“Hey! You got any pens?”
The voice that boomed this interrogative, in English, in a Spanish-speaking country, belonged to one of the two idiots lined up behind me at Super 2001. They were Texans. Too impatient to wait till he got to the checkstand, he addressed the manager, who was counting down the other till.
“Plumas,” I said.
“Plumas,” he yelled to the manager, who merely pointed to our cashier. Super has just those two registers, with the front double doors between them.
“Think of feathers, plumage, quills,” I said. “Where are you from?”
“Dallas.”
It struck me that people in Dallas, especially nice suburbanites like him, would have a shit fit if a Mexican bellowed out, “Escuche! Tiene algunas plumas?” The grace of the Ticos, daily putting up with such indignities, extends beyond measure.
–—
Yesterday’s beach sunset was as beautiful and momentous as ever. And once again I noticed the international surf kids. Sitting in two neat rows parallel to the water’s edge, they passed around a liter of rum. I didn’t see the English or Scottish lads I’d spoken with the other night, but the blonde American hellion with the great tattoo on her left shoulder recognized and greeted me. I said, “It’s the sunset club.” The girl at the end of the back row held up a can of alcoholic refreshment called Bamboo and with an American voice said, “The Bamboo Club.” Another American girl took great delight in explaining how her father keeps on his desk a picture of her extending her middle finger at the sunset, and she zestfully pantomimed.
Afterward, having already dined in the apartment (homemade potato salad, Mexican sausages, half an avocado), I went to Porto Fino, ordered a beer, and read al Día, one of the national dailies. Maria was once again my waitress. Friday was supposed to be her day off, but she’d traded with another staff member. Maria is from Bogotá. As for so many other Latin Americans—the Argentine woman who’s managing Hotel Chocolate, the Nicaraguan construction workers, the Colombian and Nicaraguan prostitutes—Costa Rica is the Land of Opportunity. I’ve had the “Costa Rica” breakfast two or three times at Porto Fino (beans and rice, scrambled eggs, glop of yogurt, fried banana), so I know Maria opens up the place at seven o’clock. She works fifteen hours, till ten o’clock at night. Six days, 90 hours per week. Dealing with American tourists (she doesn’t speak English). And her dark eyes still sparkle.
On my last evening visit to Porto Fino I’d ordered a Hawaiian pizza. When finished, I asked for the leftover slices to be wrapped and then pointed to the illuminated Briko popsicles display, which looks like a TV screen, and told her the program was getting old so would she mind having the management change the channel? Once she realized I was joking, she let loose with a real laugh.
Last night, after carefully studying the al Día page with pictures of models in skimpy costumes, I tore out the column headlined “Braided Cowgirl.” The picture presents a pigtailed lovely wearing a ludicrously frilled and beribboned blue bandeau top with a blue micro skirt trimmed in bicolor ribbon at the hem and heavily belted and extravagantly buckled just below the hips; the Pilsen beer logo is applied over her left nipple and just inside the uppermost part of the left thigh. I motioned to Maria.
“Otra cerveza?” she asked.
No, I was fine on the beer. “Look, here’s your new work uniform.”
She shrieked hilariously and said, “You buy it for me, I’ll wear it. But it needs boots, too.”
I told her I was calling right away.
–—
This morning at the beach I greeted Luz as “the first light of the day.” Caramel wasn’t with her because a boy from the restaurant had taken her home for the weekend. Luz wore her usual scarf and dark blue skirt. Her sleeveless print blouse looked familiar from Thursday, when we had last met. I’ve noticed that Maria Josefina, the orange juice queen, seems to own just two blouses. These ladies would probably scoff at the contents of our closets. Just the number of jackets and coats would astonish them: jackets for working in the yard, for 50-degrees days, for 30-degree days, for rain, for dressing up, for motorcycle riding.
A group from Omaha’s Henry Doorly Zoo has been here since Wednesday night and is leaving today for Monteverde’s rain forest. I’d briefly met one of them on Thursday morning. Today I noticed a pleasant looking woman of about 30, rather primly dressed, chalk-white skin, gazing at the bay. Referring to her Canon Eos Rebel XSi digital camera and 18-to-55 millimeter zoom lens, I pointed to the bay and said, “Take a picture.” She said she’d taken plenty of pictures. She turned out to be a graduate of South High School (and presumably a local college) and works at Mutual of Omaha in customer service. I only identify her in this blog by the initial D., for disappointment. Despite her pleasant appearance, she was the gloomiest person I’ve encountered in Tamarindo: a lifelong Nebraskan unenthusiastic about the place and unintrigued by the chance encounter with another native Omahan. She had been frightened by crocodiles during the group’s boating expedition in Tortuguero wildlife refuge. And yesterday’s outing to Santa Rosa national park had merely been hot. I was out of film today, but seeing her nice kit, I asked if she would take a picture of me and e-mail it. “I don’t know how to do that,” she said.
I left the sand at 7.15 a.m., just as a bus labeled San Judas Tadeo unloaded Tico passengers of all ages. They were opening their beach bags. I asked a girl where they were from and she said Cartago. This city in Costa Rica’s populous central valley was settled by the Spanish in the 16th century. It’s about 300 miles away, not an easy drive through the mountains. "You must have left really early in the morning," I said. Several replied: Eleven o’clock last night. And eagerness in every face.
