“In every sense of the word.”
“Great.” Katie reached into the messenger bag slung across her shoulder and pulled out a ball and chain necklace containing a dog tag branded with the SOS Tours logo. “Wear this to help you locate your fellow Indies and to help them find you. We have all sorts of fun activities planned for you this week, including a beach barbecue, a sunset cruise, and several excursions into town, so I promise you won’t have time to get bored or lonely. The bus is located in spot number twenty-nine. Sasha will check your name off the master list and get you on your way. Have fun. I’ll see you back at the resort.”
“Thanks.”
Finn felt like she had just strolled into a perky buzz saw. She walked down the row of idling charter buses and passenger vans until she reached the bus parked in the space numbered twenty-nine, where dozens of women—coupled, alone, or in groups—crowded around a sporty-looking redhead wielding a name-filled clipboard. The redhead’s name tag said her name was Sasha Greene. She looked like a cross between a personal trainer and a drill sergeant. Finn wasn’t surprised to see she was SOS Tours’ activities director.
Sasha ticked off the names of a pair of silver-haired women in matching tie-dye T-shirts, affixed their last names and room numbers to their luggage, and watched as the bags were loaded into the bus’s storage area. When they arrived at the hotel, resort employees would take the guests’ bags from the bus to their rooms so the guests wouldn’t have to lug them all over kingdom come, but Finn was too anal to let her bags out of her sight. She had lost too much luggage over the years to trust it to someone else, no matter how well meaning.
“Next,” Sasha said to a group of dog tag–wearing Indies traveling in a pack.
“I have regrets older than they are.”
Finn turned to find an African American woman in a spiked bra top, leather hot pants, and six-inch stiletto heels. Finn didn’t know which was the more badass accessory, the woman’s hot pink Mohawk or her Harley-inspired motorized wheelchair. The woman’s name was even more dramatic than her appearance.
“Aurora Bennett. Is this your first SOS trip?”
“Yes, yours?”
Aurora unleashed a brassy laugh. “Not hardly. This is my tenth. I wouldn’t travel any other way.”
Finn had heard there were women who didn’t plan a vacation unless SOS or its main business rival, Olivia Travel, was involved, but she had never been able to understand the allure of paying someone to do something she could do herself. And for far less money. Who needed an expensive travel agent or a costly tour company when the Internet was free?
“What makes you keep coming back to SOS?” she asked.
“The trips are pricy. I’m not going to lie about that. But having the chance to be completely myself without being judged and to surround myself in the company of women is priceless. Give it a few days. You’ll see what I mean.”
After she checked in with Sasha and found a seat on the rapidly filling bus, Finn pulled her notebook out of her backpack and began jotting down her first impressions of SOS Tours and its colorful array of clients.
“‘Dear Diary,’” Aurora said teasingly as Sasha carried her down the aisle and deposited her into the seat next to Finn. “‘I met a beautiful ebony goddess today and I think I’m in love.’ Does that sound about right?”
“Close, but no cigar.”
“Then what are you writing?”
Finn hesitated. Not wanting their dining experiences to be tainted by discovery of why they were there, food critics ate in anonymity and wrote their reviews in private. She had planned to do the same. But instead of blending in with the crowd, she was standing out from it. Just like old times.
She put her notebook away and took advantage of the opportunity to have a conversation with someone other than the barista at her favorite coffeehouse or the owner of the small independent bookstore where she researched her upcoming destination before each trip.
“Why write when I can talk to the beautiful ebony goddess who has stolen my heart?”
Aurora chucked Finn under her chin. “You’re cute, but I have regrets older than you, too.”
“How old are you?”
Aurora belted herself into her seat. “Old enough to know better than to answer that question. Why don’t you ask what’s really on your mind? It’s the first thing most people want to know.”
Finn thought of the wheelchair now residing in the bus’s oversized storage compartment, but curiosity led her in a different direction. “How did you get your unique sense of style?”
Aurora laughed again. “Oh, you are a charmer. If I were an indeterminate number of years younger, I would be on you like white on rice. Give me enough champagne cocktails and I still might be. Are you spoken for?”
“I’m an Indie.” Finn indicated the colorful dog tag around her neck.
Aurora rolled her eyes. “Girl, you
are
new at this. Not all Indies are single. Some are simply halves of adventurous couples looking to add spice to their relationships. I know of at least three on this bus alone who would give you good money to rent that necklace from you for a night or two.”
Finn looked around the bus. Her fellow passengers seemed too straitlaced to fit Aurora’s description, but perhaps they were too tired from their respective flights to let their hair down so soon. “So these trips are pretty much anything goes?”
“They can be, but I’ve never known any of the women to be as bad as the boys. An all-gay tour group rented the resort last week. I heard from some people in the know that a few of the guests offered the security guards twenty bucks each for a blow job. More than half of hotel employees down here make an average of five bucks a day, so the line to dish out BJs was longer than you might think.”
“Does that surprise you?”
“Nothing surprises me. When the drinks are all-inclusive, people’s true natures come out—or at least the ones they don’t want anyone at home to see.”
Finn thought about the reckless move she had made going to a hotel with Luisa Moreno after one beer and twenty minutes of conversation. Had that been her true nature or a mistake she still might live to regret?
Sasha stood at the front of the bus and raised her hands to get everyone’s attention. “Welcome to Cancún,” she said into a handheld radio hooked into the bus’s PA system. “Who’s ready to party?”
The answering roar was so loud Finn thought she might have accidentally wandered into a 49ers game.
“Emilio, our trusty bus driver, will take you to our home for the week, the Mariposa Resort and Spa. My SOS teammates are waiting to greet you. After you arrive, they’ll escort you to the theater. While you enjoy a refreshing beverage, my teammates and the resort staff will take your passports, match them up with your reservations, then return them to you, along with your room keys. After you check in, the afternoon will be yours to enjoy. Explore the resort, take a walk on the beach, introduce yourself to old friends, or make some new ones. Whatever you decide to do, don’t forget to return to the theater in time for tonight’s show. We have a wonderful lineup of performers eager to entertain you this week, and we’ll kick it off tonight with Rusty Connors.”
SOS certainly didn’t scrimp when it came to providing quality entertainment for its guests, Finn thought. Rusty Connors was one of the leading lights on the lesbian comedy circuit. Four more comediennes were scheduled to take the stage at some point over the next seven nights, along with a spoken-word artist and a musician who had finished a close second on one of those singing competitions American television networks broadcast ad nauseam.
After Sasha hopped off the bus to wait for the next wave of arrivals, Emilio closed the doors and began the short drive from the airport to the hotel. The ride was hairy but not as frightening as some Finn had experienced in the past. On her first trip to Acapulco, for example, she had lost count of the number of times her life had flashed before her eyes as the driver sped around the hairpin curves, displaying way too much confidence in the flimsy guardrail that prevented him and his passengers from taking a nasty drop to the rocks five thousand feet below.
When the bus pulled up at the Mariposa Resort and Spa, twenty smiling SOS Tours employees and a smattering of the resort’s large staff, all dressed in color-coordinated polo shirts, were standing out front. They clapped rhythmically, keeping time with the SOS Tours theme song blasting from the in-ground speakers lining the cobblestone driveway.
Finn heard effusive cries of greeting as the passengers began to disembark. Aurora was welcomed like a conquering hero. When it was her turn to walk through the two-sided receiving line, Finn expected the smiles she received to be plastic and forced, but they actually seemed genuine.
“No wonder so many travelers are addicted to this.”
A resort staffer reached for her carry-on. “Would you like me to take your bags to your room?”
“No, thanks. I can take care of it myself.”
There were three hundred rooms spread around the expansive grounds, and she didn’t want to risk having her luggage end up parked outside the wrong one. If that happened, it could be hours or even days before they were reunited. The minor headache of lugging them around now prevented the major headache of potentially losing track of them later.
Finn followed the crowd to the air-conditioned theater and took a seat near the back of the room while the laborious—and occasionally riotous—check-in process began.
“What do you mean my room isn’t ready?” a woman in several layers of cold-weather gear asked when her passport was returned minus the promised room key. “My wife and I have taken three planes and a bus to get here. We’ve been traveling for hours. We could use a shower and a change of clothes.”
“I understand your frustration,” a harried SOS employee said, “but the resort was completely full last week and it will be next week as well. The staff needs time to conduct the changeover. They’re working as fast as they can. Please have a little patience.”
“But—”
“We’re on vacation, Jules,” her partner said. “Let’s have a beer in the bar and wait for our friends. We can sort everything else out later.”
Jules started to protest further but changed her mind. “Sounds like a plan to me.”
“Crisis averted.” The staffer—her name tag read Verity—heaved an exaggerated sigh. She took Finn’s passport with a chirpy, “Be right back. Would you like something to drink in the meantime?”
Finn fanned herself with the hem of her T-shirt. “A cold beer would be great.”
“Light or dark?”
Finn took note of the plastic mugs of beer being delivered all around the room and opted for the ale over the lager. “Light’s fine.”
“Awesome. I’ll have one sent over to you. This is your first trip with SOS, isn’t it? Do you have any questions?”
“As a matter of fact, I do. Is being cheerful all the time a prerequisite to becoming a member of the staff?”
Verity grinned. “No, but it certainly helps. I’ll be back in a flash.”
Finn’s beer arrived in a matter of minutes, but her passport was returned before she had made it halfway through her drink. She expected to hear another version of the “have a little patience” routine, but Verity smiled and said, “Your room’s ready.” She held up a clear plastic wristband branded with the resort’s name and a flock of butterflies. “Left or right?”
Finn held out her right arm. “What’s this for?” she asked as Verity fastened the band around her wrist.
“The beaches in Mexico are public, so guests from the other hotels often wander onto the other properties. The wristbands allow the hotel owners to tell which guests belong where. The edges are deceptively sharp, though, so be careful when you take a shower or you could accidentally slice off a nipple.”
“Nice.”
“If you’ll follow me, I’ll show you to your room.”
Finn polished off the rest of her beer, then followed Verity on a brief tour of the resort, walking past three bars, four buffet-style restaurants, a gift shop, a fitness center, an infirmary, the on-site office of the external tour group in charge of optional excursions, and a media room featuring computers that offered high-speed Internet access for a nominal fee. She planned to hit all the bars and restaurants, burn off some high-calorie meals in the fitness center, and pay a visit to the excursion office during her stay, but the media room didn’t rank high on her list of priorities. If she wanted to check the goings-on in the outside world, she could use the WiFi on her smartphone.
Thank God for international service plans.
Otherwise, the surcharge for the data she used during her frequent forays out of the country would be astronomical.
She paused when a speedboat came roaring into the lagoon. The driver, a shirtless hotel employee with skin burnished bronze by prolonged exposure to the sun, waited until the last possible moment to cut the speed and allow the boat to drift to the tie-off spot next to a rock wall separating the lagoon from the Olympic-size pool. Then he hopped out of the boat and took another one out for a spin.
“The speedboats are available for rent, if you like,” Verity said. “You can get behind the wheel, go out in groups of two or four, drive out to a private island a few miles away, and have a picnic. Only one hundred fifty dollars for two hours. The more people you have, the less you pay.”
“Not my cup of tea,” Finn said as they started walking again. Her favorite adventures involved muscle power, not horsepower, which was why the zip-lining excursion and the half-day walking tour of Chichén Itzá she had seen advertised in the window of the external tour group’s office had captured her attention. She might have to add one or both to her still-forming agenda.
“Here we are.” Verity stopped in front of a sky blue brick building labeled, appropriately enough, Azul. “Your room’s on the third floor. There’s no elevator, but there’s a set of stairs on each end of the building. Would you like me to take one of your bags?”
“If you insist.”
This close to her final destination, Finn finally felt comfortable handing over her carry-on. Verity gave it an experimental heft and seemed surprised by its light weight.