by Amy Waeschle
It was Cassidy’s turn to raise an eyebrow. Querida was a term of mild endearment. She nodded and a menu appeared. After a quick scan, she ordered a chicken burrito.
A pair of college-aged guys tramped through the bar, dripping wet and carrying foam-topped surf boards. Cassidy followed them with her eyes and watched them meet up with a hotel employee in the entryway who helped them stow their boards in a giant metal cage. The cage contained at least a hundred surfboards of all shapes and lengths. The employee, a petite woman in a blue polo shirt, her thick dark hair coiled tightly into a perfect bun in the back of her head, locked the cage, and the two surfers headed to what Cassidy assumed were their rooms.
“You surf?” the bartender asked her, swooping in with silverware and a napkin.
“Um,” Cassidy said, turning away from the surfboard cage.
“We can set you up with a board, lessons, we even do tours,” he added, placing a glass of water near her silverware.
By now she was so hungry she felt lightheaded, but the mention of tours got her attention. “Yes, I would like to find out about tours. Do you have a boat?” she asked.
The bartender nodded. “We run weekly trips to Witch’s Rock and Ollie’s Point, as well as day trips to local breaks like Avellanas, Nosara . . . ”
“How big is the boat?” she asked.
The bartender looked puzzled. “Uh, normal sized?”
“Lo siento,” she said, shaking her head. The conversation wasn’t going where she wanted it to. “Estoy buscando a alguien,” she said. I’m looking for someone.
“A quién?” he asked.
Cassidy pulled out her phone and swiped through her pictures. When was the last time her damaged family had been together? Christmas, two years ago? Or was it during her visit to Rebecca’s after Gloria was born? Jeez, that was four years ago. Finally, she found a photo of Reeve. His brown hair hung loose—a little long, she always thought—and wearing that same goofy grin. Reeve’s eyes were a brownish hazel that when he was high went from peaceful to downright terrifying. In this picture, he wasn’t high, and his cheeks were filled out, which meant that he had probably been clean. Cassidy had forgotten how kind and normal he could look.
She flashed her screen at the bartender. He scrutinized the phone for an instant before saying, “Yeah. I’ve seen him around,” he said.
“When was the last time you saw him?” Cassidy asked.
The bartender crossed his arms and seemed to give the question some thought. “I guess it’s been a while.”
A stocky Tico in a red polo shirt brought her a giant plate of burrito, black beans, and rice. Cassidy’s eyes nearly popped out of her head at the sight of so much food. She was used to eateries in her little town on the volcano where portion sizes were for normal humans.
“How long ago?” Cassidy asked.
The bartender wiped down a corner of the bar with a rag. “A few weeks?”
“Huh,” she said, picking up her fork.
“Otra cerveza?” he asked, picking up her empty.
Cassidy nodded.
When he returned, Cassidy was three bites into her burrito. “Did he work here?” she asked, forcing herself to slow down.
The bartender shook his head.
She took a sip of the ice-cold beer. “Or for someone with a boat?”
The bartender shrugged. “You might try Bruce Keolani. He runs surf tours out of Playas del Coco.”
“Where’s that?”
“North of here, about forty-five minutes.”
Cassidy groaned inwardly.
“But Bruce usually comes around here in the mornings. Sometimes he picks up guests in Tamarindo.”
“Even though you run surf tours too?”
He glanced at the TV. “Sometimes guest want to stay out longer, explore, that kind of thing. Bruce does that.”
Cassidy nodded. The bartender assisted a waitress with a drink order, then left his post. She heard him picking up empty glasses and stacking plates. By the time he was back, Cassidy was stuffed. “The kitchen is closing in a few minutes. Can I get you anything else?”
“You got rum?” she asked.
“Absolutely.”
Cassidy scanned the shelves behind the bar, finding what she was looking for. “Then I’ll take Flor on the rocks with an orange wedge.”
“You got it.”
Normally, she would celebrate the end of her fieldwork with a glass of Glenfiddich, but it didn’t feel right, not in this surf depot. Nicaraguan rum was a close second and something she wouldn’t easily find in the States. She paid her bill and arranged for a room for two nights, then wandered to a table outside where she could hear the waves.
She told herself that she would wait it out until morning when she could find this Bruce character, ask him if he knew anything about Reeve and where he had gone. Likely, Reeve just didn’t show up for work one day, and would not have been seen since. She wondered if there was a girl involved. It was one of Reeve’s patterns: stay straight for a while, then meet a gorgeous drug addict who was trying to get clean, but would fail and pull Reeve back into using. Refusing to experience it again, Cassidy had sworn to keep her distance. She shook her head once, vigorously, to clear the memories.
She sipped her rum, then bit down on her orange wedge, sucking the juice. She knew that if Reeve was indeed stuck in another one of these cycles, there was nothing she could do to save him.
Three
Cassidy woke to a knock at her door. The air conditioning unit had been so noisy it had kept her awake until the early hours of the morning. Or maybe it was the rum. She had finally fallen asleep and was dreaming that Arenal was erupting in bright red snakes of lava pouring down the mountainside. Héctor was pulling on her hand, telling her to run.
Cassidy slid her glasses onto her face and squinted at the clock: 6:07. She pulled on the cotton guest robe hanging in the closet and wrapped it around herself. Her clothes from the day before were gritty and probably stunk from her travels; she stepped over them and approached the door, knotting the sash. The knock sounded again, and she pulled open the thick wooden door. A man with thick, dark brown hair and dancing brown eyes stood with one foot on the step and one on the walkway, almost as if he were about to bound up through her door. Black sunglasses were pushed to the top of his head, and his smooth skin—Japanese? Hawaiian, maybe?—was deeply tanned, with crow’s feet surrounding his eyes. She realized that he could be twenty-eight or fifty. When he gave her a quick up-and-down, his featured rearranged slightly; it wasn’t quite a smile but wasn’t surprise, either.
The sun was still not up, but the warm tones of the sunrise were washing the walkway and grounds outside with a pale glow. She finally decided that his look was, above all, amused.
“You the one looking for Reeve?” he asked.
“Uh,” Cassidy stammered. “Yes.”
“I’m Bruce Keolani.” They shook hands. Bruce’s grip was firm, his thick callouses pressing into her palm. “Can you surf?”
“Yes,” she said again.
“I got a tour going today, I’ll take you along. I can tell you what I know.”
Cassidy blinked. “Sure,” she said.
“Be out front in five minutes. And bring your passport.”
He stepped down from her doorstep.
“My passport?” she asked, but he didn’t turn back.
Cassidy closed the door, fully awake now. She dove for her backpack and pulled out a bikini, board shorts, rash guard, and a clean T-shirt. After popping in her contacts, she grabbed her water bottle, sunscreen, hat, passport, a fistful of colones, rolled it all up in a towel from the bathroom, and shuffled into her flip-flops. Before locking up her room, she took a last glance at the big, empty bed, wondering how many more nights she would spend in it.
Cassidy joined the group of surfers, three of them scruffy twenty-somethings, each yawning, and one couple, trim and expertly dressed—right down to the waterproof surf hats and zinc on their pale cheeks.
Bruce was on the roof of a mud-splattered jeep, cinching down surfboards.
“Hey dormilona,” he called down to her.
Cassidy peered up at him.
“I got you a seven-oh. You good with that?” he asked, leaning over the stack of boards.
“Sure,” Cassidy grumbled. Had he just called her a sleepyhead? She would ride any board, any length, but she wasn’t going to stand for some pirate teasing her, no matter how handsome he was. And especially if it was about sleep—if he only knew how precious little she got.
Bringing her own board to Costa Rica had been out of the question. She was here to complete critical research, and dragging her fragile six-foot-two Al Merrick all the way to Arenal would have been a total pain in the ass. Plus, it wasn’t like this was a dedicated surf trip, in which case, she would bring at least two boards, a ding repair kit, etcetera. She had planned five extra days in Costa Rica, an indulgence she hadn’t enjoyed for years. She figured she would find a rental surfboard, catch a few waves, do some work by the pool, and go home to the rainy Northwest. Although home wasn’t really home anymore, with Pete no longer a part of it.
Despite her best effort to control it, a gasp escaped her lips. She bit down hard on her lip and covered her mouth, pretending to cough. Please, she begged to the invisible force strangling her heart. Make this stop happening to me.
The couple that had turned at the sound of her gasp stared for a moment before looking away.
“Vámonos,” Bruce said, climbing down from the van’s roof.
The surfers filed into the van; Cassidy sat in the front, next to the glued-at-the-hip couple. Bruce did a U-turn on the quiet street and accelerated slowly out of town.
Bruce picked up a brown box from the front seat and handed it back to the woman sitting next to Cassidy. “Breakfast?” he asked the group. “I have coffee too,” he added, reaching for another box packed tight with small disposable cups, each topped with a plastic lid.
The woman opened the box, took out a pastry, and passed the box to Cassidy, who chose a croissant. After passing the box to the seat behind them, Cassidy ate her flaky pastry and washed it down with the strong coffee. The surfers in the back row were waking up, their banter and hushed laughter filling the quiet space of the vehicle. The couple next to her said nothing, and Cassidy sat back and watched the fields and verdant jungle pass by, bracing herself against the deep ruts and holes in the road.
After the drive, Bruce pulled the van to a stop in front of a grand but faded hotel with a wrap-around balcony. Cassidy slid open the door, and they all spilled out to the street. “Go ahead inside,” Bruce told them. “They’re expecting you.” Cassidy fell in behind the group, but before continuing down the entryway steps, she heard giggles behind her. She turned back to see a handful of children gathering around Bruce.
“Buenos días,” he said to them with a twinkle in his eye. “No hay escuela hoy?” he said. They giggled, and the girl of the group, who was the tallest, said, “No, tonto, no hasta después.” There was a titter of giggles again. “Tonto, huh?” he said to them, then quick as a flash, reached behind the littlest child’s ear and brought out a coin. The children tittered again like a flock of tiny birds. Bruce climbed up to the jeep’s roof, and the children dispersed.
Cassidy continued through the open-air hotel lobby and down a second set of stairs to two tables in the hotel’s restaurant. She joined the couple at a table set on a covered balcony overlooking a broad, cocoa-brown beach. A waitress in a crisp, white button-down shirt and black skirt hovered at their table with a tray of coffee cups and a silver carafe. She placed the cups and coffee service on the table, and a minute later did the same for the three guys.
Bruce returned with a small stack of papers, which he distributed to them with a fistful of mismatched pens. “These are so we can enter Santa Rosa National Park, where the waves are,” he said, pointing to the page. “Just need to fill out the top,” he added, and stepped to the other side of the restaurant where a lump was snoozing in a hammock hanging from the edge of the patio. Bruce tapped the lump, which stirred. A moment later, a slender, teenaged boy—a Tico—stood and stretched, then trotted barefoot out to the street.
Cassidy scanned the paper form and filled in the required information. The coffee was a step up from the cup she’d had in the van; she sat back and sipped it as she took in the scene. This must be Playas del Coco, she realized, and they must be headed to Witch’s Rock or Ollie’s Point, two famous waves she had always wanted to surf.
Tall, brown cliffs closed in the sapphire-blue bay in front of the hotel to the North and South. She realized that the cliffs must block the swell because the bay was as flat as a lake. The Tico boy made several trips back and forth from the street with the surfboards, carrying them through the hotel and down to the beach. He then rowed a dingy out to a medium-sized boat anchored to a faded orange buoy and climbed aboard.
Cassidy heard someone laugh and turned to see Bruce standing at the rear of the restaurant, sipping coffee from a gold-rimmed china cup with a person who she assumed, by the way he was dressed, was the hotel proprietor. Bruce slipped the man an envelope and disappeared.
Bruce returned to their tables, scooped up the paperwork, scanning each as he did so, and then tapped the pile against the table dramatically. “Drink up, mateys!” he said. “The surf waits for no one.”
The group filed down to the beach and waded through soft, gushy sand to the idling boat. The Tico boy helped Cassidy aboard and gave her the “hang loose” sign flashed by surfers around the world. In spite of herself, Cassidy felt a weak smile stretch her lips. She was about to surf the famous Witch’s Rock!
As they motored slowly out of the bay, Bruce pulled down his sunglasses and topped his thick mop with a salt-stained trucker hat, pulling the bill low. The couple had seated themselves in front of the transom and were busy applying another coat of sunscreen, nibbling on gold-wrapped energy bars, and tightening the drawstrings of their nylon sunhats. The same three young males who had been chortling with each other since getting in the van had claimed the bow.
“So, was Reeve one of your helpers?” Cassidy asked, seizing her chance to talk. In the van, she had thought to ride in the front, but the pastries and coffee had been in her way, and at the hotel in Playas del Coco, Bruce had been too busy.
She had imagined Reeve loading the boards in Tamarindo, or prepping the boat in Playas del Coco, or maybe even working a job like mechanic. Reeve was handy with things like motors and could fix almost anything. But he was also not a legal resident and so would only be able to work jobs “under the table.” If he worked at all.
“Yep,” Bruce said, his eyes on the horizon. “Until one day he wasn’t.”
“What do you mean?”
“He ran my shuttle, helped with tours, like Augusto there.” Bruce nodded his head towards the stern, where the Tico had his back to them, watching the shore recede. “I run tours up North every now and then. He worked a few of them.” Bruce accelerated slightly as they cleared the edge of the bay.
In the distance, Cassidy saw miles and miles of ocean, with the brown and green land sloping into the sea ahead of them. Clearing the bay, they passed jumbles of rock and skimmed past cliffs that were getting sloshed by junky waves and currents.
“On my last trip, on the morning we were set to leave, he didn’t show up.”
“What do you mean?”
“We had anchored overnight in San Juan del Sur,” he said, then reached over to the cooler and pulled out an iced bottle of water, opened it, and took a sip. He must have noticed her confused look because he added, “Nicaragua.”
Cassidy thought about this for a moment while also trying to conjure up a map of the coastline. Nicaragua’s southern border was only a short distance from their position, surely within a day’s travel by boat.
“We’d hit epic Witch’s and overnighted at Ollie’s, surfed it at first light.” He seemed to pause, as if lost in a memor
y for a moment. “He was doing some video for me, for the guests, but he got some waves, too,” Bruce added, placing the water bottle in a cup holder attached to the nav station. “After that we surfed some select spots in southern Nica. I always overnight in San Juan. There’s a great little bar right on the beach, some nightlife, good anchorage. The guests get a night in a four-star hotel, the whole deal. It’s gorgeous. Anyways, the next morning, I get up first, make the coffee, you know, the ritual. But he doesn’t come out of his cabin. Finally I knock—it was time to go pick up the guests—but he’s not there.”
“Did you go ashore? Ask around?” Cassidy asked. The boat was picking up speed, and the noise was making it hard to hear.
“Hell, yeah. I needed him.” By now, Bruce was almost shouting over the engine noise. “No sign of him.”
As they raced along steep gray-brown cliffs, the last vacation home disappeared, and soon there was only empty, barren wilderness. The boat zipped straight across the expansive, sapphire-blue sea, its surface peaky with a light chop.
Cassidy turned her face to the wind and closed her eyes, her mind spinning. She tried not to jump to conclusions. Reeve could have gone fishing that morning and drowned. Or had some kind of medical emergency that prevented him from getting back to the boat. But more likely, Reeve had gone ashore, blown his wad on drugs, and forgotten all about returning for work. He had left Bruce high and dry and looking foolish in front of clients. Bruce must have been furious. She knew how that felt. Reeve had ruined so many plans.
“Did he have a girlfriend?” she asked.
Bruce gave her a sideways glance. “I don’t know if she was his girlfriend, but there was someone, yeah.”
Cassidy’s skin prickled with what felt like a discovery. It was a feeling she usually associated with her work—sometimes the data would reveal something surprising, or a creative door would open unexpectedly when she was writing. “Do you know her name? Or where she might be?” Cassidy asked, reading Bruce’s face.
Bruce shook his head.