Switched (6 page)

I shuddered.

“I wonder how much it would cost to change the date of my return ticket,” I said out loud.

“But you cannot do that,” Nataniel said, clearly alarmed. “You cannot do that to Olga and Agard. They will not have a place to stay.”

I wagged my finger in Nataniel’s face. “You mean the couple who gave me their filthy, rodent-infested home? You mean the couple who is living in my luxury condo with a view of the lake? That Olga and Agard?”

I had every right to return home ASAP. Nobody could deny that. But what was I returning to? I had only four more weeks in the condo. My boss wasn’t expecting me for another month. I would have to stay with my brother or Stacy if I returned to Chicago and that would mean admitting to everything. My bad choices. Defeat.

“I would like to offer you lunch,” Nataniel said. “Give you time to think.”

I didn’t want time to think. I wanted to run for my life. But my stomach had other ideas. At the thought of lunch, it growled something awful, and I agreed to go with him.

Mallorca was totally different in the light of day. First of all there was lots of light. The sun came from everywhere through the wide expanse of blue sky. I rolled open my window to let the warm air blow on my face. We drove for a long time. The island was full of nature—trees and hills.

Nataniel was wise to remain quiet during the ride. He was letting the beauty of the island convince me to stay. He was soft-selling, and it was a good strategy. Still, he wasn’t taking into account my fear of bubonic plague and rodents eating my brain and other vital parts of my body. There was no way I was going back into that house.

Drat. I never found the view. I would have liked to have seen the view.

After a thirty-minute drive, we turned off the main road and were immediately plunged into a congested tourist area. Narrow streets were backed up with tiny cars revving in place as they waited for never-ending streams of tourists crisscrossing, slack-jawed and glassy-eyed in their vacation-induced stupors and totally unaware of the cars around them or the roads.

The streets were lined with small hotels, which squatted over stores, cafés, and tiny restaurants. It was hot and humid, the air dripping with the smell of seawater. There was a definite vibe of laid-back vacationing, but heavily tinged with the ever-vigilant desperation of hormonal young people on the make. It was party central, mellowed during the lull before the sun went down.

We inched our way down a street and were finally treated to the view of a long stretch of beach dotted with umbrellas bordering crystal clear turquoise water. Finally. It was everything I had been promised about Mallorca. Beautiful. Exotic. And almost worth the hell I had been through.

Nataniel parked in a nearby lot. He was still doing the soft sell, being quiet and letting me soak up the beach town, which didn’t have a mouse in sight. He handed me my purse—which he had braved the rodent house to fetch for me—and put his hand lightly on the small of my back to guide me through the lot and up a street to a modest hotel on the beach.

“This is Cala Millor Hotel,” he told me. “This town is Cala Millor. Very nice.”

We sat outside the hotel at its restaurant, and I ordered my first Spanish meal. A hamburger and fries. The place was packed with tourists eating lunch. I heard a lot of German, lots of English accents, and a little Spanish.

Nataniel was a perfect lunch companion. He was gentle and kind, giving me information about the different beach towns and the best restaurants on the island. It was all very relaxed and unimportant, and it lulled me into a sense of contentment.

“You could stay here at this hotel until the house is ready?” Nataniel asked me after he exhausted the talk about Jet Ski rentals and sunset cruises.

“I guess so,” I heard myself say.

Nataniel clapped his hands together. “Good,” he said, rising. “I will get your baggage, and I will bring it this evening.”

Then he paid the check, and he was gone.

I picked a fry off his plate. What kind of person leaves fries? No wonder Europeans were so skinny. I was halfway through Nataniel’s leftovers when it dawned on me that I couldn’t afford the Cala Millor Hotel or any hotel.

I was gripped with panic. Alone in a foreign country, penniless. But, I reminded myself, I was a grown-up and intelligent and not without support.

I rifled through my purse and found my cell phone. I pirated some Wi-Fi and dialed Stacy.

“Hola, amiga,” she sang into the phone.

“Yes, hola,” I said.

“Oh, no.”

“No, there’s no oh, no. Everything’s fine.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Don’t uh-huh me,” I said. “Really, all is perfectly fine.” What was I saying? I had slipped off the liar path and fallen into a deep ravine of psycho. I wasn’t fine. I was about as
oh, no
as I could possibly be. “Mallorca is beautiful,” I added. “I’m looking at the beach right this second.”

“Uh-huh,” Stacy said. “I’ve known you since middle school. You’re in trouble. I can hear it in your voice. Do you need money? You want me to buy you a return ticket?”

More than anything, I wanted her to buy me a return ticket. More than I wanted world peace, I wanted her to buy me a return ticket. In fact, the most sensible thing to do was to accept her offer, fly home and sleep on Stacy’s couch. We could order pizza, she would smell it, and I could eat it. We could watch romantic comedies on TV until late at night.

My brain skidded to a halt. Wait a minute. Eating pizza and watching TV on the couch was exactly what I was doing before I came to Mallorca. If I returned now, I would be back where I started, literally and figuratively.

But it was time to swallow my pride and take Stacy up on her offer. Who cared that I would have to admit I had made a mistake? It wasn’t my fault. I had been duped. They had tricked me into trading a gorgeous condo for a filthy Mickey’s Playhouse.

“I might not have signed a contract,” I said.

“I’m online now. I can get you a flight out tonight.”

“Richard will find out. He’ll say things.”

“I’m putting you in business class. It will be more comfortable, and it’s an aisle seat so you can get up to pee when you want.”

“I was on the partner track. I’m a grown-up,” I moaned.

“Oh, damn. Wrong flight,” Stacy said. “That one goes to New York. Close but no cigar. Hold on, I’ll keep looking.”

I found a french-fry crumb and popped it into my mouth. “I don’t want to take your money,” I said. “I need to take care of my own problems.”

“Oh, this one is a good one. First class. That means you get a bed. And only one stop.”

“Hold on,” I said. “Hold on.  I’m not ready yet.”

“Debra.”

“If I go back now, it will all be the same,” I insisted.

“No, it will be part two,” said Stacy. “You’ll go back to work, get back on the partner track, find another man. A good man. You’ll get a new apartment and your life back.”

It all sounded off, warped, like it wasn’t quite right. But I didn’t know what was right. Not yet anyway.

“No,” I said with resolve. “Keep your money.”

“Okay,” Stacy said, drawing out the word like it had four syllables.

“But answer your phone, just in case,” I added. I was stubborn but not crazy. “I might call you soon. Like next week or in an hour.”

“I won’t even sign out of Expedia,” she assured me and hung up.

I sat for a while and watched the tourists walk to and from the beach until I finally gathered up my courage to enter the hotel. I brandished my credit card and thought happy thoughts.

The lobby was tiny, no bigger than a large bathroom.  Linoleum covered the floor, and a slight breeze came in through the open glass doors. A young, thin man stood behind a blue plastic counter, reading text messages on his phone.

I knew my credit card was going to get declined, knew it like I knew the world was round and Courtney Cox had had a shot or two of Botox. But despite my absolute certainty, I still had a kernel of hope that the Spanish credit card machines were different from the American ones or that there was a time difference and that it would take hours or days for them to realize my credit card wasn’t any good.

So I handed the young man my Visa with a trembling hand. He didn’t look up from his phone and said something to me in German.

“I don’t speak German,” I said.

He didn’t seem to hear me or didn’t care because he repeated whatever he had said. A woman pushed me aside, leaned over the counter, and got in the man’s face.

“She doesn’t speak German!” she shouted at the man and grabbed his phone. She had a thick, gravelly English accent that was hard to understand. “Get to it and check her in!”

She turned to me. “You do want to be checked in, right, dearie?”

“Um, yes.”

She nodded and pounded on the counter. “Oy! ’Ear that? Check in the lady!”

She was my knight in shining armor and insisted on staying there to make sure that I got checked in all right. That’s why it was extra humiliating when my credit card was declined. I made it worse when I asked the man to run it again.

“You have another, dearie? Usually Americans have ten cards,” she said.

I felt my face go hot. I was probably beet red. I had other cards but they were so maxed out that if I tried to use them, I was sure they would blow up.

“Cash?” she asked me.

“Well—” I started.

She shot a look at the man and then grabbed me by the elbow. She was strong, solidly built, four inches shorter than me and about thirty pounds heavier. She wore a tight miniskirt and shirt, which stretched over her body, showing the outlines of her bra and thong underneath. Damaged platinum blonde hair framed her pretty face, and bountiful cleavage threatened to pop out of her push-up bra with every breath.

Oozing self-confidence, she moved like a drill sergeant. Marched. “I’ll buy you a coffee, and we’ll chat,” she announced, tugging me across the street.

The moment that I had decided I had to take control of my life and be completely independent no matter how dire were my circumstances, I found myself being physically controlled by a strange woman in a Wonder Bra.

And here’s the thing: She inspired trust. It felt right to be tugged, directed by her. Being pulled across the street to I didn’t know where by I didn’t know who made me feel like I was on the right path.

We stopped at the Royal Café across the street, which had a very large outdoor patio covered in plastic tables and chairs. The woman directed me to sit at a table in the center.

“I’ll get the coffee,” she said, leaving me. I watched her march into the small café and go behind the bar. The place was enjoying a lull in the middle of the day or it didn’t normally get much traffic because there were only a couple of tables occupied by late lunchers.

“I got you a cappuccino,” she said, returning. “You look like a cappuccino drinker.”

I didn’t know what a cappuccino drinker looked like, but she got herself one, too. She sat down across from me and took a sip of her coffee.

“I’m Debra,” I said.

“Oh! Maisey. Maisey Wellington.” She slapped the side of her head. “What a fucktard. I could have told you that before. Where’s my manners?”

“Nice to meet you, Maisey.”

“Man?” she asked.

“Excuse me?”

“I figure it has to be a man. American women with no money don’t normally wind up in Mallorca.”

I nodded. “A man.”

“What good are they, you know, if it weren’t for their willies?”

I didn’t think their willies were that good, either. I mean, I wasn’t the queen of orgasms, but being homeless and penniless, I wasn’t feeling very charitable and wanted to blame men and their penises for my misery.

“Do you want to give me the long story or the short?” she asked.

“How about no story?”

“Okay, pare it down to a few words. Can you change your return ticket?”

“For a thousand dollars.”

“I won’t ask you if you have a thousand dollars. Can anybody give you a thousand dollars?”

“Yes.”

Maisey downed the rest of her cappuccino and ran a hand over her washed-out hair. “I see. How long are you stuck here for?”

“Three weeks and six days,” I said, taking a sip of my coffee and wishing there was booze in it.

“And no place to stay, obviously.”

I thought about that a moment. “No. Not without vermin.”

“Oh, I’ve been there, dearie,” she said, nodding. “No worries. I’ve got this worked out.”

Maisey stood up and marched back into the café.

“No! Fuck
you
!” I heard her shout. She was behind the bar, waving her arms wildly, but I couldn’t see who she was waving at.

She screamed a long string of obscenities. It was like she was fighting with an invisible person because I couldn’t hear the other side of the argument at all. But she was spitting mad, and her anger seemed to revolve around me and my predicament and being thwarted in her attempt to resolve it.

“Fuck you!” she shouted even louder, punctuating the end of the argument, which I was sure she had lost.

But I was wrong. She exited the café and approached me with a big ear to ear grin that could only be described as triumphant.

“I told you so,” she said, sitting down. “Piece of cake. You’ll work here for three weeks and six days, and you’ll stay there.” She pointed at the windows above the café. “I mean you’ll live there. Nothing fancy but no vermin.”

A tear rolled down my cheek, and I wiped it away.

“A happy tear,” Maisey said. She read me like a book, like an angel sent down from heaven to help me.

“You fuckin’ cow!” a man shouted at Maisey. He stormed out of the café and charged at her. He was large, tall, and bulging with muscles. And he looked familiar. He wagged his finger at Maisey, and I thought he was going to trample her, but he stopped three feet from our table and his focus shifted to me.

“Oh, hell,” he said. “It’s the terrorist.”

It took me a moment—a long moment—to figure out where I had seen him before. He was handsome in a beachy way, unshaven in shorts and a muscle-T, tanned and very muscular. He had been angry, but his anger dissipated into surprise and something else I couldn’t read when he noticed me.