The automatic doors slide open and the rain hits us like a wall. It’s not just coming down, it’s coming sideways, driven by a wind that cuts right through my jacket and shirt. Within seconds I’m soaked through to the skin, and Brooke is in the same condition beside me, her hair plastered to her face as she squints through the downpour.
I scan the street for light and spot the Hotel Paloma sign flashing through the rain about a hundred yards down, neon pink letters buzzing against the dark. Ordinarily that would seem conveniently close to an airport. Right now it looks impossibly far.
“This way,” I shout over the roar of the rain, pointing toward the sign, and we run.
The rain is relentless. We’re both completely drenched, and the wind keeps shoving us sideways. The Hotel Paloma sign getscloser, buzzing and flickering in the storm, and I can make out the shape of the building now, a low two-story structure with a covered entrance that, at present, looks like the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.
The mountains loom in the distance, their peaks lost in the storm clouds that are still churning overhead, dark and ominous. We sprint and burst through the front doors into a lobby that smells like cleaning products, both of us dripping puddles onto the tile floor.
Brooke pushes her soaked hair out of her face, breathing hard. “Well. That was refreshing.”
I shake water off my hands and look around. The lobby is small but clean, with a front desk to the left and a seating area with worn leather couches to the right. A TV mounted on the wall is playing the news in Spanish, footage of the storm system swirling over a map of northern Mexico. Behind the desk, a woman in her fifties looks up from a paperback novel and takes in the two drowned Americans standing in her lobby.
“Buenas noches,” Brooke says, stepping forward and launching into Spanish that’s way more fluent than I expected.
I catch pieces of it, enough to follow the general shape of the conversation. Something about the airport, the storm, needing rooms for the night.Dos habitaciones.Two rooms. The woman responds in rapid Spanish, nodding sympathetically, and Brooke keeps up without missing a beat, asking questions, clarifying details, the whole exchange flowing naturally like she does this all the time.
The woman turns to her computer and starts typing, and I lean toward Brooke.
“Damn,” I say, keeping my voice low. “I knew you had some Spanish, but I didn’t know you were this fluent.”
She glances at me, looking pleased. “SpanishandItalian, actually.”
I nod, a piece clicking into place. “Right. Your dad’s Italian American, isn’t he?”
“He is.” She smiles. “And his mom was fluent, so I learned a lot from her growing up. Nonna Rosa. She refused to speak English to either of us, which helped.” She shrugs. “Spanish is a Romance language too, so it wasn’t too hard to pick up once I had Italian as a foundation. And I’ve always liked languages.”
The woman behind the desk says something to us, and Brooke turns back to handle the rest of the transaction. I pull out my wallet.
“I’ve got the rooms,” I say, handing over my credit card before Brooke can argue.
She raises an eyebrow but doesn’t protest. A few minutes later the woman slides two key cards across the counter and says something in Spanish with a warm smile. Brooke thanks her and hands me one of the cards.
“Room 212,” she says. “I’m in 214, just down the hall.”
We head up the stairs, leaving twin trails of wet footprints on the worn carpet. At the top, the hallway splits in two directions, and we both stop.
“Well,” she says. “This isn’t exactly how I pictured tonight going.”
“No,” I agree. “It’s not.”
She looks at me, and neither of us seems to know what to do next. Normally we would’ve already said something sharp to each other by now, found an excuse to fight. But we’re both soaked through and exhausted and stranded in a town we’re not supposed to be in, and I guess that takes the edge off things.
“See you tomorrow, I guess,” she says. “Hopefully on a plane.”
“Hopefully.”
She turns right. I turn left, finding room 212, and push the door open.
The room is small but clean, with a queen bed with a floral bedspread, a TV bolted to the wall, and a window that’s rattling with the force of the wind outside. I strip off my soaked clothes, towel off, and dig through my carry-on for something dry to change into. Once I’m in joggers and a t-shirt, I try my phone, holding it up toward the window in case the signal is better near the glass. One bar of service flickers briefly in the corner of the screen and then disappears, but I manage to type out a text to Roman.
Me:Stuck in Valle Quieto. Big storm, diverted flight but I will be there tomorrow. We’re going to try and catch the morning flight. Do your routine and get some sleep.
The message sits there with a little spinning wheel for thirty seconds, then forty-five, then a full minute. Then the wheel stops and a red exclamation point appears.
Message not delivered.
The single bar of service is gone. Fuck.
