by K C Ames
It was her third visit, but she knew the moment she had walked inside the first time that she was standing in her future bookstore, which she already planned to call Mariposa Books.
Luis Padilla, her spryly real estate agent, who was in his late twenties, stepped outside to take a call, so she was able to stand there by herself in silence, taking in the open space and visualizing her bookstore.
“Talk to me,” she said to the open space. She closed her eyes for a moment then opened them and quickly looked back to make sure she was still alone.
That would have been embarrassing, she thought as she confirmed that Padilla was still outside gabbing on his phone working on another deal.
Dana smiled, figuring that if he had been there, he would have just shrugged off her talking to an empty room as the California hippy-dippy thing to do.
Dana went back to the task at hand as she walked around the entire space, again.
She looked at everything, from the floorboards to the ceiling. She inspected every nook and cranny.
It was a great location, smack in the middle of Ark Row on Main Street.
Ark Row was the nickname given to the retail center of Mariposa Beach that consisted of several stand-alone cottages side-by-side. Long ago those cottages had been boats that served as residential homes that were anchored out in the water, year-round; because they were houseboats on the water with arched roofs, decks, and French doors they were referred to as arks.
In the 1960s, the government put a kibosh on the anchored-out arks, so the houseboats were brought to shore, eventually becoming the retail location known as Ark Row.
The original merchants saw the branding power of Ark Row, so when new retail buildings were built, they convinced the municipality to make it a requirement that the developers keep the look and feel of the original arks, and that is how Ark Row came to be.
Even Main Street was more of a marketing tool than any, since it was the only thoroughfare in town anyway, so the locals jokingly called it Only Street.
Mariposa Beach didn’t have any traffic lights, and the one stop sign in town was treated as a yield sign, much to the frightening realization of tourists walking down or driving on Only Street.
But to the Ark Row merchants, the connotations of Main Street, USA was a powerful marketing tool that they had embraced wholeheartedly.
None of that mattered to Dana back then as she just stood in the middle of an empty retail space, taking stock of everything and getting excited at the prospect of opening her bookstore there.
There was also the voice of fear rattling in her head, reminding her of the fact that she stood inside the empty storefront of an out-of-business store, a reminder of the risks of starting a new business, especially a bookstore—an endangered form of retail business that had been going the way of the dodo bird as just about everyone and their great-grandmother were getting into reading books digitally or ordering their print books online.
Dana was lost in those thoughts and in the silence and stillness of the moment when suddenly she heard Luis Padilla’s booming voice from behind her. “Perfect! Isn’t it?” His voice bounced around the empty walls loud enough to make Dana jump.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you.”
Dana caught her breath. “It’s okay. I didn’t hear you come back in, and I was lost with my thoughts.”
“I understand. You have a lot to think about, but as far as the location, this would be a perfect spot for your bookstore. It’s right in the heart of Ark Row,” Padilla said. Dana smiled. Like he had told her something she didn’t know.
“It’s a great location, there is no doubt about that,” she finally replied, looking around at the space again.
“It was a thriving video store for like twenty years, even outlived Blockbuster by a few years,” Padilla said, grinning. “It has a great layout for a bookstore. Instead of shelves of videos, it will have shelves of books. And look,” he said, not letting her get a word in, “there is a lot of room for expansion. Like right over there,” he said, pointing at an empty corner covered in dust, “you could put a little cafe there. Get people to come in for coffee, pastries… books,” he said with an arched eyebrow.
Dana smiled. “Baby steps, Luis. I don’t know the first thing about lattes and pastries, but I do know books.”
She kept looking around and mulling it over in her head. He was right about the location. It was perfect for her needs. It was a much bigger space than she needed, but the price was a steal. But should she? Dana was doing it again. She second-guessed herself a few dozen times a day about starting her own business in a dying industry and in a country she had just moved down to a few months ago. She kept hearing her mom’s voice in her head. You’re getting in over your head… you’re getting in over your head.
The experience of starting a new business would be new to her, but she had experience working in a dying business.
She graduated with a journalism degree from the University of California, Berkeley. She paid her dues working for smaller newspapers until she made it to her hometown newspaper, the San Francisco Times.
It wasn’t the New York Times or even the L.A. Times, but it was the big leagues of print journalism, not that her pay reflected it.
It didn’t help matters that digital media was eating print media’s lunch.
The decline of the print newspaper business reminded Dana of that Buggel’s song, “Video Killed the Radio Star,” and how the Internet did just that to print media, and she had a front-row seat to the carnage.
It seemed that anyone with a blog—and later a Twitter, YouTube, or Facebook account—was a journalist, and old-school journalists were expected to not just report the news, but more importantly generate web content… a lot of content, which made it difficult to do a journalist job properly. Fact-checking and vetting sources took a backseat in favor of getting poorly vetted, short-word-count articles with a click-bait headline on the newspaper’s website as soon as possible.
Dana figured that if her journalist background was going to be a hindrance to the business side of the newspaper business—who seemed to want bloggers, not journalists—and having grown tired of low morale, salary cutbacks and freezes, slashed budgets, and most of the resources siphoned to the online division of the newspaper, she might as well go make some money, for a change. So she left the San Francisco Times for a swanky public relations firm in the SoMa district of San Francisco.
“Penny for your thoughts?” Padilla’s voice pulled Dana’s mind back from those memories and to the empty retail store she was standing in.
“It could work,” she replied to Padilla while inside she was asking herself, Am I making a mistake?
Yes, this is too risky, the right side of her brain replied.
No, you’re not; go for it, the left part of her brain piped in.
It’s not like she was making decisions based purely on emotion. She had done her homework since she left the hectic big-city life of San Francisco for the quiet, small, beach-town community of Mariposa Beach, Costa Rica, a town and country that relied heavily on tourism.
She also saw the instant and free inventory that landed on her lap as serendipity.
When she inherited her uncle’s property, it included her uncle’s huge collection of books. Boom. Instant inventory.
After some legal battles over the property, she now owned Casa Verde free and clear.
“So… what do you think?” Padilla asked again.
“I think I need coffee,” she replied, seeing the frustration on his face.
She made her way outside, Padilla following her as he looked at his wristwatch. He oozed a “time is money” mantra with every step he took. “Okay, call me when you make up your mind and we’ll get the paperwork started,” he said as he got into his Toyota RAV4 SUV.
“I will,” Dana said as she crossed the street, heading over to her friend Mindy’s cafe.
“Were you visiting the store again?” Mindy asked Dana from be
hind the counter as soon as she walked in.
Dana smiled sheepishly and nodded. “Have to be sure, you know.”
Mindy Salas was an expat from New York who had married Leo Salas, who was from Costa Rica. They moved down to Costa Rica after a couple years of marriage, having tired of New York City living.
They moved to his hometown of Heredia—a city near San José, the capital of Costa Rica. The Salas wanted to live on the beach, so after a couple years of city living in Heredia, they made the move to Mariposa Beach.
Mindy and Leo had been in the restaurant business for almost their whole lives. In fact, they had met at a New York City restaurant where she was the pastry chef and he was the sous-chef.
They opened their cafe in Mariposa Beach a few years ago, and it had become a roaring success with made-from-scratch bagels and cream cheese, and coffee beans that were sourced from Leo’s family’s coffee farm.
Dana and Mindy had become friends since Dana moved to the small beach town six months ago, and Mindy had encouraged Dana to open the bookstore.
“The closest bookstore is one hundred fifty miles away in San José, and besides, I’ll send business your way, since I don’t have a place for customers to sit, which people constantly complain to me about,” Mindy had told Dana when she had first asked her about her business idea.
Mindy had reassured Dana that she knew all about the doubt and fears she was having about opening her own business—a scary proposition made even scarier due to the fact that they were foreigners in Costa Rica. It made things more complicated and scarier.
And Mindy had her husband, Leo, who was a Costa Rican—a tico, as Costa Ricans call themselves—who knew the ins and outs of his own country, unlike Dana, who was on her own.
Although she wasn’t really on her own. She had good friends like Mindy, and her best friend, Courtney, back in California, who was encouraging her.
Dana also had Benny Campos on her side. Benny was a tico and Dana’s attorney, and had helped her navigate the rough waters of moving to Costa Rica and inheriting her uncle’s property.
When Dana’s cousin contested her uncle’s will that left everything to Dana, it was Benny that represented her in court, and when her cousin was murdered within days of her moving to Mariposa Beach and the Costa Rican homicide detective suspected her, it was Benny and her best friend, Courtney—who had flown down to Costa Rica with Dana to help her settle in—that helped her get through that dark period of her life.
“You’re at the point of no return, I can tell,” Mindy said with a grin.
“You’re probably right.”
“So what are you waiting for? Call Luis.”
“I have to go home first. Benny is coming over to make sure I have all my ducks in a row.”
“Stop stalling,” Mindy said.
Dana smiled. Mindy could see right through what she was doing.
Three
Dana made the quick drive back to Casa Verde, the green house. It was nestled in the lush green forest, thus its name. It was a beautiful home with views of the Pacific Ocean, and was located within walking distance to the white-sand beach. She was still incredulous that her estranged uncle had left her such a magnificent property.
Her uncle, Blake Kirkpatrick, had been a travel writer and surfer who came to Costa Rica to surf in the seventies and fell in love with the Nosara area and the country.
He bought the land in the early eighties and built a beautiful home on the land with sweeping views of the Pacific Ocean in front of the property and the lush greenery of the Costa Rican jungle behind it.
Dana continued to battle the feelings that she was a freeloader for inheriting the property and the insecurities of being the newcomer expat to the small tight-knit beach community that was Mariposa Beach.
But every day those feelings kept getting smaller, and her love for the area and the town kept growing.
Dana drove up to a large, green, metal front gate. A tall wall surrounded the property so that people on the other side of it could not peer inside. Dana pressed on a clicker that brought the gate to life as it began to open. She drove in and pressed the button once again, this time to close the gate.
Ramón Villalobos, the caretaker, was working on the yard, swinging his machete like Leonard Bernstein in front of his orchestra.
He stopped and waved as Dana drove by.
Dana looked around but couldn’t see Ramón’s wife, Carmen.
The Villalobos lived in a small house on the property, and although at first Dana felt the arrangement was odd, she honored her uncle’s wishes to allow Ramón and Carmen to continue living there and taking care of the property. She looked back at Ramón, who had gone back to work with his machete, and she smiled. She couldn’t imagine what she would do without Ramón and Carmen in her life.
She parked and walked up the front steps leading up to her front door. As soon as she stepped inside, she saw her shorthair white cat coming her way to greet her as if he were a dog.
“Hey, Wally,” Dana said to the purring feline as it rubbed up and down her leg, arching its back in excitement.
Dana had always considered herself more of a dog person and never thought about having a cat as a pet, but Wally had been a stray cat who barged in one night and never left.
Dana gave him dishes with water, milk, eggs, ham, and bacon, and she let Wally have the run of the house. Why would he leave? she thought as she watched him stretch and yawn. He was sweet and friendly enough, and she quickly became a cat person.
“We’ll be hanging out someplace new in a couple months,” Dana said to Wally, who just meowed.
“How do you feel about being a bookstore cat during the day?”
“Meow.” Wally shook, and fur floated in the air.
“Well, you have no choice but to keep me company in my new bookstore. Besides, a cat and a bookstore go together like peanut butter and jelly.”
Her mind was made. She didn’t need to wait for Benny. She scratched Wally a few more times, then she walked to the living room, fidgeting with her phone, to call Luis Padilla. He picked up right away.
“Hi, Luis, I’ll take it.”
The next couple of months she became Bob the Builder in order to spruce up the home of her future bookstore. The video store that used to be there had closed a couple years ago and the property sat empty all that time, so there was a lot of work to be done.
She loved every minute of the process. This is what she needed. She was only in her mid-thirties, way too young to hang around the beach doing nothing productive with her life. She had moved down to Mariposa Beach for the beach living and slower-pace lifestyle, but that didn’t mean going into stasis mode at thirty-five.
The bookstore kept her busy and gave her life some pep. Not that it was all ra-ra-ra and fun all the time. There were days where she wanted to say forget it. Never open. Take her losses. Chalk it up as a life lesson and get under the covers and stay in bed for a few months instead.
But she soldiered on. Her friend and lawyer, Benny Campos, had put her in contact with Rodrigo Rosales, whom everyone called Rodri.
Rodri was a contractor who could do it all—carpentry, plumbing, and even working as an electrician. He had done work for just about everyone in town, including Mindy, Benny, and Dana’s uncle.
He was a handyman extraordinaire who transformed Dana’s vision into a reality after a lot of hard work.
For months there was so much hammering and sawing going on that at night those were the sounds Dana would hear in her sleep. And she would be so tired by the time her head hit the pillow that not even Napoleon, the loudmouth howler monkey that loved to keep her up at night, could pull her out of her dog-tired sleep.
Then there were also constant trips to Nicoya, the county seat and largest small town in the peninsula, which, to Dana’s surprise, had a very decent and well-stocked hardware store.
Rodri had explained that there had been a lot of construction going on during the boom days, so the hardware s
tore was accustomed to dealing with contractors and the supplies they needed.
There were a couple times she needed supplies the hardware store in Nicoya didn’t have, so she and Benny made the trip to Ferretería EPA—a large hardware store in the capital which was Costa Rica’s version of Home Depot.
To her delight, she could order supplies not available at the local hardware store online at EPA’s website and they sent a truck down to make the deliveries. She only needed to do that a couple times, but her fears of having to scrounge for supplies had been quickly assuaged. And with Rodri as her foreman, she paid tico prices for the needed supplies, thus avoiding the gringo markup.
“Gringo” was the word used by ticos for English-speaking foreigners. It didn’t matter if you were American, European, or Canadian—you were a gringo. And although at first Dana bristled at being referred to as a gringa, she found out that although it could be used for derogatory purposes, it was mostly used without any malicious intent.
Costa Ricans loved giving everyone and everything a nickname, including themselves, thus you weren’t a Costa Rican—you were a tico or tica.
Four
While Rodri was busy working away at the store, Dana was back home going through the large inventory of books she had there, all thanks to her dead uncle.
Rodri had built Dana’s uncle a cozy reading and writing room off of the living room. It was tucked away behind a half door, giving the impression that it was the doorway to a small cellar, but once inside, the truth was revealed that there was a beautiful custom-built library on the other side of that door.
Rodri, who had proudly told Dana that it was his pride and joy of everything he had built in his career, had built it to Uncle Blake’s specifications.
She could see why he was proud; it was a real testament to his carpentry skills and his craftsmanship.
It wasn’t a big room because of space limitations, but that had been the reason Uncle Blake had chosen it. He wanted a cozy nook where you would lose track of time, not knowing if it was day or night, rainy or sunny. A place to get lost in books or in writing.