by Leesa Dean
“Justin!” she cried. The soles of her feet burned as she ran toward the water. Immediately, the undertow sucked at her ankles and water rose to her knees. She was about to dive in when Justin washed up beside her, shorts half off.
He hiked them up and charged back in.
Leigh fought the undertow and clawed her way back to shore. She spread her towel on the sand and lay on her side, exhausted. When Justin had proposed a beach vacation, burning sand and killer waves weren’t exactly what she’d imagined. No one else was swimming. Aside from a lone figure in the distance, no one was even at the beach. Leigh could understand why. She flipped through a magazine and watched Justin. Before long, the figure on the beach came into focus. It was Joselito, still dressed in long pants and a heavy cotton shirt. Leigh waved him over. Justin noticed and came to shore.
“Hey, buddy!” He ruffled the child’s hair with a wet hand. “You must be hot. Don’t you want to swim?”
Joselito shook his head.
“Right—no bathing suit. Just take off your pants! No one cares.” He put his fingers into Joselito’s belt loops and tugged. The pants were too big and they slid past his hips. Joselito stood in his Spider-Man underwear, stunned. He put a hand over his crotch and stared at Justin. Leigh was about to ask if he was okay when he began to giggle. He took off his shirt and ran down the beach, letting out high-pitched shrieks. Justin chased the boy for a while and then opened another beer. He stood ankle-deep near the shore, looking out at the horizon. Joselito joined him there and took his hand. From that angle, they looked like father and son.
Leigh watched as a massive wave rolled in, sending forth a barrage of foam. Suddenly, the water was up to Joselito’s waist. He screamed, yanked his hand from Justin’s and ran back to his clothes on the shore.
“Are you okay?” Leigh asked.
Joselito looked at her with dilated pupils as he forced his pants over his wet underwear.
“Are you okay?” she asked again.
He grabbed his shirt and ran.
“That was stupid,” Leigh scolded as she walked with Justin to town, looking for Joselito.
“He said he wanted to swim!” Justin responded, offended.
When they found him back at the tourist information booth, playing with his toy car, Justin shot Leigh an infuriating told-you-so look. Nonetheless, they picked up more beer and spent the afternoon at the beach. Later, when they arrived back at Manuel’s, they found someone had moved their tent. In its place were two hammocks filled with young girls. “Peluca,” one said to Justin, pointing at his long hair. The girls shrieked with delight when he flopped into one of the hammocks.
Leigh filled a bucket to rinse the salt from her body. The water rushed over her skin and pooled at her feet. She leaned over the sink to refill the bucket and noticed a reflection in one of the pots. Manuel was watching from the yard.
Leigh hung up her wet towel and went to change in the tent. When she emerged wearing a sundress, a woman was in the kitchen, making tortillas. Probably Manuel’s wife, though she looked much younger than him. The woman flattened circles of dough between her hands and placed the tortillas on a rack over a low-burning fire. Her T-shirt barely covered her protruding belly. Pregnant, Leigh thought. Her body remembered it well.
She offered the woman her hand. “Me llamas Leigh,” she said.
“Maria. Encantada.”
Leigh told Maria in broken Spanish that she and Justin had spent the afternoon at the beach. Maria slapped the dough between her hands as she spoke. Her response came too fast for Leigh to understand.
“Justin, come here,” Leigh called. He raised his head from the hammock, hair in sloppy braids. He looked like a rag doll. Maria smiled as Justin approached, taking clown-like steps as he walked. She spoke to Justin the same way she’d spoken to Leigh, quickly, but Justin was able to understand most of what she said.
“She hasn’t been to the beach in years,” he reported. “It’s too dangerous.”
“Uno de mis hijos se ahogó. Tenía solamente doce años.”
“I think she said a boy drowned twelve years ago.”
“Las olas te pueden romper el cuello. Se prudente, pueden matarte.” Maria made a wringing gesture with her hands.
“She says we need to be careful. We could break our necks.”
Leigh studied Maria’s face, the way her jaw set as she spoke through clenched teeth. She thought of Joselito that morning, his soaked underwear clinging to his skin.
“Tendremos cuidado,” Justin assured Maria. To Leigh, he said, “I promised her we’d be careful.”
After sundown, they went back to the beach. Leigh turned her face to the night sky, buried her hands in the sand, felt her sunburn glow. It was February 20th. Had she and Justin stayed together, it would have been their anniversary. They passed a bottle of beer between them and Leigh wondered if she should ask for a cigarette. She wasn’t used to travelling as a nonsmoker.
“You’re actually good with kids,” she said to Justin. “I mean, aside from almost drowning Joselito.”
“Hey! I told you. It was his idea, not mine.”
“He really likes you.”
“Yeah? Good, I guess.”
“You looked like father and son at the beach.”
Justin laughed. “Leigh. The kid is brown.”
“I just mean . . . the way you were together.”
“I’d be a shitty dad,” Justin said, lighting a cigarette.
“Maybe not.”
Justin took a long drag and exhaled up to the stars. They were both quiet for a while. Whitecaps glinted under the half-moon’s frown and ocean spray fizzled above the waves. Leigh could feel the alcohol moving through her body, dulling the edges of old wounds, and she reached for Justin’s cigarette.
“No,” he said, gently placing her hand back in her lap.
She looked at him, sitting there in his shorts and T-shirt as if he’d never belonged anywhere else. He hadn’t changed at all in all their months apart. Justin met her gaze and let a handful of sand funnel through his fingers onto her leg. So many times he’d done just that on lazy beach afternoons in Vancouver and elsewhere. When he reached the hem of her skirt, he stopped and put his hand there.
She let it stay.
“ALABA EL SEÑOR! MI SALVADOR!”
The next morning, Leigh unlocked her body from Justin’s and searched for her clothes. Her sundress was wedged underneath Justin’s mattress. Outside, the laundry line creaked as Maria and the neighbour hung out clothes and spouted prayers at each other. It was hard to tell if they were engaged in a friendly debate or an age-old feud. Leigh pulled on her wrinkled dress and unzipped the tent. On the way to the outhouse, she passed the hut where Maria and Manuel slept with their children. The television blared without an audience. Inside, there were five beds and no windows. She climbed the steps to the outhouse and hovered over the seatless, concrete toilet. Her urine slapped against the sand below.
This is poverty, she thought.
When she returned to the tent, Justin was awake and dressed. “Let’s eat,” he said, taking her hand. In the early days, it was what she missed most—walking with him, being seen in public. They were the kind of couple people noticed. As they walked into town, she realized something had changed: the length of their steps, maybe the pacing. They were no longer in sync.
“Here?” Justin asked in front of a small cantina on a side street.
Leigh shrugged. A Coca-Cola fridge hummed mechanically while a game show blasted somewhere behind the cash register. A triangle of sun cut through the otherwise dark room. “Huevos rancheros para dos,” Justin said to the waitress, holding up two fingers. He picked up a table and moved it into the light. He took an ashtray from the counter and lit a cigarette.
“Don’t,” Leigh said when he flopped into a chair.
“Don’t what?”
“Don’t act like we’re a couple.”
Justin cocked his head.
“You just ordered my f
ood,” she said. “That’s a couple thing.”
“Oh, I see. I can un-order your food if you’d like.”
“I’m just saying.”
“You were acting pretty couple-y last night . . .” Justin raised his eyebrows.
“That was a mistake.”
“Leigh! Come on.”
“No,” she said.
Justin considered her response as he exhaled. He narrowed his cheeks and blew a few smoke rings.
“Spoilsport,” he said.
THAT AFTERNOON, MONTERRICO changed. Techno music bleated down the road and buses spat diesel as the weekend crowd rolled into town. Laughter and catcalls filled the streets and derelict buildings suddenly became bars and restaurants. By late afternoon, the main street had become a parking lot. “Gringos! Venga!” a woman said, hanging a bottle of rum out a bus window. She poured a shot into Justin’s mouth. Large groups of people milled about town, talking loud with drinks in their hands. Most of them were drunk students from Guatemala City, but a few were teachers. Leigh kept running into one named Alvaro. Even though he wore aviator glasses, she could see his eyes following her whenever they crossed paths.
Somewhere between the margaritas and cervezas, ferrying between party buses, Leigh lost track of Justin. She’d last seen him being dragged off by two young women in bikinis. Leigh had been jealous, not of the girls, but of Justin’s ability to have real conversations. She, on the other hand, remained in the background, mostly answering questions with sí. Eventually, she stumbled out of the bus and hobbled through the crowds barefoot, looking for Justin.
“Chica!” a male voice said. Leigh turned to confront the voice. It was Alvaro. Unlike everyone else in town, he didn’t seem drunk. He offered his arm to her.
“I’m okay,” she said.
Alvaro made a tsk tsk sound. “You Americanas. So independent.”
“Canadian,” she corrected.
On the main street, people sold beer out of milk crates in their front yards. No one thought to sell water. “Wait,” Leigh said to Alvaro when they passed a store. It was next to where Joselito worked. Alvaro waited for her outside. The clerk stood at the counter with his shirt unbuttoned, sweating while people drank cold beer in line. Some dropped money on the counter and left instead of waiting. Leigh, knowing the price of water, added her quetzals to the pile.
She found Alvaro talking to Joselito in front of the tourist information booth. “I was just asking your friend how I might get a nice Canadiense girl to walk with me on the beach,” he said.
“And?”
“Your friend thinks I must ask your boyfriend. It is true?”
“He’s not my boyfriend.”
“Good,” Alvaro said. “Then you have no reason to not walk on the beach.”
“I don’t have any shoes,” she said.
Before she could protest, Alvaro disappeared into the store and came out with sandals a few minutes later. “See?” he said. “No problemo.”
They were plastic and lime green, but they fit well. She and Alvaro walked toward the beach, past impromptu bars that blasted Top 40 music through speakers fed by long extension cords. Near the lifeguard chair, players lunged at each other in a heated soccer match. A few people waded near the shore. Leigh did a quick sweep for Justin but didn’t spot him anywhere.
“Do you come to Monterrico often?” Leigh asked Alvaro.
He pushed back his sunglasses and squinted at the surf. “Sometimes,” he said. “My students need someone sabio to make sure they do not get too stupid with drink.”
“You’re a teacher, right?”
“Yes, now I am teacher. But first, I was lawyer.”
“Really? Wow!”
“Yes, wow. But you must understand, to be lawyer here is nothing. All the justice is . . . how do you say? When people pay money to police? In Spanish, we say soborno.”
“Bribery?”
“Yes. Bribery. It is all the time happening in Guatemala. Here, lawyer is not really lawyer. It is more like marioneta.” Alvaro danced his hand through the air like a puppet master. “And you?” he asked. “Do you come here often?”
Leigh laughed. “No.”
She had begun to think of the beach as her own even though she’d never gone further than where the village ended. They walked until the music faded. Alvaro took off his shoes and rolled up his jeans. Houses expanded in size the further they walked and their designs became more grandiose, sophisticated.
“You see there?” Alvaro pointed ahead. “It is the home of Efraín Recinos.”
“Who?” Leigh asked.
“Efraín Recinos, a very good artist. The style, it is surreal like Salvador Dalí. The colours are like Picasso.”
The home of Efraín Recinos was immaculately white. Submarine windows lined the second floor and marble staircases connected each floor. Leigh closed her eyes and imagined living in a house like that, watching the sea from above. Every morning, a palette of cutting sky and dark ocean.
“It’s beautiful,” she said.
The day was starting to wane. The late afternoon sun hovered at the edge of a sky with no clouds. After a stretch of empty beach, there was another mansion. Two guard dogs paced behind a security gate, snapping their teeth. Alvaro suggested they turn back. As they walked, he asked Leigh about her life in Vancouver. She told him about one of her jobs, designing puppets for a theatre company. “Marionetas,” she said, mimicking his earlier hand gestures.
“You would like where I am living,” he said. “In the centro historico, by the theatres.”
“Do you ever go?” Leigh asked.
Alvaro didn’t answer. He was looking down the beach. Leigh followed his gaze and saw Justin. Even from a distance, it was clear he was drunk and looking for trouble.
“Maybe you should go,” Leigh said.
“You said he is not your boyfriend.”
“No, but he’s not good with other men. I think you should go.”
“I see,” Alvaro said, hesitant. He kissed Leigh’s cheek before walking ahead and promised to find her later that night. Alvaro nodded a greeting to Justin as he passed, but Justin ignored him.
“Who’s that grease bag?” Justin asked when he reached Leigh.
She shoved him. He fell back, arms akimbo. Once he regained balance, he draped an arm around Leigh’s sunburnt shoulders. “Ouch,” she said, removing her arm. “That hurts.”
Justin grinned. “Feisty,” he said. “That’s why I love you.”
She pretended she didn’t hear and kept walking. Soon enough, he fell into step beside her and tried to put his arm around her once again. She dodged it. Everything about the scene was so familiar. For Justin, she realized, time had not passed. In his mind, she was still his girlfriend.
THAT NIGHT, THE transformations continued. Boats were kicked out of storage sheds and the spaces became dance clubs. Students from Guatemala City filed through the streets, dressed like they were in the capital’s Zona Viva. Leigh felt underdressed in shorts and a tank top. She and Justin lounged on a blanket beside the sea, taking a time out from drinking. She even closed her eyes and had a small nap, but once the clubs opened, it was impossible to sleep. Leigh watched as a posse of girls wearing tight skirts paraded down the beach in V formation, hips swaying. They walked lopsided, heels sinking in the sand. Leigh knew before they arrived what their mission was: Justin.
“Hola,” one said. “Te gusta bailar?”
Justin looked at Leigh and then at the girl. “Just one song,” he said.
She watched him go into a club with the skinny little fawn. Leigh focused her gaze on the ocean, appreciating its agitated beauty. Fifteen minutes passed, then twenty. After a half hour, she took a walk, looking through open doors where lovestruck couples danced close under strobe lights, lost in some illusion of permanence. She circled behind the clubs, remembering how she and Justin used to paint walls with the sweat of their backs. When she found him, the girl’s skirt was up so high Leigh could see the trim of her p
anties.
Leigh went back to where they’d been sitting and shook the sand out of the blanket. She folded it over her arm and began to walk back to Manuel’s, thinking how fucked up her life had been after Justin left. She’d skipped work, refused food, and did something unheard of: cried. Friends tried to reason with her. “Get over it,” they’d said. “He’s a jerk.”
“I know,” she’d wailed.
What bothered her most was his indifference, his infuriatingly flat emotional register. Nothing seemed to matter to him. They’d only been together six months when she found out she was pregnant. Not that she wanted to keep it, but she still felt something when the blue line surfaced on the test. She told Justin immediately.
His response was a groan. “We’re broke,” he’d said. “What are we supposed to feed it? Puppets? Paint?”
They’d both laughed even though it wasn’t funny.
At least he’d taken the day off work to bring her to the clinic. She’d give him that. And he didn’t dump her right away. No, he stuck around for another six months.
THE RUMBLE OF breaking waves pulsed beneath Leigh’s feet as she walked along the beach. On the road to Manuel’s, two young teenagers sat on a concrete block passing a beer between them. Leigh smelled food somewhere and longed for it. She followed the trail and ended up at a restaurant close to Maria and Manuel’s. The night before, it had been nothing but a dark courtyard.
“Qué bueno!” a voice said. Alvaro was there, face lit by candlelight. Leigh pulled up a plastic chair, surprised to find him alone. An empty cocktail glass suggested someone else had been there earlier but left. There was a small, handwritten menu with three items: PESCADO FRITO, POLLO ENCEBOLLADO, TACOS AL PASTOR.
“You are very lucky,” Alvaro said. “The woman who lives here, Renata, is the very best cook. Maybe the best in Guatemala. You will see. All the food here is . . . magnífica.”
“Good,” Leigh said. “I could use something magnífica right now.”
Alvaro pushed his beer across the table. “Here,” he said. “This will do the trick.” Leigh laughed and took a drink. Alvaro leaned back in his chair and stretched out his feet. Leigh did the same. Alvaro glanced at her painted toenails and the lime-green sandals. “Your shoes,” he said. “Where did they take you today? Other than the home of Efraín Recinos.”