5

Ben and I spend that first night in the dirt beside the remains of his El Cedro home. In the morning, he finds a neighbor with a pickup and arranges to hire it for the day. We pull his backpack, his camping gear, hiking boots, and a few other valuables out from under the wreckage, then have the driver take us straight to La Libertad.

Once at La Posada, I help Ben hobble his way to our usual room. For the first couple of days, we hardly leave the hotel. We speak mostly of weather, food, and the lack of waves. I begin to wonder if all that talk about quitting the Peace Corps wasn’t just some posttraumatic moment of weakness.

*   *   *

On the third or fourth day, I decide to paddle out—if only for the exercise. Though he’s now walking on his own—albeit with a slight limp—Ben thinks it best to give his ankle more time.

La Lib wasn’t hurt badly in the quake. Sitting on my board, bobbing in the midday chop, it isn’t hard to forget about the disaster—which is, I suppose, exactly what we’ve been trying to do.

The ocean surface wears a dull, grayish look. A current pushes toward the pier; I spend most of my time trying to stay clear of its crusty concrete legs. I feel conflicted about Ben’s plan, to say the least. It’s true what he said: It is silly to stay. There’s no time or resources for a fresh start. And I hate the idea of not being with him all the time, of once again living on opposite sides of this country.

But on the other hand, something simply feels wrong about walking away now, in the aftermath of this disaster. We’d volunteered to help this country, hadn’t we? Now we would leave it in its greatest hour of need?

I finally get to my feet on a knee-slapper that has no face and doesn’t last half a second. Once it’s over, I tread water for a while, then decide to head for the beach. Ben and I need to talk. On the way to La Posada, my surfboard under my arm, I wonder how to best breach the topic of our next step.

*   *   *

“Check it out!” Ben meets me by the entrance, a massive smile across his face. He sits in the driver’s seat of an older-model Jeep Cherokee. There’s a crude paint job on the hood: two unfamiliar flags. The back seats have been torn out and replaced by a plywood shelf. It has Utah plates.

“Whose is this?” I find myself grinning along with him.

“It’s ours, sweetheart!” Ben hasn’t looked this happy in days. “I just bought it.”

“You what?” I nearly drop my board onto the dirt of the courtyard.

“Did you meet that Kiwi guy who was staying at Hotel Rick? He drove this thing down from the States. Today he got a call from home, sick mother or something. Had to leave right away. I got it for a song.”

“So, that’s the New Zealand flag.” I point to the blue one with the Union Jack. “What’s this?”

“Switzerland. He started the trip with a Swiss girl, but they broke up somewhere in Mexico. Met at a ski resort, I think.”

I nod, trying my best to process the whole thing.

“Get in!” Ben says. “Let’s take it for a spin.”

Still in my bathing suit, I stash my board in our room and then climb into the passenger seat. We drive east—out of town, to a section of the Litoral that follows the coast and winds around a series of hills and cliffs. We hoot and giggle, as if having a good surf session. It is, by far, the best I’ve felt since the earthquake. My faith in our plan is instantly restored. The road, the coast, this car, and Ben—this will be my home for the foreseeable future, maybe for a full year. I can’t imagine anything better. The sound of the wind rushing past my ears drowns out all the second thoughts. It’s not unlike that barrel I had half a year ago.

“When we get back,” Ben shouts, “we should call the Peace Corps office. We need to do the paperwork and get our money.”

“Right.”

*   *   *

The next morning, a loose itinerary materializes from our hotel bed. We’ll surf our way south through the rest of Central America, then continue on to the South American continent—find wet suits somewhere in Peru, surf the Pacific coast, see the Amazon, the Andes, Patagonia. The hardest part will be crossing Panama’s Darién Gap. There’s a rumor that the ferry service no longer travels around it. Ben’s confident that we’ll figure something out.

He talks about this for hours while I lie beside him, nodding. Sunlight seeps in through the jalousies in broad horizontal stripes. Above us, an oscillating table fan is bolted to the ceiling—upside down—and points at our bed; it moves from side to side with a series of jerks and clicks.

Ben props himself up on one elbow. His other hand runs back and forth along my thigh.

“Are you stoked?” His fingers pause at the bony rise of my hip.

I smile. “Stoked. I can’t believe we’re doing it.” The doubt that I felt in the water yesterday has become a distant memory.

Ben turns toward the window. “Once we get to the bottom of that big old continent”—his slight Southern drawl emerges while talking about our trip—“down to the Tierra del Fuego, I want to throw one stone out into the water.” His arm makes a mock throwing motion.

“I never thought I’d see something like that,” I say. “Make it that far from home.”

“Why don’t we go to the office tomorrow morning, get things settled. After that, we can pay off our tab, get on the road. If we don’t make it all the way to San Juan del Sur on the first day, we can stay the night in Managua.”

“Okay.” I nod.

Ben lies back down at my side, wraps his arms around me. I turn closer into him.

A car pulls into La Posada’s dirt courtyard—norteño music blaring on its stereo—and quells our conversation. The oompah bass line shakes the doors and windows, an accordion riff maxing out the little speakers. The dust cloud drifts all the way to our room with the onshore breeze. Ben and I sit up and have a look.

It’s a taxicab. To its roof is strapped a large surfboard case: the wheeled, hard-shelled, expensive kind called a “coffin”—not the sort of equipment carried by the low-budget surfers we’re used to meeting here.

The taxi parks by the air-conditioned wing. The driver kills the engine and the music. Kristy stops sweeping and greets the new guest.

“Shit.” Ben rolls his eyes. “I guess the earthquake didn’t scare all the rich cocksuckers off.”

“It’s just a cab ride and a decent board case,” I say, lying back on the bed. “Don’t jump to conclusions.”

Ben shrugs, then follows me down to the mattress.

I can tell the new arrival is a gringo from his Spanglish. Poorly pronounced words like amigo, dinero, and gracias carry in as he dismisses the driver. The taxi’s engine turns over and the music resumes. A lesser dust cloud follows its exit.

Ben moves his hand back to my thigh, tracing the small ridge and valley made by waist and hips, lingering at the hard crest of my pelvis.

“It’ll be cool to see all those places.” He speaks right against my ear. “But this is what I want the most: to get some waves during the day, and to wake up next to you every morning.”

I smile. It all sounds too good to be true.