>I nod.
“What are you doing?”
I shrug, open my hands, as if to suggest so many, many options.
“There’s this great party on the beach at Puerto Morelos. Las Olas de Molas, this wild reggae band are playing. It’s usually the best thing going in all of the Playa. A lot of us dance all night, and sometimes catch a ferry to the Isla for hangover brunch.”
“Maybe I’ll see you there.”
She grins. “I’ll cross my fingers. Here’s everything you need for your tours,” she says, handing me some paperwork, as well as a card with her personal cell phone number on it. “I’m Kayla. Call me if you need anything. Anything at all.”
The same sweating, sweater-vested security guards are manning the gate to Maya del Sol, but they don’t recognize us. Or they don’t care. In the backseat of a taxi, with official paperwork in triplicate in hand, I am transformed.
We are deposited in the front lobby, an enormous atrium full of bamboo, flowers, and tropical birds tied to perches. We sit down on a wicker loveseat while a burnished Mexican woman takes our IDs and makes copies of my credit card. Then we are delivered to an older Mexican man with a flip of golden hair held back by a pair of tortoiseshell Ray-Bans.
“Welcome!” he says. “My name is Johnny Maximo, and I’m here to tell you that at Maya del Sol, fantasy becomes reality.”
“That’s just what he’s hoping for,” Broodje says.
Johnny grins. He glances at the piece of paper in hand. “So, William, Robert. Is it Robert or Bob?”
“Robert-Jan, actually,” Broodje says.
“Robert then. Have you ever owned a vacation property?”
“I can’t say that I have.”
“What about you, William?”
“I’m more of a see-the-world kind of guy.”
Johnny laughs. “Me, too. See all the ladies of the world. So I take it you two bachelors have never to been to a vacation club before.”
“Can’t say that I have, Johnny,” Broodje says.
“I am telling you: this is the life. Why rent your vacation when you can own it? Why live half a life when you can live a whole one?”
“Or two lives, even,” Broodje says.
“Here is one of our pools. We have six of them,” Johnny brags. It’s surrounded by chaise longues and flowering shrubs. Beyond, the Caribbean glitters as if its sole purpose is to be a backdrop. “The view is nice, no?” Johnny laughs, pointing to a row of sunbathing women.
“Very,” I say, scanning them, one by one.
“So, what do you do, William?”
“Real estate,” I say.
“Ahh, so you already know how lucrative it is. You know . . .” He motions me closer. “I used to be a big movie star in Mexico,” he says in an exaggerated whisper. “But now—”
“You were an actor?” I interrupt.
This catches him off guard. “Before. But I make more money as an owner here than I ever did in the film business.”
“What films were you in?” I ask.
“Oh, nothing you’d ever hear of.”
“We get lots of foreign films in Holland. Try me.”