The Meetup

So, at seventeen hundred hours, I was squatting in the shade of the mechanical gate control near the public road that the bus was supposed to travel along. I had on my lightest shirt and was trying to stay both out of the sun and completely still, as even my most comfortable bra would rub my crispy skin. To my satisfaction, the bus was right on time and nobody on the bus batted an eye at the sun burnt American riding into Cabo.

By the time I arrived in the big city of Cabo San Lucas, I was hungry and thirsty and oddly cold, despite the air temperature that seemed be be dropping back down from forty. My first stop was a pharmacy to buy aloe vera cream. Then, I headed to a diner which offered outdoor seating, but had great big shade umbrellas that promised refuge from the sun. The food was, well, odd. It was like the familiar stuff that I got from questionable street venders outside the office, but the flavor was subtly different. Leave it to my dumb taste buds to get used to the vender trash and not appreciate the real stuff when I finally have it.

Anyway, I spent the next hour there at the restaurant, playing on my phone, which really means checking work emails, and ordering a great big margarita to enjoy before heading to the clubs where I'd pay twice as much for half the ****.

The sun was setting surprisingly early and I texted Mira to see where we'd be meeting. Her text came back quickly and simply said, "Where are you". While that lack of punctuation annoyed my very slightly intoxicated brain, I texted her the name of the restaurant and said that I'd meet her at whatever club she and the girls had picked for the night. The response was just and an address that meant nothing to me and the words, "Meet here".

Annoyed at the lack of clarity given, I typed the address into the map app on my phone and was directed to head down Lázaro Cárdenas, one of the main roads, and then take a left past a plastic surgery center and into an area that looked like it had factories of some sort, though I didn't know enough Spanish to interpret what it said. Figuring that my sister and her friends had probably hit the most obvious clubs before I arrived, I consigned myself to joining them on a tour of the less obvious clubs in the city.

By the time that I got there, the **** and aloe vera had taken the edge off my stinging skin and I was finally feeling like I might be up to a bit of dancing with my sister and her friends.

As I walked down the dimly lit street, mostly dominated by the noise of the nearby Highway Nineteen, I spotted a man standing around, the burning embers of his cigarette glowing. As I continued, he stood up and called out, "¿Estás aquí por el club?" And, when I didn't know how to answer, he repeated in broken English, "You come to club?"

Honestly, the fact that he knew about my reason for being there calmed my nerves a bit, and I responded, "Yes. I'm supposed to be meeting my sister and a couple others here."

"Si, club here. Price forty dollars."

At which point, I couldn't help but let out a chuff of indignation, and said, "No, wrong price."

I watched him flick his cigarette before he responded, "Price eight dollars."

Which seemed much more reasonable as a cover charge for some club in the middle of nowhere. So I opened my clutch and pulled out a five and three one-dollar bills and handed them over to the sullen smoker who glanced at them and then swept his arm as though I should enter the nondescript lot.

"Where should I be going?" I asked.

He took a long pull on his cigarette and then said, "Go to fence. Go left. Hit door twice," as he moved beside me and pointed to the fence at the back of the lot.

"Uh, thanks, gracias, señor," I said as I took a step in that direction.

Unfortunately, I didn't get to take a second as the man dropped his cigarette and grabbed me, pulling me close to him. My distracted and slightly tipsy brain reacted too slowly and he pinned my arms to my sides and was holding them there with his right arm while he was trying to bring his left hand up towards my face.