Paulo lit. “Management?”
“No. I’m a solo act. Work alone. It’s just the nature of my business.”
Paulo nodded. “No matter. We will help.”
“I’m afraid it will require a lot of your time. At least half the day. Sometimes all day. I’d be keeping you from your work.”
Paulo asked, “How long?”
“I’m trying to find a kid who doesn’t want to be found. A week? Two? Maybe a month.”
Paulo paused. I could see him calculating the cost. “I work la caña in the morning, and we go with you after lunch.”
I shook my head. “From what I know about him, he surfs in the mornings and they travel or sleep in the afternoons. Our chance of seeing him in any one place would be the time until noon. If we wait until after lunch to get started, our chances will be slim.” I pointed at him. “I need a driver who speaks the language, and I’ll pay for all your gas.” Paulo calculated again. Paulina sat uncomfortably quiet. I offered, “Whatever you miss in income, I’ll pay.”
Paulina spoke up. “If he doesn’t work, if he misses a day, he loses his seniority. That means when he returns, he won’t be guaranteed work.”
I began to see how I was upsetting the balance of their lives. How one missed day, one cold, one sickness, one injury, one missed bus or just oversleeping by ten minutes could alter the fortune of their lives for a long time.
She leaned forward on the table, trying not to be unkind but wanting to make sure she got her point across. “Seniority in this part of the world is a commodity. Worth more than the money we make.”
She had found me on the street. Naked except for my underwear. In her experience, I was not a solid bet.
“How will you pay?”
“With money?”
“Whose?”
“Mine.”
“Why do you want to hire me, too?”
“To translate and, no offense, to be a woman.”
“What do you mean?”
“In my experience, sometimes a woman can get information that a man cannot.”
That common sense seemed to satisfy her, yet she still looked incredulous. She sat back. “And you can afford to pay us?”
In her eyes, I was nearly as poor as she, so I wanted to be careful here. “Yes.”
She crossed her arms. “If Paulo misses a single day of work, what we call ‘getting out of line,’ he loses his place of seniority, which has taken him years to build. That means that like all the other men now waiting for a chance to work, he has to get back in line. Wait his turn. It could take him weeks to get a single day of work. It’s how things work around here.”
“I’ll pay for those days as well.”
More disbelief. “Until he can get work again?”
“Yes.”
“Every day?”
“Yes.”
I placed a single twenty-dollar bill on the table. “I’ll pay in advance.” That got both their attention. “I need you to drive me up and down the coast, looking for Zaul. We may have to drive a long way. I’ll pay you this in advance, I’ll pay your daily work rate, plus all your gas, plus any wear and tear on your vehicle, plus every day that you have to wait in line.”
I set another twenty-dollar bill on the table and turned to Paulina. “I’ll pay you the same.”
She pursed her lips as her mind wrestled with whether or not to believe me. They spoke in muffled tones to each other. Isabella looked like a kid sitting next to a Ping-Pong table keeping her eyes on the ball. Hoping to sway Isabella, I set a single dollar bill in front of her. Her small hand crept up over the top of the table and was reaching to retrieve it when her mother put her hand on hers and shook her head. Forty-one dollars sat on the table uncollected.
I set another twenty-dollar bill on the table. Paulo was now paying closer attention. That was more money than he’d make in a month, and depending upon work, maybe two months. I knew I needed to be careful. I wanted to buy their time, not shame them, and I had a feeling that there was a point at which too much money meant shame. “And I’d like to rent the chicken coop.” I licked my thumb and counted out another twenty. “And pay for all my food in advance.”
Eighty-one dollars sat uncollected. I looked at Paulo and held a finger in the air. “And if we find him, I’ll pay a hundred-dollar bonus.” Paulo was listening now. “That’s nearly as much money as he can make in a year.”
Paulina’s voice turned edgy. Almost cold. “You always buy what you want?”
“No. But I can’t do this on my own. I need to hire someone. I’d prefer it be you three.”
Paulo spoke a few harsh words to Paulina, which had the effect of quieting her and preventing her from asking me any more questions. He pointed at the money as if he didn’t need any more reason. He folded his hands. “I help you? You help me.” I wasn’t sure where this was going, but I knew I needed their help. He pointed at my watch. “I help you to lunch. You help me to dinner.”
Sounded fair. “Okay.”
Paulo stood, folded the money, and slid the wad into his pocket. He extended his hand. “We are very happy to help.”
Paulina stood as Paulo led us to the door. His body language told me he wanted to get us moving before I changed my mind—or before someone spotted all that money and robbed us. He pointed to the street. “Sí. Muy bueno. Vamos.”
Out in the street, Isabella slid her hand in mine and looked up at me—a chocolate mustache dripping off the edges of her upper lip. Content to be, she said nothing. When I looked down, she was cradling my heart in her hands.
* * *
It was late when we returned to Hotel Cardinal, so I rented them the rooms adjacent to mine, for which they were thankful. Isabella had never spent the night in a hotel, and the cold air blowing out of the two square holes in the wall was an amazement beyond words. As was the little box with blue numbers that makes the air colder or hotter. Followed closely by hot water and the idea that someone other than her mother had washed and dried the towels and sheets. Further, the fact that that same someone had then hung the towels on a bar in the bathroom and made the bed with clean sheets and left free soap in the bathroom and that the water coming out of the faucet was clean enough to drink was just more than she could wrap her mind around. When her mother tucked her in, she said, “Mami, I feel like a princess.”
I was sitting on the porch outside my room when Paulina turned out Isabella’s light and sat beside me. “This kid you’re going to find, he’s not a good kid, is he?”
I shook my head. “No. He’s not.”
“Why does he matter?”
“By his own admission, his dad is something of a nerd. Good at counting beans and entertaining the wealthy. Me? Not so much. So, I picked up where his dad left off and taught him a few things his dad had neglected.”
“Like?”
“How to ride a bike, tie double knots in his shoes, brush both his teeth and his gums, drive a boat, then a stick shift.”
She pointed to my lips. “When you speak about him, there’s a tenderness in your voice.”
It was a question posed as a statement. “When he was young and his folks would host a party, he was often overlooked. I have some experience with that, so we’d fish off the dock.” A shrug. “I’d bait his hook. Taught him how to throw a cast net, the difference between deodorant and antiperspirant.” A chuckle. “Why girls say one thing when they mean another.”
She was quiet several minutes. Before she spoke, she pushed her hair out of her eyes that the wind had loosed. “I need to say something to you and I don’t know you very well and you’re being very kind to us, so it may come across as hard or ungrateful. I don’t intend that.”
I waited.
She waved her hand across the air in front of us. “There is a thing in this country called ‘the Gringo Effect.’ It’s when white people like you—no offense—come in and wave a little money around people like me and my uncle who live on two to three dollars a day, and we jump like circus monkeys doing whatever you want us to do because we’ve never seen that much money. My country is dotted with gringos; many like you cash in their 401(k)s, buy a little place, and live out their days in relative ease, thinking that their money buys them the right to live or act however they want or that they can own us because we need what they have. I’m not a rich woman, but I was educated in the States. I’ve not always been poor. There was a time when I could afford groceries with enough left over for ice cream. Maybe even a movie ticket. Or a new razor when the old one pulled out the hair on my legs rather than shaved it.” A pause. “I don’t have a lot of experience with men who so easily buy the services of others, but I’ve lived enough to know it’s not common.”