The Prodigal: A Ragamuffin Story Read Free Page A

does,” Tracy had said.
    He hadn’t thought to ask what she meant by that.
    “So,” he said after she’d hailed a cab back into Cancún, “what’s the safest place for us in Cancún?”
    “We’re not staying in Cancún.” Sally gave him that smile that made him uncomfortable. “I booked us rooms on Isla Mujeres, a ferry ride off the coast. Cancún is pretty safe for American tourists, but there has been some violence. Isla is a lot quieter, safer, and the beaches are beautiful. We’ll go on R and R until I wrangle us a plane home.”
    “I don’t know how to R and R,” he said. “I didn’t pack a bathing suit. And I’m white as—I don’t know.” He considered his Seattle complexion. “Something really, really white.”
    “Then you can sit under a palm tree and order little drinkswith umbrellas in them,” she said. “You deserve something nice, Jack.” She fixed him with the usual sad half smile she gave him when she was trying to convince him to take care of himself. “You of all people deserve to have some fun.”
    “Okay,” he said, holding up his hands. “I give. I’ll have a margarita. Maybe a couple of hours on the beach. We’re in Mexico, let’s do Mexico.” He even pulled up a tiny smile from somewhere. “I mean, how much trouble can we possibly get into while we’re on standby?”
    “Not much,” she said, and she went off to arrange their passage.
    Not much.
    Only all the trouble in the world.

2.
    T hey took the ferry across the clear blue waters to Isla Mujeres, where Sally rented them a golf cart, the primary means of transport on the island. They checked into their rooms at a resort on the north end of the island, not the most expensive, she told him, but the nicest location. Great views of the rocky seaward side, white sand beaches on the leeward side, and lots of privacy. Each of their rooms had a private balcony looking out over the ocean.
    That night they went into town for dinner, and Jack found himself sitting next to Sally at the bar of an open-air restaurant on Hidalgo Street.
    “We’re going to have that margarita,” she said. “And then some ceviche.”
    She put her hand on his shoulder.
    He looked at it.
    He looked at her.
    And that, he reflected later, was where it happened.
    That was where he could have stopped it, if he’d really wanted to.
    After Jack had that one margarita, Sally talked him into ashot of the clear mezcal from Merida that the persuasive young bartender told them was smooth as glass. The first shot was compliments of the house.
    “It’s the purest product of the agave plant,” she told him. “It’s good for you. In Mexico we have a saying:
Para todo mal, mezcal, y para todo bien, también.
” She laughed at his raised eyebrow. “‘For everything bad, mezcal, and for everything good as well.’”
    “I guess it would be rude not to,” he said, feeling a little drunk just off that one margarita, just off her smile, and he took the tiny shot glass from her, drank, and felt his face flushing. It was good.
    He accepted a second. And then a third.
    Before the evening was out, they found themselves throwing back shots with a wedding party from Italy. Much of the evening was a blur—or just plain missing—but he remembered them all chewing tequila-flavored scorpions and washing them down with shots of mezcal to the cheers of a gathering throng in the street. He remembered overhearing Javier, their bartender, happily muttering, “Gringos,” as he counted his tips.
    Someone had driven them back to their hotel in the golf cart, and Sally held him upright and kept him on the cart when they hit potholes or speed bumps on the cobbled streets.
    Someone helped him up to his room on the second floor.
    And he had awakened late the next morning to bright daylight and the sound of surf crashing. He sat up, his head pounding, in a bed a little too rumpled to have been occupied by only one person.
    He pulled on his pajamas, padded slowly over to close