The Girl Who Remembered the Snow (13 page)

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Authors: Charles Mathes

BOOK: The Girl Who Remembered the Snow
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“I'm sure you're right,” said Emma.
They ate several more bites in silence.
“Do you think I'd be safe renting a car and driving around the island?” said Emma, changing the subject to the one that was really on her mind.
“Exploring a strange country is perhaps not something that a woman alone should do,” said Celia with a concerned, surprised look. “The men are very chauvinistic here. It is not like New Jersey.
“Yes,” said Emma. “I once played Atlantic City. The men are very enlightened in New Jersey. They threw money at the stage and barked like seals.”
“Do you speak Spanish?” said Celia, apparently not understanding the sarcasm.
“No, but I'd be with someone who does.”
Emma told her about the boy, Timoteo, the tour he had taken her on today and how she proposed to rent a car tomorrow. Celia listened in respectful silence and didn't speak until Emma had finished.
“I do not think this is such a good idea, perhaps, if I might say so, Emma. There are many children like this boy. Poor, uneducated, unwanted. It may be that he is not a problem, but there are many desperate people in this country. If there is trouble, what will you do? What if the car breaks down outside of the city? It is not like America here. There are not many gas stations.”
“Yes, this isn't my favorite idea, but unfortunately I don't have a lot of other options.”
“I have a cousin who might drive you,” said Celia. “But he works at a job during the week and you would have to wait until Saturday. And I do not know for sure that he would be available. He sometimes must work on the weekends, too, if they need him.”
Emma nodded, knowing too well what it was like to have to work weekends to make ends meet. It was Monday now, however, and she was hardly going to sit around the pool for four more days, waiting for a cousin who may or may not be able to make it.
“Thanks,” she said. “I'm pretty good about people, and I think I'll be all right with Timoteo. What do you think I should pay him, by the way? He wouldn't quote me a price. I was thinking maybe fifty pesos for the day? That's what I paid his uncle for the tour today.”
“Oh, that is much too much. Even twenty pesos would be a fortune for a boy like this.”
“I know I'll have to pay for the car, but if Timoteo spends the whole day with me, figuring even three dollars an hour …”
“That is why he tried to trick you by not telling you what would be fair. You automatically think what would be fair in
America. But this is San Marcos. For a week of work many men here earn less than a hundred pesos. Grown men. Give him ten pesos a day, that is all that is required.”
“Do you happen to know of any marinas near the city?” said Emma, changing the subject, uncomfortable at the thought of exploiting the boy and that this quiet young lady would suggest doing so. “I'm trying to find a boat that might have been here thirty years ago.”
“Thirty years is a long time,” said Celia. “I do not know anything about boats. Does this boy?”
“He says he does.”
“Can you believe him?”
“No, probably not.”
They spent the rest of the meal chatting about San Marcos, New Jersey, and what a nice restaurant it was. Emma couldn't bear to contradict Celia's breathless raves with a critique of the dated menu, which seemed to have captured America's sensibilities of the 1960s as perfectly as the amber which Timoteo had shown her in the marketplace had captured flies. And to prove the point, at least to herself, Emma insisted that they have the flaming cherries jubilee for dessert. Celia practically swooned.
After dinner Celia telephoned her parents to come and pick her up, and Emma waited with her in the lobby until they arrived. They were a quiet couple, who blushed when they were introduced and were too shy or too intimidated to get out of the car.
Celia thanked Emma again, and asked to exchange addresses so that they might stay in touch. Emma gave her the address for Charlemagne's office, remembering suddenly that she no longer had a home, and waited by the curb, waving as the car drove off. Then she walked slowly back into the hotel, feeling more alone than ever.
It was not even ten o‘clock. San Marcos time was four hours ahead of San Francisco's. Though she hadn't gotten much sleep on the plane, it still felt like only six o'clock to her. With the
excitement of being in a strange country and the coffee she had had at dinner, Emma was wide awake. Her mind whirled with images from the day, fears about tomorrow, the dull ache in her chest for her grandfather that never went away.
There was a small cocktail lounge just off the lobby. Emma wandered in and sat down at one of the little tables. There were only a few other customers in the place—sad-looking men at the bar, a few couples in the back.
A drink wasn't what she wanted, but a glass of hot milk from room service sounded unutterably lonely. And totally disgusting. Though Pépé had extolled milk as “the cow's gift to children,” Emma had hated the sight of it since she was a little girl, to say nothing of the taste.
“What can I get you, señora?” the bartender called across the room. He was a handsome man with curly black hair and a nice smile.
“Do you have something that will help me sleep?”
“Yes, I do,” he said. After a moment he appeared at her table with a glass of hot milk.
“Do you know this stuff is full of cholesterol and saturated fat?” said Emma, wincing.
“I am sorry, señora,” said the waiter, his proud smile turning to disappointment. “You looked like the wholesome type. Would you like some brandy instead?”
“No, thanks,” sighed Emma. “This is fine.”
The bartender's smile returned. He nodded and went back to his customers.
Emma stared at the white liquid in the glass. She wanted to be wholesome. She didn't want to be the kind of woman who came into a bar and slugged back brandies in order to sleep. She closed her eyes tightly and took a sip of the milk. It was awful.
On her way to the elevators afterward, Emma couldn't help but notice how quiet the lobby was, how peaceful. Still not ready to go to sleep, she took a detour and walked through the open
courtyard. A couple was holding hands and kissing on a bench in a quiet corner.
The night seen from the landscaped yard behind the hotel was inky black and above her head a thousand stars twinkled with unfamiliar brightness. Sweet smells of palms and flowers pervaded the warm air and in the distance she could hear waves breaking on the rocky shore.
Emma walked along the hotel's outer fence and stopped at a place where she could see the ocean. On the horizon, above a grove of palm trees, a sliver of moon rose gently into the sky. All was calm. All was well. There was nothing to be afraid of tomorrow, she knew. Emma was basking in a feeling of overwhelming confidence and peace when she saw the movement out of the corner of her eye.
She nearly jumped when the man came into view—a stocky bruiser in a windbreaker and black jeans. The dark object he was holding in his hands was a pump-action shotgun.
Emma froze, her mouth dropping open in surprise. The man noticed her, smiled broadly with less than a full complement of teeth, and took one hand off the shotgun long enough to tip his baseball cap.
Emma nodded back, stunned. As the man walked past her, she could see the hotel's logo on the back of his jacket. He was not a thief or assassin, she realized, but merely one of the hotel guards, keeping the guests safe from the friendly people of San Marcos.
 
 
T
urn right here, turn left at the first light,” said Timoteo, fiddling with the air-conditioning controls and adjusting the passenger seat for the third time in as many minutes.
Emma pulled out of the car-rental agency's parking lot and into traffic. She hardly needed directions back to the Casimente. It was only a block—and three hundred pesos per day, twenty centavos per mile—away. Either the agency was wise to the ins and outs of currency exchange or it was just preposterously expensive to rent a car on San Marcos to begin with.
Timoteo didn't appear concerned about the pressure his suggestion to rent the little white Honda Civic was going to put on Emma's finances, however. If anything, he looked as if he had been just been granted a dozen extra birthdays and been named Emperor of France. As they neared the hotel, the expression on his face changed from one of rank smugness to one of sheer bliss.
“Slow down, slow down,” he commanded, jumping to his knees on the seat and rolling down his window.
Emma slowed the car. Directly ahead was the usual group of
money changers and tour guides outside the gates of the Casimente. Timoteo leaned out the window, his smile growing even more enormous.
“Hey, Reginaldo!” he shouted. “Hey, Javier! Hola! Look at me!”
The boy then rattled off a rapid string of Spanish. Emma couldn't understand what he was saying, but from the disgusted looks and fist-shaking from the men at the curb she gathered that Timoteo was being less than gracious about his good fortune.
“What did you say to them?” she asked as the hotel fell out of sight behind them.
“Nothing,” said the boy, grinning with satisfaction, not meeting her eye.
“Why did they get mad then?”
“I don't know. I just tell them hello.”
“You're right,” said Emma, braking the unfamiliar car as they came to a light. “It's none of my business.”
“They're just a bunch of guys. They are nothing to me.”
Timoteo's sneakers were cracked and dirty and at least two sizes too big for his feet. He wore tatty blue jeans rolled up at the bottoms and no socks. His old sport shirt, also too big, was unbuttoned because it had no buttons, revealing the boy's bony black chest.
“So where are we going to find these boats, Timoteo?” said Emma, glancing down at her own Gap chinos and the shoes that cost as much as feet.
“I show you,” said Timoteo, his face at once earnest and defiant. “You get nowhere alone. Timoteo know all the places. We turn right at the light up here and stay on that road for a while. We go through the city, over to the other side. Over the big bridge. I take you.”
They drove in silence to the ramshackle area Emma had hesitated to venture into yesterday on foot, then on through narrow
streets crowded with noisy little cars and bicycles. Telephone wires stretched overhead. The gutters were filled with trash. The buildings were a crazy quilt of garish signs and peeling paint.
“I tell them they looked stupid,” Timoteo mumbled after a few minutes.
“Who?”
“The mens who change money. I say I laugh because they are standing there with their thumbs up their asses, while I have a beautiful lady to drive me around. I tell them they look like donkeys. You are mad at me now?”
“Why would I be mad?” said Emma, trying to remember the last time someone had called her beautiful.
“We be friends,” said Timoteo, his big smile returning. “I have lots of friends. My mother, she say I make friends with everybody.”
“It's okay with her, right? Your driving around with me today?”
“Sure. She doesn't care. She's in U.S. In Hartford, Connecticut. She sent me this shirt from the guy she works for.”
“What does your mother do in Hartford?” asked Emma.
“She's housekeeper for this man,” said the boy, playing with the controls of his seat again. “She cleans and cooks for him. She's very good cook. He is very rich. She is making money so we can be together again.”
“How long has she been away?”
“Long time. Three years, maybe. She's coming back soon. She sends me all kinds of things. She sent me these shoes. I live with my aunt. She have six kids. They all my friends. Everywhere I go, I have friends. The guys back at the hotel, they all my friends, too.”
“I thought you said they were just guys,” said Emma, “that they were nothing to you.”
“They are jealous of me,” sneered Timoteo. “Timoteo has the
car and the lady to drive him, and they have nothing.”
“Maybe they'd like you more if you didn't rub their noses in your success.”
The minute the words were out of her mouth, Emma regretted them. Since when had she been elected Oprah? This boy's welfare wasn't her responsibility. He was just someone who could help her find what she had come here to find. His personal life was none of her business. She couldn't afford to get involved. She should just shut up and drive.
“They think they're so smart,” said Timoteo angrily, “but they're full of shit. They yell at me because I am small. They would cheat you if they could. They would kill you.”
“That's why I came with you.”
“How much you pay for those shoes?”
“None of your business.”
“They are very beautiful. You give them to Timoteo, maybe?”
“Not a chance.”
“Timoteo take you to find boats. We will have a good time. You will be happy lady, yes?”
“Your friends at the hotel—they did sort of look like donkeys, didn't they?” said Emma. The boy beamed.
 
“These are oil tankers, Timoteo,” exclaimed Emma, looking at the huge hulks moved in the brackish water. “The others are cargo boats. Freighters.”
Emma didn't know why she should be surprised. The warehouses and deserted streets of the area should have been a dead giveaway as they approached, but Emma had just assumed Timoteo knew what he was talking about. She had asked him several times if they were going in the right direction, if he understood what she wanted. The boy had sounded so sure.
“These are magnificent boats,” he said again now, defensively. “They are very big and come from the ocean. From across the world. Everybody like these boats.”
“I'm looking for pleasure boats, Timoteo. Cabin cruisers. Like I told you. Small boats. Do you understand?”
“Sure.”
But he didn't. The next pier he directed her to in a less-industrialized area of the city a few miles away held a small fleet of commercial fishing trawlers. Emma suddenly realized that the boy probably didn't know what a “pleasure” boat was. Why would he?
“Oh, you want little boats for fun,” he said when she tried to explain. “You got to say so. Why don't you say so?”
“I'm sorry,” said Emma, swallowing her frustration, trying not to attack his pride. She was already a nervous wreck from competing for space on the city's narrow streets with drivers who seemed to come in only two varieties: suicidal and homicidal. The last thing she wanted was to try this again tomorrow with some thuggish money changer as her guide.
“I know this other place where there are little boats,” said Timoteo. “That's what you want. I know.”
“Where is it?”
“Outside the city. I show you. Keep on this road.”
“How far?”
“Not far. You'll see.”
They drove back through the center of town and out along the coast on Peguero's trophy highway. After twenty minutes they passed the airport and kept going. The highway in this direction quickly lost its meridian, its palm tree borders and two of its four lanes, until it was just an ordinary, not-very-well-maintained road along the oceanside.
There wasn't much traffic now that they were away from the city, and at first Emma didn't understand why the yellow car behind her was following so closely, honking its horn and flashing its headlights.
“You got to pull over,” said Timoteo with a look of disgust.
“Why? What does he want?”
“It's the police. You were speeding.”
“No, I wasn't. Was I? What's the speed limit?”
“Pull over,” Timoteo said again. “You be quiet. I talk for you, okay?”
“Like I'm going to understand what they're saying anyway?”
She pulled over to the muddy side of the road. The police car —an old Volkswagen Rabbit—clattered to a stop behind her. On its side she could see the word POLICÍA in black paint, but other than that there was nothing to mark the car as an official vehicle. It was only slightly less battered than most of the cars she had seen on the road—even her rental had numerous dents and bruises, and the girl at the agency had seemed puzzled that Emma would even comment on them. Apparently no car in San Marcos went unbashed for long.
Two men in tan uniforms got out of the car behind her. One was tall and thin. The other was short and fat. Both wore sunglasses, mustaches and enormous revolvers.
“Buenos dias, señora,”
said the tall one, smiling broadly, leaning down and tipping his hat. The short fat one smiled and tipped his hat, too. The words “banana republic” flashed into Emma's mind, and not for the first time today.
“Qué quiere?”
barked Timoteo.
The tall policeman shrugged and launched into a lengthy speech in Spanish. Timoteo folded his arms in front of him and listened, his face a picture of pure contempt.
“What did he say?” asked Emma when the man had finished.
“He says you were speeding,” answered Timoteo. “I told you so.”
“I wasn't going faster than anyone else. How does he even know? I don't see any radar.”
Timoteo said something to the policeman in Spanish. The man laughed and spoke again, pointing to his partner every so often.
“What did he say now?”
“Give me forty pesos,” said Timoteo. “Don't let him see how much money you have.”
“You're not going to try to bribe him, Timoteo.”
“Give it to me now,” said Timoteo, sounding serious. “They can take us to jail and beat us if they want.”
The tall thin one who was doing the talking tipped his hat again politely to Emma. The short fat one wiped his sweaty face with a white handkerchief. In their ill-fitting uniforms they looked almost like clowns. Emma turned away momentarily, reached into her pocket, and took out four ten-peso notes and handed them to Timoteo.
Speaking in Spanish, Timoteo handed two of the notes to the tall policeman. The man's smile vanished and he shouted a flurry of words at Timoteo, none of which Emma could understand.
Timoteo growled back, his face curled into a sneer. For a moment Emma thought he was going to spit on the floor of the car, but instead he handed the other twenty pesos to the cop. The man snatched it, hissed a few final words which even Emma could recognize as obscenities, turned and marched back to his car, followed by his portly partner. In a moment the two policemen had started their engine and roared away.
When Emma turned on her ignition again, she found her hand was shaking. She had driven a mile before she was even able to speak.
“Don't you ever do that to me again, Timoteo,” said Emma angrily.
“What?”
“What if he hadn't accepted bribes? What would have happened then?”
“Why he stop us if he didn't want money?”
Emma didn't answer.
“You should be happy,” said Timoteo. “Why you mad? I take good care of you.”
“I can take care of myself. It's no big deal to pay a speeding ticket.”
“You pay everything these guys want, every time they stop you?” said Timoteo, laughing, baring startlingly white teeth. “You must be very rich lady. Or crazy.”
“I'm just a visitor here, Timoteo. I don't want to get into trouble.”
“Okay. Next time you see those guys, you give them the two hundred pesos they wanted. That's how much they wanted. Two hundred pesos! Give them all two hundred pesos. I don't care.”
“All right.”
“I get you off cheap,” Timoteo went on. “You couldn't even talk to him. He was ignorant man. He did not even speak English. What you do if he took you to station and beat you and take all your money? What you do then?”
What would she do? Emma asked herself. It was she who was the child here. She was as naive about this place and how it worked as Timoteo would be if he were plunked down in the middle of the New York Stock Exchange.

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