We registered and took hot showers before breakfast. I sat on one of the two twin beds while Barbara showered, rubbing lotion on my legs, working around the mosquito bites and scratches. For the first time in a week, I was wearing a skirt and sandals rather than jeans and sneakers, and my hair felt clean. Overhead, the ceiling fan turned with a steady rattle. Barbara was singing in the shower.
Parque Hidalgo was a small brick-paved plaza. Tall broad-leaved trees shaded the plaza and dropped small yellow blossoms on the men who spent the day idling on the park benches. In the center of the square a tall bronze man stood on a white stone pillar atop a stone platform. I never did learn his name.
We ate breakfast at a sidewalk café beside the hotel and on one side of the park. Ornate metal tables, fringed umbrellas, red-and-white tablecloths, and a matronly waitress who seemed harried.
‘Hamacas?’ asked a stout man in a yellow baseball cap. On one shoulder he carried a bundle of plastic-wrapped hammocks. Over the other shoulder, he had slung a loose hammock, which he held out for our inspection.
‘Is your name Emilio?’ I asked. ‘I’m looking for a hammock vendor named Emilio.’ He shook his head heavily and went to the next table, where there were tourists with simpler needs.
Barbara flipped through the pages of a tourist guide to Mérida, which she had picked up from the hotel lobby. It told the way to the zoo, to the market, to the ruins at Chichén Itzá, to the best places for lunch and for dancing. She read aloud bits of information that she found interesting.
‘The main square is called the zocalo,’ she told me.
I nodded, watching the people strolling by on the street. The coffee was good and I was content. I had not realized that I was nervous about being at the dig until now, when I had relaxed.
‘You interested in a tour of Chichén Itzá?’ she asked me. ‘It’s only about an hour’s drive from here.’
‘Maybe tomorrow,’ I said.
‘We could tour Casa Montejo, the mansion built by the Spanish back in 1549,’ she said. ‘Or we could visit the cathedral. Or we could go to the market.’
‘Whatever you like.’
We decided to go to the market, figuring that we would have time to stop in the cathedral on our way back and still have time for a siesta before dinner.
We were finishing breakfast and drinking coffee when I spotted Marcos at the far end of the cafe. I nudged Barbara. ‘He’s better-looking than I remembered,’ I said. He was a thin, small-boned young man with dark brown eyes, white teeth, high dark cheekbones. He was grinning as he watched a hammock salesman – I assumed it was Emilio – display a hammock to an American couple: a woman in a sundress and a man in a Hawaiian shirt. Emilio had looped one end of a hammock around the arm of one of the wrought-iron chairs. He hesitated for a moment, holding the hammock in a bundle, then he flipped it open with an elegant flourish – the way a waiter uncorks a bottle of wine. The gesture conveyed the importance of the act and the value of the product. The hammock was a rich shade of purple that caught the sunlight and held it.
Marcos saw us then and joined us at the table. ‘Hello,’ he said to me. ‘How are you?’ He pulled out a chair. We watched Emilio close his sale; the American couple walked away with two hammocks, and Emilio stuffed a handful of paper money into his pocket.
He came to the table and dropped his bundle of hammocks by a chair. ‘It’s going to be a good day,’ he said. ‘I have luck today.’ He was a head shorter than I, compact and broad-shouldered. Dark eyes, dark skin, and a smile like an all-American boy except for the gold filling that showed around the edges of one front tooth. ‘You are Marcos’s friends.’ The easy charm of a born salesman. ‘You want to buy a hammock? I’ll give you a good price.’
‘We’ve got hammocks,’ Barbara said. ‘In fact, we’re sick to death of hammocks.’
‘How could you be sick of hammocks?’ Emilio asked, and Barbara went on at length on how she could be sick of hammocks, so very sick of hammocks.
‘Buy one for a present,’ Emilio suggested and then bought a round of coffee with the same sort of flourish with which he displayed a hammock. We talked about tourists and the weather while the morning wore on. Emilio and Marcos seemed quite at home in the café, familiar with the waitress. A line was forming outside the nearby movie theater. The smell of popcorn hung in the warm air.
After a time, Emilio was trying to talk Barbara into visiting an isolated cave at a place called Homún. An underground river in a limestone cave with stalactites. ‘Beautiful,’ he said. ‘Really beautiful.’
Marcos was watching me. ‘Qué piensas?’ he asked. ‘What are you thinking?’
I shrugged. ‘Not much.’
‘You looked like you were thinking about something.’
I shrugged again. Emilio was using both hands to describe the stalactites in the cave. Barbara looked unconvinced.
‘On the plane, you looked sad. What was wrong?’ Marcos asked.
I said nothing. Shrugged.
He glanced at Emilio, who was growing more eloquent in his attempts to persuade Barbara that a visit to the lonely cavern at Homún was the perfect thing for any young American’s summer vacation. ‘I am tired of sitting here,’ Marcos said. ‘Come on. We’ll walk and come back here.’ We left Barbara and Emilio talking about underground rivers.
They walk, in Mérida. Out in the small parks, where the breezes are a little cooler than the air pushed about by the ubiquitous ceiling fans. We wandered through the main square. ‘What were you doing in Los Angeles?’ I asked Marcos.
‘I went to visit my uncle.’ He shrugged. ‘But there was no work, so I came home. There is no work here, but I have friends.’
He led the way through the square, past small horse-drawn carriages in which tourists rode.
‘What made you sad?’ Marcos asked. ‘You can tell me.’
I shrugged and told him about coming to the dig to find my mother, about how I had not seen my mother in many years.
He listened and nodded. ‘So, what do you want from your mother?’ he asked.
I shrugged.
‘You don’t know what you want.’
‘I guess not.’
‘Tonight,’ he said, ‘I play basketball for the university. You want to come?’
‘Basketball? Let me see what Barbara thinks.’
He took my hand. ‘Even if Barbara does not want to come, you come and watch me play, OK?’
‘All right.’
Back at the café, Emilio was asking Barbara what we were planning to do that day.
‘Go to the market,’ she said. ‘Wander around Mérida.’
‘And tomorrow?’ he said. ‘What are you going to do tomorrow?’
‘We talked about going to Chichén Itzá,’ she said. ‘But it’s a long drive.’
‘I’ll help drive,’ Emilio said. ‘No problem. I’ll bring hammocks to sell. All right?’ Barbara was laughing, but Emilio did not let up. ‘I’ll tell you what. If you want to go to Chichén Itzá, you meet me here tomorrow in the morning. I’ll help drive. It’ll be good.’ He grinned, showing his gold-rimmed tooth.
We finished our coffee, and Emilio and Marcos went to the zocalo to sell hammocks. Barbara and I went to the market, heading away from the zocalo on Calle 60, a narrow street with narrow sidewalks. All the streets were narrow. The houses and shops pressed close to the street and stood shoulder to shoulder, presenting a solid front to the world.
We passed the open door of a room filled with the smell of beer and the sound of men talking. A young man standing in the doorway smiled at us, but we did not smile back. We smiled at children, dogs, and women. The children smiled back; the dogs and women did not.