He reaches over and pulls me into him.
“You look beautiful,” he whispers into my ear.
“Thank you,” I whisper back. It’s probably the necklace. “I hope you’re having a great birthday.”
“It’s the best. It couldn’t be any more perfect.”
We follow the hostess into the large, loud, crowded dining room. The ceiling is tall, the floor is concrete and the walls are white and covered with bottles of wine on old wooden shelves. The Californian in me can’t help but look at this decor and imagine the nightmare earthquake scenario.
We’re shown to a round table. I sit in between Clem and Peter.
“So, Mom.” She throws an arm around me. “The club Roberto told us about looks really cool. Check it out.” She hands me her phone. She’s pulled up the Yelp page. The club gets four-and-a-half stars. I had no idea you could Yelp a Mexican nightclub.
I hand her phone back to her.
“Well?” she asks. “What do you think?”
“About?”
“About me and Malcolm going there after dinner. It’s only three blocks away. It looks super fun. Please, Mommy?”
“Don’t ‘Mommy’ me, Clementine.”
She does a pouty face. “It’s just that it really looks fun. And I really want to go. And this vacation has been great, don’t get me wrong, but we haven’t done anything for, like, people our age.”
“How old do you have to be to go to this club?”
Clem and Malcolm exchange a look. “Well,” she says. “Technically you’re supposed to be eighteen, but online and in the reviews and stuff they say that nobody in Puerto Vallarta checks ID. They don’t care.”
“They may not care, but I do.”
“Why? What do you think is going to happen? I just want to go hear music and dance and stuff. I swear we aren’t going to drink or anything like that. I promise you. Right, Malcolm?”
“Totally,” he says. “We won’t drink. You have my word.”
“Or anything else?”
Malcolm puzzles over this, eyeing me, like I’m the one who’s been caught selling drugs. “Or anything else,” he says.
Now that the three of us are in conversation we’ve attracted attention from the others at the table.
“Dad says it’s fine with him if it’s okay with you,” Clem says. “Right, Dad?”
I glare at Peter. He gives me an apologetic shrug. He’s set me up.
“Aw, come on, Jen,” Solly chimes in. “Let the kids go have a little fun. I’d offer to chaperone, but I’m afraid I’d slip a disk, or tear a rotator cuff, and anyway, let’s face it, the music is going to suck.”
Now it’s a full-on ambush. I’m not left with much of a choice.
“Fine,” I say. “But this doesn’t mean you should rush through your father’s birthday dinner.”
Clem leans over and kisses me on the cheek. “We won’t. I swear. Thanks, Mom.”
Malcolm and Clem grin at each other. They look like they’re in a toothpaste commercial.
“What are we eating tonight?” Solly asks, opening his menu.
“What are we drinking?” I reply, gesturing for the waitress.
* * *
• • •
AT 11:15 IT’S JUST Solly, Peter and me left at our table. Clem and Malcolm have headed off to the nightclub against my better judgment and Ingrid took Ivan home before dessert, which did not make him happy.
We’ve stayed to drink a final toast to Peter.
I watched Solly walk Ingrid out to the street and help her into her cab. I watched him hold her hand and stroke her hair. I watched him act contrite about the shirt fiasco, ever the doting husband.
I never had to watch Solly put on a fake show for Maureen while he cheated with Ingrid because I found out about the affair after Maureen did. Now I see why Peter kept that secret from me and tried keeping this one: it is excruciating to watch a woman whose husband is cheating when you know it and she does not.
Why does Solly always covet the new, shiny object? Why is he never happy with what he has? Maybe I should feel sorry for Solly: who wants to live in a state of perpetual dissatisfaction?
I watch as he puts his hand on the waitress’s forearm while he orders our round of tequila. Get your hand off her, Solly, I want to say to him. Not everything is yours for the grabbing.
When the tequila comes, Solly holds up his glass.
“Peter,” he begins. “You have been my best friend for thirty-two years. I cannot fathom why the powers that be in freshman housing conspired to pair us together, unless it’s that they’d watched too many episodes of The Odd Couple.”
Solly turns to me and adds, as an aside: “In case it isn’t clear, I’m the Oscar in that scenario.”
I don’t say anything. He waits. I manage a fake smile.
He continues, “You have made my life richer in every way. And let’s be honest: I was plenty rich to begin with.”
Big belly laugh here.
God, I hate Solly.
“So I make this toast to you,” he says. “My best friend, my brother. You make turning fifty seem like a walk in the park. And I look forward to following you, as following you is something I have always done, in one way or another, since the day we first met. L’chaim.”
Solly throws back his shot of tequila. Then Peter does the same. They both stare at me, waiting. I glare at Solly. There is fire in my cheeks. I know this probably isn’t the right moment, but when is it ever the right moment to call someone out for being a fucking pig?
I take my shot of tequila. It burns going down, an exquisite, delicious sort of burn.
“Solly.”
He looks at me inquisitively. Peter is looking at me, too, with no admonition, no pleading—he has no idea that I’m about to confront Solly. This will infuriate Peter, whose first allegiance is not to me but to his best friend. He will see this as a betrayal of my trust, a trust that’s shaky to begin with. If Peter really trusted me I wouldn’t have had to squeeze the information about the affair out of him, or the truth about Malcolm’s troubles. Peter might say this is none of my concern, but he’d be wrong. This affair isn’t only about Solly and Ingrid, it’s also about the business. Our business. Solly is jeopardizing all of our futures.
“Solly,” I repeat. “I—”
Solly isn’t listening to me. He’s no longer paying attention. He’s looking out the window to the street. He’s like a kid with ADHD.
“What’s going on?” he asks, but he isn’t asking me. This isn’t about what I’ve been building up the courage to say. This is about what’s happening outside the restaurant.
The sidewalk is full of people, as it has been all night, but now the people are running. The people are shouting. You could easily mistake this sort of action and energy for revelry, for a celebration in the streets, but if you look more closely you see that there’s no order, no sense. It’s chaotic. Pure panic.
The noisy restaurant gets suddenly, eerily quiet. Sirens wail in the distance. Competing from all directions.
The check is on the table. Solly picks it up, looks at it, reaches into his pocket, pulls out four hundred-dollar bills and throws them down.
“Let’s get out of here.”
We follow him outside, leaving the quiet for the chaos. There are others like us, standing on the street, dumbfounded, trying to make sense of what is happening. And there are those who run. They are running in both directions. I can’t tell who’s running away from the danger and who’s running toward it.
We try shouting at strangers. “What’s happening? Why is everyone running? Please? Someone? Anyone? Tell us what’s going on?”
The sirens are drawing nearer to us and nearer to one another. They no longer sound like they’re coming from all directions, they sound like they’re gathering to our right, to the e
ast, at least I think it’s the east, as it’s the opposite direction from the bay.
“The nightclub,” I say. “Which way is the nightclub?” How did I not get the address of the nightclub from Clementine?
“I don’t know,” Peter says.
“It’s that way—” Solly points in the direction of the sirens. He grabs a man who is moving quickly past where we stand in front of the restaurant.
“What’s happening?” he screams at the man.
The man looks more frightened than annoyed that a stranger would put his hands on him like that.
“Un secuestro! Ha habido un secuestro!”
“What?” Solly shouts. “I don’t understand you.”
The man wrenches his arm free and runs away, and we start running in the opposite direction, toward the club, toward the screeching sirens.
We make it two blocks before we have to slow because the crowd is getting thicker. I take Peter’s hand and he takes Solly’s and the three of us worm our way through the sea of people, nearer to the flashing lights of the police cars.
I pull out my phone with my free hand and call Clem. Straight to voice mail. I text her with my shaking thumb: where r u call me now
We’ve made it as far as we’re able. Police are blockading the street and there’s already crime-scene tape going up around the perimeter of a big white building with tall windows. People are filing out of the open doors, slowly and calmly, but they are holding on to one another, and some of the women are crying. The people are young and attractive and dressed to reveal as much skin as possible.
“Is that it?” I scream. “Is that the nightclub?”
Solly and Peter have their heads close together. They are speaking so I can’t hear them.
Peter lets go of Solly and puts both of his hands on my shoulders. “Yes,” he says quietly. “But don’t panic. Look. Look at me.” I focus my eyes on his. “The police are here. All those people are coming out of the club and they’re fine. We will find them.”
We push farther through the crowd until we reach a line of police officers in helmets holding machine guns.
I try asking them, shouting at them—what is happening and I need to find my daughter—but they stand still, shoulder to shoulder, and stare straight ahead, as if I don’t exist. They part to let people through who are coming from the club, but the flow goes in one direction only.
We cannot get any closer. I scan the dozens of faces moving toward us for my pale daughter and Solly’s dark-skinned son. My eyes are darting everywhere, trying to see everything at once, desperate to put things into order, to make some sense of what is happening.
Time is both racing forward and moving in slow motion.
Time is collapsing.
Peter has stopped a young man who has made his way out of the club and he’s trying to ask him what’s happening, but Peter is shouting, and he sounds angry and threatening, and the man just wants to get away, to keep moving. The man says the same words: un secuestro.
If my hands weren’t shaking and my heart wasn’t racing and if there was wi-fi in the middle of the street or if I’d paid for a fucking data plan I could look up un secuestro on my phone, but none of these things is true, and so I shout to nobody, I scream into the electric night air: “WHAT IS UN SECUESTRO?”
“A kidnapping.”
I turn. There is a young woman standing next to me. She is tiny and looks no older than Clementine. She is holding on to the arm of a young man who appears far more upset; she is calm and she speaks clearly.
“There has been a kidnapping. Inside the nightclub. It happened very fast. Inside it was very frightening. There were gunshots fired. Into the air. I do not think anyone was shot. The police arrived after it was over. After they got away.”
“A kidnapping?” I say, only inches from her face. “Who did they kidnap?”
“I don’t know,” she says and she holds on to my arm. Her touch is gentle. She’s barely more than a child and yet she’s trying to comfort me. “There was a large group of men. All dressed in black. With masks on their faces. They took many people. It all happened very quickly.”
“My daughter,” I scream. “My daughter was in there.”
“I do not think they took your daughter,” the woman says. “They seemed to know who they wanted. They took people from the VIP section of the club. People who were together. It did not seem random. And I think they took only men, but I can’t be sure.”
“My son,” Solly says. I didn’t know that he’d been listening to us. “My son was in there, too.”
“I’m sorry,” she says. “I have to go now. My family will be worried. You will find your son and your daughter.”
She turns and, with the young man on her arm, disappears into the crowd. I wish I’d hugged her, if only so that I could be sure that she’d been real. Without her in front of me I can’t be sure of anything.
The flow of people from the nightclub has stopped. Now it’s only the police swarming the building and the sidewalk out front.
I move along down the barricade and Peter and Solly follow. I try again with a different officer.
“Please,” I say. “I am trying to find my daughter.”
Nothing.
I try another officer. And then another. I know I am screaming. I am not being polite. I am not behaving with respect. I am not showing deference to their roles, nor to their culture, nor to their language.
“PLEASE,” I shout.
Nobody will help me. I turn around to scream at Peter and Solly because I need to scream at somebody, but the bodies next to me that I thought belonged to Peter and Solly belong to strangers. They look nothing like Peter and Solly.
Where are Peter and Solly?
The crowd isn’t thinning, if anything it is growing, it is swelling, and now I can’t find my husband. I don’t see Solly. I am totally and completely lost.
I pull out my phone and call Clem again. Voice mail. I call her again. Voice mail. She must have turned her phone off, or put it on airplane mode, or maybe she’s been separated from it, from this essential piece of her.
I am separated from her, this essential piece of me.
I move back through the crowd to where I can be certain I last stood next to Peter and Solly. Can I be certain? When was this? Minutes ago? Hours? I remember there was a woman. She was young and beautiful and she told me that everything was going to be okay. She told me the kidnappers did not take my daughter. Where did she go? I would like to find this woman again.
“CLEMENTINE,” I shout. “PETER.”
The crowd is closing in on me.
I used to claim I had claustrophobia because I don’t like elevators packed with people. Who likes elevators packed with people? I was only being dramatic. Assigning a diagnosable condition to a mild dislike. Now I close my eyes. Everything swirls around me. A tornado made of noise. Light. Heat. Breath. Fear.
This is claustrophobia. I have to lie down. I am going to lie down. I cannot hold my body up any longer. I am falling down. The pavement will cool my skin. I need to feel the ground.
But no. Instead of falling, I am lifted up.
I feel arms around me. In this cluster of people, there are helping hands. Strangers’ hands. They are holding me. They are guiding me through the tornado.
In my ear: “It’s okay. The kids are okay. We found somebody who knows. This way.”
I know this voice. It is Solly. My old friend Solly.
And there is Peter. He is standing with an officer who holds his helmet under his arm and has slung his machine gun onto his back. His posture is peace. Succor.
“There you are,” Peter calls out to me. Solly delivers me to Peter’s embrace. “This is Officer Delgado. Officer Delgado, this is my wife, Jenna.”
He nods at me. Peter is squeezing me so tight now I’m having trouble breathing. I
n his effort to comfort me I can feel his fear.
“Officer Delgado says the kidnappers are from a drug cartel and the men they abducted are from a rival one. They entered quickly, fired some shots, grabbed the men, loaded them into waiting SUVs and were gone before the police arrived. Nobody in the club was hurt. And everyone who was taken was a member of the rival cartel.”
“Yes,” the officer says. “This is true. There are no injuries. There are no innocent victims. These men who were kidnapped, they were here for celebration, for Semana Santa, but they are not innocent.”
“So where’s Clem?”
“We still don’t know. But Officer Delgado assures us that everyone made it out safely. Nobody was hurt. The club is empty now. Maybe we just missed them in the crowd. They probably headed home.”
“You should go back home now,” the officer says. “And you should stay there. We are still looking for the men who did this, and we ask that, for now, everyone stay inside.”
“How do we get home?” I ask. Nothing seems possible.
“We ask that everyone stay inside and that is for taxi drivers, too. Can you walk?” Officer Delgado asks. “Is it very far?”
“No,” Peter says. “It’s not far. We can make it. Thank you for your help.”
They shake hands. Officer Delgado extends his hand to me and I hold it in both of mine and I tell him the words of Spanish I know. “Muchas gracias.”
“Let’s go,” Solly says, putting one arm around Peter and one around me. “My kingdom for an Uber.”
We start off on the long dirt road to Villa Azul Paraiso.
No place ever has seemed so far away.
THURSDAY
Peter fumbles with the key in the lock of the big front doors and we burst into a darkened, quiet house. Without saying a word, Peter and I run to the right, toward our wing, while Solly runs to the left toward his.
Tomorrow There Will Be Sun Page 16