Angels in Heaven

the partition separating us and called out,
“Everyone comfy back there?”
    “No,” I said. “And keep it down, will
you? I’ve started a diary of my own and I’m trying to concentrate.”
    After that she kept it down except
for the occasional comment, like “This is your friendly tour guide. Puerto
Morelos comin’ up straight ahead,” and “Puerto Morelos Hilton, next stop,” and
“Hang on, creepy crawlies ahead.”
    We bounced. We lurched. We jolted. We
jarred. At last we stopped, this time in a clearing just big enough to turn the
truck around in. I took a look around with the flashlight. We were on one side
of a sluggish-looking river some thirty feet across. A decrepit, mossy,
slippery gangplank only a couple of feet wide extended out from the bank to two
uprights sunk in the river.
    “That’ll be fun too, with ail the
baggage,” I said to Benny. “Don’t worry, we’ll carry you, Prof,” said Doris. “And crocs don’t feed at night unless something large, with a lot of fat, falls in.”
    We had a half hour to wait, so we sat
and waited. There were a lot of stars high above and a lot of mosquitoes lower
down. There was the occasional unforgettable cry of the lesser Cancún vulture.
    Twelve o’clock came, then
twelve-thirty, then one, with no sign of Dan—or maybe he’d arrived in a
submarine.
    By two o’clock, we had to face it.
Something must have come up, and I’m not talking about that old devil moon.
     
     
     

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
     
    “Now what, o wise one?” Sara asked,
popping the last chocolate-covered marshmallow into her greedy little mouth. We
had decided to give Dan up until three o’clock to show, which time it
undoubtedly then was. “We could always do like Huck Finn did and make a raft,”
she offered.
    “Keep your bright ideas to yourself,
will you?” I said. “It’s easy for you to be funny, no one’s looking for a bald
tomboy in sneakers and hip-huggers, are they? They’re looking for Doris the dumb blond secretary. Even the lieutenant wouldn’t recognize you if he saw you,
and how’s he going to see you? He can’t be everywhere. And as for Benny, he
could kiss Benny’s hand for an hour and not recognize him— in fact, I hardly
recognize him. I’m not sure I’d want to.” Benny had passed part of the time while
we were waiting changing into baggy, knee-length yellow shorts; long socks;
sandals; a T-shirt that read 1986 Hang Gliding Nationals, Riverside, Ca.; a cap
that had Isla Mujeres written on it, the visor of which was painted to resemble
a shark’s gaping mouth complete with teeth, yellow-tinted sunglasses, and a
false upper plate that fitted over his own teeth and completely altered the
shape of his mouth.
    “But what am I supposed to do if we
have to beachcomb for a week,” I said, “find a lighthouse to hide in? Maybe I
could bury myself up to the neck in sand like those statues on Easter Island they forgot to put eyes in.”
    “We gotta do something pretty soon,”
she said. “I’m gettin’ bit to death.”
    “Me too,” I said. “And there’s more
of me to bite. But you are right, darlin’, we sure gotta do something, and I
sure wish I knew what it was. However, let us look at it logically. Right,
Benny?”
    “Right,” said Benny.
    “One. We decide to wait a week. You
and Benny could rent a place in the morning, then I sneak in later and stay
snuck in. But it can’t be a hotel room because there’s no way I could stay
hidden in a hotel room for a week, what with maids and the food problem, so it
would have to be a house somewhere, preferably isolated and preferably without
a live-in maid, gardener, or cook. But it could be done. Or a boat, why not?
The problem with that is, if Dan doesn’t show up next week either because
something’s come up, then what?”
    “Then we’re in the same mess as now,”
Sara said. “Exactly,” I said. “Benny, do you think Jorge could put me up for a
week somewhere and then bring me back down here again next Friday?”
    Benny glanced over to the truck where
his amigo was dozing.
    “He might,” he said. “I can always
ask.”
    “If so,” I said, “then he can drop
you two in Cancún in the morning on the way back, and you can do what you will
for a few days, have a holiday until the heat’s off, and then fly home. I’ll
sort things out down here in a week one way or the other. That way at least you
two are out of it all.”
    “Yeah, but you just finished saying
we were out of it