The third wave was the same size as the first but looked more menacing from his lower angle in the passing wave’s trough. He kicked again, and his shoe toe connected. Knowing he couldn’t take the third wave head-on, he did what surfers do—he dove.
The wave broke. He was pounded against the hard sand knocking his wind out.
The next wave drove him further to shore. His shin struck a rock and flared with pain. His hip bone smacked a crag. His teeth clenched. He pedaled his legs for the bottom while swimming hard with his arms.
He came out of the sea thrashed and bloodied. The beach was a steep rise of rocks with channels of sand. With the heavy rain, there was little to see of the upper beach. He climbed rocks and limped through the wet sand flows. His backpack hanging from one shoulder, he squinted against the blinding rain and stinging angry wind.
“I’ve landed on the moon,” he told the view of the barren and rocky beach.
Further forward, the sand ended at a tree line at the base of a cliff. Forty yards to his right, a wash of fresh water ran a gulley streaming to the sea. A sturdy-looking hut stood on low posts. Two fishing boats lay with their wood underbellies facing the sky.
Kazu hobbled closer. There was a fifty-gallon drum barrel under an angled, sheet metal awning. An outboard motor was bracketed to the side of the barrel, its prop down inside. He stopped to look for a sign of life standing in soaked clothing and bleeding. With no hint of anyone, he turned around looking for his fuel can.
Searching rocks and crevices for a hint of the can’s red color, he climbed this way and that as waves crashed and washed.
The can was a hundred yards up the northern beach, half buried in the heavy, wet sand. It lay upside down beside a rock-formed tide pool. Digging with his hands, Kazu worked it free and headed back to the fishing hut with it at his side.
Standing inside the hut doorway, he called forward, “Hola, alguien inicio?” Hello, anyone home?
Setting the red can down, he took in the room listening for voices or movement. Rats scurried through the shadows. Taking another step inside, he saw that he was in an abandoned storeroom of fishing nets, floats, and empty tool boxes. A crude arch of second-hand mud bricks led to the smaller second room.
In the indirect gray light from the front doorway, Kazu leaned in under the arch. A butane camp stove sat on the dirt floor beside a six-foot aluminum icebox. A tangle of darkly stained blankets was piled against the opposite wall behind a row of hand-smudged white candles on the floor. A coating of sand dust lay on everything. A wood box of cooking utensils stuck out from the left shadows. Inside, there was a rat nest of dry weeds, stolen twine, and bits of this and that.
Kazu walked outside to the outboard attached to the side of the drum full of greasy black water. He smelled the oil mixed with fresh water that the prop was sunk into.
At the rear of the building, there was a fuel barrel on its side, elevated on coarse wood planks. He clouted the side with his fist and heard the echoing song of gasoline.
“Wa la,” he celebrated his find in a tired voice.
The lever and two valves were easily figured out. He uncapped his red eight-gallon can and knelt in the gravel beside it while gasoline trickled in. The red can was half full when the flow narrowed to drips to nothing more.
“Just as well. Not sure how it’ll float when full,” he thanked the elevated He placed one of the twenty-dollar bills inside an empty, dusty toolbox.
“Should be enough. If not, give me a ring.”
Back outside in the wind and rain looking skyward to the north, a slice of blue sky was tailing the churning heavy clouds.
“Half hour,” he estimated and sat down in the dirt and sand under the awning to wait.
Ignoring his hunger, Kazu put his arm around the red fuel can. More blue sky revealed itself slowly. He traced his earlier footprints down through the crusty rocks and twisting channels of sandy water to the white foam in the wash from each breaking wave.
Looking out further, he saw a set of waves form and break.
“Looks like there’s no rush,” he sadly addressed the fuel can at his side.
Lowering his head to his crossed arms, he squeezed his eyes tightly ensuring no tears. With each explosion of breaking waves, he could see without looking up. The blue and white bow of Billy’s boat pointed upward in the wave faces, the rest of the craft floundering under the surface.
21
Back of the fishing hut, Kazu made out the vague footpath up through the boulders, little more than a suggestion of a trail.
“To where?” he asked a two-foot-long iguana atop a crag that was warming with sunlight. Blue sky had returned under the burning sun above. Taking off his rain-soaked, black long-sleeve t-shirt, he pushed it into his backpack and put on his Pirates cap.
Returning to the hut, he searched both rooms carefully for food. Finding none, he picked up a brown and gold Café Goya coffee can. He also pocketed the twenty-dollar bill he had left to pay for the fuel.
Kneeling outside the door, he used sand to scrub the rust out of the can. He crossed to a pit covered by a worn sheet of plastic held in place by head-size rocks. Pulling the sheet back, he brushed the dust-mottled surface of the water before rinsing and filling the coffee can. Sniffing the water, he frowned and turned to the rear of the hut.
“I’m better than this,” he told the worthless red fuel can. He could see his duffle bag of food and supplies on the bottom of the ocean along with Billy’s boat.
Standing at the start of the foot trail, the heat baked his shoulders and his breaths were full of hot, dry air. The gash on his shin continued bleeding as did the tear on his hip. To his right was a spill of firewood alongside the skeleton of a barren chicken coop. Walking forward a few yards, he yelled and stopped. A three-inch nail had driven deep through the ball of his left foot.
“Really?’ he gasped at the exploding spider web of pain.
With three tugs, he got his foot free from the rusty spike.
Holding his small supply of water, he started up the hint of the trail with dulling stars of pain coming at him from his injuries.
Kazu climbed for an hour, the sweat on his face and body covered with a skim of dust. Except for reptiles basking in the blazing sunlight, he saw no signs of life. The path itself gave up no hint of recent human passing.
The ascent grew steep, slowing him as he stopped time after time to balance his water can on a boulder before climbing it. Ten minutes later, he struggled up atop a car-size outcropping and confirmed he was in a steep gulley below a roadway. The brushing sound of tires swept past, thirty yards above.
Struggling with his injuries and keeping his can of water from spilling, he reached a rusted, steel culvert pipe—a dark black mouth that extended out into the air. Carefully placing the coffee can inside on the ribbed metal, he pulled himself up and inside the circle of shade.
Kneeling in the midday rainwater a few inches deep, he looked further in. He was not alone. Hundreds, perhaps thousands of cicadas lined the round walls, in conflict for space with the dime-size spiders poised on elaborate, large webs. From the opposite end of the twenty-foot culvert, something larger and angry was stirring in the branches and gravel that partially blocked the opening.
“This too?” Kazu crawled inside far enough so that he was completely shaded. Resting his back to the curved steel, he took a drink from the Goya coffee can.
“Not from sparkling artesian wells, whatever those are.” He spit out his first mouthful.
In response to his voice, the cicadas clicked and buzzed. The big animal on the other side of the pipe snarled a warning.
“I’ll get past you. Through you, if I have to,” he yelled the last.
Arching his shoulders wide, Kazu began banging the inside of the pipe climbing forward aggressively quick, making his body as tall as possible. A few yards in, he made out the form of a Durango coyote. He gave it a deep growl before barks and bellows.
“I’ll kill you.”
“I will eat your puppies.”
He watched the coyote rise and turn, first growling, then nosing its three offspring out into the sunlight at the edge of the pipe.
Pushing aside the branches, Kazu climbed out into that same sunshine. At the tip of the gravel rise, he stood alongside the roadway. He started out to the south walking alongside the highway, five yards from the pavement, his left shoe squishing with blood and pain from the nail that had gone all the way through his foot.
Ten kilometers along the way, the highway ran through three turns while entering the shade of tall eucalyptus. The green brush thickened with vines, and as the jungle enveloped the road and left behind the stark and dry, hot rocky terrain. The humidity swarmed in on Kazu as he limped along. He hunched low and looked away when a truck or bus passed by.
The last of the three curves spilled out onto a long straightaway running gray for three kilometers with the jungle overhanging the run. At the end of the long straight stretch, the two-lane highway swept through a long turn aimed to the coast.
Kazu came up on the first side road, an uneven and narrow driveway disappearing into the western jungle. A sign rose from the brush, half hidden, its wood surface covered with flowers of jungle rot.
“Or Petrol y Restaurante,” he read. “Restaurante” sparking rumbles of hunger. He had the eighty dollars, and his thirst was firing off images of ice and soda. Standing just a few strides in on the driveway, he stared to where it disappeared into the tall turn of green vegetation. Suspecting the business might not be up and running—the half-hidden sign suggesting so—he hesitated.
It was a passing rental minivan blowing by at his back at high speed that prodded him forward. He turned around in the stirred damp air to the passing, trailing stream of loud music. The van roof racks held two stacks of surfboards.
Declining his hunger and greedy thirst, he walked back out to the highway and continued south.
The sun was low to the west, the orange globe in the dense brush and tree limbs. He came to a well-marked and freshly paved road. Ten yards in, the road was blocked by a yellow-striped crossing bar. To the left was a security kiosk with a keypad and two cameras on poles.
Ignoring the elegant sign with bold colors and inviting lettering, Kazu stood drenched in sweat, his wounds throbbing, staring off along the road. He climbed over the crossing bar and limped the paved road until it became cobblestones thirty yards in.
He slowed up and relaxed his tensed shoulders and stride. Nodding and grinning, he kept his eyes on his first glimpse through the trees of the vibrant yellow tower.
22
The cobblestone driveway completed its final turn before running downhill to the hotel’s entrance. Eight vehicles were in the parking lot off to the left side, all of them looking rental new with surfboard racks on their roof. Beyond the lot, a half-dozen construction trucks were parked in the dirt inside a gated fence. Above the open-air lobby entrance, a deep yellow sign with white lettering read, ‘Surf Or… Hotel.’
Before turning away, he looked inside to the walls and furnishings of polished teak. Slow calypso music swirled outside from long-armed ceiling fans. He walked around the north corner of the yellow, cereal-box shaped hotel.
The maintenance entrance was on the north side of the building between two cargo trucks parked on the burnt orange dirt. One was from a laundry service, and the other had ladders and poles on the roof. The ramp between the vehicles led to double steel doors.
Kazu tilted his head to one side sensing an optical illusion. The deeply cracked concrete ramp and the trucks leaned to the unseen coast as though the property had been tilted by an earthquake. Off to the right, a square of wire fence backed into a clear-cut area in the jungle wall. Dual generators chugged supplying power to a row of shiny chrome tanks that resembled those at propane stations. Each tank had a four-inch pipe that disappeared into the jungle. Mildly curious, he turned away and climbed the ramp stepping over deep fissures in the concrete. He knocked on the door and stepped back.
The door opened after a second, harder knock.
A tan, smiling man in his mid-twenties stared at Kazu’s ragged and bloodied appearance before speaking
“Help you, bro? Looks like you need some.” He had beads in his brown and blond hair and was thin and strong muscled—most certainly a surfer. His eyes were covered by round, black sunglasses. Before Kazu said a word, he went on, “Just arrived? Haven’t seen you around. Name’s Santiago, but Sand works better.”
“I’m looking for work,” Kazu got out.
“You’d need to be presentable first. What can you do? Anything criminal?”
Not sure if the guy was serious or not, Kazu ignored the last question, saying, “I’m looking for Billy Hamil.”
“Billy?” Sand laughed, shaking his head. “The famous style master. He’s a no-show. Pissing Constance off into a grand mal of anger. She does like her celebrities.”
“Constance?”
“The owner. Come in out of the heat.”
Sand stepped aside, a white binder open in his hands, the same color as his long surf trunks.
Stepping into the cool air of the warehouse, Kazu tried to place Sand’s accent—a sparking, sing-song South American inflection. He gave up, asking, “Your accent?”
“Argentinian. I’m an import. I was the local hero in Playa Mariano. Best surf spot that part of the coast. This pay’s obscenely better.”
Sand led Kazu past full laundry carts and industrial-size machinery keeping the hotel cool and up and running. A Mexican work crew wearing tool belts went by, talking among themselves, carrying lunch boxes. Kazu followed Sand deeper into the building.
They entered a side office void of a desk with three worn-out couches and a coffee table centered with stacks of folders, work orders, and soda bottles. Both took a couch sitting at a right angle to each other.
“Hungry? Thirsty?” Sand offered.
“Yes, both.”
“Help yourself.” Sand gestured to the refrigerator and kitchen hutch lined with boxes of power bars and baskets of fruit and vegetables.
Kazu stood and went straight for the fruit basket and refrigerator.
“The Or is understaffed. Lay that at Constance’s feet. Tirant of her own little island of misfit toys. What kind of work are you looking for?”
“Anything that’s not around people.”
“There are a few jobs like that. The storeroom.” Sand looked to the ceiling. “Maybe in maintenance? You good with tools and machines?”
“I’m a quick learner.”
“I’ll have to clear it with Constance. You’ll have to meet her. She’ll probably eat you for lunch. Now, back to the criminal work.”
“What kind of crime?”
“Let me think on that.” Sand twisted to his side and pulled out a key on a yellow-beaded fob from his trunks pocket.
“Here’s the key to my place. Get a shower, room service, and a nap. I’ve got the bar staff to motivate.” He tossed the key.
Kazu caught it with his injured hand, the other holding a half-consumed banana. “Thank you. Your room is upstairs?”
“I wish that was so. No, we all have little rooms down here. The row of doors back behind food storage.”
“Number two,” Kazu read from the beaded fob. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome. I snuck in here a year ago myself. I wasn’t quite as torn up as you are, but close.”
Sand left the office and disappeared up a stairwell. As soon as his bare feet rose out of sight, Kazu wolfed the half banana and two more before washing the fruit down with a cold bottle of water.
Sand’s apartment was one of the smallest Kazu had ever seen—a single room with closed-in walls. A narrow mattress on a box spring lay low on the concrete. He had to climb along its foot to get to the single and worn yellow chair before a shelf mounted to the wall—a desk with nothing but a six-button telephone. The apartment was spotles
s and free of any personal touches save a half-dozen pairs of surf trunks hanging in a row on the wall. A clean and minimal place to live with chilled air.
“Cinnamon,” he named the scent of the air from the ceiling vent.
Placing his backpack on the desk, he took the two steps to the bathroom door. While the shower warmed, he stripped off his clothes and tossed them in on the shower pan.
Before showering, he took up the desk telephone and pushed the Room Service button.
“Hola, Sand,” a woman answered, “Qué podemos nosotros cocinarle?” What can we cook you?
“Yo no soy Santiago. Soy un amigo.” I’m not Santiago. I’m a friend.
“Another stray?” she switched to English. “Sand is a good one. What would you like?”
Kazu answered quickly, his hunger speaking, “A club sandwich, a plate of bacon, three glasses of milk.” Soda over ice was tempting, but the milk would settle his stomach.
“Be ready in ten minutes. Come to the kitchen. It is down here past the big engines.”
Kazu used body gel on his clothes and himself, causing a soapy swirl of dirt and blood around his feet.
He left the apartment in his damp clothing and backpack protectively brought along, strung over his shoulder. He followed the harried Mexican voices and tropical music to the double swing doors of the kitchen.
“Santiago’s perro callejero?” Santiago’s stray dog, a sweating, overworked cook called from the flaming stovetop. “Allí en la mesa.” There on the table.
Kazu turned to the mentioned table. His meal was in two reused paper bags. A second bag held three white Styrofoam cups with lids.
“Gracias.” Kazu backed through the door.
Before returning to Sand’s apartment, he set the bags on the worktable outside the kitchen and rounded the big machines until he saw the steel stairs his new friend had climbed earlier. He stole upstairs and looked from a door set along the north wall, getting his first view of the hotel grounds. Under a peerless blue sky, there was a wandering swimming pool with a bar and benches in the clear water. Another bar was off to the right of the top wood deck as well as a smoking, restaurant-size barbecue and an outdoor kitchen. He couldn’t see the beach or ocean but knew they had to be close—he could taste the sea breeze.
The Girl in the Hotel Page 13