Meyer appeared at my elbow, with a cloth soaked in cold water. He placed its folded length across her forehead. “I’m so sorry,” he said. “Maybe it was a wild guess, not true.”
She opened her eyes. “I’ve known he is dead. I’ve known it since three o’clock that day. I was working. And suddenly there was an emptiness in my chest, as if the strings that hold my heart had been sliced through, and it sagged to a lower place. I was going to tell William about that strange feeling. I know that was when he died, and I know he died thinking of me, trying to tell me. I could not admit it to myself. Suddenly you made me able to admit it. Don’t be sorry. I couldn’t live in limbo forever. He left everything behind.”
I moved away. Meyer eased himself down to sit on the floor beside the couch. He held her hand. “The dead have to leave everything and everybody behind. For some, it is the right time. For others…”
“How could that shallow smiling man be so wicked?”
“He has been able to get away with being wicked because he does not look or act wicked. He has the gift of friendship. He inspires trust. My niece loved him and married him.”
She tried to sit up and he touched her shoulder, urging her back. “Please,” she said. “What is his other identity here? You said he is someone else here.”
“We can get into that later.”
“Could you please get the box of tissues in the kitchen?” I went out and got it and brought it to her. She blew her nose and she wiped her eyes, and she tried to smile. “Sometimes we laughed about what my babies would look like. Dark little Yndios with red hair. I said we should hurry with them. I am twenty-seven. William was thirty-two. He had been married once. I had not.”
She pushed Meyer’s hand aside and sat up, swung her feet to the floor.
“So! I am not a weak person. I come from people who have survived everything. And I come from people who know violence. That is the Toltec heritage, not the Mayan. And I am not going to mourn my man in front of strangers.”
“Who would like to be friends,” Meyer said.
She studied him. “Very American. Instant friends. Like your instant foods. Heat and serve. The heart does not move so fast. You walk in here and destroy me. In the name of friendship?”
“But we only-”
“Do you have a car?”
“Yes,” I said.
“I will not work tomorrow. In the name of this new friendship could you pick me up very very early? There’s a place I want to be when the sun rises. We’ll have to walk a distance in the dark. Perhaps at quarter to four? I will bring a good flashlight. And insect repellent. Wear shoes for walking, please. I’m not asking too much?”
Meyer beamed at her. “Not too much to ask of old friends.”
Twenty-two
WHEN I pulled up to the entrance to La Vista del Caribe, Barbara was silhouetted against the dim interior lights. She came striding quickly to our pink automobile. Meyer had moved into the back. She slid in beside me and said, “I’m very grateful for this. I should never have asked.”
“It’s fine,” I said. “It’s okay. Where are we going?”
“Toward the airport, but don’t turn off there. We go straight for many miles.”
She had brought cups, a thermos of coffee, a dozen doughnuts. The road was straight. It was almost eerily straight under the overcast night. It had no shoulders. The jungle grew right to the edge of the pavement. She sat quietly beside me, half turned to lean against the door, blue-jeaned legs turned and pulled up, sharply bent knees angled toward me.
“If we could go a little bit faster?” she said at one point. This was after a big bus came booming up behind me, doing at least eighty on the two-lane road, and nearly blew me away when it went by.
She identified the turnoffs as we passed them. There were not many of them. “Puerto Morelos, for the truck ferry to Cozumel.” And San Carlos, Punta Bete, Playa del Carmen, Xcaret, Pamul, Akumal, Xelha, Tulum. Finally, not far past Tulum, where she said there were Mayan ruins on the seashore, she told me to slow down and pointed out the right turn. More straight two-lane road. But the vines and bushes leaned so far out over the concrete, I drove down the middle. An animal scuttled out of the way. It seemed to be tan and had an awkward waddling gait.
“Coatimundi,” she said. “There are small villages here near the road. All dark at night. The children catch the coatimundi pups and make pets of them. But when they are grown they get angry quickly and bite.”
“Where are we going?” Meyer asked.
“Now it is only perhaps ten miles. It is called Coba. Great ruins, partially excavated.”
We arrived at a large parking area. There was a shack where one was supposed to buy admission tickets. I locked the car and we followed her and the beam of the flashlight directed on the ground.
A man came wandering out of a dark structure behind the shack.
“iSenora, senora, cerrado!” he cried.
She put the light on him. As he stood blinking, bare to the waist, she said a single long sentence in a language unlike any I had ever heard before. It was full of snappings and pops and little coughs. He bowed and backed away and she began walking again, so swiffly I had to take a couple of running steps to catch up with her.
“Watch where you step,” she said. “It is uneven here. There are pebbles and stones.”
I would estimate we went two miles on a dark track wide enough in places for a car, through the jungle, through the keening, shrilling of a billion bugs, the caws of night birds, a thick stillness of the air. Toward the end she was almost running.
When she stopped abruptly, I stopped in time but Meyer ran into her and backed off apologizing. She ignored the apology. She gave me the flashlight. “Here I am going up that pyramid. I will not need the light. Please don’t turn the light on me while I climb it. It will spoil my night vision. Please wait here. When it is time, I will call for you to come up.
I turned the light off. She went off into darkness. In a few minutes I could see that she had gone‘ toward a huge bulk that loomed up out of the jungle, bigger than any cathedral. As my eyes became used to starlight, I saw how it projected up and up, blotting out a big segment of the starry sky, and I could make out the paleness of her white long-sleeved shirt, a tiny object a third of the way up, moving steadily. Meyer was still panting from the fast twomile walk. We had, all three, forgotten the bug repellent. So we stood in the darkness, waved our arms, slapped our necks and foreheads. I broke some small leafy branches off a bush. When we whisked those around, it lessened the problem.
A rooster crowed nearby, and when I looked toward the summit of the pyramid, it was now outlined against gray instead of against a blackness with stars. It was not much later when I realized I could see the tree trunks and see Meyer’s face. Looking at the summit, I thought I could see her up there, sitting on a flat place at the very top, her back toward us.
Morning bird sounds began. There was a gray morning light, and then a rosiness beyond the pyramid as the sun began to come up out of the sea. I could see her clearly then, with a spill of black hair down the back of the white shirt. Sunlight struck her, golden, setting her ablaze. Soon we could see it against the treetops to the left and right of the pyramid.
A small herd of turkeys came strolling out of the brush, gabbling softly among themselves, stopped aghast when they saw us, whirled, and went back to cover swiftly, looking back over their shoulders, telling each other how dangerous we were to turkey life everywhere.
We heard her faint cry and looked up and saw her standing, beckoning to us. My watch said she had been alone up there for a little more than an hour.
“She wants us to climb up there,” I said.
“Up that?” Meyer said.
“Come on. Just don’t look down.”
“Dear God,” he muttered, and came padding along behind me.