“You’ll find me.” Then Gus hit the gas and the shitty little car took off down the road, trying to catch up with the Range Rover that was long gone.
I watched him disappear, standing on the side of the road a lot longer than I should have. Because I was afraid. … afraid to walk into that hotel and see Ellie. I didn’t know what I’d do now. I wasn’t about to say anything but even seeing her up close would be a sword in my gut.
I took in a deep breath through my nose, walked up the street to the entrance and went inside. The lobby was cool, with high arched doorways that let the breeze in from the courtyard I could see in the back. A slim, eager looking fellow was behind the front desk. My eyes darted across the tiled floor to see if Ellie was lounging in any of the wicker rocker chairs or obscured by the illustrious house plants. She wasn’t – she must have gone to her room.
I went up to the front desk clerk with the nametag Enrico and enquired about a room for the night.
“We have one,” he said, flipping through the book. It had been a long time since I’d seen someone log their details in an actual notebook, not a computer. “Shared bathroom, if that’s okay.”
I nodded. “Sure that’s fine. I’m curious, how much is your most expensive room here?”
“That would be the garden haciendas in the back. They run about 300 US dollars a night but as you can see they are full.”
He tapped the notebook, enough for me to glance down and catch the name Eleanor Willis. One of Ellie’s fake names.
“Oh, well, maybe next time,” I said. “How much for the shared bath?”
He told me it was sixty dollars a night and I fished a wad of bills out of my wallet, using my Connor Malloy driver’s license. I’d forgotten I was him for a while there. I was forgetting a lot of things about myself lately.
“Do you have any bags?” he asked.
Ah, right. I shook my head and shrugged. “First I mess up my arm mountain biking in the Baja, then Air Mexico loses all my bags.”
He gave me a sympathetic smile and handed me the key. I went up to my room, a tiny sliver of Mexico, sat on the narrow, squeaky bed for a minute, trying to gather up my thoughts and coming up empty. Then I decided to head back down to the lobby. I wanted to go into the courtyard, to the pool area where all the tourists were, but there was too much a chance for Ellie to see me and I still didn’t know what I’d do if she did.
I ended up going into the tiny gift shop and found a shirt to wear. The plaid one was starting to smell. I bought a black one that said Veracruz on the back in a nice script. The perfect tourist shirt, even though it was a bit tight. I decided to wear it out and was coming out of the changing room when I saw Ellie through the gift shop window, walking across the lobby.
I had to do something. I had to say something to her. Gus wanted to wait until we knew what the situation was, but I couldn’t just let her walk by. Now that she was alone and we were in the same building that made everything different. I quickly paid for the shirt and rushed out of the store. But it was too late, she’d hopped in a cab and off they went.
I went back into the hotel and asked Enrico to call me a cab too. I was tempted to ask him a few questions about Ellie but something told me to keep my mouth shut for now.
Of course, my god damn cab took forever to arrive and when it did I got the slowest fucking driver in the world who kept going on in Spanish, ignoring every attempt I made to tell him I didn’t speak the language. By the time he dropped me off at the Veracruz market, it was packed with people and absolutely bustling. How the hell was I going to find Ellie here, let alone Gus?
I walked down the aisles, looking past the merchants, at every person who was squeezing through the crowd. I didn’t notice anything unusual except for all the armed guards everywhere I turned. I didn’t know if it was protected like this because it was the Veracruz way, or if it had something to do with Travis frequenting the market. Maybe it was one and the same.
I had finally stopped at a taco stand, needing something in my stomach, and was waiting in line with families carrying overflowing shopping bags when I felt the skin on the back of my neck prickle. It felt like lightning was kissing me.
I slowly turned around, and through the sea of people, I saw her face. Her beautiful, cruel face, looking right at me.
Only she didn’t look cruel just then. She looked soft, her eyes dark pools, filled with things I wanted to read into, to dive into. She looked like an animal in a very large cage, an illusion of freedom around her but she could only run so far before she’d run back into herself.
Oh Christ, this hurt more than anything in the world. How easily she had forgotten about me. How my memory must have been tossed to the wind, like she’d done to me before.
Then she smiled, recognizing me, like it really hit her, and I never thought she could look so much like an angel. She was glowing. And her radiance was breaking my heart.