by M. G. Harris
Ixchel’s arms are constantly around my waist. After half an hour she snuggles closer and leans against my back. There’s no tension between us, nothing but a melting feeling of togetherness. With my focus on the motorbike, my world shrinks until there’s only the machine beneath me, the balance of its wheels, vibrations from the road, the warmth of Ixchel behind me.
It’s like being drugged with happiness.
Ixchel could have suggested that we go to Becan, to get into Ek Naab that way. If she were really keen on Benicio, I’m pretty sure that she’d be desperate to find our way there. Yet she’d rather be with me, riding up the Caribbean coast for a getaway break in five-star luxury.
Behind my visor, I grin to myself.
We stop a couple of times at tiny little petrol stations in the sparse villages we pass and buy crisps and cold drinks. The breeze keeps us from sweating too much but underneath the helmets our hair quickly gets damp. We keep waiting for the road to turn into the major dual carriageway that links Playa del Carmen, Tulum and Cancun. But already six hours have passed and we’re still on the same little road, which actually stops being much more than a dirt track every so often and slows down with road bumps as it passes through every tiny hamlet.
When we see a scruffy little hand-painted sign pointing to the cliff-top Mayan ruins of Tulum, I come off the road, take my helmet off and turn to Ixchel.
“What the heck is going on? Where’s the fast road? Where are all the big Tulum hotels?”
Ixchel looks uneasy. “Maybe they haven’t been built yet. It’s only been in the last ten years that Tulum has really developed as a resort.”
“Why wouldn’t it be built yet?”
She shrugs, but I can tell from her eyes that Ixchel is pretty anxious. “No clue. Maybe the economy?”
I’m tired enough to think about stopping now. We’re going to keep going all the way to Cancun, I decide. Then stop and rest properly on a lounger beside a pristine blue infinity pool, being served piña coladas and club sandwiches dripping with mayonnaise.
Another hour passes. The road doesn’t get any better, but it does take us almost alongside the coast with a stunning view of the turquoise blue Caribbean Sea and a long line of frothy white surf.
Finally there’s a sign for Cancun.
The motorway appears, glistening black, fresh tarmac. We pass a long line of slow-moving trucks carrying tons of building materials – sacks of concrete and sand, breeze blocks, rolled steel joists. Eventually, rolling over the bridge across one of the inlets to the wide, green Nichupte Lagoon, we get our first view of Cancun.
Gigantic cranes scar a cloudless blue skyline, hoisting six or seven huge white buildings. The trucks roll over the bridge. Not a single building seems to be finished. The sea shimmers like a jewel in sunlight, kilometres of empty beaches bordering the concrete pits and construction projects.
Cancun – the gigantic, the premier tourist resort of Mexico – is still nothing more than a building site.
Beside the shiny new road, workers with brushes on ladders paste a gigantic banner on to a blank display. Red and green words against a white background – the colours of the Mexican flag. How many of these signs must I have ignored on our way across the state? This time I can hardly drag my eyes from the words splashed across that roadside poster.
GOD SPARED MEXICO.
The words hit me with a stark ferocity. Words that trip off people’s tongues. Words that are everywhere, so much that people have grown blind to their presence. Even me – I’ve heard and seen those words, dismissed them as a bit of folk wisdom.
In the world I knew, people didn’t say “God spared Mexico”. If anything, they said the opposite. The worse things got in the country, the more they rolled their eyes and said things like “God’s forgotten Mexico”.
God spared Mexico . . . from what? Ixchel’s hands clutch me tightly, sensing my tension. Something bad happened in this timeline. Something really bad.
In that moment I’m aware of how drained I am by the ride. My wrists and arms ache from the long enforced position on the handlebars. Looking over at the gigantic construction site of Cancun, we watch concrete hotels and shopping malls being put up in a cloud of murky dust, between the brilliant green of the Yucatan countryside and the turquoise sea.
I don’t want to be here, don’t want to get my head around what this all means; I don’t want to know what God spared Mexico from or why. I just want to lie down on a beach with a sandwich and a drink.
Without a word, I slow the motorbike down and do a U-turn beside the long line of trucks. Then we’re heading in the opposite direction, travelling south along the coastal road. Ixchel immediately works out what we’re doing. I guess she agrees because she seems pretty relaxed behind me. I can still feel the heat of her skin through the thin cotton of my Hawaiian shirt.
At the first sign of a village and a path to the beach, we stop. There’s a big hand-painted sign at the edge of the road – Las Olas – A Surfer’s Paradise – with a picture of a hammock and a bottle. It may not be the Hilton, but at this point, I don’t care.
The lodgings are right on the beach. A smell of barbecued fish reaches us immediately. My stomach responds with a hungry rumble. There are nine or ten straw-roofed cabanas, each with a hammock outside, all facing the beach. There’s another thatched roof, this time covering a wooden bar where a bunch of people are gathered, drinking beer in bottles. Most of them look like college students, or around that age. There are six guys and two girls, all in wacky beachwear. From a glance I’d guess they’re all Mexican, and from the silhouettes of some surfboards racked up beside the closest cabana, I’d guess they’re surfers.
One of the guys is steadily strumming a guitar and singing along in a husky voice.
Is you is or is you ain’t my baby?
Maybe baby’s found somebody new.
Both girls in the surfer group are watching him with a kind of fascination that makes me a bit jealous. He’s pretty good.
Strolling up to the bar, I notice that on the beach side there’s a big grill on top of glowing wood and coals. The delicious barbecue smell comes from a heap of blackened fish and seafood: red snapper, crab and shrimp. Beside it a tall, portly guy with a moustache and thick, hairy arms, wearing a baseball cap and a white cotton apron, is serving up portions of the cooked fish on to plates of rice and tortillas.
As I stand watching the food, I slowly become aware that the eyes of the bar crowd are on the two of us. When Ixchel’s arm snakes around my waist, I realize that they’re looking at her. Not in a nasty way, but all smiley and flirty.
Which is quite bad enough, if you ask me.
I lay an arm across Ixchel’s shoulders and we face them together, returning their grins.
The guitarist finishes his song. “What’s happening, kids?” he asks, speaking Spanish with a strong Mexico City accent. He’s fair-skinned and with dyed blond hair. “Shouldn’t you two be in school?”
I don’t answer. Ixchel ignores him and asks the cook, “Where can we book in?”
The cook grins, not taking his eyes off the food. “Right here, missy.” His voice is deep and gravelly. For a brief instant he reminds me of Carlos Montoyo. “Two thousand pesos for the cabana per night,” he says. “Four thousand all-inclusive; that’s food, drinks, towels.” He waves a hand, indicating somewhere along the beach. “You can have either of those two.” He glances at me, his eyes quick, dark. “Better get your age right on the registration form or I won’t be able to serve you a beer.” When Ixchel and I both nod in agreement, he looks over at the bartender. “Hey, Paquito, lazybones, get these two lovebirds set up in number three. Towels, forms, etc.” Then for a second his face gets a fierce look. “You can have a beer or two, I don’t mind that. But if I catch you smoking weed or anything worse, I’m gonna kick you out and I mean kick! We’re a hundred per cent drug-free here, is that clear?”
“Sure, chief,” Ixchel tells him breezily. “You don’t have to worry ab
out us, we’re good kids.”
He laughs and looks at his blackened fish. “All the way out here on your own with a boyfriend on a motorbike during school. . . Miss, I doubt very much that you’re ‘good kids’.”
I’m silent, but walking to cabana number three I think about how relaxed Ixchel seems to be with the whole biker-boyfriend, rebel-girl-away-from-home scene.
Is the motorbike her way of making me more like Benicio? What’s all this “boyfriend” stuff anyway? In the mood I’m in right now, I decide that I’m not going to put up with another bout of is you is or is you ain’t my baby. Even as we’re strolling along the sand to the cabana, Ixchel is removing her arm from around my waist. Was it just an act? I can’t tell any longer. So the minute we’re inside the room and the bartender has gone I drop my arm from her shoulders, toss my helmet on the floor and glare at her.
“What’s going on?”
Ixchel seems genuinely surprised by my tone. “With Cancun. . .?”
“With us,” I say sharply, folding my arms. “With you and me. The motorbike, the shirts. Are you trying to turn me into a substitute for Benicio? The whole girlfriend-boyfriend act just now. Who’s that for – for me? For them?”
Ixchel stares at me for a few seconds, breathing in. Her eyes widen but apart from that I can’t read her reaction at all. There’s no bed inside the cabana, no chairs either, only two hammocks strung between two hooks at either end of the room. She leans briefly on one end of the hammock, then very calmly removes her backpack and puts it on the floor. She looks at me then, carefully. Her hands go to her head; her fingers trail in her hair. Very deeply, she sighs. She seems genuinely at a loss for words.
I shift my stance a little, unsure what to do or say next. I don’t know what I expected. Tears? Anger? Instead, though, I seem to have plunged Ixchel deep into thought.
Finally, she speaks. “I’m not the only one with the problem.”
My arms drop to my sides. “Huh?”
“You don’t exactly behave like you should either. Yes, I can see you’re angry about Benicio. Every time you see me with him you sulk.”
“I do not!”
“Yes!” she interrupts. “You get that sad, hurt face. And I catch you looking at me sometimes. Staring. When you think I’m not looking.”
I feel a little sick. She’s right. I have felt a bit like a stalker. But I couldn’t help it.
Ixchel keeps looking at me. “What’s wrong, Josh, nothing to say?”
I lower my voice. “I don’t want to fight with you.”
“What do you want?” She steps closer. “Why don’t you ever say anything to me?” She’s staring into my eyes now. “You never ask me for anything. You never tell me anything nice. Don’t you know how you’re supposed to be with a girl that you like?”
Now she’s confusing me. “You’re supposed to say nice things,” she continues. “To chase. You’re supposed to write poems and make gifts and . . . all of that.”
“But all of that is so . . . corny,” I say, bewildered. “So fake. Guys like Tyler do that. Guys like Benicio. They can get any girl that way. I could do it too, I suppose. But you’re not just any girl, you’re. . .” I stop then, swallowing as the words run out.
When I glance into her eyes what I see is a look of frank anticipation. Slowly, I exhale.
She steps even closer. Her fingers go to my arms, barely touching my skin. “What . . . am I?”
“You’re my destiny,” I whisper. “My future. We’re meant for each other. From the day we were born, from the minute we met.”
Ixchel laughs. Her hands slide around my neck; I can feel her fingers in my hair. She starts to say, “So you can be romantic. . .” but I don’t let her finish the sentence. Instead, I lunge forward to kiss her, and she kisses me back. We’re both unsteady on our feet and stagger backwards until Ixchel’s leaning against the cabana door with me pressed against her. It gives way suddenly, bursts open. We fall through, trip over and collapse on to the sand. There’s chortling from the bar, the singer stops singing; there are cheers and then a smattering of applause.
“Kids, cool it!” the chef yells with a good-natured laugh. “Get over here and grab some lunch. You shouldn’t fool around on an empty stomach!”
The guys from the bar leap off their stools and chase us both into the sea, roaring with laughter, yelling, “Get them into the water . . . they need a cold shower!” Once we’re finally in the surf, being pounded by the waves, they leave us alone.
After a few minutes of holding on to each other in the sea (whilst the bar crowd boos), Ixchel and I drag ourselves out of there and join the surfers at the bar. The bartender passes us a couple of towels. We dry our heads and hands. Still in soaking-wet clothes, we eat grilled red snapper with tomato salsa and tortillas. Afterwards we change into beach stuff, rinse our clothes in the cold-water showers outside the cabana and hang them to dry outside.
For the rest of the day I only live in the moment. Pure existence. Nowhere and no moment in the history of the universe has ever struck me as so beautiful, so perfect. The sun begins to set behind the palm trees that line the shore; the sky turns various shades of peach.
I approach the surfer with the guitar, persuade him to lend me the instrument. I unhook one of our hammocks and carry it about a hundred metres down the coast until we can’t hear the catcalls of the surfer crowd. We stretch the hammock over smooth sand.
Ixchel asks me what the guitar is for.
“You wanted poetry,” I reply enigmatically, then start to play an Arctic Monkeys song – “The Only Ones Who Know”.
In a foreign place, the saving grace was the feeling,
That it was a heart that he was stealing
Ixchel listens intently. But I can’t look at her while I’m singing. It’s hard enough to remember the lyrics without my lips going numb too.
When I put the guitar down, Ixchel says nothing, just stares at me.
“Well. . .?”
“You’re full of surprises, Josh Garcia.”
Which calls for a clever comeback, but right now I can’t think of one.
We lie on our backs watching the roof of the sky turn a deeper shade of blue. We watch the stars begin to appear, then the moon.
I tell Ixchel that I love her then. I say it once, then over and over again, kissing her lips each time. After the third or fourth time she gives me a shove and sits up. “OK, OK,” she says with a chuckle. “Now you are just saying it.”
“No way,” I insist, grinning. “You wanted poems and romanticness and stuff, remember?”
The rhythmic roll of the waves becomes hypnotic. We stare up at wisps of clouds that drift in front of the moon. When we concentrate on the moon it feels as though we’re moving at the speed of the clouds. It’s like feeling the Earth turn beneath us.
The problem with falling asleep on the beach is that you’re woken by the first light of dawn. I sit up blinking, one side of my face powdery with sand. The sound of the sea seems different; clear and sharp. Ixchel has gone from my side but I can see her standing close to the water, watching two grey herons diving for fish. The sun is rising over the horizon, bleeding pink and purple into the grey sky. I stand up and walk over to Ixchel. Without saying anything, I put my arms around her waist from behind.
“We can’t stay,” she murmurs.
“Yeaahhh. I know.”
“‘God spared Mexico’.”
Wordlessly, I nod. Ixchel turns around in my arms and says, “We have to return to Ek Naab.”
She’s right, but I wish we could have forgotten about all that for a few more days. Since we arrived on this beach I haven’t wanted to leave. It’s as if there’s some kind of glue making me stick to it. Something tells me that if I don’t leave pretty quickly, I never will.
We leave after breakfast – pancakes cooked on a hot plate by the sea. I barely manage three, that’s how sick I feel about leaving. The air cools sharply as we start our journey back along the coast. We don’t s
top for petrol until two hours later. Then the summer rain starts: a skin-drenching torrent that makes the ride back north even more miserable. A cloud of rain-splash and steam rises into the air. Our beach seems very far behind. Soon, I know, it will feel like another life.
Even though it makes us both heartsick to admit it, we agree that Ek Naab has to be our first stop. So when hours later we finally reach the turning to Chetumal, instead we turn up Highway 186, towards Becan. For the second time in my life, I find myself riding along that arrow-straight road. This time I’m trying not to think about the last time I was here, with my sister Camila. Trying not to look at all the treacle-black swamps that have formed in the ditches beside the road. One of those swamps swallowed my sister, drowned her. It was a shock to my system that made every bad thing that had happened to me before seem mundane.