Acapulco, 1953
He made his way back up the sands to the hotel as soon as he knew they would be in the office. Trudging past the Big Crowd in their lounge chairs, the men baking themselves a still deeper red-brown, the matrons remaining a pure white under their parasols and bandanas, commanding the Indian maids who crouched by their sides, digging into picnic baskets and buckets of rapidly melting ice for finger sandwiches and bottles of pink champagne. Tom sure he could feel their eyes following him, beneath sunglasses and umbrellas—wondering if he was becoming as paranoid as Slim.
In the hotel, he struggled with the change and the international operator in his meager Spanish, trying both to make himself understood and to keep from shouting his business across the echoing, tiled lobby. There was a long silence as he waited for Ellie to come on, picturing her in the hushed, carpeted office, the Seven Sisters grads gliding briskly through the halls.
“Tom! Where are you?”
He could hear her voice at last, as if down the other end of a wind tunnel—sounding, he thought, a little plaintive and confused.
“I told you! Acapulco!” he repeated, watching heads turn across the elegant lobby, trying desperately not to shout.
“Why are you there?”
“It’s complicated! I came down with Charlie, to talk to him.”
“How did that go?”
There was a sudden break in the constant blast of the winds when she spoke, and her voice came across abruptly close, and intimate. Filled with an immediate, tactful sympathy that made him feel even more like a louse.
“He went back to Mexico City. There was a . . . disagreement,” he said awkwardly, trying to explain as cryptically as possible for anyone who might be overhearing.
“With you?”
“No.”
There was a pause on the line.
“With . . . her?”
“Yes.”
There was another pause—one so long this time that he was afraid he might have lost the connection.
“So you’re there . . . with her.”
“Yes. Look, Ellie, he just stormed out. She’s supposed to give me a ride back.”
“Today?”
“Well . . . I don’t know. Look, it’s complicated—”
Her voice coming back to him, both wistful and ironic. “I bet.”
The operator was back on the line by then, saying something in Spanish that he could barely fathom, but surely pertaining to money. He tried to talk over her: “I’ll call you when I’m back—”
The operator kept talking, the windstorm on the line blowing back up again. He thought he could just make out the words Ellie was saying, though afterward he wasn’t sure, they sounded so strange—the tone still angry, but anxious for him at the same time: “Tom, don’t let him trap you down there . . .”
He walked back across the immaculate white sand, still contemplating what she’d said. How would Charlie ever trap him? It didn’tw make sense. His brother, whose name he would clear—who he wanted only to redeem.
Just as soon as he finished sleeping with his wife . . .
Slim was standing above their picnic basket when he reached her, the blanket over her shoulder, beach umbrella in her hand. He noticed the crease of muscle in her well-tanned arms.
Arms strong enough to kill a bull? he wondered idly. At least an old and tired one?
“What’s up?” he asked, trying to tamp down the note of hope in his voice. “We’re leaving already?”
“Everybody is. Didn’t you notice?” she said, gesturing around. Looking around, he could see the Big Crowd all trudging together off the beach. All of them—the kerchiefed matrons and the bronzed playboys, the little children and young wives—headed north along the little peninsula, plodding along as dutifully as sea crabs responding to some tidal imperative, their maids and their valets scrambling to gather up their possessions and follow. In their wake, a darkness was spreading slowly across the Caleta, something he had failed altogether to notice coming back from the hotel, he had been so engrossed thinking about Ellie, and his brother.
“What is it? An eclipse?” he asked, uncomprehending.
“La Quebrada,” she said, pointing to the mountain. “Every day the sun moves behind it at noon, and we all follow it over to La Caletilla.”
He took the umbrella and the picnic basket from her, and they began to make their own track across the cooling sands. Tom and Slim were the very last, and by the time they reached the knot of trees the Caleta was the shade of a late afternoon before a thunderstorm. Even as the shadow moved over their beach, it seemed to recede from the one ahead of them, like a tarpaulin being removed from a ball field—leaving the white sands ahead as pristine and sunlit as what they had just left. Slim was a little ahead of him, and now it was her turn to smile back at him—trying to tease, lowering her sunglasses, her lips smiling but her eyes filled with trepidation.
“Slim,” he said compulsively, and then he took hold of her elbow and guided her into the little grove of trees, away from where anyone could see.
She smiled wider and gave a little laugh, mistaking—or trying to mistake—his urgency for lust, her long, tanned legs moving against his. She closed her eyes and kissed him, and he could taste the sea salt on her tongue. He pulled her closer to him, but broke the kiss.
“Slim,” he said, and she knew. Her face falling as he held her by her arms.
“Ah, hell,” she said, pulling away from him and running a finger across his hair, pushing away a stray hair. “It’s just such bad timing! It always was.”
“I don’t know about that,” he said, still holding her—still wanting to kiss her, as he always did when she was this close. “It was the two of us taking what we wanted, regardless of anyone else.”
“I know. And I liked it. I won’t say that I didn’t like it,” she told him defiantly. “If I’d met you first—”
“If we’d met first, would it have still been what we wanted?” he asked softly.
She made no answer but huddled against him in the deepening shade of the deserted beach. His arms around her, holding her to him and warming them both.
“It was the best thing I ever had,” she said, her face wet against his chest now. “I know we hurt him, I know we did, and I know it’s impossible now, but I won’t regret it. I won’t say that it’s wrong, or a sin, or some kind of delusion. If we betrayed him—”
“We did betray him.”
“If we betrayed him, he sold himself out a long time ago, Tom. At least we did it out of love.”
“Yes, love. That’s the best excuse there is.”