OUT OF THE SIERRA, INTO THE TROPICS. STATE OF VERACRUZ. She had a backpack now, containing several changes of clothes, a toothbrush, a stick of deodorant, and some travel-sized soaps and shampoos, and she shouldered her pack and disembarked from the bus into a beachside community that seemed as right a place as any other. Night climbed from the east on the shoulders of rain clouds. She was thinking of Jonah, and she bought a postcard from a stand in a little snack shop. She wanted him to know she was all right, and she wanted to believe he could hold this postcard from her in his hands and be all right, too.
Luz received directions to the nearest youth hostel from the shop’s cashier, but first she wanted to see the Gulf. She had never seen the sea before. The air smelled like a storm and saltwater. Orbs of humidity gathered to the sodium-vapor lamps. There were no stars, no moon. The wall of cloud silently pulsed with lightning, teasing out its depths. She crossed the final street and took off her sneakers and squeezed the cool sand beneath her toes. She could just begin to see the white spit of foam in the black gulf when torrential rain began to fall.
Luz ran to shelter beneath a wooden gazebo. She sat at the picnic table beneath it and watched the storm. Luz had seen the news, knew what was happening off the Louisiana coast. Thinking about Louisiana made her think of her father. She hoped he was okay. She hoped he was finding his way. The cardboard and glass detritus of people’s lunches lay scattered across the picnic table, and Luz reached and spun an empty pint of whiskey, watched it come to rest parallel to the shoreline, pointing south.