Kilometer 99 (18 page)

“I'm Asian-American.”

He stares at me as if I've invented the term. “Passport?”

“I lost it; that's why I'm here.” I take out the other documents I've brought: my Hawai‘i driver's license, a copy of my Social Security card, the ID that the Peace Corps issued me but which did little good.

Finally, he sighs and presses a button on the radio strapped to his chest.

While the Wackenhut speaks in a color/number code, I look out at the visa line again. There—not for fortune, not for grace, not even for race—but for a few official documents go I.

The guard gives a version of my story to whoever listens on the other end. He describes me as a “Hawaiian-Oriental type of lady”—as if those labels disqualify me as authentically American.

“Her name?” The voice comes back over the radio.

I give my full name. The guard struggles to pronounce it.

The voice crackles on the radio. “Send her in.”

*   *   *

I'm sent through a metal detector and directed to American Citizen Services. In the waiting room, I'm given a number and shown a seat. After several minutes, the woman I spoke to on the phone the day before, Elaine, comes and finds me. She shows me into a white-walled, windowless room lit by fluorescent tubes. We sit at either end of a table. I'm a little concerned that the wire in my sandal might scrape the nice floor. On the wall behind Elaine hangs a series of corny patriotic photos in frames: Mount Rushmore, the Washington, D.C., skyline, a screeching bald eagle.

“All right, fill this out.” She hands me a clipboard with a form several pages long. “What do you have for documentation?”

I show her the same cards and papers that I showed the guard outside. She chuckles at my Che wallet.

“Let me make a copy of these.” She leaves the room.

I spend some time alone with the form, the clipboard, and a pen bearing the State Department seal. What should I put down as my address? I've used the Peace Corps office for so long. I can't even remember my father's street number in Honolulu. What is the mailing address for La Posada?

Elaine reenters the room a few minutes later. Her heels click hard against the tile floor.

“So you're a Peace Corps volunteer?” she asks.

“I was,” I say.

“Good for you. I served in Tonga, years ago.”

The idea of Peace Corps volunteers in Tonga sounds funny to me. I knew lots of Tongans growing up. But I nod and smile, feigning interest, doing my best to establish some sort of rapport.

“Did you just close your service?” she asks.

“ET'd, actually.” It's the first time I've uttered the Peace Corps code for quitting.

“Oh.” Elaine doesn't seem to know how to respond. “I'm sorry.”

“You shouldn't be sorry,” I say. “It made sense. The project I was working on, it was destroyed by the earthquake. I had only a few months left. The handwriting was on the wall, you know.”

She nods. “And now what?”

“Surfing,” I say.

“Right.” She raises my driver's license to study it. “You're from Hawai‘i, aren't you?”

“My boyfriend and I planned to go to South America. We hoped to spend a year or so.”

“That sounds wonderful.”

I nod. “The trip of a lifetime. But we were robbed the night before last. Now, I'm not sure we'll make it.”

Neither of us speaks. I drop the pen on the table and the sound echoes like thunder.

“So.” I try not to come off as desperate. “How long do you think this will take?”

“This paperwork has to be sent to Washington for processing, and then the passport must be shipped back. It could be a while. And as you know, the embassy has other priorities at the moment.”

I study the screeching eagle in the photo behind her. “Can I ask you something?”

“Of course.”

“Is it exciting to be working here right now, with the earthquake and all? Do you enjoy it?”

She sighs. “It's less boring than my last post; that's for sure. But it's frustrating as well. And stressful. There's more at stake, I suppose, more chance for success and for failure.”

“Right.” It seems a stupid question almost as soon as I've asked it. “Remember what you told me yesterday, about the emergency passport to fly back home?”

“Yes.” She looks puzzled. “The one-month option. The one that you weren't interested in?”

“Out of curiosity, how long would one of those take to process?”

“Not long. Could be the same day.” She cocks her head to one side, perhaps considering whether I'm a quitter at surfing and traveling as much as at Peace Corps work. “Is that something you might want to pursue?”

“Just curious is all.” In truth, this is the first time I've seriously considered simply going back to Hawai‘i. “I look forward to hearing from you.”

“Malia.” She says my name sternly as I rise to leave. “I'm sure you'll get to South America someday.”

*   *   *

Outside the embassy's tall white walls, I pause and stare at the visa line. It isn't hard to imagine a Mayan temple standing on this spot. An entire caste of disposable laborers already lines up. Well-fed guards stand over them, looking superior. And the high priests are hidden somewhere inside, along with their cryptic means of receiving orders from their far-off gods.

I try, with a strain like a mental push-up, to put myself in the place of those poor Salvadorans in the line, to appreciate the couple hundred dollars I have left, the car, the father in the States who could send me more money—if I could only bring myself to ask. I could even walk back inside the embassy, opt for the temporary permission, and return to the United States within the week.

Back at the Jeep, the clock on the dashboard shows that it's still early. I don't feel like returning to La Lib just yet, to pass another waveless day waiting for my future to start. Without deciding to, I find myself crossing town. Traffic is light at this time of the morning. Within a few minutes, I come to the familiar stretch of Boulevard de los Heroes and find a parking spot in Metrocentro's ample lot.

Across the boulevard, inside the Hotel Intercontinental, I buy Ben the rolling tobacco he didn't ask for. I walk up a nearby side street into a residential neighborhood. It's a place I've been to only one other time—the night before last. My feet seem to find it on instinct, by sense of smell. Soon enough, I'm standing at the front gate of Alex's apartment.

But why? I regret what happened between us two nights ago. I truly do. Still, Alex has been a big part of my life here. I need to close this chapter in a satisfying way, not with a hurried hungover exit.

Also, one part of me wants to know what he meant about my staying here, and about the job that he wanted to offer me last week. Even if my mind is made up, even if I have chosen Ben and our epic trip, I should at least know what that decision means, what my options are, or were.

Too nervous to ring the bell, I stand outside for a span of several minutes. I break open the sack of Dutch tobacco meant as a gift for Ben. With shaking hands, I roll a too-loose, too-damp cigarette and smoke it there on the sidewalk. The sound of a high-pitched pan flute startles me. The flutist turns out to be a man with a mobile knife-sharpening cart. He rolls past and stares, curious as to what I'm doing here, whom I'm waiting for.

Finally, light-headed from the tobacco and an empty stomach, I ring the buzzer beside Alex's name.

“
¿Quien es?
” I hear through the intercom.

“Alex? It's me, Malia.”

There's a pause. “Hold on a second. I'm coming down.”

Though it's late morning, Alex looks as though he's just awakened—which shouldn't be a shock, considering his schedule.

“You want to come up?” he manages to say.

“Yeah.”

He's already made a pot of coffee, so we spend the first few minutes fussing over spoons and cups and milk and sugar. Alex wears only the sweatpant shorts he's slept in. The scars along his arms are visible but look less striking to me now.

“So,” I say once both of us have our coffees and are seated—me on the bed, Alex on the single plastic chair at his multipurpose table. “No work today?”

He shrugs. “We're trying to rotate our days off throughout the week, so services don't dry up on Saturday and Sunday. I've been spending a lot of nights in Zacatecoluca.”

“Do you like it?” I ask.

“Zacatecoluca?”

“No, the job. The lifestyle.”

He looks into his coffee mug. “I don't stop to think about whether or not I like it very often. But I suppose that I do, yes. It's busy, you know. The work is valued.”

“That's good. You seem happier now, compared to before.” I catch myself staring at his forearms and will my eyes back to his face. “At first, when they sent you back down here from D.C., I was a little outraged.”

He brings his coffee mug up to his lips and holds it there.

“I didn't think it was responsible to send somebody in your … your condition straight back after a few weeks of therapy.”

“Maybe they shouldn't have.” Alex lowers the cup and forces a smile.

“But now it seems like a perfect fit.”

“I suppose that's true.” His eyebrows rise. “My ‘condition' is probably best described as depression.”

It's the first time I've heard him use that word.

“The doctors, they see it differently from the way I do. But I've always felt that at the heart of it was an inability to pretend.”

He pauses and looks about the room, as if the words he wants are written on the walls or ceiling.

“To pretend what?” I ask.

“Ever since I was a teenager, I've seen everything in life as a sort of slow, senseless withering toward death. People who are happier than I am—at least it feels this way—are able to pretend that's not the case, or maybe they forget or ignore it long enough to function.”

I'm not sure what to say to that. His tone is calm and measured.

“With the job I have now, I don't feel I have to pretend anymore. The fallen villages and the refugee camps, they're exactly what I believed the human condition to be all along. It's as if some sort of veil or tinted glass is finally removed from my vision—some layer of distortion that I always knew was there. Don't get me wrong: It's nice to bring food, and medicine, and clothing. But honestly, I feel like my real job is simply to witness it all. To confirm that this is the state of the world. To ignore nothing, and deny nothing.”

And in that instant, his Red Cross job seems as selfish and indulgent as surfing. “I'm glad that works for you.”

“The more I think about it, the more I'm convinced that some of our ideas behind development and aid are flawed. It's sort of a twentieth-century construct that we do good works as a means to an end. Before that, people did them as charity, as penance. It was a way to get into heaven, or to gain enlightenment. It was about you, the giver, not about the receiving end. I'm not sure we've adapted so well to the secular, results-oriented version.”

“Maybe not.” Some of what he says rings true, but I'm in no mood for his philosophical musings.

He smiles and puts his coffee cup down on the table. “It's good to see you, Malia. I didn't want our final good-bye to be that morning a couple days ago.”

“Neither did I.” My stomach feels dry and cavernous.

Alex refreshes both our coffees.

“Do you remember what you said at the Peace Corps office last week?” I ask.

“I said good-bye.” He puts the now-empty coffeepot on the table.

“Before that. You mentioned that the Red Cross needs engineers. That I'd be perfect for the job. That was why you came looking for me, right?” I take a sip from the warm cup.

“I guess I remember saying something like that.”

“Is it still an option?” My question comes out sheepishly. I try to picture it. Could I do relief work long enough to cash up for both Ben and me? How many months might that take?

“A job? For you?” He looks surprised. “Not exactly. I mean, we've gotten a lot of people in place since then.”

“A lot of engineers? People who speak the language? Who have experience in the sort of water systems that were crushed?” My voice turns loud and defensive.

“Look.” He holds his palms up, as if to say,
Don't shoot
. “Something could come along; that's always a possibility. But things are different now.”

“It was like five days ago you told me this.”

“That morning at the office, I tried to find you because of a rumor that you were about to terminate your service. I was convinced I could sort out a situation for you like mine—working with the Red Cross for a few months until your service was up, then come aboard officially.”

“So, why not come aboard now?”

“Because you quit, Malia!”

I don't have a response for him.

In a lower tone, he continues: “It doesn't mean anything to me—two or three months, one acronym instead of another—but the bosses take that stuff seriously.”

Whether or not this is true, it makes me feel small.

“What's all this about anyway? Aren't you going to South America? What happened to your trip?”

I let out a deep breath and look at the floor. “I lost my passport, and all our money. That night I spent here with you, somebody broke into our hotel room and ripped us off.” I emphasize the
here
and the
you,
hoping he might see this as his problem, too.

“Fuck.” Alex winces and bares his teeth. “I'm sorry. Have you been to the embassy?”

“Of course. They're working on it, but it could take weeks.”

“So this job is, what, the consolation prize or something?”

“It's not like that.” I have no patience for his judgment. “I want to know what my options are. You offered me something once, not so long ago. I came to see if the offer was still good.”