Day of the Dead

‘Gary, Vicky tells me you might have Danny’s address,’ she said.

‘I might.’

Gary smiled, pushing his pillowy cheeks up to meet his puffy eyes. Like a debauched cherub, Michelle thought. ‘You want to check up on him? See how he’s doing?’

‘No.’ She pushed down the urge to snap off some hostile response. ‘I mean yes, but mainly I have some of his things. His phone. And I think he has mine.’

‘Ah.’ From his little smirk, she wondered if he believed her. He appeared to consider. ‘Well, I think I can help you out,’ he finally said. ‘Anybody have a pen?’

Vicky did.

He extracted a business card from his wallet and scribbled on its back. ‘This isn’t the exact address, but any cabdriver will be able to find it.’ He held it out to her, fingertips brushing hers when she took it. ‘I wouldn’t go there tonight, though. I don’t think he’s home right now. Try him tomorrow.’ The smirk again. ‘Not too early.’

She glanced at the front of the card. Plain black letters on white linen – nice design and good-quality paper.

Gary Wallace. Trinity Consulting. A cell-phone number. An e-mail address.

‘Thanks.’ She stood up, unsteady from the rum. ‘I’d better get going,’ she said. ‘Thanks for the drinks.’

Vicky rose with her and gave her a hug. ‘This is a good place,’ she said in Michelle’s ear. ‘Don’t let what happened spoil Vallarta for you.’

CHAPTER FOUR

‘I think you will want to take a cab,’ the woman at the front desk told her after looking at the address written on Gary’s card. ‘It is a ways from here, and up the hill.’

‘But close enough to walk?’

‘If you like walking.’

Between last night’s drinks and the margarita she’d just had at lunch, she could use the walk. ‘I do.’

‘Maybe two miles.’

I could take some pictures, she thought. Like she’d set out to do yesterday, before Daniel’s phone rang.

She went back to her room, grabbed the Che bag with Daniel’s clothes, retrieved her Olympus E-3 from the hotel safe, and set off, heading south from the hotel, up a road that curved around the hill.

The heat made it hard to keep walking. It felt like being smothered in a steaming-hot blanket. Sweat dripped into her eyes, smeared her sunglasses when she pushed them onto her head. And trying to take pictures while juggling her purse and the Che bag was awkward. The camera, which usually fit so comfortably in her hand, slipped in her grip.

Nothing was going to go right today.

She tried. Shot a few images. Nothing very interesting. Wrought iron and bougainvillea. Superhero piñatas. She’d seen these photos before, she was certain, and seen them better executed.

Michelle put the camera back in its bag and slung it over her shoulder.

The road ahead was cobblestoned, the banks lining it tangled with browning vegetation that would not green until after the summer rains, with plastic bags and food wrappers caught up in the branches. A lot of the houses looked expensive. New construction clung tenuously to the hillside, as though the flesh of the land had wasted away, leaving skeletal frames stacked unsteadily on top of one another, foundations undermined before they’d even been laid. With enough rain saturating the hill, she could just see one of these buildings giving up, letting go, the cheap rebar popping out of the ground like a rotten tooth.

Halfway up the hill was a little street that branched off the main road at an impossibly steep angle. She followed it, per Gary’s directions. The street led to a cluster of small, multistory buildings – apartments or condominiums.

The one on the right, Gary’s note said, light brown with a dark roof.

She looked. She thought the description fit, but blue tarps covered most of the roof, and there was other evidence of ongoing construction or repairs: a small cement mixer and a pile of gravel, a dug-up walkway, a boarded window. No workers. The place looked abandoned.

Daniel’s unit was the one on the upper right, according to Gary’s note. The tarps extended halfway across what would have been his roof.

Michelle stood there for a moment. She was absurdly sweaty, drenched; her blouse was actually wet, her hair separated into salty tendrils. Really, she wasn’t in any condition to see Daniel if he was there.

Did she want to see him? She wasn’t sure.

Stupid, she told herself. You need your phone. You’ve come all this way. Say hello, how are you, and good-bye.

She shifted the tote bag on her shoulder and approached the building.

An external staircase with a wrought-iron banister led up to Daniel’s unit, crossing the side of the building and leading to a balcony facing the ocean, wide enough to accommodate two chairs and a small glass table.

When she reached the balcony, she could see only a sliver of water above the roof of the building below. Still a nice view, she supposed.

There was no name on the door, no number, no mailbox. She’d have to take Gary’s word that this was the right unit. If it wasn’t … well, this was a small building. Someone would have to know where Daniel lived.

If no one answers, she thought, I’ll leave the bag by the door with a note. Take his phone back to the hotel, and he can pick it up there.

Heart pounding, she knocked on the door.

Which swung open. About six inches before the rusting hinges slowed it to a halt.

Michelle hesitated at the threshold.

‘Daniel?’ she called out.

She heard something from within. Not a person. She couldn’t make it out at first. A sort of hum.

A fly flew out the door, bumping into her shoulder.

I have to look, she told herself. I have to look.

She pushed the door further open.

It was dim inside, the curtains drawn, and hot. The smell, the flies – for that was the hum she’d heard, the buzzing of flies – hit her at once, and she couldn’t entirely sort out one thing from the other – the darkness, the closed heat, the smell: a sweetish rot. She fumbled for a light switch, thinking there must be one, but there wasn’t, not by the door at least.

Her eyes adjusted. It wasn’t really dark. There was enough light seeping through the curtains, from the open door.

The living room. This was the living room. It was simple, hardly anything in it. A couch. A chair. A television. A coffee table.

On the coffee table was something dark, an oval shape with protrusions she couldn’t make out. The thing almost seemed to shimmer, as though its lines were mutable, fluid, shifting ever so slightly.

She approached the table, and a cloud of flies rose from the object.

A head.