Without Borders (2 page)

For the first five minutes of the drive, she stared out the open window at the ramshackle houses and the legions of Ché Guevara graffiti covering nearly every flat surface. Talk radio blared through the old Corolla’s speakers and filled the silence, saving her from small talk. A breeze rushed in and cooled her sweaty skin, but it couldn’t blow away the raw sting of her mortification.

They stopped in a dim parking lot, surrounded by a rusty iron fence and topped with spiraling razor wire. Without a word, Felipe shut off the engine and hopped out of the car. She followed and stared at the ground as he plucked her bags from the trunk.

“So,” Annie fumbled for words, “when you said you had to drive me back to the hotel… this is what you meant, huh?”

He nodded.

“And tomorrow we’re flying to the other side of the country? With Marisol?”
Please say yes.
The thought of spending an entire flight alone with him made her stomach ball up into a hundred tiny knots.

He nodded again, and Annie was desperate for him to say something, anything, to relieve the tension stretched between them.

Nothing.

“So we’ll drive to the airport in the morning?” she asked.

“I have some things to take care of at the hospital. I will send a taxi. Noon.”

“Okay.” She grabbed her luggage and lumbered toward the front doors of the grenadine-red hotel. A long staircase twisted its way to a second floor balcony, and above it a hundred shards of broken glass were glued to the flat roof.

Felipe’s stare bored into the back of her head, and she couldn’t move herself or her belongings fast enough to get away.

“Annie—”

“Yeah?” Her shoulders sagged, and she kept her eyes down.
I can’t believe this is happening.

“I—” he started. He ran a hand through his hair. “Never mind.” He climbed into the car. “See you tomorrow.”

Annie stood in front of the blue and yellow La Costeña Airlines sign, waiting for Marisol. This section of the airport was nearly empty. Even the kiosks with snacks and knick-knacks were closed, shuttered by a fortress of wire fencing. She fixed her stare on the entryway, wound tightly as she waited under the harsh, too bright lights.

Footsteps shuffled along the tile. “
¡Mi Anita!
”

“Marisol!” Annie’s eyes went wide, and she knew she probably looked like a feral cat, all puffed up with the excitement of seeing someone. But she couldn’t stifle her crazed relief. After a day and a half of scrambling through airports and struggling to wrap her mind around unfamiliar words and sounds and faces, the comfort of a friend sent Annie spinning into overdrive.

“I’m so glad you’re here. I was starting to worry.” The words spilled from Annie’s mouth, crammed together and a half-octave too high. “I missed you so much! Is everything okay? When you didn’t come last night, I thought—”

“Breathe, Annie.” Marisol laughed. She wrapped her arms around Annie’s midsection and squeezed. “Everything is fine.” For a moment Annie let Marisol’s musical voice ease her neuroses. “I am so happy you are here.”

They parted, and Annie took in her friend’s round face and sheath of long, black hair. She was even prettier than Annie remembered, but the sparkle of adventure in Marisol’s eyes was unchanged. It was contagious, and for the first time since last night’s fiasco, Annie began to feel excited about their plans.

“How long is this flight?”

“Maybe one hour. That will be plenty of time to tell me about your travels, yes?”

Annie squirmed. No way was she going to recount her drunken misadventures. “We’ll head out for the brigade tomorrow? I’m still not sure what I’m supposed to be doing.”

Marisol was quiet. She frowned at the luggage piled at Annie’s feet. “You have not checked these yet?”

Annie shook her head.

“Are they all yours? Did you get the packing list?”

That packing list needs work.
“They told me to take them to the gate. There wasn’t a place to check them at the ticket counter.” Marisol’s face scrunched, and Annie knew she must have misunderstood the attendant’s instructions. “What do I do?”

“It is okay. Come.” Marisol stalked toward the main entrance, and Annie scrambled behind her. They rounded a corner and hung a right before hitting an intricate maze of people and luggage. She pulled her arms in close, trying to make herself smaller against the buzz of the crowd and the press of bodies invading her personal space.

Marisol weaved them in and out of the lines, muttering the same Spanish phrase again and again. Annie couldn’t tell exactly what her friend said, but based on the glares she received, she imagined it was “Make way. Idiot American coming through.”

Marisol pushed them both to the front of the line. Her friend’s hands flailed, explaining their predicament in rushed Spanish to the dull-featured man behind the counter.

With a grunt, he motioned to Annie and then to the scale next to him. Panting from the cross-airport sprint, she used both hands to drop her largest suitcase onto the scuffed metal surface. She followed with the two smaller pieces and waited for some type of identification tag. None came, and she plastered on the brightest smile she could muster. “That’s all,” she said. “
No mas
.”

Marisol placed a hand on the small of Annie’s back and pushed lightly. “You too.”

“Me?” Her eyes darted between Marisol and the scale, trying to make sense of the instructions. When she couldn’t figure out anything else to do, she stepped next to the bags.

“No.” The man took one look at Annie’s blank face and shook his head.

“Too heavy.” A low, familiar voice came from behind her, and Annie’s insides constricted until she couldn’t breathe. “There is a weight limit for the small planes.” Felipe stood less than a foot away, his brown eyes and dark, rumpled hair set off by the baby blue shirt he wore.

“A weight limit?” She remembered the two bags of chips she’d inhaled the night before, still half-drunk on booze and shame.
Dear God.

“
Sí
. Do you have extra things?” Marisol asked.

“Extra things?” Frustration rolled off the people behind her, but Annie couldn’t imagine getting through an entire month without everything she’d packed. She put a lot of time and effort into her packing list—it held only the most necessary items.

“Is there anything you can throw out?” Marisol asked.

The man behind the counter smoothed his thick, graying mustache, and Annie’s mind spun, composing a list of her belongings and ranking them from most precious to slightly less precious.

“I can check one. I only have this.” Felipe held up a small duffle bag then reached for the bag on top of her mountain of luggage.

She pulled it out of his reach. That was the bag with her underwear, and she wasn’t about to risk another disaster. “Thanks.” She handed him the rolling suitcase full of first-aid supplies and extra socks and prayed that would be enough.

“
Bien.
” The mustached man began pulling Annie’s luggage into the mountain of bags behind the counter.

For the first time since the El Bar debacle, she forced herself to look Felipe in the eye. “Thank you.”

• • •

Felipe heaved Annie’s suitcase onto the scale and tossed his duffle bag into the mix. He stepped onto the scale, sliding under the limit by two kilos.
How can anyone need so many things?

Annie’s silhouette headed toward the gate, and he followed. Her face looked the same as it had all those years ago, the upturned nose and the wide brown eyes. The same untamed red curls. But the way her body had filled out was something new; the curve of her hips and the way they swayed the slightest bit as she moved had drawn his attention from across the airport the night before.

She never tried to kiss me when we were kids.
And Felipe would have remembered, because his teenage crush on Annie was so charged and full of fervor. Instead, he spent his year in the States alone in the basement of their rental house, watching old
Roseanne
reruns and trying to get a handle on the strange Midwestern accent. Meanwhile, his sister and Annie flitted in and out between houses and social extravaganzas. Marisol’s classmates saw her as an exciting and extroverted freshman. He was the short senior with a weird accent.

Outside the window, their small plane waited, and his stomach threatened to revolt. The flight from Managua to his mother’s house in Puerto Cabezas never failed to turn him into a wobbling, nauseated mess. Most of the time, the other passengers pretended not to notice the dark patches of sweat that bloomed beneath his underarms. But every once in a while, the tiny fourteen-passenger plane would lurch and shift just right, and no one could ignore the retching noises he made as he filled the tiny paper bag tucked into the seat pocket.

Please do not let me vomit this time.

“
Buenos días, Doctor
,” the pilot called as Felipe climbed the unsteady steps. The man didn’t look up, arranging newspapers along the windshield for easy reading. It was the same pilot from the last flight. The flight when Felipe didn’t quite get the bag open in time. He muttered a quick response and kept his head ducked low.

He shuffled down the narrow aisle. On both sides, the plane brimmed with people. Children sat on parents’ laps, smacking and slobbering on the windows. The recycled air was chilled, and already the beginnings of motion sickness churned inside him.

“’Lipe!” Marisol called to him from the last row, gesturing toward the spot next to Annie.

His eyes darted around for another option.
Nada
. Of the fourteen seats, thirteen were already filled. He scooted in front of Annie without meeting her eyes, and their knees collided. It sent an ugly ache through his leg, and he doubled over, practically landing in her lap. “Sorry.” He scrambled for his cracked vinyl seat and pressed his forehead to the cool glass, suddenly feeling more like a bumbling adolescent than a medical professional.

Annie’s ears flushed a deep red. “It’s okay.”

“He is not usually such a mess,” Marisol said.

Felipe kept his eyes on the seat in front of him, wishing he could crawl over the other passengers and into the fresh air. “I do not like to fly.”

“Is it safe?” Annie asked.

“These are Sandinista pilots. The best in the world. Our trip is like a smooth baby’s bottom.”

Marisol laughed as the plane’s engines roared beneath their feet. “Smooth as a baby’s bottom.”

Felipe waved his sister off, pretending not to care about the way the plane rocked as they moved toward the runway. Inside his chest, a familiar embarrassment flickered to life.

He hated the way Americans looked at him when he butchered their language. He hated the way his job—even after years of medical school and some of the top grades in his class—depended on their donations. He hated that, within a week of setting off on one of the brigades, Americans were beaten down by the rain and the bugs and the never-ending procession of poverty. Then, they became dead weight. One more piece of equipment for him to haul in and out of the boat. Necessary liabilities.

Annie would be no different—even if he couldn’t stop thinking about that almost-kiss.

The plane taxied and took off down the runway. Felipe’s insides pushed against his spinal cord, and the familiar jerk of panic grabbed him. He reached for the armrest, hoping to steady himself, but Annie’s arm lay there. He yanked his hand away and mumbled an apology, but not before he noticed her hands were as clammy as his own. The brief touch allowed his mind to forget the heights and the swell of nausea threatening to overtake him.

Willing to do anything to keep his mind off the flight, Felipe focused on the smattering of freckles across her bare left shoulder. For the next half hour, he counted each of them out of the corner of his eye—an entire universe’s worth. Lost in the constellations, he barely noticed the lurch of the small plane.

“Look.” Annie leaned over him, her eyes fixed on the window.

The objects below grew as the plane eased toward the empty field. There was no landing strip. No giant tower full of air traffic controllers guiding their way. Only a few brown, spotted cows dotted the field, barely looking up from their grazing to acknowledge the plane—as though the aircraft belonged there as much as any heifer.

“We’re landing in a cow pasture?” Annie’s guffaw escaped between her words. She returned to the confines of her own seat.

Felipe closed his eyes as the plane’s wheels hit earth. Already her superiority was showing. “You should not use that soap,” he said, ignoring the way her coconut scent reminded him of those moments at the bar when he’d nearly leaned in to kiss her. “You will attract mosquitoes.”

“What?” Annie stared out at the field, and he could tell she barely registered his words.

“
Nada
.”

• • •

Annie stepped through the door of
Ahora
headquarters—a modest two-story house with white iron bars in the windows. Fans whirred in every direction, and her gaze oscillated with them, taking in every detail of the place where Marisol grew up. The front room had been converted into office space, and towers of paper fluttered in the fake breeze. On the far wall, mismatched picture frames and awards hung in long, perfect lines. A far cry from her father’s office, with its plush chairs and serene elevator music being piped in over the waiting room speakers.

A bright American accent interrupted her thoughts. “I’m so glad you’re here.” Marisol’s mother wrapped her arms around Annie’s shoulders, swaddling her in the scent of patchouli. The sixty-something woman wore baggy khaki cargo pants and a flowing green top. Her laugh lines were deeper and her hair a bit grayer, but otherwise Melinda looked just as Annie remembered.

Annie squeezed back, careful to keep her arms at her sides. Sometime during the bumpy van ride from the cow pasture airport to the office, the humidity won a hard fought battle against her deodorant. “Thank you so much for letting me come along.”

“Of course.” Melinda turned to her son. “’Lipe, take Annie’s bags to Marisol’s room,
por favor
.”