My deepest thanks to the gracious and patient monks and other Buddhist friends at the Kungri Monastery in the Pin Valley, India, where this manuscript was first written; to Wayne and the gang at UMKC; to Tim Small, the kind editor who first conceived of, motivated and published the project overseas; to Lorin Stein and my all-knowing, all-good agent Susan Golomb, who together convinced me to rewrite what began as a memoir into fiction; to my brilliant editor Giancarlo DiTrapano, who has been relentless in his determination to see it appear here in the US, and who has quite possibly put as much passion into the book as I have; to Mom, Alicia, Rebecca, Darren, Pat and Mompat; to Rinpoche; and above all, to my daughters, Zelly, Margaret and Portia, and to my best reader, best friend, and loving wife, Amie.
Love and Lies
How to Sell
Introducing Philosophy
The German Sisyphus
The Philosophy of Deception
Ethics Across the Professions
Honest Work
Since Socrates
Morality and the Good Life
Above the Bottom Line
The former owner of a variety of jewellery operations in Texas, Clancy Martin is the author of the acclaimed novel How to Sell and the memoir Love and Lies.
He is an Associate Professor and Chair of Philosophy at the University of Missouri in Kansas City. He has translated Kierkegaard and Nietzsche, has written several books for Oxford University Press, and has published many essays, reviews and short stories. He is married and has three daughters.
Brett is in Central America, away from her husband, Paul, when she meets his captivating friend Eduard.
Paul’s is a stabilising influence but Eduard encourages Brett’s dark side, her sobriety soon slipping from her grasp. She quickly finds herself on a downward spiral, sneaking off for weeks with her new lover and blacking out in hotels. Brett still has the clarity to see that she is sabotaging her life, but is unable to stop.
‘Cheating on your husband is like doing cocaine,’ says Brett at one point. ‘It’s rarely pleasurable, but try quitting.’
Love in Central America is a fiery, addictive, tragicomic novel about desperately, deliciously bad choices.
This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorized distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.
Epub ISBN: 9781473521216
Version 1.0
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Harvill Secker, an imprint of Vintage,
20 Vauxhall Bridge Road,
London SW1V 2SA
Harvill Secker is part of the Penguin Random House group of companies whose addresses can be found at global.penguinrandomhouse.com.
Copyright © Clancy Martin 2015
Cover image © Jean Fan / Trevillion Images
Clancy Martin has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this Work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
First published by Harvill Secker in 2016
First published with the title Bad Sex in 2015 by Tyrant Books, New York
penguin.co.uk/vintage
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 9781846559587
For ZC
Thank you for never giving up
“This wasn’t invented, it really happened”
– Alejandro Zambra
ONE OF US had to watch our hotel in Tulum during the storm, so I was flying into Cancun International then renting a car. The hurricane had closed all of the airports on the coast, and my flight was delayed, and then cancelled. As I was walking out of the airport, I heard an announcement my flight was boarding. It was the last flight into Cancun. When I got to the hotel, I told the story to the clerk and she laughed and upgraded me to a suite. “It will just sit empty anyway,” she told me, as though she were apologizing for the change. “We’re getting flooded with cancellations.” I asked her for an envelope, put sixty dollars into it, and handed it back to her. The room was enormous, with a dining room table, a kitchen in case you’d brought your own cook, and floor-to-ceiling windows with long views of the ocean. The waves were huge and confused in the storm, and they stretched as far as I could see in the rain.
It was ten in the morning.
I PACED AROUND the room, looked at myself in the mirror, went to the bathroom, and then opened my computer on the desk. I sat for a few minutes, trying to tell myself I could write, and then moved to the bed and read the room service menu. When I came to the wine list in the back, I closed it. I went over to the window, leaned my forehead against the cold glass, and stared down the ten stories. My forehead made a smear on the glass. I got a Coke Light from the minibar. Then I took off my shoes and jacket and sat on the couch to call Paul.
“I’m already lonely for you,” I said. It was the day after Christmas, and the truth was I was glad for a break. Paul’s boys had been out of school for a week and his family had visited for the holidays. His mother was a friend of mine but she had a way of taking over the house. She was a devoted grandmother but the boys were nervous around her, because she was wealthy and uptight and dressed carefully each morning. Paul’s father was there now—his parents were divorced—and he was clingy and demanding. He frequently needed to go to the pharmacy or the grocery store to buy things. But he hated Mexico City—they were from a small town in Massachusetts—and he’d get lost if he drove himself. He was good with the boys but he liked to tell us how to parent them. Also, after a few days Paul felt like he had a third child in the house.
“My dad is driving me crazy. He keeps getting angry when I won’t stay up and watch a movie with him. We watched two Burt Reynolds movies last night and he wasn’t satisfied. Hurry home,” he said. “I need you here right now.”
“I’m sorry. One of us had to go. It’s three nights. I really ought to be here for at least a week. And I’ve already got a little writing done. It’s so quiet here, with the hurricane, there’s nothing else to do. I’ll drive down to Tulum tomorrow or the next day.”
“Don’t get on the road until the weather is better. You’re writing? That’s good. I told you. How’s the Ritz?”
“It hasn’t changed. Anyway, without you, it’s a room. It doesn’t matter.”
We didn’t have anything to talk about but I didn’t want him to get off the phone.
I CALLED MY friend Sadie, a doctor from Galveston, Texas. I hadn’t seen her in a couple of years, and she was driving to Cancun to meet me for the weekend. She wasn’t afraid of the storm.
I hadn’t told Paul that Sadie was coming. Not for any reason. I knew it would annoy him. It was understood that this was a necessary but unfortunate work trip that one of us had to make and since they were his boys I was the one going, and I wasn’t supposed to enjoy myself. But I should have told him I’d invited Sadie down. He had never been crazy about Sadie.
“She’s trouble,” he always said about her. “All psychiatrists are crazy. But she’s not just ordinary crazy. She’s crazy about sex. She tries to sleep with me every time she visits.”
“Paul, she does not.” Maybe she did, a little. But she didn’t mean anything by it.
“Man! These roads are for shit. I’d turn around right now if it weren’t for you.”
“I’m glad you’re coming. Thanks. You want to go to Pobrecito’s? I’ll make a reservation.”
“You’re buying. Hell, I’m almost in town, I’ll come to your hotel. No, you’re not invited, buddy, sorry. I’m dropping you off the minute we cross the border, like you said. Del la What? That on the coast?”
“What?” I had no idea what she was talking about. “That’s where they catch those green lobsters, right?”
“Tell me you didn’t pick up a hitchhiker, Sadie.”
“I have you on the speakerphone, Brett, watch what you say.” I heard her pick up the phone. “He’s a college kid. No? Well, what’s with the bandana? You want any of this? Okay, fine. Well, just hold it, would ya? It’s a pipe, buddy, it don’t bite.”
“Sadie, I gotta go.”
“Can you believe this rain? Beautiful, actually. All the colors.”
“Sadie, you’re stoned. I’ll see you when you get here. Just valet under my name.”
“You just called. Alright, fine. Set up that restaurant.”
I thought about calling Paul back but I knew he was busy with his dad and the boys. I needed to work. Before I started, I checked my email. Three emails from an Italian publisher panicking about a manuscript I had promised him for months. Dozens of emails from Fab, Dwell, and Tablet. A request to blurb a book. Fan mail. An invitation to sit on someone’s doctoral dissertation. I started to switch into Word when I saw there was one from Paul’s banker. “I’m in Cancun,” was the header. “Do you have time for a cup of coffee today or tonight? Paul said you’re here. I was supposed to be in Panama, but I’m stuck with everybody else. They say I’ll get a flight tomorrow. Yrs, Eduard.”
Eduard and I had met briefly once at a party nearly a decade before, but I didn’t remember it. I only knew because Paul told me so.
“He’s not the kind of man you would notice,” Paul said. “He’s old, a bit chubby, and he doesn’t know how to dress.”
I didn’t want to meet with Eduard but thought I probably should.
Plus, now if I met Eduard, Paul would find out Sadie was in Cancun.
I wrote to Eduard. “I have a friend in town from Texas, a psychiatrist I’ve known since high school, but if you want to meet us, it would be great. I’d love to hang out. What’s a good bar? You’d be doing me a favor, in fact. My friend Sadie is a drinker, and this way she’ll have a drinking buddy.”
Eduard wrote back immediately: “I don’t know the bars in Cancun. I’ll try to find a place close to your hotel. Paul said you’re at the Ritz-Carlton?”
SADIE CAME UP to my room around six.
“Wow, look at this place. I should have just stayed with you.”
“That’s what I said. You can. Cancel your room.”
“No, you know me. I sometimes stay up late.” She laughed. I could see she was still stoned. “I’m going to make a drink. You want a club soda?”
I told her the news.
“Man, I thought it was going to be girls’ night out,” she said. “What about that horse place we were planning on? I want to see those horses. Cowboys! Mexican cowboys are still the real thing. I thought we had reservations.”
“Oh, I changed it to tomorrow. This won’t take long. We’ll have one drink with him, then we can hit the town. Wherever you want to go.”
“Boring. You’ve been doing this to me for twenty-five years. Always some man.”
“I’ve been doing it to you? Please. He’s not a man, Sadie. He’s Paul’s banker.”
Sadie rolled her eyes.
“Those days are behind me. We’re old women. We’re practically middle-aged.”
“Speak for yourself,” Sadie said. She was two years younger than me.
EDUARD HAD PICKED an expensive bar in a basement in the old town. It took the taxi almost an hour to find the place. It was packed. The ceilings were low and the zinc bar stretched the entire length of the room. It was lit with dozens of bare Edison bulbs, and on the back wall they had glass cabinets filled with taxidermy molds and instruments. They’d have to redo the whole place in two years, I thought. New Mexico in old Cancun.
“This place is cool,” Sadie said. “This is like a bar in New York. You wouldn’t even know where you were if it weren’t for all the Mexicans.”
Sadie had red hair. She had freckles on the bridge of her nose, and was slender with extraordinary legs and excellent posture. She was pretty in a way that made women hate and worship her.
I ordered her a martini and watched the door for Eduard. I was worried I wouldn’t recognize him—I had no picture in my mind at all—and so I stared at all the men who came and went. An hour passed. Sadie told me a long story about one of her patients who was emotionally abusive to her husband. After three years of treatment, the woman broke down and confessed that she was not married.
“Now that’s a woman who’s fucking crazy,” she said. “No better word for her. What the hell am I supposed to do with this woman? She still comes to see me. There’s a novel in that one for you. You can use it to break your slump.”
I said, “Maybe you should write it.”
I wondered if I could have gotten the night wrong. I checked my email on my phone.
“Where the hell is he? I thought a banker worked for you, not the other way around. I’m hungry. What time did he say?”
“Nine.”
“Shit, it’s quarter after ten, and we haven’t had any dinner. I’m starving. I’m getting a hamburger. Do you want a burger? Rare?”
Sadie got a hamburger, and her third double martini. I ordered things I thought Eduard might like, things that wouldn’t go cold: olives, cheese, salami, roasted peppers, anchovies, lobster. The bartender recommended the truffle fries so I got those too.
“And one more Coke Light, if you don’t mind. Sorry. I drink these things like water.”
“You know those are bad for you,” the bartender said. He smiled. “Poison. Let me make you a ginger ale. Trust me. Do you like eucalyptus?”