Or it might be that you hadn’t.
She remembered the day the snapshot was taken.
Fourth of July, she was nine or ten, a friend of her father’s had brought fireworks up from the border, fat little sizzler rockets she had not liked and sparklers that made fireflies in the hot desert twilight.
Half a margarita and I’m already flying, her mother had kept saying.
This is all right, her father had kept saying. Who needs the goombahs, we got our own show right here.
We had a life and now we don’t and just because I’m your daughter I’m supposed to like it and I don’t.
What’s going to happen now, her father had said on the day she brought him home to the house in Sweetwater. Goddamn. Ellie. What’s going to happen now.
I’ll take care of it, she had said.
By eight o’clock on the morning of July 2 she had already checked out of the Hotel Colonial and was in the taxi on her way to the San José airport. By eight o’clock on the morning of July 2 she did not yet know that her father’s obituary had appeared in that morning’s Miami Herald, but she did know something else.
This was the third thing she already knew.
She had asked for her passport when she checked out.
Her own passport.
The passport she had left at the desk the night she arrived.
For the authorities, for safekeeping.
The clerk was quite certain that it had been returned to her.
Por cierto, he had repeated. Certísimo.
The airport taxi had been waiting outside.
If you would look again, she had said. An American passport. McMahon. Elena McMahon.
The clerk had opened the safe, removed several passports, fanned them on the desk, and shrugged.
None of the passports were American.
In the mailboxes behind the clerk she could see room keys, a few messages.
The box for her room was empty.
She considered this.
The clerk raised an index finger, tapped his temple, and smiled. Tengo la solución, he said. Since the passport had certainly been returned to her, the passport would doubtless be found in her room. Perhaps she would be so kind as to leave an address.
I don’t think so, she had said, and walked to the open door.
Buen viaje, Señora Meyer, the clerk had called as she was getting into the airport taxi.
8
When she landed on the island at one-thirty on the afternoon of July 2 the sky was dark with clouds and the runway already swamped with the rain that would fall intermittently for the next week. The Costa Rican pilot had mentioned this possibility. “A few bands of showers that will never dampen the spirit of any vacationer,” was how the pilot had put it in his English-language update from the front cabin. It had occurred to Elena as she sheltered the unfamiliar passport under her T-shirt and made a run for the terminal that these bands of showers would not in fact dampen the spirit of any vacationer, since there did not seem to be any vacationer in sight.
No golf bag, no tennis racket, no sunburned child in tow.
No anxious traveler with four overstuffed tote bags and one boarding pass for the six-seater hop to the more desirable island.
There did not even seem to be any airport employee in sight.
Only the half-dozen young men, wearing the short-sleeved uniforms of what seemed to be some kind of local military police, lounging just inside the closed glass doors to the terminal.
She had stopped, rain streaming down her face, waiting for the doors to slide open automatically.
When the doors did not open she had knocked on the glass.
After what seemed a considerable length of time, once she had been joined outside the glass door by the crew from her flight, one of the men inside had detached himself from the others and inserted a key to open the door.
Thank you, she had said.
Move on, he had said.
She had moved on.
Gate after gate was unlit. The moving sidewalks were not moving, the baggage carousels were silent. Metal grilles had been lowered over the doors to the coffee bars and concessions, even the shop that promised OPEN 24 HOURS DUTY-FREE. She had steeled herself on the plane to make direct eye contact when she went through immigration but the lone immigration official had examined the passport without interest, stamped it, and handed it back to her, never meeting her eyes.
“Where you stay,” he had said, pen poised to complete whatever form required this information.
She had tried to think of a plausible answer.
“You mean while I’m here,” she had said, stalling. “You mean what hotel.”
“Correct, correct, what hotel.” He was bored, impatient. “Ramada, Royal Caribe, Intercon, what.”
“Ramada,” she had said.
She had gotten a taxi for the Ramada and then, once the doors were closed, told the driver that she had changed her mind and wanted to go to the Intercon. She had registered at the Intercon as Elise Meyer. As soon as she got upstairs she called Barry Sedlow’s beeper and left the number of the hotel.
Twenty minutes later the telephone had rung.
She had picked it up but said nothing.
So far so good, Barry Sedlow said. You’re where you should be.
She thought about this.
She had left the number of the hotel on his beeper but she had not left the number of her room.
To get through to the room he had to know how she was registered.
Had to know that the passport was in the name Elise Meyer.
She said nothing.
Just sit tight, he said. Someone’s going to be in touch.
Still she said nothing.
Losing radio contact, he said. Hel-lo-oh.
There had been a silence.
Okay I get it, he had said finally. You don’t want to talk, don’t talk. But do yourself a favor? Relax. Go down to the pool, tip the boy to set up a chaise, get some sun, order one of those drinks with the cherries and the pineapple and the little umbrellas, you’re there as a tourist, try acting like one, just tell the operator to switch your calls, don’t worry about their finding you, they’re going to find you all right.
She had done this. She had not spoken to Barry Sedlow but she had done what he said to do.
I do not know why (another instance of what “changed” her, what “motivated” her, what made her do it) but she had put down the telephone and waited for a break in the rain and then done exactly what Barry Sedlow said to do.
At four that afternoon and again at noon the next day and again at noon of the day after that, she had bought the local paper and whatever day-old American papers she could find in the coffee shop and gone down to the Intercon pool and tipped the boy to set up a chaise within range of the pool shack telephone. She had sat on the chaise under the gray sky and she had read the newspapers all the way through, one by one, beginning with the local paper and progressing to whatever Miami Herald or New York Times or USA Today had come in that morning. She read on the chaise at the Intercon pool about the dock strike in the Grenadines. She read on the chaise at the Intercon pool about the demonstration in Pointe-à-Pitre to protest the arrest of the leader of the independence movement. She read in a week-old USA Today about the effect of fish oil on infertile pandas in distant zoos. The only stories she avoided outright, there on the chaise at the Intercon pool, were those having to do with the campaign. She moved past any story having to do with the campaign. She preferred stories having to do with natural forces, stories about new evidence of reef erosion in the Maldives, say, or recently released research on the deep cold Pacific welling of El Niño.