Follow the Dotted Line (37 page)

Andy stood for a long time contemplating the door to the Hotel De La Rosa, the little hideaway where Tilda had booked a reservation about the time Mark vanished from Texas. The entrance was tucked into jungle foliage growing over a small lane just blocks from the ocean and yet nearly a hundred feet above sea level, giving anyone making the climb a spectacular view of the water below. The ridiculously charming little inn was exactly the kind of humble establishment where the staff would not ask too many questions of a frantic American wife whose husband had just drowned accidently.

Andy knew instinctively that this was the place to begin. If Mark had died here, anyone and everyone would know about it. All she had to do was sidle up to the reception desk and ask. But was that the kind of question you just blurted out? In a foreign country? Where you didn’t speak the language? The point of coming to Mexico was to find out as much information as possible about Mark’s last days. She needed to avoid embarrassing or antagonizing her sources.

How could she break the cross-cultural ice? She considered the possibility of asking the desk clerk about Tilda’s previous reservation, but Annabelle hadn’t known any of the booking details. She couldn’t tell Andy the precise dates. Or the length of the stay. Or even what name Tilda had used to register. All Andy knew for sure was that the reservation had been early in the summer, some time after Mitch had received the ashes.

The struggle over what to say to the desk clerk was paralyzing her. Maybe Lorna had been right. Maybe Andy wasn’t really up to this part, the part where you have to ask the question that you don’t really want answered. Ten more minutes passed. Her indecision was beginning to rankle. How long was she going to stand here? After all, she’d chosen this odyssey to find Mark of her own free will, hadn’t she? But here she was, on the threshold of making herself relevant, and she couldn’t seem to take the last self-defining step.

Desperate to overcome her inertia, Andrea Bravos searched for some act of defiance that would motivate her. The only thing she could think to do was spit. She tried it. She liked it. She did it again. This time it felt downright invigorating. Finally, after a third satisfying projectile of saliva, she squared her shoulders, crossed the dirt path, and pushed open the door of the Hotel De La Rosa. Without breaking stride, she stepped inside.

Naturally, there was no one there. The little lobby with the polished tile floor was completely empty. There was no bell or buzzer, so Andy stood at the vacant reception counter waiting for someone to appear. No one did. She called out a poorly accented, but highly audible, ‘Hola!’ and still no one came to her aid. After nearly 15 minutes, she picked up the handle of her small carry on and turned toward the turquoise doorway that had been glaring at her from the end of a small hall to one side of the lobby. This she did not because she expected to find the desk clerk behind it, but because she wanted a drink—and the sign above the door read
Pedro’s Cantina
.

And that, of course, was where she found him.

Although the little bar was located on a lushly adorned stone patio beveled into the hillside next to the hotel, she didn’t really notice. Nor was she cognizant of the three small tables perched on the edge of the stone that overlooked the beach below. All she could see was the teak bar to the rear of the patio and the solitary customer seated on a rattan barstool facing the orchestra of liquor bottles.

Even with his lumbering back to her, she recognized the pinkish scar on the nape of Mark Kornacky’s neck and the glass of Captain Morgan in his hand. For some reason, seeing him sitting there—in pretty much the same way he had been sitting years ago when she left him—punctured something deep inside her. It was as if the all the helium buoying her up the past two months came rushing out, leaving her unaccountably deflated.

She had been expecting so much more out of the moment that finally ended her quest, something that involved death and drama or maybe even rescue from the clutches of evil. Instead, she found herself staring at, well, a shaggy dog, both real and emblematic: big, rumpled, and looking like the anti-climax to a pointless story. He was alive, yes, but surprisingly unchanged and pitifully disappointing.

Silently, she set down her suitcase, crossed the room, and slipped on to the seat next to him.

“I’ll have what he’s having,” she instructed the young bartender, who was busy texting and had barely noticed her himself.

As the boy looked up and nodded, Andy felt the afternoon light pouring in behind them. It was now as amber as the rum in Mark’s tumbler, and he appeared to be equally mesmerized by both.

“Hello, Mark,” she said, without looking in his direction. Then Andy took possession of her own liquid anesthetic and waited for a new and wholly unexpected day to dawn on her ex-husband.

He didn’t speak at first. He just raised his ample eyebrows in amazement and kept them raised in a gesture that looked remarkably like self-defense. “Jesus H. Christ!” he finally muttered.

Not for the first time, Andy was tempted to ask him if he remembered the names of any of his children, but as always with Mark, she deferred to more urgent matters. “You’re a hard man to find,” she said, turning to face him head-on. The beard startled her; he had never worn one as a young man. It was gray and tired looking. A halo of wrinkles framed his once deep blue eyes. Mark had never been a handsome man, but then Andy had never been a beautiful woman. They had been a remarkably average-looking couple in a town and a business where average was a disability.

“Did I say I wanted to be found?” he asked, with genuine confusion.

“No. In fact, you haven’t said very much at all. In years. To me. Or to anybody else you formerly called your family.”

He shook his head, as if he did not need to be reminded of the obvious, and he signaled the bartender for a refill. Then in a tone that sounded almost apologetic, he said, “I think we’ve already established that I’m not much of a family man, Andy. I hope to hell you haven’t tracked me all the way to Mexico just to re-litigate that one.”

“No. Sorry. You’re right. I didn’t come all this way to rehash the past. I came to, well . . .” She searched for how to begin. “I came for several reasons.”

Without warning, Mark Kornacky straightened his sagging shoulders, as if some spark in his smoldering nervous system had suddenly ignited. “Nothing’s happened, has it?” he said, focusing his eyes on her for the first time. “No one’s died, have they?”

“What?”

“I mean, you haven’t come to tell me there’s something wrong with one of the kids?”

“Oh. No, no,” she assured him. “Nothing’s happened to the kids. Or the grandkids. And no one’s died . . . exactly. But, as it turns out, we are in the middle of a funeral.”

“A funeral? That’s why you’re here?”

She nodded.

He waited for a response about as long as could be expected and, when she didn’t continue, he said perturbed, “Whose funeral?”

“Yours, Mark. Everybody thought you were dead.”

His creased lips parted in surprise, as his inebriated countenance sobered before her.

“What are you doing here, Mark?” she asked, before he had the presence of mind to respond to the news of his funeral.

“What?”

Andy could hardly hear his wilted voice.

“What are you doing in Mexico?” she pushed.

“Waiting.”

“For Tilda?”

He nodded and then seemed to recover his self-respect. “Why are you asking me this?”

“Where is she?”

“Why is it any of your business?”

“Please, Mark. It’s important.”

“Has something happened to Tilda?” Mark swallowed uncomfortably, and it appeared to Andy that his concern was real.

“Just tell me where you think she is.”

He didn’t like the way Andy had phrased the question. His anxiety increased. “In California.”

“Doing what?”

“Putting her name on the title to the cabin up in Big Bear. We decided it was a good idea. She’s, well, so much younger than I am.”

“She is,” Andy said, not wanting to antagonize him, hoping he’d say more.

“We’ve been planning to come to Mexico for a long time. But Tilda wanted to see the cabin in Big Bear and take care of the title change before we buy a place here.”

“You’re buying a place here?”

“Sure. Great place to retire.”

Andy nodded. Waited.

“So I came ahead to Mexico to vacation and to look at real estate, and she went to California take care of business there.”

“When is she joining you?”

“Any day now.”

And there it was, Andy realized all at once, the elusive sequence of events she and Lorna had been unable to piece together. Tilda had made the hotel reservation for Mark, while she had gone to Big Bear to put her
name on the title to the cabin. She’d driven across the southwest from Texas to get a look at her latest asset in the mountains of California and to scope out any potential new hubbies at places like the Elks Lodge. She wasn’t waiting for a death certificate—because she hadn’t killed her mate yet. She was planning to return to Mexico long before Andy and the feds had taken an interest in her. The ticket in her car was there because she needed to complete the job of devouring her latest victim. Andy and Lorna, it turned out, had found the spider before she’d had time to finish her meal.

“What’s wrong, Andrea?” asked Mark, sharply. “What are you doing here?”

Andy set her empty glass down on the glossy bar and felt a surge of sympathy for the man who’d spent at least half of their marriage making her miserable. How odd it should come to this: the two of them on a patio overlooking the Pacific decades later—inevitably discussing his foolish behavior with other women.

“She’s a black widow, Mark. Do you know what I’m talking about?”

“No,” he shoved back, indignantly. “And I’m not going to sit here and—”

“She killed three previous husbands.”

“Fuck you, Andy!”

“And she was about to do the same thing to you. Here in Mexico.”

He stood up, his aging face, waning beneath the beard, burned with confusion and anger. She guessed Mark was probably in love with Tilda, in the same way Gus and the others had loved her. She was young, exotic, full of adventure. What was there
not
to love—and keep loving—right up until the end?

“Sit down, Mark,” she instructed. “You need to hear this. Tilda’s not coming. She’s been arrested by the Treasury Department for tax evasion. And she’s under investigation for murder.”

“You’re lying.”

“No, I’m not. I’m here on a mission,” she said, keeping her angry voice as even as possible. “Because Tilda told your children you were dead and sent your ashes to them in a burger box. They are holding a funeral on Sunday morning. This isn’t a lie. It’s an absurdity—of your own making, Mark. And for once, you need to deal with it.”

Slowly, Mark Kornacky sat back down and ordered another rum.

In the end, he did what he always did when caught in a tangled web; he cried. When he was married to Andy, he cried for the mess he made of things and the second chance he always needed. It had taken her years to realize that whatever the crisis, Mark always cried for himself. And today was really no different.

“How could she do this to me?” he wondered, as he wiped his eyes with his palms. “I thought we were happy. I thought she loved me.”

And in the end, Andy did what she always did; she tried to turn it all into a morality tale, the kind you write in a bad TV movie.

“I think you should come back to Santa Monica with me,” she said, waving away the bartender, who kept nuzzling closer and closer to the conversation in order to follow the story.

“Why should I go to Santa Monica?” he sniffed.

“Because they deserve an explanation.”

He nearly asked ‘who’ before he felt the heat from her glare and stopped himself.

“The kids don’t want to see me,” Mark finally said, dismissing the idea.

Andy marveled at her ex-husband’s capacity for self-pity. “And what about you? Don’t you want to see them?”

For a moment, he was stymied by her reverse logic. But then he recalibrated. “It’s been a long time, Andrea. Our children are adults now. It’s about time they moved on.”

He wasn’t looking at her anymore. He was massaging the glass in his hand. The ache in Andy’s chest bit deeper, and she understood again why our metaphoric hearts are located there, in the same place as the biological ones. That’s where she was now feeling the considerable pain of being reminded that she was once married to this man. Even the bartender sensed her shame.

“On di house,” he whispered, slipping her a margarita he poured in the silence now hanging between the aging couple.

Andy drank. And then drank again.

“You should contact the IRS and the FBI,” she said, draining the glass and dismounting the barstool. “They’re going to want to talk to you as soon as possible.”

She picked up her small suitcase and carried it toward the turquoise door, then stopped. “Do you remember a song called The Weight?”

“Hmmm?” Mark appeared to have reentered his amber afternoon haze.

“With the lyric
Take a load off Fanny
. By The Band?”

“I like that song,” he said, turning to look at her and noticing for the first time that she was leaving.

“Do you think it’s about sex, drugs, or redemption?”

He laughed. “No fucking idea, Andy.”

“I think it’s about dumping somebody’s ass.”

He laughed again. “You mean, like me? When you dumped my ass?”

“Sadly, Mark, that’s exactly what I thought I’d done. A long time ago. Dumped you. But all this time, I’ve been encouraging the kids to hang on. Because, well, you shouldn’t dump your dad, should you?”

“But they have, haven’t they?
They’ve
dumped me now, too.” He sounded strangely satisfied, as if this confirmed everything he believed about both himself and his children.

“No. That’s not it at all. They never dumped you, Mark. And neither did I. You dumped us. Long before the marriage ended. Years before I got the divorce. The problem is, we didn’t dump you back. We’re all still weighed down by a load of guilt when it comes to you. I think every one of us has carried it around in one form or another since you walked out the door and pretended we didn’t exist anymore.”