by K C Ames
Dana turned to look at Luis, who rolled his eyes and hissed, “How rude.”
Dana unlocked the door and opened it ajar. There was a man standing there whom she hadn’t met before.
“Oh, good, you’re open,” he said, peering into the bookstore. He was an American.
“Actually, we’re not; that’s why the door was locked. The grand opening won’t be for another two weeks, sorry.” Dana began to close the door when the man slipped his foot into the door, preventing her from closing it.
Dana looked down at the foot, then she glared at the rude man.
“Well, I’m only here for a week,” he said, looking over her head into the store.
“I’m sorry, sir, I’m just not open for business yet.”
“I see you have a bunch of books in there. Come on, let me take a look,” the man whined.
“Any problems, Dana?” Luis said as he stood behind Dana.
The man removed his foot. “You’re not going to stay in business too long by turning away eager customers,” the man said angrily.
“Like I’ve told you more than once, I’m not open for business yet. Sorry,” Dana said, closing the door.
“Nice way to treat your customers,” the man yelled from behind the closed door.
“Weirdo,” Luis said as he walked over to the window and pushed the shade aside so he could look outside to see what the man was doing. “He’s leaving,” Luis said.
“Good. The nerve of that man,” Dana replied. She felt creeped out over the odd encounter.
“I didn’t know the bookselling business generated such passion. Perhaps you’ll have campers out lining outside like at an Apple store grand opening,” Luis said, laughing out loud.
“I wish,” Dana said.
She proceeded with her tour of the store, trying to act unfazed in front of Luis, but the encounter with the pushy man left her rattled, so she was not in the mood of being alone in the store, thus she left with Luis Padilla.
“Can’t wait for the opening, darling,” he said with a wave as he got into his Toyota RAV4 and drove off. Dana fired up Big Red and headed home to Casa Verde, which was a five-minute drive away.
That evening, Dana met up with Benny at the Qué Vista Restaurant, which specialized in local tico cuisine of casados, pescado entero, ceviche, picadillo de papa, arroz con pollo, gallo pinto, and the like. The restaurant was right on the beach, its structure built to resemble a palapa.
The ocean view was so incredible that Dana was certain she could feel the sea splash reach her table with every crashing wave mere feet away.
She ordered the arroz con mariscos—a seafood stir-fried rice dish that consisted of shrimp, mussels, fish, peas, carrots, onions, and red peppers among other goodies.
Benny ordered the pescado entero—Spanish for whole fish. And it really was the whole fish from head to tail served on a plate with a salad, fried yuca, and lots of fresh lime slices.
If the new bookstore wasn’t enough to keep the Mariposa Beach rumor mill fat and happy, the sight of Dana and Benny out for another late-night dinner was going to give it heart palpitations.
They both knew it, and although at first it felt awkward, they stopped caring. “You can’t stop a small beach community from gossiping, so I don’t worry about it,” Benny had explained to Dana when she had brought it up during their last dinner together.
Dana had been relieved he felt the same way as she did on the subject matter. She enjoyed his company, and he was her lawyer who had helped her fend off a lawsuit over the ownership of Casa Verde, and they had become friends.
Besides, for an American expat to open a small business in Costa Rica required a lot of paperwork and legal minefields to cross, and she would have long ago set one of them off without Benny’s legal expertise.
She pushed the thoughts of going beyond the friendship zone—something that continued becoming harder for her, especially on a lovely dinner night out like the one they were on, so her mind would wander until she would chide herself… Stop it, Dana, you’re doing it again.
She needed something to talk about before it got awkward again.
“So, I had my first sort of customer today at the bookstore,” she said, eager to get her mind on another subject, even if that subject was the rude tourist.
Benny responded with a quizzical look as he took a sip from his bottle of Cerveza Imperial.
Dana told Benny all about the obnoxious, door-blocking tourist from earlier in the day.
“Maybe they’ll start camping out for the grand opening like an Apple store when a new iPhone is about to drop,” Benny said, grinning.
“That’s exactly what Luis Padilla said.”
At that moment there was a loud commotion coming from one of the tables towards the back of the restaurant, by the bar.
“I’m not drunk,” shrieked the voice of a man who had obviously imbibed vast quantities of alcohol.
“Looks like someone isn’t happy about being cut off,” Benny said, looking over towards the bar. Dana turned around for a glimpse and she quickly turned back to face Benny.
“Oh, my, that’s him.”
“Who?”
“Him. My first wannabe customer today.”
“Oh, him,” Benny said, trying to catch a better glimpse of the man.
He was in his mid- to late thirties and although balding you could tell he was a redhead.
“Seems like a great guy,” Benny said facetiously as the man kept raising his voice to protest being cut off.
After a few minutes, the drunken man was making his way out when he locked eyes with Dana and stopped at her table.
“You’re that woman from the bookstore,” the man said, slurring his words.
Oh, gosh, Dana thought as she looked away, embarrassed.
“Sir, please leave,” Benny said, throwing his napkin on the table.
“You wouldn’t let me inside your bookstore. I just wanted to look at your books,” the man said, sounding more agitated.
“Like I told you this morning, I’m not open for business yet.”
“Whatever,” the man said, spraying Dana with spittle.
“Oh, gross.” She flinched.
“Okay, buddy, that’s enough,” Benny said, getting up.
“Tell your boyfriend to take it easy, I’m leaving,” the man said as he continued on his way outside.
Benny watched the man stagger off as Jorge, the restaurant manager, apologized. María Rivera, the owner, soon joined Jorge to offer her apology, and told them dessert was on the house.
Benny and Dana insisted that wasn’t necessary, but she pressed, so two big slices of the deliciously decadent tres leches cake topped with fresh strawberries arrived soon after.
“Enjoy,” María said with a smile and wink.
“Well, that’s a lot of excitement for Mariposa Beach,” Dana said, smiling as she picked up a fork and tore into her dessert.
Nine
The next day, Dana was back at work at the bookstore. She was outside with Rodri and his teenage nephew, putting in some final touch-ups to the exterior. Dana was working on the trim when she heard a rattle coming down Main Street.
It was a rattle she recognized right away, and it made her tense up because she knew what that rattling was: it was the telltale sound of Barry Shy’s rickety trike bike, overloaded with junk and trinkets clanging together and against the metal frame of his three-wheeled trike as he headed into town on one of his supply runs. Unfortunately for her, the small grocery store he frequented was on the tail of the Ark Row shops, so he had to pedal down Main Street and by her bookstore, which meant he would see her there. She sighed. The last thing she needed on that pleasant morning was another confrontation with Barry Shy, especially after dealing with the loudmouth tourist at her store and the restaurant the previous day.
Am I wearing jerk-attraction spray? she thought as she put all her attention to the work at hand, trying hard to ignore Barry Shy and his clanking trike as he rode throu
gh town.
Barry Shy was anything but shy. He was a sixty-two-year-old American expat who lived in a handmade shack-like cabin a few miles from Mariposa Beach up in the mountains.
He would come into town riding on an old but sturdy-looking Worksman Mover Industrial Tricycle with a large rear-mounted cargo basket. Everyone in town called it his trike.
Dana had thought it was an amazing feat to get around on that thing in the mostly unpaved and pockmarked roads around town, and how he got that overloaded trike back up the mountain dumbfounded her.
She figured the scrawny old man must have the legs of a Tour de France cyclist.
Barry Shy was a self-described minimalist infused with a self-righteous indignation over the commercialization of the world and in particular, and much to his fury, Mariposa Beach.
He would come to town to pick up the few amenities he needed that didn’t come from his land, like propane and kerosene, and pontificate on the demise of Mariposa Beach because of the continuous influx of tourists and well-heeled expats.
Dana was the latest expat in town, much to his ire. She had noticed that it seemed to be a popular sport for expats who had arrived long ago to complain about the newest expats in town.
Benny had explained that it was a common phenomenon he saw a lot all over the country, where each new wave of expats would be reviled by the previous wave.
It seemed to her that Barry loathed all expats, and that probably included himself. He seemed like a miserable man, and Dana actually felt bad for the man who lived all alone like a hermit up in the mountain.
Dana had noticed throughout her life that it was hard for people like Barry Shy to like other people when they don't even like themselves.
But his disdain for one type of person trumped them all: the merchants. Barry would chastise the merchants for catering to tourists’ every spoiled whim, and Dana’s bookstore was the latest affront to his sensibilities since Mindy had opened her coffee and bagel shop a few years ago to sell “fancy and overpriced coffee and bagels to the ‘bugs,’” which is what Barry called the tourists.
Tourists were bugs. Expats like Dana and Mindy—and any expat that came to town after him—had their own descriptor. They were locusts.
“He called me a locust. He said I was destroying Mariposa Beach, eating up all the natural resources, and that I was now his enemy for opening a new business in town,” a befuddled Dana had told Mindy a few weeks ago, after her first face-to-face confrontation with Barry Shy.
Dana had pushed back and tried to act tough, like he wasn’t scaring her, but he had—a fact she would only share with Mindy.
“That man sounds like a broken record. He has said that to all of us at one time or another, so don’t worry about it, honey, we’re all locusts to him. And tourists are bugs,” Mindy explained.
“Hello, he’s an expat.”
“Yes, but in that indignant, judgmental little brain of his, any expat that moved here after he did and doesn’t live out in the jungle in a medieval cabin without electricity or running water like the Unabomber is a locust, since we’re consuming all the natural resources and I guess he is not, in his mind.”
“What a jerk,” Dana said.
“Yes, indeed. But don’t worry, honey, being Barry’s enemy won’t take much of your time. It’s just an annoyance. Like a gnat. His self-righteous indignation will eventually zero in on someone new.”
“How long has he been here?”
“He’s been here a while. I was told that he showed up in the late eighties. I don’t know from which state, since he won’t tell anyone. He bought land a few miles out of town when it was a lot cheaper back then. When all the hoopla about Y2K ushering in the end of the world, he moved down permanently in the early nineties. I heard when he first came to town, he had a tent and a few sacks of rice and beans as he prepared for the end of the world. Well, Y2K came and went and nothing happened, but he stayed on and has never left. He eventually built that shack he lives in now.”
“Is it nice?”
“Oh, no, not at all,” Mindy replied, laughing. “It’s slanted to one side, since he’s not a very good carpenter. But he does have a nice little farm going now. His cabin has no electricity, no water, or indoor bathroom. He doesn’t have a phone or a computer. I would be surprised if he even knew what Facebook or Twitter were, seeing how he’s been out there alone and disconnected since the nineties.”
“That’s so sad.” Dana actually felt bad for the man. It was obvious there was some sort of mental issue going on there.
“I think he gets lonely out there, so when he comes to town, he picks fights with one of us locusts as a way to connect with fellow human beings, then he scampers back to his shack.”
It sounded like an awful way to live to Dana, but to each their own. She just wished he respected her choice to be part of the community and to start a business, just like she respected his choice of living like a hermit disconnected from the world.
Dana was trying to ignore him. She glanced at the window to catch his reflection, hoping he would continue to pedal into town without stopping to give her grief.
She was relieved that he kept on pedaling by her store without saying anything. After yesterday’s encounters with the loudmouth, she wasn’t in the mood for more drama.
Ten
Dana was stocking her bookshelves when Ramón showed up around noon in his 1997 Datsun pickup with several boxes of books from Casa Verde. Dana was excited to finish stocking up her bookstore.
He moved the boxes from the bed of his pickup truck into the store.
“Do you need my help putting these away?” he asked, always eager to lend a helping hand.
“No, it’s fine. Benny is coming. And I have Rodri and his nephew Mateo here. So I have plenty of help.”
Ramón smiled and left. Dana figured he was more than happy to go to tend to his landscaping of Casa Verde that he loved.
Benny arrived an hour later to help out putting the books in their appropriate spots.
They were getting a lot done, and Dana was getting into the music of Marimba Orquesta Maribel that Rodri was playing on his iPhone. It was a mixture of salsa, cumbia, reggae, and typical Costa Rican music where the marimba was front and center. They were all grooving to the beats when they heard muffled shouts coming from outside.
“Oh, brother,” Dana said as they made their way outside, where Barry Shy was holding up a sign that read: “Stop the Gentrification of our beaches.”
“Oh, brother,” Dana said again. She went back inside and closed the door and locked it.
“Don’t worry, he does that to every new business until he eventually gets bored and wanders on back to his mountain patch,” Benny said, a stack of books under his arm.
“He’s such a pain,” Dana said.
“That he is. He’s been around forever.”
“Yeah, Mindy gave me the four-one-one on him when he first showed up to harass me. She said no one knows where he’s from originally. Do you know?”
“I don’t know either. I don’t think anyone knows, and he’s not telling. I think he likes the mystery of it all. When people have asked him where he’s from, he just says ‘Earth.’ Rumor has it he’s an old hippy from the States who moved to Canada to avoid the Vietnam War draft, but only he knows the truth, and he’s not sharing.”
“So what’s his problem?” Dana wondered.
“Acid flashbacks,” Benny said, grinning.
Dana gave him a shrug.
“He’s just been here a long time. Lives off the grid. He doesn’t make it into town that often anyway, so he’s not going to be a problem for you for too long. Eventually he gets bored and moves on. He just likes making some noise and getting attention. Maybe it reminds him of protesting in the sixties or something,” Benny explained.
Dana peered out a small gap in the window covering and saw him out there leading his one-man protest of her store.
“I thought he would go easy on you, since you’re
opening a bookstore. The man loves to read,” Benny said.
“Yeah, the Unabomber manifesto, no doubt,” Dana said.
Benny laughed. “Don’t worry, he will move on.”
“I’m used to dealing with self-righteous old hippies. I am from San Francisco, after all. But he just seems like an angry old man that could be dangerous.”
“Nah, he’s harmless,” Benny said.
“I can’t have him out there pestering potential customers when the store opens.”
“Don’t worry, the man has the attention span of a child. He’ll wander off before then.”
Dana hoped Benny was correct. The grand opening was days away, and she didn’t want Barry Shy to ruin her big day.
Dana and Benny continued to work for another hour, stocking books while Rodri and Mateo finished up their work inside. Dana asked Rodri to turn the music up loud to drown out Barry’s chants from outside, but she could still hear him ranting and raving.
Once all the books were in place, Dana decided to call it a day.
“I’ve had enough for today,” she told Benny.
She sent Rodri and Mateo home as well.
On their way out, Barry became agitated when he saw them exiting the bookstore, and he seemed to focus all his rage on Dana, the newest expat and town merchant.
“Why don’t you go back to the empire?” Barry shouted at her. Dana assumed he meant the States.
“Why don’t you go back to the empire, Barry? Don’t forget, you’re an expat too. A guest in our country,” Benny, who was born and raised in Costa Rica, said to him, smiling.
Rodri spoke enough English to understand, and he laughed, being a native Costa Rican as well. The other tico in the group, Mateo, didn’t speak English. But Dana could tell he was aware of the tension, so he stood next to his uncle in case things got physical.
“You sold out to corporate interests, man, you’re part of the problem too,” Barry spewed his spiel. He refocused on Dana and pointed an arthritic finger at her, seething. “You are turning Main Street into Rodeo Drive. You all are.”