The Scared Stiff

18

There was no one there. It’s true I was three minutes early, but there was still no one there. Room 2217 of the Hotel Inter-Nación was dim and cool and completely empty.

I’d told Maria and Carlos about the message from Arturo and asked if I could borrow a vehicle to keep the appointment. I hoped, of course, the vehicle would be the Buick.

Carlos, sounding almost avuncular, told me there was no problem, he’d loan me a vehicle, but it turned out the vehicle he had in mind was anything but a nice air-conditioned Buick. It was a scooter, an Italian Vespa, a motorized kitchen chair with a shield stuck on the front. The word vespa in Italian means wasp, and that’s exactly what the thing sounded like, nasty and nasal and snarling.

So, having driven Carlos and Maria home to Rancio, I’d changed from chauffeur back to peon, accepted the Vespa with many expressions of gratitude, and rode my mobile kitchen chair among the trucks back down to San Cristobal, through town, and out to the Inter-Nación.

Room 2217 sounds as though it should be on the twenty-second floor, but in fact the Inter-Nación is only three stories high, a squat building across the road from the airport. They’d stuck an extra 2 in front of the room numbers to make the place sound more impressive. So I went diagonally across the lobby without attracting attention from the staff, ignored the elevator, and climbed the stairs to the second floor. The card key produced a small green light above the doorknob, the door opened, and I entered an empty room.

She hadn’t been here. The closet was empty, the bed untouched. I went to look out the window, but this room didn’t face the road and the airport, it faced the jungle. As I stood gazing out at the greens, I heard clicking sounds from the door and turned with a smile of welcome. But then I heard voices. She was with somebody else.

It had to be the bellboy. She’d have all her luggage with her for tomorrow morning’s flight. And the bellboy shouldn’t see a man in the widow’s room, especially a man who just might be identifiable later on as her dead husband. As the door to the hall opened, I made a dash for the bathroom, sliding in just as the two Spanish-speaking voices entered. Yes, Lola and a young male. She was directing the placement of the luggage, and he was explaining the wonders of the room.

And his voice was coming this way. Quickly I stepped into the tub, behind the half-drawn shower curtain. If he were to come all the way to the tub to demonstrate the faucets, I didn’t know what I’d do.

But then the lights came on in the bathroom and I saw the mirror. The wall facing the door was all mirror, and in it I could see the doorway, where the bellboy stood, a short young guy in a red uniform jacket, hand on the light switch. Beyond him, back in the main room, was Lola.

If I could see them, they could see me. Except that the bellboy was calling Lola’s attention to other things and wasn’t looking toward the mirror. Lola was; I saw her eyes widen with surprise, then amusement. She said something, drawing the bellboy away, and as he left the doorway she came forward to switch off the light.

It took her another couple of minutes to get rid of him. At last I heard the outer door snick shut, and as soon as it did I stepped out of the tub and into the other room, where Lola in her traveling clothes sat on the bed among her suitcases, laughing. Looking at me, she said, “Speedy Gonzales, I presume.”

God, she was beautiful. I never want to be away from her, not for a second. “Oh, no,” I said, walking toward her. “Not speedy. This is going to be very, very slow.”

Early in the morning, before I snuck out of the Inter-Nación to climb back aboard my Vespa, we had a conversation that we’d had before and was the basis of our life together.

“I’ll be here,” I said.

And she said, “Of course you will, you’re the net.”

“And you’re the net,” I said.

“You know I am.”

We smiled at each other. I said, “We’re out there alone, nobody to be sure of in the whole world except you and me. I’m your net and you’re my net. The only net we’ve got.”

“The only net we need, Barry,” she said.