by Mary Morris
Mostly I am to go to Puente de Juventud and visit the new joint-venture hotels being opened by Canadians and Swedes, sleep in the new beds, get copies of the activity sheets. Do they have banana-eating or beer-guzzling contests? Can you ride a glass-bottomed boat? I need to check on the snorkeling. See if they have a day camp, pony rides. Do kids under twelve eat free on the all-inclusive? How good are the security guards?
Now the colonel looks at me in such a way that I understand our conversation is over, but I don’t want it to be. I want an explanation and, more than that, as I stand there shivering, I want a blanket. It seems like such a small thing, but it is suddenly so essential to me. I’m not sure how I’ll make it through the night. Todd is the warm one, but I am cold. Even in the heat of summer, I need a cover over me. I hesitate, thinking better of it; then I ask if I could have a blanket, and the colonel looks at me with neither rage nor compassion. Rather, he looks at me with indifference. “This is not a hotel,” he says.
I’ve noticed, I want to reply. But it seems better to say nothing at all. I think that at any moment he will mention Isabel. He’ll say, “Why don’t you tell about what happened the last time you were here.” Instead he starts shuffling papers on his desk. “Anything else?” he asks abruptly.
“Yes, I have to go to the bathroom.”
He signals to one of his guards. The stone-faced guard with a gun in his hand accompanies me down a narrow corridor. To my right is the bathroom and straight ahead is the door outside. It has been left ajar and a warm, tropical breeze blows in. I hesitate, smelling the salt, the sea, a hint of jasmine in the air, and for an instant I think I could dash through the opening into the night, but the guard motions with the butt of his rifle. The bathroom is gray and there is no mirror. There is also no toilet paper.
I am taken back to the immigration waiting room, where it appears I will be for a while. I try to stretch out across three plastic chairs, but the armrests press into my sides. Tossing a light jacket over my shoulders, I arrange myself better, resting on my duffel, the way I have seen pictures of travelers stranded by snowstorms in Denver, strikes in Milan, though I have never been a stranded traveler before this night.
Just when I feel as if I could doze off, as if I could actually sleep with my head resting on my palm, one of the guards, a pleasant enough man with a nice face, informs me that I am to be moved upstairs, where I’ll be more comfortable. He hoists my duffel as I follow him up some winding steps into a departure lounge. The lounge, lined with vinyl-covered benches, smells of grease and beer and does not look like much of an improvement, except that the guard tells me I can stretch out on the benches. He also tells me that there are no more flights until Tuesday so I could actually live in this lounge until they find a flight for me.
I sit down, trembling. Though I have my duffel with me, the only warm things it contains are a few cotton sweaters, an extra pair of jeans. I pull on a sweater, but still my teeth chatter. Travel light, Todd told me, but take a sweatshirt. You never know, he said. He’s practical about this sort of thing, but somehow I don’t listen. My bag is heavy with a blow-dryer and a clothes steamer, but no sweatshirt. The windchill was fifteen below when I left home; I handed Todd my winter coat at the airport when I kissed him good-bye, knowing he’d be waiting at the same place upon my return.
I’ve never been very good at being awake when everyone else is asleep. At home I want to wake someone up to keep me company. I’m not one for cleaning drawers or counting sheep. When I was younger, I used to drink a little brandy, though I never felt right the next day. I try to lie down on the narrow benches, but as soon as I start to doze, I feel myself slipping toward the floor.
The fluorescent lights are on in the duty-free shops that line the departure lounge, and I get up and walk around. One shop displays a giant lizard, stuffed in attack position, and a weird chess set that appears medieval in origins. The pawns are belly dancers as if out of a harem; the rook is a real castle; the knight, a knight on his rearing horse. I wonder where this chess set came from and what it is doing at the duty-free shop in the Aeropuerto Internacional.
There is a display of wood carvings and giant spiders with wire legs that I try to envision on coffee tables in Munich and Amsterdam. Do these spiders really exist on la isla? There are ceramics—bowls that look as if they’d disintegrate with water in them, brittle-looking plates, perfect for hurling in domestic battles on Spanish-language soap operas, but I can’t imagine serving food on them. The ceramics have squiggles and shapes on the sides in an attempt to appear indigenous, but the natives were wiped out centuries ago.
Books line the counter. Propaganda mostly. The Revolution from Columbus to the Present. The Diary of a Guerrilla Fighter. Leafing through a volume of contemporary poetry, I glance up and see the woman. She is lying flat on a shelf, her skin pasty white, her dark hair perfectly coiffured, red lipstick, a sheet pulled up to her chin. Slamming the book down, I dash back into the darkness, my hand pressed to my mouth, because I am certain she is dead. Then I notice that the airport is full of these women, lying on pallets, wrapped in sheets, on the floor. They are workers on the graveyard shift, but they all look dead. At any moment I expect them all to rise up. Overhead Muzak plays “Guantanamera.” Innumerable flies and mosquitoes buzz around my head; I swat blindly at the air, slapping myself in the face.
As I stand here, I realize that it was in this room that I first saw Isabel. Or rather first noticed Isabel, because my sense was, even then, that I’d seen her before. But it was here in this departure lounge that I noticed her darting eyes, caught her furtive glance. I saw her the day I was departing on an excursion to Puente de Juventud, the Bridge of Youth, a beach resort twenty minutes’ flight away. Manuel was waiting with me in this same airport where I am being detained when I noticed the young woman, close to my age. She was hugging people who were leaving, greeting others who were arriving. Her laughter echoed through the lounge and everyone seemed to know her, even the guards and officials.
The jeans she wore were too big and the navy blue sweater was too heavy for the season. It seemed as if she was wearing clothes borrowed from a man with whom she was intimate. But it was her black eyes that caught me as they skitted from person to person, from face to face. She gazed across doorways as if she was involved in contraband or some form of espionage. I’d seen things like this at airports before. But she seemed to be searching for someone she’d lost in the crowd.
It was Manuel who told me who she was. Of course, the moment he told me, it was as if I had already known. Everyone who’d been to la isla knew who she was. And then he said, If you like, I’ll arrange for you to meet her. He was a distant relation, a cousin by marriage, but they were the same age and had grown up together. She likes to have visitors, he said. As you know, he told me, though I didn’t at the time, for years she has been trying to leave.
My heart pounds in my chest. Once I captured a baby rabbit in the woods and its heart beat this way in my palm. My mother said it died of fright. Now I curl up on the bench in a little ball, teetering on the edge. A driving rain falls, hitting the picture window. Outside three jumbo jets sit idle, waiting to take people away.
Two
THE POLICE CAR speeds along the outskirts of Ciudad del Caballo. Though it is a Monday afternoon, the beige, nondescript car does not need its siren because the streets are empty, as if everyone is asleep, as if they have decided to stay home. Teenagers ride bicycles in the middle of the road, ignoring what little traffic there is. A whole family rides on a single bicycle like a circus act. Dodging potholes, they wave as we pass.
We drive by shantytowns, tin-roofed shacks held together with plywood and cardboard. Small children race to the roadside, dirty faces staring at us. Shabby dogs and one-eyed cats stagger across the road. The sunlight is so intense that I have to shade my eyes. Major Lorenzo puts down the window and a blast of hot air blows into the backseat. Warmth seeps into my bones. “Perhaps that is too much wind?” he asks, but I
tell him no, it feels good.
He drapes his arm across the seat where his driver sits. His nails are manicured, buffed. He wears a gold watch—a Rolex—that shows the time to be just after noon. He and his driver, who is hidden behind reflector shades, exchange glances. Both men wear short sleeves that reveal sturdy, tanned forearms. “Are you hungry?” Major Lorenzo asks me. “Have you had something to eat?”
“I had breakfast,” I answer, thinking of the hard roll and black coffee I’d been given at the airport. He nods, satisfied with my reply. Major Lorenzo—a small, compact man with a thin mustache and wire-rimmed glasses—has taken charge of my case. He seems somewhat embarrassed, sorry to put me through this. When he met me at the airport, he shook my hand.
He is a go-between, and someone else has given him his orders. In fact, it seems as if he is as ignorant of the details of my case as I am. Or else he is good at pretending. When I asked him if he could explain what the difficulty was, he said, “I am sorry, but I have not been informed. I am just taking care of … how do you say it, the red tape.” He grinned when he found this expression. We both laughed, a hearty laugh that friends might share over a beer.
We drive swiftly now past the crumbling arches of colonial houses, some held up by ancient scaffolding. Others have no roofs. The frames of windows stand empty, open to the sky. They are taking me to the hotel where I will stay until I can be returned to where I came from. That is what I have been told. We turn right on to the Miramar, the wide road that follows the sea.
Along the sea there is a wall. Spray rises from it. I gasp as a young man dives off for his afternoon swim. On the Miramar, houses once owned by the rich stand with their fading crimson, sun-drenched yellow, cobalt blue facades in need of paint. In these houses ten families now live. We come to a red light but do not stop.
We turn, then zigzag down side streets, until we arrive at the main square. Major Lorenzo’s aide opens my door, offering me a hand. His fingers on my arm are warm and sticky, and for the first time I notice that unlike Major Lorenzo he is wearing a gun. When he steps away, I pause in the bright sunlight, which burns hot on my face.
Tipping my head back, I gaze at the Hotel España. It is an old Spanish—style building with an arching portico, thick columns. Scarlet and yellow bougainvillea dangle from its balcony. A vine, the color of mangoes, climbs up the columns. Across the street in the main square people linger on benches, and I want to stroll down its crisscross paths, beneath the shade of its royal palms, but Major Lorenzo takes me gently by the arm, ushering me inside.
Everything in the lobby is wicker—white wicker—and the walls are painted white. There are creamy sofas and overstuffed armchairs. Light pours in through the huge windows, which are open, as ceiling fans whirl, turning warm air. A woman sits in a fluffy chair, staring into space, probably waiting for someone who is late. Two Jamaican men in linen suits and red ties sit hunched over a pad of paper, smoking cigarettes.
Though I stayed here the last time, I hardly recognize the place now because it has been refurbished to meet the new demand in the tourist trade. Its dark, stuffy lobby has been replaced with all this wicker and light. It is a modest but decent hotel, one our guidebook only gives a brief mention to, short shrift really, but at a glance I think it is much better than the full-service ones we advise for tourists. This hotel lacks in modern conveniences (no air-conditioning or room service), but its floor and ceiling are now brightly decorated in mosaics in the old Spanish style. I will expand our entry on it during my stay.
Major Lorenzo asks if I want a view of the plaza. He tells me that from this room if I stand on my balcony I can see the sea. I think this is a very nice suggestion. The last time I was here I was given a room with a curtain across one wall. When I flung the curtain back, it revealed a brick wall.
It takes a long time for them to prepare my room. While I am waiting, I have a cup of coffee in the bar. I sit at a table and order a café con leche and toast, since it has been hours since I last ate. After the waiter takes my order, he doesn’t leave. Instead he stands there, looking at me oddly. “You have been here before,” he says, beaming. He is a tall man with wavy brown hair, and I recognize him as Enrique, the waiter who was grateful two years ago when I tipped him with toothpaste and cans of sardines, which is what people who visit la isla do. “So you have come back to see us once more,” he says as we shake hands, introducing ourselves again.
“I couldn’t stay away,” I tell him, surprised at how this is true. Enrique was the one who told me to be careful when he saw me with Isabel. He tried to whisper something in my ear, but I don’t like whispering. I never have and I didn’t listen to what he said then and I suppose I would not listen again now. As he asks me how I have been, I wonder if he knows what has happened to me, but I don’t mention it.
In the corner of the bar there is a pool table, where a group of blond men and two dark women are shooting. The sound of breaking balls shatters the quiet of the bar. I do not recall seeing a pool table when I was here the last time. A few moments later the coffee arrives. It is watery and the milk swirls in the cup. The toast is served dry. “There’s no sugar,” Enrique informs me, his face full of chagrin.
From the bar where I sip my coffee, I observe Major Lorenzo in the lobby, briefing a small group of staff. Waiters and desk clerks keep glancing my way. The hotel is run by the state, so all the staff are government workers, and they are being informed of my plight. I guess there will be no guard posted at my door; they won’t need one. After a few moments Major Lorenzo comes to join me. Though I offer him a seat, he remains standing. “I will be back later,” he says, “when I have some news. In the meantime you should make yourself as comfortable as possible.”
“I was wondering,” I ask him, “if I couldn’t just sit out front in the plaza where there are trees.”
“No,” he says firmly, “that will not be possible.” Then he pauses, gazing down at me. “But the hotel is at your disposal,” he says. “Do you understand?”
“Yes, I think I understand.”
“Good, it is important that we understand each other.” Then he smiles and heads for the door. “So I will see you this afternoon. Hopefully I’ll have some news.”
As he is leaving, I think I have forgotten something in his car, but as I run to the door to call him, several hotel attendants stand in my way.
Returning to my table at the bar, I look around. I had expected interrogations, cinder-block rooms, not the mosaic-trimmed lobby of this hotel, not doormen in white suits blocking my way. Perhaps they do not know about Isabel. Perhaps they know nothing about what happened between us, and they are detaining me just because I worked as a journalist on a tourist’s visa, something la isla cannot abide. It has nothing to do with Isabel after all.
Still I cannot sit here and not imagine her rushing through this lobby in her pale flowing skirt, her body that seemed to be swimming through air, her dark hair tied back in a bun, the white silk blouse under which she wore no bra. I can see all the heads turning, hear the whispers. Everyone knew who she was. And of course that was part of it. She wanted them to.
At the table across from me two Finnish men, one of whom is a dwarf, and an elderly German in green polyester pants are buying drinks for three local women. A pretty young woman in a red dress gets up, tugging on her dress, but the dwarf pulls her down into his lap. He has pudgy, gnarled hands and he runs them up and down her arms. He stuffs money into her bodice and she laughs, pushing him away. The elderly man is fondling another woman, who has a sour look on her face. She ogles a tall blond man, probably from Scandinavia, who just arrived, sporting a large backpack.
One of the women has a child with her—a toddler with golden Afro curls who eats candy bar after candy bar. A few moments after I sit down, this woman gets up. She leaves the hotel on the arm of the elderly German, the child chasing after her.
They have given me a room that overlooks the square. It has a small balcony from which I really can se
e the sea, twin beds, and a television that gets the Caribbean equivalent of MTV. The first thing I do when I get to the room is open the French doors to let in the light and air. Noise from the street rises to my window. I can hear the voices of schoolchildren at play.
Jessica would be having lunch now. A bologna sandwich on white bread, an orange, animal crackers. The same thing every day. Todd probably let her wear whatever she wanted to school—the Aladdin sweatshirt, the dinosaur skirt, lace stockings. When I am away, Todd has many weak moments when it comes to Jessica. He buys her Barbie dolls; he doesn’t say no to candy as a snack. I am the strict one, the one who lays down the rules.
My daughter is five and I’ve left her at home. She prefers it there, with her dog, her yard, her friends. She has a night-light with a rainbow that she cannot sleep without. Todd and I have this understanding: I can go on these junkets three or four times a year and in this way get my taste of freedom. My fix, he calls it. It’s enough to keep me going. And this didn’t seem such a bad idea, to come here in January during the worst part of the winter. Even Todd thought it was a good idea.
I’ve always needed a secret life. Diaries with locks, hiding places under the stairs. When I was a teenager, I snuck out to meet boys my father forbade me to see on darkened street corners, just blocks from my house. I slid down the drainpipe. Getting back in was harder, but the boys hoisted me onto the roof. When I make love to Todd, I think of things I shouldn’t think of. Other men, women. I imagine myself in different places. Distant lands are foreign bodies to me, perfect for clandestine affairs. I require these small absences. Time away. Todd accepts this, though he doesn’t know why. He doesn’t want to know. If I start to tell him, he walks out of the room.
