The woman called to the girl in the kitchen, Marisol. Marisol appeared at once, pausing only to brush a few loose strands of hair from her eyes. He thought he saw her smile, as if she recognized him.
“Bienvenido.”
The words, appearing out of nowhere, sounded like a name: Ben Venida, garbled in Texas drawl. Michael Boni turned to find the source striding toward him down the corridor. The man was dressed in khaki cargo shorts and a white linen shirt. Fit and tanned, with tousled, sandy blond hair. A shark’s tooth dangled from a leather lace around his neck.
“Me llamo Shim,” the man said. He took Michael Boni’s hand as if he were bestowing a prize. “Y usted?”
“I don’t speak Spanish,” Michael Boni said.
“No kidding!” Shim looked delighted. “It’s nice to see a fellow countryman.” Shim motioned toward the empty street and the empty restaurant. “I was beginning to wonder if there’s some sort of plague here no one told me about.” His smile framed rows of bleached white teeth. “Well, people don’t know what they’re missing.”
Michael Boni nodded, turning away.
“The señora will take good care of you,” Shim said, aiming a grin at the old woman, who in turn regarded him with a complete absence of expression.
The girl leaned over one of the tables, wiping a circle on the plastic tablecloth.
Shim pointed to Michael Boni’s lone bag. “Traveling solo?”
He nodded.
“Too bad,” Shim said. “Such a romantic spot. The sunsets are beautiful.”
Shim was constantly moving. In an instant, he was behind the bar. “You pour your own here.” As Shim lifted a bottle from the shelf, the señora clenched the towel draped over her shoulder, narrowing her eyes.
Shim hoisted his glass. “Let me buy you a drink.”
Michael Boni picked up his bag. “Maybe later.” The señora was moving down the corridor, and he started after her, happy to have an excuse to get away.
When they reached his room, the señora opened the door with a bump of her hip. With a few waves of her hand, she revealed the room’s amenities: a shower stall without a curtain, a bureau with one drawer, the switch for the ceiling fan. The only decoration was a ceramic crucifix nailed to the wall.
They were in the bathroom, the señora pantomiming how to use the electric shower, when footsteps paused outside his door. Michael Boni heard the slap of bare feet going up the concrete stairs.
Michael Boni unpacked and washed the dust from his face. When he passed through the restaurant on his way to the street a few minutes later, the dining room was once again empty. The street was empty, too.
A familiar voice called out from above. “Change your mind about that drink?” Propped up on the hammock, Shim once again raised his glass.
“Later,” Michael Boni said.
Shim smiled and set the glass on his chest. “Don’t think I’ll stop asking.”
The beach was a block from the hotel. There Michael Boni saw just how unvisited the village truly was. By the water’s edge, two lone children were playing, forming and crushing mounds of wet sand. Beyond the tide line, their parents were shaking out their belongings and cramming them into a large knit bag.
The beach was at least a mile long, far larger than the village itself. At the top of the dune, a boardwalk stretched a few hundred feet in each direction. Directly in the middle lay a stack of folded wooden beach chairs and a concession stand. Inside, an old woman was closing the shutters. A boy approached carrying more chairs up from the beach. Down by the water, an old man in rolled pants secured the last of the umbrella canopies.
Michael Boni headed north, and when the boardwalk ended, he continued along the dune. Soon the entire village was behind him. He sat in the sand and watched the ocean for a while, hypnotized by the waves. A breeze crept inland. The air had quickly turned cool. He untied his boots. The stain and varnish on the leather assumed a new brilliance against the sand. He dug his feet in, feeling the day’s heat buried like the coals of a dying fire.
The sun was setting into the ocean. Birds were singing in the trees along the shoreline, little black birds with streaks of yellow on their wings. Michael Boni thought of Priscilla, how happy she must be. Now she had the entire house to destroy, all by herself. And for the chicks, there was the garage and the yard and Clementine to watch them and all the garden scraps they could eat.
He wondered if any of them would even notice he was gone.
In the restaurant that night, the patrons were villagers, dressed in well-worn jeans and faded slacks. Shim had left his perch on the balcony. Michael Boni selected for himself an empty table by the sidewalk. No one seemed to notice him.
A loud, boisterous group had gathered in the far corner. In the center sat a heavy-set man in a wide-brimmed straw hat, face and arms a ruddy brown. He looked as though he’d just come in from the fields. The others listened, occasionally laughing, as the man told a story. Michael Boni could make out only some of the words, not enough to follow along.
After a few minutes, Marisol came over and wiped off the tablecloth.
“How are you?” she said in halting English, smiling down at him.
“Okay.”
“You are from the United States?” When Michael Boni didn’t answer, she said, “I have a cousin in the United States.”
Michael Boni nodded, reaching for his water glass.
“I want to go to the United States someday.”
“Is this from a bottle?” he said.
Marisol took the glass and gazed at it a moment.
“I want to go to New York City,” she said. “Or maybe Los Angeles. I want to make clothes.” Still holding the glass, Marisol stepped back from the table and turned to the side. “You see?” she said. “I make this.”
A plain blue dress with a sort of gold brocade sash at the waist.
“It’s nice,” Michael Boni said.
“Are you from New York City?” She extracted a laminated menu from under her arm.
“No.”
“I return.” And she and his water glass disappeared into the kitchen.
He knew enough to be able to make his way through the menu. The names were familiar, but there was no pozole. The specialty here seemed to be fish. He wondered if that was what these people were, these locals — fishermen.
In a minute, Marisol was back, the water glass she set down in front of him identical to the one she’d taken away.
“Yes?” she said.
Michael Boni pointed to the taquitos, the cheapest item on the menu.
“Oh, no, no, no,” Marisol patted his arm and took his menu. “I bring you something better.”
“That’s okay,” he said, trying to stop her before she walked away.
“Okay!” she said happily.
She came back fifteen minutes later with an enormous platter, an entire fish, a red snapper, head and all, buried in mounds of tomatoes and olives and capers and chiles.
“Better?” she said, grinning.
He stared at the melted, milky white eyes of the fish, feeling suddenly nostalgic for vegetable stew.
After a dinner he barely touched, Michael Boni returned to the beach.
From the top of the dune, he looked down to find that the tide had nearly reached the line of umbrellas in the sand. The canvas canopies rustled in the breeze, the moon lighting them from behind, outlining them in pale yellow flames.