Speaking in Tongues

American Express card.
    “That’s a party of . . . ?” the clerk queried.
    “Party of two.”
    “Ah,” the desk clerk responded. Tate filled out the registration card with ungainly strokes.
    “So, you are from Virginia,” the clerk said. “Near Washington?”
    “Sí,” Tate responded self-consciously, ready for his pronunciation to throw the conversation off kilter if not insult the clerk personally.
    “I have been there several times. I like the Smithsonian especially.”
    “Sí,” Tate tried again, forgetting even the words that conveyed some meaningless pleasantry—words he’d practiced on the flight. For a man who’d made his way in the world by speaking, Tate’s command of foreign languages was abysmal.
    He watched the clerk glance down at the reservation form with a momentarily perplexed frown on his dark, handsome face. Tate knew why. The clerk had taken a good look at the attractive woman who’d entered the hotel on Tate’s arm a moment before, and though surely, in this line of work, the clerk had seen just about everything, he couldn’t for the life of him figure out why these two would want separate rooms.
    A man is, after all, a man . . . And an age difference of twenty years . . . well, that’s nothing.
    Megan came out of the lobby phone booth and walked to the desk just as the clerk was showing Tate a diagram of the available rooms. Tate pointed to two, first a smaller inside room, then a corner unit with aview of the beach. “I’ll take this one. My daughter’ll have the corner room.”
    “No, Dad, you take the nice one.”
    “Ah, this is your daughter?” the clerk said, his curiosity satisfied. “Of course, I should have known.”
    “I’m sorry?” Tate asked him.
    “I mean, the resemblance. The young lady takes after you.”
    The man’s suspicions crept back when he saw the two guests exchange fast glances and struggle to suppress laughter. Tate thought about pulling out driver’s licenses and proving the relationship but then decided: it’s none of this guy’s business.
    Besides, mystery has an appeal that documented fact will always lack.
    They settled on the rooms and after Tate’s card was imprinted they followed the bellhop through a veranda.
    “Josh said his new physical therapist is great,” Megan told him.
    “Glad to hear it.”
    “But the way he put it was he said ‘she’s’ great. Think she’s old and fat?”
    “We’ll be back in six days. You can find out for yourself. When do you say de nada again?”
    “After somebody thanks you. It means, ‘It’s nothing.’ ”
    “They say gracias and then I say de nada.” Tate repeated the words several times as if he were a walking Berlitz tape.
    “Then I called Bett,” Megan continued. “She’s glad we got in okay. She said to take lots of pictures.”
    “I’ll call her later.”
    “She, um, was going over to Brad’s tonight. But she said it in a funny way. Like there was something going on. Is anything going on?”
    “I don’t have a clue.”
    Megan shrugged. “She said she talked to Konnie and he’s coming to your office on Tuesday at nine to talk about the case.”
    The previous week Tate had made his first appearance in a criminal court in nearly five years—Konnie’s arraignment. He’d answered the judge’s simple query with simpler words. “My client pleads not guilty, Your Honor.”
    He had a novel defense planned. It was called “induced intoxication,” and although he’d promised Megan that they would be spending the week doing nothing but seeing the sights and partying he’d hidden three law books in his suitcase and suspected the last day of the trip would find him with at least a rough draft of his opening statement to the jury—if not a set of deposition questions or two. He knew that as soon as Megan met a handsome young windsurfer—probably at the cocktail party that night—he would have at least a few hours free on most of the evenings.
    He and Megan arrived at their rooms.
    “Gracias de nada,” Tate said, and slipped the confused bellhop an outrageously generous tip. A half hour later they’d showered and were in khaki shorts, T-shirts and wicker hats. Every inch los turistas. They walked down to the lobby and asked about how they might bicycle to the nearest Mayan ruin. The clerk arranged for the bike rental and gave them directions.It was just past the afternoon siesta and most of the guests were headed for the white sand beach. But Tate and