Marisol
Okay so here's the thing about me: I was on my phone.
I know. Iknow.I was the person who ran onboarding sessions calledPresent & Engaged: Why Your Phone Can Waitand I got on the wrong ferry because I was texting my mother back about whether I had remembered sunscreen, which,yes, Mom, I had remembered sunscreen. I was going to a beach, I was not an idiot, I was just, as it turned out, an idiot.
The sign at the back of the boat saidLa Boca — Playa Oscura.My boarding pass saidLas Palmas Resort & Marina.I had read both documents three times in the hope that one of them would have the decency to change. They were united in their refusal.
Current status: twenty minutes out to sea, wrong direction, operating on airport rum and the specific dead calm of a person who had passed through every stage of panic and come out the other side into something that looked a lot like acceptance if you squinted.
I had been awake for twenty-two hours. My checked bag was in Miami. I had a flight home in eight days and a resort booking I was apparently not going to use and a list of everything that had gone wrong that currently stood at eight items and was going to stand at eight items because I was not adding anything else to that list, I was done, the list was closed, the list was a crime scene and I was leaving it for the investigators.
Eight items:
The 6 AM flight delayed four hours because of a bird strike, which, fine, birds exist, I cannot be angry at birds
The layover in Atlanta during which I ate a nine-dollar granola bar and sat next to a man who wanted to talk about his divorce for forty-five minutes
The checked bag which contained literally all of my real clothes and also my good shampoo somehow making it to Miami without me
The airport in San Juan that was, for reasons I did not have the energy to examine, playing Christmas music in July
The connecting flight in which I had a middle seat between two men who had each individually decided they were entitled to the armrests and were conducting a silent war over them that I was physically caught in the middle of
The taxi driver who took me to the wrong ferry terminal
Getting on the wrong ferry
Still being on it
