bahia de las Aguilas, and the other stiffly competitive struggles to develop the tip of the peninsula of Enriquillo and, to hedge its bets, it decided to put up something earlier at the entrance to the peninsula. Ismael’s job was to find the locale and set up an all-inclusive resort that would bring in the money to finance the other beach developments. How hard could this be? Confidence he had in fistfuls, born, as he was, with the sense of entitlement that comes with an ancient, moneyed family that saw itself as the heir of the great conquistadores.
All through the little towns in his several-hour trek to the west, he could not help feeling like a conqueror himself. He had resources at his disposal, a company that believed in him, and the heritage that, to his mind, made all the difference. He noted all the Taino names on the map and in the towns and knew that, by these same culpable ancestors, they had been exterminated and replaced by Africans. It was a shame, of course, but, he defended his forbearers by noting to himself that there is a price to progress—the weak must yield to the strong. It is the way of the natural world.
This was the confidence that he brought into Barahona and, after driving up and down, surveying the available establishments in town, to the very hotel and casino where the Heitzes were staying. He was, one might reason, a lot like a hornet diving into a spider’s web.
Basil and Star, lounging in the comfortable reception area, took his measure as he strode in. “Let’s spring for supper in the restaurant,” whispered Basil.
“Okay,