Meeting the Minotaur

by Carol Dawson

Genres: Literary Fiction

Synopsis

An audacious modern-day retelling of an ancient Greek myth. "A sinister, slapstick thriller."--USA Today; "An abundant feat of imagination deftly executed."--The Dallas Morning News; "An exhilarating, self-assured novel with brains, muscle, and an eccentric beauty that keeps catching us by surprise."--The Boston Globe; "Scenes that are as taut, gritty, and violent as those in the best noir thrillers."--Publishers Weekly.

Release date: July 1, 2012

Publisher: Algonquin Books

Print pages: 299

Sample

Granddaddy hunkered under the palapa in the sun, drumming his fingers on the table. Beyond his bald head I could see the blue Caribbean, the waves slipping up the sand, the lightpoints dancing across water. “Boy, I think it’s time we talk business,” he said.

“Business.”

“No point in letting the grass grow under our feet. There’s no time like the present.”

“You mean, discuss some stocks or something?” Granddaddy liked to predict the market. Occasionally he’d enjoy airing an opinion about a private tip he’d received from a client, or some dark horse he’d spotted on Wall Street, or world trends after a Middle East political crash. He only did this with me—a recreational vice, harmless, he contended, in my company.

“No I do not. I mean about what you’re going to do with the rest of your life.”

“Oh,” I said. “Ah.” I straightened up, alert and businesslike. I’d been waiting for this conversation.

“As you know, I have never poked around overmuch in your intentions.”

“No, sir.”

“I’ve always figured that you would find your way. After equipping you with the tools you needed and guiding you as best I could, that was all there was left to do for a time.”

“Yes sir, I know it.”

“This University thing last month, this whatever it was you did down there in Austin—”

“Dropping out, you mean?”

“Yes, well.” He grimaced and wiped his lips on his napkin. “If that is what you must insist on calling it.”

“Withdrawing, Granddaddy. Before they expelled me for flunking, is what it was.” On the Taylor Troys Nil Studere Curriculum aka the Grand Class-cut and Coasting Slalom.

He sighed. “Anyhow, this whatever notion seems to have left you at a loose end. Wouldn’t you agree that’s the case?”

“I guess so. Yes, sir.”

“Yes.” He paused, took a sip of iced tea, set the glass down. Then he squinted mistrustfully at the bowl of ceviche, pushed it aside, chewed off a corner of club sandwich, mumbled it between his dentures, and swallowed, his eyes flaring slightly. “So. We must arrive at a thing for you to do. And I have concluded that the wisest thing, since you don’t seem scholastically inclined—not that I’m blaming you, son, I know you can’t help it—would be to set you up in business.”

“Business,” I said. The word this time had a different heft in my mouth, an altered slant, an amended blaze. “Like a store, or an office, something like that?”

“Something like that,” he agreed.

“Like—what?”

“Well, sir.” He paused, eyes gleaming. “Pick an enterprise.” His freckled hand uncupped toward me as if offering aces. “You come up with any sensible, realistic-type project, an ongoing concern that would guarantee you an occupation in the years ahead. And I will be pleased to bankroll it.”

He closed his mouth to let the full weight of this last sink in: a monumental moment.

“Why,” I said, “I don’t know what to say.”

“Of course you don’t.” He nodded, pleased, and leaned forward confidentially. “You weren’t expecting this. But just attend me carefully. I’m talking about whatever you’d like. Although not necessarily an endeavor requiring you to, you know, gab with people a great deal. Or of course handle mechanical equipment.”

“Of course,” I said, my curiosity awakening. How long had he been turning this over? “Is there something particular you’ve already thought of, Grand-daddy?” Although it seemed only the latest in a long history of attempts to ground me in the world—Montessori kindergarten, the Handicapped Olympics, summer camp, a military boarding school for physically challenged students, to name a few—I was touched.

“Well, let’s see. Nothing too arduous. I had figured, maybe”—he folded his hands ceremonially on the table, so I did, too—“something you might tend to. Like a breeding or growing setup. Preferably, you know, in a rural location. That way you could sort of be out of the way of city pressures—more peaceful, like.”

“Gosh.” My surprise expanded exponentially. “A country place. Hm.” The town of Bernice’s “city pressures” consist of five traffic lights, a fruitcake bakery, three car dealerships, the county courthouse, and a Saturday-night country western dance hall, plus the hyperactive gossip network at the country club.

“Yes! Where you’d be raising something. Some suitable thing. Wouldn’t that be nice? There’s a real satisfaction in raising things, son. Animals. Plants. So long as it’s not Cain, heh heh!”

Or perhaps children. Which meant, in his terms, something with certain prerequisite qualities. Such as: an imperviousness to easy damage. With a robust constitution if it was alive and kicking. A quick healer. And nimble—fleet-footed at dodging falling objects. Or else something totally passive, like carrots or beans. But most of all easy-tempered, docile, forgiving rather than grudge-bearing, and likely to hang around even if the opportunity for escape arose, as we both knew it was bound to sooner or later.

Mentally I reviewed the qualifications just for fun. Let’s see, I thought: that rules out racehorses. Which was too bad, because I would have liked horses. I’ve always been attracted to them even though I wasn’t allowed to ride when younger. It also ruled out most exotica, such as cockatoos, ostriches, emus, or the more popular forms of African game found on Texas ranches of late.

“Listen!” I said. “Llamas. How about llamas?” I raised my brows to show him I was entering the spirit. “I hear they’re real friendly and easy to feed.”

“Llamas?” He peered over his tea glass. “Good Lord, Taylor. What are you dreaming of? Those creatures cost many thousands of dollars apiece. Besides, what purpose do llamas serve, other than their hair?”

“Some golf resort I read about in South Carolina uses them as caddies. They charge one hundred dollars an hour rental.”

“What harebrained foolishness.” He frowned. “Dogs, now, at least the species worth raising for money, are a possibility. You could breed pedigreed hunting hounds, for instance. Good blooded pointers. Sell them to sportsmen. Of course, let them train them themselves, you wouldn’t want to fuss with that.”

I smiled. Granddaddy’s diplomacy was often fumbled out like an afterthought.

“Or fish!” he cried suddenly. “Yes. There you go! Catfish. Or rainbow trout! Those are farmed all over the country nowadays. Mississippi, Idaho.” He eyed me, willing his optimism into my body. “Dig a couple of tanks. Or better yet, find a little property somewhere that already has a few. Institute turtle control. Buy some fingerlings—”

“Or koi.”

“Beg your pardon?”

“Koi. You know, those colorful fish you see in rock gardens and museum pools?”

“Ah—goldfish, you mean?” He blinked.

“Well, kind of. They’re Japanese carp. Specially bred, long bloodlines going back through to ancient emperors. It’s an art form over in Japan. They’re real valuable, people name them like pets.”

“Is that right?” The canniness had slid from his gaze, replaced by absence. He folded his napkin into finicky squares, tucked it under his plate, and shook his head again. “Sometimes, Taylor, I declare I wonder where in the world you scrounge up these screwy items.”

There was a silence.

“Actually, Granddaddy, I think a problem might arise with farming fish.”

“What’s that?”

“The harvesting might get a little, uh, tricky.” I glanced modestly into my lap.

“Why, you know what? You’re probably right.” He brightened, consenting to look at me once more, his thoughts transparently obvious. “That would be a real slippery job, I should imagine. For anybody,” he said, and reassuringly patted my hand. I remembered the days he’d come to Fredericksburg to visit me at school and see the paraplegic boys rolling the wheelchairs down the ramps outside class, their faces rigid with gallantry, and how he would stand to one side with me, solemnly beaming in admiration as they passed. “We’ll come up with something else.”

It made an interesting problem. I reflected, looking out at Mexico. The beach shimmered. Unease nagged at me like a whisper. What would fit, I wondered? Sheep? Organic salad greens?

“I talked to a fellow a while back who’d thought up a scheme of growing blood oranges. Turns out Texas soil is ideal for them, to hear him tell it,” he proffered.

“Blood oranges. Why do they call them that?”

“He claimed it’s the color of the juice. Or the flesh, one.”

“Spooky kind of fruit.”

“They fetch inflated prices at the Safeway, let me tell you. How does three ninety-eight a pound sound?”

“For an orange? That bleeds?”

Granddaddy cocked his chin upward, ruminating. “Well. Okay, then, how about bulbs? For fancy nurseries, like Neil Sperry talks about on the radio. Irises. Rare tulips.”

For a moment the tulips caught my fancy. “They’re nice,” I agreed. “I remember them blooming in Grandmother’s front beds in the spring.”

“She sure had a green thumb,” said Granddaddy.

I conjured Grandmother, digging around in her garden long after the day when her memory had finally turned into a flat, shining sea stretching without detail past any horizon. “I think they would make me miss her too much.”

“Really?” He looked disconcerted. “Hm. Then orchids, maybe. Or, how about snakes for their venom, for antido—no, never mind.” He grimaced hastily. “Well, anyhow. This should be giving you some ideas to mull upon. Churn around through the afternoon. Don’t wait, though. We need to push on ahead.”

“I will.”

“See you in a little while.” He shoved his chair back.

But the malaise of the conversation was clapping down upon me like a dark shingle. Then, suddenly, I hit the nail. “Granddaddy?” He stopped. “If you’re the one who’s going to bankroll this business—”

“That’s right.”

“Does that mean my trust no longer works?”

His expression froze.

“Has he killed it?”

“Why, Taylor,” he said slowly. “I haven’t said that.”

A little shock went through my heart. You don’t have to, I thought.

The snubbed old face filled with a mixture of emotions. “It’s got nothing to do with trusts. I just want to do this for you. Myself.”

Having done every other.

“Tell me one thing.” I paused, swallowing my hatred. “Is he still in Dallas?”

He turned his hands palm up, palm down, flexing the fingers, frowning at liver spots. “I don’t have his home address, Taylor, if that’s what you mean. His lawyers’, well, that’s—” His lips seamed tight.

“But he’s alive,” I said. “Whoever he is.”

“Son—I really think it’s best if you don’t fret about it. Just try to leave it be. It’s over, over and done with.”

RIP.

“You’re all right as things are, aren’t you?” He dropped a hand awkwardly to my shoulder, where it thumped like a pot roast. “I tell you what. You just figure you out a line of work. It’ll all turn out fine, I guarantee.”

When I still didn’t speak, he gathered himself together. “Whew! It’s sure hot, isn’t it?”

“Yessir.”

“Believe I’ll just go check on that other thing I mentioned.”

“Okay.”

But he was already wandering across the terrace toward the tour office. The audience was over.

SHE WOULDN’T LOOK up.

A drop of water ricocheted off the fountain’s edge and hit my nose. I dabbed it off and stole another peek over the red plastic flowers lining the marble lip. Chic chic went the keys, naming and sorting through reservations, Visas, MasterCards. A bell jangled on the desk beside her and she reached over, pressed a button, and returned to the keyboard. Just then Ramón hurried through the lobby, waving a bottle of green goo with a gold foil label in one hand. I watched his white shirt bob and glimmer past wicker furniture into the shadowy dining room and vanish behind the bar.

“So, vamonos su llamas,” I said.

Now she glanced up, her gaze settling briefly on me.

“If not llamas, what?” I frisked the back of my head, as if to start some dendritic action, get the old brain humming. “I’m damned if I know.”

Assessing me, her eyes narrowed. The manager, lounging beside her, murmured a few words behind his angled hand and chuckled, all the while staring straight at her perfect breasts. Scorn and lust had pulled his expression askew; he was usually a somber man. She didn’t answer but switched back to the screen. Oh, Jesus.

Five or six people sat at the palapa bar on the pool terrace outside, whiling away siesta hour drinking piña coladas. Farther out in the surf several buoylike butts marked the spots where their owners snorkeled above the dead reef and empty sand. This hotel with its urns, wood, and terra-cotta stucco could be anywhere in the world nowadays, a replica of the unicultural luxury found from Bangkok to Bel Air to Maui to Johannesburg. There was no local coda to remind me that I was in the Yucatán, surrounded by Mexicans.

Except perhaps for the staff.

“All right. Let’s just skip animals—dogs, goats, ermine.” I leaned forward, elbows propped on knees, and punched a fist into my open palm. “No fur!”

The girl at the computer pushed her chair back and stood up.

I didn’t dare look, but lounged back to thoughtfully stroke my jaw as she rustled round the desk’s end, stalking through the lobby. Her heels struck tile. Unable to help myself I pictured the V collar of her orange blouse unbuttoning onto a constellation of small moles just above her bra. She had one that actually showed: a genuine certifying beauty mark embossing her upper lip. I closed my eyes and imagined her dark winged brows, the lathed turnings of her shapely legs, thighs brushing, bearing her off on her errand, the bounce and swell, tuck, the crease. . . . When the heels stopped I opened my eyes. She was standing squarely above me.

“Are you comfortable, señor?”

“Ah . . . comfortable!” The cold smoothness of the question made hairs rise on the back of my neck. Her voice had no texture at all. “Yes, gracias. I’m, uh, very comfortable. Thank you.”

“May I get you anything?” The deadpan changed to a smile, set, uninflected. “A taxi to town, perhaps? A dive schedule? Our boat goes out again in the late afternoon.”

“Oh—no. Thanks! No diving.”

“Then perhaps you would like to order something from the bar? A fruit juice? A cerveza?”

She didn’t really care what I wanted. Her boss lounged back behind the big main desk, observing her with mineral detachment while she stood there proving she was career rather than his.

“Well now. I wouldn’t say no to a lemonade. I’m just sitting here sorting through a few business decisions.” I smiled suavely, but it was like having to report to the principal. “Thank you kindly. Un limón, por favor.”

She nodded, wheeled, and strode to the threshold of the dining room. Murmuring to someone inside, she unconsciously sleeked the tight skirt over one hip. Oh, dear Christ Almighty. I caught the word veintidós. So she knew that much. I glanced at the manager behind the desk, who stared at me impassively. I smiled. Then she returned to the desk and sat back down before the monitor, her skin glowing in the aqueous light, her hair dressed high in its loops and coils and braids on her crown. How old? Nineteen? Twenty? Thirty-six? After nearly a week I still couldn’t tell. The pulse inside my wrist jumped. Chicken, I thought.

Then—Well: why not chickens?

Suddenly it seemed a perfect answer. I could start a restaurant farm. Free-range pullets, fed naturally. No antibiotics, no additives, only the most select varieties raised to the highest standards. They could eat the bugs in the yard. They could live on fire ants! I pictured the yard: bare dirt, hydrangeas, cannas in the borders edged with bricks set on their corners. Then the house, my very own house, an old cottage with gingerbread trim, shards of peeling paint, a big front porch and a breezeway. I sat on the breezeway with my boots propped up, watching an orb spider suture her web against the screen, frittering myself away exactly the way I’d been doing for the last three years, while beyond the evening light dipped the front gate in copper and the mesquite leaves cooled from yellow to deeper green. What could be simpler? Unease stirred again. I shoved it back down. Then came a vision: Me, striding down the concourse at the state fair, my prize guinea bantam under one arm, the blue ribbons clutched aloft for the newspaper cameras. The piles of order faxes from top brasseries all over the world. The newspapers would publish my name. Certainly The Dallas Morning News would—maybe even The Wall Street Journal. My full name appearing in black and white, easily available to snag the attention of a man who just might notice, might stop, squint, and frown, his eye snagging upon the old, familiar surname: “Rising whiz kid. Bright new business star. Resourceful young entrepreneur Taylor Thaddeus Troys, twenty years old, of Bernice, Texas, uses America’s nastiest pests to produce the superb. A go-getter prodigy at a phenomenally early age.”

Perhaps, I thought, this was what Granddaddy secretly had in mind.

But then a voice whispered inside my head: Wrong. The son of a bitch.

“Señor Troys.” Ramón reappeared. He bent over my chair, a model of formality balancing a tray. Upon it stood the lemonade.

“Hi.” I took it, set it down, signed the tab with his gold ballpoint: Room Twenty-two.

“Gracias.”

“What are you doing tonight after you get off? Want another game?”

“Posible.” He clicked the ballpoint, dropped it into his chest pocket. His eye drifted around the room, noting the manager’s siesta disappearance. Tucking the tray under his left elbow, he flapped the receipt book against his palm. “You beat last night.”

“Shoot. Last night isn’t tonight.”

“I don’t got no more money.” The grin lingered. Ramón would never admit it if this were really true. He knew that I knew it.

“We can play for other things.”

He shrugged and looked off. “What other?”

“Well—how soon are you heading back to Dallas?” I asked casually, as if snatching at a stray thought.

“In another month. Two months. It depends on openings.”

“Openings?”

His eyelids flicked. “In the company.”

“So where do you live when you’re up there? Maybe we could meet up sometime.”

The surprise flashed out before he could stop it. A wheel of speculation ratcheted behind his eyes: first doubt, then suspicion, possibilities, a weighing, more questions. “Maybe. I don’t know. Sure, you want to.” His heavy head canted to one side. “Maybe.”

“Keep the game going.”

He nodded, meditating.

“We can always settle up there. Or run a tab on what we’re owing each other.”

“Is not professional.”

“It doesn’t have to be for money, anyhow. Shoot, since when are we card-sharks? I’ve played many a time for shots of beer even. Or matches.”

“Matches?” He looked amused.

“Did that all the time in school.”

Smiling, he shook his head and scanned the room.

“And we’ve got imagination between us. There are always more intriguing stakes possible.”

“What kind?”

“I don’t know. Other bases of trade. This and that.” I shrugged. It was almost an exact copy of his. He recognized it.

“Like what?”

“We’d figure something out. Maybe, I don’t know, favors.”

“Favors!” Smirking, he tossed his hair off his forehead.

“Sure. You never know who might come in handy.”

The brown gaze clamped suddenly back on me.

“You interested?”

His head jerked down, one short snap.

“So how about tonight? Around eleven? Same spot.”

“La playa.”

“Right.”

“Pero, mi hermano . . . my brother wants me to go to a certain place with him.”

“Heck, bring your brother. He can play too. Make it more fun.”

Ramón studied me warily. “Acaso.” His eyes cut over to the girl, a hooded glance.

“She going to tell you off for loitering?”

His contemptuous look made me grin. “Y también . . . by the way. In Dallas I stay at my uncle’s in Oak Cliff,” he added suddenly.

“Oh yeah?”

“Hasta la vista.”

“Yeah, great. See you later, buddy.”

The lemonade trickled down my throat. Ramón strolled back into the dining room, whistling between his teeth.

“Taytay!”

I turned. The voice came simultaneous to the sneeze of the elevator doors. Emerging from the fluorescent cell, Mother waved like a maniac. “I’ve been wondering where you were. What are you doing? Just sitting?”

“Yes ma’am.”

“Just sitting in the lobby! On your Easter vacation.”

“Thinking,” I explained.

“Thinking. Ah.” Automatically she drew a sharp breath, fanning herself with a scarf end to fume the embarrassment. “Well, um! I hope you’ve been having a good time this morning, at least. Did you even eat lunch?”

“Yessum, I sure did.”

“You know to just charge it to the room, don’t you.” She told me this freshly minted thing at least once a day.

“Yessum, I surely do.”

“Don’t talk like that, you sound like the yard man. I’m looking for your sister. By the way, how do you like my new suit?” Posing in her one-piece she tipped up on her toes and revolved 360 degrees. She must have decided that this year was one too many down the line for another bikini. I had already seen the bathing suit she’d brought with her, still in its Lou Lattimore bag. She’d worn it our first morning here on Cozumel, a black maillot sewn all over with tiny glass champagne bottles—dangerous if she hit a reef, not that she ever would, since she didn’t enter water. On this new one the neckline plunged only as far as her cleavage. She touched the shallow hemisphere of her belly self-consciously and then gave another playful twirl to make the short skirt fly up.

“I like the color.”

“Aren’t you sweet! Pink is always a safe bet, don’t you agree?” she asked. Vagueness was her usual form of tact, but instinct also prompted her to defer to whatever male might be present. “I found it yesterday in a little boutique by the plaza. Dodie went with me. We got her one in chartreuse.”

“Oh. That’s nice.” I pictured Mother and Dodie, brachiating their way through the ready-to-wear racks of Cozumel. It’s good when you have a sport you can practice anywhere.

“Do you know where she is? I simply cannot find her on this earth.”

“No ma’am.” Dodie had jumped into a cab half an hour before in front of the hotel. I’d watched her do it. She hadn’t spoken to me, of course. Presumably she had been headed for town. She was not alone.

“Well then, have you at least seen your granddaddy?”

“I had lunch with him a while ago.”

“Where is he then?”

“He mentioned that he might go over to the tour office. To see about one of the trips to the mainland tomorrow.”

“To those ruins at Tulum? Cross the ocean on some tippity old boat for that? Oh my Lord.” She shook her head. “Don’t you worry, anyhow. You won’t have to go high up. Just Dodie and me will. Climbing all over those smelly pyramids and rocks in the boiling sun. Rock rooms smelling like somebody’s gone tee-tee in the corner. Just like at Chichén Itzá.” Testily she shook a fly off her arm, bracelets clinking.

I thought of the carpet of jungle we had passed over in the plane on the way here. The crewelwork of treetops that lay unbroken by line or road or thread, while the plane’s shadow skittered across it like a blue moth. In the hot humid darkness of its labyrinth a person would lose all boundaries. The ancient Mayan roads were gone. The temples lay swallowed by bush and decay. There would be no path. There would be no trail through the tumuli of leaves, no stones to follow anchored like footsteps in the layers and mats of old growth, no civilized procedure to shape a life. The only limitations would be those imposed by the jungle itself: the striped roof, the latticework of vines, the caws of birds and the rustle as a coatimundi leaped from a branch. One could walk on and on, slashing the way. When one came to a clearing it would be no evidence of the hand of man. There, in the clearing, under the dense, caloric light, a cenote would lie bowled between the fallen sides of earth. It would lie black and still, its edges bridged by long sinuous roots. Creatures would avoid the rim, no matter how thirsty, knowing the endless vacancy that awaited them. Its shaft would gore down through silt, past the limestone plate, past the strata of rock and clay and primal debris, until it plunged straight to the heart of the world itself. Not even fish would swim just beneath the surface. Water, lapless, like a tube of night, would fill its depths, and it would suck up the light into its dark eye, absorb it so that the light vanished with no reflection.

“Buggy old ruins crawling with guides telling us all about human sacrifice. Ugh!” Mother muttered.

“I think it’ll be interesting,” I said.

But she had already swung around, distracted. “Maybe Dodie’s out on the beach. Or at the hairdresser. She mentioned she might get streaked.” She tightened the belt of her cover-up. “If you see her, tell her don’t budge, don’t move a muscle, I’m hunting all over for her.” She started down the hall toward the beauty shop in the next wing.

I raised my drink. Something caught my eye. The girl behind the desk was watching. She’d listened to all this exchange. Now she bent down once more, the clicking recommencing.

Since Dodie was not in the beauty shop Mother would be back any second. Carefully I stepped down off the fountain base and maneuvered across the tile floor through the lobby furniture, making it out the French doors without an unwonted incident. The sunlight was dazzling. On the far end of the pool I skirted turquoise water and armchairs. Then I passed beyond the shade of palapas to the beach.

The role of outsider is an old one for me. If my vestibular handicap throws me out of balance with the rest of the world, then the facts of my birth have always pinned me there. For this reason, during childhood I took control of whatever I could, cultivating affability, learning patience, moseying through homework, reading a lot. That way the outsiderhood became my own choice, not the inevitable consequence of my condition. My legs might tump me over, the schoolroom judder like a cement mixer, my consciousness rise and fall at the click of a light switch, but I could always chat my way through anything. Clumsiness plus a quick mouth, a blend assuring doom. Geekhood felt as familiar as an old bathrobe. But now Granddaddy was telling me I had to drop it and get naked.

The sand swept down the coast, clean of litter. Upon its sheet lay a crisscross of tourists arranged on towels. Their bodies in the bathing suits seemed amateur somehow: a group of people more at home in working clothes, ties and low-heeled pumps, trying out the feel of bare skin. The women’s flesh looked sweet and homely, peeping through mesh, below and above strings tied taut, like fresh trussed bread loaves. I wandered along the surf’s edge, watching the breakers, wishing I could just slope straight out on a boogie board, or snorkle, or even go diving as the girl had suggested. I’d practiced swimming for a few months under the watchful eyes of the boarding school instructors, but ever since toddlerhood at the country club Mother had been too scared to let me so much as dog-paddle alone. The riskiest activity for someone with my condition is to enter the ocean. The danger lies in getting disoriented while submerged, running out of air, and striving downward, convinced that you’re climbing to the surface. Granddaddy’s zest for these sight-seeing trips was as much to give me something to do as to enjoy himself.

The beach lay completely deserted behind the next hotel, the Emperador del Mar. Only one wing of the Emperador was in operation yet; the rest stood in a jumble of rebar and concrete half walls, plastic sheets whipping in the wind. Even the beachward end of the working wing still festered under construction. In my opinion the whole resort looked to be a sloppy job, haphazard, patched together by people who must not have the first clue about building a real structure. How could the finished product invite credibility? Ramón had explained to me that here in Mexico buildings still in progress couldn’t be taxed; it wasn’t until they were completed that they became a source of income for the government, which was the reason you saw so many cement chunks blocking the path beside open hotels and cafés. And here was a whole heap of rubble already housing guests. Expensive, too, probably. I stood behind the sand hill, marveling at how little you could get by with and still call yourself a professional in this world.

Well, fine.

Beyond the slabs of masonry a movement flickered on the building face. A door swung slowly out over the near side of the big patio, a room door with a number gilded on it. It opened just widely enough to release a man who slipped through the dark slot as if excreted: a short figure in a cotton shirt, burdened down with paraphernalia. He wore two cameras slung around his neck; a third he carried in his left hand. From his right wrist dangled a yellow, canvas ladies’ overnight bag. A large backpack weighed down his scrawny shoulders. Once through th