An Ordinary Drowning, Book One of The Mermaid's Pendant (3 page)

There
weren’t many other options. On the way back into town, there was only The Happy
Landing Café near the airport. Beyond that, there appeared to be only two or
three standalone eateries in Dewey. Either way, he was on foot. The prospect
didn’t appeal to him, but he decided that he could kill a few birds with one
weary trip: he’d rent a bike, report the lost gear, and get a beer and dinner.
So he settled on Isla Encantada, which was back near the dive shop. It sounded
more appealing anyway, even if Culebra had turned out to be far from enchanted.

He
regretted his decision to walk into Dewey after taking an hour to get there. If
he hadn’t stopped at The Happy Landing Café for a bottle of water, he might
have passed out along the way. A lone black stallion standing along the highway
oddly tempted him, but when he took a step in its direction, it bolted.

The bike
shop owner had just stuck his key into the shop’s lock when John came limping
up. He smiled and opened up anyway, chatting the whole time it took John to
fill out a form and for him to swipe John’s credit card. John didn’t have the
same luck with the dive shop, however. It was already closed even though it was
only four-thirty in the afternoon. He didn’t mind. If he didn’t get a cold
Medalla in the next ten minutes, he might combust and his ashes float away on
the wind over the harbor, Ensenada Honda. He was that dry.

Isla
Encantada had none of Señorita’s refinements. That is to say, it wasn’t pastel.
It didn’t have strings of white Christmas lights and tropical flowers. There
was no Hemingway doppelganger at the bar. The tables were wooden, their
surfaces pockmarked and oiled by countless palms and fingers. It didn’t serve
Nuevo Caribbean cuisine with thin-sliced plantain chips and entrees drizzled
with garlic-scented sauce. No, Isla Encantada served traditional
tostones
,
monstrous
pastelillos de carne
,
paella
teeming with shrimp and
spiny lobster, and heavy
arroz con dulce
. This was a place Culebrense
sons came to eat when they couldn’t eat their mother’s cooking. John, who
wasn’t a Culebrense son but the boyfriend of a virulent vegetarian, restricted
himself to
estofado de garbanzos
, a thick chickpea stew with pumpkin and
cabbage. He washed it down with Medalla and ice water. He tried to pace
himself, but he drank more beer and water than he’d ever consumed at one
sitting.

He sank
against his chair back and looked around the dim restaurant. A barrel-chested
Culebrense with a hairy caterpillar of a mustache stood talking to a younger
Culebrense behind the bar. Four young men sat at one of the ten tables in the
dining area. A small dance floor with worn, sooty parquet took up the rest of
the space. John grimaced at his reflection in the floor-to-ceiling mirror on
the far wall. He wondered what kind of musicians used the stands waiting in the
corner.

Too bad
no lovely
señoritas
sat sipping
sangria
at the bar. Not that it
mattered, anyway. He wasn’t as smooth as his friend Stefan. Or maybe not as
carefree and immoral. He could never seek out a one-night stand, Zoë or no Zoë.
At the thought of his girlfriend, John looked around the bar even though she
wasn’t there. That’s when he saw the old woman at a table by the door. She
nodded at him and raised her beer bottle. John nodded back and shifted his gaze
away. Something about her gave him the willies.

The
barrel-chested man approached with a Medalla.

“
Hola,
mi amigo
. Medalla?” He didn’t wait for John’s answer, just set the bottle
next to John’s empty. “May I?” He gestured to the chair across from John.

John
shrugged and nodded.

“So, you
like our island,
señor
?” The man had brought an extra Medalla for
himself. He sipped it and waited.

John
shifted in his seat. His backside ached and he found himself thinking about the
hard campground where he planned to sleep tonight. “I dunno. Haven’t seen much
of it yet.”

The big
man nodded. “Not much to see, unless you like seabirds and turtles.”

“Playa
Flamenco as amazing as they say?”

“
Sí,
señor
. Not so much when the beachgoers from the mainland infest it like
sand fleas. They will be gone tomorrow. Then you will see for yourself.”

“Weekend
only?”

The man
nodded. “My name is Tomás. I own Isla Encantada. You like my wife’s cooking,
no?”

“
Sí
.”
John smiled, his first since he’d gotten to Culebra. “My name’s John.” They
shook hands. “So, what’s there to do around here at night? Any good music?” He
indicated the music stands with a sideways tilt of his head.

“We have
a four-piece group. A guitar and kettle drum. A trumpet. And
maracas
, of
course. It’s the best on
la isla
. You stay and listen, no?”

“Is
there a lot of music on Culebra?”

“Sometimes
at Señorita’s. No one is there now.” Tomás sipped his beer. “We are
muy
rústico
here,
señor
. There are more roosters and wild horses than
turistas
.
I am the only one open past eleven on the weekend. An hour.”

“Wow.
Zoë’s gonna love that.”

“
Cómo?
”

“Oh,
nothing.” He shrugged. “It’s not what I expected is all.”

“You
came to snorkel perhaps? The reefs, they bring many
norteamericanos
.”

“Actually,
I came to scuba dive. I’m going out over the Trench in a couple of weeks.”

“Treasure
hunting? The Trench is graveyard to many Spanish galleons.”

“No, no.
Too deep,
amigo
. It’s a research trip. Underwater geology.” John
laughed. “Of course, I almost drowned in the canal today so maybe I shouldn’t
go.”

Tomás
appeared shocked. “The canal? Luís Peña?”

John
nodded, sheepish. “Long story, Tomás. Never would have made it back to shore
without somebody pulling me in.”

Tomás
frowned. “You snorkeled alone then? You are
suerte
, lucky,
señor,
that someone came along at the right time. As I have already said, not many
turistas
come here and the
puertoriqueños
stay on Playa Flamenco. The
Culebrenses, they don’t often snorkel.”

“Well,
whoever she was, she saved my life.”

Tomás
started. “She? A woman pulled you from the canal?”

“Yeah,”
John laughed. “Must be some kind of superhero to pluck me out of the water and
drag me to shore so fast.”

Tomás
looked thoughtful. “What did she look like, this woman?”

“Don’t
really know. My eyes were full of saltwater. I was throwing it up, too.” John
paused. “Actually, now that you ask, I’m getting this distinct image of her.”
He frowned heavily, concentrating on the startling and clear vision that popped
into his mind.

“She’s
got outrageously curly hair”—here he demonstrated with two hands hovering
around his head—“the color of an old penny and eyes the color of the shallows
around Culebra. And …” here John hesitated, “and she didn’t have anything on.
No shirt. No swimsuit.
Nada
.”

“You saw
her?” Tomás sounded excited. “You really saw this woman,
señor
?”

John’s
confusion mushroomed. “No. No.” Anger sharpened the edge of his voice and he
shook his head. “
Lo siento
, Tomás. I’m not angry with you. It’s just
that I know I didn’t see her clearly, but I have this distinct image of her.
Like I already know her.”

Tomás
pursed his lips and nodded. He sipped his beer and then, his gaze directed at
his beer label as though seeing for the first time, he asked, “What happened to
her,
Señor
Juan? Did she tell you her name?”

“That’s
the odd thing. I passed out. When I woke up, she was gone. But that old woman—”
John inclined his head toward the old woman, who sat smoking and reading a
book—“was there. Stuck a foul-smelling liquid under my nose. Claims she found
me on the shore, no one else there.”

Tomás’s
gaze slid toward Ana and back. “Ana?”

“You
know her?”

“Yes,
everyone knows Ana,
señor
. Some more than most. Some wish they knew her
less.”

“What’s
that mean?”

Tomás
kept his gaze on his hands, which were wrapped around his empty Medalla bottle.
“Some say she is a
bruja
, a witch,
señor
.”

John
looked at the other man for a moment, trying to gauge his meaning. “You’re
kidding? A witch?”

Tomás
shrugged. “One man’s superstition is another man’s explanation.”

“She’s
just some sort of herbalist. Crossed with a bag lady. Scary looking, but a
witch?” John heard incredulity twist his voice.

“Some
say she is also
del mar
.”

“‘
Del
mar’
? ‘Of the sea’?”

“This
woman, the one who pulled you from the sea. Perhaps she was not altogether a
woman.”

“What’s
that mean?” John studied the other man’s face but saw only seriousness in his
eyes. “What else is there? A mermaid?” He laughed and looked away.

Tomás
looked at Ana. He picked at the label on his bottle and shook his head. “Sí,
loco
,
loco
. Just a crazy explanation for your mystery,
Señor
Juan. A
story to tell your friends when you go home.”

John
frowned. “I’d rather know who she is, Tomás. I just don’t have any idea how to
track her down.”

“You
could post a flyer here. Nearly everyone comes here at one time or another.”

“A
flyer?” John pursed his lips. “Sure. Why not?” He tilted the last of the beer
into his mouth. “Time for me to head back to the campground. I’ll catch the
music another time. Nearly drowning has worn me out. What I owe you?”

After he
settled the bill—trying without success to pay the friendly Tomás for the last
Medalla—John biked back to Playa Flamenco. The heat had fled with the sunset
and a languor slowed his peddling. He passed a few Culebrenses enjoying the
evening from their porches. They waved and called hello and he answered in
kind. There were only a handful of cars on the road to the north, and none past
the airport. The acrid smell of dry thorn acacia and asphalt subsided beneath
the cool mineral scent of ocean water. The sky was the color of honeydew,
oozing thousands of white seed-stars. Bougainvillea, its rich red muted, added
mystery to the dusk. John thought the world looked unutterably lovely, tranquil
and complete. He was alive and he had no one to thank. His gratitude wouldn’t
stay inside though.

“I’m
alive!” he yelled into the gloaming. Startled horses whinnied and broke across
the highway in front of him. He bellowed, a pure animal sound of pleasure, and
coasted down an incline, his hands fluttering above his head.

Later,
as he lay listening to laughter from the weekenders still partying on the
beach, he wondered again how he was going to find her, the vulnerable woman
with the crazy hair and haunting eyes who’d saved him from drowning. He tossed
on the sandy ground for more than an hour, replaying the rescue. Where was she,
this woman
del mar
? Something tickled his thoughts and ran down his
spine. He popped up in his sleeping bag. Again, he had the feeling that someone
was watching him, but he could see nothing, just dark shapes of trees and
snoring bodies. He strained his hearing, but only voices and waves reached him.
He might have sat up half the night, waiting, but a breeze caressed his face.
Its touch urged him to slide back down, to close his eyes, to dream.

***

Ana
climbed the hidden path beyond her house toward Playa Tamarindo. Overhead,
sooty terns fluttered like kites without string. Before she reached the summit,
her rooster crowed, but her sleepy hens would ignore him. They wouldn’t leave
their straw-lined beds until she jostled them looking for eggs. She paused at a
small stand of tamarind trees and studied the full-length pods hanging from the
branches. Their pliant shells needed another six weeks to fill out with a
sweet-sour pulp and become brittle enough to pluck. Given the number of pods,
she’d have pulp for a dozen vials of diarrhea medicine, a jar of burn salve,
and a vial of abortifacient—and still have enough to make three or four kegs of
tamarind ale. If she didn’t harvest them quickly, the birds might feast on them
first. Her cadre of laughing gulls forgot their training as messengers and
spies every spring to gorge on ripe tamarind pods.

While
she stood there, one fluttered to a branch at her head. Seaweed affixed a lace
murex shell to its leg.

“What’s
this, Ai?”

Ana
slipped a small pair of scissors from the bag at her waist and snipped the
seaweed. The lace murex dropped into her palm. She fingered it, turning it over
and studying its lacy spines and ridges. Then she rubbed it around her palm
several times, humming and chanting under her breath. When she’d released the
message, she put the shell into the bag. The gull cocked its head and opened
its beak, laughing at her.