manos and metates, the tomb site.
"When I was a little boy, I found a very old pot in the fields near my grandmother's house. A very old pot, with paintings on the sides. I took it home to my grandmother, and she said that I must take it back to the fields. She said it was very bad luck to take it from the old ones, very bad. I went back to the field and buried the pot." I could tell from his voice that he was smiling. "If I found that pot now, I'd sell it to someone like your mother for lots of money. I wouldn't worry about bad luck."
I lay on my back, listened to the surf, and worried about bad luck.
"Your friend Barbara will have a good time at Tixkokob," Marcos said. "You and I could have a good time too. Why not?"
"Because I don't want to," I said.
"You want to."
I shook my head and listened to the surf wash the beach clean.
"Qué piensas?" he asked.
"I'm thinking about my mother."
"Why are you thinking of your mother?" I believe that Marcos was growing impatient with me. He wanted me to be thinking about him, not about my mother.
"She doesn't want me to come back to the dig."
"Why not?"
The sunlight was warm on my eyelids. "She is afraid of something. She won't say what. I think she's like your grandmother. She's afraid of the old ones."
"Your mother is afraid of the old ones? She's crazy."
I opened my eyes to protest and saw the old woman standing by the surf. She was dressed in blue and in her hand she held a conch shell. I turned to Marcos to ask him if he saw her too. He leaned toward me, forcing me back down on the sand. I felt a warm strong hand on my breast and another between my thighs and he leaned on me, kissing me hard on the mouth. "You're crazy too," he said. I pushed him away and he laughed. The woman was gone.
"Later," he said. "At your hotel, we will have a good time. I like you very much."
I left him on the beach and went swimming in the warm murky water of the gulf, swimming far away from the beach and looking back at the line of palms, the strip of white sand. Floating on my back in the blood-warm water, I admitted to myself that I was afraid of the strange apparition in blue. I was afraid. I was haunted by a Mayan ghost and I felt very much alone.
As a child, I had played tag with other neighborhood kids on summer nights. As the sunlight faded to darkness, we would go on playing, but the nature of the game changed. The kid who was It would not chase the rest of us—he would slip into the shadows and sneak up on people, appearing out of the darkness like a ghost. I remember jumping at shadows, thinking that each one was going to tag me. I felt like I was playing night tag now, fighting with shadows that appeared and disappeared.
Eventually, I had to swim back to the beach. Marcos smiled when I came back, and said that he was sorry, that he would not try to kiss me again. I lay in the sun for a time, but I felt nervous, on edge. I kept glancing toward the water, expecting to see the woman. She did not reappear, but I could not relax.
We ate dinner at a small restaurant by the beach and took the bus back to Mérida.
Of course Marcos was playing a game. The name of the game was get the gringa into bed. I told him so on the bus back to Mérida. "I don't know the rules to this game you're playing. And I don't play games when I don't know the rules."
"You think I'm playing games? I'm sorry you think that." He sat in silence for a while, staring out the window. When we stopped in Mérida, he stood abruptly and headed for the door. "Come on. I will take you to your hotel. No games." I followed him, saying nothing.
Early evening and the shadows were thick in Parque Hidalgo. "Why won't you sleep with me? What are you afraid of?" he asked me as we walked.
I shrugged. I looked in the shadows for the old woman, but I did not see her. But I could not stop looking.
"Maybe I won't see you again," Marcos said.