Already Gone (25 page)

The next morning we wake up early and get back on the road. I drive, and Diane sits in the passenger seat with the map open on her lap. Outside, the day is bright and the air is clear, and the sun shines warm on my skin.

We reach the ocean that afternoon and stop for lunch at a seafood shack on the beach. We take our food out to sit on the sand and stare at the water.

I don’t eat right away, and Diane asks me what I’m thinking.

“This is a first for me.”

“What is?”

“This.” I point out at the blue water and the white waves. “I’ve never seen the ocean.”

“You’re kidding.”

I shake my head. “I’m not.”

Diane smiles, sets her food aside. “So, what do you think of it?”

“It’s beautiful.”

“Are you going to miss the mountains?”

“Probably, but I’ll adapt. How about you?”

“I won’t miss them.”

“You sound confident.”

“There’s a trick to never being homesick,” she says. “I learned it when I was a kid.”

“What’s that?”

Diane pauses, says, “Never have a home.”

We drive south for a few more hours, and the view changes from sandy beaches to rocky cliffs to palm forests, thick and green.

Eventually, we pass a sign for El Regalo.

Diane looks down at the map and says, “There should be a turn up here somewhere. Look for a road.”

“Don’t we need to go into town?”

She holds up the map and points to the line Doug traced for us to follow. “It’s before the town.”

I don’t argue, and when she tells me to turn, I do.

The road is unpaved, and a thick trail of dust lifts into the air behind us as we drive. We pass a line of one-level concrete houses with a group of children playing out front. They stop to watch us go by.

One little girl waves.

I wave back.

The road curves, and then the trees open and I see a haze of blue water in the distance.

“There’s the ocean,” I say. “The road ends.”

Diane doesn’t look up from the map. “There’s no address. His note says to turn left before we hit the beach, then look for the lawn jockey.”

I laugh.

Diane turns to me. “He’s not serious, is he?”

“What do you think?”

She shakes her head and mumbles to herself.

The road stops at a line of sand dunes just before the beach, and I turn left in front of a row of stone houses that stretch south along the water. They’re bigger than the concrete homes we saw on the way in, but not by much.

Diane says, “Is that it?”

She points to a two-level house with a small, sun-bleached statue out front. It’s a man wearing jockey boots and a riding cap and holding a rusted metal ring out in front of him.

“Has to be.”

There’s no driveway, so I pull off the road and park on the lawn. We get out of the SUV and stretch, staring at the house.

“Doesn’t look too bad.”

Diane crosses the lawn, past the jockey, and stops at the door. She turns the knob, locked, then walks around to the window. She looks inside, using her hands to shield her eyes from the sun.

“There’s furniture in here,” she says. “Are you sure this is the place?”

I look around at the other houses. None of them have lawn jockeys out front. I take the key Doug gave me from my pocket and say, “There’s only one way to find out.”

Diane steps aside, and I slide the key into the lock. It turns easily, and the door opens.

I look at Diane. “I guess this is the place.”

“It’s clean.” Diane crosses through the room. “When Doug said he hasn’t been down here in years, I was thinking the worst.”

“I should find the caretaker and tell him we’re here.” I take the letter Doug gave me before we left out of my back pocket and read the name written on the front. “Oscar Guzman.”

“Where is he?”

“He runs the market in town.”

Diane nods, then turns and starts wandering around the house. There’s not much to it. The main room has two hard couches and a small table with a chess set on top. The kitchen has a sink and a reach-in refrigerator next to a walk-up bar and two stools.

“There’s no stove,” Diane says. “What kind of house doesn’t have a stove?”

I shrug, then walk past her to a set of full-length curtains covering two sliding glass doors. I pull them open, and for a second, I forget to breathe.

I feel Diane come up behind me.

“Oh my God,” she says. “It’s beautiful.”

She’s right, it is.

The glass doors open onto a redwood porch and a set of stairs leading down to a thin walking trail that snakes around rocks and over sand dunes toward a rolling line of teal blue water and waves breaking white over white sand.

“You want to go down there?”

“Already?”

I look at Diane. “You have other plans?”

“I thought you wanted to find the caretaker.”

“We can walk up the beach into town and introduce ourselves.”

“Are you sure you’re up for it?”

“The exercise will do me good.”

Diane slides the glass door open and steps out.

I follow her.

The breeze coming in off the sea is clean and cool. I breathe deep and taste the salt on my lips.

Diane taps my shoulder and points to the corner of the porch and a large outdoor gas grill. “There’s our stove.”

I smile. “Mystery solved.”

Diane laughs, takes my hand. “Come on, let’s go.”

I motion to the stairs, and we start down the trail toward the sea.

Once we reach the ocean, we stop and kick off our shoes. The sand is hot, and Diane skips down to the waterline. She’s laughing, and the sound warms me.

The beach is deserted.

I stand on the wet sand, letting the water cover my feet. “Where is everyone?”

“Who cares,” Diane says. “I hope it stays like this. I can’t wait to go in.”

“Not me.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t swim.”

Diane takes my hand. “Maybe I can change that.”

I laugh. “Maybe you can.”

We start walking south toward town, stopping every few feet to pick up a shell or piece of driftwood to throw back into the sea. The sun is burning low on the horizon, reflecting a rusted line of fire across the surface of the water, all the way to the shore.

I put my arm around Diane’s shoulder. “I think I could get used to this.”

She looks down at her feet as she walks, silent.

“You know, this could be a new start,” I say. “We can put everything behind us and go back to the beginning.”

“You think so?”

“Why not?”

Diane smiles, then steps closer and leans into me as we walk. “Let’s just wait and see.”

I don’t like her answer, but I let it go.

We walk for a while longer. The closer we get to town, the more houses we see along the coast. A few are white and modern, but most are older. These are dark and weatherworn, and they blend in to the dunes, hidden by sand and trees.

There is a wooden signpost dug into the beach up ahead. We passed another one by the house, but I’d been distracted by the view and didn’t pay attention.

Now, looking up and down the coast, I notice several identical signs, each one spaced about a hundred yards apart.

I stop and read the words stenciled in green spray paint across the front.

“
Ninguna Natacion
!”

Then under it.

“
Corriente de Resaca
!”

Diane is next to me, reading over my shoulder.

“What does it say?”

“It says we can’t swim.” She pauses, frowns. “There’s a riptide. The currents are too strong.”

I turn and look out at the ocean. The water is so blue and so beautiful that it’s hard to believe it could be dangerous.

We keep walking, but now we’re both quiet.

After a little while, Diane stops and says, “I think I want to go back. I’m tired.”

I stop and look down the beach toward the town.

“Are you sure?” I ask. “We’re almost there.”

“You go ahead,” she says. “I’ll meet you.”

I could keep going, but the sound of her voice, distant and detached, worries me.

I decide we’ve gone far enough.

“This can wait,” I say. “Let’s go back.”

Diane smiles and reaches for my hand.

We turn and walk back down the beach together.

The next day we drive into El Regalo and introduce ourselves to Oscar Guzman at the town market. He’s older than I expected, and he watches us closely as we talk, as if he’s expecting us to steal something.

It’s not until I mention Doug’s name that his eyes grow wide and he smiles, grand and welcoming, showing a thin scatter of yellow teeth.

“Mr. Doug?”

I take the letter from my pocket and hand it over. Oscar looks at it like it’s dirty and drops it unread on a stack of wooden vegetable crates next to his chair.

“How long?”

I look at Diane. “How long what?”

She says something to him in Spanish, and he answers.

“He wants to know how long we’re going to be at the house,” she says. “He wants to know if Doug will keep sending him money while we’re here.”

“Tell him I’ll make sure he does.”

Diane tells him, and Oscar smiles. He reaches out and shakes my hand, talking fast. I can’t understand a word, but Diane follows along without a problem.

She translates as she listens.

“He says the roof leaks in the front of the house, and not to use the outside shower.”

“There’s an outside shower?”

“He says it’s next to the porch, and it’s for rinsing off after swimming.” She listens. “And it’s broken.”

“We can’t go in the water anyway,” I say. “Ask him about the signs on the beach.”

Diane asks, and when she finishes talking, Oscar points west toward the water and shakes his finger in the air, as if scolding a child. “
Natacion
.”

I nod. “I know, the riptide.”

“
Si
.” He nods. “
Tiburones
.”

I look at Diane.

Oscar leans forward and slaps his hands together in front of me, one on top of the other. He laughs, then does it again, making a loud chomping noise each time.

I step back.

Oscar smiles, says something to Diane.

I wait for her to translate.

“He says the water will carry you out to the sharks.” She pauses, listens. “And he thinks he scared you.”

“He didn’t.”

She looks at me, her eyes reflecting the light. “You did jump.”

“I think he’s crazy.” I tap the side of my head, then point to him and say, “Loco.”

Oscar laughs, loud and rolling, then takes a brown paper bag from a shelf next to his chair and fills it with avocados. He hands the bag to me and says, in perfect English, “Welcome to El Regalo.”

That evening, I’m sitting on the porch watching the sunset when Diane comes out carrying a cardboard box.

“Look what I found.” She sets the box on the ground at my feet and opens the top flaps. “Books, lots of them, and there are three or four more boxes in the closet.”

I reach down and take one out. The pages are yellow with age, and the cover is missing. I turn it around and read the name on the spine.

“Day Keene?” I drop the book back in the box then grab a few more and read the names. “Fredric Brown, Ed Lacy, Horace McCoy.”

“Have you heard of them?”

“Some of them,” I say. “These are really old.”

“But they’re in good shape,” Diane says. “Readable, at least.”

I pick up another and flip through the pages.

“What’s that one?”

I look at the spine, say, “James M. Cain.”

“Do you know it?”

I tell her I do, then lean back and open to the first page.

For the next couple weeks, things are good. Diane and I spend most of our time sitting around the house, reading Doug’s collection of pulp paperbacks, or walking along the beach. The days are peaceful, my body is healing, and for a while I let myself relax and believe everything is normal.

We don’t talk about what happened back home, and I don’t push the subject. I still keep Doug’s .38 on the bedside table, and she doesn’t say a word about it.

Things have changed.

Sometimes I’ll catch her staring up at the sky or out at the water, lost in thought, and I’ll ask what’s on her mind. Usually she doesn’t answer, but if she does, it’s always the same thing.

She asks me if I think Gabby is looking for us.

I tell her he’s not, and I believe it.

Most of the time this helps, and Diane will come back from whatever dark place she’s in, and things will be good again for a while.

Other times it doesn’t help at all.

“How do you know?”

“If he was looking for us, he’d have found us by now.”

This stops her, and I see her struggling to find the words. “No one knows we’re here but Doug.”

“That’s right.”

“You said he wouldn’t tell anyone.”

“He won’t,” I say. “But Gabby is different. If he really wanted to find us, he’d find us.”

Diane turns away and walks to the glass doors. She looks out at the ocean, arms folded across her chest. “I don’t think I can take this much longer.”

“Take what?”

“Not knowing.”

I don’t say anything.

She looks back at me. “Will you do something for me?”

“What?”

“Call Doug,” she says. “Find out what’s going on, see if he’s heard anything.”

“I can’t,” I say. “I told him I wouldn’t call for at least a month. It’s only been a few weeks.”

“Please, Jake. I need to know.” I can hear the tears behind her voice, getting closer to the surface with each word. “Every time a car passes, my heart starts racing so fast that I think it’s going to explode.”

“And calling Doug is going to make it better?”

“I think I saw a pay phone up the street,” she says. “You can call from there.”

“If I call, I’ll go into town this afternoon and call from the market,” I say. “But I think it’s a mistake.”

Diane stares at me, then says, “Are you mad at me?”

I shake my head and tell her I’m not, but we both know it’s a lie.

I’m standing outside the market holding the phone against my ear with my shoulder while I sort through a handful of coins, dropping them in the slot. When I’ve deposited enough money, I dial Doug’s number and wait.

The phone rings.

It sounds a million miles away.

I start thinking about what I’ll say when Doug answers. Nothing comes to me, and I can feel myself getting more and more angry with each ring. I realize that Doug put himself at risk to help us, and that calling him now, just to make Diane feel better, could be dangerous.

That thought is all it takes. I hang up after the third ring. I stare at the phone for a while, then turn and walk inside the shop to buy some fruit to take home.

Oscar is arranging tomatoes in a wooden crate. He sees me and nods. “Hello, Jake. Just you today?”

“Just me.” I can feel my bad mood spreading, covering me like a cloud passing in front of the sun. “What’s good today?”

“Everything, my friend.” Oscar holds up one of the tomatoes for me to see. “You like?”

“Sure,” I say. “I’ll take a couple.”

He picks out a few of the best ones and sets them on the counter in front of me. Then he touches his forehead with his fingers and says, “I have something else for you.”

I tell him I don’t need anything else, that the tomatoes are fine, but he waves me off and disappears behind a curtain in the back of the store.

For a second, I think about leaving money on the counter and walking out, but I can’t bring myself to do it.

A few minutes later, Oscar comes out with a package. It’s about the size of a shoebox, and it’s wrapped in white butcher paper. He sets it next to the tomatoes.

“This came yesterday.” His voice drops to a whisper. “A private courier. It’s addressed to you.”

I feel something inside me drop away.

I turn the box around on the counter, and read the shipping label. I recognize the handwriting immediately.

“Are you okay?”

I look up at Oscar. “This came yesterday?”

He nods.

“Do you have a knife?”

Oscar takes a small paring knife from behind the counter and hands it to me. I use it to cut the tape away from the package, then I open the box and look inside. There’s a yellow Post-it note sitting on top. I pick it up and read.

“Something important?” Oscar asks.

I crumple the note and slide it into my pocket. “A gift,” I say. “From an old friend.”