Mary drove inland, to where the land flattened and crops grew in huge patchwork fields, spindly seedlings just beginning to rise from the red-brown dirt. She stopped at a restaurant where quiet men with black hair and tanned skin tried not to look at her as they ate their meals.
When the waitress came, she smiled at Mary. Mary pointed to something on the menu, which was in a language she didn’t understand. “This one,” she said. “Please.” The waitress nodded, and Mary sat back and watched the men. They spoke quietly and kept their eyes low, the sound of their words melodic and lovely. And Mary remembered the apartment she and Hannah had lived in when they first arrived in Northton. She remembered listening to her neighbor’s voice through the wall, the way it rose and fell like a songbird’s flight.
After several minutes, Mary’s meal came. The waitress set it in front of her and took a step back, as if to ensure it was to her liking. Mary looked down at a packet that appeared wrapped in an olive green leaf. With her knife and fork, she pried it open. The woman nodded in encouragement.
She ate, feeling the pleasure of anonymity, of hearing voices she did not know or understand. She ate feeling the pleasure of being in a place to which she had never been and would never return. The men seemed to relax. One of them glanced at Mary. She smiled. He looked away.
Mary’s gaze turned to the landscape outside the window. Across the road was a field filled with barren trees as far and deep and wide as she could see.
“Hey, what do they grow over there?” she asked the woman when she came to take her plate.
The woman paused, as if letting the words form first in her mind. When she spoke, her voice was deliberate. “Wal-nuts,” she said, the word a lovely rolling thing.
Mary nodded and turned back to the window. She thought about the men around her, their arms reaching up through the branches, their bodies always in motion, the landscape always changing, depending on the crop.
Mary paid her check, leaving a generous tip. “Gracias,” she said to the woman, pausing at the door.
“You’re welcome,” the woman replied.
Mary drove back toward the coast with a Mexican station playing on the radio. She would go there, she told herself. It wasn’t far. She’d go to Mexico and bring Bunny. They’d go there and let their skin go brown. They’d go there, eat food wrapped in leaves, and listen to a language that was like birds.
Jake was waiting for her in the parking lot when she arrived at Sea Cliff. Mary put the Blazer in park, but she didn’t get out. She just looked ahead. She loved this spot in front of the ocean. The passenger’s-side door opened. She heard his voice. “Where were you today, Mary?” he asked, a proprietary panic beneath his words.
Mary said nothing.
“You weren’t at home sleeping.”
Mary closed her eyes and brought her finger to her lips. “Shhhhh,” she said. Then she slipped off her jeans, feeling her eyes grow damp. Then she threw her leg over and was on top of him.
“Oh, baby,” he said, desperate and ecstatic. “I’m so sorry. I love you so much.”
“Shhhhh,” she said again.
It was the first time they had sex since he picked up Hannah at her school.
At the front desk that night, Mary felt her eyes start to slip shut after checking a young couple into the hotel. She hadn’t slept all day.
“Wake up, Miss Mary Mack,” she heard Curtis say, as he hauled the couple’s luggage onto the cart. “You can get away with a lot of shit at this job, but sleeping isn’t one of them.”
Mary leaned on the desk in front of her and watched him, watched him force his body into performing the same task he had performed on countless nights before. “Is it hard for you?” she asked. “Physically, I mean.”
He shook his head but kept his eyes on his cart. “Nah,” he said, brushing his bangs to the side. “I mean, not as hard as it must look.”
“Were you born this way?”
“No,” he said, his voice full of mischief. “It was a freak rodeo accident.” He looked at her, as if anticipating laughter. When her face didn’t change, his gaze dropped back to the bags. “Yeah, I mean,” he started. “My shit’s always been fucked up. I’ll spare you the syndrome. It has lots of syllables.”
And as he grasped the brass bar of the cart, Mary stared at the twisted bend of his wrist. It reminded Mary of something fragile and new. A seedling. A hatchling. A bunny. And she felt a sadness come over her so suddenly, it was as if it had been injected right into the vein.
Mary didn’t escort anyone back to their rooms from the bar that night. She barely even saw them pass. It was in those ambiguous hours between morning and night, when no one ever arrived, that Mary sensed him. It was an animal’s instinct, a primal recognition. She stared at the glass door just before he materialized. Surrounded by black, all she could see was the white of his shirt, the white of his eyes, and then the white of his smile. He pushed open the door and stepped into the light. And finally, finally, the man for whom she had come arrived. He walked toward her like a crocodile gliding through the water. And for a moment, Mary wasn’t sure he was real.
When he reached the desk, he put his suitcase down, then loosened the collar of his dress shirt as he looked at Mary. “Hello,” he said, his voice glass smooth and of no single place. “I’m afraid I don’t have a reservation.”
Thirty-six
1990
Mary’s face remained still, but she felt her heart falter as she took a single audible breath. “Welcome back, Mr. Mondasian,” she said, her voice raw as she spoke. She recognized him, of course. From more than his picture. He was familiar to Mary in a way she couldn’t explain.
Robert Mondasian smiled. He was accustomed to being recognized on occasion. “And your name is?”
“Mary Chase.”
“You’re new.”
“I started a few months ago.”
“You’re not from California.”
“I’m from back East.”
“Ah,” he smiled. “As am I.”
“You prefer an ocean-side suite with a view, correct?” she asked, forcing herself to speak. The paper back in Northton had only mentioned his affinity for the hotel, but Mary checked Sea Cliff?’s records. He always stayed in a west-facing room. He always arrived in winter. And he never had a reservation.
Robert smiled, his eyes narrowing in interest and curiosity as he slid his credit card across the desk. “That’s right,” he said. “And how is it that you know me?” He was used to batting about pretty young things who knew something of his reputation. “I shudder to think I’ve made it into the training manual.”
Mary’s head tilted as she looked at the face that was so much like her own. “You knew my mother,” she said.