The Ruins (3 page)

 While
they were waiting for Eric and Stacy to return with their backpack, one
of the Greeks came walking into the lobby. It was the one
who'd been calling himself Pablo lately. He hugged everyone
in turn. All the Greeks liked to hug; they did it at every opportunity.
After the hugs, he and Jeff had a brief discussion in their separate
languages, both of them resorting to pantomime to fill in the gaps.

 "Juan?"
Jeff asked. "Don Quixote?" He lifted his hands,
raised his eyebrows.

 Pablo
said something in Greek and made a casting motion with his arm. Then he
pretended to reel in a large fish, straining against its weight. He
pointed to his watch, at the six, then the twelve.

 Jeff
nodded, smiled, showing he understood: the other two had gone fishing.
They'd left at six and would be back at noon. He took
Henrich's
note, showed
it to the Greek. He gestured at Amy and Mathias, waved upward to
indicate Stacy and Eric, then pointed at
Cancún
on the map. He slowly moved his finger to
Cobá
,
then to
the
X
,
which marked the dig. He couldn't think how to explain the
purpose of their trip, how to
signal
brother
or
missing
,
so he just kept tracing his finger across the map.

 Pablo
got very excited. He smiled and nodded and pointed at his own chest,
then at the map, talking rapidly in Greek all the while. It appeared he
wanted to go with them. Jeff nodded; the others nodded, too. The Greeks
were staying in the neighboring hotel. Jeff pointed toward it, then
down at Pablo's bare legs, then at his own jeans. Pablo just
stared at him. Jeff pointed at the others, at their pants, and the
Greek began nodding again. He started to leave, but then came back
suddenly, reaching for
Henrich's
note. He took it to the concierge's desk; they saw him borrow
a pen, a piece of paper, then bend to write. It took him a long time.
In the middle of it, Eric and Stacy reappeared, with their backpack,
and Pablo tossed down his pen, rushed over to hug them. He and Eric
made shaking motions with their hands, casting imaginary dice. They
pretended to drink, then laughed and shook their heads, and Pablo told
a long story in Greek that no one could make any sense of. It seemed to
have something to do with an airplane, or a bird, something with wings,
and it took him several minutes to relate. It was obviously funny, or
at least he found it to be so, because he kept having to stop and
laugh. His laughter was infectious, and the others joined in, though
they couldn't say why. Finally, he went back and resumed
whatever he was doing with
Henrich's
note.

 When
he returned, they saw that he'd made his own copy of the
hand-drawn map. He'd written a paragraph in Greek above it;
Jeff assumed it was a note for Juan and Don Quixote, telling them to
come join them at the dig. He tried to explain to Pablo that they were
only intending to go for the day, that they'd be back late
that evening, but he couldn't find a way to make this clear.
He kept pointing at his watch, and so did Pablo, who seemed to think
Jeff was asking when the other two Greeks would return from fishing.
They were both pointing at the twelve, but Jeff meant midnight, and
Pablo meant noon. Finally, Jeff gave up; they were going to miss their
bus if this continued. He waved Pablo toward his hotel, gesturing at
his bare legs again. Pablo smiled and nodded and hugged them all once
more, then jogged out of the lobby, clutching the copy of
Henrich's
map in his
hand.

 Jeff
waited by the front door, watching for their van. Mathias paced about
behind him, folding and unfolding
Henrich's
note, sliding it into his pocket, only to pull it out again. Stacy,
Eric, and Amy sat together on a couch in the center of the lobby, and
when Jeff glanced toward them, he felt a sudden wavering. They
shouldn't go, he realized; it was a terrible idea.
Eric's head kept dipping; he was drunk and overtired and
having great difficulty staying awake. Amy was pouting, arms folded
across her chest, eyes fixed on the floor in front of her. Stacy was
wearing sandals and no socks; in a few more hours, her feet were going
to be covered in bug bites. Jeff couldn't imagine
accompanying these three on a two-mile hike through the
Yucatán heat. He knew he should just explain this to
Mathias, apologize, ask for his forgiveness. All he had to do was think
of a way to say it, to make Mathias understand, and they could spend
another aimless day on the beach. It ought to have been easy enough,
finding the right words, and Jeff was just starting to form them in his
head when Pablo returned, dressed in jeans, carrying a pack. There were
hugs again, all around, everyone talking at once. Then the van arrived,
and they were piling into it, one after another, and suddenly it was
too late to speak with Mathias, too late not to go. They were pulling
out into traffic, away from the hotel, the beach, everything that had
grown so familiar in the past two weeks. Yes, they were on their way,
they were leaving, they were going, they were gone.

A
s Stacy was hurrying after the
others into the bus station, a boy grabbed her breast. He reached in
from behind and gave it a hard, painful squeeze. Stacy spun, scrambling
to thrust his hand from her body. That was the whole
point—the spin, the scrambling, the distraction inherent in
these motions—it gave a second boy the opportunity to snatch
her hat and sunglasses from her head. Then they were off, both of them,
racing down the sidewalk, two dark-haired little boys—twelve
years old, she would've guessed—vanishing now into
the crowd.

 The
day was abruptly bright without her glasses. Stacy stood blinking, a
little dazed, still feeling the boy's hand on her breast. The
others were already pushing their way into the station. She'd
yelped—she thought she'd yelped—but
apparently no one had heard. She had to run to catch up with them, her
hand reflexively rising to hold her hat to her head, the hat that was
no longer there, that was beyond the plaza already, moving farther and
farther into the distance with each passing second, traveling toward
some new owner's hands, a stranger who'd have no
idea of her, of course, no sense of this moment, of her running into
the
Cancún
bus station, struggling suddenly against the urge to cry.

 Inside,
it felt more like an airport than a bus station, clean and heavily
air-conditioned and very bright. Jeff had already found the right
ticket counter; he was talking to the attendant, asking questions in
his careful, precisely enunciated Spanish. The others were huddled
behind him, pulling out their wallets, gathering the money for their
fares. When Stacy reached them, she said, "A boy stole my
hat."

 Only
Pablo turned; the others were all leaning toward Jeff, trying to hear
what the attendant was telling him. Pablo smiled at her. He gestured
around them at the bus station, in the way someone might indicate a
particularly pleasing view from a balcony.

 Stacy
was beginning to calm down now. Her heart had been racing,
adrenaline-fueled, her body trembling with it, and now that it was
starting to ease, she felt more embarrassed than anything else, as if
the whole incident were somehow her own fault. This was the sort of
thing that always seemed to be happening to her. She dropped cameras
off ferries; she left purses on airplanes. The others didn't
lose things or break things or have them stolen, so why should she? She
should've been paying attention. She should've seen
the boys coming. She was calmer, but she still felt like crying.

 "And
my sunglasses," she said.

 Pablo
nodded, his smile deepening. He seemed very happy to be here. It was
unsettling, having him respond with such oblivious contentment to what
she believed must be her obvious distress; for a moment, Stacy wondered
if he might be mocking her. She glanced past him to the others.

 "Eric,"
she called.

 Eric
waved her away without looking at her. "I got it,"
he said. He was handing Jeff money for their tickets.

 Mathias
was the only one who turned. He stared for a moment, examining her
face, then stepped toward her. He was so tall and she was so small; he
ended up crouching in front of her, as if she were a child, looking at
her with what appeared to be genuine concern. "What's wrong?" he asked.

 On
the night of the bonfire, when Stacy had kissed the Greek, it
hadn't been only Amy she'd felt staring at her, but
Mathias, too. Amy's expression had been one of pure surprise;
Mathias's had been perfectly blank. In the days to follow,
she'd caught him watching her in the exact same manner: not
judgmental, exactly, but with a hidden, held-back quality that
nonetheless made her feel as if she were being weighed in some balance,
appraised and assessed, and found wanting. Stacy was a coward at
heart—she had no illusions about this, knew that
she'd sacrifice much to escape difficulty or
conflict—and she'd avoided Mathias as best she
could. Avoided not only his presence but his eyes, too, that watchful
gaze. And now here he was, crouched in front of her, looking at her so
sympathetically, while the others, all unknowing, busied themselves
purchasing their tickets. It was too confusing; she lost her voice.

 Mathias
reached out, touched her forearm, just with his fingertips, resting
them there, as if she were some small animal he was trying to calm. "What is it?" he asked.

 "A
boy stole my hat," Stacy managed to say. She gestured toward
her head, her eyes. "And my sunglasses."

 "Just
now?"

 Stacy
nodded, pointed toward the doors. "Outside."

 Mathias
stood up; his fingertips left her arm. He seemed ready to stride off
and find the boys. Stacy lifted her hand to stop him.

 "They're
gone," she said. "They ran away."

 "Who
ran away?" Amy asked. She was standing, suddenly, beside
Mathias.

 "The
boys who stole my hat."

 Eric
was there, too, now, handing her a piece of paper. She took it, held it
at her side, with no sense of what it was, or why Eric wanted her to
have it. "Look at it," he said. "Look at
your name."

 Stacy
peered down at the piece of paper. It was her ticket; her name was
printed on it. "
Spacy
Hutchins," it said.

 Eric
was smiling, pleased with himself. "They asked for our
names."

 "Her
hat was stolen," Mathias said.

 Stacy
nodded, feeling that embarrassment again. Everyone was staring at her. "And my sunglasses."

 Now
Jeff was there, too, not stopping, moving past them. "Hurry," he said. "We're
gonna
miss it." He was
heading off toward their gate, and the others started after him: Pablo
and Mathias and Amy, all in a line. Eric lingered beside her.

 "How?"
he asked.

 "It
wasn't my fault."

 "I'm
not saying that. I'm just—"

 "They
grabbed them. They grabbed them and ran." She could still
feel the boy's grip on her breast. That, and the oddly cool
touch of Mathias's fingertips on her arm. If Eric asked her
another question, she was afraid it would be too much for her;
she'd surrender, begin to cry.

 Eric
glanced toward the others. They were almost out of sight. "We
better go," he said. He waited until she nodded, and then
they started off together, his hand clasping hers, pulling her along
through the crowd.

T
he bus wasn't at all
what Amy had expected. She'd pictured something dirty and
broken-down, with rattling windows and blown shocks and a smell coming
from the bathroom. But it was nice. There was air conditioning; there
were little TVs hanging from the ceiling. Amy's seat number
was on her ticket. She and Stacy were together, toward the middle of
the bus. Pablo and Eric were directly in front of them, with Jeff and
Mathias across the aisle.

 As
soon as the bus pulled out of the station, the TVs turned on. They were
playing a Mexican soap opera. Amy didn't know any Spanish,
but she watched anyway, imagining a story line to fit the
actors' startled expressions, their gestures of disgust. It
wasn't that difficult—all soap operas are more or
less the same—and it made her feel better, losing herself a
little in her imagined narrative. It was immediately clear that the
dark-haired man who was maybe some sort of lawyer was cheating on his
wife with the bleached-blond woman, but that he didn't
realize the blonde was taping their conversations. There was an elderly
woman with lots of jewelry who was obviously manipulating everyone else
with her money. There was a woman with long black hair whom the elderly
woman trusted but who appeared to be plotting something against her.
She was in league with the elderly woman's doctor, who seemed
also to be the bleached blonde's husband.

 After
awhile, by the time they'd left the city behind and were
heading south along the coast, Amy felt easy enough with herself that
she reached out and took Stacy's hand. "It's all right," she said. "You can borrow my hat, if you want."

 And
Stacy's smile at this—so open, so immediate, so
loving—changed everything, made the whole day seem possible,
even exciting. They were best friends, and they were going on an
adventure, a hike through the jungle to see the ruins. They held hands
and watched the soap opera. Stacy couldn't speak Spanish,
either, so they argued about what was happening, each of them
struggling to propose the most outlandish scenario possible. Stacy
imitated the elderly woman's expressions, which were like a
silent movie actress's, expansive and exaggerated, full of
greed and malice, and they hunched low in their seats, giggling
together, each making the other feel better—safer,
happier—as the bus pushed its way down the coast through the
day's burgeoning heat.