It was past the height of the winter tourist season, but the avenue was crowded. Families walked together as the afternoon approached its end. Little girls in dresses and leather sandals ran in circles laughing. Again, it occurred to Maddie that if she had come for another reason, it would be easy to be enchanted by this place. She studied the Mayan faces with their long, elegant noses rising without indentation to slanting foreheads. A mother and child crossed the sand to sit near her. As Maddie looked at them, she imagined she could have been peering back through the curtain of hundreds of years. The woman wore a traditional huipil. She was self-contained and handsome, and her face seemed to hold both the beauty and the sorrow of her native land. The history of this country. The girl had dark eyes and long, shiny plaits interwoven with red ribbon. She cast a furtive glance Maddie’s way and, seeing her scars, quickly looked away.
She shook off all her musing. This was getting her nowhere. She retrieved the street map from her tote and unfolded it. The police station was located next to the post office, several blocks north of the hotel on Avenida Juarez. She would start there.
The officer on duty put aside his magazine and looked up when she entered. His ID badge identified him as Officer Ruiz.
“May I help you, señorita?” His English was formal and nearly flawless.
“Sí,” she said and found herself telling yet another official about Kat’s disappearance. In the middle of her recitation, two voices raised in anger came from an adjoining room, but Ruiz, attentive to her story, ignored them, as if they were of no more importance than the buzzing of a single fly. He made a few notes, and when she was done he fingered through a stack of reports on his desk. “Ah, yes,” he said, withdrawing one. “We have received an inquiry from your Department of State about this missing woman.” Her pulse quickened. For the first time since arriving, someone in Playa knew of Kat, knew she was missing. He scanned the report. From across the desk, Maddie could see a faxed copy of the photo of Kat she had given to the DC police. The violinist had been cropped out. “Naturally, we wish to help,” Ruiz said, “but I am afraid we have not been successful in finding any information about your sister. We have informed your authorities of this.”
Tears threatened. She had come all this way pulled by the sense that she would find Kat, only to meet more roadblocks, only to encounter another official who could not help. “Gracias,” she said, unwilling to let him see the weakness of her tears, the enormity of her failure. “But you will continue to investigate, sí?”
“Of, course, señorita,” he said. His eyes returned to his paperwork, dismissing her.
She left the station and, momentarily confused, turned left instead of right toward the route that would have led her back to the hotel. She passed a silver shop and next to that a souvenir shop, where displays of thick Mexican glass and pottery crowded the shelves, along with mass-produced clay reproductions of Mayan gods, evidence she had seen in other places of how authentic cultures had become perverted by the god of commerce. Another shelf held baskets. On the wall above hung a smattering of cheap papier-mâché and wooden masks. She scanned them with a practiced eye. Bats and snakes, mermaids and devils, one of which bore an amusing resemblance to Richard Nixon. She knew Mexico had a strong mask culture with a tradition that went back thousands of years to pre-conquest times. She was familiar with the material of the traditional masks, bone and wood, skin and leather, and knew, too, the recent and sophisticated work of José Rodríguez.
The masks in this shop were cheap copies of the traditional masks, unworthy of the rich custom. It angered and offended her to see them. Who would buy them? And what would they do with such crap once they returned home?
She pulled out Kat’s photo and showed it to the clerk. The man shook his head. He had not seen her. She exited the shop, crossed the intersection, and approached a small church. A Spanish-style stucco building with red shutters, it was smaller than the surrounding buildings, the size, really, of a single-car garage. On the north side of the building, a loudspeaker had been bolted to the roof, the source of the folk music that blared out over the square. Atop the south face were three wooden crosses. Maddie considered the building. The last place in the world she would ever expect to find Kat was in a church. Of that she was certain. Neither of them had ever found much comfort in religion.
Several fruit vendors sat in the shade of the north wall of the church. She stopped and watched as one vendor chose a piece of fruit and began peeling the rind. Her knife was broad-bladed and resembled a half-scale machete. The child at her feet reached up for a slice of the melon, and the woman handed him one without comment or smile, returning to her work before he had even taken a bite. What is her story? Maddie wondered. Is she happy? Has she known sickness? Or loss? Her impassive face revealed nothing. Maddie approached her and showed her Kat’s photo. The woman shook her head and continued slicing melon. Two Mayan women, squat-bodied, no taller than an average fifth grader, passed her, walking with loose-limbed gaits. She listened to the pat, pat, pat of their sandals slapping against bare soles. She caught up with them and held out the photo. They shook their heads and continued on.
She turned in the direction of the Hotel Molcas, but as she passed the entrance of the church, her feet detoured from the path, as if on their own. Quickly, before her mind could regain control, they led her inside. The interior was plain. Plaster walls painted white, with fluorescent tubes hanging from the ceiling. Orange paper flowers decorated the altar. Crude wooden benches with narrow seats took up most of the space. At the front, flanking the altar, two niches were framed by white lace curtains made of plastic. In one, a boldly painted plaster statue of the Virgin resided. In the other, one of the Madonna and child. A dozen candles flickered on narrow tables set beneath each icon.
Two old women with heavy bodies and thin hair, so alike they must have been sisters, sat near the front, shoulders touching, despite the near-empty church. Maddie could hear the rhythmic droning as faint as that of wasps as they recited their rosaries. What were they seeking? Solace? Redemption? Blessings? Or perhaps nothing more than the mindless comfort of ritual, spewing out syllables that by their very familiarity comforted. There was one other woman in the church. She knelt before the statue of the Virgin. The woman was weeping, her figure bent in a posture Maddie recognized as the broken carriage of grief. As if such emotion were contagious, Maddie was struck with the desire to run, followed almost instantly by the urge to go to the woman and hold her, cry with her until their tears mingled and formed a river of sorrow too deep to be measured, denied, or ignored. What loss, she wondered, did the kneeling woman grieve?
Maddie had to flee the church and the weeping woman. Her head throbbed. She crossed the square, heading back to the hotel, and passed another street vendor, this one an old woman, wrinkled and fat, with two braids of white hair roping down her back. Her wares—blankets and shawls and belts—hung from a wooden frame. She sat behind a small table on which, improbably, was a wire cage with a small green bird inside, its prehensile claws curled around a roost. The old woman was staring at her with eyes so unfocused that for an instant Maddie believed her to be blind. She noticed on the table a small card. ADIVINACIÓN, a small sign read. She dug out her dictionary and looked up the word. Prophesies. She turned to continue to the hotel when, as clearly as if her sister stood beside her, she heard Kat’s laughter. Of course. This was exactly the kind of thing Kat would do. She would have been unable to resist the whole scene. The old woman, the fortunes, the bird. Hope, that terrible thing with feathers, took hold. Of course Kat would have talked to the old woman. She stepped forward and once again drew out the photo of Kat. “Mi hermana,” she told the old woman.
The fortune-teller ignored the picture.
“Mi hermana,” Maddie repeated.
The old woman looked straight at her with unsettling, unfocused eyes. Maddie would not have persisted, but at that instant the woman lifted a gnarled and swollen finger and motioned for her to come close
.
Maddie’s pulse rushed. Did the old woman know something?
The fortune-teller reached for a shawl and pushed it toward Maddie. “You buy?” she asked.
Oh. Just another street vendor wanting to make a sale. “No, no, gracias.”
The old woman folded the shawl and placed it back on display. Then she pointed a bent finger at the sign.
If she had been superstitious, Maddie would have said a shadow, presaging evil, flitted through her. But she did not believe in such things. Even so, she did not move. She did not want her fortune told. But she understood the mechanisms of the marketplace. To gain information, she needed to buy something. She indicated the shawl the woman had rehung on the frame. She fumbled in her tote and pulled out some pesos. “How much?”
She did not bargain. When the transaction was completed, she again showed Kat’s photo.
The old fortune-teller shook her head.
TIA CLARA
The life of Playa played out around Tia Clara. She watched the tourists wandering the streets, listened to the music of the Tejano singers pouring out from the speaker atop the church. Today, perhaps because she was tired, or perhaps because she was plagued by the memory of many ghosts, now it seemed that the colors that hung above the village were shifting. Memories, emerging this morning like sargasso floating on the surface of the sea, tired her. Perhaps she should have stayed home. But memory waited there as well. There was no escaping. She leaned back in her chair. A woman approached. Even from a distance Tia Clara could see she held a heavy heart. She beckoned her to the table. The woman paused, and again Tia Clara motioned for her to approach.
When the stranger drew close, the fortune-teller saw her clearly, saw what had been hidden by the shadow of her hat. It was the woman of scars. The woman of many masks. The stranger was handing her a photo. In the cage, the bird began to hop about fretfully, pulling at the yarn that fastened the mirror to the wires.
The gringa set the photo on the table. “Mi hermana,” she said.
Tia Clara took a shawl from the display and pushed it forward, pretending to misunderstand, to offer a bargain. She needed more time to decide. Tell her, a voice urged. Tell her what you know. She resisted, stalling for time.
Tell her. The voice was more urgent now. No, whispered another voice, one filled with bitterness. Tell her nothing. This is not any business of mine. Do not become involved in the affairs of the gringos. That way always led to complications. To problems. “No.” She pushed the picture away, a sharp gesture, and fixed her attention on the shawl, carefully folding it and placing it back on the frame that Felipe Leones, the carpenter, had built for her. She would let fate determine what to tell the woman. She pointed to the sign offering a reading, but the woman shook her head, and so it was decided.
Even after the gringa reconsidered and stayed to buy the shawl, Tia Clara did not waver from her decision and did not tell her what she knew about the woman with the golden K hanging at her throat. She would not be responsible for the troubles of others. It was not her concern. But she remembered her recent premonition on the morning of the shrouded dawn that foretold of the coming of the woman of many scars. And Tia Clara knew doubt. The makers of masks held more power than most. For the second time that day she took a pinch of chia and tossed it in the air to assuage the spirits and protect herself.
MADISON
Maddie reviewed the exchange with the old fortune-teller. In spite of her denial, Maddie was certain she had seen a flash of recognition in the old woman’s eyes when she had looked at Kat’s photo. But why would she have lied? Or had she been mistaken, and the crafty expression she had glimpsed had simply been the slyness of a street vendor?
As she headed back to the hotel, she paused on the pedestrian walkway and watched the bathers in the placid sea. One woman was swimming apart from the others. She swam without a cap, and her hair clung to her scalp like a helmet of gold. She cut through the water with a steady crawl, her long arms scissoring the air in strong strokes. The woman reminded her of Kat and how much she loved to swim. Tears filled her eyes.
She continued on, past the beachfront palapa where tourists drank while a mariachi band played. The doubt that had claimed her in the police station faded. She would not give up yet. She would talk to every employee at the Molcas, where Kat had once stayed. She would canvass the entire village if she had to, go into every shop and restaurant, show Kat’s photo to every vendor.
As she crossed to the steps leading to the hotel terrace, she saw Jack—even from the back she would have recognized him. The wash of desire warmed her. The desensitization program wasn’t working yet.
“Hi,” she said, unable to conceal the catch in her voice.
He turned and she saw he was talking on his cell phone. “Mom,” he mouthed.
“Is everything okay?” she whispered. Olivia, she thought. A picture of the girl—her impish humor, her adoration for Jack, her courage in the face of her illness—flashed before her, and she mentally crossed her fingers that everything was all right.
He nodded. “She’s right here,” he said into the phone. “Do you want to say hello?”
Before she could wave it off, he handed the phone to her.
“Hi, Maddie,” Natalie said. “I am so glad I managed to reach Jack.”
Her breath caught. “What’s wrong? Is Olivia all right?”
“Nothing’s wrong, dear. Quite the opposite, in fact. But I was calling to make sure you two arrived safely.”
This was the first time they had spoken since she had broken it off with Jack, and the warmth in Natalie’s voice eased the awkwardness she’d felt. She pictured her the first time she had met Jack’s mother and Olivia: she had been struck by what she had seen in their faces and had wondered if kindness ran in families, like a trait for curly hair or long fingers. “Yes. Just a little tired from the trip.”
“What’s it like there? I’ve always wanted to go to Mexico but have never been.”
Maddie looked out from the hotel veranda, took in the colors and sounds and people. “Unfiltered,” she said. “Everything is pretty much unfiltered.” She laughed. “Right now there’s a mariachi band playing on the veranda of a restaurant across the street and folk songs being broadcast from the roof of the village church. Which is really more of a chapel.”
“It sounds delightful.”
“Yes.”
“Jack told us why you are there. Have you been able to find out anything about Katherine?”
“Not yet.” She heard the note of motherly concern in Natalie’s voice, and a wash of grief at the loss of her own mother took her.
“Well, you must be tired. I’ll let you go get some sleep. We’re pulling for you. You just call if you want a shot of moral support.”
Tears welled in her eyes. “Thanks, Natalie.”
“Olivia sends her love.”
She pictured Jack’s sister, her sweet smile, the laugh that still held a touch of mischief that gave Maddie a hint of what Olivia had been like before she grew so ill. “How’s Winks? I hope he isn’t too much care for her.”
“No. In fact, we think he’s her good luck charm. We’ve had some very hopeful news. Olivia has been accepted into a study. Her doctors believe she’s in the very small minority who are candidates for an experimental procedure. They are cautiously optimistic. We’re keeping our fingers crossed.”
“That’s wonderful.” She swallowed against the lump in her throat.
“Yes. It’s the first hopeful news we’ve had in months.”
“I’m so glad. Tell Olivia I’ll be pulling for her.”
“Thanks.”
“And thanks for your concern. I really appreciate it.”
“You stay in touch, okay? Let us know how things are going.”
“We will.” She handed the phone back to Jack and turned away so he wouldn’t see the tears that had sprung to her eyes or how she could explain them to him when she didn’t fully understand them herself.
K
ATHERINE
Kat felt the difference in energy the moment Verner entered the room, as if he, too, had a sense that she was getting stronger, healing, and it hadn’t been based on futile hope. Perhaps her latest blood tests had revealed improvement.
She nodded hello, not trusting her voice. She was cautious and on guard around him, saying little, continuing to pretend to be agreeable and that she believed he could still help her, but this role was not natural to her and she feared beneath his piercing eyes that her facade was tissue thin. She forced herself to hold his gaze, hoping it was without guile.
An unfamiliar nurse entered the room and helped her up. Verner opened the door and motioned for two aides to enter, and he pointed toward the bed. Kat froze. Had they somehow discovered she had been hiding pills? One aide went to the head and the other to the foot. They took hold of the frame and began to move it closer to the wall. To her enormous relief, they did not touch the post that contained her Plan Omega.
“Good. Good,” Verner said and sent them off. Within minutes they returned carrying an oversize wicker armchair and two cushions. The nurse helped her to the chair. One of the aides left and returned a moment later, this time with a small pedaled contraption that looked like a bike without wheels or seat. He set it in front of Kat.
“I want you to use this several times a day,” Verner said. He began to talk, words tumbling out. A breakthrough, he said. A new protocol. He was putting her on a new schedule to start at once. She would continue to be taken to the pool to swim at night. Her diet would be nutrient rich. A new series of injections would begin. She began to demur, remembering what had happened when she had received his injections before. He brushed aside her protests. She would be receiving physical therapy and deep-tissue massage twice a day. Word games would be brought in for her to keep her mind active. And more books. “We will make history. We will not only forestall aging,” he said. “We will reverse it.”
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