Day of the Dead

by Lisa Brackman

  Gary sighed. ‘Well, that’s disappointing. I’d’ve thought you could hold his interest a little longer.’

  She felt a flush of anger. ‘He wants to get together on Friday,’ she said. ‘Is that enough interest for you?’

  He chuckled and gave her shoulder a quick rub. ‘You’re a hoot, you know that?’

  A stocky blond woman waited for them back at the 4Runner. Vicky. Wearing another Hawaiian shirt. This one featured palm trees and pink flamingos.

  ‘Oh, Michelle, hi!’ she said, beaming. ‘I’m so glad you made it!’

  ‘I wouldn’t have missed it,’ Michelle said.

  ‘I told Michelle all about your charitable work,’ Gary said. ‘And of course she wanted to come and see it for herself.’

  ‘Next time you’ll have to visit the school. That’s where you can really see the difference we’re making in the neighborhood. This …’ Vicky spread her hands. ‘Well, it’s a tough environment. We just try to make things a little nicer for the workers when we can.’

  ‘I loved coming up here to help,’ Gary said. ‘And I knew that Michelle would really appreciate it.’

  He gave her a little smile, like they were sharing a joke, and though she didn’t want to share anything with him, she knew that she was in on it.

  ‘Well, I’m ready to go get a drink,’ Vicky said. ‘We have plenty of time to catch the sunset. What do you think? Maybe Daiquiri Dick’s?’

  ‘As much as I’d love to, I’ve got another appointment,’ Gary said. ‘Michelle, why don’t you go with Vicky? I’ll get a ride with Gustavo.’

  ‘I can take a cab—’ Michelle began.

  ‘Oh, honey, that’ll cost, what? A hundred fifty pesos? If you don’t feel like getting a drink, I can drop you off in Old Town. I live down there anyway.’

  ‘You okay, hon? You look … I don’t know, a little shaky.’

  Sometimes we just want to keep tabs on somebody. … Just in case.

  ‘Just the heat. And … that place.’

  Vicky turned up the 4Runner’s air conditioner.

  ‘Yeah. It’s pretty awful, isn’t it? It’s hard to understand why people have to live that way.’

  This was the third time she’d encountered Vicky. Twice when Vicky had been in the company of Gary. Once when she’d just happened to be in Michelle’s neighborhood.

  ‘Things have been really tough for the workers lately – nobody’s paying good prices for recyclables with the economy in such bad shape. And they’re closing that dump soon. Moving to a new state-of-the-art facility outside the city. I don’t know what will happen to everyone then. There’s just no work.’

  She said she lives down there, Michelle reminded herself. And this is a small town. Wasn’t that more plausible than, say, Vicky as a CIA assassin? In a Hawaiian shirt and fanny pack?

  Bad enough she had to accept Gary as some sort of spy.

  ‘So you know Gary pretty well,’ Michelle said as they approached Old Town.

  ‘Oh, just the way that you tend to know other expats here,’ Vicky said. ‘He’s really been great, though. Just rolled up his sleeves and got involved with the community, and, you know, he’s pretty new.’

  ‘Oh, really? How long has he been here?’

  ‘Well, let’s see. I think I met him about five months ago. He comes and goes, like a lot of the expats.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘So …’ Vicky hesitated. ‘How is it the two of you … ? I mean, I don’t want to pry.’

  Great, Michelle thought. The last thing she wanted was a rumor spread around that she and Gary had hooked up.

  What would Daniel think, if he heard it?

  That would not be good.

  If you’re gonna lie, keep it simple.

  ‘You know that problem I told you I had, with the police? Gary helped me out.’

  ‘Oh, right,’ Vicky said with a little gasp. ‘Gary’s great about things like that, isn’t he? He really knows his way around.’

  ‘He really does.’ Michelle forced a smile. ‘It’s just that … well, the whole thing is pretty embarrassing for me. I wouldn’t want people here to think … you know … that I’m the kind of person who gets into trouble with the police.’

  ‘Oh, sweetie, everybody would understand! Sometimes the legal system here is just awful.’ Vicky gave her shoulder a little pat. ‘But don’t worry, I’ll keep it to myself.’

  Daiquiri Dick’s was more upscale than most of the restaurants on the sand south of the river, stuccoed cement painted the color of a ripened peach. They found a table next to the wall that bordered the beach.

  ‘The margaritas are really good here,’ Vicky said.

  ‘I think I’ll just have a glass of white wine.’

  Vicky raised her hand to flag down the waiter, then studied Michelle, her expression concerned and slightly puzzled.

  ‘Did you hurt your arm?’ she asked.

  Michelle flinched. She’d been rubbing her wrist, she realized, and it did hurt, and there were bruises coming up where Gary had grabbed her.

  ‘Oh. I … I just tweaked it doing yoga.’

  ‘Maybe you should put some ice on it.’

  ‘Good idea,’ she said.

  ‘So did you ever get Danny’s things back to him?’ Vicky asked, a little tentatively, after their drinks arrived.

  ‘I did.’

  ‘And he’s doing okay?’

  ‘He’s fine. Just some stitches.’

  ‘I’m really glad to hear that. I like Danny, I really do.’

  The unspoken ‘but’ hung in the air.

  ‘I mean, he’s just … exciting!’ Vicky nearly giggled. ‘And so cute. Not the kind of American you usually see living here. Mostly it’s, you know, people like me and Keith – Keith’s my husband. Pretty boring.’

  ‘Come on, you’re not boring,’ Michelle said, because that was what was expected.

  ‘Oh, you know what I mean.’ Vicky leaned back in her chair, and the look she gave Michelle was unexpectedly shrewd. ‘You’re a little unusual, too.’

  ‘I’m really not.’ Michelle managed a smile. ‘I’m just a housewife from Los Angeles.’

  Stupid, she told herself as soon as she’d said it. Now she sounded like a married woman screwing around on her husband, having a fling on a Mexican beach.

  ‘I mean, I was,’ she amended. ‘Now I’m … at loose ends, I guess.’

  ‘I don’t mean to pry,’ Vicky said.

  Sure you do, Michelle thought.

  ‘I’m a widow,’ she said. ‘My husband passed away a few months ago. We were supposed to take this vacation together. I decided to come on my own. To just … I don’t know, figure out my next step. I wasn’t expecting to meet anyone.’ She shrugged. ‘I know that a lot of people would probably think it’s too soon.’

  Now I’m making it sound like the thing with Daniel is something real, she thought. Well, probably better to pretend that with a person like Vicky than to pass it off as some meaningless drunken fuck.

  ‘Oh, I had no idea. I’m so sorry.’

  Vicky seemed genuinely embarrassed. She probably was, Michelle thought. Most people weren’t very good actors when it came right down to it. They might put on a show, but it was rarely convincing.

  Vicky ducked her head, sipped her margarita, and then looked up, her cheeks pink. ‘You know, I just want to say … I don’t think it’s up to me or anyone else to judge what’s too soon.’

  ‘Thanks. I appreciate that.’

  Michelle stared out over the beach. The parasails and banana boats had finished for the day. She wondered how much business they would do now that tourist season was over, in the coming summer’s heat and rain.

  ‘I’m really glad you came out today, Michelle,’ Vicky said. ‘If you’re interested, you’re welcome to visit anytime. I find that volunteering helps take my mind off things,’ she added, almost shyly. ‘And we have services on Sunday if you’re interested in attending, close to the marina.’

  ‘Oh, is
your group a church group?’

  She must not have hidden her skepticism well enough. Vicky hesitated. ‘It’s a part of our ministry. But we don’t focus on that. Jesus said you give them something to eat. So that’s what we do.’

  ‘Sarong, señoras? Dresses? ¿Vestidos?’ A beach vendor, a stocky Indian woman, with dresses and bolts of batik-dyed fabric draped over her arms, came up to the low, peach-painted wall.

  ‘Ahora no,’ Vicky said. ‘Gracias.’

  ‘Look,’ the vendor said, holding up a tiny tie-dyed dress. ‘For a little girl.’

  ‘No, thank you.’

  The vendor kept the same expression – the polite smile, the neutral eyes – and continued down the beach, in search of nonexistent customers.

  ‘It’s sad,’ Vicky said, staring after her.

  There was a chime from Michelle’s iPhone – a text. She retrieved it from her Fred Segal tote.

  chck yr cc accounts tomorrow. ted.

  Michelle stared at it.

  She felt a number of things at once. Violated that he knew these things about her, that he had access to her private life. Ashamed that she hadn’t objected when he’d made the offer at lunch, that she’d just acquiesced. She could tell herself that she hadn’t taken him seriously then, but that wasn’t really true.

  And curious.

  What had he paid for?

  ‘I heard they found bodies,’ Michelle said. ‘I mean, up at the dump.’

  Vicky frowned. ‘Bodies? Not that I know of. I guess it’s possible, though.’ She rolled her eyes and raised her glass. ‘Honey, they find all kinds of things up at that dump!’

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  The next morning she checked her credit-card accounts on the iPhone. The roaming charges would be a fortune, but she didn’t trust the Net bar.

  The Working Assets was paid off. Her American Airlines AAdvantage Visa was, too. The United Mileage Plus, the AmEx Blue, and the Chase Visa were still close to maxed.

  Two dates, two credit cards.

  She was supposed to meet Daniel tonight at El Tiburón.

  Did that mean Gary would pay off another one?

  ‘Oh, fuck,’ she whispered. This was not a good way to be thinking.

  But how was she supposed to think about it?

  She made a list in her head of what she knew.

  She knew that Gary had power over her. That he could help her, or hurt her, and that he didn’t particularly seem to care which.

  She knew that she had no money, that she had nothing but debt and no real prospects to change that.

  God, the things she’d seen and read lately. About all kinds of people who had more qualifications than she could ever dream of having, who’d still lost their jobs, their homes, their entire lives.

  A few of her friends kept telling her it would all be okay, but they had no real way of knowing that. It was just something to say when you didn’t know what else to say, when there was nothing you could really do to help.

  And then there was Daniel. Who might be a criminal. Whom she found attractive and thought she might even like but hardly knew.

  Of course, in some ways knowing a person was overrated. She’d thought she’d known Tom pretty well. They’d been married for ten years; you’d think you’d know a person after that. She never would have imagined that he’d have done what he did, that he would have lied to her, repeatedly, about everything.

  She was just now beginning to think that she understood what had happened. She guessed that it had started with a minor transgression, a small lie, and those little wrongs had fed each other until they’d turned into a monster engorged on its own deceptions, too huge to confess, or to bear.

  Dying had been easier for Tom.

  Around 5:00 P.M. she got dressed to go to El Tiburón. She decided on a casual sundress, Kenneth Cole flip-flops, and a Scala raffia hat.

  Finally she put on the watch.

  She stood in front of the long mirror in her bathroom at Hacienda Carmen and considered.

  With this outfit it didn’t look bad.

  ‘Hey – Michelle, right?’

  ‘Right. And you’re … Ned?’

  ‘Right!’

  Ned, whom she’d met that first night with Daniel. ‘Tweaker Ned,’ she’d dubbed him. The guy who’d called her on Daniel’s iPhone.

  She’d arrived at El Tiburón only a minute before he did, had just climbed the three steps off the sand to enter the bar. She hadn’t even located the group’s table yet before Ned had tugged on her sleeve.

  Ned looked at Michelle again, then around the bar. ‘So … uh, you with Danny tonight?’

  Sweat plastered his hair to his scalp, formed huge, ragged ovals under his arms. Nothing unusual about that; it was as stifling hot as it had been every day since she’d arrived in Vallarta.

  But he’d been wanting to talk to Daniel since the night she’d met him, the night when everything started.

  ‘He said he might be coming by later,’ she said.

  ‘Did he say when?’

  ‘He wasn’t sure. Have you tried calling?’

  ‘Yeah, yeah, I called. Kept going straight to voicemail. He’s hard to get a hold of sometimes.’

  ‘Look, I just walked in,’ Michelle said. ‘I’m going to get something to drink. Do you want anything, or … ?’

  ‘Sure. A beer. Thanks!’

  ‘Okay. Be right back.’

  She’d buy Ned his beer. Maybe he’d talk to her. Tell her something about Daniel’s actual business. Maybe knowing wouldn’t really matter in the end, but it was still better to know, she supposed.

  It would be something to tell Gary anyway.

  She headed to the bar.

  There was Charlie, she remembered him: the wizened survivor with yellowed nicotine fingers and rock-band T-shirt, sitting at the long table that stretched across one side of El Tiburón, facing the beach for the sunset, the same table as last week. Today his T-shirt was Thai, advertising Singha beer.

  She bought a Corona for Ned and for herself a glass of white wine, which was sour.

  When she returned from the bar, Ned had straddled an empty chair next to Charlie. He reminded Michelle of an elementary-school kid, like he’d just learned how to sit in a classroom but not how to sit still – hands clasped, torso unnaturally stiff, one leg jiggling up and down.

  ‘Danny’s friend,’ Charlie said, lifting his hand. ‘And how are you on this lovely evening?’

  ‘I’m fine, thank you. Michelle,’ she reminded him.

  ‘I actually think I knew that,’ Charlie said.

  She sat down next to Ned. ‘Corona okay?’

  ‘Great. Yeah. Thanks.’

  He grasped the beer with one hand. Patted his pants pocket with the other.

  ‘Oh, don’t worry about it,’ Michelle said.

  ‘I’ll get you next round, then, okay? I’ll put it on my tab.’ Now he patted his other pants pocket. ‘Thought I heard my phone.’

  Michelle rested her elbow on the table, her chin on her hand, the watch pointed at Ned. It was easy to press the button by the stem. Easy to turn and face Charlie and press the button again.

  There. She’d done it. She felt a shudder in the pit of her stomach. The kind of fear you felt at the top of a roller coaster. A rush.

  ‘So how’s business?’ Charlie asked Ned.

  ‘Oh, you know, slow this time of year, like everyplace else. But I’m running some great specials. Hey, you should come by. I’m doing two-for-one dinners.’

  ‘You going to close for the summer?’

  ‘Yeah. Maybe. I’m not sure.’

  Charlie focused on Michelle, squinting a bit into the sunset. ‘So how is Danny? He get out of the hospital all right?’

  ‘He’s fine. Just a couple stitches.’

  ‘Did they catch those guys?’

  ‘Not that I know of.’

  ‘Ah, well. Unfortunately, they hardly ever do.’ Charlie paused to light a cigarette, sucking in smoke until he started cough
ing, and drowned that with a swallow of beer. ‘Thankfully, most of the time you run into trouble here, you have to go looking for it.’

  ‘I wasn’t,’ she said. ‘Looking for it.’

  Charlie had lifted his beer bottle halfway to his mouth. It paused there, his arm in mid-arc. He put the bottle down.

  ‘Sorry, my dear, I didn’t mean to imply that you were. I just meant that you can’t expect too much from the police here. But in the normal course of things, you don’t have to. This really is a pretty safe place for foreigners, as long as you’re sensible. You’ve just had a run of bad luck.’

  Ned laughed nervously. ‘Yeah. Lady Luck’s a bitch, you know?’ He sucked down a few more slugs of beer. ‘So do you think Danny’s going to come tonight?’ he asked Michelle.

  He really is a wreck, she thought, watching his leg bounce up and down. He seemed in much worse shape than he had a week before.

  What was it that he hoped Daniel could do for him?

  ‘I think so.’

  ‘I guess I can wait a little longer,’ Ned said, checking his watch.

  ‘Robberies aside, I hope you’re enjoying the town,’ Charlie said. ‘I’m guessing you must be, or you wouldn’t still be here.’

  Oh, yes, I had a lovely visit to the scenic dump yesterday.

  Probably not the best answer.

  ‘Parts of it I’m enjoying a lot,’ she said.

  ‘Danny’s an entertaining guy.’

  Did everyone know everybody else’s business here?

  She didn’t hide her irritation well, apparently, because Charlie suddenly grimaced. ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘I guess I should’ve warned you, gossip is the town sport.’

  ‘You must be a mindreader.’

  ‘No, just an aging drunk with a tactless streak.’

  Michelle laughed. She was starting to like him, nicotine stains and all.

  ‘We’ve only been out on a couple of dates,’ she said, ‘but aside from, you know, the armed robbery, it’s been fun.’

  ‘He really is an interesting fellow,’ Charlie said. ‘Seems to have his fingers in a lot of things.’

  His tone was deliberately noncommittal, she thought, or was she reading too much into it?

  ‘I don’t know him that well, actually,’ she said, leaning forward a little. Act like you’re confiding in him, she told herself. If gossip was the town sport, Charlie had to be a player. ‘I don’t really know that much about what he does.’