I try again, holding the phone in different positions, standing on the bed to get closer to the ceiling, opening the window and leaning out into the rain. Nothing. The message refuses to send.
I pull on my shoes and head back downstairs. The woman at the front desk looks up from her paperback as I approach.
“Disculpe,” I say, my Spanish rough and halting. “Teléfono? Para llamar?” I mime holding a phone to my ear, feeling like an idiot.
She nods, understanding despite my butchered attempt, and gestures toward the phone on the counter. She says something in Spanish that I don’t catch, but her tone is sympathetic.
“Gracias,” I say, and she slides it toward me.
It takes a couple tries to get an outside line, and even then the connection crackles like the storm is interfering with the signal. Roman doesn’t pick up, so I leave a voicemail explaining the situation, that I’m stranded in some town called Valle Quieto,that I’ll find a way to get there, that he should focus on his prep and not worry about me.
“Gracias,” I say again to the woman, and she nods and goes back to her book.
Back in my room, I pace the small space, running through options. There’s nothing else I can do from here. No flights to rebook, no cars to rent, no way to will myself to Mexico City through sheer stubbornness. Roman’s title shot is the day after tomorrow and I’m stuck in Valle Quieto, completely powerless to do anything but wait.
I hate being powerless. I’ve spent my entire adult life building systems and routines specifically designed to prevent this feeling. I control what I can control. I prepare for what I can prepare for. And then a storm rolls in and none of it matters.
A knock at the door pulls me out of my thoughts. I cross the room and open it to find Brooke standing in the hallway, changed into leggings and a sweater, her wet hair twisted up in some kind of knot on top of her head.
“There’s a bar downstairs.” She nods toward the stairs. “I saw it when we checked in. So, any chance you want to join me and drown our sorrows in whatever alcohol they have? Because I refuse to spiral alone.”
I should say no. I should stay in this room and keep trying the phone and figure out logistics and maintain the professional distance that’s kept me sane for the last few weeks. I should avoid Brooke and whatever confusing thing keeps happening between us every time we’re in the same room. There are a million reasons to close this door and spend the night alone with my thoughts.
“Yeah,” I hear myself say. “That’s actually the best idea I’ve heard all day.”
The bar is tucked into the back corner of the hotel, a small room with wood-paneled walls and mismatched furniture that looks like it’s been here since the seventies. A few locals sit at the bar watching a soccer match on a mounted TV, and the bartender, a guy who looks to be in his sixties with a weathered face, nods at us as we walk in.
The storm is still pounding outside, rain hammering the roof, but in here the warm lighting and hum of Spanish commentary make the rest of the world feel far away. Like we’ve stepped into some pocket dimension where Mexico City and title fights and years of grudges don’t exist.
Brooke tilts her head toward the bar and we make our way over. I scan the bottles lined up on the shelf behind the bartender, the usual suspects plus some labels I don’t recognize, and a familiar one catches my eye. Mezcal Enmascarado. The black and gold label with the luchador mask.
“Tiene el Enmascarado?” I ask, pointing.
The bartender’s eyebrows lift and he says something in rapid Spanish, nodding approvingly like I’ve passed some kind of test.
“Lo siento, no hablo mucho español.” I gesture toward Brooke. “She’s the translator.”
She’s looking at me with a surprised expression. “He wants to know where you learned about Enmascarado. Apparently it’s the good stuff.”
“My sister-in-law Lark is half Mexican and she was a bartender for years, so she always brings the good stuff to family dinners. This one’s a favorite of hers.”
Brooke translates and the bartender smiles broadly, saying something that makes her laugh before pouring two glasses and sliding them across the bar.
“He says your sister-in-law has good taste,” she says. “And that this is from a family in Oaxaca who’ve been making mezcal for four generations.”
I raise my glass to the bartender in thanks and we take our drinks to a table in the back corner, away from the TV and the old guys and the bartender’s watchful gaze. The chairs are mismatched and the table is scarred and wobbles slightly on uneven legs.
For a moment we just sit there, the soccer match providing background noise, the announcer’s rapid Spanish punctuated by occasional cheers from the guys at the bar when someone does something worth celebrating. The rain drums against the roof and streams down the windows in sheets, and every few seconds lightning flashes bright enough to cast shadows across the room.
What Margo told me at the Halloween party keeps circling through my head, the same loop I’ve been running for weeks now. I have no idea how to bring it up. How do you tell someone that the foundation of everything between you was rotten from the start? That the thing you did to them, the thing that started all of it, was based on complete bullshit?
She taps her fingers against the scarred wood of the table. “This is unbelievable, you know. The biggest fight of your career, and potentially one of the biggest stories I’ve ever covered, and instead of being in the action, we’re stuck in some random town in the Sierra Madre, drinking mezcal and waiting out a storm.”
She lets out a sharp breath, frustration radiating off her.
I nod, my own stress surging back at the thought of Roman in Mexico City without me, of everything that could go wrong tomorrow if we don’t get out of here.
“Tell me about it.” I glance up at the water-stained ceiling like some god up there might take pity on me and clear the skies. “Maybe it’s karma for all the shitty things we’ve done to each other.”
