PAULINA, SAN LUIS OBISPO

Paulina stands on the deck of the boat. She watches the diminishing port of San Luis Obispo: her almost-home looks strange from this perspective, tiny houses squeezed between the sky and the sea. The wind is pulling at her black, high ponytail, entwining it around her neck. She thinks she must look like a plump raspberry in her pink raincoat — one that is about to roll into the sea.

This morning she stormed out of her house just to be anywhere else for a day, but now she realises that she’s enjoying it. The sea gives her a thrilling feeling that has something to do with escape. For a few hours, she has nothing to care about. She imagines the boat leaving behind not only the port but also the small rooms of her house, the wrinkled sheets still damp with the sweat of bodies.

The port is eventually swallowed up by the horizon. Spume shoots up from under the boat towards the sky. A sailor walks along the deck collecting money in a can. At the end of the day, the one who has caught the biggest fish will win the whole pot. They call it the lottery.

Paulina peels the rod out of the bag and weighs it in her hands. Her fingers close around it. The gesture feels familiar, even if she was a child the last time she did this, standing by a brown river. Now the ocean is tossing the boat about. She likes it: the intensity of the new experience.

She places the rod back in the bag and fetches a burrito from below the deck. One of the sailors started preparing them as soon as the boat left the harbour. The burrito is included in the price of the fishing trip. She devours the soft, steaming roll, facing the open sea. Oil drips down her forearms and into her sleeves. Coriander gets stuck against the roof of her mouth. The sweet taste of chilli lingers in her throat.

The passengers on the deck look relaxed and relieved. They have left behind their routines today, exchanging the straight asphalt lines of the city for the rolling water of the sea. Some of them come often, perhaps every Saturday. Paulina knows this from the way they take over the deck, like it belongs to them.

Close to Paulina, a group of passengers wearing near-identical windbreakers are drinking beer, the foam catching on their chins. They laugh loudly. They discuss how big the cod are here: huge, strong, and meaty. Paulina can’t prevent a complacent smile when she looks at them. The feeling of solidarity lasts only a second. A woman’s tipsy eyes rest on Paulina. Her lips pucker. Heads turn, and they go on talking quietly. With the back of her hand, Paulina wipes her cheeks, greasy from the burrito. Of course they can smell her difference. And there it is again: the shame, that old acquaintance she thought she had rid herself of, who has found its way back and — but actually, no, they aren’t talking about her after all. Their eyes are directed somewhere behind her back. She turns her head quickly. Two young men are standing on the prow, the only black passengers on the boat. One is wearing a bright red quilted jacket, the other a green one. They don’t have scarves, and their necks rise naked and thin out of the puffy jackets. They smile a lot and gesture enthusiastically as they speak.

Paulina can’t help the relief washing over her. Relief doesn’t come alone, though; it drags guilt behind it like a broken suitcase. She hastens to smile at the two men, the object of the other passengers’ hostile looks, and stretches out her hand. The men are brothers and come from Cameroon.

We’ve lived here for a few years, one says.

A year and eight months, the other specifies.

Paulina nods, moved by the earnestness with which the first man hastened to correct his brother. Her eyebrows arch and her lips spread into a smile, as if effusive kindness could make up for the rudeness of others. The brothers don’t seem to notice what’s going on around them, though — or they don’t care.

With renewed excitement, Paulina turns to face the sea. Petrol blue and steel grey. Gigantic clouds group together and disperse, their shadows following suit upon the water. She leans against the railing, her breasts pressing against the cold metal, to be as close as possible to the water. She isn’t from here either. But she doesn’t say this to the Cameroonians: that she moved to California three years ago. That during the first months she cleaned shopping centres, studied English, and planned her ‘business’. She put aside as much money as she could. She walked from one shop window to the other, looking at everything she would soon be able to buy. She would send some of the money home, of course; the bundles of bank notes would travel proudly across the Atlantic to the cottage, a validation of her departure; hurt feelings would be soothed. She bought a car and rented a house not too far from the harbour. Customers came to her like ants in search of honey. One of them, an old energetic man, gave his rod to Paulina. His overgrown nail poked her cheek as he commented how she was pale as dough, even anaemic, and that the sea would do her good.

Two hours after leaving the dock, the motor of the boat goes quiet; the ocean becomes louder. The Cameroonians don’t manage to throw at first. The bait drops at their feet or rises too high in the air. Paulina takes the fishing rod from the bag, places the line against the handle with her index finger, opens the lock, bends the rod back, throws, frees the line, and watches the bait disappear into the water. Then she starts to reel quickly. She waits for the rewarding feeling of weight and thinks about the lottery. How much money is there in the can?

At least half an hour goes by before she feels a tug. The blue of the sea condenses. She doesn’t have time to wipe the tears that the brightness squeezes out from her eyes. Her knuckles are white now, and the veins on the back of her hand swell as she reels the heavy catch. Suddenly the weight is gone and the rod swings back. The bait flickers and shimmers in the air, taunting her: Ha, and you thought you had it!

Around her, lines start to tug, first one and then another. The hands feel the weight and begin to pull, but no fish appear. The boat’s captain paces up and down the deck and restrains the tourists: Damas y caballeros, por favor, he pleads. He taps their shoulders and orders who should pull and who shouldn’t, to prevent everybody from tugging the fish towards themselves. The tangled lines try to detach. The men and women shout and push each other. They resemble the hippos that Paulina recently saw on Animal Planet, fighting for territory.

Finally, the tangled lines are cleared. Only the Cameroonian with the red jacket reels in his line triumphantly, his body leaning towards the sea until the surface of the water breaks and the fish bites at the light. The cod flies across the air towards the deck, eyes bulging in horror. The others aren’t happy; everyone feels the fish belongs to them. The woman who was drinking herself tipsy a few hours ago looks around, bewildered. The black kohl has spread under one eye like an exclamation mark.

What the fuck, that’s my fish! she snaps.

Somebody places a soothing hand on her shoulder, but she slaps it away like she would a gadfly.

Stay out of this, Roddy, someone has to teach them how things are done, she barks. How you should behave here, she adds, and thrusts her hands on top of her hips, lifting her chin like the lessons are about to start.

The Cameroonian’s hand doesn’t shake when it holds the rod. The hanging fish’s body glistens in the sun, turning first in one direction and then the other.

Paulina holds on to the railing. Her fingernails have the vestiges of scarlet nail polish, tiny stains at the top. Her hands are worn from continuous washing, and yet they always feel dirty. She takes quick breaths and tries to control the shaking.

She bends over the side of the boat like a branch snapped from a tree, squeezing the railing so hard the metal digs into the soft skin of her palms. Pungent, the chilli rushes to her throat. She gags until her stomach is empty and her mouth is filled with a sour taste. She won’t eat another burrito for at least a hundred years. She drops to the ground next to the cabin, pulls her knees to her breast, and leans her shoulder blades against the wall.

Even if she has only dozed for a second, something has changed. Then she notices it: at the bottom of the erstwhile empty cool box is a cod. It looks stupefied. Paulina gazes around her for the Cameroonians but they are somewhere on the other side of the cabin.

If she has the energy, she’ll make a soup with the fish tonight. She and her strange companions will gather around the table to eat. They will discuss their day, what was in the news, and what the animals did in the nature documentary.

She’d already had the idea before moving to California. She’d heard that taking care of the elderly is a profitable business here. It’s possible to earn 3,000 dollars per month, just for hosting one old person. That would never happen in her own country. Old people die at home, inside a house which generations inhabit together. If they aren’t blessed with children — or if their children have heartlessly abandoned them in search of their own happiness — they die alone, God forbid.

But there were regulations Paulina wasn’t prepared for. To register her house as an official elder care home, she needed to prove it had all the facilities and a certain amount of square metres. Her house was too small, the rooms too narrow. And what about those treacherous thresholds and stairs? Still, it was easy for her to find a way around the rules. Word spread and people began to contact her. Usually it was a husband and a wife who came, two siblings, or a widowed parent. Even if the adult children were holding gently on to the arm of the elderly, there would be something urgent in their eyes. Paulina invited them to sit on the porch. The way she held the porcelain coffee pot between her hands would make you think it was a trophy, as she told them how much care and love the residents would receive. The longer they sat and chatted, the more the confidence between them grew, its shape becoming as defined as that of the coffee pot, at the mouth of which, if light hit it at the right angle, you could distinguish a chink.

The money did not stream into Paulina’s hands. Taking care of the elderly was not easy. And the fear of things going really wrong accrued in the corners of the house, much in the same way snails spread around a fish tank: one slimy centimetre at a time.

The lines whip through the air many times and then the last time. A thin cloud wipes across the sun. The boat heads back towards the harbour. The passengers sit on the deck drinking beer; a few doze under their caps. The Cameroonians look content. After a clumsy beginning, they started to catch fish like they knew exactly where in the dark sea they were swimming, the precise point at which they shifted their silver bodies.

Behind a plastic table on the deck, two sailors begin to clean the fish. Eyes, fins, tails spatter around. The hard wind does nothing to dispel the smell. The city is outlined against the sky. Paulina is never usually gone this long. It’s been days since morning.

She places the rod in its bag and decides to give it to the man’s children when they visit next. It’s a good rod — it might have been very expensive or at least of sentimental value. The old man probably mistook Paulina for his daughter or granddaughter.

The sailors gut the fish quickly and Paulina gets her cod back — or what’s left of it, that is: a hollow, torn trunk. From its grey underside the pale orange meat peeps out.

When the boat is close to the port, the sailor gives the lottery can to one of the Cameroonian brothers. He says something, maybe ‘Oh wow’ or ‘Oh well’. He shrugs and looks amused that it is he who caught the biggest fish.

The first noise tears the sky. Paulina, sitting curled up against the cabin, shades her eyes with her palms and tips her head to see. They are pouring down, dozens of them, maybe a hundred, squawking ravenously. Their white wings flap against the wind. Even though her neck is throbbing with pain, Paulina sits with her face up. There are so many wings that the sky is barely visible. The pelicans are gyrating in tighter and tighter circles above her. She scrambles to the cool box and covers the carcass of the fish.