The Year of Fog (27 page)

At 5:35 I wake to a quiet apartment. I tiptoe over to his bed and find him sleeping in a blue T-shirt and boxers, one foot dangling off the edge. Uncovered like this, unaware, he looks less like a mysterious jet-setter, and I fight an urge to crawl in beside him. I imagine how warm his skin would be, the pleasant pressure of his legs against mine. I imagine how, in another life, another time, I might be lying beside Nick right now, with nothing bigger to worry about than our weekend plans. I’ve thought of it more and more lately—how much better it would have been simply to never have met Jake, or Emma. If I’d never met them, I couldn’t have hurt them, and I couldn’t know what I was missing by not having Emma in my life.

I look at Nick one last time, scribble a thank-you note, grab my messenger bag, and slip out as quietly as possible.

Leaving like this, so early in the morning—while the city is deserted and the shops are closed and a pinkish light is settling over the streets—reminds me of family vacations when I was a child. My mother would come into our rooms before dawn, usher us outside in our pajamas, and settle us into the back of the station wagon. Annabel and I would lie side by side, a single blanket spread over us, and drift in and out of sleep as the car wound through the quiet neighborhood.

The smell of my mother’s coffee would fill the car, and we would hear the rustling of the maps, my parents’ quiet whispers. It was on those morning escapes from our ordinary house and our ordinary lives that my parents seemed to belong together; the front seat seemed to be a very long distance away, and with their maps and coffee, their whispered plans, they appeared to live a secret life. Annabel and I would wake up in some unfamiliar town as the car rolled to a stop outside a McDonald’s or Stuckey’s. We’d change clothes in the back of the station wagon, then go inside for breakfast and a bathroom break. At some point inside the restaurant, with the sun streaming through the windows and the business of the day settling in, our regular lives would resume, our parents would begin to bicker, and the ride through the dark streets in our pajamas would feel a dream, like a false but pleasant memory of a thing that never happened.

When I told Annabel about my trip, she was less than enthusiastic. “Are you sure you’ve thought this through?” she said.

“I have.”

She was quiet for a minute. “I still believe what I told you in the beginning—you have to follow the search to its logical end. I just worry about you, Abby.”

“You’re my sister,” I said. “It’s your job to worry. But I’m not crazy, if that’s what you’re getting at. It feels really good to have a plan. It may not be a perfect plan, but it’s something.”

I hurry to the bus stop at Folsom and Twentieth. A couple of early risers are already waiting—a woman in hospital scrubs, a nervous teenager who looks like he’s been out all night. No one speaks. No one meets the eyes. Somewhere, a motorcycle revs to life, one long, angry roar. Five minutes later, a bus appears down Folsom, a moving beam of light in the near-dark of an urban morning, its fluorescent interior impossibly bright.

Just before the bus reaches us, sparks fly in the air, and the pole connecting the bus to the matrix of wires above swings free. The teenager besides me curses softly, shoves his hands into his pockets. What he does next is so startling that for a moment, I believe I’m imagining it: he begins to cry.

The bus comes to a stop, and the driver slowly gets out. With the bored patience of someone who’s done this hundreds of times, he uses a long stick to guide the pole back into place. More sparks, and then he’s on the bus again, and in a few seconds he pulls up beside us. The woman in hospital scrubs steps back to let the teenager get in first. Head down, he moves to the back of the bus, and I’m thinking it must be some girl, some tragedy that for the moment seems impossible to survive. And I want to tell him that you find a way, somehow, to get through the most horrible things, things you think would kill you. You find a way, and you move through the days, one by one—in shock, in despair, but you move. The days pass, one after the other, and you go along with them—occasionally stunned, and not entirely relieved, to find that you are still alive.

62

O
N THE
afternoon of day 232, I wake to rain, a thunderous racket on the tin roof. Outside, something creaks and moans. It takes a minute to remember where I am—the long flight, the missed connection, the late arrival in San José, the disorienting taxi ride through unfamiliar streets.

Through the window, I can see a stand of bamboo trees, tall and golden, swaying in the wind. Everything here is captured in a state of rampant growth; everything is alive. The rain comes down in torrents, and minutes later subsides to a trickle. Raindrops slap the banana leaves just outside the window. Roosters crow in the distance, dogs bark. A church bell tolls—one, two, three, four, five.

A few hours ago when I arrived, a middle-aged woman greeted me at the door. Two small children clung to her legs.

“
Buenos días,
” I said. “I’m Nick Eliot’s friend.”

“
Bueno,
” she said. “I am Soledad. I expecting you.” She smiled and stepped back, motioning for me to come inside.

She showed me to my room and I thanked her, explaining in broken Spanish that I was very sleepy.

“
Bueno,
” she said. “First you sleep, then you eat.”

After she closed the door, I collapsed on the small bed and drifted off to the comforting din of children and television, dishes clattering, a dog barking.

Now, the house is filled with the good smell of something cooking. When I open the door, the children rush to greet me.

“Roberto,” the boy says, tapping his chest proudly. He points to his sister. “Maria.”

They follow me down the hall to the bathroom and giggle when I try to shut the door, which won’t close all the way. When I come out, Maria grabs my hand and leads me to the kitchen, where Soledad is frying plantains and beans.

“Food?” Soledad asks.

“Sí.”

She gestures for me to sit down. The children join me at the kitchen table, chattering in English. “Where are you from?” Roberto asks.

“California.”

“Hollywood!” he says, getting so excited he leaps out of his chair. “Do you know Arnold Schwarzenegger?”

“No, I live in a different part of California. San Francisco.”

Maria puts her hand on my arm. “Do you know Mickey Mouse?”

“Yes,” I say. “Mickey Mouse said to tell you hello.”

“Really?”

“Yes. You speak very good English. Where did you learn?”

“TV,” says Roberto.

“Smurfs,” Maria adds.

Minutes later the table is piled high with food. Soledad pours warm orange Fanta into four small glasses. Except for a soggy muffin on the flight from Miami, I haven’t eaten since I left San Francisco. I eat ravenously, and Soledad piles a second helping onto my plate. Her English isn’t much better than my Spanish, but we’re able to communicate by having the children translate. Roberto and Maria are her grandchildren, I learn, and their mother works as a housekeeper at a hotel in the city.

I ask how she knows Nick Eliot. Apparently, he rented a room from her five years ago, and he’s kept in touch ever since.

She says something in Spanish to Roberto, who swallows a bit of rice before turning to me and translating.

“Is Mr. Eliot your boyfriend?” he asks.

“No,” I say.

“Yes he is!” Roberto insists, giggling.

After dinner, I ask if I can take a bath, and Soledad gives me a towel and a small bar of soap. Through the crack in the door, I can see Roberto and Maria, knees tucked under their chins in front of the TV, Soledad’s feet tapping the floor as she rocks back and forth in her chair. The old tub is deep and immaculate, and it feels good to soak away the grime of travel.

After my bath, I ask Soledad if I can use her phone. I dial the number for Nick’s friend Wiggins, and on the third ring a woman answers. “U.S. Embassy,” she says. She sounds as if she’s got a million other things she’d rather be doing.

“I’m looking for Wiggins.” Saying it, I feel a bit ridiculous. That’s all I have to go on. No title. No first name. Just Wiggins.

There’s a pause, a shuffling of papers. Then, “Just a moment, I’ll connect you.”

A man’s voice comes on the line. “Yes?”

“I’m looking for Wiggins,” I repeat.

“He’s out of the country.”

“When will he return?”

“A couple of months. Who wants to know?”

I tell him the whole story. It comes out in a rush, a jumble of breathless sentences: the disappearance, the search, the clues that led me here.

“Does the FBI have a case open on this?” he asks.

“They were working with the SFPD, but the police closed the investigation.” I can hear my own case falling apart as I talk.

“I’m sorry, but this sort of thing isn’t really our jurisdiction. If someone from the Bureau sets a lead, we’ll get involved.”

“But Nick Eliot told me to call Wiggins.”

“Nick Eliot. The name doesn’t ring a bell. Listen, if you find your little girl, call us, and we can help with the locals.”

“Please,” I say, “there must be something you can do.”

“Why don’t you call again in a couple of months, when Wiggins is back. Good luck.”

The line goes dead. When he hangs up, I feel more alone than ever in the search, yet somehow more resolved. Maybe it’s a long shot, maybe Jake was right. Perhaps I’m putting too much faith in the minor details, clinging to every bit of circumstantial evidence that will fit into my belief system. But I feel certain that finding the couple from the yellow van is my best hope of finding Emma. This is my final option, my last unexplored set of clues—the woman at the Beach Chalet staring so obviously at Emma, the timing of the van’s departure from Ocean Beach that day, the Ticos bumper sticker, the longboard—and in my mind the pieces fit together. They simply have to.

In bed, I consult my guidebook. Buses depart the main terminal in San José for Playa Hermosa at nine o’clock weekday mornings. I try to sleep, but my mind won’t rest. For the first time since Emma’s disappearance, I’m truly angry with Jake. He should be here; we could accomplish more together. He shouldn’t have given up.

I don’t think Jake would understand it if I told him that being in this foreign place feels like a new beginning. I’m finally free of the endless repetitions that characterized my search in San Francisco: the daily trips to Ocean Beach, the countless returns to the same streets, the same dead-end clues. Memory researchers have a theory to explain a common experience: the feeling that we know a word but it is just out of reach. The theory is called blocking, and it holds that the tip-of-the-tongue sensation occurs when our effort to remember leads us away from the word we want to retrieve, diverting us instead to some other word. The desired word is there, but we can’t access it because we’ve become sidetracked; we’re following the wrong route. The words that get in the way are called interlopers.

Is it wrong to imagine that Costa Rica might clear my mind, that here, in this unfamiliar place, the interlopers might be banished?

When I wake at seven the next morning, the smell of coffee fills the house. The children are in front of the fuzzy television watching American cartoons and drinking chocolate milk. Soledad is already in the kitchen, the flesh of her arms jiggling as she works the spatula over the grill. The scene seems so ordinary, so fundamentally human, I find myself not just hoping, but truly believing, that Emma could be here in this country.

“
Bueno,
” Soledad says, looking over her shoulder. “You have good sleep?”

“
Sí. Muy bien
.”

She puts a plate in front of me—a big serving of rice and beans topped with two fried eggs. She stands by the table while I eat, hands on her hips, watching. “You like?” she says, wiping her hands on her apron.

“I like.”

“Good! In California you no get good breakfast!”

“Not like this,” I agree.

I help her clear the dishes, then pay the bill—just twenty American dollars. I thank Soledad, say goodbye to the children, and wait outside for the taxi. The driver gets out and loads my pack into the trunk. “
La estación de autobúses
?” he says.

“Sí, por favor.”

“Where you going?”

“Playa Hermosa.”

“Is very beautiful. You will like.”

At the bus station, a man at a card table is selling tickets to Hermosa. By nine-fifteen I’m on my way, a warm wind roaring through the windows. I keep thinking about what Nick said:
To become aware of the possibility of a search is to be onto something. Not to be onto something is to be in despair.
I have to believe I’m onto something; it’s the only thing that keeps me going.

63

P
LAYA HERMOSA
. A cabin on the beach. A single naked bulb, two dirty beds, a wall so thin I can hear the people in the next cabin snoring. A long, narrow mirror, unframed, hanging on the wall beside the door. In the mirror: a startling find, a ghost. Jutting hip bones, dark circles beneath the eyes.

Rain pelts the tin roof of the cabin. It begins as a single tap, then another, and another, gaining speed, until it’s a steady thrumming, a hard racket in the brain. Soon it’s a full-fledged storm, growing heavier by the minute. There is the smell of rain, and of the sea, and some sickly sweet smell that saturates the unwashed sheets. I switch off the light and lie fully clothed on the bed, listening to the howl of the storm. Through the tiny screened window, I can see occasional flashes of light.

Something about the rain, the saltwater smell, reminds me of Alabama. A couple of months before Emma disappeared, the three of us took a trip to Gulf Shores. Jake had never been down south, and he wanted to see what it was like, get a feel for where I came from. We checked into one of the nicer hotels in Orange Beach, and on our first evening we sat on the sand and watched the sun set over the Gulf. After that, it rained the entire week.

We spent mornings by the covered pool at our hotel, afternoons at the Pink Pony Pub. Emma drank Shirley Temples while Jake and I downed sweet iced tea and Bud Light. We’d sit in the smoke-filled restaurant and watch lightning split the sky in two. The lightning fascinated Emma, who was used to San Francisco’s calmer rains. It was what I missed most about the Gulf Coast, the drenching rainfall and booming thunder. San Francisco storms are so subtle, they can hardly be called storms at all.

“It smells weird,” Emma said, “like the sky’s on fire.”

“That’s ozone, nitrogen, and ammonia acids you’re smelling,” Jake said, always ready to turn anything into a lesson. It was fun seeing the world through his eyes, like a trip back to grammar school, when everything had a simple scientific explanation, every question had an answer.

It felt good to be back home, even if it wasn’t under the best of circumstances. One afternoon I took Emma to the souvenir shop with the giant shark at the entrance, the shop I’d visited dozens of times as a kid, and let her choose a basket full of T-shirts and knickknacks for her friends. The best memento we have from the vacation is a photograph of the three of us standing in front of Moe’s Christmas and Gun Store on the beach road. I still remember the guy who took it, an elderly gentleman with a lifetime tan and a shirt that said
Bama Forever
.

By the end of the week, Emma was teary-eyed and tired, and we were just as pale as when we’d arrived. “Alabama wasn’t exactly as I pictured it,” Jake said on the flight back. We agreed that our next beach vacation would be somewhere more exotic—Tahiti or Costa Rica. I never imagined that I would be coming here alone, that future snapshots of my life would contain a singular subject.

There is a girl, her name is Emma, she is walking on the beach. I look away. Seconds pass. I look back, and she is gone. I keep thinking about the seconds, the ever-expanding circle. How I set this chain of events in motion. How I must find some way to make amends.

T
he next day, I wander up and down the beach, which is crowded with American surfers and backpackers. I search for the Rossbottom board, the blond couple, the yellow van. Driving to Costa Rica wouldn’t be easy, but it can be done. Back home I read a blogger’s account of driving through the Sonora Desert, then through the highlands of Oaxaca, on into Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua. The border at Penas Blancas is notoriously lax, so someone with a good poker face could probably hide a child in the back of a van and bring her through with no documents. Like Jake said, it’s a big
if
, a whole lot of
probably
, but it’s the best thing I’ve got to go on.

Late in the afternoon, I find a cabin for rent for three hundred dollars a month—better and cheaper than the one I stayed in last night. It’s simple, tiny, and clean, with a tin roof and a small window with a view of the sea. I decide it will be my base of operations, my temporary home.

It doesn’t take long to settle into the rhythm of beach life. There’s no reason to get up early, because everything is closed. My only hope is to meet people—surfers, mainly—and the easiest way to meet them is in the bars and resturants at night. Many of the town’s inhabitants are seasonal, coming here for three months or so until their money runs out, then heading back to the States. On my second evening in Hermosa, I discover a little bar just a few steps from my cabin. The staff is made up of North Americans and young Ticos. Over the next week, I get to know all of them by name. Each day I pick up a little more Spanish and, hopefully, earn a little more trust from the surfers, but it still feels like I’m no closer to finding Emma.

“You should try it,” says a forty-something computer programmer from Atlanta. Meaning surfing. Meaning loosen up. It’s my third day in Hermosa, and we’re sitting side by side at the bar. Beautiful South is playing on the speakers, and the TV is tuned to a football game between the Delaware Blue Hens and the Citadel. The computer programmer’s name is Deke. He reminds me of a guy in a soap opera, with his perfect hair and his overconfident way of staring into my eyes for long moments. He keeps glancing up at the TV, yelling, “Go, Hens!” Rumor has it Deke has been to bed with half the North American girls in this town, and a few of the Ticos, too.

“Surfing’s not for me,” I say. “I’m afraid of deep water and speed. Plus, I couldn’t handle the lack of control.”

“That’s the best part,” Deke says, putting his hand in the small of my back, slipping it under my tank top.

“Watch it.”

He makes a joke and raises both hands in the air, a gesture of surrender, but I can tell he’s startled by the rejection.

A few hours later I meet Sami from Galveston, who supports her sun-worshipping habit by bartending and cleaning rooms at a local motel. She’s thirty-six and has a boyfriend back home who builds limousines. He’s waiting for her to get Costa Rica out of her blood so they can get married and have babies.

“We came here together seven years ago. He eventually got tired of it, but I never did. Thing is, the longer I’m here, the more I think about
pura vida,
and the less I think about babies,” Sami says, polishing the bar with a damp rag.

When she asks me what I’m doing in Costa Rica, I tell her I’m taking photographs for a Lonely Planet guidebook. It’s my cover, the only way I know to explain my presence here. The Leica I carry everywhere I go, slung over my shoulder, seems to be enough to verify my story. Over the next few days, Sami and I become friends. Sometimes in the late afternoon, when business is slow, Sami will ask one of the cooks to watch the bar and she’ll walk out to the beach with me, and we’ll sit on the sand and watch the surfers catching the last waves before turning in for the evening. Their bodies are sleek and lovely in the fading light, and the blue of the Costa Rican sky is a blue I’ve never seen before. The wet bodies emerging from the surf, boards propped on their shoulders, look like the bodies of dancers, and it’s hard to believe they’re just ordinary boys and girls from dull Midwestern towns.

On my fifth day in Hermosa, I’m sitting on the beach with Sami, a couple of beers between us on the sand. I take a piece of paper from my pocket, unfold it, and hand it to her. “Does this look familiar?”

“Should it?”

“It’s a symbol on a board.”

She looks more closely at the image of the golden frog, which I downloaded from the Internet. “Oh, sure. The Killer Longboard. The guy who made them kicked the bucket not long ago. Billy Rossbottom.”

“You know of him?”

“Who doesn’t? Rossbottom came into the bar a couple of years ago. He was a big flirt, buying drinks for all the ladies. Nice guy, left a tip bigger than his bill. The day after he died, we had a big party on the beach in his honor.”

“I’d like to get my hands on one of those boards,” I say. “You see any around here?”

“Just once. They’re really rare, you know.”

“The one you saw, when was that?”

“I don’t know, several months ago.”

“Do you know who the guy was?”

“Girl, actually.” She gives me a look like she’s trying to figure me out. “Why are you so interested, anyway? You don’t even surf.”

“I’m looking to buy one, a gift for a friend,” I say, feeling guilty for the lie. But I don’t want to show my hand yet, don’t want my business spread all over the coast. I’m afraid that if the couple from the yellow van is here, and if they catch wind of me, they’ll move on. For that reason, I’ve yet to show anyone the forensic sketches; they’re tucked away in my backpack in the cabin, waiting for the right moment.

Sami finishes off her beer in one long gulp. “I’ll keep an eye out for the board.”

“Thanks.”

“Abby,” she says, popping the cap off another beer.

“Yeah?”

“I’ve got a good sense for people, and there’s something you’re not telling me.”

“What makes you think that?”

“A single professional woman, alone in a little surfing town in Costa Rica. You don’t surf. You’re older than most of the people here.” She winks. “Present company excepted.”

“I told you, I’m working on a guidebook.”

“Doesn’t make sense,” she says, leaning back on her elbows and tilting her face up to the sun. “If that was the case, you’d be long gone from Playa Hermosa by now. So are you going to tell me what the deal is, or do you want me to guess?”

At that moment, I make a conscious decision to trust her. My mother always said my biggest flaw was that I tried to do everything on my own, but my biggest strength was a kind of obsessive determination. She had this story she loved to tell about how when I was fourteen months old, I once spent the better part of an hour trying to get a sock on my foot, and I refused to let her help me. She had evidence of the event, fifteen minutes of scratchy black-and-white film in which a baby who looks nothing like me struggles with a lacy white sock and a chubby foot. I never did get the sock on.

“Come by my place tonight after you get off,” I say.

She hums a few bars from the
Twilight Zone
theme song and says, “I’ll be there. Shall I come in disguise? Maybe a black cape and mask?”

She shows up at my door after midnight, reeking of pot. “Want some?” she asks, pulling a joint out of her pocket.

“Thanks, I’ll pass.”

“Suit yourself.” She plops down on the unused bed. “So what’s the big secret?”

“I lost my little girl.”

“What?”

“Actually, my fiancé’s little girl, Emma. On the beach in San Francisco. I’m down here because I think she was kidnapped, and I believe the people who did it may be in Costa Rica.” I don’t tell her what a long shot it is, don’t let onto the fact that I’m chasing my last lead. Maybe what I need more than anything right now is simply for someone to believe in my plan.

“Not funny,” Sami says. “Stop fucking with my head.”

“It’s true.” I lay the police sketches on the mattress next to her.

“Shit, you’re not kidding, are you?”

“Have you seen them?”

“They don’t look familiar.”

“You sure? The guy, he has a tattoo of a wave on his chest. He’s medium height, muscular, has a lazy eye. She’s thin, bleached blonde, a little crazy-looking.”

“What’s the Killer Longboard got to do with all this?”

“This couple was at Ocean Beach the day Emma disappeared. The guy had a Rossbottom board.”

Sami’s eyes get wide. “I can’t believe it,” she says. “A kidnapping. That’s movie shit.” She’s quiet for a moment. “Surfers are a tight-knit group, you know. Best keep your eyes open and your mouth shut for a little while. Let me help. I’ll ask around about the board.”

“Thanks. Another thing. I don’t really know where to look. I’ve been over my map of Costa Rica a hundred times, and I’m lost.”

“You should meet Dwight. He’s a bartender at the Pink Pelican. He’s not all there, but he’s been here for twenty years. Knows the whole country by heart. I’ll hook you up.”

“I owe you.”

“Hey,” Sami says, “I’m starved. Got anything to eat?”

“Bananas, Oreos, peanut butter, white bread, and chips.”

“You’re a veritable health food store,” she says. “I could sure go for a peanut butter and banana sandwich.”

I go over to the little table underneath the window, which I’ve transformed into a makeshift kitchenette with a coffeepot, Bunsen burner, paper plates, and silverware. I make two sandwiches, with a side of Pringles.

Sami takes the top piece of bread off her sandwich, lays a few Pringles on top of the bananas, and puts the top back on. “Hey, you ever been to Graceland?”

“No.”

“I went a couple of years ago. Funny thing is, the Graceland Mansion isn’t a mansion. It’s just like a regular house, only bigger, with uglier furniture. But there’s this restaurant across the street where you can get fried peanut butter and banana sandwiches. They’re so fucking good, I had two and bought a third one to go. It’d be worth going back to Graceland just to get that sandwich.”

The peanut butter tastes good, even feels good against the roof of my mouth, and I realize that I’ve been eating regularly for the past week. I stick my finger in the waistband of my shorts and notice that, even though I’m still much too thin, the fit is getting slightly more snug. Everyone’s been telling me I had to get on with my life, and I’ve been thinking, all along, that they’re wrong. I’ve been thinking that there’s no getting on with anything as long is Emma is missing. But my body, it seems, has made its own decision.

I think of Emma, wherever she is, and I wonder if she’s healthy. Is she growing, gaining weight? Is her face changing? Among my meager luggage, I brought a small album containing a couple dozen photos of her. In some she’s with Jake, in some she is alone, and in one the two of us stand together on the grounds of the Legion of Honor, with the fountain in the background. The first photo in the book was taken at Crissy Field a couple of weeks after I met her, and the last one was taken the day before she disappeared. Even in that short span of time, a single year, her features underwent a gentle metamorphosis—her face thinning, her widow’s peak becoming more pronounced. An adult can look pretty much the same for a decade or more, but in childhood the alterations occur so rapidly that photographs taken just months apart can be startlingly different.