He extended the watch to me, shaking his head. “Señor, if it belong to you—”
I handed him twenty dollars. “Will you sell it to me for that?”
He nodded quickly. “Sí. Sí. Muy bueno.”
I turned to the owner. “That okay with you?”
She smiled, exhaled, and put her hand on the back of my chair. “Would you like some more coffee? I think Mauricio can brew you up something hot. He makes a pretty mean latte.”
I handed him the money, which he folded and stuck in his pocket. After shaking my hand, he returned to the coffee machine. The owner spoke to all of us. “Please let me know if there’s anything else you need.”
Paulo stared at me over his coffee mug. Isabella sank her teeth into another Danish, and Paulina watched me with a suppressed look of curiosity. I strapped the watch on my wrist and was finishing my croissant when a wrinkle appeared between her eyes. A slight shake of her head accompanied by the beginning of an amused smile. “You’re an interesting one.”
“How so?”
“You could have easily taken that watch from that kid.”
“I could.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“I have, or had, a friend in Bimini named Hack. He’s dead now. Used to tell me that people spend money on three things: what they love, what they worship, and what helps ease their pain.”
“Which of those does that watch represent?”
I ran my thumb along the bezel of the watch. “The third.”
“What else do you spend money on?”
“Good coffee, bottled water with bubbles—and Costa Del Mars.”
She pointed to the glasses resting on the top of my head. “Like those?”
A nod. “I have about sixty pair at my house in Bimini.”
“Sixty? As in six-zero?”
“My partner, Colin, is married to a lady named Marguerite who has a bit of a shoe fetish. Something like two hundred pairs. Had a cedar closet built just for her shoes. We often compare notes about our latest purchases. I guess we’re cut from the same cloth.”
She eyed the kid making my latte. “I think you made a friend.”
“That’s good ’cause I don’t have too many of those.”
* * *
Paulina and Paulo shared a cell phone with prepaid minutes, which they used only in emergencies. Paulina explained that they seldom, if ever, used it. Regardless, Paulo had been on it all morning. One call leading to another. He was talking on it as we left the café, and Isabella began steering me through the streets. Walking by the cathedral, she turned to Paulina, tugging on her arm. “Mami, can we go see Dadi?”
“Just a few minutes. We can’t stay long.”
Isabella jumped and climbed the same steps the naked dancer had pirouetted up a week earlier. Paulina noticed the strange look on my face but said nothing. We followed Isabella inside where it was quiet. And empty. Paulo dipped his finger in some water on the wall and genuflected. Paulina did likewise, although she added a bow, or curtsy, when she crossed in front of the center aisle. Isabella ran down the aisle and turned right, near the altar. Just above her, a lectern had been built on the side of a huge column that supported the ceiling. Stairs led up to a platform where the priest gave the sermon.
Isabella ran to the stairs, and when she reached them, she slid on her knees on the marble. Coming to a stop, she crawled on her belly beneath the stairs. When I reached her, she was propped up on her elbows speaking to a stone plaque. It simply read: GABRIEL.
Paulina pointed. “My husband is buried here.”
I nodded and said nothing.
Paulo sat behind us in the second row. Hands folded.
I sat on the stairs and could understand nothing, as Isabella was talking a hundred miles an hour in Spanish. Paulina sat opposite me on a pew and listened. “She’s telling him what’s happened since we were here last week. About finding you; you sleeping in the chicken coop, which she thinks is funny; about pulling teeth; and”—she smiled—“about last night.” Isabella said more but Paulina didn’t translate it.
We sat quietly, listening while Isabella rattled on—talking to the stone just inches from her face. I pointed behind me to the vault where her husband lay. “When?”
“Ten years ago. I was pregnant.” A single shake. “She has no memory of him.”
I rested my elbows on my knees. “How?”
“He was a doctor. Made house calls. We worked”—she waved her hand in front of us—“out in the villages. He contracted a virus that attacked the lining of his heart. Grew weak. We took him to a specialist, but he had self-diagnosed and knew there was no cure. Six months later, he died at home.” She looked around the church and waved at a priest. “He took care of all the priests. Many of the parishioners. He started a clinic”—she pointed to the back of the cathedral—“which continues to this day. About ten well-trained doctors volunteer their time here—a day here every two weeks. Some more than others. Because no one wants to anger the Catholic Church, hospitals donate medicine—and a lot of it. Some of which they give me when they can spare it. It’s where I get most of the medicine I need for my work. Barring a trauma, it may well be the best clinic in Nicaragua, and in some ways, it’s better than most hospitals in Central America. The church honored us by burying him here because he was beloved of the people.” She pointed to Isabella, who was whispering, her lips brushing the stone. “Still is.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Me, too.” She waved her hand across the walls around us, which were full of dead people who had been entombed in the walls and beneath the floor. “They paid over a million córdobas to be buried here. It’s a very great honor.” Her eyes fell on Isabella. Who was still talking. “She talks nonstop whenever she walks in here.” A pause with half a smile. When she spoke, she wasn’t looking at me. She was looking through the stone. “Every girl should have a daddy.”
* * *
Paulo clicked the phone shut and slid it in his front pocket, waving us onward. “Vamos.” He pointed. “Vamos al océano.”
I turned to Paulina, who was listening to Paulo. When he finished speaking, she turned to me. “Your friend has been seen around the ocean not far from here.”
“Really? Just like that?”
She held up a finger. “He’s been seen.” She stood. “Not found. Evidently, he likes to leave an impression wherever he goes.”
* * *
We drove west out of León toward the Pacific. Isabella slept up front, coming down off a sugar and carb high, while Paulina and I sat in the back. When we were out of town, she said, “Your friend played a card game here a week ago. He was drinking a lot and is not a very good cardplayer. Paulo talked to a man who tended bar in the game. You were right, he lost his truck to the foreman. Later in the game, in a—” Her face contorted. “Twice or zero?”
“Double or nothing?”
“That’s it. He was caught cheating, tried to run and steal back his own truck so the foreman—who is a big strong man—roughed him up. After that, your friend went to the beach. He was there yesterday. That’s all we know.”
San Cristóbal loomed behind us. White smoke spiraling through a blue sky into the stratosphere.
She pressed me. “Does that sound like your friend?”
I hesitated. “Yes.”
“He does not sound like a good man.”
“Sometimes…people have some help becoming like that.”
Leena chewed on my answer, which I was learning was her process. She thought before she spoke, although I didn’t confuse thoughtfulness with hesitancy. She was not afraid to speak. The wind tugged at her hair and skirt and dried the sweat on her skin. I’d not told her this—as I had no reason—but Leena was one of the more beautiful people I’d ever known, much less seen, and I’d known some beautiful women in my life. Amanda was petite, polished, fashion minded and design savvy, quick to speak, and striking. Shelly was taller, more natural in her appearance, more attracted to the shadow than the spotlight, comfortable in loose-fitting scrubs, and well-suited to both the operating room and the beach. Leena was something of a combination of the two. As tough as her environment demanded, tender at the drop of a hat; quick to speak but more apt to listen; modest in her dress but also comfortable in her confidence; beautiful not only in silence and passing glance, but even more so in action. Leena also possessed the one thing that neither Amanda nor Shelly did: presence. She commanded authority because she was first and foremost ready to serve those around her. She’d earned it. Her willingness to kneel down and clean the groin and bottom of a feces- and urine-soaked man, then kiss his forehead, put her on a pedestal unlike any other. I did not feel comfortable around her not because she made me feel uncomfortable, but because I felt counterfeit. Her willingness to stop, kneel, and serve amid filthy, embarrassing, and uncomfortable situations jarred something loose in me because I wasn’t. I’d spent my life pursuing my comfort, not others’. Leena had not. A strange emotion shadowed me as we bumped down dirt roads in the middle of nowhere. I did not know what to call it, but “unworthy” came about as close as anything. The second emotion was a question: How could someone so pure and selfless sit inches from someone so stained and selfish?