Paul, though, was kind of enjoying idiothood.
Now he squeezed Joanna’s hand as they waited at a curb. He kissed her neck when they stopped and lingered before an art gallery window. A Botero exhibition, the Latin American painter who portrayed everyone as grossly distended, fat, and swollen, like Thanksgiving parade balloons.
After they had strolled a few more blocks, he found he missed his daughter. This was a new experience—going somewhere and leaving a piece of yourself behind. He felt . . . incomplete. The circle needed to be closed again.
“Want to go back?” he asked Joanna.
“I was about to say the same thing.”
“I think I’m going to call her Jo,” Paul said after they had crossed the street and turned back toward L’Esplanade. Two couples on mopeds gunned their engines and surged past them, spitting out a thin cloud of blue exhaust.
“Ugh,” Joanna said; evidently, she wasn’t referring to the noxious fumes.
“Something wrong with Jo ?”
“When you tried to call me Jo, I threatened you with bodily harm. I think I did you bodily harm.”
“Yeah. Why was that again?”
“I dated a Joe, remember? He was unemployed and psychotic—not in that order. So all things being equal,” Joanna said, “I’d prefer that you not call her Jo.”
“Fine. What about Joey ?”
“Like in Buttafuoco?”
“Like in Breidbart.”
“How about we start with Joelle ? Just so the poor kid learns her name.”
They were passing a toy store, its window stocked floor-to-ceiling with dolls, trucks, video games, stuffed animals, soccer balls, and some things he honestly couldn’t recognize.
“What do you say?” Paul said.
“Sure,” Joanna said. “Let’s go buy some toys.”
WHEN THEY ENTERED THE HOTEL LOBBY, THEY NEEDED THE doorman to help them make it into the elevator. They’d gone a little overboard— they’d been like kids in a toy store.
There seemed to be so much more to buy than when they were children. It was pretty much G.I. Joes, Barbies, and Slinkys back then. Now there were vast new categories to contemplate, numerous subcategories too. Things that talked and walked and beeped and flashed and zapped and pirouetted and sang.
All of them seemed to have Joelle’s name on them.
The doorman managed to get them into the elevator without a major mishap.
When they opened the door to their hotel room, Galina wasn’t there.
“She’s in the bathroom,” Joanna said.
Paul opened the bathroom door, stuffed giraffe in hand, but Galina wasn’t in there either.
When Paul turned around with his hands up, Joanna turned an ugly shade of white.
It wasn’t just Galina that was missing.
It was their daughter.
She was gone too.
“NO, MR. BREIDBART, I DIDN’T TALK TO YOUR NURSE.” THE concierge retained his air of helpful solicitude, but up against Paul’s full-blown panic, it seemed woefully inadequate.
“They’re not in the room,” Paul said. “Do you understand me?”
“Yes, sir. I understand.”
Paul had come down to the lobby—after checking the rooftop pool, the restaurant, the hair salon, the game room. Joanna had remained up in the room in case Galina called.
“Perhaps she went shopping,” the concierge offered.
“Did you see them leave the hotel?”
“No. I was busy with several guests.”
“Well, did anyone see them leave the hotel?”
“I don’t know, Mr. Breidbart. Why don’t we ask?”
The concierge led him over to the front desk, where he interrupted the registration clerk, who was in the middle of checking in a guest. He spoke to him in Spanish, gesturing to Paul. Paul heard him mention Galina’s name, then niña, that word again. The registration clerk looked at Paul, then back to the concierge, and shook his head.
“He didn’t see them,” the concierge said. “Come with me.”
They walked outside the hotel where the doorman who’d just helped them into the elevator was flirting with a striking woman in a midriff-baring tank top.
The doorman immediately straightened up, deserting the woman in midsentence. After the concierge had explained the problem, he looked over at Paul and slowly nodded.
“Sí,” the doorman said. Apparently, he had seen Galina and Joelle leave the hotel. “Hace una hora . . .”
An hour ago. Which would have been just after he and Joanna had left the hotel.
“Ahh, mystery solved,” the concierge said, smiling stupidly. “She is taking your baby for a walk.”
His baby had been napping.
Why would Galina take a sleeping baby for a walk?
Paul felt dizzy; the ground seemed to be tipping. The concierge was still talking to him, but Paul wasn’t processing the words. There was a steady hum in the air.
“She’s taken my baby,” Paul said.
The doorman and concierge were looking at him oddly.
“Did you hear what I said? She’s taken my baby. ”
“Yes,” the concierge finally responded. “For a walk, Mr. Breidbart.”
“I want you to call the police.”
“Policía?”
“Yes. Call them.”
“I think you are maybe too excited here . . .”
“Yes, I am excited.” The ground was tipping one way, then the other. The sun had gone cold. “My baby’s been taken. I’m excited about that. Call the police.”
“I don’t think . . .”
“Call the police.”
“You are accusing your nurse of kidnapping, Mr. Breidbart.” It was said as a statement, not a question, and it seemed to Paul that the concierge’s voice had somehow changed, gone from warm and helpful to cool and unhelpful.
“My baby was napping. The nurse told us to go get some fresh air. Then she left the hotel two minutes later and she’s not back.”
“The baby woke up perhaps.”
“Perhaps you’re right. All the same, I want you to call the police.”
“Maybe we wait a little and see if she returns, no?”
“No.”
“She has been used as a nurse many times here, Mr. Breidbart.” Yes, the concierge’s tone had definitely undergone a transformation.
Paul was accusing a Colombian woman of a crime.
A sweet-looking Colombian woman with laugh lines and patient gray eyes who was taking care of a Colombian baby. A baby that he, an American, was spiriting out of the country because there evidently weren’t enough American babies to go around.
“I don’t care how many times she’s been used. She took my baby without permission. She didn’t tell us. I need to talk to the police.”
The concierge might not have agreed with him and might not have even liked him, but he was still a concierge.
“If that’s what you want, sir,” he said stiffly.
He walked back into the lobby and up to his desk, where he lifted the phone with painful resignation and dialed out. Paul waited silently as the concierge said a few Spanish words into the receiver. He hung up the phone with undue force. The click echoed through the sterile lobby, causing several people to look up with alarmed and puzzled expressions.