Noah shrugged. “Why don’t we go inside and ask?”
The station contained barely more than a few chairs, fliers, and a ticket booth. He thought he saw someone behind it, but as soon as he and Rachel stepped inside, the bottled heat drove them back.
“I think I’m going to wait for you outside,” Rachel said.
Noah stepped in again and let himself get acclimated to the heat. He took deep breaths, his body struggling for oxygen, and the exertion only made him sweat more. As he walked in, he realised the station was much older than he thought. The wood was mottled and cracked, baked too long in the sun. But as old as the station appeared, it must have been built up around the station agent, who had no doubt sat slack-jawed on his stool since the beginning of time. Noah approached, but the man’s eyes did not move. Instead, the left merely drooped somewhat further than the half-lidded right, and he licked his lips with an inhuman patience. Had he not blinked, Noah might have mistaken him for a wax sculpture that the heat miraculously hadn’t touched. As though on cue, the station agent spoke in a rasp not nearly powerful enough to disturb the flies crawling over his sweating face. He moved his head with a creaking, his eyes scouring Noah and his bag. Noah did not enjoy the sensation. “Can you tell me where the Hotel Bolero is?”
“¿Que? Bolero?”
“Si, si,“ Noah repeated with exasperation. Outside, he could see Rachel standing against the side of the station fanning herself while trying to squeeze into a sliver of shade.
“No la puedes dejar afuera. Es peligroso.“
The language barrier was proving difficult for Noah, especially knowing it would likely be the biggest impairment to finding his son.
“Telephone?” he said, miming dialling a rotary phone. The station agent barked inhumanly, and with what must have been a tremendous show of strength he lifted his arm and pointed across the room. There among torn billets on the irregular walls hung a telephone, or the remains of one. It was barely more than a dangling receiver. Noah caught a glimpse of the old man’s tongue as he gummed his lips and wheezed, and the small wrinkled flesh looked like a chewed piece of leather. The station agent seemed stricken dumb, his long white moustache hanging over his mouth. It twitched and rustled as though he spoke under his breath, and Noah had to force down his paranoia in the face of that unblinking gaze.
Despite its rough-hewn looks, the telephone produced noise that seemed to approximate a dial tone, though the sound was not at all one to which Noah was accustomed—its pitch was higher, and it was a series of short bursts of varying length. Noah clicked the hook switch a few times to try and mediate the sound without success before dialling. There was a pause after the number was entered, a dead space that lasted long enough for Noah to worry nothing was happening. Then, there was a ring, a horrible ring that was like a wailing child. A voice spoke words he didn’t recognise, then a click and a voice.
“Hotel Bolero.”
Rachel was standing against the wall of the station, waiting for Noah to be done. When he opened the door she raised her hand to shade her brow. After being inside for so long, he found the baking Mexican air refreshing and wondered why Rachel was still sweating.
“Did you get the directions?” she asked.
“Eventually. It was a bit of a struggle.”
“Did they have trouble understanding you?”
“Well,” he hesitated. “That was part of it…How are you holding up?”
She shrugged. “This weather here only makes me feel more bloated than usual. At least I have this.” She lifted her arm to display the wreath circling her forearm like a large bracelet. It was made of hundreds of dried stems woven into a rough tangled circle.
“Who gave you that?”
“Some woman was passing by. She looked upset, and I suppose she caught me staring. I would have asked her what was wrong, but…” She shrugged, the reason obvious. “Then she gave it to me and said madre. I guess it’s my first baby shower gift.”
He smiled, then thought of Eli.
“We should get to the hotel. The girl on the phone said it was near the church.”
They followed the directions Noah had been given. Though he secretly doubted he’d understood the broken English correctly, he remained silent for fear of worrying Rachel. In the end, it was for naught, as he quickly recognised ahead the broken spire of the church he had seen from the bus—a black needle piercing the sky against the blinding backdrop of the setting sun. It forced him to avert his eyes as they continued toward it. Noah and Rachel passed few people, and as they did each glared back with suspicion. Noah hadn’t expected to feel so alien, so unwelcomed. The worst had been the old lady in front of the church as they passed, dressed head to toe in black, a child’s bicycle in her hands. She was wailing, yet when she saw Rachel, she stopped and looked at her growing pregnancy without a sound. It was only when she and Noah had passed that the wailing resumed.
They arrived at the Hotel Bolero just as the sun vanished behind the horizon and failed to take the stifling heat with it. The building was simply a converted two-storey house, out of place in its surroundings of poorly built shanties, but even the late addition of inexpertly installed siding could not dispel the influence of the ornate church. Positioned so close, the church made an eyesore of everything in its shadow. Insects filled the sky with an electric drone, and tiny flies preceded Noah and Rachel into the building, harbingers of the couples’ arrival. Noah could still feel them crawling on his skin, but reaching to scratch their tiny legs away only left his hand sticky with sweat. The skin of the señora behind the counter was deeply bronzed and leathery, and it folded like paper around her eyes as she glared with equal parts suspicion, worry, and fear. She said nothing, instead dropping the keys to the room into Noah’s hand as though they were slick with poison. She would not look at Rachel.
The room was barely larger than the bed, and when Rachel sat down upon it she sank with a long creak of old springs. “I guess we don’t have a lot of options,” she said. “At least we have that balcony door we can open to catch a breeze.”
“There doesn’t seem to be much hope for one,” Noah said, putting their bags in the corner and climbing onto the bed to join her. He lay down and stretched out his arm so she could snuggle close and put her head on his chest. Rachel’s flesh was on fire, but he tried to ignore it and simply enjoy the feel of her against his skin.
“So what’s the plan?” she said, looking up at him. He swept her blonde hair off her face.
“We can’t go to the police. We can’t even prove it’s her in the photo.”
“But you’re sure?”
“Absolutely.”
“Have you any ideas on how to find her?”
“I only care about finding him.”
The first moment Noah stumbled across that article in La Diario Oficial during his monthly trek to the Toronto Reference Library, he knew he was on the right track. The police did not agree. They felt the photo was too blurry, too indistinct to take seriously despite Noah’s insistence it was his fugitive ex-wife. He knew her body so well, its shape and how she held it, that there was no doubt in his mind the obscured figure was Sonia. For the police, however, it was not enough. When he finally convinced someone to listen, he was told that without more solid proof there was little they could do…even if they believed him. The Canadian police had no jurisdiction in Mexico, and the Mexican police were too corrupt to help find a missing boy when so many others disappeared daily from their overrun streets.
“Did I tell you what I was dreaming about on the bus? I dreamed I saw Sonia at a vegetable stand—a lot like the one we saw at the St Jacob’s market, do you remember?—and Eli was right beside her, holding her hand. I walked up to them without saying a word. Eli saw me first. He shouted with joy—ecstatic—and ran into my arms. I scooped him up and held him so close I could smell his hair and his skin. It was just like I remembered—comforting and sweet. Then Sonia looked at me and she was crying. She tried to speak and maybe she couldn’t or maybe I cut her off, but the words were choked. While she struggled I simply took Eli’s hand, turned around, and walked away. Somehow I knew that now I’d be the one to disappear and never be found.