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Relaxing should have been easy. It had been a long day, and it was not even noon. In the span of a few hours, Alexander had jogged several hundred yards to the shoreline, swam a great distance, towed in a rather limp body, and carried it back up the beach to his house. This triathlon was only missing a bicycle ride. But a young girl floating in the surf off his beach was not relaxing. Zero answers. Many ideas, but none were plausible. Until Mayte, who liked to be called May, woke up, there would be no answers.
Alexander showered and brewed a half pot of coffee. He sat in his favorite oversize recliner, staring out the double French doors at the back of the McMansion. On more than one occasion, he had the urge to go into his bedroom, wake May and start asking questions, but he resisted, knowing she needed to rest.
Alexander did all he could do. He examined the evidence, which consisted of one double-extra-large men’s T-shirt and a life jacket. The T-shirt was a common brand, standard V-neck T-shirt made in El Salvador. Being a two XL, he had to assume it was not the girl’s shirt.
The inflatable life jacket was more puzzling. It was a type-V floatation device meant for inshore use when paddling a kayak or sailboard. It was not for floating around in an ocean for long periods, although it had likely saved May’s life. This jacket was a West Marine brand, which didn’t provide any additional clues to the mystery.
The only other piece of evidence was the large treble hook Alexander pulled out of May’s hand. She might have been hooked before ending up in the water, but not likely. Galveston Bay is protected by two long jetties – the north and south. The north jetty is on the Bolivar side and extends nearly five miles into the gulf. May had to be in the water past the end of the jetties. She probably swam or floated close to them, tried to grab on but couldn’t. The jetties are made up of large rocks and chunks of granite which, after years in saltwater, are covered with barnacles, silt, seaweed, and slime. Even the most experienced swimmer at full strength would have a hard time grabbing a hold of a rock and pulling themself up.
Fishermen anchor off the end of the jetty and cast toward it, often hanging their hooks on a rock and breaking their line off. This would explain the treble hook in May’s hand, which was probably abandoned by a fisherman and found by the young girl when she tried to get a hold on a rock to pull herself to safety. Instead, the tide likely washed her around the jetty and toward Bolivar Peninsula, where Alexander found her floundering just off the beach.
He now had a good idea from where she came, but the bigger question still loomed – Why? What was she doing over five miles offshore? A boating accident made the most sense, but the fact she was wearing a non-approved personal floatation device under a T-shirt two times too big for her was disturbing. Did someone try to kill her?
The minutes seemed like hours as Alexander waited for the girl to awaken. Having a private investigator license and access to several law-enforcement databases, he searched for missing persons fitting May’s description. Nothing came up. He searched for boating accidents in the past forty-eight hours. Nada. No reported drownings.
Alexander entered Mayte Diaz into the various databases. Again, nothing. He Googled her name and was surprised to find that Mayte Diaz was a relatively common name. He found public servants, lawyers, a doctor, and a former model with that name. The search also retrieved several obituaries. Alexander checked out the former model.
The link took him to a Facebook page. The profile picture was a selfie of a young girl with wavy brown hair, wearing low-cut jeans and a bikini top. She was standing in front of a mirror, holding her cellphone in one hand and making some kind of gesture with the other. It wasn’t the Mayte Diaz he was looking for. He clicked the Search icon. Pages upon pages of results popped up, which surprised him more than the Google search. He thought Mayte, with an E, would be uncommon, maybe a handful at most.
Having little better to do while Mayte was sleeping, Alexander looked at every Mayte Diaz page on Facebook and found the list to be endless. To try and limit the results, he filtered the results to just Houston.
Houston was listed as the home to ten Mayte Diazes. From the profile picture displayed in the search results, none looked like May. He clicked on a few of the pages, just to be sure. The first was attractive and well-endowed but who, with a tattoo above her breast, could not have been his May.
Alexander looked at the remaining profiles. One girl was about the right age and had similar facial features, but her hair was extremely long. The picture had a current date. He was sure it was not his Mayte Diaz.
The search had been enlightening, but Alexander soon became bored. He knew he was just killing time and when the girl in his bed woke up, he would find out who she was and why she had been floating in the Gulf of Mexico.
Alexander stretched out in a recliner and closed his eyes. He wasn’t intending to sleep, but it had been a long and tiring day and soon he was out. Several hours had passed when the rapping on the window of the French door woke him. Before he could sit up or speak, the door opened and Bartholomew Epaphroditus Farnsworth the Third entered the room.
Bartholomew was a short, heavy-set man in his early forties who didn’t consider himself short and would promptly correct anyone who suggested it. “Five-ten is not short,” he would say. Men under six feet tall would agree with him. Those over six feet would let it go. His prematurely grey-streaked hair was tied in a ponytail, which made him look like a cross between Willie Nelson and Truman Capote, albeit a younger version of both.
For obvious reasons, Bartholomew didn’t care much for his name. He was not fond of “Bart,” as he was sometimes called when he was young. When Bartholomew was around age ten, Bart Simpson appeared on television. Ever since, Bartholomew had loathed the name Bart. When he started his freshman year of high school at age fourteen, Bartholomew decided he would be known as “Bat.” Bat Farnsworth.
“You asleep?” Bat asked. He didn’t recall ever seeing Alexander napping in the afternoon.
“Yeah. I must’ve dozed off. It’s been a long day.”
“Well, wake up. It’s seventeen hundred. Happy hour time.”
“Keep it down. There’s a girl asleep in my bed.”
“A girl?”
“Yes, a—”
“Yeah, I need to hear about this ‘long day’.”
“I wish. You aren’t going to believe this. But first, it’s time for happy hour. How ‘bout a Scotch?”
“Sounds good.”
Alexander filled two rocks glasses with ice and poured Glenlivet Founder’s Reserve single malt over the ice. He handed a glass to his friend and told him to sit. He had a story to tell him.
Bat sipped his whiskey and listened intently as Alexander recounted the events of the day – minus the intimate details of the shower. The story concluded about the time the first round of Scotch was finished.
“Refill?” Alexander asked.
“Of course.” Bat handed his glass to his friend.
Alexander refilled the glasses with ice and Scotch. “You know,” he said, handing Bat the drink, “I could speculate on how she ended up in the water, but why? The answers, at least some of them, are lying in the other room. I suggest we sit and drink until she wakes up.”
“Bat!” Alexander said, rather loudly when his friend did not respond.
“I’m sorry. Yes, I was thinking ‘bout the girl in your room. It’s hard not to.”
“Agreed. I know she needs rest. You don’t know how often I’ve wanted to go in and wake her to find out what the hell happened to her.”
“You’re correct in assuming she needs rest. No telling how long she was in the water. However, if you don’t wake her up soon, she could sleep until maybe midnight, maybe two or three in the morning. You don’t want her wandering around in the middle of the night. I think you should wake her, get some water and maybe a little food in her, and get some information out of her. If she’s that tired, she’d probably go back to sleep and sleep through the night. Worst case, she could leave. Disappear into the night, and you’d never get your answers.”
Alexander knew his friend was right and told him so.
“Also,” Bat continued, “you should be careful how you wake her. She’s in a strange place and may or may not remember what happened or how she got here. It could take a few minutes for her brain to come around. She might go berserk on you, especially if the room is dark when you wake her.”
“Any suggestions?”
“Bucket of cold water in the face would do it.” Bat laughed.
“Any suggestions that won’t scare the shit out of her? Any serious suggestions?”
“What’d you say her name was?”
“She said, ‘Myday,’ spelled with an ‘e.’ I wasn’t sure what she meant, but I Googled ‘Myday’ and variances, and a popular name came up, ‘Mayte,’ with an ‘e.’ I also found where ‘Mayte’ is pronounced ‘My-day,’ I think her name is Mayte Diaz, but she said people call her ‘May’. At least I’m pretty sure she said ‘May’, like the month.”
“You’ve been bored today,” Bat said after listening to his long-winded answer.
“Nothing else to do.”
“Go to the door, knock on it gently, say her name softly, and ask if she’s awake. If you don’t get an answer, say her name louder. Keep saying it until you get a response. If you’re pronouncing it correctly, it will give her comfort. She may not know where she is, or who’s calling her name, but hearing her name will let her know it’s someone she can trust.”
Alexander nodded then walked to his bedroom door. Following Bat’s suggestion, he tapped on the door a few times, stuck his head in, and said, “May?” He waited for a second and repeated her name – twice. He called again, this time a little louder. A moan came from the bed.
“May, I’m sorry to wake you, but I think you should get up. You should have some water and maybe some food. You still haven’t eaten today.”
Another muted moan came from the bed, followed by a moment of silence. Finally, May stirred. “I’m awake. I do need to use the toilet.”
Alexander turned on the light, causing May to squint and shield her eyes.
“I hurt,” she said as her eyes adjusted.
“Where?” Alexander asked.
“Everywhere.”
Alexander knew she was not being flippant. From the girl’s physical condition, he knew she’d been in the ocean for several hours. She’d been bounced over barnacle-covered rocks, jabbed by a fishhook, and most likely stung by jellyfish. The only saving grace, if it could be called that, was she had been in the water at night. Had she spent only a few hours in the water during the day, she could be dealing with a first-degree, possibly second-degree, sunburn as well.
“Can you get up by yourself? The bathroom is there.” Alexander pointed toward the bathroom door.
“I...I’m not sure. Where are my clothes?”
“All you had was a T-shirt, and it was all chewed up. I’ll see if I can find you some clothes while you go to the bathroom.” He handed her an extra-large beach towel to cover herself and helped her out of bed. The towel started to fall, and she let go of Alexander to catch it. She appeared to be much more concerned with her modesty than she had been earlier that morning. Alexander took it as a good sign.
Alexander led her to the bathroom and asked if she could make it alone. When she nodded, he let her go, closed the door, and waited a moment to make sure she didn’t fall. Once he was reasonably sure she was okay, he went to the guestroom closet and looked through the boxes of clothes he had accumulated.
Alexander was not a good judge of women’s sizes. He could tell Mayte was a plus-size, but beyond that, he was clueless. He remembered the double-extra-large T-shirt she wore when he found her had been too big. He dug out an extra-large and hoped he wouldn’t insult or embarrass her. She was not tall. Five-two, maybe. He found a pair of black capris leggings. Large. He had seen many women wearing them. Although appropriate, the leggings might irritate the still-healing barnacle scrapes.
Alexander put the leggings and T-shirt back in their respective boxes then found a cute plus-size purple beach cover-up. “Perfect,” he said to himself. He returned to the bedroom and found Mayte sitting on the bed, wrapped in the beach towel. “Try this on,” he told her. “I have several boxes of woman’s clothing in the guest closet. You can look. I’m sure you’ll find something to wear.”
“Okay. Thank you.” May hesitated a few seconds, “You have boxes of women’s clothes?”
“I do. I’ll show them to you after you’re dressed. Put on the cover-up and come out. Oh, you should know, I have a friend over. I don’t want you to be surprised when you come out.”
“Thank you.”
Alexander left the room. May followed later, wearing the purple beach cover-up. He hadn’t realized that it had an open back and a crisscross front that exposed a good portion of her legs as she walked. She held the fabric ends together, keeping as much of herself covered as possible.
“That looks good on you,” Alexander said, hoping to boost her confidence.
Mayte smiled, causing small dimples to appear in her chubby cheeks. Then she saw the other man in the room.
Bat sauntered toward the girl. “Hi, I’m Bartholomew Epaphroditus Farnsworth the Third.”
The slight smile returned to Mayte’s face, but she quickly tried to hide it.
“It’s okay. That’s why I go by Bat.”
“I am Mayte Diaz.” She pronounced it ‘MyDay.’ “They call me ‘May’.”
“It’s nice to meet you,” Bat said. “I’m curious, why ‘May’?”
“Why ‘Bat’?”
“I don’t like ‘Bart’.”
“But how did you get ‘Bat’? Do you play baseball?”
“No, I wanted a short name. ‘Bat’ seemed cool at the time, and it stuck. Why ‘May’? I like ‘Myday’.”
“Well, my name is spelled M-A-Y-T-E. People would always call me ‘May-tee’. Instead of correcting them, I started going by May. Mayte is a common name in Cuba, but I interacted with many English-speaking tourists – mostly Canadian – and they didn’t know how to pronounce it. ‘May’ was easier.”
Alexander was impressed that, in a matter of seconds, Bat was able to find out how Mayte spelled her name and that at some point she had lived in Cuba. It was a start.
“Come with me,” Alexander said, then led May to the guest room with the boxes of women’s clothes. “See what you can find that you like and fits you. Come out when you get dressed. I bet you’re hungry.”
“I am. Starving.”
“You may be disappointed. I’m a little low on fresh food. You shouldn’t eat much now anyway. You probably ingested salt water, and your stomach may not like solid food. You do need to drink as much water as you can.”
“I’m very thirsty. My mouth is super dry.”
“Yep, that’s a sign of drinking salt water. You will be fine. We need to get some fresh water into you.”
Alexander left May alone to pick out clothes. Bat was waiting when he returned to the other room.
“She seems nice,” Bat said.
“She does. Her voice is much softer now. It was raspy and horse this morning.”
“Exposure will do that. She must’ve been in the water for a long time. You mind if I stay while you talk to her?”
“Not at all.” Alexander was expecting his friend to stay. “You seemed to get along well with her. Do you want to see what you can get out of her? I don’t want to scare her. She didn’t want me to call the police. Her English is perfect, but I don’t think she’s legal.”
May entered the kitchen where the guys were talking, wearing an extra-large T-shirt and cut-off blue jeans shorts which were too small. She must have worked to button them. A roll of fat hung over the waist seam. The T-shirt was pink with a palm tree and the words, “The Beach is Calling.” May had tied a knot in the hem of the shirt, exposing her midriff. Alexander wondered if she had been unable to find any shorts that fit. She appeared happy with the wardrobe so he didn’t ask. He did sneak a peek at her legs. They had been badly chewed up, most likely from barnacles on the jetties, but they looked to be healing.
“I have a can of chicken soup. Is that okay?” Alexander asked.
“Yes, soup would be nice, thank you.”
Alexander handed her a water bottle. “Sit. It’ll only take a few minutes.”
May and Bat sat at the round glass table in the breakfast nook. Bat turned to her and said, “Alex tells me he found you floating in the ocean this morning.”
“Yeah, he might have saved my life.”
“If you don’t mind, May, may I ask how you ended up in the ocean?”
May attempted to open the water bottle, but had trouble due to the cuts and abrasions on her hands. Her left hand was still swollen but noticeably smaller.
Bat opened the water bottle and handed it back to her. He gently took her hand in his. “You were in the water a while, weren’t you?”
May took a long drink from the bottle. “Yes.”
“Hey, we don’t know what happened, but you were in serious danger. We want to help you. We’re your friends. You’re safe with us.”
“I was on a smuggler’s boat. One of the men raped me and I heard him tell the others he was going to kill me. I jumped into the water to save myself.”