Before departing, we ate at the Holiday Inn there, a nice Brazilian-style place where they laid side dishes in a buffet and then brought to the table skewered cuts of meat for us to choose from. I had the beer-braised chicken and a nice cucumber salad. While he enjoyed a cup of excellent coffee and I pondered having some flan, I heard a familiar voice.
“Chance, is that you?”
There it was again—his luck. If we hadn’t broken down, we’d never have stopped here. What earthly reason could Tanya have to be in San Luis? Yet here she was. He waved her over, smiling. She was one of his acquaintances, and I’d never liked her, rich and useless to say the least. Of course, I might have liked her better if she didn’t seize every possible opportunity to remind me I didn’t belong with him.
When she reached our table, she stared at me as if I were something she’d found sticking to the sole of her shoe. In the end, she decided not to dignify my existence with a comment. Maybe she hoped I’d disappear if she clicked her ruby slippers together (though they were bisque and bronze) and wished hard enough.
“I tried to get in touch with you before I left the country,” she said to him. “But nobody seemed to know where you’d gone. I have your money. Daddy finally coughed up my allowance because I’m doing something useful these days. I’m a patron of native crafts and culture.” Her tone disparaged the art she purported to patronize, but Tanya chattered on, oblivious to our silence. “So odd we’d run into each other here of all places, but then it is the only decent restaurant in town. We’d probably die of dysentery if we chanced one of those tavernas or taco stands.”
I steamed quietly, as I’d eaten in my share of those places and never suffered any ill effects. Chance made an effort to be civil, though I could tell his patience was stretched to the breaking point. We’d be lucky to get there by midnight at this rate, and I’d give myself a lobotomy if he invited Tanya along.
With precise motions, he wiped his mouth on the blue linen napkin and then laid it across his coffee cup. “I wish I could spend more time catching up, but we need to go. If you want to give me a check while we’re here, though, that will be fine.”
Her expression as she got out her checkbook said he’d been rude. I think she had expected to make some social headway with him but I could have warned her that Chance never f**ked anyone who borrowed money from him. He was fastidious in that regard; he mingled, wore the right clothes to intrigue twats like Tanya, but he’d never be one of them.
Though he wasn’t a shark with a goon squad that broke legs for him, Chance often made high interest, short term loans to privileged idiots who overspent their trust funds, and I was how he’d earned the capital to do so. Still, the number of zeroes on the check she made out to him in U.S. dollars made my eyes widen.
“Good luck with your art show,” I said to her in saccharine tones.
As we waited for the valet to bring our car around (in Mexico even Burger King has valet parking), he murmured, “That came at a good time.” He paused, as if weighing whether to tell me more. “Things were running a bit lean, and we’re going to need that money before we’re through.”
I rolled my eyes. “Tell me again why you don’t play the lottery.”
“It would be wrong.” Giving me an inscrutable look, he tipped the man holding his door and got into the piss yellow Camry.
“Right,” I said. “We’re the good guys.”
Occupied with heading back toward the highway, he didn’t respond. I grinned as he stopped at a PEMEX and had the fluids topped off; we were taking no chances with the Toyota. We bought bottles of water there as well, just to be safe. However, studying him once we got under way, I decided something beneath his impeccable tailoring suggested a hero keeping dark forces at bay.
The sun was setting by that point, blazing fire over the Sierra Madre. Slate and charcoal clouds gathered over the mountains in the distance. The highway uncoiled before us like a dark, patient snake. We had another four hours to go, and most of the driving would be after dark. I considered offering to spell him, but he’d just sigh and shift in the passenger seat. Chance didn’t like being driven—another control issue.
The vastness between towns had a way of making me feel small, like nobody would notice anything that went down out here except to hose off the road. Headlights shining in the rearview mirror made me feel uneasy. The feeling passed, but the car never did. It kept pace with us for miles.
I tried to dismiss it as paranoia, but I still remembered the way Kel Ferguson had stared at me as the bailiffs led him away. Unlike other cons, he hadn’t sworn vengeance or screamed that he knew people on the outside. His eyes did all the talking, and what they said still woke me up at night.
“Do you ever think about them?” I asked after the silence started to get to me.
“About who?” He didn’t look at me.
I traced a protective symbol against the car window, like that would help. “The guys we put away.”
“I’m glad they’re off the street,” he said. “And no, I don’t worry about them getting out. We have enough law abiding citizens after us to make me wary of borrowed trouble.”
We’d run afoul of lawmen more than once. In Terre Haute, they’d all but run us out of town on a rail. I sighed. “You got that right.”
After that, we didn’t talk much as we headed north along 57. If we were so inclined, we could follow the highway all the way to Piedras Negras, Coahuila, but our business took us onto 40 instead, marking the last miles to Monterrey. Over nine hours in the car so far, not counting the time we spent waiting for rescue.
Since November ranged toward the end of rainy season, the sky didn’t open up until well after full dark. The rain splattered on the windshield as if by the bucket, and Chance leaned forward, slowing to a crawl as we approached the lights of Monterrey. After replaying what he’d said about needing money, it occurred to me then that maybe he knew more than he’d told me, but I wasn’t dumb enough to pick a fight in the middle of a storm.
He had to be tense, worrying about his mother, and this marked our tenth hour in a car. More like fourteen since we left my apartment this morning, so it was a wonder we hadn’t killed each other yet. Unerringly, I found the spot at the base of his skull with my thumb and forefinger, pressed so that he let out a moan.
“Christ, that’s good. Stop while I’m driving, though. I don’t want to run off the road.”
Funny how he had the power to take me back in time with a handful of words. In my mind’s eye, I saw all the other occasions where he’d tipped his head back in bliss beneath my hand. My chest felt tight; I didn’t want to remember the good times. I’d blocked them because it’s next to impossible to leave someone you really like.
“Head for Diego Rivera,” I said as we came into the city. The buildings took some force out of the rain, though the other cars made driving difficult. Here, the streets flooded easily, and some wiseass in a taxi tried to splash standing water through my cracked window. “It’s in the financial district.”
So maybe I wanted to show off. I’d spent one night at the gorgeous Quinta Real, a colonial hotel of marble sandstone that looked like a palace. Inside it was more of the same, impossibly sumptuous with a staff that knew service. No pool, but the in-room Jacuzzi more than made up for it—and Tanya’s check said he could afford a grand class suite. I sighed, remembering that I’d stayed there alone. Still, a room that contained fine tapestries and sculptures, beautiful paintings with lavish gilt frames, decorative inlaid marble in the baths, and an imperial bed with golden columns could make anyone feel like royalty for a night. There were advantages to knowing a man’s weaknesses.
I was desperate to avoid driving farther tonight.
Chasing Geese
I’d like to claim that Chance took one look at the hotel and fell upon his knees, declaring his undying devotion. I’d like to say he apologized for everything that went wrong between us and promised he’d spend the rest of his life making it up to me. But if I did, you probably wouldn’t believe another word I said, especially with regard to Chance.
Instead he offered a smoldering look. “Trying to tempt me?”
“Absolutely. The weather is rotten and we won’t be able to see anyone about the purse until morning anyway.”
He sighed and tapped the steering wheel. His answer came when he swung into the well-manicured drive and gave the keys over to the valet attendant. We stepped out of the driving rain and into another world, one filled with lavish service and utter opulence. Assessing the foyer in a glance, he said softly, “It’s like one of the grand old hotels in Europe. Can I get a masseuse in the room?”
“I expect so. You can get just about anything here, as long as you can pay for it. They’ll even do your shopping, although the mall across the street is closed right now.”
He nodded like that was good to know, and I helped him with check-in. I’ve noticed most service people speak enough English to do business in major commercial cities, but they think better of you if you speak enough Spanish to do it that way; it’s an almost intangible shift, a near smile and a lightening in the eyes.
Once upstairs, I left Chance in the hands of a masseuse who looked as though she wouldn’t mind relaxing him in ways that were only permitted in the zona de tolerancia in Nuevo Laredo. He was sound asleep when I finally crawled out of the sunken marble tub, pink and wrinkled like a newborn. I stood for a moment, wrapped in my plush hotel bathrobe, and watched him sleep. Somehow he always looked innocent in repose, a ridiculous premise if you knew him at all.
As I turned, I heard him whisper, “No, don’t go.”
I didn’t hesitate because he wasn’t alive in the moment with me but remembering in dreams, perhaps remembering someone else as well. In a remote corner of my mind, I wondered whether he had spoken those words aloud as the door closed behind me. Could I believe he’d loved me once?