Hotelero Mono Gritando

Kaqabe, Quintana Roo, Mexico

February 21

In this version of Andie McKenna's nightmare, she was twelve again. No longer chopping up snakes in Mother Mary McKenna's vegetable garden at the orphanage or wasting away in a Catholic boarding school in the French Alps, she knelt on an antique rug in a cozy den. Flames crackled in the fireplace as Christmas carols, old favorites, whispered good cheer.

Nancy Keegan, her best and only friend, sat on a nearby couch, waiting for her famous filmmaker dad, Henry Keegan, to return from yet another business call so Christmas could officially begin. John Coffey, Henry's secrétaire, sat next to his young charge dressed as always in his black jacket and white tux shirt, the pair giggling over some secret families were known to share.

Please, God. Despite the pain that was her life, she still believed in God. I want to stay. Please let me stay.

The knock at the door made her jump, shattering the illusion of family and home, the knocking so loud it threatened to shatter the door and bring down the walls.

She looked at Nancy and Coffey, oblivious to the sounds, and drew in a ragged breath.

Why can no one hear the knocking but me? Why am I always the one set apart?

Like a moth to the flame, she opened the door and watched as the hallway with its antiques and plush Persian rugs melt away into a black void—an oubliette.

"Andie," a husky male voice whispered from the dark.

She strained to see a face. Any face that might explain the voice, but it never came. Instead, it came as it always did at the end of her nightmare.

The knife appeared above her and plunged for her heart. She twisted away, the blade missed its mark, and sliced down her side. Blood gushed in billowing ribbons.

Clutching her side, she looked up to see the knife inches above her heart, ready to strike the fatal blow.

In her nightmare, twelve-year-old Andie screamed.

In her hotel room, thirty-two-year-old Andie bolted awake and choked out a sob.

Twisted in yellowing sheets, she drew in a ragged breath, shoved her long, dark hair from her face, and tried to stop shaking, her slim body soaked with sweat.

Someone was knocking on her door.

"Hola, Señorita," a voice called through the door's rotting wood.

Relief flooded over her as she remembered where she was. Not in her childhood nightmare but in a decrepit, roach-infested hotel in the middle of the Mexican jungle.

She collapsed on the bed, crooked an arm over her eyes, and frowned. Why does his voice sound so familiar?

Of course the old drunk who begged for pesos with the children in the marketplace. Kaqabe was filled with his kind. Remnants of the conquistador's genocide, they wandered aimlessly looking for themselves in the bottom of a tequila bottle or the bittersweet of some shaman's mushroom dream.

As a girl, she felt sorry for them. As a woman, she gave a wide berth to their despair. It was contagious.

"Senorita." The doorknob jiggled, but the ladder-back chair shoved under it held secure. "¿Todo bien?"

No, I am not alright.

"My children are hungry, and you are rich American," the old man implored.

Andie glanced down at the holes in her T-shirt, the frayed laces on the worn boots she'd dropped on the floor hours earlier, and smirked.

Rich? Right. What a joke.

She withdrew five hundred pesos from her knapsack and slipped the money under the door. Shadowy fingers crept in and snagged the cash. She could hear the man's heavy breathing. Could see the shadow of his feet shifting as his unseen hand gave the doorknob another twist.

You don't want to come in here, old man. If you have any idea who I am, you really don't.

The doorknob stopped twisting, and she listened as his footsteps shuffled away. The sudden silence broken by the sound of her cell ringing on the nightstand. She snatched it up, pretty sure who it wasn't, and sat up on the bed.

"What," she said.

"You've got a problem." A voice like rolling thunder rumbled on the other end of the line.

"Curtis?" It could only be. No one else sounded less like a man and more like a brewing monsoon. "Do you know what time it is?"

"Yeah, as a matter of fact, I do," Curtis said in the best peeved, thirteen-year-old voice he could muster. "Just after midnight, San Francisco time."

The unmistakable click of a lighter. The long suck of air between large, white teeth. "See, I was sound asleep. But then I woke up because I couldn't stop worrying about your problem. El problemo. And I got to thinking, hey, if I'm awake and worrying, then maybe you should be awake and worrying, too."

"Problem?" Andie shoved the bangs from her forehead. "What problem?"

"Two more crew texted in sick."

Shit.

"Being that it's your film company, I thought you might like to know." The lighter clicked petulantly on the other end of the line. Click-snap-click-snap. "Being that it's your film company."

"You know, you only call it my company when the shit hits."

"Doesn't change the fact that we're damn near out of crew."

"Hold that thought." She laid the phone on the nightstand, grabbed her shorts from the floor, and tugged them on. Even though Curtis Shotski was thirty-four-hundred miles away, she still felt uncomfortable talking to him in her underwear.

Good Catholic upbringing.

"It's the comet." She dropped down on the edge of the bed, and the springs groaned under her slim weight. "It's making everybody crazy."

"You don't believe that any more than I do," Curtis said. "Want to know what I think?"

"Aw, gee. Can I pass on that?"

"Amusing." Click-snap-click-snap. "I think they found out we got turned down for the loan again. You got a letter."

"Oh." She squeezed her toes against the pockmarked floor. Through the years, she'd tried to prepare herself for every horrible thing that could go wrong in her life. And because it was her life, that meant just about everything.

"Thanks for going through my mail." She tried to sound indignant. It didn't work.

"What's a business partner for?" Curtis tried to sound contrite. That didn't work either.

Friends since film school, she, Curtis, and his wife Lily, had garnered enough accolades to start their own studio. She'd pushed hard for it. So sure they were ready, everyone pooling their savings to make it happen. Then the recession hit, their client list dried up, and the company was on the ropes.

Bad enough to risk my career, my finances, but Lily and Curtis' as well?

Oh, yeah. Henry Keegan's legacy.

My obsession.

"If we could just get distribution, that money would get us out of debt."

"I don't mean to burst your bubble, Cinderella, but you're missing the point. Since there's no money to finish the project, there won't be a project to distribute."

"Wow, I can't believe I forgot to tell you. I got a loan." Up on her feet, she began to pace. Easier to lie to him when she was moving.

"You're telling me this now?"

"Slipped my mind."

"Riiight," Curtis said, drawing out the word, and she heard the righteous suspicion in his voice. "Okay, I'll bite. Who from and how much?"

"Fifty thousand. From a friend."

This person who lent you the money? What's their name?"

"You wouldn't know them." Better to go on lying than tell the truth. Already a failure, she didn't want Curtis to label her a fool as well. And he would if he knew where she'd gotten the money. That, and worse.

"Fine. Don't tell me."

"It's not that—"

"Look," Curtis said, acid in his voice. "I don't care who gave you the money. When can I have it?"

Andie felt about five inches tall. "Give me an hour."

Silence, and then, "I suppose you're not going to tell me where you are, why you had to leave the city so fast, or when you'll be back? You know we're in the middle of a goddamn film shoot."

She bit her lip. What could she say? There was nothing she could say.

"Great." Curtis' lighter clicked furiously. "You and your goddamn secrets."

The line went dead.

She set the phone on the nightstand, sank back down on the bed, and dropped her face in her hands. Tears threatened, but she stuffed them back. Crying, the priest liked to say, was for the weak. And she was hardly that. She was, however, a fool, a failure, and now a liar and a thief. He'd likely have her arrested the minute she set foot in San Francisco.

Could things get any worse?