The island was coming into view now and I looked at it because there was nothing else to do and … okay.Okay.
That was a cliff.
A dark volcanic rock going straight up out of the water, draped in jungle so dense and green it was almost aggressive about it, the kind of green that didn't exist in Austin and was making a point about that. Below the cliff was a beach. Black sand. Not dark, not grey —black,like someone had poured ink on it and then the afternoon light had gotten involved and turned it warm and amber and honestly kind of gorgeous.
The water in the cove was the exact color of sea glass held up to the sun.
This was extremely rude given the circumstances.
I wanted a beach vacation the way you wanted a concept. Theideaof a beach vacation — the drinks, the float, the particular spiritual experience of having nowhere to be. I burned in forty minutes flat and I had complicated feelings about sand as a texture and I had booked Las Palmas because it was the most aggressively relaxing option available, the kind of resort that handed you a towel when you arrived and pointed you toward a pool with a swim-up bar and left you alone.
I had rescheduled this trip four times. Since January. I was going to do it if it killed me.
It was killing me a little, actually.
The ferry docked against a small wooden pier made of three planks and a rusted cleat, the kind of dock that had been built by someone who waspretty sureit would hold. I picked up my carry-on and walked down the gangplank into heat that was soft and thick and smelled like salt and flowers. There was one woman waiting at the dock.
She was in her sixties, wearing a loose linen dress the color of the sea in shallow water. Arms folded with the particular ease of someone who had stopped being surprised by anythingapproximately thirty years ago and had made a full peace with this. She looked at me with warm dark eyes and the beginning of a smile, and I thought: she already knows how this conversation goes.
"Hi," I said. "I think I got on the wrong ferry."
"Yes," she said.
"I’m Marisol. I'm supposed to be at Las Palmas. Is there a—"
"Same ferry comes back Tuesday," she said. Patient. Kind. Utterly unmoved.
I did the math. Tuesday. I counted on my fingers like a person who had temporarily forgotten how calendars worked. Seven days. Seven days on the wrong side of an island that didn't have a swim-up bar, with the clothes in my carry-on, which were three days' worth of clothes because myrealclothes were in Miami.
"I have a room," the woman said. "Good view. Dinner at seven. Come."
She picked up my bag and started walking, up a path that curved away from the dock into the trees. I looked at the dock. I looked at the path. I thought about the logistics of asking someone for a taxi and then the logistics of finding a road and then the logistics of arriving somewhere unfamiliar and having to explain myself again.
I had no choice but to followed her.
Sometimes the obstacle was not the practical one.
***
Her name was Tina, and the place was called Casa Oscura, and I understood immediately why it wasn't on any app I had ever used.
There was no slick website. There was no booking widget. There was a hand-painted wooden sign at the path that saidCasa Oscura — 6 habitacionesin faded blue letters, and thewordbienvenidosunderneath in smaller script, and the feeling of a place that knew exactly what it was and had no interest in explaining itself to people who wouldn't understand anyway.
My room had wooden shutters that latched with a hook. A ceiling fan with a pull chain. A rag rug on the tile floor in colors that should have clashed but didn't. And a window aimed directly at the cove.
I stood at the window and looked at the water and thought: okay.Okay.This was not what I had planned. But the view was doing something to the part of me that had been clenched for two years, and the air smelled like nothing I had a name for. Tina was already banging around in a kitchen somewhere producing smells that made my airport granola bar feel like a distant bad dream.
***
The drink was pink and cold and it tasted like passionfruit and rum and something underneath that I couldn't name — smoky and sweet at once, landing in my chest like a warm hand pressing on something that had been tight for a long time without my noticing.
"What is it called?" I asked, when Tina brought it out to the terrace.
"No te preocupes," she said —don't worry about it— and went back inside.
Fair enough.
