23
Dan had to hand it to Lilyanna and Pete—the beach looked fabulous.
Two generous sections for seating, split down the middle by a large aisle of dark sand adorned with rose petals. A couple of massive bonfires on either side. Pete was right. It was warm. The light of the fire danced against guests’ faces and made everyone feel more alive, more kinetic, like their skulls were lanterns for the flames they carried inside. Through the wedding arch, the black ocean crashed against the shore.
Lilyanna’s plan had worked. Seemed everyone was here. Standing room only in the back, where throngs of guests jostled and swayed to get a better look.
It was perfect, actually. Dan couldn’t imagine his wedding to Mara under normal circumstances being as beautiful as this. He wished his mom was there, his dad, his sister. Some friends. Of course. But new friends were here. Alan stood behind him, a calming presence. Behind Alan, Lenny. And across the way, past Pete with his open bible, stood Charles and Gloria. Charles wanted to be on Mara’s side. In Dan’s new world, the one the size of this island, everyone was here. Everyone except—
A string quartet began, and guests rose from their seats. Dan caught Charles’s eyes, and, as promised, they shimmered. At the end of the aisle, past dozens of rows of turned heads, Mara appeared as though she was God’s replacement for the sun, his condolence gift, because she shined almost as bright, hurt so much to look at that Dan almost shielded his eyes. Guests gasped when they saw her, and for a moment, shame bubbled in Dan’s belly again. He popped it.
She walked down the aisle unaccompanied, bouquet in hand, thinking of her dad, Dan was sure, thinking of her mom, her sister, her friends. She smiled at Dan, and Dan smiled back, and everything else faded away.
When she reached the altar, Charles fixed her dress behind her.
“Well, now, aren’t these two just a sight?” Pete said, signaling for those with seats to sit. The crowd voiced their consensus. “Now, I gotta say, I’ve married a few couples in my day, and of course I say all the brides are beautiful, because gosh, all brides are beautiful on their wedding day, aren’t they? But I ask you folks, I really ask ya, have you ever seen a bride as beautiful this?”
Cheers from the crowd, laughter from Charles, a woo from Gloria. Dan almost woo ed himself. Mara blushed. Dan mouthed I love you to her, and she mouthed it back. She was nervous, a little jittery, but so was he.
“Friends, guests, Building A visitants, we’re gathered here before God to witness and bless the joining together of two souls in holy matrimony on this day. Day . That’s a funny word, now, isn’t it? Dayyy. How can there be days without the sun? God says in Deuteronomy 4:19, He says, when you look up at the sun, the moon, and stars—all the forces of Heaven—don’t be seduced into worshipping them. The Lord your God gave them to all the peoples of the Earth. Say—what’s He mean by that? What’s He gettin’ at? Well, friends, what God’s saying is that while the sun may be the center of our physical universe, each of us gets to choose what’s the center of our own universe, the universe inside our…”
Pete droned on for a while, and Dan stared lovingly at his bride. He was doing something with his life. Finally. He was marrying Mara! And he’d get her home today. To the mainland, at least, but then home home. He was going too, which was better than he’d even hoped for.
She’d forgive him, right?
Pete called Lilyanna up to read from Peter 4:8, and, oh my God, she was wearing white.
Dan didn’t know much about weddings, or about women, obviously, but he knew you didn’t wear white to someone else’s wedding. And this wasn’t like an off-white, or an eggshell, or a functional beige, this was white , like, look-at-me white, like, pure-as-the-driven-snow white. And there was cleavage and the slit on the side of the dress stretched all the way to Milwaukee, and she walked to the altar like this was her show, her big day. Dan looked at Mara, like, Can you believe this lady, but Mara just smiled at him and rolled her eyes, unbothered.
There was a mic on the side of the stage, and when Lilyanna reached it, she put both fists in the air and said, “Okay, y’all, this one’s for all my prayer warriors out there. Give me an amen if prayer’s the most powerful weapon on this planet!” There were a lot of amens. A spooky amount of amens.
“Now I’m about to read from Peter 4:8, y’all, which is one of my favorites, but before I do, can I just borrow your ears for a moment?”
Translation: Do you mind if I make this about me?
“Just a quick second, y’all, and then I’ll get back to my seat because I know I’m going to cry when I see this beautiful couple say ‘I do,’ and I can’t have y’all seeing my makeup run. I can’t! I just wanted to say, y’all, real quick: Look around. Look at your neighbor, look across the aisle, look in front of you, and look behind you. This is the power of gathering with a grateful heart, y’all. I tell my ladies, my BeachBod by Lilyanna ladies, I tell them that when women gather, great things happen. But that applies to our men too. Hey—shout-out to all our men on this island, ladies, because Lord knows we wouldn’t be starting any fires without them.”
She laughed, some women from the crowd cheered. Dan heard Alan grunt. After everything Lilyanna had put this place through, there were still people in this crowd who bought in?
“And I just want to say—we’ve had some tussles over the past week. Some growing pains, y’all. No one said this was going to be easy, but hey, no one said it was gonna be this hard either! I laugh with Pete at night, we visit and laugh, because I say, ‘Well, no matter how hard things get on this island, it ain’t as bad as raising two teenagers back home!’ And in some ways, I mean it. I think I speak for all of us when I say thank you, Brody Sheridan, for making Tizoc an adults-only resort. But seriously, y’all. I just wanted to say tonight that we appreciate some of the feedback y’all are giving us about how things are running around here. That’s why we threw this party tonight, invited everyone, not only because it’s so easy to celebrate special friends like Dan and Mara, because it is. But we’re also here to celebrate each of you, each of us.”
If Dan wasn’t dressed in his best shower curtain, he might’ve puked.
“Now, okay, Lilyanna’s gonna get off her soapbox. Lord knows I can talk. My momma used to say, Lilyanna, if you ran like your mouth does, you’d lose that baby fat. Anyway, so let’s hear from Peter 4:8…”
She read from Peter, and it was nice, because she had a real nice reading voice despite everything. Dan was annoyed she stole the spotlight from Mara, wearing white and talking on and on like that, but whatever. Let her have her moment. Little does she know …
“Okay,” Pete said, a few minutes later. “Dan, would you take Mara’s hands in yours?”
Gladly, he thought, and Mara passed her bouquet to Charles, and Dan reached out and clutched his bride. His heart pounded. He’d written some killer vows. Like, he was glad most folks were sitting, because these would knock them off their feet. Dan wasn’t usually so good at saying how he felt, but this was his chance, before God and man, to profess his love for this woman, to shout it over the crashing of the ocean, to scream back into the void, “Universe, there are some things you can’t extinguish.”
Oh, damn. There are some things you can’t extinguish . That’s a good line. Dan thought through his vows. Maybe he could slip it in there…or there…or after that part, yeah, hit them with the ol’ razzle-dazzle…
The texture on the back of Mara’s hand felt different. Dan looked down at it. What were those black streaks? What were those—oh. Oh. How had he not noticed?
He looked up at Mara, she smiled, and a tear had started in the corner of her eye. She’d used henna to draw the rock pattern on her hand. The rock with waves on it, the one from their first date, the one Dan threw into the ocean last week like an idiot. That rock. She’d applied the pattern to her hand from memory, and suddenly Dan’s vows felt inadequate.
“Gloria helped,” she whispered. “We used coffee powder.”
Dan shook his head at her, like, What did I do to deserve you?
She winked.
“We will now begin the reading of the vows, my absolute favorite part,” Pete said. “Dan, if you’d do us the honors. Oh, man, I bet these will be good, folks, because he may not look it, but this guy’s a romantic. He’s a romantic, alright. I know that from my private conversations with him. He—”
Mara ripped her hands from Dan’s and slammed one of them right into Pete’s mouth, totally catching the guy off guard, sending him stumbling through the arch and toward the ocean. Before Dan could even grunt his confusion, even calculate what just happened, she tore from the altar and pounced on Lilyanna in the front row, tugged her up by her extensions. And Dan thought, Wow, women really don’t like it when you wear white to their wedding, but this actually seemed bigger than that, and now there were fabric scissors in Mara’s hand, and she held them to Lilyanna’s throat and dragged her screaming to the altar. Alan shouted something, like What the fuck? and then Lenny was shouting, and he had a gun—a pistol—and he said, “Stay the fuck back, stay the fuck back, everyone stay calm,” and he pointed the gun at Rico and his guards as they approached. They raised their hands in the air, because they didn’t want Mara to hurt Lilyanna, and Mara screamed, “Stay back,” and she sounded more intimidating than Dan had ever heard her. Rico looked like he could tear the head off a horse. Dan wasn’t sure what to do with his hands, wasn’t sure if he should help or what, but Charles had dropped the bouquet in the confusion, so he picked it up. So now Lenny had a pistol, Mara had scissors, and Dan had a bouquet of flowers, but he held it as threateningly as he could.
No one was sitting anymore, everyone stood in place, gasped, screamed.
“This is a hostile takeover!” Lenny shouted, brandishing the gun like Dirty Harry. Dan had never seen Dirty Harry, but he was pretty sure that’s how he brandished a gun. “Put your guns in the sand! Guns on the beach!”
The guards hesitated. Mara spoke next. “I swear to God, I’ll cut her throat!”
Dan almost laughed at that, because there was a 0.0 percent chance Mara was cutting anyone’s throat, even Lilyanna’s, because Mara was the type to put spiders in a paper towel and escort them outside, and she could barely open a box from Amazon if they double-taped it. But she did her best to sound menacing, and it actually must’ve worked because Lilyanna really looked scared, eyes wide and rabid. Rico told his men to hold steady.
“Lenny, what the fuck are you doing?” Alan asked, a genuinely good question.
“The right thing, bro.”
Dan’s trembling free hand found Mara’s bare shoulder. “Was this the plan all along? Mara, you were in on it? You weren’t supposed—”
“I love you, Danny,” she said. “But I told you. I don’t need you to save me.”
“Honey,” Lilyanna pleaded, “I got babies. A sweet thing like you don’t want to—”
The crowd gasped as Pete came stumbling back through the arch, his mouth a bloody mess. Mara had some power behind those fists. He made a half-hearted lunge toward Lilyanna, but Alan saw him coming a mile away. He sighed, seized Pete, and buckled him with one blow. Lights out. Alan spun Pete’s limp body in the sand so he wouldn’t suffocate.
“What now?” Charles said, frantic. “What now?”
“Yeah,” Rico echoed, his gun on Lenny. “What now?”
Gloria appeared behind Lenny. She held a walkie-talkie. Was there a hostile takeover depot on the island Dan didn’t know about?
“Roger,” she said into it. She tapped Lenny’s shoulder, her voice high and fast like air escaping a balloon. “We did it! We did it, Len! Oh my God. I’m gonna faint, I swear. They didn’t get everything, but they got a lot.”
Lenny smirked, real cocksure. “Guests of Buildings B and C!” he announced. “Tizoc Grand Islands Resort and Spa has been liberated!”
Dan could tell he was expecting an ovation or something, like in the movies, but folks just stood around, dumbfounded, scared. Alan rubbed his face with his hands. Charles looked like he might pass out.
“It ain’t too late,” Lilyanna said, the scissors carving a dimple into her throat. “This was stupid, y’all, it was real stupid, but we all do stupid things sometimes. You let me go, darling, and you put down that gun, Mr. Fava, and we can move on from this. We ain’t gonna be friends, but—”
“Shut up,” Mara said. “Do you ever shut up?”
“Guests of Buildings B and C!” Lenny said again. “We have this situation under control!”
Sure didn’t feel like it.
“We will regroup in the lobby of Building C! Please! Walk calmly toward Building C, do not make any stops, and await further instruction! Thank you!”
No one moved. Rico laughed. He motioned toward Mara.
“Whaddya bet I can tag her forehead over Lilyanna’s shoulder? One shot. Easy.”
Dan, still not used to staring down the barrel of a gun, slid in front of Mara and Lilyanna. Lenny’s resolve was beginning to rupture. He wasn’t holding the pistol with the same authority anymore.
“Dan, you tell ’em,” Lenny said.
“What?”
“They’ll listen to you. Tell ’em to go to C.”
“Lenny, what’s our endgame here? What are—”
“Do it, Danny!” Mara shouted.
Dan raised his hands in the air. “Everyone!” His voice cracked. Damn it. He cleared his throat and started over. “Everyone! Thank you for coming! We have everything under control here. A few days ago, we demanded change. Well, as of tonight”—he glanced backward—“ everything has changed. But we still need your help. Please, guests of Buildings B and C. Walk to the lobby of Building C, and we’ll meet you there soon.” He paused. “Consider it a reception!”
At first, no one moved. Dan’s heart sank. But then someone stepped into the aisle—it was the guy whose beard was his whole personality—and he shouted back at Dan. “Hell, yeah!” he said gleefully. “I knew you were planning something, Foster! We’ll meet you there!” Others murmured their agreement, and the back rows slowly emptied. They marched north through the sand, hundreds of them, a procession from a dream. No one looked back, no one hesitated any longer, they strolled past Building A, along the pools, and toward Building C, their new future.
“Get Building A guests outta here too,” Lenny said.
They didn’t need to be told twice. The front rows—the rows full of those much better dressed, those who looked more insulted than terrified—brushed off their pants and gowns, shuffled politely into nearby Building A. Brody Sheridan tried to lose himself among them, but Lenny called him out.
“Not you, Sheridan. Stay. You hear this too.”
The only people who remained on the beach were the guards, the wedding party, Lilyanna, Sheridan, and Pete’s crumpled body.
“Okay,” Rico said, the corner of his mouth curled into a tight smile. He was enjoying this. “All alone. What’s stopping us from wasting all you right now?”
“I-If I die,” Lilyanna stammered, “y’all don’t get paid, Rico. How’s that for starters? Hun, could you loosen your grip? No? Okay. Okay. Now, let’s just talk through this. What do y’all want? Where we goin’ here, ’cause I’m having trouble with the plot.”
Dan was too.
Gloria said, “Tell ’em, honey.”
Lenny’s swagger returned. “We took back what was ours. You think you can just take and take from the working man and we ain’t ever gonna take back? No more. Alright? No more. Now we got the goods. We got the power. You understand that? We got the numbers.”
“You hit the supply room,” Rico said.
“Sharp as a tack, this one,” Gloria said.
Rico snarled.
“We only took back what was ours,” Lenny said. “Left the caviar for you. People don’t deserve to suffer in their final days. They deserve some comfort. Full bellies. Medicine. Maybe a couple of drinks to remember their families back home. If they’re gonna die on this island, least I can do is make them comfortable. Right? It’s the least we can do. We’re gonna go back there, and you’re gonna stay here, and that’s the end of it.” He signaled toward Lilyanna. “And to make sure you don’t pull nothing, we’re taking BeachBod with us.”
“No,” Lilyanna said. “No.”
Rico laughed. “You didn’t answer my question. What’s stopping us from taking everything back, big guy? You might have the numbers. We got the guns.”
Lenny cocked an eyebrow and nodded at the pistol grasped in his beefy hands. “You sure about that?”
Another guard spoke up. “Rico, they hit the security room too. Gomez isn’t responding. We had—”
“Shut up,” Rico said. “Alright. There were three extra pistols in the security room. Some ammo. And I’m guessing the pistol in your hand is the one that went missing two days ago. Safe bet? Let’s also assume Gomez is dead, and your men got his gun too.”
Dead? Had Lenny’s men killed someone?
“So, at most, you’ve got five Glock nineteens. Okay. I’ve got eleven trained men with guns. Ten, if Gomez is dead. You like those odds, fat boy? I like mine.”
This sure was a long conversation to have at gunpoint. Gunpoint conversations are supposed to be snappy, full of one-liners. This was like Thanksgiving dinner and a math problem.
“While you’re here running your mouth,” Lenny said, “my men are fortifying Building C. We got balconies, we got a rooftop, we got sniper nests in the windows along the third floor. We got tradesmen, nurses, contractors. Ex-military. People who know how to use their hands. Look at what Mara and my boy Alan did to soft Pete over there. Made a fool of him. And you sure you got your math right about those guns? You better be sure, bro. You real good at math? Inventory management? I ain’t real good at math, Rico, but you asked me about odds. Odds are my people at B and C could wipe the floor with the wealth managers and politicians you got holed up in A. Those are good odds, you ask me.”
Leonard fuckin’ Layout.
“Plus, you try anything, we open up Lilyanna.”
“ Yeah ,” Mara said.
Dan wished he had something cool to say, but it’s hard to say something cool while also feeling violently ill. The reality of the situation was catching up to him. He felt emasculated, betrayed, sick with worry. A little turned on too. He’d never seen Mara like this.
“We got the plane,” Rico said, flustered.
“We got the pilot,” Lenny said.
Well, that was that. An impasse. No one spoke for several moments. It was awkward, almost, like lining up behind an old classmate at the grocery store checkout. What else was there to talk about…? Dan glanced around. Had they really done it? Seized back control of the resort? They being everyone else besides Dan, obviously. He had done absolutely nothing. He loosened his tie, undid his top button.
Breathed.
“Okay,” Dan said, tossing the bouquet to the sand. “Well, it really meant a lot to us that you came, Rico. Fellas. See ya later.” He placed his hand on the small of Mara’s back, prodding her to walk. Team B and C shimmied clockwise, dragging a deflated Lilyanna with them. Then they walked backward down the aisle, a wedding tape on rewind.
“This isn’t over,” Rico called.
“Okay, thanks again,” Dan said. “Drive safe.”
Rico and his thunderstruck men remained at the altar. Brody Sheridan bent to retrieve Pete. Dan and the others eventually stepped from the sand, onto the wooden beach access ramp, then onto the textured cement of the resort. When there was adequate distance, they spun on their heels and ran. The warmth of the bonfires slipped away, cold sunk back into their bones.
“That was an incredibly stupid move, y’all,” Lilyanna said near the pools. Mara removed the scissors and shoved her at Lenny. With Alan’s help, he hoisted Lilyanna onto his shoulder and carried her like King Kong.
“Building C really as fortified as you said?” Alan asked, checking over his shoulder.
Lenny shrugged, bouncing Lilyanna. “Got a few guns.”
“Enough to make a run on the plane? They’ll be sending more guards to the hangar now.”
Lenny huffed. “Probably not.”
“Then she’s right,” Alan said, disgusted. “That was an incredibly stupid move.”