by Dick Wybrow
Once my back tire hit the ramp, I shot out and braced for my inevitable fall. But when I hit the dusty blacktop, the bike suddenly swerved into an arch, skidded, then stopped. I hadn't fallen off. In fact, I was facing south, pointing toward our destination.
Somewhere along the ramp, the bike had started up. On its own.
"You're pretty good on that thing," Simon said and let out a low whistle.
Shrugging, I just shook my head and smiled. Must have been my instincts, reflexes taking over in a brief moment of low-boil danger. I didn't say it, but I'd even impressed myself.
The Actor came out with a couple of bottles of soda and a tiny pink backpack with a cartoon on its face that looked like a character called Dora. He took a swig, recapped his bottle, and stuffed it inside.
We said our goodbyes to Simon and watched him drive away.
I said, "Let's go find Anza."
* * *
Without needing to fill up, we never had to pull in for gas. The only times we did stop were when the Actor started punching me in the back. Once the punching started bruising, I would pull over, and we would walk around to feel our legs again. My friend would spend most of that time reflecting on how all the time on the back of the bike would mean he wouldn't likely ever have children. I didn't say it, but I felt that would be better for humanity in general.
Halfway to Cozumel, we hit a T in the road. The sun had nearly clocked out and was slowly dipping below the horizon, so I pointed to a convenience store that was strapped to what was left of a motel. The sign said Vacancy.
With no restaurants or cafes in sight, we grabbed a couple of bags of chips and some sodas, and the Actor dropped them into his little Dora backpack.
Hanging next to the register on little metal pegs all down the counter were devices that ranged from useless to pointless. What they all had in common was that the heat had warped their cardboard and cheap plastic packaging over the years, or in some cases, I was sure, decades.
Hanging there, waiting for someone to find this or that trinket useful, all those devices without a home hit me with a bone-deep sadness. The only thing that lightened it hung on one of the drooping hooks—a cartoon depiction of a crack-addled clown presenting something called a "Laff Bag," a small gray-purple sack emblazoned with the faded words Ha! Ha! Ha!
My mind raced trying to work out what could be in the bag. However, all the options I came up were more horrible than funny.
"I need a vacation," I said.
"The vacation suite is booked," a woman behind the counter croaked, and I nearly jumped out of my skin. I hadn't seen her there. She'd been hidden by fifty years of unwanted trinkets.
When we asked about a room, she went to a wall behind the counter with a row of six hooks.
She grabbed one of the five keys hanging there and threw it down. "Sixteen hundred."
The Actor said, "Dollars? Christ, whaddya think you're running the Ritz here?"
I reached into my friend's pocket for a couple of the bills he'd stuffed in there and came out with a thick wad of napkins. Then I realized it wasn't all napkins. "Gross, you still have this burrito? It's twelve hours old, man."
He snatched it back and stuffed it into his black hoodie. "Still good. Beans never go bad."
The woman at the counter said, "That is not true." She sighed. "Eighty-five. Dollars."
When the Actor started to protest, I flicked his ear. He snapped one hand up to the side of his head. With the other, he dug into his pocket, pulled out a couple fifties, and threw them on the counter.
She looked at him sideways as she punched some numbers into an ancient till. When the drawer popped open, she handed over his change and a key looped to an orange slice of plastic with a three on it.
"It must pay well," she said with a tiny grin, "to kill all of your family."
"What?" I asked.
"That kind of greed, lust for power, and now, you have nothing but your crown."
The Actor raised his eyebrows and nodded as he stuffed the bills away. "They didn't actually let me keep the crown. I think they're doing a Princess Diaries remake."
The woman pulled out a small rectangle of paper and a weathered leather sack from her apron. She dropped some tobacco into the crease and began twisting it in her fingers.
"You were still my favorite, though."
"Oh?" He brightened. "Thanks for that."
"But," she added, "I liked you better in the train movie."
I told her thanks, and we walked back outside, leaving the lights of the small store behind. It was crazy dark outside. A single light burned brightly on a very tall telephone pole by the street. Next to the store on one side was a small, low home with stucco walls.
There appeared to be no one home, but after my eyes adjusted for a few seconds, I could see a light flickering inside.
The roof looked like the mop-top hair of some eight-year-old boy who'd only had bowl cuts his entire life—grass or thatch, if there was a difference. On one edge of the roof, poking out of the straw, was a small gray satellite dish.
The Actor's feet shuffled across the gravel lot. I turned and followed him around the other side of the store.
There were two floors of rooms, three on top, three on the bottom. There were no lights on that side of the building, and we both strained to see the room numbers. The Actor headed for the door that was adorned with a three, which had lost one of its screws and hung upside down.
Glancing over at a set of concrete stairs, I put my hand on his shoulder and nodded to the second floor.
"What?"
"You've never spent the night in a dodgy motel, have you?"
He bristled. "I'm famous, Raz. My kind of people don't have to sleep in dodgy motels." Then he nodded slowly. "But there was a time… a long while ago."
"Well, I've spent a lot of time in crappy motels."
"Sure, a young man's gotta make a living."
I lifted my hand into a pre-flick gesture, and he covered his ears, moving toward the stairs.
As we climbed, I explained, "I'm sure this is a fine place, but in a flop like this, you always check in to one room and sleep in another."
"Get out. Really?"
"Yeah, there aren't a lot of people around. It only takes some asshole to roll in here, take a look at that row of keys, and realize some dolt is snoozing in room three. Then you get rolled."
"Rolled?" he asked, reaching the second floor.
"Yeah, you wake up the next day, and your wallet's gone. Or your kidney."
He tried the first door, room four, but the door was locked. "I don't think the kidney thing is a thing."
"It is a thing!"
"Urban legend," the Actor said and tried the knob on the next room. He opened the door and peered in. "Smells like cigarettes."
Inside, a dark figure in the bed sat up with a start and the pulled covers up, bundling the fabric in front of them. A man's thin voice shouted, "Stay away from my kidney!"
"Sorry!" I said and pulled the door closed again.
We moved to the last door on the floor, room six.
The Actor slowly tried the door, and it opened. We waited on the threshold for a few moments then went inside, closing the door behind us. When I clicked on the light, I saw, thankfully, there were two single beds.
My friend threw his little Dora backpack on the bed closest to the window and headed for the bathroom.
Locking the room’s door, I called out, "Don't do anything in there that'll make us have to find another room, 'kay?"
He snorted and closed the bathroom door.
I threw my wallet onto the nightstand next to the other bed then thought better of it. I tucked it under the mattress.
The television looked like something out of the nineties, large and bulky. Still, it was locked down with a small silver keyhole at the bottom. I wondered how the owners thought a mere mortal could lift the TV out of the room even if it weren't locked down.
"Must've brought this thing through th
e window, on a crane."
"Huh?" I heard a voice through the bathroom door then a long grunt. It would be a while before I would want to go in there.
"Nothing."
I flicked through the television channels. They carried the major US networks and a few in Spanish. Nothing on. I clicked it off again and tried the clock radio. The only thing that came out of the small speaker was a series of numbers.
"Seventeen, twenty-four, thirty-five, ninety-six, seventy-seven…"
I remembered hearing the very same thing on the radio the last time I'd been in Mexico. I still had no idea what they were for. Spinning the small dial, I found a station playing some old rock from the seventies.
"That'll do."
The bed was made out of rusty springs and broken dreams. Still, after a very long day on Sally's motorcycle, it was an improvement.
In the single drawer of the nightstand were a small collection of dog-eared novels—Agatha Christie, Brad Meltzer, Lee Child, and a couple with Spanish titles I didn't recognize. I slid it closed again.
The Actor emerged from the bathroom wearing a thin yellow robe.
"That reminds me of the last time we were on a little adventure."
He frowned. "That one was purchased from a shop in Melbourne. Plush and fluffy and warm. This one feels like I've knocked down an old woman and stolen her housecoat."
"At least it's not pink."
"It was red," the Actor said and plopped down on his bed. "With far fewer shit stains, as far as I remember."
More than anything, I wanted to sleep, but I'd avoided the conversation long enough and felt I had to clear the air. First, we needed to get an idea about what the next day would look like. "We've got about twelve hours before we reach Cozumel," I said. "Once we find Anza, we'll work out what to do about your contract."
He shifted for a few moments under his covers. "You think she'll be happy to see us?"
"I hope so. I mean, we're old friends, right?"
"Except that your little adventure may have cost her her marriage," he said. "She might not want to see hide nor hair of you, brother."
I hadn't thought of that. "Hey, I wanted to mention something."
The Actor groaned. "I always hate when someone says they're going to say something. It's never anything good."
"Just listen. You know how we were talking about Uncle Jerry a bit earlier?"
"Yeah?"
"Well," I said and tried to find the right words. I didn't, so I just blurted it out. "He's dead."
The Actor sat up in his bed. "What? What's that supposed to mean?"
"It, um, I mean… I thought that was pretty clear."
"No, Raz," he said. "What… I mean, how do you know that?"
"Before Enrique threatened my life, he told me that he'd killed Uncle Jerry. Something over his plane, I expect."
He sighed. "Or just, you know, just being Uncle Jerry." He was quiet for a few minutes then added, "Fucker was always trouble anyhow. Finally caught up to him, I guess."
I looked over and tried to get a read on the Actor's face but got nothing. "I'm sorry, man," I said. "I should have said something earlier."
"Do you know how?"
I shook my head. "But if Enrique was involved, it wouldn't have been, you know, pleasant."
"Jesus, thanks for that."
I didn't know what else to say. He just stared across the room for a long while, and I closed my eyes, trying to drift off. I briefly came out of my doze when he clicked off his light, and I watched as he shuffled low under his covers. It was hard to tell in the dark, but it looked like his shoulders were shaking slightly.
We both slept, tired from the road.
Hours later, when I saw the dawn just begin to peek through the blinds, I realized I hadn't really slept much at all. I then spent the next half hour drifting in and out of sleep.
It was only when I heard the roar of motorcycles outside that I came fully awake.
Chapter Twelve
"Who the fuck is that?"
The Actor stood next to me as we peered out a slit in the stained curtains. Outside, there were about a dozen motorcycles, all parked in the store's lot. They looked big, mean, and powerful. So did the guys getting off of them. We watched as they came together in a haphazard circle, chatting away and pointing in various directions.
"Maybe, you know, they're on vacation or something. A holiday," the Actor said, his voice shaking. "Going to see the pyramids or something."
When one of the men pulled off his helmet and goggles, my heart skipped a beat. I recognized him. "Shit, that's the guy from the rest stop."
The Actor leaned forward, pressing his nose against the glass. "No."
"Yeah, I recognize that shitty goatee. I bet his skinny buddy is in that group too."
He pulled back from the window. Where he'd leaned in, there was a tiny clear spot on the glass. "Then… who are all those other guys?"
I shrugged and looked back into our room. The lights were off, thankfully. The sun wasn't yet fully up, and if they had been on, our room would have been target number one.
The Actor said, "Why are they here? Did you say something that pissed them off at the rest stop?"
"Me?"
We watched a few moments more, and the guy with the goatee walked over to Sally's motorcycle. He rubbed his chin for a moment then did something no man or woman should ever do. He sat on our bike.
"These are bad people," the Actor said.
Of course, we had stolen the motorcycle from Sally, but we’d been running for our lives from a homicidal devil-contracted gunslinger. Totally okay.
Below, the other bikers circled around Goatee. Eight large men, two big women, and one that was just too hard to tell because of their wide-brimmed oil-black hat.
"It seems very impractical to be riding a motorcycle in that hat. No protection and the thing would fly off—"
Laughter bubbled up from below as Goatee clapped his hands together and gripped the handlebars of our motorcycle.
"You should go down there," the Actor said, standing there, still in the threadbare yellow bathrobe. "That's totally uncool. Stake your claim. Be a man."
"What about you?"
"I'll be up here packing so we can get back on the road."
"Packing? Everything you've got is inside a Dora the Explorer backpack. What packing?"
"Look," the Actor said and pressed his nose against the glass again.
The group was walking into the convenience store below. I wasn't sure if the woman at the desk would give us up easily, but it would take just one look at the keys hanging behind her to know we were in one of two rooms.
"We gotta get out of here," I said.
"And go where? We can't run out there!"
"Well, we can't stay here!" I said and turned toward the back wall of the room and hurried over.
Out the window was a clear path. The only thing I could see from there was the neighboring house with the thatch roof and satellite dish. Below was hard-packed dirt. Dust had risen and was creating eddies in the wind.
The Actor turned from his perch at the front window.
"I have an idea," I said. "Grab all those blankets."
He did as I said, and I wrenched the window open. It took a few tries because time and grit had nearly welded the thing shut. I pushed harder as it caught halfway up, and it finally came open with a long screech.
"Can you be quiet?"
I turned and saw a massive pile of blankets shaking angrily, and I flattened myself against the wall. Then I realized the Actor was underneath it.
He dropped them on the floor and reappeared. Then he looked out the window and down. "Christ, that's got to be fifteen, twenty feet!"
I smiled and said, "Watch."
Bundling up all the blankets, I pressed them out the window and eyed my target below.
"Wait, you want us to jump?"
Grunting, I told him to help me, and we began pushing the mass farther and farther out the window.
He said, "Raz, no way! We'll break our legs."
"You got a better idea? Besides, you're hell contracted. It won't kill you."
"I can still break my legs!"
"That's fine. If you go down first, I can just land on top of you after you hit the blankets."
The Actor started to protest, but then we heard one of the doors below bang against its hinges. The bikers had found room three.
We heard angry shouting below.
"Fuck it," I said, and holding the blankets expertly above a spot just below us, I found my mark, aimed, and let the blankets go.
They flitted down for a moment, then caught by the wind, they all blew, fluttering, somewhere behind the motel and out of sight.
I said, "Huh."
The Actor looked down and saw only the hard-packed dirt below. He scowled. "Any other ideas?"
I heard footfalls on the stairs. "Goddamn it. Look for a weapon or something."
"A weapon? We're in a shitty Mexican motel, not an armory."
I raced back toward the bed and grabbed the lamp, but it didn't move. "Bolted to the desk."
The end table was also secured to the floor and, impressively, even the clock radio had a chain on the back of it I couldn't break.
The Actor's eyes followed me as I went to the front of the room. Down the hall, there were a succession of bang, bang, bangs and more shouting.
"Shit, they're coming," I muttered and backed away from the door.
Then my friend pulled something out of his pocket and looked back outside at the house next door. "Wait, I can create a distraction," he said and leaned up on his tiptoes to get a better view of the home with the thatched room.
I came over, looking over my shoulder as I did. "What? What do you—"
"If I can knock that satellite dish over, it'll come down with a crash. They'll follow the noise."
We were out of options, so I shook my head quickly then nodded.
The Actor arched his arm back, taking a few quick practice throws.
"Hurry up, man!" I said. He ignored me, closing one eye and concentrating. "Are you a good shot, even?"