“I don’t like this place. I’d take our chances and keep going.”
And after a pause, he added, “We have one vote in favor of staying and another against, so you decide.”
Joanes thought how with the electricity already cut, charging his phone was no longer a reason to stay. But he was tired and hungry, and he didn’t feel like heading back into that traffic jam for God only knew how long. To say nothing of the hurricane. Without them even noticing, the sky had filled with heavy, gray clouds.
“We’ll bed down here till tomorrow,” he said. “I think that’s best.”
“What about your family?” asked the professor.
“They’ll be fine. I’ll call them and explain what’s happened.”
The professor stared at him.
“So it’s decided,” he said. “Even though, given that we’re dependent on you, the truth is our opinions count for little. We’re in your hands.”
“I’ll talk to the owner,” responded Joanes, refusing to take the bait, and he walked off, leaving the elderly couple to go on exchanging whispers.
“We’ll take it.”
The owner nodded, satisfied, and without taking his eyes off the barbecue. He was putting a lot of care and attention into his work. Despite the fact that there were other men around, not one offered him their help or advice on how best to cook the meat, as one might expect.
“How much is the room?”
The owner gave his price. It was more than the room was worth, but in the current circumstances, reasonable enough.
“How long are you going to stay?”
“A night. Two, at most. Do you want payment now?”
“No, don’t worry. We’ll discuss that tomorrow. There’s a lot of folks here,” he added, waving his meat fork toward the mass. “There’s no way of you slipping away without me knowing about it.”
“Why is it called the English Residence?”
“An English couple lived here before. Archeologists. They came for the ruins and stayed twenty years. This was their house. When they died, it was abandoned. We tore it down and built our own on top.”
“So there are no English people now.”
“Not one.”
“So. . this is a hotel.”
The owner looked at him as if he didn’t understand.
“It’s just it doesn’t say anywhere that it’s a hotel,” Joanes explained.
“It has a lot of rooms, and I rent them out. It’s a hotel.”
“I see. Are they guests, too?” asked Joanes, referring to the others. There were close to forty people out on the lawn, sitting on plastic chairs under umbrellas advertising Coca-Cola.
“Only a few of them,” said the owner with a resigned smile. “Almost all of them are family. They’ve come for shelter.”
“Your relatives?”
“And my wife’s. It’s a tradition. When there’s a hurricane, those of them who live on the coast come here to the English Residence.”
“Do you think the hurricane will reach us here?”
“It’ll get a bit breezy.”
“Enough to worry about?”
“Only if you want to, my friend. Anyway, why don’t you make yourselves comfortable and eat something?” said the owner, pointing to the meat on the barbecue. “It’s cochinita. Like it?”
Joanes nodded.
The professor pushed his wife to the room in her wheelchair. Joanes followed them with the luggage. The professor settled his wife in the bed, refusing Joanes’s help. She fell down onto the bed with a moan, whether of pleasure or pain Joanes couldn’t tell.
“Are you all right like that?”
If she said anything in reply, only the professor heard her.
“I’ll bring you more water and something to eat,” he said. “Do you need anything else?”
“My mask,” she murmured.
The professor rummaged in the travel bag until he came across her eye mask. Very carefully, he put it on his wife. Then he gestured to Joanes to leave the room and followed him out.
Once in the hallway, lowering his voice, Joanes asked the professor if his wife was all right.
“Yes, of course she is. She’s just tired and. . well, the whole commotion on the bus took its toll on her. But that’s understandable, wouldn’t you say?”
Once he’d freshened up, having waited a long time in line for the restroom, Joanes went back outside. He kept his backpack on him, reluctant to leave it in the room. The hotel owner waved him over and dished a monumental portion of meat onto his paper plate. The other guests were already eating. Several women were tending a table filled with platters of potatoes, rice, tortillas, beans, chiles rellenos, plantain tamales, and mole chicken.
Joanes grabbed a chair and took it over to the edge of the lawn, just where the plants and creepers that surrounded the hotel began. On his way, he picked up a beer from a tub of water with cans of drinks floating inside.
He ought to call his family before eating. He imagined them in their room in the evacuation hotel. His father-in-law would be spouting nonsense and praising his new bride’s latest stroke of genius. His daughter, her hair falling over her face as a kind of barrier against the adults, would be curled up in a corner working on the nihilistic vampire novel she’d been writing for months. And as for his wife, Joanes imagined her checking her watch and asking herself where in the hell he’d gotten to.
He looked at the battery icon on his cell phone. It would have to be a quick conversation. He needed the rest of the battery to sort out the hotel offer with his client. He dialed the number of the evacuation hotel and asked to be put through to his family’s room. The phone rang three times, four. .
“Come on, come on. . where are you?”
On the sixth ring, he hung up and dialed the number again. He left a message for his wife, explaining what had happened and that he would get to Valladolid the following day. He added that it was important she didn’t call him, so he could save his battery.
“Did you get all that?”
“Yes, sir,” answered the employee at the other end of the line. “I’ll be sure to pass it on to your wife.”
But Joanes wasn’t convinced. He could hear a lot going on in the background, a real racket, and it seemed to him that the hotel employee had more pressing things to attend to than taking down his message. But he couldn’t waste any more time repeating himself. He hung up without saying goodbye and looked again at the battery icon on the screen. He put the phone away in his backpack and nibbled on his cochinita. More than a few of the Mexican folks sat brazenly staring at him. He felt utterly depressed all of a sudden. He wanted to say to hell with it all and talk to his wife until he’d used up every last drop of battery. Hearing her voice always calmed him down. She would almost certainly have some sound piece of advice for him.
He saw the professor coming out of the hotel. He’d put on a clean shirt. Joanes watched him as he chose from the platters of food and served out small portions of everything on two plates, but so that no one food type touched another. Afterward, the professor made one of the Mexican women attending the table bring him a tray so he could take the plates up to the room. He didn’t notice Joanes, or if he did, he didn’t bother to say hello.
Joanes polished off his food and grabbed another beer, not caring that it was warm. He felt a bit better with a full stomach. A band of children paraded one after the other in front of him, some stopping to stare at him. He made faces at them, but they weren’t laughing. Little by little, the lawn was emptying; as soon as people finished eating, they looked up at the sky and retreated to their rooms. The women looking after the table had begun taking in the food. One of them came out of the hotel with a palm frond and began to sweep the dirt yard, which made the others laugh. The wind would take care of that.