“I don’t. I need to get to Tulum,” Matt said.
The man grimaced. “We’re booked solid, my friend. This is our busy season.”
Matt let out a breath. “There’s nothing? I’ll take anything you have. It doesn’t have to be nice.”
The man paused, like he was thinking. He unclipped a walkie-talkie from his belt and said something into it in Spanish. A distorted voice responded.
“It won’t be very comfortable,” the man said, “but we can probably fit you in. Three thousand pesos.”
“Will you take US?” Matt asked, showing the man a twenty-dollar bill.
“Yes, one hundred sixty dollars.”
Matt had five hundred dollars in cash, the ATM’s daily maximum. “I’ll take it.”
“Bus cinco,” the man said, pointing to a line of vans. They were larger than standard vans, but smaller than buses.
Matt didn’t speak Spanish, but cinco was easy enough. What college kid hadn’t been to a Cinco de Mayo party? Matt paid the fare and hesitantly tipped the man a twenty—he didn’t have smaller bills—leaving Matt enough for a shuttle back to the airport and dinner. He found the van with a sign displaying the number five.
The driver was leaning against the vehicle smoking a cigarette. He sported an impressive mustache.
“I understand you have room for one more to Tulum,” Matt said, looking back toward the man with the clipboard.
The driver crushed out his cigarette on the sidewalk. Without saying a word, he led Matt to the back of the van. Matt could see the outline of travelers through the tinted windows. The shuttle looked packed. The driver then opened the back hatch and gestured for Matt’s duffel bag.
Matt threw it inside, and the driver started rearranging the other bags. He was piling them to one side in a very particular way.
“Oh,” Matt said, realizing that the man was making room for him. He climbed inside and sat in the cramped space surrounded by luggage. It wasn’t as bad as he’d expected. At least he could stretch out his legs. That was more than he could say for the Spirit Airlines flight.
“Are you okay back there?” a woman said from the main compartment. She had a sweet Southern accent.
Matt pulled himself up on the seat back so he could see into the crowded cabin.
“It’s great. Thank you for letting me hitch a ride.”
“You let us know if you need anything, hon.” Her voice held a motherly hint of concern.
Matt spent the next two hours bouncing around in the back, watching out the rear window as they cruised south on Highway 307. It could’ve been any nondescript road in the US, except maybe there was more litter. Or maybe that was just Matt's current mindset, focusing only on the gloom. These weren't exactly the ideal circumstances under which to visit Mexico for the first time.
It was nearly five o’clock. They’d arrive soon. He’d have just enough time to get to the police station, sign the papers, and make it back to the Cancún airport for his nine o’clock return flight to New York. Agent Keller said they could extend the stay if needed. But he had no interest in seeing the beaches, ruins, or other sites. In and out.
The seat back blocked Matt’s view of the cabin, but he could make out some of the travelers up front in the reflection of the van’s window. He spied three kids, under ten by the looks of them, draped all over their parents. Even in the distorted reflection, the mom and dad looked bone tired. He thought of his family in a van like this one: Tommy with his face pressed to the window; Dad lost in his thoughts, pondering some Danny conspiracy; Maggie making an agenda for the trip; Mom with her nose in a book.
Matt pulled up that last text Maggie had sent him, the one Keller had taken an interest in. It was a photo of Matt’s father. It was zoomed in on his face, with a road behind him and what looked like the entrance to a business—a nightclub, maybe. Nothing out of the ordinary.
Scratch that. It was slightly unusual that Maggie would send Matt a shot of their father, given tensions of late.
In a sociology class at NYU, Matt had read about a study finding that by the time kids are eighteen, they’ve had an average of 4,200 arguments with their parents. Matt and his father had probably shattered that mean. It hadn’t always been like that. Before Danny’s arrest, Dad had been the one to encourage Matt’s interest in filmmaking, buying him moviemaking software, researching old Super 8 cameras, setting up screening parties for Matt’s short films. It wasn’t football, but Dad—and Mom, too—seemed genuinely impressed with his work. By the time he’d won his first film contest senior year, it barely went noticed in the Pine home. Dad had Danny, Maggie had Dad, Mom had Tommy.