Love on the Road 2015 (15 page)

Neil had also made a comment about a friend of his. It
was a time when he and Charlotte were particularly close, and Neil told her about an ultimatum his friend had given his wife. ‘The guy hadn’t been prepared for the consequences,’ Neil said. ‘He thought he’d get his way. You gotta be prepared to take whatever.’ Charlotte stared at the rocks and olive trees, scant at this height. The consequences of her get-even lark could be the absolute end of her and Neil. She’d show him she wouldn’t be used or toyed with. But – my god – at a price as steep as this mountain.

She collapsed over the steering wheel. Losing Athens, losing
Neil.

She thought hard: who was doing what to whom? Had Neil done anything – beyond flirting a bit? Had Athena? She’d made eye contact, it was true, but maybe she didn’t know how to play the scene any more than Charlotte did. Why should Charlotte let either of them take away this opportunity to soar on Parnassus? If she had issues with Neil, wouldn’t it be better to resolve them where she herself wasn’t the primary sacrifice?

She managed to turn the car around in three K-turns, heaving huge intakes of relief along with the dust. She didn’t
have to
drive foreign roads for hours. She laughed bitterly. Tolerating Athena seemed simple by contrast.

It took a while to find Neil standing at the high rim of the amphitheatre, his hand shielding his eyes like a surveyor. He waved his arms, signalling where he was. Charlotte had brought cans of orange drink with her, their frostiness keeping her somewhat cool, and offered them as an excuse for her long absence.

‘Over an hour?’ he said. ‘For sodas?’

She studied his face, determining whether he had been worried. She decided he had.

‘Libations of “Nitea”,’ she said, and fought back a thickening in her throat that had suddenly appeared.

He looked puzzled briefly.

‘Oh – yeah,’ he said.

He took two cans from her and indicated where Athena was, although Charlotte had already spotted the yellow sundress several tiers below. Even from here, she could see Athena clutching a sandal in her hands and rubbing her foot.

‘I think she’s getting tired of the day,’ Neil said. ‘This might help.’

Charlotte was still trying to catch her breath with the relief of being back with Neil, of his not knowing about her abortive getaway attempt, as she followed behind him. She sank near Athena on the stone bench and Neil remained standing, surveying what was once the playing arena.

‘Charlotte knows lots about all this,’ he said, indicating with wide arms the size of Charlotte’s knowledge. ‘I’m always surprised at what Charlotte knows.’

Charlotte said nothing.

‘He is worried,’ Athena said. ‘Long time we cannot see you.’

‘She was getting us these drinks,’ Neil said. ‘And got lost.’

He was going to pretend to accept the lie, Charlotte realised, the way she’d pretended to accept his contrition over the other woman.

When Neil assumed the driver’s seat, he eyed Charlotte only briefly as he re-adjusted its distance from the pedals. Athena insisted on sitting in the back seat. She said all that sun and the lunch had made her sleepy and she’d direct them once in Athens, which she did. They all shook hands and hugged – Charlotte felt stupid here, but went along with
Athena’s gesture – when they returned the car.

At the bar in their hotel, Neil and Charlotte ordered gin and tonics. The drinks were warm. No ice, they were told.

‘Jesus,’ Charlotte said. ‘How un-refreshing.’

‘It’s a constant adjustment here,’ Neil said, taking a huge gulp. His eyes met hers for what seemed a long time, as though he would ask a question. Then he did. ‘You wouldn’t have gone through with it, would you?’

She attempted to wash down the thickness in her throat with warm tonic:
it
.

Neil ordered a second drink, and said, ‘What made you change your mind?’

It felt as though they were perched precariously once again, like the experience of physical sensation that lingered long after they’d gone skiing or boating, her body continuing to rock, now with fear.

She shook her head in denial of a reason – or perhaps an inability to frame a reason – tears in her eyes.

‘The consequen—’ he started, but seemed to think better of it. He asked the bartender for snacks, and said to Charlotte, ‘Are we okay now?’

She nodded, embarrassed.

They sat together in silence, having another warm drink, some potato chips, waiting for cues of normality to resume. She pressed her bare arm against his on the bar. ‘We are so burned,’ she said. He agreed. ‘No wonder. All that heat.’ He swivelled on his stool and tucked Charlotte’s knees between his own. The gesture was a familiar one to her, but her legs felt sticky and she pulled away. ‘Even that’s too hot,’ she said, but then, not knowing what else to do, she kissed him
suddenly, briefly. He waited a few seconds and kissed her back. Their mouths tasted of gin and salt and, for the moment, all felt well again.

The following year, Charlotte and Neil went to Norway, where days were cool, and they moved among icebergs with civility. It was the last trip they took together.

Stewart Gates, San Diego postman recently retired, picked himself up off the pavement in front of the cathedral in San José, Costa Rica and cussed the driver of the bus which had grazed him as he'd stepped off the curb. He brushed off some of the dirt, examined his body for bruises, found a few, but mostly his dignity had been hurt. His determination had been strengthened.

He approached two or three people walking by, saying ‘Train?' as if they'd know he meant to be directed to one. The fourth woman stopped, quizzed ‘
Señor
?'

He repeated, ‘Train?' She caught on, to his relief. She guided him a few yards to the corner, pointed down the hill, held up four fingers, which he assumed meant four blocks, then said, ‘
A la
derecha
', as she gestured to the right. The words meant nothing, but he got the point. He thanked her profusely and hoped that she got his, as he pranced down the hill. He might have been on his old mail route, so happily did he advance. He made the turn correctly because ahead he saw a very old, very dirty, very beautiful building that was obviously a train station.

The din inside would normally have disgusted him, but, with a fervent desire to escape this city he now hated, he got in a line that reached across the entire lobby. He had no idea where he was going. When his turn came, the ticket seller asked, and poor Stew didn't even understand what he'd been asked. Nor did he know the name of a town to go to if he had known. All he really knew was he wanted out of San José at any cost.

A boy of about twelve behind him felt for him in his bewilderment. ‘
Señor
,' he said, ‘
Tren
a Puntarenas
?'

‘
Si, si
,' Stew said, having no idea where Puntarenas might be.

The lad took a dollar from the several that Stew extended and gave it to the cashier to buy him a ticket to the west coast of the country. Had the train waiting on the track been going to Puerto Limón on the east coast, Stew's entire future would have been different. He thanked the boy over and over, offered him the rest of the dollars in his hand, but the boy accepted only the few cents in change. Stew had no idea what any of it was worth. He'd arrived only hours before, in a breathtaking landing between menacing mountains. The natives on board had applauded as the pilot landed safely. Stew had understood their enthusiasm. Out of fear, he hadn't been able to move a muscle until the plane had emptied.

Stew never saw the helpful boy again but, by the time I met Stew three months later and heard the entire tale, the child had become an icon. He was the prologue to Stew's new chapter of life. He symbolised the Ticos and Ticas, whom Stew had come to love like his own kin. Better than his own kin. I don't know how many times I heard the story
of his arrival, not in Puntarenas, but in Mata de Limón, fifty miles short of his destination.

It seems he'd been fascinated from the time he'd left the Maidenform Bra billboard, as the train pulled out of San José and passed station after station, where no one seemed to get on or off much, but the mail got dropped and a bag lifted up, the most interesting activity to him, as they picked up speed and, a few miles further on, saw the blink-blink at another stop.

At a larger town, which turned out to be Orotina, the train stopped for a supper break – or what seemed to pass as one. Stew's appetite was ready for the fried chicken, boiled eggs, macadamia nuts, boiled field corn and whatever else a bevy of long-haired, unsmiling, tired-looking ladies who boarded had to offer. He bought some of each vender's wares. He left them the change because he had no idea how to figure colones against dollars. This turned out to be generosity that must have made the women's day, because he got the best of whatever they sold from that day forward, when the train stopped in Orotina.

Just as the train chugged past the cemetery on the way out of town, Stew glanced back and saw the one word he'd be coached on by the stranger in his corner bar at home:
cerveza
. He slapped his hand to his high forehead. He'd passed up a beer – the one thing he needed more than food after his harrowing day. What was he thinking about! A boy had boarded briefly, selling Coke, which he'd bought in desperation, never dreaming that, a block down the track, the nectar of the gods …

At any rate, his vigour was renewed with the mixture he'd indulged in and he'd been more alert thereafter. He
dozed for a while. A loud call from the conductor woke him. He didn't comprehend a syllable of the announcement. He did, however, glance out the window curiously and see, blessedly, a homemade sign in what turned out to be the Cantina Clara Luz:
cerveza
.

The train had slowed, but not to a standstill. Yet passengers were jumping off with agility. Hell, he could do it if they could. He'd done worse on D-Day. Sure it was a long time back, but, not to be daunted, he tossed his small satchel out the door and swung to the ground, shakily, after it.

He gingerly crossed the tracks and entered the Clara Luz in a spirit of adventure. He dropped his bag on the spotless floor, surveyed the simple room with its half dozen worse-for-wear tables, its chairs that threatened to give way when he plunked his ample body in one. He held up two fingers for the teenage waitress and formed a bottle-tipping gesture with his other hand. Quite bravely, as he described his move later, he uttered his one word of Spanish: ‘
Cerveza
.'

In a flash, the young girl plopped two opened bottles of beer before him, smiled, made no announcement of cost, and retreated. Stew's brilliant blue eyes followed the Tica in amazement. He'd spoken his first foreign word. She'd understood. She'd welcomed an alien with a smile to a strange land. Stew repeated endlessly, ‘I was home. It was love at first sight for Mata de Limón.' That's where – he found out the next day – he had alit from a moving train to find Utopia.

Someone anonymously poured him into a bed in the hotel across the tracks, after he'd held up his two fingers for more
cerveza
heaven knows how many times. He woke to a glistening 6
AM
sun in his eyes, only slightly the worse for
wear. His duffel bag lay intact beside him. He stood and looked across a wide river. Mud flats, peppered with aggressively hungry gray birds, indicated that the river had been wider recently. In fact, it receded before Stew's very eyes, his second mystery of the morning. He ventured out on a narrow walkway above the river, wisely not leaning against the rail. He looked in the three directions he could see and no road was in sight. ‘I knew I was in town,' he told of his introduction to Utopia. ‘I remembered the depot. But no roads! Had I died and gone to heaven actually crossed my foggy mind.'

The way he'd heard about Costa Rica in the first place was by telling a man he met in his neighbourhood bar that – in answer to his question – his goal for retirement was to get away from traffic. ‘A Ford killed my wife in a collision,' he told the man. ‘My daughter was knocked up in the back seat of one, and I haven't seen her since she eloped with the guy. I banned cars from our household but, wouldn't you know it, my two sons found drag racing to be their priority. I can't tell one of them from the other for grease on their faces. I need relief! I hate Henry Ford almost as much as I hate Adolph Hitler.' He bought the guy a beer.

In reply, the fellow gave Stew a welcome tip: ‘I just came back from business in a country where some people have never seen a car,' he said. Stew's ears strained for the name of it.

‘I'm as good as packed,' Stew said. ‘Tell me how I get there.'

‘It's Costa Rica. Take a supply of Kennedy half dollars. Oh, yes, and a Polaroid. Those Ticos love to have their picture taken. The only word you need to know as a starter is
‘Cerveza.
' That way, you'll get your beer, and you can point to anything else you want to say in a pocket dictionary. That's what I do. You can take a train from coast to coast. I love it.'

Stew thought it was beer talk, but he couldn't resist investigating. That very night, he packed for a short trip, called for a plane ticket to a country he'd heard about for the first time. Next morning, he bought the Polaroid and a lot of film, and went to the bank. They sold him as many Kennedy half dollars as he felt he could carry. One of his sons' feet were, as usual, sticking out from under a needy junker in the driveway. Stew nudged them as he went by, ‘Going on a little trip, son,' he said casually.

‘Good for you, Dad. You earned it. The house will be fine with us, so don't worry. Send a card.' He didn't even come out from under the car all the way to make his speech. Stew caught a cab to the airport, clutching the sides all the way. He wasn't kidding. Cars were not for him. He saw trains in his future, even if the stranger's story sounded too good to be true.

‘Aggie and I were going to take trains everywhere if she'd lived. I'll have to do it by myself and she'd approve,' he said to himself. ‘I raised the three kids and, yes, I've earned it.'

He was amused when he thought of the stranger telling him to expect to find his own holy grail in the adventure ahead.

I found Costa Rica the same year Stew did. In fact, I'd gone to Puntarenas on the train and was venturing back to San José when the train stopped at Mata de Limón. I saw a lake in the background through an arch that spanned a sidewalk toward a hotel, on which I read ‘Luna de Miel'
which made no sense to me. I wasn't in a hurry. Why not get off and look around? I left my bags in the postage-stamp-sized station, with a kindly attendant, and strolled down the sidewalk to a pavilion that seemed to be the restaurant. I sidled into a chair, timidly.

I was one of two diners. The other one, a man with skinny legs sticking out of cut-off khakis, seemed hidden behind what, unbelievably, looked like the
New York Times.
Two malnourished dogs lapped at crumbs from beneath now-unoccupied tables, as well as the reader's table.

Ducking under the counter at my left darted the plainest young lady I may ever have seen. She approached for my order but stopped abruptly, turned excitedly toward the other table. ‘
Gringa
, gringa,
' she called, pulling at the man's arm. She dashed back to me, ‘
Gringo, gringo,
' she said, pointing to the now-alert fellow in the Harry Truman shirt.

He rose and moved toward me with blue eyes misting almost to tears. A broad smile exposed a chipped front tooth. His hand extended to me. ‘I'm Stew,' he said, ‘I haven't spoken English for three months. Let me buy you breakfast and don't expect to get a word in edgewise for the first hour. I can't tell you how I welcome you.' He ordered what seemed to be the only breakfast served: standard and good. Stew began to tell me all that had happened to him since he'd landed in the country, a lot of which I sorted out later.

He was right. I got in no more than the occasional ‘Oh no!', and nodded yes or no to indicate I was listening to his life story. I was fascinated by what he was doing in an infinitesimal railroad town in Central America without even a superficial knowledge of the language.

Stew hadn't talked long before I knew he was a man of
intense likes and equally intense hates. Among the former were trains, beer, football, the
New York Times
and Ticas. Among the latter: as a WWII vet, he hated Hitler; as the victim, he felt, of motor vehicles, he hated Henry Ford.

He told me about bringing back his teenage bride from England after the war. They'd had a daughter and two sons before Aggie had been hit and killed by a Ford driver. He had raised the kids alone, banning cars from the household. As was natural, his sixteen-year-old daughter dated in them and his boys took to drag racing like pelicans to fish.

‘They'll never give me grandchildren. They're married to Henry's offspring,' he tried to joke. ‘I kept my eye on the doughnut since Aggie died and, here I am, a stone's throw from a train and not a car in sight.'

Then he told me about that fateful day in San José, in bumper-to-bumper traffic on streets wide enough for oxcarts. He'd been with the light, he said, ‘Imagine? Still I got knocked down.'

I told him about the man I'd met who had explained: ‘I've lived in the States, and you have to prove you can't hit a pedestrian before you get a license. Here we have to prove we
can
before we get ours.' His joke didn't sound all that funny to Stew.

He told me about his weekly trip to San José to pick up the
New York Times,
which he'd arranged to have saved for him at a stand. ‘I take pictures at the stops,' he said, proudly. ‘My artwork graces more mantels between here and San José than the Virgin Mary, I bet.'

Stew got his yen for trains at an early age. ‘We were poor. Lived on the wrong side of the tracks, so to speak. For me, it was the right side. I could spell “Chesapeake and Ohio”
before I could spell my own name. My mother saved to buy me a Lionel engine when I was six or seven, during the Depression. She added a car whenever she could. She knew how I loved that train that went by, the high point of my day. I joined the army as soon as I could, just to ride a troop train. Now look at the marvellous monster at my doorstep.'

Stew lived in a room of the Manglares Hotel, where we ate. It cost fifty cents a day. Except for the lack of English speakers to share his thoughts with, he said he was in heaven. ‘I take the train to San José for my papers and read them one at a time on the correct days. So I'm a week late. I can't do anything about the news anyway, as long as I don't bet on the Dodgers after the game is done and they lost.' He laughed. ‘You're the first person I could have bet with anyway. These Ticos spend their days like birds, scratching for enough to live on. They'd have no time to go to a baseball game if there was a team around.'