Read Online Still the Same Man by Jon Bilbao - Free Book Online

before. Archeologists. They came for the ruins and stayed twenty years. This was their house. When they died, it was abandoned. We tore it down and built our own on top.”
    “So there are no English people now.”
    “Not one.”
    “So . . . this is a hotel.”
    The owner looked at him as if he didn’t understand.
    “It’s just it doesn’t say anywhere that it’s a hotel,” Joanes explained.
    “It has a lot of rooms, and I rent them out. It’s a hotel.”
    “I see. Are they guests, too?” asked Joanes, referring to the others. There were close to forty people out on the lawn, sitting on plastic chairs under umbrellas advertising Coca-Cola.
    “Only a few of them,” said the owner with a resigned smile. “Almost all of them are family. They’ve come for shelter.”
    “Your relatives?”
    “And my wife’s. It’s a tradition. When there’s a hurricane, those of them who live on the coast come here to the English Residence.”
    “Do you think the hurricane will reach us here?”
    “It’ll get a bit breezy.”
    “Enough to worry about?”
    “Only if you want to, my friend. Anyway, why don’t you make yourselves comfortable and eat something?” said the owner, pointing to the meat on the barbecue. “It’s
cochinita
. Like it?”
    Joanes nodded.

    The professor pushed his wife to the room in her wheelchair. Joanes followed them with the luggage. The professor settled his wife in the bed, refusing Joanes’s help. She fell down onto the bed with a moan, whether of pleasure or pain Joanes couldn’t tell.
    “Are you all right like that?”
    If she said anything in reply, only the professor heard her.
    “I’ll bring you more water and something to eat,” he said. “Do you need anything else?”
    “My mask,” she murmured.
    The professor rummaged in the travel bag until he came across her eye mask. Very carefully, he put it on his wife. Then he gestured to Joanes to leave the room and followed him out.
    Once in the hallway, lowering his voice, Joanes asked the professor if his wife was all right.
    “Yes, of course she is. She’s just tired and . . . well, the whole commotion on the bus took its toll on her. But that’s understandable, wouldn’t you say?”

    Once he’d freshened up, having waited a long time in line for the restroom, Joanes went back outside. He kept his backpack on him, reluctant to leave it in the room. The hotel owner waved him over and dished a monumental portion of meat onto his paper plate. The other guests were already eating. Several women were tending a table filled with platters of potatoes, rice, tortillas, beans,
chiles rellenos
, plantain
tamales
, and
mole
chicken
.
    Joanes grabbed a chair and took it over to the edge of the lawn, just where the plants and creepers that surrounded the hotel began. On his way, he picked up a beer from a tub of water with cans of drinks floating inside.
    He ought to call his family before eating. He imagined them in their room in the evacuation hotel. His father-in-law would be spouting nonsense and praising his new bride’s latest stroke of genius. His daughter, her hair falling over her face as a kind of barrier against the adults, would be curled up in a corner working on the nihilistic vampire novel she’d been writing for months. And as for his wife, Joanes imagined her checking her watch and asking herself where in the hell he’d gotten to.
    He looked at the battery icon on his cell phone. It would have to be a quick conversation. He needed the rest of the battery to sort out the hotel offer with his client. He dialed the number of the evacuation hotel and asked to be put through to his family’s room. The phone rang three times, four . . .
    “Come on, come on . . . where are you?”
    On the sixth ring, he hung up and dialed the number again. He left a message for his wife, explaining what had happened and that he would get to Valladolid the following day. He added that it was important she didn’t call him, so he could