The money changers hollered rates at her. Emma pulled a twenty-dollar bill from her wallet, then another. How much would it cost to get from the airport to her hotel in a cab? She settled on fifty dollarsâbetter safe than sorryâand waited while the two men in front of her argued with one another in Spanish before apparently coming to some sort of pool arrangement to deal with her.
“Dos veinticinco,”
one of them declared finally, shaking his thick roll of bills at her. “Two two-five.”
“Two and a half,” said Emma, having watched some other exchanges and seen how it was done. “Two five.”
“We give you two three. No more.”
“Two five.”
“Two three.”
“Two four-five.”
The men looked at one another, shrugged and started to walk away.
“Okay, two three,” said Emma.
In a moment Emma had a colorful stack of San Marcan pesos in her handâa hundred and fifteen of them for her fifty dollars âand directions to the ramp where the taxis were parked.
Instead of familiar yellow cabs, the “taxis” she found were all regular unmarked private cars, most of them of about the same vintage and condition as her own Nissan back home. A few drivers rushed over to solicit her business; the others stood around chatting with one another or simply leaned on their vehicles reading newspapers.
Emma chose a driver who was polishing the hood of a fairly clean, European-looking car. She didn't recognize the little vehicle's make but from its styling judged it to be at least fifteen years oldâpractically new compared to its neighbors.
“The Hotel Casimente,” Emma said in answer to the man's lengthy Spanish greeting after she got in. He replied with another incomprehensible diatribe, shook her hand repeatedly, then started his engine, which purred like a cement mixer.
In a minute they were away from the airport and onto a modern four-lane highway. On one side of the road was an esplanade overlooking the ocean, which stretched out forever to meet the deep-blue sky. Tall, stately palm trees spaced fifteen feet apart framed the road on both sides as far as the eye could see. The bases of all the trees were painted whiteâperhaps to reflect oncoming headlights. Looking down the coast, Emma could see the jewel-like white buildings of a city gleaming in the distance.
“This is beautiful,” said Emma, the unreal feeling she had had since getting off the plane beginning to lift. She was really here in San Marcos, where Jacques Passant must have been more than thirty years ago when he had sailed on the
Kaito Spirit.
She was following Pépé back in time.
“Peguero, he build the road,” said the driver full of smiles, watching her in his rearview mirror instead of watching the road. “Take twenty years. Mucho dollars.”
“Is it like this all the way to the city? With the palm trees?”
“SÃ. Palm trees. And monuments.”
Emma looked out her window in the direction of the driver's gesticulations. A sandstone obelisk, surrounded by chained pillars and statues of dolphins, rose on the ocean side of the road, adding to the island's exotic strangeness.
“There are others like this? Monuments?”
“Many others. Many, many. Peguero, he build. Make good impression on foreigners.”
“It certainly does,” said Emma, the claustrophobia of the plane and customs fading against the clean beauty of the highway. The road was constructed so that nothing could be seen of the island and its people, save for picture-postcard views. There were no road signs and not a trace of litter.
As she looked more carefully, however, Emma could see that perhaps all was not as idyllic as the view suggested. There were many cracks in the concrete where clumps of grass had sprung up, as if the road had not been resurfaced in years. Military vehicles âjeeps and the kind of olive-colored trucks used to transport troopsâwere parked every few miles. There was strangely little traffic. What there was consisted mostly of elderly vehicles like the one she was in.
After twenty minutes Emma knew they must be close to the city, but still she could see nothing from the road except palm trees, monuments, and the beautiful blue sea. The highway was beginning to show even more signs of age here. Potholes and overgrown patches of grass were everywhere. Telephone wires began to be visible to landside, spoiling the perfection of the view.
The highway abruptly turned a corner and rose above its protecting embankment. Suddenly Emma was in the center of a bustling city. Squat, dilapidated buildings with colorful signs in Spanish rose on either side of the street, which had become narrow and crowded. Dogs barked. Horns blared. People were everywhere.
After the spacious highway, San Marcos City was a shockâa raggedy collection of buildings of every shape and size jumbled together without rhyme or reason. It was as if the downtowns of a dozen old rust-belt cities had suddenly been crammed together and packed with a hundred times more people than they had ever been designed to hold.
Now Emma understood. The highway had been just a dictator's illusion for the outside world to remember when they thought of his country. This was the real San Marcos. The garish facades and dirty windows of buildings squeezed together like shoes in a crowded closet. The din of traffic and smell of livestock and rotting garbage. The sidewalks of the city were jammed with men and women, shoppers and hustlers, street children and beggars, though none of the faces seemed to have the anger and hopelessness she was used to seeing in the downtowns of America.
Had Pépé walked these streets, known these people? Or had he not been in this city at all, but somewhere else on the island, miles away?
“How many people are there here?” Emma asked, leaning forward, speaking slowly.
“One and half million,” said the driver proudly.
“That's the whole country, right?”
“San Marcos City one and half million. San Marcos, four million.”
“Four million!” exclaimed Emma. The haystack was even bigger than she had imagined.
“Almost as many people as Haiti,” said the driver, smiling from ear to ear.
It took another ten minutes for the cab to get through the bustling streets. At practically every traffic light peddlers descended upon the car, pushing handfuls of unfamiliar-looking fruits through the window. The streets echoed with the noise of horns, merengues from blaring radios, and the cries of vendorsâ“
Tengo plátanos!” “Tomates!” “Cebollas!” “Lechuga!”
Finally they came to a wealthier-looking residential area, with fewer people on the streets and large stucco houses behind tall walls. Beyond this was a newer area of town. There were fewer, more modern-looking structures here. The wide four-lane streets had center meridians planted with young palm trees only a few feet in height. Almost immediately the driver pulled the car up to the gates of a large complex of modern brick buildings that looked like apartments.
Even from the driveway, Emma could see that the sprawling structure was unlike anything she had seen in the rest of the city. Space suddenly wasn't at a premium. The hotel was surrounded by a large grassy area planted with shrubs and flowers. Everything inside the gates was uncluttered and clean. It was almost as if the whole complex had been plucked up and transplanted from some other country altogether.
The driver exchanged some words with one of the guards at the gateâa burly, dark-faced man in green pants and a sport shirt, who wore a holstered revolver on his belt. Another guard finally lifted the barrier.
Emma's driver steered slowly through the spacious parking lot to the front door of the hotel, chattering happily in Spanish. As they got closer, Emma could see the huge, clean, modern hotel. It looked something like a tropical version of the Grand Marquis in Phoenix, where she had played her last magic showâall peachcolored with slanting terra-cottaâtiled roofs and a jungle of professionally landscaped tropical foliage.
“MagnÃfico! Increible!”
said the driver, stopping the car at the door of the hotel and beaming with prideâas if he were somehow part of this San Marcos and not the San Marcos outside the gate. “Fifty pesos.”
Emma had no idea whether the rate was fair or the man was doubling his usual fare based on her destination. She was just glad to be here, and ready to hit the showers. She handed the man three twenty-peso notes, and waved away the change with a smile
âa smile which the driver returned several-fold as he drove away. A porter rushed out to take her luggage. Emma followed him through the double front doors, which opened automatically.
She found herself in a cool, spacious lobby that rose to a peaked roof slatted with mahogany and punctuated with lazily spinning fans. Palm trees and other foliage were placed strategically between the tall white columns that supported the ceiling. Open archways led to covered courtyards on either side, giving the effect of bringing the outdoors in. The furniture was rattan, covered with rich, patterned fabrics. The stucco walls were clean and pink. The floor, where it was not thickly carpeted, was terra-cotta-tiled.
“Welcome to the Casimente, Miss Passant,” said the desk clerk, taking an imprint of Emma's credit card and summoning a porter to take her to her two-hundred-fifty-dollars-per-night room (so much for things in San Marcos being so cheap, as the American at the airport had said).
In a few minutes Emma was in her room, a simple space with rattan chairs, two double beds covered with lightweight chintz spreads, and windows that overlooked landscaped grounds and the limitless ocean. Apparently the decorator belonged to the Peguero school of designânothing of the dirty, noisy, bustling city was visible at all.
“There is an ice machine at the end of the hall,” said the porter in perfect English, setting down her bags. “Room service is available until eleven o'clock P.M.”
“Thank you,” said Emma, worried that she was beginning to like luxury hotels. “Do you happen to know of any areas around here where pleasure boats might be moored?”
“Pleasure boats?” said the man, a slight fellow with a nice smile. “I know that the
Queen of the Pacific
docks at Puerta Lavaya. My cousin, he works for the cruise line.”
“No, not like that. Cabin cruisers, I guess you would call them.”
“Cabin cruisers? What are, please?”
Emma tried to picture the model boat that had always sat on Pépé's dresser, but it was just a blur in her mind. A whitewashed hull. A wood cabin and deck. It had been just an old-fashioned cabin cruiser. A pleasure boat. Or had it been used for fishing? Or as a passenger ferry? Pepe had rarely talked about the old days, just said he had been a sailor, had been all over the world. That had been the truth, hadn't it? The
Kaito Spirit
wasn't just some garbage scow he had done the cooking on, was it?
“Never mind,” said Emma. “It's not important.”
“Will there be anything else?”
“No,” said Emma, fumbling in her pocket for some pesos. The man took them and exited, murmuring thanks.
“Do you happen to know where pleasure boats might be moored?” Emma repeated in a mocking tone. “Poteet was right. I'm an idiot.”
Emma sat down on the edge of the bed and stared out the window at the ocean. Four million people. Who would remember a boat that mayâor may notâhave been here thirty years ago? Or her grandfather?
For a moment Emma couldn't even remember his face herself. When his red cheeks and twinkling eyes and kind smile finally winked into her mind, her eyes brimmed with tears and she felt more alone than she ever had in her life.
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fter a long, hot shower, Emma came downstairs dressed in clean white shorts and a light linen jacket over a cotton blouse. She felt a lot better, though she had to keep looking at her watch to understand what time it was. The long flight and time changes had left her confused, and now she regretted having napped so much on the plane. It would probably take days to get her internal clock back to normal.
One of Emma's mottoes had always been, “When in doubt, eat something,” so she headed to the hotel's open-courtyard restaurant and ordered a fruit salad. Half the fruits were unrecognizable, but all were delicious. Around her the other guests conversed in English and French and German. The service was crisp and professional. Palm trees swayed in the breeze.
After lunch Emma wandered through the quiet lobby to the other side of the hotel, where dozens of hotel guests lay stretched out on deck chairs, absorbing sunshine and tropical drinks around one of the largest swimming pools Emma had ever seen in her life.
Though the ocean was just a few landscaped yards away from the pool area, there was no beach, nor any way to get down to the water. The pool was surrounded by a tall wall. Another, even taller and more solid-looking wall framed the edge of the hotel grounds, closing off any view of the city and preventing anyone from outside looking in. From what the happy swimmers splashing in the pool could see, there was no way to tell whether they were in San Marcos or Timbuktu. The deck chairs at poolside were all angled to give a view of the large, thatched-roof hut housing the bar.
Emma walked back to the lobby, amazed that people would come thousands of miles to sit by a walled-in swimming pool and drink fruit juice and vodka. That was certainly not for herâeven if she were just here for pleasure, which she wasn't. She was here to find the
Kaito Spirit
. It was time to get started.
“I'd like to change two hundred dollars in traveler's checks for pesos,” said Emma to the woman at the cashier's window at the desk. The pesos she had changed at the airport were running low and she'd need more. Emma planned to put everything she could on credit cards, but there were bound to be cash expenses.
“Please sign your checks,” said the clerk, looking up from her paperwork. She was an attractive young girl with dark-blond hair and a deep tan. “Will twenties be all right?”
“Yes, that's fine,” said Emma, signing the checks. The clerk counted out ten twenty-peso notes and went back to the forms she was filling out.
“That's only two hundred pesos,” said Emma when it became clear that the transaction was over.
“Yes, that's correct,” said the girl.
“But that's one dollar to one peso.”
“Yes, the exchange rate is set by the government at one dollar to one peso.”
“But you can get more than two to one from the money changers at the airport.”
“That would be illegal,” said the girl with a blank smile.
“My room is two hundred fifty dollars a night,” said Emma, who was finding the subject of foreign exchange more interesting all of a sudden. “How much is it in pesos?”
“The same. Two hundred fifty pesos. The official exchange rate is set by the government at one to one.”
Emma wasn't brilliant at math, but it didn't take a genius to see that it would make more sense for her to buy pesos from the money changers with her dollars and pay for everything in cash. Even if Pépé's million dollars turned out to be real, it was still no reason for her to start throwing money away.
“Can I take the money from those traveler's checks in dollars instead of pesos?”
The girl nodded and retrieved the pesos she had laid down on the table for Emma. Then she reached into another drawer and counted out greenbacks.
“I'll need to cash a check, too,” said Emma, opening her checkbook, which she had brought downstairs with her along with her passport and traveler's checks, intending to put them all into the hotel safe. She certainly hadn't brought enough cash to pay for her entire stay.
“I'm sorry, but we don't cash personal checks,” said the girl, the same blank expression on her face.
“Who does?”
The girl shrugged.
“Is there an American Express office in the city?” said Emma, remembering vaguely that her credit card gave her check-cashing privileges.
“I believe so.”
“Can you give me directions?” This was like pulling teeth.
“You go out the front door, turn left and go the end of the block, then turn right, and it's on the left side of the road after the first traffic light.”
Emma thanked the girl and walked out the front door. She crossed the hotel's long parking lot, nodded to the armed guards at the gate and found herself on the wide street.
Battered cars packed with San Marcans honked and sped by. The air felt strangely quiet and smelled of unfamiliar scents. A number of cars were parked down the street to her right. Next to them men milled about under trees, smoking cigarettes. When they saw her, they stopped talking and stared eagerly at her.
“Give you tour, lady?” shouted one. “Show you San Marcos?”
“Change money?” shouted another.
Emma shook her head and walked in the opposite direction, as the clerk had directed. Out of the oasis of the hotel and on the street, she was vulnerable, helpless, alone. Emma had felt that way many times before, howeverâevery time she had walked out onstage in fact. It had never stopped her. It wouldn't now.
More battered cars crammed with passengers and painted with advertisements honked at her as they passed, slowing down, apparently looking to pick her up. Emma walked briskly to the corner, her chin down, her eyes straight ahead. Were tourists in this country in danger of being snatched off the streets?
Another quick glance at the cars and their passengers suggested not. The tired-looking men and dull-eyed women bore all the signs of commuters. The cars must be a kind of entrepreneurial bus service, Emma realized. She had seen no evidence of public transportation since she had arrived.
Feeling more and more like an ignorant foreignerâshe was the only person on the streets in shortsâEmma crossed the street and turned right onto another four-laned road, then proceeded past low office buildings and walled properties to the next traffic light. As the clerk had promised, there, in front of a threestory brick structure, was a sign that said “American Express.”
Emma went in and found herself in what looked like an airport waiting room: anonymous, fluorescent-lit, crowded. Uniformed
armed guards were stationed at strategic points around the room. One long line of people leading to a pair of cashier's windows snaked through the room.
Emma took her place behind a short, prim young woman who was wearing a dowdy-looking white dress and a red ribbon in her dark-brown hairâthe few women in slacks and shorts looked like tourists.
“Hi,” said Emma automatically in response to the girl's shy smile.
“Hello,” she replied in English and in a moment they were talking.
Celia Eschiverra, it turned out, had gone to college in New Jersey and returned to her native San Marcos to teach English at a local private school. She was a serious girl, exceedingly polite, and seemed surprised that Emma would show any interest in her. For her part Emma was so relieved to have someone to talk to that she was practically ecstatic.
“Yes, it is much better to pay for your hotel in pesos,” Celia said when Emma brought up the subject of money. “Only the most naive or frightened tourists do not take advantage of the black market. Or those who are so rich they do not care. You cannot help but notice the money changers. They are everywhere with their loud, unattractive yelling. It is very embarrassing.”
“But isn't it illegal?”
“Oh, yes. The authorities try to crack down occasionally, but it is not practical. There are just too many money changers and too much profit to be made.”
“Why doesn't the government just set a more reasonable exchange rate? That would put them out of business, wouldn't it?”
Celia smiled.
“What the money changers take from the economy is merely a trickle. The government is playing a larger game. Pesos have even less value outside of San Marcos, you see. By setting the official exchange rate at one to one, the government can force big foreign
companies to accept pesos for what they sell here; for what they buy, they must pay in dollars.”
“I see,” said Emma. Suddenly the whole situation began to make sense. “It's still a little frightening, having to deal with men on the street for your bankingâespecially if you have large sums to exchange.”
“Oh, the street-corner money changers are not dangerous,” said Celia. “They are out in the open. Most are just trying to earn some extra money for their families. But if you are nervous, you should go the cambio.”
“The cambio?”
“It is like a bankâthey exchange money at posted rates, which are usually as good or better than you can get from the money changers on the street. The cambios are licensed and taxed by the government. There is one on the next block from here.”
“But why didn't they tell me about this at the hotel?”
“I think perhaps the hotels do not mind to be paid in dollars instead of pesos, yes?”
Celia waited for another question with an eager, expectant smile. The line had moved too quickly. They were now practically at the cashier's windows.
“I'm going to be here in San Marcos for a little while,” said Emma, “and I'd like to learn more about your country. May I take you to lunch? I'd love to ask you some more questions.”
“I am very sorry,” said Celia with obvious disappointment. “I am leaving tomorrow for the United States. I am taking a monthlong class in educational science at my old college in New Jersey. That is why I am here todayâI am arranging details of my tuition payment. Then I must spend the afternoon with paperwork at my school here.”
“Well, I'm sure you'll have a good time in the States,” said Emma, disappointed too.
They stood in silence for a moment. Then Emma spoke again.
“Look,” she said, “I know you probably have a lot of packing
to do, but maybe we could get together for dinner tonight. My treat.”
“That is very kind of you. I would be honored, but I would not wish you to go to any trouble or expense because of me.”
“No troubleâI'm glad to have someone to talk to. And I'm sure there's a restaurant at the hotel I'm staying at. Do you know the Casimente?”
“Oh, yes. The restaurant there is the best in San Marcos City, but it is very expensive. I could not accept such generosity.”
“Don't be silly. Do you know how much money you've just saved me? I'm the one who's in your debt.”
By the time they had concluded their business at the cashier's window, Emma had arranged to meet Celia in the hotel lobby at seven-thirty. She said good-bye and walked to the small brick building across the street where Celia had told her to go. The sign outside read CAMBIO.
Inside, two clerks dispensed money from behind barred windows under the watchful gaze of three boys who looked about fourteen years old. All cradled submachine guns in their arms.
The line here was short and consisted entirely of men who looked like money changers themselves and probably were. No wonder there were so many of them, thought Emma, realizing how easy it would be to make a profit off ignorant tourists.
It took only a few minutes for Emma to exchange the money she had cashed at American Express at a better rate than anything she could have gotten on the street. Paid in pesos, her hotel room would now cost less than ninety dollars per night.
Emma walked back to the hotel, feeling better for having made a friend and nervous for having so much cash in her pocket. She didn't relax until most of the cash was locked in the hotel safe, along with her passport, her checkbook and the rest of the traveler's checks.
It was now a little after three o'clock, still time to orient herself
in San Marcos City. Emma got a map of the city from a rack by the door and brochures for the area's few tourist attractions, sat down in one of the rattan lobby armchairs, and began leafing through the pictures.
The largest and most impressive brochure was for Las Calvos, some kind of exclusive resort area in another part of the island. Rich people from all over the world apparently came here to play golf and tennis, stay in luxury bungalows and dance the nights away in tropically decorated discotheques. It all looked very expensive and very boring.
In San Marcos City there were an old Spanish fort, government buildings, and the botanical gardens to see. Several hotels featured their own casinos and nightclubs. Apparently a bus left the hotel twice a day and shuttled between tourist attractions. The afternoon bus had left half an hour ago and the next one wouldn't be until eleven o'clock tomorrow morning. Emma could buy a ticket now if she wanted to see the island from the safety of a crowd.