But still—the business did something to a person. There was so much attention, and so much pressure to be young and flawless. Raymond had joked about wanting the dumb reducing treatment in the spa, but she knew he really did want it. She thought she would’ve minded less if he’d been tempted by the Brazilian trainer, and not by the seaweed wrap and the electrodes. At least then the temptation would be about someone else. There was nothing sexy about incipient narcissism.
After June was born, Raymond had asked if she was having an affair, and Nora had realized that she was, in a way, because all of her emotional energy had gone to her children. She was infatuated with them, besotted. But that wasn’t the real reason she wasn’t that into sex anymore. Her therapist said that their situation was pretty normal, for a stable long-term couple in an equitable relationship. Power imbalances were erotically generative. So were fights. Her therapist said she should initiate sex more, maybe think of it like exercise. You didn’t really want to do it beforehand, but it felt good afterward. It raised serotonin levels. It was supposed to be good for your skin.
But Nora always had about twelve other things she wanted or needed to do, at any given time.
She and Pedro were deep in the trees, talking about birds, and he was standing very close to her. She didn’t move away. She felt like she was sixteen. Then he was kissing her against a tree, and she didn’t pull away.
After a minute, he slipped a hand inside her white shorts, and she was embarrassed by the slide, by how wet she was already. There was no fumbling and hunting for the right spot. He made her come so quickly and expertly it took her breath away. It seemed to take about thirty seconds from the moment his hand pushed aside the silky nylon of her shorts. Her whole body was trembling, her legs weak, but he held her up with his other arm. With Raymond she had to really concentrate these days, and she had to be lying down. Was this hotter because it was all so strange and taboo? Or did Pedro have secret powers? He didn’t seem surprised or disappointed by the speed of it. Everything seemed to be going according to his plan: He knew where the switch was, and he knew how to flip it. He did it again, and she found herself gasping, shaking as he held her upright.
She recovered, the world coming back into focus, with a hint of the remorse to come. “What about you?” she asked.
“No,” he said. “No condom. No sexo.”
“Oh.” She realized she hadn’t actually thought there would be sexo. In her teenage fog, she had reverted to the assumption that sexo itself was off the table. Actual intercourse was something grown-ups did.
“You have condom?” Pedro asked.
“No.” She thought of her daypack full of cheese sticks and crackers. She thought of Raymond’s vasectomy. Raymond out golfing. She shrank away from the guide a little. “No condom.”
“So no sexo,” Pedro said, shrugging. Then he brought himself off in the same quick, expert way he had worked on her, with no shame, convulsing at the end, in broad daylight, while she watched. She noted that his penis—what she could see of it, inside his shorts—was smaller than Raymond’s, but he was smaller than Raymond in every way. He was built on a different scale. She noted it without judgment or even a sense of involvement.
Pedro wiped his hand off on a flat leaf and grinned at her. She’d had spa massages that were more emotionally compromising. It was as if she’d been to the car wash. Just the basic, thanks. No wax. “One more?” he asked.
“No, that’s okay.” She saw her own dazed expression in his mirrored sunglasses. Her legs were still weak. “Thanks. We should get back.”
That was when they heard the first shout.
“Marcus!” she cried.
Later she would wonder why she’d said her son’s name, and not June’s, but in that moment she wasn’t thinking at all. She went crashing back through the brush. They’d walked farther than she’d thought, and must have been gone for longer than she’d realized. Branches hit her face, but she didn’t notice. Later she would see a red welt on her cheek, a scratch near her eyebrow.
Liv was standing alone on the beach in her swimsuit and hat, looking sunstruck, calling the children’s names. The children were nowhere to be seen.
“Where are they?” Nora asked, breathless.
“I don’t know!” Liv said. Camila had hiked back up the trail to the road, in case the children had gone to the van for something they’d left behind.
But Pedro stared at the flowing river. “Oh my God,” he said.
“What?” Nora said.
“The tide,” he said. “Took them up the river.”
“Where are they?” she screamed. She would kill Pedro, if something had happened to her children. She would break his neck with her hands. Or she would hold him under the water until he drowned.
“That way.” He pointed inland and she ran, blindly, but there was no trail along the river. There was only thick brush and she was fighting her way through it, unaware if the others were behind her. She sank into the mud on the bank, and couldn’t move forward.
She was trying to make her way to clear water when she heard Camila’s voice and turned. The Argentinian woman was standing with a police officer in uniform, who looked concerned and said something in Spanish.
Camila looked ashen. “The officer says there are crocodiles,” she said.
“What?” Nora screamed.
Pedro waded in and put an arm around her waist.
She pulled free, almost losing her balance and falling in. “You said there was nothing dangerous!” She couldn’t seem to speak normally anymore, she could only scream. She thought of the word hysterical, a word for which she had always had a feminist contempt.
“I didn’t know,” Pedro said.
“How could you not know?” she screamed. “How did this happen?”
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I forget the tide. Come out of the water.”
“Where the fuck are my children?” she screamed.
7.
THE KIDS WERE engrossed in a complicated game with the three inner tubes, making a kind of raft that they could stand on. It required a great deal of concentration. Hector was the master of the game, and he kept everyone involved. He didn’t leave Sebastian and June out, or cut them any slack just because they were little. Penny admired that in him.
He tossed his wet hair off his face. If Hector had been in a band, Penny’s friends would have fainted over him. And he could be in a band. He played guitar that well.
He was good at building a structure, too, like her father was. He gave directions, saying, “Hold there. Now, Penny, you sit there. Okay, now you can stand up there. Now Penny, too.” He kept the whole three-ring raft stable. She loved hearing him say her name. His stomach was tan and slick above his pink-and-green checked shorts.
Every few minutes, someone would slip or step in the wrong place and everyone would go crashing into the water, screaming with delight, the inner tubes flying. Hector would make sure everyone was safe and afloat, and then they would start rebuilding.
They were so focused that they didn’t notice when the tide changed. It must have paused when they were first in the water. Then it reversed, and began to flow inland. No one noticed that the water from the sea was pushing them upstream, slowly at first, and then with surprising force.
When they finally looked up, waterlogged, each with an arm slung over a tube and legs treading the silty water, they were in a different place. There was no beach. There were no mothers on towels. The river was starting to narrow. It was overhung with trees.
Penny squinted against the sun. She was hanging on to an inner tube with Isabel, and had one arm over the smaller tube June and Sebastian were on. Her fingertips were pruned. She felt her little brother’s arm slide against hers. Hector and Marcus were on the third tube. Birds sang, and insects buzzed in the trees, but there were no human sounds.
“What do we do?” she asked.
They all looked to Hector, their leader. He frowned. Then he said, “We hold on and kick back.” He rolled his long body over and started to kick.
They tried, all six of them, to propel themselves back toward the beach. But it was pointless, the tidal current was too strong. The little ones spluttered, water in their faces.
“Stop!” Hector commanded.
The song of insects and birds returned. On they floated, with the muscle of the river.