All I wanted to do was climb in my bed, but I straddled the hammock, sat, and then lay back. She was right. Everything about it was divine. She sat next to me in a plastic chair, gently rocking me back and forth, and as she did, every pain and weight lifted off me with the gentle sway of the canvas hammock.
I was having trouble keeping my eyes open, but I had a feeling there were dishes to do or clothes to wash or some responsibility I was shirking. I offered, “Aren’t we supposed to be doing something?”
She propped her feet up on the end of the hammock and chuckled. “We’re doing it.”
I doubt I’d ever been that tired. And it’d been a long time since I’d felt that good.
Chapter Twenty
Paulina woke me with a steaming mug beneath my nose, then set it on the table next to me. She said, “Paulo’s already gone and Isabella’s at school. We should get moving.” I glanced at my watch. It was already eight o’clock. I’d slept ten hours.
We piled onto the bike and resumed our search, starting where we’d left off yesterday. My hands and forearms were sore from digging, as was most everything else in my body. Our path paralleled the coast, and much of the time was spent rolling down dirt roads just inside the dunes with the sound of the waves on the other side. We stopped in several gas stations, places to eat, bars, anyplace where someone might have reason to stop. No one recognized his picture. At noon, Paulo called. He said he’d talked to a manager at a seaside hotel who had kicked out five guys who trashed two of his rooms and broke a bunch of bottles on his pool deck. He said they were traveling in an old Chevrolet convertible. He also said one of them had been pretty busted up, one eye was swollen shut. When asked what he looked like, the man described Zaul.
Paulina and I shared lunch on the dunes beneath a mango tree that had been picked clean except for the shade. The breeze felt good and I actually dozed. When I woke, I found Paulina walking in the waves, a faraway look in her eyes. She said nothing to me upon her return. I got the feeling it’d been a long time since she’d done anything like that. That in itself got me thinking. As did the fact that Isabella couldn’t swim.
Other than a single necklace, Paulina didn’t wear jewelry. Few women around here did. Granted, it cost money, which was in short supply, but I got the feeling it was more cultural. The necklace she wore was a long chain, which seldom showed unless you were looking. And I admit, when it came to Leena, I found myself looking more often than not. She also let her hair grow—as did every other woman. While they wore their hair all rolled up in a bun, none cut it. Most hung at waist length when they let it down, which was usually after a shower or when they brushed it just before going to bed.
She sat down next to me beneath the mango tree, and I asked about it. “Why do you keep your hair so long?”
“It is believed here that a woman’s hair is her crown. Where God bestows his glory.”
“Then why do all of you pull it up in tight buns that pin your ears back?”
She laughed. “’Cause it’s hot and all that hair on your neck only makes it worse.”
“All function. No form.”
More laughter. “Something like that.”
“What about jewelry? No one here wears any.”
“We are taught not to bring unnatural attention to ourselves. To let our natural beauty do that. To not attempt to improve on what God made perfect.”
I pointed at her necklace. “And that?”
She smiled. “That is the exception.”
“I noticed.”
She placed the polished and worn stone that hung on the chain in her palm. “One evening, when my father was at the bottom of his well and had been digging for months, thinking he’d never strike water, he found two polished stones. When he picked them up, water began seeping in from the edges. To anyone but us, the stones are worthless, but he had them made like this; the chains are made of Nicaraguan gold. He gave one to my mother, one to me. In over thirty years, I’ve never taken it off. My mother did the same. Worth nothing, yet to me, it’s priceless.” She crossed her legs and her face turned curious. “Tell me more about you. How you got here. Your work. What you do when you’re not here.”
“In college, I spent some time playing poker for a living, but I realized there were people better than me so I cashed in my chips.”
“Smart.”
“Doing so caught the attention of a man who ran a venture capital firm. So I spent some time in the financial world but was fired when I didn’t want to play ball with my boss.”
“Why?”
“Let’s just say he wanted to own more than just my time.”
“What’d you do for him?”
“Traveled a lot. I evaluated companies. Tried to figure out which were worth keeping and which were worth breaking up into small pieces. Depended on which made him more money.”
“Did it pay well?”
“Could have, but he kept it all when I left.”
“Sounds like a story there.”
“Just a bit.”
“You ever work outside the States?”
“Yes.”
“Where?”
“Europe. The islands. Asia. Some in Central America.”
“Ever come here? To Nicaragua?”
I casually looked away. “No.”
“How’d you get to Bimini?”
“When I left, I wandered some. Eventually, I found myself on a shrimp boat headed for Bimini, where I gutted a hurricane shack and began working with an old man to make specialized wooden skiffs. We built about two a year.”
“You work with wood?”
A nod. “I do seem to possess some talent there.”
“Well, aren’t you just a Renaissance man.”
“Not too sure about that.” I wasn’t comfortable talking about me, so I tried to speed the conversation along. “From there, I began guiding people fishing for—”
“You’re also a fishing guide?”
“It’s not too difficult in Bimini. The fish are rather predictable.”
“You’re starting to get interesting.”
“I met my current business partner when he came to fish. He told me his family owned an import business, and if I ever wanted or needed a job, he’d put me to work. So Colin put me in charge of import logistics and transport. Primarily acquisition and delivery.”
“Wow, listen to you with the big words.” She was smiling now. “What did you import?”
“Primarily wine and spirits. Lately, he’s been moving into olive oil.”
“Ever been married?”
“No.”
“Why?” She smiled. Playing with me. Growing more comfortable. “You seem likable enough. You wear deodorant, trim your fingernails, not too much stuff hanging from your teeth.”
I rubbed my front teeth on my shirt. “Can we talk about you a while?”
“But you were just starting to get interesting.”
“I’m afraid the interesting part is over.”
“And your friend, Zaul?”
There was more to her question. “What about him?”
“What kind of kid is he?”
“He’s had a cell phone and a credit card since he could crawl. His parents have, admittedly, enabled him so he knows next to nothing about responsibility. He’s also grown up around the überwealthy and social elite so he has a skewed view of reality.”
“Sounds like a bad recipe.”
I pointed at San Cristóbal smoking in the distance. “Yep.”
“Why’d he come here?”
“I’m not sure, other than they own a home in Costa Rica and he knows the surf.”
“Why’d they send you? Why not his dad?”
“You sure do ask a lot of questions.”
She smiled. Beautiful white teeth that filtered laughter with nothing to hold it down. The tension here was to satisfy her without giving up too much or getting too close to the truth. “When he left, his sister, Maria, was in the hospital. He feels responsible for her being there. He thinks his parents feel that way, too.”
“Is he?”
“Ultimately, no. But that’s why I’m here, because his father wouldn’t be able to convince him of that.”