A Mexican Gem

Gary at the wheel, we’re headed south on the first afternoon of our journey deep into Mexico. We cross miles of spectacular Sonoran desert, our moods buoyed by our love of this country and the spectacular desert scenery. Multi-armed saguaro cacti, bushy yellow-green creosote bushes, kestrels perched on power lines, this desert is far from a wasteland. The sun no longer bleaches the landscape as we watch an indigo tint seep across the sky from the east. Time to stop for the day.

Remembering a summer thirty years ago when we slept in our tent on a beach, we head for familiar ground, turning towards Guaymas, a fishing town on the mainland side of the Gulf of California. We drive through the center of town, weaving through the traffic funneling down Avenida Serdán, the no-frills business route. Palm trees and the blue waters in the bay form the backdrop for neon signs advertising everything from lawyers to Coke, Taquería Big Boy to Tienda Froggy. Shoppers, workers heading for home, students in school uniforms of navy and white fill the sidewalks, walking through the waves of stored heat radiating from the pavement. Now a town of 100,000 people, Guaymas is no longer the sleepy village we remember.

As the beach is nowhere in sight, I thumb through our still-pristine Lonely Planet guidebook. “Let’s try Hotel Rubi… quiet…air-conditioned rooms opening out onto a courtyard.”

The price, twenty-one dollars, is right, so we follow the sea wall down to the far end of town where the rows of rusty fishing boats are moored. We locate Bar Rubi across the street from the bay and extrapolate that the signless building next door with the filmy windows, peeling paint, and metal bars is Hotel Rubi. Dismal, but the drive has been long and we have discovered after many Mexican trips that, like geodes, the dull exterior of a Mexican building can sometimes hide the gem within. We have also developed a tolerance and even a taste for adventure.

We park and ring the bell, peering into the gloom of the lobby for signs of life. A bent, gray-haired man with the weathered skin of a fisherman appears and leads us across the patterned cement-tiled floor to the registration desk. His toothless mouth is caved in like a sinkhole, but he is friendly and chatty as he shuffles behind the desk to help us register. I notice the cubicles for the hotel room keys. All the keys are hanging from their hooks. We are the only guests.

As Gary registers, my eyes explore the lobby. There is a dusty but impressive collection of seashells hanging in a frame, a fake fireplace with an image of the Virgin of Guadalupe on the mantel, and a few filmy-leafed plants in large pots that fill in spaces between the Spanish-style furniture. Behind a massive clunker of a leather chair, I see a flash of white. A cat peers out at the two new guests. She is just past kittenhood, her body beginning to stretch out like that of an adult cat, but she still has the perky blunt head of a kitten. This ghost cat must have found many plump rodents in this loser motel; dainty and petite otherwise, she has a little “panza,” Spanish for belly. I marvel at her coloration, all white except for a tiger-striped tail and one black leg. One of her eyes is blue, the other yellow.

Like many Mexican cats, she keeps to the shadows as we survey each other. Cats in Mexico have to be savvy to survive in a world filled with street dogs, cars, and the many Mexicans who don’t see beyond the “mouse catcher” status of felines.

She scoots off as we drag our luggage across a courtyard filled with rubble to room number four. It is a single-light bulb-hanging-from-the-ceiling kind of room, except that instead of a bulb, it’s a small fluorescent ring emitting a dim light just strong enough and blue enough to poison the coral color of the walls, our skin tone, and any other items of color. The room is stuffy, but the ancient air conditioner set into the soiled wall is so begrimed, we don’t have the courage to turn it on. The blankets are shabby green-plaid terrycloth, the sheet, that transparent kind of ancient polyester, and the TV has everything but an on/off button. We call the office and trade the useless television for a massive one that teeters on the narrow top of the dresser. It has no volume control. We will soon discover in the cool of the next morning, that the shower is cold. We have paid for the night. This is it. We collapse onto the sagging beds in a depressed stupor to recharge before dinner, lip reading the mouths of the lurid orange and blue people that flip by on the whispering television channels.

In an attempt to bring in some light and real air, we crack the door to our room. Soon, above the hiss of traffic on the street outside, we hear loud, insistent meowing. As we peer out, we see the hotel kitten, racing for cover in a rubble pile. Passionate cat lovers, this is too much to resist, so we drag ourselves out to the courtyard and practice our best cat-enticing techniques. Finally, the kitty sneaks over for a quick scratch behind the ears. Her eyes dart around the courtyard looking for danger and she doesn’t linger long. We return to our room. The meowing starts again. It crescendos to the cat version of a yell. This cat wants to be our friend.

A pattern emerges. For the next twenty minutes, we go out and pet the kitty, she darts away, yell-meows, then creeps back for another stroke or scratch. Any contact and she arches her back, slits her eyes and purrs almost as loudly as she meows. The proprietor of the hotel told us she has no name. We decide to call her Ruby.

As it begins to get dark, we retreat to our room, leaving our door ajar. Ruby peers around the corner and produces an agony of desperate meows as she tries to get up the courage to cross the threshold.

Finally, Ruby darts into the room, meows and dashes out. She repeats this until Gary finally gets close enough to rub her head. She can no longer resist. Soon, she is on the bed rolling in ecstasy, kneading the air or the cheesy plaid blanket with her claws, power purring, even allowing her plump belly to be rubbed. Ruby wants to be a pet. Only our exhaustion and the late hour ends our affair and we close Ruby out so we can finally sleep.

When we check out early the next day, there is no sign of our friend. We are sad to leave Ruby amidst the crumbling plaster, dusty chairs and indifferent humans. I would like to think we made her feel like a gem, even if only for one evening. Ruby stepped out of the role of the lonely rat catcher just long enough to show us that the desire for touch and affection goes beyond the patterns of a culture. We could only hope that for the next guest, she would also be the gem in the geode.

- 2004

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Noche of San Miguel