Nineteen

Valladolid, Mexico

Two hitched truck rides later, I find myself on the outskirts of Valladolid, a small colonial town. I wander around the central square, full of low-rise, pastel colonial buildings reflecting in a large fountain. Soon I stumble upon a cheap hotel.

It feels a world away from the Mayan Riviera here. Not just the lack of megaresorts or partying tourists, but how I got here. Not looking, just finding.

I have no schedule. I sleep when I’m tired, eat when I’m hungry, grabbing something hot and spicy from one of the food carts. I linger late into the night. I don’t look for anyone. I don’t talk to anyone. After the last few months on Bloemstraat, the boys always around, or if not them, Ana Lucia, I’m not used to being alone.

I sit at the edge of the fountain and watch people and, for a minute, indulge myself imagining Lulu being one of them, imagining that we really had escaped into the wilds of Mexico. Is this where we’d go? Would we sit at a café, our ankles intertwined, our heads close, like that couple over there under the umbrella? Would we walk all night, ducking into the alleyways to steal a kiss? Would we wake up the next morning, untangle our bodies, pull out a map, close our eyes and decide where to next? Or would we just never get out of bed?

No! Stop it! This is pointless. A road nowhere. I get up, brush off my pants and return to the hotel. Lying in bed, I spin a twenty-peso coin around my knuckles and ponder what to do next. When the coin falls to the floor, I reach for it. And then I stop. Heads, I’ll stay in Valladolid another day. Tails, I’ll move on. Tails.

It’s not pointing at the map. But it’ll do.

• • •

The next morning I go downstairs in search of coffee. The worn dining room is practically empty—one Spanish-speaking family at one table, and in the corner by the window, a pretty woman about my age with hair the color of rust.

“I was wondering about you,” she calls in English. She sounds American.

I pour some coffee from the samovar. “I often wonder about me, too,” I reply.

“I saw you last night at the food carts. I’ve been trying to brave up to eat at them, but I wasn’t sure what they were serving or if it would kill a gringo like me.”

“I think it was pork. I don’t ask too many questions.”

“Well, it didn’t kill you.” She laughs. “And whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.”

We stand there for a second. I gesture to join her at the same time she gestures for me to take a seat. I sit down across from her. A waiter in a tired tuxedo drops off a plate of Mexican sweet bread.

“Careful there,” she says, flicking at her own stale bread with a turquoise-painted nail. “I almost chipped a tooth.”

I knock at it. It sounds like a hollow log. “I’ve had worse.”

“What are you, some kind of a professional adventure eater?”

“Something like that.”

“Where are you from?” She holds up a hand. “No, wait, let me guess. Say something else.”

“Something else?”

She taps a finger to her temple, then snaps her fingers. “You’re Dutch.”

“Good ear.”

“Not much of an accent, though.”

“Very good ear. I grew up speaking English.”

“Did you live in England?”

“No, it was just my mother didn’t like speaking Dutch, thought it sounded too much like German. So at home, it was English.”

She glances at the phone on the table. “Well, I suspect there is a fascinating story behind that, but I’m afraid it’ll have to remain a mystery.” She pauses. “I’m a day late already.”

“Late for what?”

“For Mérida. I was supposed to be there yesterday, but my car broke down, and, well, it’s been a cascading comedy of errors. What about you? Where are you headed?”

I pause. “Mérida—if you’ll give me a ride.”

“I wonder what would piss off David more—driving alone or giving a ride to strangers.”

“Willem.” I hold out my hand. “Now I’m not a stranger.”

She narrows her eyes at my outstretched hand. “You’ll need to do better than that.”

“Sorry. I’m Willem de Ruiter.” I reach into my backpack for my stiff new passport and hand it over. “Here’s some identification.”

She flips through it. “Nice picture, Willem. I’m Kate. Kate Roebling. And I’m not showing you my passport because the picture is very unfortunate. You’ll just have to trust me on that.”

She smiles and slides my passport back across the table. “Okay, then, Willem de Ruiter, traveling adventure-eater. The garage just opened so I’m grabbing the car. Assuming it’s actually ready, I’ll be hitting the road in about a half hour. Does that give you time to get packed and ready to go?”

I point to my rucksack on the floor next to me. “I’m always packed and ready to go.”

• • •

Kate picks me up in a sputtering Volkswagen jeep, the seats torn, the foam stuffing coming out. “This is fixed?” I ask, climbing in.

“That’s just cosmetic. You should’ve seen it before. The muffler was falling out, literally dragging behind the car, sparking. The whole rainforest could’ve gone up in flames because of this baby. No offense. Who’s a pretty girl?” She pats the dashboard and turns to me, whispering. “You have to be nice to her. Or she won’t go.”

I tip an imaginary hat to the car. “My apologies.”

“This is actually a great car. Appearances can be quite deceiving, you know.” She guns the engine.

“Yes, I’ve noticed.”

“Thank God, or I’d be out of a job.”

“Bank robber?”

“Ha! I’m an actor.”

“Really?”

She turns to me. “Why? Are you of the tribe?”

“Not really.”

She raises an eyebrow. “‘Not really’? That’s like being ‘a little’ pregnant. You either are or you’re not.”

“How about I was, not seriously, and now I’m not.”

“Oh, did you need to get a ‘real job’?” she asks sympathetically.

“No. I don’t have one of those, either.”

“So you just travel and eat dangerously?”

“More or less.”

“Nice life.”

“More or less.” The car hits a pothole and my stomach seems to smack against the roof and then just as abruptly, plummet back to the floor. “What kind of acting do you do?” I ask when I’ve regained my equilibrium.

“I’m a cofounder and artistic director of a small theater company in New York called Ruckus. We do productions, but also training and teaching programs.”

“That’s not impressive at all.”

“I know, right? I never meant to be quite so ambitious, but when my friends and I moved to New York, we couldn’t get the kind of roles we wanted, so we started our own company. And it’s just kind of grown. We produce our own plays and we teach, and now we’ve started this overseas initiative. That’s why we’re in Mexico. We’re running a workshop on Shakespeare in Mérida in conjunction with Universidad Autónoma de Yucatán.”

“You’re teaching Shakespeare in Spanish?”

“Well, I’m not, because I don’t speak a lick of Spanish. I’ll work with the English speakers. David, my fiancé, he speaks Spanish. Though the funny thing is, even when we do the Shakespeare in translation, I somehow know where we are in the plays. Maybe because I know them so well. Or because Shakespeare transcends language.”

I nod. “The first time I did Shakespeare, I did it in French.”

She turns to me. Her eyes are green, bright as autumn apples, and there’s a smattering of freckles across the bridge of her nose. “You did Shakespeare then? And in French?”

“Mostly in English, of course.”

“Oh, of course.” She pauses. “That’s pretty good for a not-serious actor.”

“I never said I was any good.”

She laughs. “Oh, I can tell you were good.”

“Really?”

“Yep. I have a Spidey-sense for these things.” She pulls out a package of gum, takes a stick, and offers me a piece. It tastes like talcum powder and coconuts and makes my still-churning stomach rebel a little bit more. I spit it out.