I didn’t expect him to regain composure so quickly. “Okay.” I struggle to do the same.
In the neighboring room, Pelochucho lies like a starfish across his bed, the fan going full blast and shaking in its mount. Kristy stands in his doorway, looking in.
“The poor thing,” she says.
“He’ll be fine.” I put my hand on her shoulder. “We should close this and let him rest.”
She steps back and I pull the door shut.
* * *
I spend nearly an hour at the public phone office. The bank passes me from one employee to the next. Without my passport, they can’t confirm that it’s my account. I fail to get a hold put on it. Nobody will even tell me the balance.
Jim is nice enough, but he reminds me that since I’m a private citizen traveling in this country, there isn’t much he can do beyond point me in the right direction.
He gives me the number of a kind woman named Elaine from the embassy. At first, she talks as if we can sort the passport out in a few days. But she is mistaken, speaking of an emergency document that would be good for only one month. I explain our trip, the fact that we’re planning to travel for several months.
“I see. You’ll need a full-fledged passport, then.”
“That’s right,” I say.
“I’m afraid that will be more difficult.”
“It will?”
“Yes. As you can probably guess, the embassy is a little overextended at the moment. Under normal circumstances, we might issue emergency passports for as long as a year, but the ambassador has passed some blanket policies since the earthquake. Now they’re all for one month, period.”
I sigh audibly into the receiver.
Elaine seems to register my frustration. “Sorry about this. The black-market value of a U.S. passport has gone through the roof recently. They’ve had to crack down.”
“I didn’t sell my passport,” I say.
“Of course not. I didn’t mean to imply any such thing. Still, issuing new ones is not taken lightly these days.”
I tell myself to stay calm, that she’s trying to help. “So, what’s my best bet here?”
“You should make an appointment immediately and fill out the paperwork. Do you have a photocopy of your lost passport?”
“No,” I say, though I’d been told many times that making a copy was a good idea.
“Bring in whatever documents you have. We’ll start the process right away. But I must warn you: It could take weeks.”
I swallow her facts as best I can, hoping that Ben is having more luck with a street-level approach than I’ve had with the bureaucratic one.
“Shall I make you an appointment for tomorrow morning?”
“Yes, please.”
Elaine urges me to keep my spirits up and says good-bye.
The phone’s old bell lets out a droning ring once I hang it up. In my mind, I tally up what time it is in Honolulu. There’s nothing I’d like more than to hear my father’s voice right now. But what would I tell him? That I’d abandoned the aqueduct he thought so much of? That I accidentally sabotaged the surf trip I’d left it for? That I might’ve just lost thousands of dollars, much of which wasn’t my own—on account of a drunken infidelity?
* * *
Back at La Posada, I ask Kristy for my day’s first cup of coffee. She brings out a mug of hot milk and a jar of instant mix. As I stir black crystals into the cup, all sorts of ideas brew through my mind. Could I conceivably sneak my way past every single border in South America? I’ve known others to skip through here and there, mostly volunteers who hadn’t taken vacation days on their way home from Guatemala or Honduras.
But Ben and I are looking at a lot of borders, and we’ll have to get on a plane eventually, to somewhere. Plus, we no longer have any real budget.
I look up from my coffee and see Ben in the street with Peseta. Their conversation turns heated. Peseta shrugs and Ben nods. After a couple more words, they bump fists and Peseta takes off. Ben comes in to join me. I signal Kristy for another cup of coffee.
“How’d it go on your end?” Ben sits down.
“Not great. They’ve got an emergency option, but it’s only good for a month. A whole new passport is more complicated. I have to go to the embassy tomorrow. This could take weeks.”
“Shit.”
“How about your approach?”
He sighs. “I told Peseta I’d pay for the passport and the bank cards. He isn’t too hopeful. He says most of the crackheads burn the documents straight away when they steal a wallet—so they won’t be caught with them later. With an American passport, there’s some chance they might hold on to it. Especially in the case of yours, because…” Ben pauses.
“Because I’m brown,” I say, finishing the sentence for him. “A Salvadoran girl might use it to sneak through immigration—if she looked enough like me—without even changing the photo.” I realize it as I say it.
“Right,” Ben says. “But that sort of thing is a little sophisticated for the rank-and-file sneak thieves. Which means there’s a chance your passport is still around, waiting for a buyer.”
Kristy brings out a tray with another mug of warm milk. We are silent as Ben fixes his coffee.
“You need to call the bank. They might put a hold on your account.”
“I did that,” Ben says. “But the balance shows there are only a few bucks left.”
“What? They can’t take your cash without the PIN number.”
“That’s right.” Ben sighed and looked at the spot where Peseta had been standing. “But apparently they used the debit option and bought stuff with just a signature. It takes more time, but still.”
“Shit.” I hadn’t thought of that. “So the thieves must’ve been on a spending spree for the last twelve hours or so.”
“More likely the thief passed the cards on to somebody else, somebody with wheels. Anyplace that was open, they bought shit from it.”
“What do we do now?” I ask. The outlook for my own bank account isn’t good.
“I’m not sure.” He extends his hand across the table and touches mine. “We’ll figure something out.”
For a few minutes, we sit in silence and drink our coffee. I want to ask if our trip is still on. How little money would be too little?
“I’ll run out to Sunzal real quick.” Ben takes a final sip and puts down the mug.
“Why?” I ask.
“To get the boards.” He stands up.
I’d forgotten all about them.
Ben waves as he drives out of La Posada. Though it isn’t even noon, I ask Kristy for a beer, hoping to keep this hangover at bay long enough to hold my thoughts together. I drink it fast and then brush my teeth in the sink by the shared bathrooms.
“Chinita!” Kristy pokes her head out of the office, her hand held over the mouthpiece of the phone. “For you.”
I’m still rinsing toothpaste foam from my mouth. “One moment.” I spit in the sink, then cross the courtyard.
Kristy hands me the phone, cord stretched out through the office door.
“Hello?”
“Does everyone know you as ‘Chinita’ in that town?”
“You shouldn’t call me here, Alex.”
“I just wanted to say I’m sorry about last night.”
“We had too much to drink and we fucked,” I say. “That’s all it was. I’d like to be able to blame you for it, but that’s not how it happened.”
“Can I see you again?”
“Look, Alex, I’m in a relationship, a serious one. We’ve got plans.” The word plans feels like a punch to the stomach after the events of this morning.
“Will you tell him?”
“Tell Ben? About last night? I don’t think he’d take it too well.” I neglect to mention our jealous exchange a couple hours earlier. I look down at my arms. Twin black dots—the size of nickels—form at the base of each bicep in the spots where Ben pressed his thumbs.
“That’s probably
for the best,” Alex says. “It’s not about him, after all.”
“It’s not about anything. I feel shitty not telling him, but it isn’t worth ruining our trip.” I leave off the fact that my carelessness—combined with some crackhead’s cunning—might already have ruined the trip.
“I’m with you,” he says.
“Look, Alex. I have to go.”
“You don’t have to go, Malia.”
“I do, actually. Ben will be back any minute, and we’ve got some stuff to deal with here.”
“I don’t mean right now,” he goes on. “I mean period. You don’t have to leave El Salvador. I understand your reasons. You can, obviously. But don’t act as if you have no choice. That may be the only thing I learned from going to D.C., then coming back here. I didn’t think I could face it: Salvador, El Vado, the Peace Corps, anything. But the truth is, nobody cares. People have their own problems.”
I hear the distinct rattle of our Jeep’s engine coming down the street. “Alex, I have to hang up now.”
“Come see me if you can, please.”
“Good-bye.”
I hang up the phone and take a few steps out into the courtyard. Ben pulls in and parks. Once he climbs out of the Jeep, he sticks his index finger in his mouth and then holds it straight up above his head. “The wind still hasn’t picked up,” he says. “Might as well go surfing.”
* * *
Ben and I set out into a hapless sea. We don’t bother with the point, opting instead for the shorter beach break on the inside, the surf spot the locals call La Paz.
A couple small sets roll in after we paddle out. I get a workable section right off the bat and land a little floater before it closes. For a moment, I have that rare and wonderful sense that surfing can redeem the rest of this mess. My feet hit the deck, and for one fleeting instant my bank account and my passport don’t exist. Two turns into a moderately punchy face, and I can see myself from a distance, from years in the future; today’s problems look small and silly—a funny story told over cocktails. That feeling lasts less than a second, then fizzles out with the white water.
After twenty minutes or so, the wind picks up and the surf turns to crap. We stubbornly sit on our boards, hoping that a fluke wave might line up, waiting for that same elusive sense of redemption.
Bobbing up and down in the blown-out sea, with the midday sun now reflecting so hard off the water that I have to squint, things finally catch up with me. I internalize the accusations that Courtney hurled my way. I think of my mother again. Once she’d cheated on my father and left us, at least she left for good. She didn’t lie about it—as far as I know. And she didn’t come back and try to be a wife or parent every so often. Maybe she deserves some credit for that.
The shame washes over me along with the residual indecision and a slight sense that I ought to tell Ben what happened. For a second, I fear I might drown in all of it.
“This sucks,” I shout to Ben, and paddle for shore.
* * *
I rinse off. Ben gathers the medical supplies and enters Pelochucho’s room. In my sarong, I go to the doorway and watch as Pelo lowers his board shorts and exposes the uppermost inches of his white ass.
“Easy,” Ben says, then sticks the needle in.
I wonder if Ben has ever done this before. He looks like a pro. Beyond tired, I walk back to our own room. The sun is still high in the early-afternoon sky. I shut the door, turn on the fan, take off my sarong, and lie down across the bed. For a few minutes, I enjoy the cold, quick air against my naked skin.
* * *
I wake up feeling drugged, barely able to open my eyes. It takes a second to remember where I am. I paw at the bed beside me, surprised not to find a male body there.
In the hastily wrapped sarong, I have a peek out the door. It’s dusk. The sun will be setting soon. Ben sits at a table in the kitchen, a Regia and a glass set before him. He waves when he sees me. I put on some proper clothes and go to join him. The metal wire of my flip-flop scrapes against the tiles of the dining room.
“How’d it get so late?” My voice is deep and froggy.
“You were out like a light.” He stands up and grabs me a glass from behind the counter. I pour myself a beer from the big amber bottle.
Ben reaches into the cargo pocket of his board shorts. “Got you a new wallet,” he says.
Before me, he places a leather square with the image of Che Guevara burned into it, along with the words ¡HASTA LA VICTORIA SIEMPRE!
“Where’d you get this?” I pick up the gift. It’s still stiff and smells of the tanning process.
“The jewelry lady stopped by. It was either Che or the Virgin Mary.”
“Tough choice.” I grin. “Thank you.” I love it. It’s sweet of him. And while we’re prone to joke about Che’s misunderstood iconography, I find the image and the mythology comforting at that moment: a handful of men with ideals and bird rifles taking on the strongest military in the world, their faith and their struggle. Until victory always!
“I am sorry,” Ben says. “About before. I shouldn’t have … grabbed you like that.”
“No, you shouldn’t have,” I say. “But it’s been a messed-up day. I forgive you.”
“It’s my Irish side,” he says. “My grandmother used to say that Irishmen treat women and horses the exact same way.” He takes a sip of beer.
“How’s that?”
“They worship both, but they expect both to suffer constantly and gracefully.”
“I was expecting something more R-rated,” I say. “How’s Pelochucho?”
“He’s fine. Sleeping. I was bored out here with nobody to talk to.”
“Has he mentioned anything about the hospital bills?”
“Yeah, he paid me back.” Ben nods and points at the Che wallet. “That’s all we have in the world.”
I look inside. There’s a little over four hundred American dollars.
“You hungry?” Ben asks.
“Starving.” All I’ve eaten today is the sweet bread at the hospital.
A couple doors down, a woman cooks pupusas on a portable gas grill. She wraps them in brown paper, along with plastic bags of spicy pickled cabbage and red tomato sauce. We take them back to the hotel and open more beer.
Once the food is finished, we carry our bottles up to the roof. Ben takes out his pouch of Dutch tobacco and a newspaper bundle of the local brown weed. He rolls a spliff. Opting out on the pot, I make myself a thin cigarette. The ocean is still and sounds like a dog’s whimper. It laps gently upon the shore, as if afraid it might do harm to the land.
“No waves,” Ben says with a dry mouth.
“Not one.”
We’re silent for a minute, sharing only the mild sucking and puffing sounds of smoking.
“Can I ask you something?” The quiet night turns me contemplative. “Why do you love surfing so much?”
“It’s fun,” Ben says, trying to brush the question off. “What’s not to love?”
“I know it’s fun.” I won’t let him off that easy. “Lots of things are fun. But why surfing? Why you?”
He holds the spliff upward and inspects the cherry. “I come from a family of—for lack of a better term—tough guys. My dad, my uncles, my older brother: They’ve all been marines, high school football stars, that sort of thing.”
I pay attention, never having heard him say much on this subject. “Obviously, I’m the hippie in the bunch, right? And I’d never make it in the military—could never stand some asshole shouting at me, or, God forbid, to shoot anyone. Even the team sports thing was too much.”
I take a long gulp of beer.
“But when you’re a boy and you’re raised by guys like that, they presume you’re a pussy—too scared for all that physical stuff. For me, surfing—especially in North Carolina, where I learned, with the only real waves coming in as storms and all—was a way for me to have adventures, to test myself.”
“Did it work?” I can’t say the next sent
ence with a straight face. “Did it prove to your dad that you’re not a pussy?” The suppressed laughter bursts at the sides of my mouth.
Ben smiles at the silliness of the question. “It’s not like that. My dad, my brothers, they’ll never get it. But yeah, it gives me peace of mind. I know I’m not afraid. That’s enough. In a sense, I like that they don’t understand it. After all, I don’t get any of the stuff they’re into.” Ben tops his beer glass off, relieved to be finished with his explanation. “What about you?” he asks. “What do you love about surfing?”
I shrug, wishing I’d prepared a response before starting this. “Most of all, I like that it’s an end in itself, you know? That it’s not a means to an end.”
“How so?”
The cigarette feels hot in my fingers. “Speaking of families, my father’s family is … we’d say pake in Hawai‘i. That word technically means Chinese, but it’s used for anyone who’s frugal and thrifty. You met my dad; he’s very disciplined. Everything is about getting ahead, or helping the next generation get ahead. It’s sort of admirable. My grandparents were plantation workers, and my grandfather managed to save up and start his own business. Now my dad runs it, and it’s successful. He raised me by himself, of course. Sent me to private school. But there’s no stopping to enjoy it, no indulgence. It’s all profit and loss.”
Ben furrows his brow.
“With surfing, I like that there’s no earning or spending involved. Waves aren’t an investment in something else to come. There’s no past or future—only the moment at hand.”
He licks a finger and wets one side of the spliff.
“I get hard work and sacrifice and everything; it’s not like I’m lazy.” I’m having a hard time expressing myself. “But people like my father, or Alex, for that matter … it’s as if they see life as one big suffering contest, you know? That’s like the only measure of character for them.”
I stop talking. The two of us stare out at the dark ocean.
“I’ve got a bad feeling about this passport thing,” I confess.
“Want me to go with you tomorrow?”
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