After the Hurricane(54)



Perhaps it doesn’t matter if she takes a ride from a stranger. She is a stranger to herself as much as he is one to her.

The car starts, and Elena considers throwing herself out of it. It will hurt, yes, but perhaps something else will hurt her later, more. Perhaps this man will tie her up in a basement and perform experiments on her body, perhaps he will leave her dead in a ditch somewhere. She looks at him out of the corner of her eye, but his eyes are on the road.

“You want to stop for coffee before we get on the highway? I know a good place. They could use the business. Everyone could,” he says, blunt, his accent stronger than it was the night before. Elena wonders if he puts it on and takes it off like mascara.

“Sure.” A serial killer probably wouldn’t offer to get coffee first, would he? That would give her a chance to run. He is probably exactly what he is, a nice man on his way to Aguadilla, a drinking buddy her father knows in passing, a human helping another human. How wonderful it would be to be a man, Elena thinks, to not worry so much about what people offer you, to take it with open hands as your right, instead of inspecting it for poison. But what are women to do, when every story teaches them that nice old ladies with apples are trying to kill them, that wolves sit at every corner ready to eat them, that their stepmothers will abuse them, that simple home crafts will send them to sleep for a hundred years?

The car turns. It is early, nine in the morning, early for San Juan, which is a city of late nights and sleepy mornings, and the streets are empty. Fernando parks on Calle San Justo, explaining to Elena that the coffee shop is on Calle Recinto Sur, but that it goes the wrong way for their purposes, so they will just walk there and come back. This is another good sign, she knows, that he is giving her useful information, not trying to deceive her, and Elena makes a decision to hope for the best with Fernando. She has Mace on her key chain, anyway, and despite what a personal trainer she once did a trial session with implied, she knows full well how to run.

He leads her to a little café, its outside a muted taupe color, a rare neutral among bright exteriors, a handwritten sign saying Just re-opened, come in, on the door. Inside it is somehow welcoming, if a building can be welcoming, and the barista, a big man with a big mustache, smiles at them.

“Fernando! How are you?” he says in Spanish, and Fernando responds in kind, he has been well, he is going to Aguadilla this morning, this is his friend, he’s giving her a ride to Rincón.

“My friend, Elena,” he repeats in English, gesturing to her. She smiles and tells the barista, Mario, it is a pleasure.

“Rincón? What, you like to surf?” Mario asks, courteously, in English, as he starts to make their drinks, an iced latte for Elena, a red-eye for Fernando.

“Visiting family,” Elena says, smiling weakly. It isn’t a complete lie.

“You better be careful. It’s been hit up pretty bad. All that coastal land is wrecked. Lots of detours. Just go slow, you should make it,” Mario says, and Elena nods, wondering how he knows. Well, it’s a small island, of course, but who is doing much joyriding these days? Parts of the island still have no power. She thinks about the insanity, the thoughtlessness of her father himself, that he has gone wandering at this time, in this world still bleeding and broken from this storm. Anger lashes her, the anger she was so unprepared to feel, anger she does not know what to do with, and she has to clench her fists to tamp it down, to contain it, to find a place for it to hide so she doesn’t have to look at it, feel it, so deeply.

She fears she is running out of places to put it.

“How’s it been?” Fernando asks, pinning Mario with his stare. Mario shrugs, and Elena notices that he has a few silver hairs scattered in his black curls, and a dried food stain on his shoulder.

“Slow. But people come, little by little. It’s been a few days, not too many customers, but it’s just important to be open, you know?” Mario slips back into Spanish halfway through, but Elena understands him, in words and sentiment. “We had a lot of people come when we were putting together packages for people stuck in the interior and along the coasts, new faces; since then, they’ve come to say hello, buy some beans. But we will have to buy beans this year ourselves, the crop was hit too hard for us to just use our own this year. I want to try to get them from the island, but . . .” Mario’s voice trails away, sadly. If his crop of coffee was hurt by the storm, then so was everyone’s.

“Maybe you make a collective blend, ‘Maria edition.’ See if any other farms will join in,” Fernando says, stirring sugar into the paper cup Mario has lovingly handed him. Here is a man who loves coffee. He dips a spoon into Elena’s own drink to taste it before handing it over to her, nodding once.

“You have something on your shirt,” Elena whispers to him in Spanish. Mario smiles.

“The cost of having a three-year-old.” He points to a large painting on the wall, and Elena sees a rendering of Mario, the mustache marking him, with a smiling woman, who seems to be in mid-laugh, and a baby.

“How’s Marissa?” Fernando asks, sipping his coffee and adding more sugar. Elena winces, and Fernando shrugs.

“She’s good. She took her old job back, teaching at the elementary school, just for the year. Another teacher left after, so. That was lucky.”

“Sure. Lucky,” Fernando says, his voice hard. Mario shrugs.

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