Avoiding Prison & Other Noble Vacation Goals (19 page)

In addition to the advantage of being able to network with top government officials, hanging out with a man who was incarcerated began to feel strangely safe to me. During the next few visits, I shamelessly poured out the darkest secrets of my life to him in part because I knew that soon I would leave. Getting seriously involved with him was so unreal that it posed no danger; it was a fantasy that couldn't possibly be. Before, my international flings had ended with my departing flight. This one only existed from 8 A.M. to noon on Thursdays and Sundays.

In between those days, I would hang out with Jessica and occasionally with her business partner and friend, Maritza, trying out strange Costa Rican fruits and teaching my friends English swear words. But this proved to be a bit of a challenge.

“Shit,” I told Jessica, when she asked me to teach her a bad word in English.

“Yeah, yeah, I already know that one.”

“Fuck.”

“Yeah, I know that one too.”

We went through the list: bastard, dick, pussy—but she'd heard them all before. And this was a woman whose only other English expression was “Happy New Year.”

“What is it you want to know how to say?”

She thought about this for a minute. “I know,” she said in Spanish, “teach me how to say, ‘I sucked him off and then kissed him, spitting the cum into his mouth.' ”

“Jessica, I thought you were a virgin!”

“I am, but Maritza's been talking to me.”

“Maritza!” I said, looking at my other Costa Rican friend in a whole new light. Apparently she'd learned more than just a few English swear words from her boyfriend, Marco. There was just one problem with her relationship, she explained. Marco only wanted to see her one time a week.

“You should have Marco arrested,” I advised her. “Then you'd get to see him two days, on Thursdays and Sundays.”

“And you'd get to talk to him on the phone every day,” Jessica chimed in.

This was a bit of a ritual with us. Every day, sometime between seven and eight-thirty at night, Jessica and I would sit in her kitchen, eating and chatting, waiting for the phone to ring. This arrangement presented just one small problem. Jessica's parents were often huddled around the table at this hour and she had yet to tell them about her boyfriend's change of address. What she had explained was that he was in northern Costa Rica for several months because of his job and he could only call her once a day.

This fib worked rather well until I started getting a phone call too. “Take care of yourself, Olman,” she'd say, ending the call and handing the phone to me. “Wendy, Olman wants to say hello to you too.” Telling Olman I was thinking of him, that I was looking forward to seeing him again may have seemed a bit overly affectionate, but fortunately, Jessica's parents never said anything.

Every time I had started up a relationship with someone in Los Angeles, it had been the norm to have sex first and ask questions about each other later. There was no “Where were you born?” “What is your family like?” “Who should I contact in the event of an emergency?”The guys I became involved with revealed more information to their employment applications than they ever did to me.

However, the man I was currently seeing didn't live in Hollywood or Santa Monica or Pasadena, which meant that sex was definitely out of the question—he wasn't free to come over to my place, and although I went to see him at his place twice a week, staying the night was not a possibility. After all, Francisco had 230 other roommates.

With our situation the way it was, there was nothing left to do but fall back on spending quality time together. Over the next few weeks, we continued to delve into the inexhaustible well of subjects we had to talk about. I discussed California and Arizona and he went on about Cauca and el Valle; I mentioned American Coke and he explained about the Colombian kind.

On the few occasions when the strain of translating my stories into Spanish became too exhausting for me, we would sit on a blanket spread on the ground, my head resting comfortably on his lap while he sang to me. Slowly I was beginning to distinguish the
baladas
from the
boleros,
the
cumbias
from the
vallenatos.
Sometimes he would write down the lyrics to his favorite songs and hand them to me as visiting hour drew to a close, timidly turning them over like secret love notes.

I was even growing accustomed to the amount of effort required to see Francisco. I was getting used to the early mornings, the long prison lines, the women patiently waiting outside with their shopping bags filled with food. There was a camaraderie there. Everywhere else in Costa Rica, I was a
gringa,
an outsider. But at the prison, I was a woman whose man was locked away. This mutual circumstance was bigger than issues of culture or race. They treated me as one of them.

How easy it was to arrive in a new country, how simple to brush up on a foreign language, to taste new foods, learn new customs. How difficult it was to leave.

Several days before my flight was scheduled to depart from San José, as I sat alone in a café writing in my notebook over a strong cup of Costa Rican coffee (while Jessica took care of some errands for work), I thought back on all that had happened to me in this country so far—meeting Michel, Jessica, then Francisco. How had I managed to get so involved with the place?

A month earlier, I had planned to lounge on the sands of white beaches, drink pineapple drinks laced with rum, dance late into the night, and plunge myself into the warm waters of the Caribbean. I had done none of those things. So why was I struggling with the idea that soon I would have to leave?

As I scribbled my thoughts down, fittingly enough, a group of noisy and enthusiastic American backpackers filed in to the café and settled in at the table next to mine. By now, I knew their type well. These travelers sauntered their way through Latin America, weighed down by nothing but their backpacks, their specially designed gear offering ideal weight distribution, lightweight aluminum frames, and a wide assortment of pockets that were perfect for quick storage of Swiss Army knives, portable alarm clocks, and collapsible silverware. I knew—I too had read the catalogs.

On my previous trip to Costa Rica before Jessica had shown up, my loneliness had made me want to be part of them. Walking past them in the streets of San José, having given up Christmas and then Michel, I had longed for one of them to start up a conversation with me. I had wanted to discuss the inane details of traveling, notes about where to go and how to get there, details as insignificant as the brand of jeans it had seemed so essential to be wearing in high school. But now I realized that it was too late. What these people had to say about traveling seemed as worthless to me now as the prom queen's advice on what type of lip gloss to be using. They were so far removed from my notion of Costa Rica that I really had nothing to say to them.

Just like the popular kids at high school with their homecoming parties, proms, and football keggers, these travelers had their own obligatory events, a list of required sightseeing that in order to be one of them, you had to necessarily attend. But I didn't have the right brand of extra-durable, element-resistant traveling jacket and never would. Hell, I didn't even own a backpack.

“So what have you been doing the whole time you've been in Costa Rica?” It was such a simple question for them, something they responded to with a long list of place names. But for me the answer required a degree of self-revelation that I reserved for those able to understand.

My real friends were the ones who knew the details of my life. In spite of all my whining about Jessica's dragging me to a prison, I had to admit that I had a deep respect for her. She was a tough but emotional nineteen-year-old who refused to follow in anyone's footsteps. And as much as the thought frightened me, I knew that Francisco too had become my friend. We both possessed the melancholy souls of those with unconventional lives, those who are poorly understood—who in each other's presence finally lose their loneliness.

I forgave Francisco for not being able to say good-bye to me at the airport. Apparently, there was something he just couldn't get out of. But Jessica and Maritza were there.

“When will we see you again?” Jessica wanted to know as we stood in line at the “migration counter,” where travelers waited to get exit visas stamped in their passports.

“It may be a while.”

“When? A month? Two months?” Maritza asked.

“It will take me a while to arrange things. I have to do one more freelance job, go to the consulate, get a visa.”

“But you don't need a visa to visit Costa Rica,” Jessica said.

“No,” I smiled. “I just need one if I want to live here.”

My two friends looked at me and then each other. “You're joking,” Maritza said.

I thought over what it was I had in Los Angeles. I had a successful freelance writing business, a lovely apartment with wood floors that I'd spent years decorating with antiques. I had a car, a budding screenwriting career, and connections with the most important bar-tenders in town. And what did I have in Costa Rica? A guy in jail, a Costa Rican family, and two friends, one of whom had just spent the past week sleeping on her floor.

“See you in July,” I said.

I hugged my friends one last time and started toward my gate, passing the point through which nontravelers were not allowed to pass.

“You have to come back, Wendy,” Jessica called after me.

“Don't worry, Jessica,” I yelled back, trying out the phrase she had taught me. “Don't worry.”

Of course, I'd be back. After all, there were beaches to swim and volcanoes to climb. And besides, there was still one prison I hadn't yet visited.

Chapter Six

The Exit Strategy

At some point during our temporary separation (Francisco remained in prison; I was back in Los Angeles), the unexpected happened: I made a commitment to Francisco. Other couples did this all the time, moving gradually toward a life together, eased in slowly through late-night champagnes and shared morning coffees. With Francisco, it was all or nothing. It meant giving up Los Angeles, giving up my hard won freedom, giving up other men.

It had not been an act of faith. I had not made any conscious attempt to give relationships one more chance, nor did I think to aim one more time in the direction of responsibility. It was not something I even thought over. I had survived war-torn Beirut, communist Cuba, illegal entry into some of the world's most threatening places, yet here I was, powerless in the face of one man.

I wanted to understand what was happening to me, to categorize it the way my father had taught me, to explain it. But my analysis always came up short. There were a hundred reasons to commit to a man and a thousand reasons not to commit to this particular one, but I did it anyway, not because I should or shouldn't, because it was good or bad, the right thing or the wrong thing—but because it was the only thing that occurred to me.

My existence became divided up into moments spent speaking to Francisco and moments spent waiting to speak to Francisco. My life in Los Angeles ceased to exist—it was just time spent waiting— waiting for the phone to ring, waiting to hear his voice. And each call was an unbearably short eight minutes, counted off second by second by a guard with a stopwatch—enough time to say, “I miss you, I'm thinking of you, I'll be back for you,” but not enough time to tell him about my day or the funny article I'd read in the paper or about what happened the other morning in line at the drugstore. And it was certainly not enough time to tell him about the pit in my stomach, the gut instinct when things began to feel not quite right—not with him or with us, but with his situation.

The pieces of news foretelling what was to come had begun falling into place one by one, lined up like dominoes ready to topple at the slightest pressure. At first, the lawyer had assured us that Francisco would see the light of day before the month had passed. Once thirty days had gone by, the lawyer simply shrugged his shoulders, offered no explanation, and prescribed patience as the best remedy at this point. And after two months had gone by and the attorney no longer visited Francisco or accepted his calls, I resorted to a number of expensive but necessary phone calls to the lawyer myself. Each time, upon hearing Francisco's name, he abruptly hung up on me.

I was concerned, but from a distance of twenty-seven-hundred miles, my options were limited. I sent Francisco five hundred dollars to find another attorney and did my best to stay focused on the task at hand: getting out of Los Angeles. Once I was in Costa Rica, I would be able to take control of the situation and help him out. Until then, there were so many personal errands I needed to check off my list in order to make it back to him—subletting my apartment, selling my car, sorting out my essential (i.e., portable) belongings, getting certifications and identifications, visiting government agencies, and canceling every membership in my name, which turned out to be so problematic that I began to suspect I was the only American who had ever moved out of the country.

“Is there a reason you are canceling your subscription to
The New
Yorker?
Have you been dissatisfied with your service?” the female voice at the other end of the line had asked during a phone call earlier that week.

“No, no problems at all. It's that I'm leaving the United States,” I had politely explained.

“I see. But don't you want to continue receiving the magazine? That way you can read the past issues when you get back.”

“No, you see, I don't know when I'm coming back.”

Given the woman's uncomfortable “uh-huh,” I figured that saying that I belonged to a tribe of cannibals would probably have been less shocking. Sure, Americans left the country all the time. Unlike me, however, they all planned on coming back.

After a week of repeating this news and having grown used to the astonished silence at the other end of the line, I finally realized the positive side of my unique situation: I had the strongest ammunition ever invented against obnoxious telemarketers, a crafty, overzealous bunch of people who normally had a response to just about anything. “You don't have any money right now? Pay later.” “You are a busy person and don't have time for this? This timesaving device will save you hours.” “You just got your arm amputated and aren't interested in a free tennis racket? Not to worry. Your trial membership also includes a free prosthetic limb.”

Telemarketers had rebuttals for any conceivable situation, every situation, that is, but one—they had neglected to sufficiently prepare for the news that their intended customer had imminent plans to move to the Third World. I could actually hear the shocked look on their faces, feel the uncomfortable pause as they rifled through their papers, hoping to come across the scripted answer that their supervisor had promised would work in any situation, and, finally, the anxious clearing of the throat and the ultimate defeated words, “Well then, have a nice day.”

In addition to the never-ending quantity of small details I was working out in order to leave the country, there was also the slightly larger issue of how I would support myself. Counting the checks that had yet to come in, I was going to have about sixteen-thousand dollars to tide me over, a decent chunk of money that would magically stretch five times further when converted into
colones
and spent in Costa Rica. Plus, there was the chance that I would be able to telecommute, doing some boring but well-paying business writings for Hughes Aircraft from Costa Rica.

Of course, the final obstacle to overcome was breaking the news to my folks. Happily, my parents' move had already been precedent-setting, so my disclosure didn't phase them in the least. They saw it as their eldest daughter simply following in their footsteps. Besides, now that they were safely settled in their home in Bolivia, having me in Costa Rica would mean I was that much closer.

Granted, I hadn't quite let them in on the whole Francisco situation, but this was what our familial fondness was founded on: lack of information. I had also never spoken at length about any of the other men who had passed through my life—and it didn't seem to be the ideal moment to begin the process of self-revelation, now that my current boyfriend lived in a prison.

My friends in Los Angeles as well as my sisters actually did have all the details, but they still remained characteristically supportive. Heather was all for it, Catherine gave it the thumbs up, my buddy Michael offered his blessing, and Lisa sat me down and said, “You know, most people taking this kind of step, leaving the country and all—I'd say they were running from something. But with you, it's different. I think that you're actually running
to
something.”

She was right. But not even she could have predicted the situation I was about to get myself into.

Four days before I was due to leave, something odd happened—Francisco failed to make his scheduled Wednesday morning call. I checked to make sure the ringer was on, that the cord was plugged in to the wall, that there wasn't a message on my voicemail. But there was nothing.

I spent the entire day fidgety and anxious, hoping that it would hurry up and get dark so that sleep would rid me of the pit in my stomach. I even went to bed with the phone by my side in the hopes of a call in the morning, even though I knew it was unlikely. Prisoners followed a regular schedule—if one of them failed to make his Wednesday phone call, there were no make-ups the following day.

At seven A.M., however, the phone actually did ring. At the other end of the line, I heard a tiny depressed voice that I barely recognized as Francisco's.

Delivering bad news within eight minutes does not allow for subtlety or procrastination. “I've been arrested,” he said.

I didn't understand how they could arrest a man already imprisoned, but Francisco continued, “There was a breakout. They claim I was the mastermind behind it. I had nothing to do with it. And they've transferred me to La Reforma, a high-security prison.”

There was silence while I tried to take this new information in. Francisco must have suspected what I was thinking so he added, “Please, tell me you're still coming.”

The thought of another false charge against Francisco was terrifying, but it wouldn't deter me. In my life, I had always gone after whatever I desired with a single-minded determination—the bleakness of the situation wasn't enough to scare me off.

What had made me pause was the tiny worry that the new charge against Francisco might turn out to be true. I didn't seriously believe Francisco was capable of lying to me, but I had been lied to before and I needed to be sure.

I had just four minutes to make up my mind. There was no way to call him back, no possibility of deciding another day.

My mind reeled. Three months had gone by. There had been long letters, reassuring calls. Three months of longing, waiting to see him again. It felt so real to me. But emotion didn't count. Feelings could deceive. To answer, I needed logic, cold hard rational thought.

There were just three minutes to go. I had to make up my mind, decide my fate.

Then it hit me. Francisco was supposed to be released any day. Every official had told us as much. Even the prison guards believed it. He was as good as a free man, no reason to treat him like a criminal. Francisco had never lost hope. And that was it, the reason I needed. A man who believes he is going to be freed doesn't gamble everything on a risky escape attempt. It wouldn't make sense.

“I'll see you in three days,” I said.

There was just a minute left to go and there was so much left to say, but it didn't matter. I would see him in three days.

I arrived at my new Costa Rican home with a suitcase, a carry-on, and a tremendous hangover. Not knowing when they were going to see me again, my friends had planned a small going away party the night before and managed to ensure that I left the country drunk, happy, and quickly—before there was any time to even consider backing out.

But just like airplanes, all drunks eventually come down, and the next morning I found myself in San José, burdened with fully functioning reasoning capabilities, the disadvantage of which was that I had to think about what I was doing with my life. The thing was, getting on an airplane had always been as easy as drinking piña coladas, because tucked away in my pocket I had always had a nice safe return ticket, and tucked away in my mind was the knowledge that I could always come home.

But this was no round-trip. This was one way, all the way. My belongings were now packed into two pieces of luggage and a cardboard box, which caused me some dismay when I realized that the cabdriver picking me up would have no difficulties whatsoever fitting everything I currently owned into his small Toyota Tercel.

Of course, there was a bigger problem facing me, and that was the fact that although my things fit very nicely in that cab, they could not remain there indefinitely. At some point I would have to take them out and I wasn't sure exactly where this was going to be. Luckily, Jessica was home.

“Don't worry, I found you a place to live,” her bubbly voice informed me over the phone. “It's a one-room guest house owned by a family in Santa Ana and they're expecting you. It's next to the butcher shop, the white house with the white fence.”

“Great. What's the address?”

“I just gave it to you.”

This was one of the anomalies of the city of San José. There were rarely street names and the buildings were never numbered. So a Costa Rican address read something like this: “From the Park Morazón, go one hundred meters to the south, fifty meters west, and where you see the Beer Cheap sign (sometimes covered up by the line of people in front of it), enter the alley. We're located right across from the fat man who usually sits at the corner.”

The whole thing got further complicated any time an address included a bank, because every financial institution in the city had nearly the same name. There was the Bank of Costa Rica, not to be confused with the National Bank of Costa Rica, which was completely different from the Popular Bank of Costa Rica.

My own address was pretty solid by Costa Rican standards. “Next to the butcher shop, the white house with the white gate” actually fit on a standard-sized envelope, the only inconvenience being that I would have to send out change-of-address cards every time the family I would be staying with decided to paint the house.

“You're skinny. I'm going to make you fat.”These first words I heard after hauling my things from the cab and knocking at my new abode were uttered by a pudgy woman in her forties who kissed me on the cheek, introduced herself as Cloti, and took me around to the backyard to show me my new place: the tiny detached room without a kitchen or a phone that I would be calling home.

“You must be Wendy. And your husband?”

“My husband?”

“When will he be arriving?”

“My husband will be arriving . . .” About never, I thought, marriage being one of the few bad habits I had managed to avoid. “You must mean Francisco,” I said, wondering what stories Jessica had primed my new landlady with.

“Francisco, yes, that's right. And where is he now?”

“That is a very good question.”

It
was
a good question; however, it seemed that Jessica was the one with all the answers when it came to queries about my life. Luckily, Cloti changed the subject, there being something more pressing that she needed to know.

“Your husband, tell me, is he very attractive?”

It was not a typical Latin American query. “What does he do for a living?” “How many brothers and sisters does he have?” “Is he a drug trafficker?”—these were the questions I usually got when people found out I was dating a Colombian. But Doña Cloti wanted to know about Francisco's physical features.