The Coconut Chronicles: Two Guys, One Caribbean Dream House

by Youngblood, Patrick

  Instead he reached for my sweaty hand and led me slowly but firmly back to the car, which he got unstuck in no time.

  I felt marginally better the next morning. After taking a cautious inventory of my various organs I even decided to tear up the detailed instructions I’d written the night before regarding the disposal of my remains. Michael made coffee but I couldn’t drink it.

  “You have to ingest something,” he chided, as if using the word ingest would convince me to do anything other than laugh in his face (assuming I had the energy).

  Next he tried to persuade me to eat a bowl of cereal. Cornflakes no less. I made faint gagging sounds and retreated to the balcony with Book Two.

  This was Jane Hamilton’s A Map of the World. Hardly a masterpiece, I admit, but gripping in its own way. I felt true pity for the heroine, Alice Goodwin, when she went to jail for a crime she didn’t commit. Halfway through the rousing courtroom scene, my fever broke. Between the penultimate and final chapters my nausea subsided. And by the time I put the book aside I felt almost robust.

  I was reminded, not for the first time in my life, that there’s nothing like someone else’s troubles to cheer me up.

  Michael, restless as ever, sensed my upgraded status and proposed another beach outing. I agreed but suggested we try a prehistoric-monster-free beach this time around.

  Luckily, while I’d been reading a book with the word “map” in its title, he’d been studying actual (i.e., useful) maps. This was another of his favorite, vaguely obsessive-compulsive, activities. He spread a wrinkled map across the kitchen table and pointed to a strip of land along the southwestern corner of the island. It was labeled Playa Grande in pseudo-gothic treasure map script.

  When the U.S. Navy had vacated Vieques earlier that year, Michael patiently explained, two-thirds of the island had been turned over to the Fish and Wildlife Service to establish a National Wildlife Refuge, which now contained all the best beaches on the island. And one of the best of the best, according to Michael, was Playa Grande. After downing a fistful of pills, I grabbed a towel and we headed out.

  I’ll never forget that first drive to Playa Grande. The road leading to the beach takes you in an almost direct north-south line from the top of the island to the bottom. At first the road looks like nothing more than a rocky dirt path that leads to nowhere. But after a few twists and turns it broadens slightly. And after you’ve chugged and bounced your way up a very steep hill, it opens up suddenly onto a deep, lush valley into which the road plunges straight downward before climbing up again.

  Old Navy road to Playa Grande

  This roller coaster ride is repeated three times until you crest the final hill and there, before you, lies the shining Caribbean, fringed by towering blackish-green palm trees and backed by a broad lagoon.

  It was so extravagantly travelogue-beautiful we actually laughed out loud.

  The final stretch of road leading to the beach was deeply rutted, even by island standards, and very overgrown. Palm fronds slapped the windshield, prickly pears scratched the car doors. A furtive-looking mongoose shot across the road in front of us. To our left, through the thick seagrapes, we caught occasional glimpses of the sparkling water.

  Then, quite abruptly, we came to a concrete barrier upon which someone had spray-painted, in a sprawling hand, Bridge out. Thanks for the update.

  It was a huge beach (hence its name) and there wasn’t a soul in sight. To the east stretched a long curving expanse of sand that led, in the far distance, to a promontory beyond which we suspected Esperanza lay. (Michael later confirmed this with his trusty map.)

  And to the west, just beyond a shallow tributary that obviously fed the lagoon behind us, lay the most glorious expanse of beach either of us had ever seen, culminating approximately half a mile away in an artfully-arranged collection of massive boulders cascading down the hillside into the sea.

  Playa Grande

  We stood in awed silence for a minute or two.

  “How about a short walk?” Michael suggested.

  I surprised myself by saying yes—even in my current frail condition I couldn’t imagine saying no to such beauty. Wading gingerly across the broad, shallow stream, flip flops in hand, we marveled at the tiny sea creatures darting through the water as our footsteps roiled the warm sand.

  Eventually we made our way to the other side and along the white beach. It was glorious, exhilarating—and tiring. After about fifty yards I began to flag. The sun was powerful and sweat began trickling down my back. Excited though my mind was, my body was rebelling.

  “I think I need to sit down,” I said in a pathetic, reedy voice, barely audible above the crashing of the waves.

  Without a word, Michael took my arm and led me towards a thick grove of palm trees nearby.

  “Sit,” he said, extracting a towel from his backpack and spreading it out in a shady alcove.

  I sat.

  I felt better in no time.

  And then the wheels began to turn. This would be my bower, my refuge, my recovery room, for the remainder of our stay. This was where I would get well.

  Our tropical haven at Playa Grande

  “Let’s come back tomorrow,” I said, smiling to myself. “I’ll bring another book.”

  Although the medicine undoubtedly played its part, to this day I credit that idyllic palm grove with my recovery.

  By Wednesday I was fit enough to wade out into the water and sit in the shallows. I gathered shells and ocean glass and got a sunburned nose.

  By Friday night, I was game for a long-delayed birthday dinner on the town.

  And at sunset that night we were on our way to the Inn on the Blue Horizon, heartily recommended by almost everyone we’d met during our relatively solitary week, including the emergency room doctor who had engineered my slow recovery.

  After six alcohol-free days my very being ached for a vodka martini. If they’d told me there was no Grey Goose in the house I would have torn my hair out and wept. But no such tragic event occurred, and when my martini was placed before me it was a thing of beauty—enormous, icy cold, and anchored by two of the plumpest olives in captivity.

  Our table faced the ocean. There was a warm, teasing breeze. Jazz snaked in from the tiki-hut-style bar.

  “I’m sorry you got sick,” Michael said, sipping a glass of Shiraz. What a rock he was, spending his vacation caring for a whimpering semi-invalid and never uttering a word of complaint.

  “Me too,” I said and swizzled the olives around in my drink. “I was thinking as I got dressed tonight—if I enjoyed Vieques this much feeling this lousy, imagine how much I’ll like it next time.”

  He sat up straight in his chair.

  “You mean you’d come back?”

  I took a long sip of my drink and looked out across the dark, beckoning water.

  “In a heartbeat.”

  Four

  Unreal Estate

  The next year was tough.

  My boss quit her job and suddenly I was thrust into the spotlight at work. My stress level shot into the upper stratosphere and stayed there for nine long months. In mid-February I decided I couldn’t bear it anymore and, as an early birthday present to myself, I quit.

  By the middle of April I was happily ensconced in a new job. This time it felt right. And in May we went back to Vieques.

  Our little puddle jumper from San Juan to the island shook like the devil but for reasons unknown I remained eerily calm—okay, maybe prescription drugs played a minor role but let’s not quibble. I even found myself pitying the man next to me, who was clearly terrified but trying valiantly to keep a stiff upper lip. Poor bastard.

  Felicity, our wizened property manager from the previous year, met us at the airport. If anything, she looked even more stressed out than before, her fingers more nicotine-stained, her hair frizzier. But she gave us a warm welcome and bundled us into her car with good cheer. Soon we were careening along the narrow roads towards our rental.

  “There
was a little problem with the house you wanted,” she yelled above the din. “The owners arrived unexpectedly yesterday, so I’m afraid it’s not available.”

  I closed my eyes, bracing myself for whatever was coming next. This felt like a not-so-instant replay of the goat debacle from the year before. Only this time the term floating through my addled brain was bait and switch rather than failure to advertise property as a cell block.

  “But we’ve upgraded you to a much nicer house.”

  I fidgeted, tempted to protest. Michael, meanwhile, stared straight ahead (again) and didn’t say a word.

  In all honesty, I couldn’t remember much about the house we’d actually booked, except that it was a couple of notches above the place we’d rented the year before (in other words, habitable). It had a pool, I seemed to recall, and faced the Caribbean side.

  The road leading up to our replacement house was sensationally bumpy, rutted, and generally washed out. A novice might have considered this a bad sign, but I saw it as vaguely hopeful, having learned through the years (after living in a variety of out-of-the-way places around the world) that sometimes the most inaccessible roads lead to the best houses.

  And I was right.

  It was a stunner. Situated in a high flat field with spectacular views down to the water, the brand-new two story house was surrounded by enormous boulders that looked as if the gods had been shooting marbles across the lawn.

  We walked up onto a screened-in veranda. A sparkling lap pool lay below us. Inside, the raftered great room—furnished with rattan chairs, canvas-covered sofas, and framed prints—stretched from the front of the house to the back. At each end lay a bedroom suite complete with outdoor shower.

  An hour later, standing in the embrace of the shower’s four warm jets, gazing across the sloping meadow towards the sea, I had only one thought in my head:

  I want this house.

  ☼ ☼ ☼

  Nothing bad happened this time.

  No one teetered on the brink of death. We weren’t serenaded at four in the morning by herds of goats (there were lots of cows but they were admirably reticent). No giant iguanas stalked us.

  In short, we had fun.

  By mid-week I found myself wondering, lazily at first, how much a house like this would cost. The next afternoon I loitered nonchalantly in front of the real estate office in Isabel, surreptitiously scanning the bulletin board. Two or three listings caught my eye, but I didn’t say a word. Michael would think I’d finally flipped (an eventuality he no doubt prepared for on an hourly basis).

  Over dinner that night he caught me completely off guard.

  “Do you think we could swing it?”

  I thought I knew what he meant but there was no way I was going to tip my hand without knowing for sure.

  “Swing what?” I asked innocently, batting my eyes.

  He gave me a knowing smile.

  “Don’t be coy. You know what I mean. A house down here.”

  My answer gurgled up before I even had time to think about it.

  “Absolutely not!”

  He looked as if I’d sucker-punched him.

  “Excuse me?”

  “We can’t afford it.”

  He sat back in his chair, clearly perplexed.

  “We could rent the house out when we’re not here, like everyone else. Sure, it might not pay for itself at first, but in a few years it might come close.”

  This didn’t sound like the maddeningly level-headed Michael I’d known for ten years. In fact, it sounded suspiciously like one of my own wildly optimistic statements (“global warming will be so good for our tans!”), the kind that Michael typically absorbed in stoical silence and then slowly, methodically deconstructed until I couldn’t wait to renounce it myself (“…but I’m sure it’ll hurt like hell when our skin burns to a crisp and falls off”).

  Clearly the island had worked its magic on him.

  “I’m not so sure,” I said, perversely relishing this rare opportunity to play the naysayer instead of my usual dreary Pollyanna role.

  But he wasn’t paying the slightest bit of attention.

  “I’ve watched you the past few days and I don’t think I’ve ever seen you this relaxed. And maybe you’re right. Maybe we can’t afford to buy a place down here.”

  He took a long gulp of his drink and flashed his most winning smile.

  “But let’s give it a helluva try.”

  ☼ ☼ ☼

  We were at the realtor’s office at nine the next morning. It didn’t open until ten, and the proprietress didn’t arrive until ten-thirty.

  Her name was Suzanne. She wore baggy shorts and a black tank top. Her blonde hair was scraped back in a greasy ponytail.

  “Hey boys,” she mumbled wearily, switching on the lights and rolling up the louvered windows. “Where you from?”

  “D.C.,” we replied in unison.

  She looked us up and down in a not-too-friendly fashion.

  “We’ve had a lot of you people lately.”

  We weren’t sure if “you people” meant D.C. residents, gay couples, or some other category of undesirables that hadn’t even occurred to us yet, so we held our tongues.

  “We’re interested in buying a house,” I hazarded after a few moments.

  “Are you now?” she said, and all but rolled her eyes.

  I shifted uncomfortably in my seat.

  “We love the island.”

  “Sure you do,” she replied. “Everyone does. Except the people who actually live here.”

  It was hard to know quite how to respond to this. Luckily the phone rang as I was racking my brain for a suitably clever riposte.

  “Yup,” she barked into the phone with all the charm of a longshoreman. A protracted silence followed. “Yup,” she repeated after a while. More silence. Michael shuffled his feet.

  “Look,” she said, fiddling with a jumble of papers on her desk, “I’ve got people here. Just put some ointment on it. That usually does the trick.”

  With a minimum of formalities she concluded the call.

  “My cousin in Maryland,” she remarked.

  While I was mentally flipping through the Physicians’ Desk Reference, in search of maladies that call for ointment, she suddenly turned to us.

  “Hey, isn’t Maryland up in your neck of the woods?” she exclaimed.

  “Actually, I work in Maryland,” Michael replied.

  “I thought you were from D.C.,” she countered suspiciously.

  “They’re very close,” Michael explained in his most reasonable (that is to say, condescendingly factual) way. “Just a few miles. You’ve never been there?”

  She emitted a short yap of a laugh.

  “No way. Too cold for me. I came here straight from Boca five years ago. Frankly I never go above the 30th parallel. Never have, never will.”

  While this was an undeniably fascinating world view, I decided it was time to steer the conversation back to the subject of real estate.

  “Now, about a house.”

  The tiny glimmer of animation she had summoned for her diatribe against cold weather flickered and died out.

  “Right,” she said, her eyes glazing over.

  I was puzzled—wasn’t selling houses her livelihood? But I plunged ahead, determined to make my pitch.

  “We’re looking for three bedrooms and two baths with ocean views for about $250,000. Or less.”

  There was long, stunned silence. She glanced absently at her computer screen and, presumably for appearance’s sake, tapped a couple of random keys. “Sorry, nothing in that range,” she announced, rubbing her nose with the back of her hand.

  “Nothing?” Michael asked incredulously.

  She cleared her throat and spoke very slowly, as if addressing mentally-challenged adolescents.

  “What you’ve just described is what everybody who comes to Vieques for a couple of days and falls in love with the island is looking for. And it’s all gone. There’s nothing left. Kaput.
”

  Five minutes later we skulked out of Suzanne’s office feeling as if we’d just broken wind at a tea party.

  “She’s quite the saleslady,” Michael remarked.

  “Very persuasive,” I agreed, trying to match his breezy tone.

  But we both felt dejected.

  Even worse, I couldn’t stop wondering about that ointment.

  Five

  Conspicuous Consumption

  The next day we took a deep collective breath and decided to spin the real estate wheel again.

  Flipping through the local rag that morning, Michael noticed that one of the island realtors professed to be “gay-friendly,” so we decided to find out if the company’s admirable commitment to social equality included a willingness to sell houses to people wanting to buy them.

  I made the call. A perfectly nice woman, named Melinda, answered. I described what we were looking for.

  “Sure, I’d be happy to meet with you this afternoon,” she said. “I can think of a couple of things I’d like to show you.”

  No put downs. No one-liners. I could barely believe my ears.

  “I appreciate your call,” she said. “Let’s say three at my office.”

  We were almost giddy with excitement.

  Everything seemed different now that we were practically landed gentry. We viewed the ubiquitous litter along the side of the road with outraged disbelief. (“How dare they trash our island!”) We felt a new sense of comradeship with the sullen woman in the bakery who’d never shown us the slightest glimmer of kindness. (“Who knows, maybe she’ll be our neighbor someday.”) We walked through town with our heads held just a little higher. Being an insider really does give one a whole new perspective.

  We arrived at Melinda’s office just before three, although office is a generous term for where we found ourselves. Lean-to would be more technically accurate. The interior was dark and fetid, and when we stepped inside, our eyes took a few moments to acclimatize to the gloom. At first the place seemed deserted. Except for the forlorn homely sound of a clucking chicken near the side door, silence reigned. Then a movement from the back caught our attention.