by Steven Gould
I stepped off the road on the other side, put a mesquite bush between the house and me, and jumped away.
I took a cab into La Crucecita from St. Augustin. I was wearing tourist clothes and a big droopy sun hat. I gave directions in English and when the driver overcharged me, I didn't correct him. I went into Significado Claro like any other client. Alejandra was on the phone and I didn't look at her as she talked-I looked at the posters on the wall.
She glanced at my clothes and said, in English, "I'll be with you in a moment." I waved my hand, acknowledging this.
She was arranging the details for one of her immersion courses out at the Sheraton resort and I listened, not really paying attention to what she said, but just hungry for her voice.
Finally, details arranged, she hung up the phone and said, "How may I help you?"
I took off the hat and held my finger to my lips. They might be bugging the office.
Her eyes widened and without saying anything, she came around the desk and enfolded me in her arms, I began crying.
"Shhhhh." Her arms tightened and I cried harder; after a while, I calmed down and she let go. I picked up a pad of paper and wrote on it, iDonde podemos hablar?
She took the pad and wrote where and when.
A half hour later we met on the wooded hillside behind the church, screened by the trees and with a good view of the approaches.
"No one was with me when I went into the church. I said ten Ave Marias," she told me and held up a bag, "and I brought chapulines."
She was kidding about the grasshoppers.
"I don't know what came over me," I said, over the chicken enmoladas. I'm okay, really."
"I missed you, too," Alejandra said.
I had to busy myself with eating for a moment, though I nearly choked. She covered by telling the news, new babies, two marriages, what was happening at the agency. I'd gotten some of this from Consuelo but I didn't tell her that. I just listened and watched. After a bit, when I'd finished eating, she said, "You look so muscular! Exercising?"
"Yeah, karate."
"And your schoolwork?"
"Yes, Mum. Every day."
She tilted her head. "Your English has changed-the accent, it's less American."
"Yeah, I've been mucking about in London."
"Don't tell me where," she cautioned.
"It's a big town, London-twelve million souls. But I don't live there."
"Et votre frangais?"
We switched to French.
"I still do written class work. I'm going to Normandy next month. Work on my accent."
"I'm jealous! I've been to Quebec and their French is… different. But Martinique in the French West Indies was good. But never to France."
"After next week, I can take you instantly."
She looked sorely tempted. "No. Maybe someday, when our friend from the Villa Blanca is gone, when they've stopped looking for you. Last time I went out of town, to Mexico City, they were there, watching to see who I met."
I could feel my face change, set.
"Don't feel bad. I do everything I would do otherwise, except see you. I just ignore them."
"Consuelo said they searched the house."
I saw anger flicker across her face but then she smiled. "But they didn't take anything. See? Not like a thief."
"They steal your privacy."
She shrugged and touched her forehead. "This is still private." She gestured between us. "This is still private."
She rolled up the paper trash from the lunch, twisting it tighter and tighter, then put it in my hand. "You can dispose of this. I will go back into the church and pray. How do you leave?"
I sighed. "I'll take the bus to Oaxaca, but I won't arrive. Twenty kilometers should be safe." I pulled the hat back over my eyes. "See? Invisible."
"We can meet here sometimes. Have Consuelo call the day before-exactly twenty-four hours before-and she can say el goto saliseo. I will meet you the next day."
"Well, if the cat got out, the coyotes would eat it. Very well, if it is safe," I added a little stridently.
She pulled me to her again. "If it is safe."
The dogs were nowhere to be seen when I appeared behind the bush on the other side of the county road from the ranch house. It was dark but the moon was three-quarters full and my eyes were acclimated. I jumped up to the porch, ripped the bags open, and dumped the rotting coyote corpses in front of the door.
The dogs began barking up a storm but I was back behind the bush before the first light came on.
"Oh, shit! Tasha, Linus, Jack, Lucy, get out of that!" I heard a thud and a dog's yelp. "Trey, get your rifle! Someone's messing with us!" I recognized the voice from when they'd dumped the last coyote.
I left before they started shooting randomly into the night. I hoped all of the dogs rolled in it.
"Why am I doing this?"
Henry reached out and adjusted my bow tie. It was a rented white-jacket dinner suit from a formal hire shop in Lewisham. They made me leave a bloody great deposit since I didn't have a credit card.
"Meet girls, have fun. Meet Tricia."
He'd only asked me two days in advance. I guess if your school is in a Georgian mansion and they have an honest-to-God ballroom, you occasionally have an honest-to-God ball. The St. Bartholomew's Midwinter Ball, to be specific.
"I went once before, when I first started at St. Brutus's, but spent the whole time against the wall. But Tricia's got leave to attend with her roommate and the girls from St. Margaret's come. It'll be fun."
We were waiting for Tricia at Paddington Station by the bronze statue of Isambard Kingdom Brunei. My hair was sticking up in back. I could feel it. I kept trying to push it down but Henry said, "Leave it alone. People will think you have nits."
"Git."
"Twit."
The 5:29 rolled in and Henry turned to watch. If he'd been my height, he would've been craning his neck and standing on tiptoe, but he didn't have to.
I'd realized early on that I was there for moral support. What the hell-why not?
Tricia really was stunning-tall, blond, green-eyed, and if she had any of Henry's problem with pimples, makeup was hiding it entirely. Her roommate was shorter, thank God, probably my height without heels, but slightly taller with. She had dark glossy hair half over her face, brown eyes, a turned-up nose.
"Griffin O'Conner, Martha Petersham."
"Delighted," she said.
"Charmed," I said, sounding rehearsed and phony and stupid.
We took the Tube back to Russell Square but a cab from the station, fog and drizzle not mixing well with rented clothing.
Tricia and Martha checked in with the headmaster as required and he placed the reassuring call back to St. Margaret's. They were to call again when they reached Martha's aunt's flat in Kensington Gardens after the ball.
Henry and I escorted them into the ballroom.
I don't know what I was expecting-probably something like a Merchant-Ivory production with a butler announcing the arrivals. It was kids in good clothes dancing to a nice punk band from the East End. Every six songs or so, the band would break and they'd play slow recorded music and a few students but mostly the chaperones would get out and foxtrot.
"I don't know how to dance," I told Martha early on, "but I'll take instruction."
This, apparently, was the right thing to say. I just thought about it like kata, or two-step kumite, and took instruction. She relaxed a great deal and bossed me around unmercifully. There was lots of laughter and some teasing because Henry and Tricia did all the slow dances.
Henry and I were returning from the refreshments table with drinks when we saw Watters, Henry's in-school nemesis, trying to pull Tricia onto the dance floor. I took one look at Henry's face and said loudly, "Why's the headmaster coming over here?"
Watters released her arm like he'd been scalded and turned.
Henry looked like murder so I stepped forward, between him and Watters, my drinks held out before
me. "Watch out, drinks coming through!" I weaved a bit wildly and Watters stepped back, eyeing the drinks and still looking around for the headmaster.
Tricia, also eyeing Henry's expression, moved suddenly, taking Henry by the hand and saying, "I love this song." She pulled him onto the dance floor and kept moving until she was on the other side, near where two of the chaperones sat, nibbling cake.
I turned, more cautiously, and handed Martha her fizzy water. "Here you go, m'dear." I turned back to Watters and offered him the other. "Thirsty, mate?"
His reply was inarticulate. He turned on his heel and left. I didn't turn my back until he was well away so I was surprised when Martha kissed me on the cheek. I felt my ears go hot.
"What's that for?"
"Being clever," she said. "Being brilliant when it was needed." She was blushing a little, too. "Come on, dance."
We took a taxi after and Henry and I saw them all the way to the aunt's flat in Kensington Gardens.
Henry and Tricia snogged the whole way, and on the steps, before Martha punched the buzzer, I got kissed, too. And not on the cheek.
They scanned our passports, and along with fifteen hundred other souls, we trooped aboard the MV Bretagne. The brochure said it could handle over two thousand, but it was off-season. The cars had been loading for over an hour.
"Dad actually sprung for a cabin. Usually I just do the trip in one of the reclining chairs, which is a lot cheaper, but I guess there's a certain economy with two. He's not paying for two cabins, after all."
I nodded. I vaguely remember taking the ferry to Calais from Dover as a child and my mother insisting we not speak a word of English until we were back in the UK. I think they were both in graduate school then and we had three weeks off.
She was pretty serious about it and I learned the words for my favorite foods pretty quickly. Pommesfrites, Maman, s'il te plait?
They had a cinema aboard, bars, shops, several restaurants. We could've eaten in the fancier table service, Les Abers, but we hit the self-service place, La Baule, instead.
"Not fish and chips again?"
"Eat what you want."
I had the baguette with Brie and tomato and basil, and pie a la mode for pudding.
As we got out into the channel, the ship began pitching around and I began to regret the pie. We'd been thinking about hitting the cinema but it was something we'd both seen, so we returned to our tiny in-board cabin and lay down. Henry dropped off promptly but I couldn't get to sleep-it was still early afternoon by my clock. I started to get up again, but the ship was still dancing and my stomach lurched. I lay back down and dozed, more or less, through the night.
The ship was far calmer when we awoke, sheltered from the north winds by the Cotentin Peninsula. We got our stuff together, then hit the La Gerbe de Locronan cafe for tea and a roll. The Isle of Jersey was bathed in wisps of fog to the south. We docked at Saint-Malo at eight but it took a bit to get off.
Cousin Harold was waiting on the other side of passport control. "No trouble?"
"Not this time," said Henry. "Mr. Harold Langsford, young Master Griffin O'Conner."
We shook hands and I asked, "Is there trouble sometimes?"
Harold smiled. "Sometimes they get concerned about youngsters traveling alone. I've had to step up more than once to show he's being met. But," he looked up at Henry's face, "since Henry's shot up, I expect they're not paying that much attention." He glanced at the people streaming around us. "Let's give the car park a shot, why don't we? I'd like to clear out before they start unloading the cars."
It took less than forty-five minutes to make it to Pontsorson. We went on the coast road but it turned inland before we could see Mont-Saint-Michel. "Later," said Cousin Harold. "Don't want to go today, anyhow. There's less tourists during the week."
We had four days.
Cousin Harold's gray stone "cottage" had four bedrooms, a walled garden, and a vast slate roof. Everything in the garden was brown and wilted but tidy, beds well covered with mulch. It had been foggy in Portsmouth but by the time we parked his Citroen, the sun had burned off the light mist and the sky was blue as Mum's eyes.
Well, like they were.
His home wasn't quite in the village; it was fifteen minutes to walk in. "Thought we'd have lunch at the cafe." On the way he said, "You've just crossed into Normandy."
"It's not at the river?" The bridge was still ahead.
"No, in ancient times it was but now it's west of the river. There's a saying: 'The madness of the Couesnon put Mont-Saint-Michel in Normandy. But modern France doesn't de;pend on the vagaries of rivers."
He fed us fish soup and potatoes and salad and poured us half glasses of white Muscadet. "Right then, you bugger off-I'm going to take my nap. Tea at five?"
We walked around the village and Henry pointed out a large three-storied house with dormer windows sticking out of the slate roof and shielded by a wrought iron and stone wall. "That's haunted, you know."
"Tell me another."
"Well, doesn't it look like it's haunted?"
"Oh, aye. Movie-set haunted. Like the haunted house in Disneyland. They have that at Euro Disney?"
"They call it the Phantom Manor, I think."
We walked down around the Hotel Montgomery and then down by the river, the Couesnon, and the walkway that ran all the way to Mont-Saint-Michel.
The sun made everything lovely-still, warm air-and I took off my jacket and tied it around my waist. Back by the train station there were lots of little models of the Mont and I asked the clerk, a bored young woman, which she thought I should buy, to try my French. She looked at me like I was crazy but entered into a conversation readily enough. I began saying things like, "Well, if I wanted to hit someone, which would be the best? And which do you recommend for throwing? For feeding to disliked relatives? For clogging a toilet?"
This killed thirty minutes and I could feel my ear for the accent improving. She asked where we were from and, fortunately, didn't want to try her English when she found out. Then a large busload of tourists returned from the Mont and filled the shop, killing time before their train. I bought a medium brass Mont and a postcard and we fled from the crowd.
"Well, your accent is still atrocious," said Henry.
"She didn't seem to have any trouble understanding me."
"Triumph of content over style. Your vocabulary is still bigger. Couldn't follow all of it."
"Thought you studied it in school?"
"Used to. This year it's Arabic."
"Oh."
"Because it looks like my parents are making a speciality of the Middle East. And, er…"
"And?"
"Tricia, too. She's fluent."
I laughed and laughed, until he turned red and punched my arm.
"Nous devrions parler seulementfrangais tandis que nous sommes ici."
He had me say it more slowly and finally got it.
So we did-only French for the rest of the trip. Cousin Harold was fine with it. He'd been fluent for years. Henry didn't talk near as much as he usually did but we worked hard to drag him into conversations.
The next day, Henry and I walked all the ten kilometers to the Mont and spent the day wandering from Gautier's Leap to Gabriel's Tower, then spent some time toddling around the mud banks, though we stayed away from the areas marked
SABLES MOUVANTS!
I discussed it with Henry, in French of course. He picked up a rock and heaved it onto the wet sand and bloop, it sank right down. Very quick sand indeed.
I sketched a great deal, annoying Henry, who was snapping pics with his camera, but got a good sketch of the lace staircase and the statue of Saint Michael slaying the dragon. He kept wanting me to hurry up but I'd just send him off to get us drinks or snacks.
Having decided we'd walked quite enough, we took the train station shuttle back to Pontorson.
We relaxed the next day, helped Cousin Harold clear leaves out of his roof gutters. I sketched, and we watched a Manchester
United match on the telly. We were keeping the deal though, not speaking anything but French.
By the time the MV Bretagne had pulled into Portsmouth (Cousin Harold came back with us, to hand us through passport control and do some shopping) my accent was much better and we'd managed to increase Henry's vocabulary by about fifty words.
"You visit me this summer and we'll make a real breakthrough-get you speaking like Griff here," said Cousin Harold, finally reverting to English while we waited in the British-citizen line at immigration.
They were scanning the bar code on the passports and glancing at the pictures, and saying, "Welcome back, welcome back, welcome ba-" The terminal beeped when they scanned my passport and two bored-looking guards leaning against the wall were suddenly blocking the route out to the car park and the taxis and the buses.
"Mr. O'Conner, I'm afraid I'll need you to go with these officers."
Shit! "What's wrong?" I asked. "Did my passport expire?"
He shook his head. "No."
Cousin Harold and Henry had gone through before me and gotten yards on the way, but Henry tugged on Harold's elbow and they came back. "What seems to be the problem, Officer?"
"Are you traveling with this lad, sir?"
"Indeed I am. In loco parentis, so to speak. Were you worried he was an unaccompanied minor?"
"No, sir. There's an alert out. He's wanted for questioning."
"Questioning? For what? I should really call his parents, then."
"I'd be surprised if you could, sir. According to this alert, they were murdered six years ago. This lad's been missing ever since."
Henry was frowning but when he heard this his eyes went wide. "Nonsense. Griff's dad teaches computers and his mother teaches French lit."
The immigration control officer narrowed his eyes and looked interestedly at Henry. "Tell you that, did he?"
"Stop it," I said to Henry. "That's what they did, all right. Before-" My voice broke and I clamped my mouth shut.
Cousin Harold frowned at me. "Surely, Officer, you don't expect this boy to have anything to do with this crime?"
The officer shrugged. "It just says 'detain for questioning.' Until four days ago he was presumed dead." His phone rang and he picked it up. "Yes, sir. We've got him. Your office? Yes, sir." He hung up and spoke to the two guards. "The chief wants him." He handed my passport to one of them.
