One: Arms and the Man.

1.

Next morning walk the sidewalks of beach neighborhood, checking out this colonia at the end of the earth. Notice a few signs se renta apartamentos. Back at the motel, look at my room phone. If I stay in TJ, I could easily keep in touch with my agent, even go up to L.A. if I have to pitch a script.

I call him. Nothing – he tells me – nobody biting – stay, enjoy yourself, write your novel. Now I think more about an apartment. My own kitchen window on the sea. Diga, she said, commanding me to speak.

Afternoon I will ride the public bus over hillsides of crumbling houses into downtown flat land full of buildings. Stroll up and down Revolution Avenue. Watch the tourist change from day into night paseo. You are one of them now, Michael. No, I want to be more – maybe I should live here, get to know some new people, try to forget Ceci, and understand this border city. Notice how souvenir passageways shut down as the sun sets. Pussycats lets down their moveable stairway, covers that daytime alley where shops now hide behind metal shutters.

I will eat tipico food at stereotypical Sanborn’s, then take a drink and then another and another, in cantinas on and off the avenue. At Caesar Hotel – where that salad was invented eighty years ago – I talk with a man whose factory makes booths and tables for restaurants in California. With a little patience I can understand his business language. That required minor in Latinamerican literature actually helped me. Huh. Whatya know. Later, a woman sits next to me at the bar. Suggests I tell her what interests me. Writing, I answer. She doesn’t frown, but smiles sadly, "Ah ¿eres un artista, entonces?"

My notebook is out on the bar. I’ve been scribbling. I won’t tell her about Hollywood. Only say I am writing this novel. She nods, excuses herself with courtesy, and goes off I think to look for another client.

Finally come back to the beach after midnight via the yellow & cream route taxis from 3rd and D. Glad again I read guidebooks before coming here. What with taxis de ruta y camiones, hay buena transportación. Think I won’t need a car. In Playas, get off at El Tigre – a big scarlet building on the corner. Someone's having a late party in the big social salon upstairs. Lights and music drift down. A security guard sleepily nods outside the marble street door.

Walk the last blocks from boulevard to motel, past the dark trees of Parque México. Stray dogs prowl the shadows, looking for picnic crumbs. Ocean surf growls louder and louder as I approach, a siren song crashing and washing for millions of years – as close to eternity as you’ll ever get tonight, Michael, always the same, is was shall be waves amen forever now ssshhh rumble splash sigh....

Norma sits in the office again. I notice a sign in the window – night receptionist wanted, it says in Spanish. She beckons me in. "Tenemos un departamento cerca de aquí – we have an apartment for rent near here – would you like to see it tomorrow?"

The next day, around noon, we walk three blocks south along Avenida del Pacifico. Pass basketball court, power poles, coconut shack corner and two storey houses. Turn around the edge of a purple condo block. Enter the mouth of an outdoor staircase. Behold a flight of concrete steps hung in the gap between tall houses on tiny beach lots, a cement pathway leading downhill toward oceanfront promenade, shifting sand, and rumbling waves.

Norma points up. "Acá es el dorado."

I will lift up my eyes to the skinny yellow domino on the left of the stairway. Balconies and wall tower seven stories up up up toward an oversize head wrapped in windowglass and rooftop rail.

That’s weird, I think, it’s like my dream last month when I saw the sea and knew I had gone to Mexico. Or did I see this one yesterday and forget deja vu? No. Halfway down the stairs is a place where I sit and think about you and Christopher Robin and la China Poblana.

"¿Norma?"

"Sí. Diga."

That word again. I know it’s custom, but... "¿Cual es el departamento que se rentan ustedes?"

"Es el penthouse, Miguel."

"Oye, debe tener una vista muy padre, ¿no?"

"Sí. Claro. Sí tiene. Vamanos."

Five hundred dollars. You can’t touch anything like this on the L.A. coast for under two, three, four thousand a month – not even in Venice, forget Malibu! But here I have one bedroom downstairs (6th floor), hidden behind my large living room clothed in glass, with a fireplace on one side, and kitchen in the corner. Upstairs another bedroom (and a second bath) sits beside the roof deck. I got a six-month lease – if I don’t like it I can leave then. But I think I am going to like it very much.

You see, this will not only give me a base to learn Tijuana and explore Baja, but – as I realized gazing at the ocean yesterday with Norma – now I can finally concentrate on writing my dream script: Cortés and Moctezuma: the conquest of Mexico. To hell with commercials and stupid sitcom pilots. No more Cecilia begging extra money to take her girlfriends to Rodeo Drive. Now I can really work – if this view doesn’t distract me too much!

Yes, it is truly a cliché of a view to die for. Not just a beach, no; I look into the cosmos from here, perched on the edge of earth and sky, hung between land and sea, a last lonely roof eight blocks south of the new Berlin wall. Border lighthouse flashes in my windows at night.

The neighborhood of Playas de Tijuana divides around me, shifting from city to ocean. Even the "bad side" of my view is attractive. In front of hills, a wide terrace of land stretches from the bullring-by-the-sea south to last slopes plunging into the waves – maybe two miles of beachfront. On this coastal flat, Playas lays itself down in an elegant symmetry of boulevards sliced by parks and streets full of houses. The one design flaw is only one road in or out of town – the whole mass is cut off by the scenic tollway to Rosarito. But that doesn’t stop tens of thousands of middle class and rich Mexicans from living here.

On the other side of my view, the ocean itself. That vast mother reaches beyond the islands toward Hawaii, China and Japan, and lays down its truth and law: I am your womb, you cannot drink from me; my fish taste good.

I sit on the roof deck and read my copy of Bernal Diáz de Castillo. La Verdadera Historia de la Conquista de Nueva España. I am going to write the script. Hell. Who cares if it never sells – well, I do, of course – but what matters is to write it. Cortés and Moctezuma. They came from two different worlds – and history would never be the same again... yes. I can write this. Even if I have to write it in verses... I can write this....

At such exceeding risk of death and wounds we ventured our lives both by sea discovering new lands never heard of before, and by day and night fighting firece warriors, all so far from Castille, without any help except the mercy of our Lord God, who was pleased that we should gain the great city of Tenuztijuan Mexico, as it is called, and so many other cities and provinces that I don’t tell their names here. Then, after we pacified and populated them with Spaniards, like loyal servants of Your Majesty the reader we are obliged to our natural king and lord, with much care we have sent these ambassador words to Spain and from there to Flanders, where Your Majesty was at that time holding court, and where Albrecht Durer did behold the gold and silver wheels Moctezuma gave us for you.

-- (trans/adapt) Bernal Diáz de Castillo