Paper Moon (8 page)

“Omigosh, that's my dad. Hey, Daddy!”

Emboldened by his daughter's approval, Blaine loosened his step another notch, feeling like he was caught in Michael Jackson's robotic moves and was about to spin a bearing.

Caroline, on the other hand, had come to life with the unstructured dance. If she thrashed, she did so with a grace the other girls should envy. Blaine couldn't take his eyes off her, even if he wanted to, which he did not.

The Holy Spirit with a piece of pink paper, a free spirit, or just dumb luck . . . whatever the reason, he was glad he had come.

CHAPTER
6

Outside Banditos, patrons dispersed in all directions after the closing hour in a studded denim, tattooed, and sundressed stampede.

“Yo!” translated universally to the cabbies hailed over the curbs.

Beneath the Banditos marquee, John Chandler gave Karen Madison a brief kiss on the cheek. He'd have done more, but the girl's father watched him like a ready-to-pounce eagle from the curb, where he and the tour guide were trying to arrange transportation back to their hotel.

“Tomorrow?” he called after her as she pulled away to join her group.

Karen took a deep breath and sighed, her dark-lashed eyes a dancing reflection of the marquee lights overhead. “Tomorrow.”

John wondered that she didn't fall, the way she backed away from him, ponytail swinging, blowing kisses until she reached her group. The perfect target—naïve and eager to please. She was cute, but way too young for him. She was more suited for the curly-haired dude in a new Banditos T-shirt, who tugged her around with a reprimand.

“Get a grip or you're gonna fall,” Wally said.

“This, from the King of Uncoordinated?” she shot back in derision.

The nerd's involvement with her was obviously one-sided, but he was better for her than the kind of guy that tripped her trigger.

Guys like me.

“So,
la señorita
is, how do you say, good to went?” Javier Rocha lit up a cigarette at John's elbow.

“You mean good to go?”

“Whatsoever. We have no time to play around,” he said, exhaling through wide nostrils.

“I know it.” John drilled his metaphor-challenged roommate with an impatient look.

Javier showed more Indian ancestry than the Spanish his affluent family so proudly claimed. It was all a front for some of the lowest life on the planet—thieves and scoundrels cloaked in mock designer clothes with cushy digs. Cushy for Mexico, that is.

“She took the bait.”

John wasn't pleased. He'd rather have chosen someone else, someone who didn't look like his youngest sister, complete with the little gold cross that his grandmother had given her. He had received one too, bigger, more masculine, but he hadn't worn it since he began his studies at the university. Given his activities of late, it would be somehow a sacrilege, an affront to the devout woman who'd given it to him.

“She is very young,” Javier observed, picking up on the uncertainty riddling John's mind. “Do you think she can be trusted not to open it . . . or even lose it?”

John, and sometimes Javier, routinely picked the most naïve and gullible of the American students and struck up a friendship. Once they had the person's trust, making her or him feel important, they'd hand over the stolen property for the student to post upon returning to the States. And Javier knew they were both pinched for time, so his question was moot.

“We agreed not to wait for the older crowd because Jorge wanted it out pronto, right?” John couldn't help the anger in his challenge. But it wasn't directed at his friend. It was directed at the situation he'd gotten himself into.

“Sí, that is true. It has three weeks until the summer semester ends.”

“So who was left but the kiddies? She took the bait . . . and she's with a Christian group. They're usually a dependable lot. Let it go at that.”

“So when will you give her the goods?”

John snuffed the pang of conscience, watching Javier blow two perfect smoke rings. Not only did Javier mix his metaphors, he'd definitely watched too many gangster flicks.

“The
goods,”
John mimicked, “go out tomorrow . . . or on the bus trip at the latest.” Most of the Mexico City–Acapulco tours had the same itinerary.

Javier nodded.
“Bueno.
I will tell my uncle that everything is going up as planned.”

“That's going
down
.”

Javier shrugged. “Up, down, howsoever. Just so it goes, no?”

John gave a short, less-than-amused laugh. “Yeah.
Howsoever.”

The package had to go out this week. Javier's uncle was insistent. And no one bucked Jorge Rocha, who had dubbed himself
El
Jefe,
and lived to tell about it—unless they got away fast. So John routinely picked the most rebellious or the most naïve and gullible of the American students in the club.

Despite warnings from the authorities about accepting packages from strangers to carry across the border, the teen didn't hesitate to say yes to mailing a card from a fellow American student to his mom upon the group's return to the States. His complaint about the Mexican postal service being so unreliable hadn't been a stretch of the truth, but the card wasn't going to his mom. It was going to Rocha's dealer stateside—all $50,000 worth of it. It wasn't big-time like drug smuggling, but 50K worth of collector's stamps wasn't exactly chump change either.

“You
blondez
do have more fun.” Javier patted John on the back.

“I'm going back to the bar. You did good,
gringo.”

“Catch you in a minute,
hermano.
” This blond had had all the fun he could take. The aspirin he continually popped eased his headaches, but there was no balm for his nerves. He glanced back to where Karen's tour guide had two taxis lined up at the curb.

“Vámonos,
princes and princesses, your coaches are waiting,” the guide shouted. “Move now or they will turn into—”

“Squash!” several of the kids chorused.

Their cheer made John feel fifty rather than just six years their senior. He gave Karen one last lingering smile and waved. Maybe he could find someone older who was just as gullible—someone who didn't remind him of his little sister and who wasn't traveling with a church school. Taking a deep brace of cool air, he reentered the club.

The mountain-cooled night air brought some semblance of order to Caroline's bedazzled senses as she waited for the kids to get into the cars. In her mind, she still spun in the laser flashes of light in Blaine's arms. A divine dancer in the slow, measured sense, he'd been one lost puppy when the music passed the old jitterbug. But just being on a dance floor with an awkward but game partner had made Caroline feel footloose and fancy-free for a while. Between molting in the jacket to hide the glow of the living wonder lift and the fact that her partner's last name could be Charming, her heart had done the rumba.

Still is,
she amended, fanning herself with the Banditos rose.

Since when did hot flashes and schoolgirl giddiness strike at once?

Blaine opened the door to a yellow VW taxi with a flourish.

“Ladies, your coach, pulled by horsepower rather than mice.”

A man up on his fairy tales. Another layer of Caroline's heart melted away. Blaine continued to play the wry cavalier by taking the cushion on the floor in front of her.

After a swerving, dodging, speeding, braking ride, they made their way into the hotel lobby. Caroline marveled that Blaine could walk straight. He'd reminded her of a clown punching bag, rolling and jerking with the motion of the vehicle. She could still feel the muscular shoulders she'd grasped to steady him.

The fatigue of the day's travel and the night's dancing having caught up with them, the students fished blindly in purses and pockets for keys as they filed into the elevator. Karen hugged her Banditos package to her chest, leaning against the brass rail at the back with a sigh. “This was the most romantic night of my whole life.”

From the corner, his dark hair still plastered to his head with sweat from dancing and socializing with the
señoritas
, Wally agreed.

“Definitely cool. I didn't even have time to finish my game.”

Next to him, Kurt, who had recovered from Karen's jilting before the next dance ended, leaned against the elevator wall next to a quiet Annie and nodded.

Caroline exchanged a jaded grin with Blaine. The starstruck kids were so young. If they only knew. The moonlight and the long-stemmed roses she and the girls carried from the club would wither by morning. Romantic love was a wonderful start, but it wasn't eternal.

Caroline had wondered for years exactly what had gone wrong with her marriage. All the excuses boiled down to one reason—God was not at the center of their union. At best, He was a part-time boarder. Frank didn't go to church at all. Determined to be the perfect wife and mother, Caroline had gone through the motions of “churchianity” and somehow missed God. It wasn't until she came back to her faith after the divorce that she discovered the difference.

She turned the red rose in her hand, lost in self-study. If she'd had more of a relationship with Jesus instead of the altar ladies . . .

The elevator door opened.

“Peso for your thoughts.” Blaine's voice drew Caroline back to the present.

She suddenly realized that they were the only two remaining in the elevator.

“At this hour, they're not worth a peso.”

Annie had bolted ahead of the others. By the time Caroline and Karen caught up with her, the room door was open and Annie was exactly where her mother expected—in the bathroom.

Leaving Caroline standing in the hall, Karen tapped at the door with an equal urgency. “Don't take all night!”

Beside Caroline, Blaine shook his head, bemused. “Females!”

And the urgency didn't get any better with age. Caroline waited with him until all the students were in their respective rooms and the click of the deadbolts resounded in the empty hall.

“Well,
Seen-der-eh-ya
. . .” He mimicked Hector's pronunciation to perfection. “I think all our little mice are accounted for.” Blaine took her hand in his and lifted it to his lips.

“Who?” Caroline asked, as his sweep-'em-off-the feet smile took out her knees like a smart bomb.

The corner of his mouth quirked. “Cinderella? Mice?” He paused and then added, “Squash?”

“Oh,” she laughed, holding up her souvenir flower. “I thought you just wanted to smell my rose.” Squirming partly from nerves and partly from the same urgency the girls suffered, she let the flower slip from her fingers.

In a rush to avoid making a further fool of herself, she leaned over to pick it up, only to bang heads with Blaine as he did the same. Before she knew it, she fell back against the doorjamb and slid to the floor with an unceremonious plop.

With one hand on his head where their noggins had collided, and the rose in his other, Blaine knelt down in front of her. “Are you hurt?”

“Only my pride.”

“Dad, what
are
you doing?” Karen exclaimed. Behind her, Annie stared at Caroline in dumb wonder.

“Trying to help a klutz,” Caroline rallied, before the confusion claiming Blaine's face cleared his response. A picture of what they surely looked like to the girls, she sprawled against the doorjamb, he kneeling between her knees brandishing a rose, gave rise to a slaphappy giggle at the back of Caroline's throat. And one begat another, which begat another until, no matter how Blaine tried to help her up, his efforts were useless.

“Mom?” Annie asked, her expression hovering between amusement and concern.

Karen was no less torn. “Dad?”

At that, Blaine laughed as well as he hooked his arms under Caroline's and lifted her to her feet. “Good thing we have hard heads, eh?” he teased.