No gifts please

The assholes made a big deal of "no gifts" please, and "we don't give gifts at Christmas," and "Christmas is for children."

Of course now its clear.  They had no money to spend on gifts.   Any money they did get their hands on was for sustaining themselves.  They wanted no stuff, because they had to move quickly and lightly once their scam was over.  Remember, it was them and the dogs in their stolen Mercedes, plus a few pairs of bermuda shorts and Costco Hawaiian shirts.

But me being me, and loving Christmas, and loving surprises of even the most humble sort, bought them three tiny, precious, thoughtful gifts.  Monogramed linen handkerchiefs.  How luxurious was that -- linen handkerchiefs, hand monogramed by local nuns.  I carefully supervised the initials of their last names:  M for Dud, M for Tommy and E for Uncle Ron.

They were dismayed when I handed my little wrapped packages around the table.  They opened them and were speechless with...blank looks.  Most people are thrilled for a personalized, thoughtful gift of luxurious proportions, no matter how inexpensive.  But they were curiously cold, turning over these gems.

It was as if I had received a handkerchief monogramed with an S.  I now understand it was because those weren't their initials because those weren't their last names.  So yes, meaningless.

Christmas Shrimp

The assholes' idea of a Christmas eve celebration was a huge bowl of pre cooked Costco shrimp.  Of course, they started out inviting us with the promise of a classic, seven fish Christmas eve dinner.  Ooh, I thought, this would be good.

But it quickly turned into an enormous bowl of pre cooked Costco shrimp.  Their idea of heaven.  All you could eat.  Shrimp.   But how much shrimp can you eat?  Five or six, maybe.

Eva was living with them as Bob had only been dead about 6 weeks and she was in no shape to be alone.  Everyone complimented the assholes on their generosity, for how they took Eva in and helped her with every little thing.

"We promised Bob we would take care of her," they replied.  Oh, they were helping her all right.  They were helping themselves to her bank account, her debit card, her dead husband's credit card.

The mountain of shrimp?  Courtesy of Eva's dead husband.  The Nikon camera Tommy bought for my daughter?  Same.  "Don't tell Dud about it," Tommy said when he delivered the camera, standing outside my door, not wanting to come in.   Now I understand.  Tommy didn't have any affect about the camera, it was just something he had promised and for some reason, felt compelled to deliver.  He had no interest in placing it in my daughter's hands, seeing her reaction, receiving her thanks.

Dud would have had a fit knowing Tommy was spending their precious stolen resources on someone other than themselves.  

I know...

...that this is confusing.  It is for me too.

 I've been messy, just getting it all out there.  I haven't offered a coherent narrative yet.  All I've been able to do is offer bursts of rage, regret, lies, sadness, bitterness, loss, wonderment, shock, dismay.

Soon, soon, I'll be able to tell the story.  To start at the beginning and take you to the end.

Evil is as evil does

What the hell does that mean?

I discovered evil late in my life.  Evil happened to other people or, it was a distant concept, both historical or geographical.  I counted myself lucky to be far away from evil.   I used to believe in the inherent goodness of man, and that things like genocides or wars or murders were isolated incidents of atoms gone bad.

After meeting the boys, I now believe in "the banality of evil."  Now I am wallowing in it,  I know that evil breathes alongside of me in every hour of the day.  It is a dormant cancer that lies in wait in everyone's body, evil is waiting to erupt given the chance.

I used to trust people and now, I will keep my counsel, keep to myself.

I want to get out, away from it.  Europe, pastry, handbags, beaches.  Meditation, yoga, poetry, flowers.  Prosseco, candles, dawn.  But now that I have observed evil this close, there seems to be no exit.  I smell evil all around me.  Evil is pervasive.  The ability of people to be evil astounds me, makes me breathless.  Makes me quiver.

Why are we so fascinated by evil?  And yes, we are.  We love movies filled with evil -- evil characters, evil happenings.  We sit in the comfort of our own lives and watch others misbehave on the movie, tv and computer screens, in books and in newspapers.   And we love it.  We read books about evil characters and doings.  We can not believe it.  Could someone really be so evil?  And then we read some more.

How do people turn evil?  Are they born evil?  Do they become evil?  Is it a turning of event or simple body chemistry that makes neurons clash in chaotic ways, removing all reason, compassion, intelligence and mashing them up to form evil.

Originally, I thought this story was about the boys' scamming Eva, stealing her inheritance.  But yesterday I found out, something worse happened to Eva.  She had been living with evil all her life and she never knew it.  Discovering that you have lived for 28 years with a sociopathic husband, who you never really knew, who lied and scammed, who was a sexual addict, a liar in all things, a man without feelings.  I can't believe Eva isn't just a puddle on the floor.

I found out it was the meeting of two evils that created a new, fresh evil, visited upon the innocent suspect Eva.  It didn't happen to me, but just realizing it gives me the existential shakes. Eva's husband Bob meeting The Boys was a sprinkle encrusted bomb meeting a wrapped candy.  A huge explosion of scammer scamming scammers.

Lesson learned:  if something doesn't feel right, believe it.  If something doesn't feel right, step away.

Every day now my phone rings and it is Eva for her hour of ranting.  I settle down as she starts screaming into the phone, vomiting her hatred her fury her confusion her fear her powerlessness.  Over the two men who ruined her life.

I don't say a word.  She doesn't want me to say a word.  When she first started calling, I tried to say things, to offer explanations, solace, solutions and then I learned she doesn't want my words.  She just needs to vomit.

Yes, evil breathes alongside of me.  

Thoughts on Evil

Evil comes into lives at different moments.  Are there actually those blessed ones to have never had it cross their paths?  Consider that and them, lucky.

Some discover evil as children when the wayward hands of relatives or ministers steal their childhood.  Others, like me, later in life.

Once evil has entered your life there is a stain.  It informs everything you do, every person you meet. It is exhausting to know of evil, because then you have to watch for it.

And by the way: Not an uncle

Uncle Ron was no uncle.  An elderly, single, gay guy with no living relatives, he had sold himself to the boys.  It's called "rent an uncle."   In return for his monthly social security check they would take care of him for life.  At 91, how long could that be?

Why did they do such a thing?  He was the perfect foil, a seemingly frail 91 year old with a castrati voice.  He made the boys respectable -- a gay couple devoted to caring for their aged uncle.  Oh, and the dogs too.  Make that two gay guys with their aging uncle and two dogs.  Harmless.

Uncle Ron was the biggest scammer of them all,  the mastermind for the whole operation.

He looked like someone hovering near death.  He didn't speak much.  The boys condescended to him or they treated him roughly.  But it was clear he was taking it all in, listening to the banter, sizing up people, deciding who could be scammed for what.  He ate the food set in front of him, wore the clothes he was given and was dragged to every party, every event, and took it all in with his eagle eyes.

It was his eyes that gave him away, to me, at any rate.  He was always quiet, sitting with a Sudoku book, or watching tv...but once I saw the flash, the intelligence, something evil flash in his eyes.  It chilled me when I realized who he really was.

But to the rest of the world, he was a poor, tired uncle, packed into the stolen Mercedes along with the two dogs and driven south across the border.   He was given clothes, food, a clean bed, and the promise of Super Bowl Sunday in peace and quiet.  

Two Thanksgivings

We had two Thanksgivings last year.

Because Stan had just passed away, no one felt like Thanksgiving.  Tommy and Dud were exhausted from the death watch, the funeral and post death details.  Eva in her black fury was not easy to be around.  At the last minute, Tommy invited us all to the Hyatt, which advertised a special Thanksgiving buffet for expats.

We met in the lobby waterfall bar and drank Cosmos.  Small groups of gay men passed us on their way into the dining room.  "Why is everyone looking at us?" Dud said.  He always felt he was being studied.  Why was he so suspect of gay men and so critical of them and their lifestyles.

I have never liked the Hyatt dining room, it looked like cafeteria with dark wood.  And on this evening it was especially depressing with its clatter of silverware, mulling of people around the food stations and a live band playing cruise ship music.   No one in the audience knew that the lead singer, a woman in sparkly gown, big hair, too much makeup, was in fact a tranny.   The buffet was populated with large and small tables of gay men and redneck couples in casual wear.

I don't like buffets.  Why go out and have to get up to serve yourself?  I'm could care less about "all you can eat"  (all you can eat is one plate anyway) and then there's the constant coming and going at the table and the, "What'd you get?"  and "Ooh, I didn't see that."  The cold food was warm.  The hot food was cold.  All, tasteless.  The desserts looked fanciful but tasted of raw flour, bitter baking soda and flavorless gelatin.  We ate, numbed, pretending happy and  thankfulness, but felt nothing.  It was a chore being at this meal in this room with this food and these people.

"I can't believe it," Dud said when he sat down with a plate of salad.  "That young guy cruised me.  How disgusting is that, being cruised at the salad bar at Thanksgiving."  He pointed to a table of eight older gay gringos with their young Mexican boy toys.  "Now that is appalling," he said.  "Doesn't anyone ever say anything about that?  I can't believe it is accepted."

On Saturday after Thanksgiving I cooked a Thanksgiving dinner at my house to erase the horrible meal.  Tommy, Dud, Uncle Ron, Eva and me.  It was the best Thanksgiving they will ever eat in their lives.  My silver sparkly white formal table, flower poseys alternating with flickering votives.  My Mother's Tiffany sterling and Spode plates.  Elegant to make us feel special, warm to make us feel embraced.  I poured Prosecco.  Thanksgiving was had.

I remember I lifted my glass and said, "Where were you last year at this time?"  Of course, dissembling about being with some cousin or parent in some mumbled midwestern place.  I didn't know they were evil yet.  I thought about Thanksgivings past and how each year brings change and new people to the table.

I called Eva in Miami this morning and reminded her about our Thanksgiving last year.  She refuses to feel an ounce of anything.   She has willed herself to forget, to not give the scum anymore soul space. In one year, she closed everything up and moved back to Miami to start a new life as a single woman.   But I'm still here, in my empty house on Thanksgiving.  I didn't get invited anywhere, and I don't want to cook for anyone.  And although I shouldn't care a rat's ass about you anymore, I do wonder, where you are this year?  Is some expat in some forgotten Central American town cooking for you?   A year, a year and the pain is still fresh.

The scamming begins

Eva moved into the boys' house right after Stan's death.

Everyone tiptoed around her.  Instead of grief, she was a spectre of undefined fury, strung too tight to bear for more than a few minutes.  I could not go near her.

Every morning, before anyone woke up, Tommy went online and into Stan's email to erase and rearrange things.   He enjoyed the dirty emails from the expensive Chinese hooker demanding money.  There were emails from his nieces who wanted hush money for the sexual abuse.  Solicitation emails from online sex sites that Stan frequented.  Kinky bills to pay.  Credit card bills to pay and erase.  Emails from Goodyear seeking retribution for all the money he stole and accounts he rearranged.  Tommy discovered Stan's life of sexual depravity and lies.

Tommy did this because Stan asked him to.  In his moment of death, he suddenly felt aggrieved that Eva would find out about all this.  He hadn't planned on dying so fast that he wouldn't be able to clean things up himself.  He had felt that Tommy wouldn't judge him, that Tommy would clean it all up.

And Tommy did.  He cleaned up real good.  In the name of protecting Eva, he discovered Stan's secret bank accounts and, having his usernames, passwords, and security questions, he methodically transferred to himself all the money from accounts that Eva knew nothing about.  Then he quietly closed the accounts.  A clean job, no one would ever know.

He also discovered that Stan had set up automatic payment on the credit card.  So Tommy helped himself to Stan's credit and debit cards.

Eva, meanwhile, considered the boys her Godsend.  They were sheltering her, feeding her, driving her. They were listening to her, filing health insurance papers, life insurance (they were ace at this), getting death certificates at the U.S. Consulate, and, helped her rewrite her will online at legalzip.com, making themselves her executors and her witnesses.  They all trooped into the consulate to sign, and Eva felt lucky to be so taken care of.  How easy could this be.

In a few months she would never say their names again, calling them only, the fags, the scum, the scammers.

Stan's Bus Station Funeral

That's what the funeral parlors feel like in Merida:  bus station waiting rooms.

Noisy.  Lots of people milling around on filthy tile floors. People slumped on benches.  Off the waiting room are small, air conditioned rooms each holding someone's beloved.   You go in, sit in the "chapel" (just benches around the edge of the room), commune with the open or closed casket, talk to the family, then go back out into the waiting room.  You go in and out as you can take it, feel it,  help yourself to Coke from a soda fountain, Yucas idea of heaven, free Coke.

A paid by the mass priest in dirty vestments wheels in an altar with a seen better days white lace cloth, communion stuff, a sad bottle of tap agua, a worn Bible that he doesn't use, just holds.  He asks the name of the deceased and then rattles off a mass, sprinkling the casket with water, constantly asking again the deceased's name as he fills it into the boilerplate.  He talks as fast as he can, emotionless, taking care of business, blesses all quickly and wheels out his altar onto the next lost soul.  Death as not precious, nothing special.  Something actually liberating about this.

This was Stan's funeral.  A motley handful of guests.  Samantha and Dick.  Bob, Tommy and Uncle Ron.  Eva.  Me.  Eva was at this point still concerned with doing things right,  -- a funeral, going to the cremation.  She was a good wife.

Samantha misbehaved.  I noticed her whispering to Bob.  Thought she was asking how Eva was holding up.  But no.  Found out later she was asking him how much this funeral cost, was that a rented coffin, what was the hospital bill -- all the while imagining herself in the widow's seat a few years hence.  Even Bob the scammer was disgusted.

Eva insisted on going to the crematory.  She regretted it after she arrived in a desolate stretch of Merida bordering the jungle, a grey from smoke warehouse, and the shoving in of Stan's cardboard box.  The rented coffin was cradling someone else.

Only a few months later, she refused to call him by name, or say "my husband."  He became the bastard, the scammer, the old man.  He would never be her anything, ever again.   She would not make him her anything, anymore.

Arage

I know.  Yesterday's post was a bit of a mess.

As I try to relive the events of a year ago, all the emotions and memories are flying around, and, hard to order or present coherently.  That's why I'm writing this blog, to figure it all out.  In bits and pieces the story will come together.  Stay with me.

I was telling you about the boys and suddenly I've entered into Stan's death.  That's when the boys stepped up and started their big time scam.

When Stan died, Eva's behavior totally confounded me.  She was in shock of course, having been his wife for 28 years.  But it wasn't the kind of shock I had seen with my mother, when my father died.  Eva was arage.  I just made that word up.   Her shock was laced with an anger so unfocused but piercing, so profound, so bitter, so furious, so everything that I couldn't understand it, much less be around her.  Why so angry?  Why?  Where did this anger come from.  And, why?

Even she didn't know why.  There was something underlying everything that she would discover in due time.

R.I.P. you lousy bastard

"Stan died," Bob wept into the phone at 2 a.m. one year ago tonight.  

He was standing in the intensive care hell of the Clinica de Merida where Eva had just fainted and Tommy was dealing with the bureaucracy.  One minute a holy soul, the next minute a lifeless carcass to be removed post haste from the premises.  

Eva and I  didn't know Stan was a lousy bastard at that moment.  We found that out later.  The boys knew it, though, and that is what prompted their year of scamming dangerously.  The ultimate high for a scammer is to outscam another scammer.

Whilst Eva was being scammed by the boys, we found out that Stan was the biggest scammer of all of them, having scammed Eva for the entire 30 years of their marriage.

Stan's paper thin lungs collapsed during the panicked intubation for one last heroic measure.  He had signed a DNR, but as many people do, ignored his carefully thought out plan and died violently instead of peacefully.

Two weeks earlier my phone jolted me at 1:30 a.m.  It was Bob.  "Call an ambulance for Stan!" he cried.  "We don't speak Spanish and Eva doesn't know who to call."

Stupid gringos.  And stupider still, Tommy tipped the volunteer Red Cross ambulance driver 10 pesos when they arrived at the E.R.  Free mbulance service and he gave him one dollar?

"I can't believe you did that," I said, enraged.  "I'll take care of it," Tommy said. "I'll go to the Red Cross and make a big donation."  A lie.   He always said he'd take care of it, and never did.  He had no cash, remember?

Bob and Tommy's work had come to fruition.  Their subtle, silent poisoning of Stan hastened his death from an already complicated case of pulmonary fibrosis.  Yes, we now know that's what you did.   He lunched and dined at your house and you slipped things into his beer, his food, turning him into a crazy man before he died.

At the end, Stan turned jumpy and impossible.  Couldn't be in the house, wanted to be roaming the streets. He wouldn't bathe.  He stank.  "Take a shower old man," Eva said.  "You're not getting into my bed smelling like that.  What has gotten into you?"

On his last night on earth, heading towards his death, Stan only wanted to talk to Tommy, to give him all his banking information.  Eva couldn't understand why her husband of 30 years wanted to talk to a man he had met only 5 months before.  When he did talk to Eva, all he said was, "I've lived a selfish life."

Eva is in Miami now piecing together a new life, trying not to think about the sham of a marriage she had lived.  I called her tonight to tell her it was one year ago.  She did not care.  "The man," she would not call him her husband, "can have all the Chinese hookers he wants in hell."

In Chicago

The lapse in time:  I've been housesitting in Chicago.

Chicago was supposedly your town, the city you had spent many years in, being young, prosperous careerists.  The city where you two met each other.  The city where you had a standing reservation at La Vie en Rose each bone chilling New Year's Eve.  The city where you drank martinis at the Ritz Carlton, bought suits at Nordstrom's, played with your dogs on the dog beach of Lake Michigan.

Do I believe any of this?  Now, everything you ever said is suspect, so skillful were you, are you, at creating fictions.

I rode the buses.  I climbed up and down the El steps.  I stood on the glass deck of the Sears Tower and looked down at the "city of big shoulders." I walked Michigan Ave.  I saw you everywhere and nowhere.  

I imagined bumping into you.  You were just around every corner. Would you have been shocked? Would you ignore me?  Would you be embarrassed?  I'd like to think of a sheepish face, a sorrowful, apologetic face.  But no, that's not the case, not possible.  As close as we had become in our months of five daily conversations, your intimacy was feigned because you harbored a secret the whole time, the secret of sitting on so many lies, living so many lies.

What I say is this:  your city, if it ever was, is a fine city.  "Your" Chicago is now mine.   It endeared itself to me in all the ways a city can, with spirit, humanity, ebullience. If I saw you today, I would tell you this.  I would talk about Gibsons and the Gold Coast, Boystown and Old Town.  I would revel in every word you could say about everything Chicago.

But, not.  No way.  No longer.  No how.  I am poorer for the knowing you.  And that, is the saddest thing you can say about another person.

Eva's Gone

Eva, the person most scammed and stunned by you -- and her dead husband-- is gone.

Back to Miami to start a new life.  Again.  It took her only six months to pack up -- but it seemed like an eternity both for her and for me.  I endured her daily phone call of acid, wrath, hate, misery, complaints.  I was the only person she knew in town, the only person who knew the dirty details of what happened to her.  The only person she could talk to.

A year ago, her husband was alive and they had just moved into the colonial that she had renovated to perfection.  Now, he's dead, her bank accounts have been pillaged and ravaged by you,  plus lots of cash and property stolen.  You emptied her house of anything you wanted or could use to raise cash.  Expensive power tools mainly.  Tommy, you sat at her computer, rifled through her desk, threw out files, erased things on her computer.  Evidence.

On Stan's deathbed, he gave you the user ID's and passwords to his secret bank accounts, and you stripped them before Eva could ever find out they existed.  But she did find out.

She also found out the husband she had been married to for 28 years was:  vile.  A vile man, is how a niece described him to Eva when she learned of his death.  A bigger scammer than you, ha ha.

The prostitutes, the sexual addiction, the money laundering and manipulation as a Goodyear auditor.  Who better than a corporate auditor to learn how to steal money, cook the books, squirrel cash away to fuel his sex addiction.  $1000 a night Chinese prostitutes.  Phone sex at $X a minute.  Lies, lies, lies about everything.

No wonder Eva was strange after he died.  She was not the usual grieving widow.  Sure, she was in shock, but there were no tears, no mourning.  Just huge anger boiling up and she didn't know why.  In six months as she unraveled his life, she found out everything.  That her entire marriage to his man had been a sham.  That he had used her for a housekeeper and a cosigner of his precious tax returns, as a specter of respectability to hide behind while he indulged in his appetites.

The only thing he said to her on his deathbed was a vague, "I was too selfish."  And then he asked for Tommy to come in, and handed over all the secret bank information.  At the end, Stan didn't want Eva to know of his double life.  He asked Tommy to disappear the books and get the funds deposited into Eva's account, never thinking Tommy would keep it all for himself.

A scammer being scammed by scammers.

Poor Eva was scammed from all sides.  But now she's gone to start her new life.  And I am left here alone, digging myself out of the emotional rubble.

Shame

It is hard for me to write this, to come face to face with my naiveté.  Embarrassing.  The thought of time wasted.  How I let these creeps into my home, into my life, that they met and mingled with my children.  They contaminated me with evil.  Evil had never visited me before and now, evil seems to be around every corner, waiting.

Now that the memories flood to me, now that I know who these creeps were, are...I am ashamed I was so taken.  Everything seems so obvious now, but then, I was blind to messages screaming out at me.  

As you read my posts, you must be thinking, my God, this is so obvious. And, "I would have known immediately.  Or, better."

That's the thing about a sociopath.  You think you can outwit them but you can't.  You think you can sniff them out, but you can't.  They fooled everyone.  There is no one they met here who didn't fall under their spell.  They.  Are.  That.  Charming.  Beckoning.  Warm.  Seductive.  Evil.

They were very careful with who they hung out with.  They kept their social circle small.  They were not the typical expat gringos pouring into town, wanting to become a part of the scene.  They didn't go to the English Library, the hub of expat Merida, just around the block from the house they didn't buy. They didn't go to the Nafta cocktail parties on Friday nights to socialize with other gringos.  They didn't go on the House & Garden tours.  They didn't go to church bazaars or lectures or events.  They did not want to integrate or become part of the social life of Merida.

The fewer people they met, the better.  The more people they met, the more the chance that someone would know who they were or sniff out what kind of people they were.   They didn't want friends, they only wanted enough people to survive, and amongst those people, were those who they would scam.

I was the first person they met.  They were about to groom me, until they met Eva and Stan.  

Sunday dinner

It is a brilliant, fresh, blustery October Sunday in Yucatan, and I'm cooking Sunday supper.

But not for you guys.

When I was a little girl, I hated Sundays.  The day dragged and the week loomed, heavy and impenetrable.  But now I love Sundays.  Sunday breathes.  Sunday stops.  Sunday is the great pause, where nothing is expected and anything goes.  My religion is Sunday supper, served anytime from 2 to 8 p.m.  It is a definitive moment, a collective sigh, a communion.

I wonder where you are every day but especially on Sundays.  Do you think of my Sunday suppers and remember me fondly?  Are you cooking for yourselves, or just opening cans?  Do you even have money to buy food?  Who have you conned into cooking for you now?

The boys loved my insistence on Sunday supper.  They loved it even more because I am a wonderful cook.  And they loved it more than that because I was willing to cook at my house and bring it over to their house.  Easier for them not to be a guest, not to leave their house.  At the time, it seemed like a fair trade to me:  I cooked, they entertained.  But they were thinking, wow, did we get a deal with this one.

I cook with heart.  "You should open a restaurant," Tommy said. "Really."   Trays of lasagna, pyrexes of Chicken Marbella, parsley flecked tabouleh salad, plum tortes, roasted beets, candied carrots, masterful meatloaves, vats of hearty soups and home baked breads, apple crisps and prize winning carrot cakes.  My Sunday suppers were comforting and inspirational.

I think of Uncle Ron laughing at his good fortune, his two "nephews" had found a live one.  He was the only one who knew exactly how good the food was.  Tommy screamed "Awesome" all the time.  "Elizabeth it was awesome," he said with two thumbs up and a definitive nod. No matter what I cooked, it was awesome.  I hate the word, awesome, it became meaningless.   I could have cooked sloppy joes and they would have screamed, "Awesome."   Awesome is what I consider to be everything wrong with America -- super sized, meaningless, lack of imagination.  What awesome really meant to them was:  something we didn't have to cook ourselves.  

I was awesome because their diet consisted of defrosted Costco.  No Mexican supermarket for them with its chance of germs, of strange packaging they couldn't read.  They bought by the bulk:  huge bags of frozen, breaded chicken, tough steaks by the dozens, (they would never spring for the good meat -- all they wanted was huge quantities of beef on the grill)  enormous cans of baked beans.   Their idea of the high class was what they had gleaned in Rustler steak houses, not Gibsons of Chicago as they claimed.  They liked their baked potatoes wrapped in silver foil,  precut iceberg lettuce salad served in separate salad bowls, with a selection of bottled dressing on the table, and steaks that were tough as hell.  I took it as charming, nostalgic Americana and didn't think more about it.  As I struggled with the steak I thought, maybe they just didn't know about good steaks, never considering they didn't want to spend the money.   And the wine they bought was pure shit. I was never served a decent glass of wine in that house.  In fact I cringed when a glass of wine was offered to me.  And yet, I ignored all these messages staring at me in the face because...everyone did and they were so nice.

Tommy had an emotional thing for jarred pears and cans of tomato sauce.  If his cupboard was filled with pears and tomatoes, he felt safe.   Industrial size bags of potato chips, those giant, impossible to put anywhere bottles of Kirkland vodka, flats of Coke, dozens of cans of tuna, huge glass jars of pickles.  It was American, it was big, it was sterilized.

My memories on this tropical blustery Sunday morning, with the air so fresh, blowing across the peninsula, this is the reason people move to the tropics, I think.   I make a luscious Jamie Oliver chicken bake that I cooked for you once, a roasted beet and goat cheese salad, a creamy rice pudding.  You will not be eating this.

You never deserved me.  But mostly, I didn't deserve you.  You were the first evil ever to show up in my life.  It palls me to think you never spoke one honest word the entire time I knew you, except for the word, "Hello."  Everything after that was pure shit and lies.

I am pleased that you never said goodbye because then that would make two honest words out of your mouth.

That's what happens when you skip town in the middle of the night.

Saying grace

And what's with the Catholicism?

Apparently sociopaths can have a religion. It helps compartmentalize, equalize, sentimentalize. There's the need to posture to the outside world.  Or posing to themselves, asking forgiveness on a regular basis for their past, present and future sins.  Perhaps simply a remembrance of childhood when things were simple and...sweet.

Tommy insisted on saying grace before a mea.  He made a big show of reaching for hands to grasp.  Bowing his head, he raced through a canned grace, "Oh Heavenly Father we thank Thee for the gifts we are about to receive..." blah blah blah.  Maybe he truly was thankful, since he never knew where the next meal might come from.  After everyone said "Amen,"  he shouted,  "And God Bless The Chef!"  The first time he did this, I laughed.  After that, it was embarrassing.  It spoke volumes about his low class background.

"Investment banker, no way!" Eva says about Tommy now.  "Look at his build.  Nothing but a low class Italian construction worker."

And then there were his trips to Mass, as if grace and Mass would undo all the scamming, as if, I am trying Lord, forgive me because I know not what I do, I have this problem.  Or was that show too?  Catholicism was a sacred subject with him.  Apparently, God help you if you ever said anything against the Pope. On the few occasions I verged on Pope politics Bob warned me in his stupid hushed voice, "Don't let Tommy hear you say that," or "Don't ever criticize the Catholic church in front of Tommy."  His voice was so menacing I shrank.

Thing is, both Bob and Tommy really believed they had a moral compass and all the correct morality.  Bob was scandalized when a known, openly accepted by the gringo community, pedophile collected our tickets as we drove into the Polo Club for a benefit. Bob was always criticizing the uncouth behavior of the gringos who had the misfortune of crossing his path.

"How can you know someone like that?" he said scathingly because I was so c'est la vie about it.  I'd say, "That's why gringos come to Mexico, to do whatever they damn please and not get thrown into the slammer."

How can I know someone like you, I now ask myself.  How is it I let you trample my delicate, refined and generous soul, take you into my house, feed you, help you, and let you in contact with my children?   Ah...you were their first scammers....thanks to me, their mother.    

A stupid old telephone

Bob spoke in an impossibly soft voice, barely just barely above a whisper.  It was obnoxious.  Where did he pick up this affectation?  Did he think it meant well bred?  He must have read about it in the few books he had read in his life.  He spoke so softly that I had to lean in when speaking to him in order to hear.  It was an intimate tone, as if he were imparting gems not for general ears, or telling me secrets in a conspiratorial hush, confiding great and interesting information.  Over the phone he spoke even softer, so much that I grew to dislike speaking on the telephone with him.  He made me feel like I had bad hearing, that I needed a new telephone and finally, that he needed a new telephone.

"There's something wrong with your phone," I said in a crabby tone.  I knew I could hear and converse normally with other friends on my phone.  With him, I was always saying, "What?"  and "Can you repeat that?"  and "Say it again?"  and "Bob, I can't hear you."  Aggravation set in.  I began to feel crabby every time it was him on the phone.

"Oh, it's this phone," he said, louder.  But then soft again, "We brought it with us and we need new batteries for it and can't find them here so we're having them sent from the States."

"Why don't you just buy a new one for God's sake," I said.  "Telmex sells Siemens and Panasonic.  They're cheap and they're good." I had no patience for a gringo who wouldn't spring $30 for a local phone, and worse, for gringos who sent to the U.S. for batteries.  Those batteries could be found here, everything could be found here, but I didn't want to offer to go on the hunt. 

"No, we like our phone," he said and I just shrugged, getting more aggravated every time he phoned.  At first I was polite and then I would growl, "You have to speak up."  He phoned at least four times a day, sometimes as early as 8:00.  The next call was around 11:00 when he was pouring his first drink of the day.  He was lonely, shut up in the house whilst Tommy roamed the streets of Merida, looking for deals, scams and adventure.  I was Bob's only friend, his only link to the outside world. 

I looked at their phone when I was over there for one of our gatherings.  It was an old, beat up thing, nothing special, bigger than it should be because it was so old.  Ridiculous.  Why the heck were they obsessed about finding batteries for it.  People and their quirks.  

It was when they skipped town that I understood they took the phone with them.  They traveled with nothing but their few Hawaiian shirts and bermudas each, the two dogs, Uncle John and this phone.  The phone was a diary of their past wrongdoings.  It had caller ID, hence the number of every person they had ever spoken to on a regular basis.  This was the way they screened calls from family, hurt parties, victims, enemies, the police.  If I ever did find their new telephone number in Belize and tried calling them, they would see my name come up and not answer.  That's why the phone was so valuable.  It insured their privacy.   It was how they left people behind, weeding them out of their life, staying forever out of touch, unfindable.

Now I have come to understand that that Bob's soft voice was a control thing.  It made you Pay Attention. To Him.  He craved attention since he was the housewife, home scrubbing floors.  He spoke extra softly on the phone so as not to be heard by Tommy or Uncle John.  Clearly they each had their secrets from each other.  Everyone was suspecting the other of selling out, giving way, giving up.  Bob also spoke softly because had no voice in the goings on, he was a captive of Tommy's schemes in order that they eat and live.  

Bob's soft demeanor was in exact opposite to Tommy who couldn't manage anything other than a shout at all times for all occasions.  He literally could not speak in a normal, civilized tone of voice.  So, one whispered, the other shouted, each in response to the other.  A dance of odds in a minor key.

So much fun

Two nights later, around six, the phone rings.   

"Hi Elizabeth!" Such a happy voice and so happy to hear mine.  "It's Tom.  Can I ask you a favor?"  He laughs, his voice turns sheepish for sympathy.  "Can you order us a pizza?  We tried...but they didn't understand my English.  Jeez."  He can't believe the whole world doesn't speak English.

I am silent.  This is how it begins.  I refuse to become their fixer.  Been there, done that with way too many gringos.  A fucking waste of energy.

Brightly in a singsong: "I know a good language school for you."  Still lighthearted:  "You guys have got to learn Spanish." 

"Definitely.  Give Bob the number tomorrow."

"I'll give it to you now."  I gave them the number for the Spanish school many times, but in the nine months they lived in Merida, Bob never learned anything other than hola, por favor, gracias.  Tommy used one word all the time for everything, perfecto.  He loved saying it.  Everything, no matter what, was always perfecto. He said it with authoritative gusto.  When the waiter brought the bill, it was perfecto, when he brought back the change, perfecto.  Tlapaleria, Bancomer, the garbage man:  perfecto.  With one word he made everyone feel good.

Suddenly I found myself saying, "OK.  What kind of pizza do you want?"  I couldn't believe it. Why would I do something for them that I would have never done for anyone else?  

With this gesture, I entered into their "learning to be expats journey."  They were so loopy, so out of it, I felt sorry for them   Never occurred to me, not being able to order a pizza.  I would do this one little thing, but nothing more.  I would not stand on line with them at the electric company.  I would not go to the doctor with them.  

"Vegetarian with sausage, meatballs and bacon."

These guys are a riot.   I call Messina's Pizza.  Because it is so much fun.

Gut feelings

The day after my cocktail evening, I called my friend Denise who lived in a restored colonial down the street and told her about The Boys, as we would affectionately come to call them.  

"There's something that's not quite right about them," I said.  "Fishy."   

I told Denise everything back then, before the boys put an end to that friendship with some clever stirring of the pot.  Their modus operandi was to divide and conquer, isolate their prey, make a gal devoted and dependent solely on them.  

I was musing outloud.  "Someone who arrives like this, out of nowhere....will leave the same way."  Then, "I wouldn't be surprised if one day...they disappear just as quickly as they arrived."    

  

My gringo radar was spot on but it is only now I see how so many things didn't add up. Of course I metaphorically slap my head.  They were sending me signals all the time, but each time the curious sentence, act or omission happened, I just brushed it off.

Why?

Because that's the power of the sociopath. Bob and Tommy were so charming, so intimate, so warm, so generous, that I got seduced, just as they knew I would. This was not their first time, after all.  They knew I was lonely.  They believed I had means. ("She's rich," Tommy said to Eva.  "She has a black credit card.")  I knew everything there was to know about expat life in Merida.  How incredibly lucky they were to have met me at the salon.  I was perfect and they cultivated me.  I couldn't believe my luck at having met two such devoted friends.

When Eva called me early one morning to say, "They're gone" I said, "No way."

"Oh yes, my dear.  The scum left in the middle of the night. I know they did.  Ask around.  You'll see."

An instant later, my heart thud shrieked.  Of course.  They slipped away as I had predicted. Quickly.  Effortlessly.  From nowhere to nowhere.

This is how its done

Bob and Tom showed up at my front door, awkwardly holding a typical tropical bouquet,  i.e. on the wilted side.

It seemed over the top to bring a bouquet for cocktails at American five.  But I thought, how sweet, they are either gallant or insecure about etiquette in Mexico.  Although they claimed to have traveled extensively, first class, throughout Europe and taken cruises on major rivers, this was their first trip anywhere and they were scared shitless, especially given that they didn't speak any Spanish and had an unusual terror of the Mexican police.

"Come on in.  Welcome to my world.  It's for sale, by the way."  It's what I tell everyone when they walk into my amazing, yes it is amazing, tropical townhouse.

A few steps in and they stop and look at my soaring ceilings, skylights, inner garden.  "Wow.  We should have bought your house," Bob says.   "Yeah," says Tom.  "We like your house so much better."

What were they thinking?  This is how sociopaths work.  They create a fiction from the word go.  By the time they're through with you, you don't know what's up or down anymore.  They had never bought any house.  It seems they cut a deal with the owners of that house they claimed to have bought:  to live in the house and renovate it, financed by the two gay owners who were not in the best of health.  When Bob told me they had paid $450,000 for it, "furnished," he added proudly,  I said, "Oh my God" and not in a good way.

"Why? A house like this would cost a million in the U.S." he said.  I thought, oh man, have you been taken to the cleaners.  The fiction had begun.  They owned nothing, they had nothing, and they had never planned on making Merida their new home. It was a desperate act they had pulled off, throwing Uncle Ron, their two huge dogs in their Mercedes SUV and fleeing the U.S. just ahead of the Feds.

For two such picky gay guys who had owned four houses at one time, decorated to the max, with four sets of sheets for each bedroom (for the change of seasons, Bob said) I often wondered, how could they live in someone else's not so nice stuff?  During the time they were here they never bought so much as a place mat, a pool towel, a spatula.  Not even new sheets.

We're all on our best behavior.  The gracious grand dame of gringas, the humble clueless newcomers.  I made margaritas and served melty quesadillas cut into Martha Stewart triangles.  Homemade meant everything to them, margaritas from fresh, hand squeezed lemons, rosemary toasted almonds hot out of the pan.  They lived entirely on Costco frozen food.

After two hours of I knew nothing about them.  I was amused, I was confused.  I ask the usual getting to know you cocktail party questions.  I don't know how they dissembled, but they did it skillfully.  Real estate and banking was all I could get.  They were vague about where they lived, where they were from, and there seemed to be so many places.  References to Chicago, Atlanta, Savannah, Florida, Arizona.  When I asked Bob, what bank did you work for, he said in an condescending tone, "A major one," and nodded, like, there are only three of any importance, so, one of those.  I took it to mean he was a super high executive who had made his millions, signed a confidentiality agreement and didn't want people bothering him for investment advice.

I set Bob into the routine that would become his whenever he came over.  After I served their first drinks I said, "Now, you make your own."  Bob loved that.  He started drinking at ten in the morning, although I never saw him drunk.  He liked coming over and feeling free to pull the vodka from my freezer and mix it with cranberry juice.

As we settled on the cushions and enjoyed the sweet breezy dusk, I said, "Listen.  You guys are new in town.  I'm going to tell you something.  Be very careful of what you say and who you get involved with.  There are lots of crazy gringos out there.  Don't trust anyone."

I didn't follow my own advice.

"What's in your bag?"

Four simple words entangled me.

In other words, it began as innocently as most human encounters do.

I was sitting on a chic bench in Merida's poshest salon, if only because of location location location, a Manhattan Soho decor and the highest prices in town. The gringos swarmed in, not knowing the owner had a copy of  "Haircutting for Dummies" stashed in the color drawer and had no diploma or license from anywhere.  Oh and did I mention he can't cut hair?

But at the time, he hadn't been found out yet.  So, I'm sitting on the bench, waiting for my DD (that's darling daughter for you non internet people) when in walk Bob and Tom (if you can't distinguish their names, no matter, because their slime is interchangeable). Tom has an appointment for cut and color.  Sociopaths have to look just so.

Bob sits down next to me.  "What's in the bag?" I say, queen of chit chat, pointing to his Walmart plastic bag.

"Oh," he laughed.  "Diapers and vodka."

My antenna perks.  I like a good answer.  I sit up and laugh.  Could he be...an interesting person?

"Diapers for my 91-year-old uncle, and...vodka for myself."

"That sounds about right," I say.  I chit the chat learning that they just arrived in Merida a week ago having purchased a house off the internet.

"But you saw the house, of course, before you bought it?  And you visited Merida, right?"

"Nope.  We researched everything thoroughly on the internet and it all looked good.  Houses sure are cheap here and we're sure we're going to like Merida."  He had no questions in his mind.

Who does that? 

I didn't even bother saying, you're in for a rude awakening. I had sworn off befriending the new breed of gringos swarming to Merida. No more orientation, help, contacts would I share. Whereas in the past, expats were interesting and quirky, worth getting to know, the new ones tended to be largely losers, liars, clueless, petty, cheap, alcoholic gossips.

I'm still waiting for DD when Tom and Bob leave the salon. Bob comes running back in with his email on the grocery slip.  It was striking in its anonymity:  2catscooking@gmail.  I drop it into my purse and thank him ever so much.  I'm so fucking polite.  As if.  I do not give him mine.

A few days later, so intrigued am I by the idea of two guys buying a house they had never seen in a city they had never visited, I paw through the garbage for the email and invite them over for drinks.

A year ago tonight...

Dinner and the Symphony

A year ago tonight, I was sitting at the Peon Contreras theatre in downtown Merida, Mexico with you.  You being Bob, Tom and Ron.  I never realized your names sound alike, the same "o" and all one syllable.

Now I am home alone, in my bedroom, the fan whirring overhead, thinking of that lovely evening, incredulous that you disappeared out of my life, in the middle of the night, a mere nine months later.  Even though I have since learned you are sick and evil, I feel bereft.  I miss you.  That's what good con artists you are.  That's what con artists do.  You fooled me.  You fooled everybody.

It was the opening night of the Fall 2012 season of the Yucatan Symphony.  Tom had bought seasons' tickets for the four of us. I thought, okay, these guys have style.  They have class and money.  Seasons tickets and I was included.  You made me feel beloved.   Suddenly I had a posse.  Whilst the orchestra (staffed with imported Russians, hence, good musicians) was tuning up, you noticed men in the balcony looking at us, or rather, you.  You were being cruised big time.  Fresh meat.  You were indignant to be so observed.  

Now I know you just never wanted to be noticed or looked it.  Someone might have recognized you.  Or, would remember you in the future.

We had just come from dinner at Malarky's Pub.  Martinis and burgers. Bob, you were so happy to have me as your martini buddy since Tom never drank.  We tossed them back and ordered two more.  It was a festive night, this social debut of yours.  You had just arrived out of nowhere and you were starting the fall with a cultural splurge.  

"Do we have to wear long pants?" Bob had asked me over the phone earlier. That would be the question every time we went out, either to a nice restaurant, to the polo club, to a party.  "Do we have to wear long pants?" as if you were 10 years old.    Since you arrived in paradise, you only wore bermudas.  "It's because we wore Armani suits all the time, back in our life in the States.  We have a closet full of Armani suits in storage.  And two custom made Armani tuxes."

"I never want to wear a suit again," Tom added, shaking his head at the thought of it. 

But it was a dumb question, because you didn't even own long pants here.  You three arrived with two huge dogs in cages packed into a stolen Mercedes, with three pairs of bermudas each.  You must have been in some hurry to leave the U.S. You bought a few hawaiian shirts at Costco when you arrived and wore them in rotation.  The Armani suits were fiction.  The Armani tuxes were wistful thinking.  You groomed us so well.

You looked harmless.  A gay couple with their 91-year-old gay "uncle" and two enormous dogs.  You looked honorable, taking care of your uncle.  Little did anyone know Uncle Ron was the mastermind of your scams.

No Ritz Carlton in Vienna.  No country club memberships.  No cruises at "platinum level."  You never had Blackberrys that you threw in the trash because you were burned out from successful executive life.   How skillfully you played us.  All of us, not just me, thought you were fully funded boomers who came to Mexico to live the good life, leaving your stressful, empty, American lives behind.

I wonder where you are tonight.  Fiona thinks you are in Belize.  "They speak English in Belize and they never learned Spanish."   Eva said, "They're in Belize because Belize is the place for criminals.  They can hide in Belize, it's full of scammers, just like them."  Eva is the one you hurt the most, turning her life inside out.

I have no idea where you are.   I wonder if you are drinking martinis.  I wonder who you're scamming now.  I wonder if you are happy.  I wonder if you miss me.  

Of course you don't.