After she closed the door, I collapsed on the small bed and drifted off to the comforting din of children and television, dishes clattering, a dog barking.
Now, the house is filled with the good smell of something cooking. When I open the door, the children rush to greet me.
“Roberto,” the boy says, tapping his chest proudly. He points to his sister. “Maria.”
They follow me down the hall to the bathroom and giggle when I try to shut the door, which won’t close all the way. When I come out, Maria grabs my hand and leads me to the kitchen, where Soledad is frying plantains and beans.
“Food?” Soledad asks.
“Sí.”
She gestures for me to sit down. The children join me at the kitchen table, chattering in English. “Where are you from?” Roberto asks.
“California.”
“Hollywood!” he says, getting so excited he leaps out of his chair. “Do you know Arnold Schwarzenegger?”
“No, I live in a different part of California. San Francisco.”
Maria puts her hand on my arm. “Do you know Mickey Mouse?”
“Yes,” I say. “Mickey Mouse said to tell you hello.”
“Really?”
“Yes. You speak very good English. Where did you learn?”
“TV,” says Roberto.
“Smurfs,” Maria adds.
Minutes later the table is piled high with food. Soledad pours warm orange Fanta into four small glasses. Except for a soggy muffin on the flight from Miami, I haven’t eaten since I left San Francisco. I eat ravenously, and Soledad piles a second helping onto my plate. Her English isn’t much better than my Spanish, but we’re able to communicate by having the children translate. Roberto and Maria are her grandchildren, I learn, and their mother works as a housekeeper at a hotel in the city.
I ask how she knows Nick Eliot. Apparently, he rented a room from her five years ago, and he’s kept in touch ever since.
She says something in Spanish to Roberto, who swallows a bit of rice before turning to me and translating.
“Is Mr. Eliot your boyfriend?” he asks.
“No,” I say.
“Yes he is!” Roberto insists, giggling.
After dinner, I ask if I can take a bath, and Soledad gives me a towel and a small bar of soap. Through the crack in the door, I can see Roberto and Maria, knees tucked under their chins in front of the TV, Soledad’s feet tapping the floor as she rocks back and forth in her chair. The old tub is deep and immaculate, and it feels good to soak away the grime of travel.
After my bath, I ask Soledad if I can use her phone. I dial the number for Nick’s friend Wiggins, and on the third ring a woman answers. “U.S. Embassy,” she says. She sounds as if she’s got a million other things she’d rather be doing.
“I’m looking for Wiggins.” Saying it, I feel a bit ridiculous. That’s all I have to go on. No title. No first name. Just Wiggins.
There’s a pause, a shuffling of papers. Then, “Just a moment, I’ll connect you.”
A man’s voice comes on the line. “Yes?”
“I’m looking for Wiggins,” I repeat.
“He’s out of the country.”
“When will he return?”
“A couple of months. Who wants to know?”
I tell him the whole story. It comes out in a rush, a jumble of breathless sentences: the disappearance, the search, the clues that led me here.
“Does the FBI have a case open on this?” he asks.
“They were working with the SFPD, but the police closed the investigation.” I can hear my own case falling apart as I talk.
“I’m sorry, but this sort of thing isn’t really our jurisdiction. If someone from the Bureau sets a lead, we’ll get involved.”
“But Nick Eliot told me to call Wiggins.”
“Nick Eliot. The name doesn’t ring a bell. Listen, if you find your little girl, call us, and we can help with the locals.”
“Please,” I say, “there must be something you can do.”
“Why don’t you call again in a couple of months, when Wiggins is back. Good luck.”
The line goes dead. When he hangs up, I feel more alone than ever in the search, yet somehow more resolved. Maybe it’s a long shot, maybe Jake was right. Perhaps I’m putting too much faith in the minor details, clinging to every bit of circumstantial evidence that will fit into my belief system. But I feel certain that finding the couple from the yellow van is my best hope of finding Emma. This is my final option, my last unexplored set of clues—the woman at the Beach Chalet staring so obviously at Emma, the timing of the van’s departure from Ocean Beach that day, the Ticos bumper sticker, the longboard—and in my mind the pieces fit together. They simply have to.
In bed, I consult my guidebook. Buses depart the main terminal in San José for Playa Hermosa at nine o’clock weekday mornings. I try to sleep, but my mind won’t rest. For the first time since Emma’s disappearance, I’m truly angry with Jake. He should be here; we could accomplish more together. He shouldn’t have given up.
I don’t think Jake would understand it if I told him that being in this foreign place feels like a new beginning. I’m finally free of the endless repetitions that characterized my search in San Francisco: the daily trips to Ocean Beach, the countless returns to the same streets, the same dead-end clues. Memory researchers have a theory to explain a common experience: the feeling that we know a word but it is just out of reach. The theory is called blocking, and it holds that the tip-of-the-tongue sensation occurs when our effort to remember leads us away from the word we want to retrieve, diverting us instead to some other word. The desired word is there, but we can’t access it because we’ve become sidetracked; we’re following the wrong route. The words that get in the way are called interlopers.
Is it wrong to imagine that Costa Rica might clear my mind, that here, in this unfamiliar place, the interlopers might be banished?
When I wake at seven the next morning, the smell of coffee fills the house. The children are in front of the fuzzy television watching American cartoons and drinking chocolate milk. Soledad is already in the kitchen, the flesh of her arms jiggling as she works the spatula over the grill. The scene seems so ordinary, so fundamentally human, I find myself not just hoping, but truly believing, that Emma could be here in this country.
“Bueno,” Soledad says, looking over her shoulder. “You have good sleep?”
“Sí. Muy bien.”
She puts a plate in front of me—a big serving of rice and beans topped with two fried eggs. She stands by the table while I eat, hands on her hips, watching. “You like?” she says, wiping her hands on her apron.
“I like.”
“Good! In California you no get good breakfast!”
“Not like this,” I agree.
I help her clear the dishes, then pay the bill—just twenty American dollars. I thank Soledad, say goodbye to the children, and wait outside for the taxi. The driver gets out and loads my pack into the trunk. “La estación de autobúses?” he says.
“Sí, por favor.”
“Where you going?”
“Playa Hermosa.”
“Is very beautiful. You will like.”
At the bus station, a man at a card table is selling tickets to Hermosa. By nine-fifteen I’m on my way, a warm wind roaring through the windows. I keep thinking about what Nick said: To become aware of the possibility of a search is to be onto something. Not to be onto something is to be in despair. I have to believe I’m onto something; it’s the only thing that keeps me going.
63
PLAYA HERMOSA. A cabin on the beach. A single naked bulb, two dirty beds, a wall so thin I can hear the people in the next cabin snoring. A long, narrow mirror, unframed, hanging on the wall beside the door. In the mirror: a startling find, a ghost. Jutting hip bones, dark circles beneath the eyes.
Rain pelts the tin roof of the cabin. It begins as a single tap, then another, and another, gaining speed, until it’s a st
eady thrumming, a hard racket in the brain. Soon it’s a full-fledged storm, growing heavier by the minute. There is the smell of rain, and of the sea, and some sickly sweet smell that saturates the unwashed sheets. I switch off the light and lie fully clothed on the bed, listening to the howl of the storm. Through the tiny screened window, I can see occasional flashes of light.
Something about the rain, the saltwater smell, reminds me of Alabama. A couple of months before Emma disappeared, the three of us took a trip to Gulf Shores. Jake had never been down south, and he wanted to see what it was like, get a feel for where I came from. We checked into one of the nicer hotels in Orange Beach, and on our first evening we sat on the sand and watched the sun set over the Gulf. After that, it rained the entire week.
We spent mornings by the covered pool at our hotel, afternoons at the Pink Pony Pub. Emma drank Shirley Temples while Jake and I downed sweet iced tea and Bud Light. We’d sit in the smoke-filled restaurant and watch lightning split the sky in two. The lightning fascinated Emma, who was used to San Francisco’s calmer rains. It was what I missed most about the Gulf Coast, the drenching rainfall and booming thunder. San Francisco storms are so subtle, they can hardly be called storms at all.
“It smells weird,” Emma said, “like the sky’s on fire.”
“That’s ozone, nitrogen, and ammonia acids you’re smelling,” Jake said, always ready to turn anything into a lesson. It was fun seeing the world through his eyes, like a trip back to grammar school, when everything had a simple scientific explanation, every question had an answer.
It felt good to be back home, even if it wasn’t under the best of circumstances. One afternoon I took Emma to the souvenir shop with the giant shark at the entrance, the shop I’d visited dozens of times as a kid, and let her choose a basket full of T-shirts and knickknacks for her friends. The best memento we have from the vacation is a photograph of the three of us standing in front of Moe’s Christmas and Gun Store on the beach road. I still remember the guy who took it, an elderly gentleman with a lifetime tan and a shirt that said Bama Forever.
By the end of the week, Emma was teary-eyed and tired, and we were just as pale as when we’d arrived. “Alabama wasn’t exactly as I pictured it,” Jake said on the flight back. We agreed that our next beach vacation would be somewhere more exotic—Tahiti or Costa Rica. I never imagined that I would be coming here alone, that future snapshots of my life would contain a singular subject.
There is a girl, her name is Emma, she is walking on the beach. I look away. Seconds pass. I look back, and she is gone. I keep thinking about the seconds, the ever-expanding circle. How I set this chain of events in motion. How I must find some way to make amends.
The next day, I wander up and down the beach, which is crowded with American surfers and backpackers. I search for the Rossbottom board, the blond couple, the yellow van. Driving to Costa Rica wouldn’t be easy, but it can be done. Back home I read a blogger’s account of driving through the Sonora Desert, then through the highlands of Oaxaca, on into Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua. The border at Penas Blancas is notoriously lax, so someone with a good poker face could probably hide a child in the back of a van and bring her through with no documents. Like Jake said, it’s a big if, a whole lot of probably, but it’s the best thing I’ve got to go on.
Late in the afternoon, I find a cabin for rent for three hundred dollars a month—better and cheaper than the one I stayed in last night. It’s simple, tiny, and clean, with a tin roof and a small window with a view of the sea. I decide it will be my base of operations, my temporary home.
It doesn’t take long to settle into the rhythm of beach life. There’s no reason to get up early, because everything is closed. My only hope is to meet people—surfers, mainly—and the easiest way to meet them is in the bars and resturants at night. Many of the town’s inhabitants are seasonal, coming here for three months or so until their money runs out, then heading back to the States. On my second evening in Hermosa, I discover a little bar just a few steps from my cabin. The staff is made up of North Americans and young Ticos. Over the next week, I get to know all of them by name. Each day I pick up a little more Spanish and, hopefully, earn a little more trust from the surfers, but it still feels like I’m no closer to finding Emma.
“You should try it,” says a forty-something computer programmer from Atlanta. Meaning surfing. Meaning loosen up. It’s my third day in Hermosa, and we’re sitting side by side at the bar. Beautiful South is playing on the speakers, and the TV is tuned to a football game between the Delaware Blue Hens and the Citadel. The computer programmer’s name is Deke. He reminds me of a guy in a soap opera, with his perfect hair and his overconfident way of staring into my eyes for long moments. He keeps glancing up at the TV, yelling, “Go, Hens!” Rumor has it Deke has been to bed with half the North American girls in this town, and a few of the Ticos, too.
“Surfing’s not for me,” I say. “I’m afraid of deep water and speed. Plus, I couldn’t handle the lack of control.”
“That’s the best part,” Deke says, putting his hand in the small of my back, slipping it under my tank top.
“Watch it.”
He makes a joke and raises both hands in the air, a gesture of surrender, but I can tell he’s startled by the rejection.
A few hours later I meet Sami from Galveston, who supports her sun-worshipping habit by bartending and cleaning rooms at a local motel. She’s thirty-six and has a boyfriend back home who builds limousines. He’s waiting for her to get Costa Rica out of her blood so they can get married and have babies.
“We came here together seven years ago. He eventually got tired of it, but I never did. Thing is, the longer I’m here, the more I think about pura vida, and the less I think about babies,” Sami says, polishing the bar with a damp rag.
When she asks me what I’m doing in Costa Rica, I tell her I’m taking photographs for a Lonely Planet guidebook. It’s my cover, the only way I know to explain my presence here. The Leica I carry everywhere I go, slung over my shoulder, seems to be enough to verify my story. Over the next few days, Sami and I become friends. Sometimes in the late afternoon, when business is slow, Sami will ask one of the cooks to watch the bar and she’ll walk out to the beach with me, and we’ll sit on the sand and watch the surfers catching the last waves before turning in for the evening. Their bodies are sleek and lovely in the fading light, and the blue of the Costa Rican sky is a blue I’ve never seen before. The wet bodies emerging from the surf, boards propped on their shoulders, look like the bodies of dancers, and it’s hard to believe they’re just ordinary boys and girls from dull Midwestern towns.
On my fifth day in Hermosa, I’m sitting on the beach with Sami, a couple of beers between us on the sand. I take a piece of paper from my pocket, unfold it, and hand it to her. “Does this look familiar?”
“Should it?”
“It’s a symbol on a board.”
She looks more closely at the image of the golden frog, which I downloaded from the Internet. “Oh, sure. The Killer Longboard. The guy who made them kicked the bucket not long ago. Billy Rossbottom.”
“You know of him?”
“Who doesn’t? Rossbottom came into the bar a couple of years ago. He was a big flirt, buying drinks for all the ladies. Nice guy, left a tip bigger than his bill. The day after he died, we had a big party on the beach in his honor.”
“I’d like to get my hands on one of those boards,” I say. “You see any around here?”
“Just once. They’re really rare, you know.”
“The one you saw, when was that?”
“I don’t know, several months ago.”
“Do you know who the guy was?”
“Girl, actually.” She gives me a look like she’s trying to figure me out. “Why are you so interested, anyway? You don’t even surf.”
“I’m looking to buy one, a gift for a friend,” I say, feeling guilty for the lie. But I don’t want to show my hand yet, don’t want my busine
ss spread all over the coast. I’m afraid that if the couple from the yellow van is here, and if they catch wind of me, they’ll move on. For that reason, I’ve yet to show anyone the forensic sketches; they’re tucked away in my backpack in the cabin, waiting for the right moment.
Sami finishes off her beer in one long gulp. “I’ll keep an eye out for the board.”
“Thanks.”
“Abby,” she says, popping the cap off another beer.
“Yeah?”
“I’ve got a good sense for people, and there’s something you’re not telling me.”
“What makes you think that?”
“A single professional woman, alone in a little surfing town in Costa Rica. You don’t surf. You’re older than most of the people here.” She winks. “Present company excepted.”
“I told you, I’m working on a guidebook.”
“Doesn’t make sense,” she says, leaning back on her elbows and tilting her face up to the sun. “If that was the case, you’d be long gone from Playa Hermosa by now. So are you going to tell me what the deal is, or do you want me to guess?”
At that moment, I make a conscious decision to trust her. My mother always said my biggest flaw was that I tried to do everything on my own, but my biggest strength was a kind of obsessive determination. She had this story she loved to tell about how when I was fourteen months old, I once spent the better part of an hour trying to get a sock on my foot, and I refused to let her help me. She had evidence of the event, fifteen minutes of scratchy black-and-white film in which a baby who looks nothing like me struggles with a lacy white sock and a chubby foot. I never did get the sock on.
“Come by my place tonight after you get off,” I say.
She hums a few bars from the Twilight Zone theme song and says, “I’ll be there. Shall I come in disguise? Maybe a black cape and mask?”
She shows up at my door after midnight, reeking of pot. “Want some?” she asks, pulling a joint out of her pocket.
“Thanks, I’ll pass.”
“Suit yourself.” She plops down on the unused bed. “So what’s the big secret?”
The Year of Fog Page 27