LITMIR.BIZ

      12.

      I FLY FOR TWO DAYS IN A DARK GREEN FUNK. GOODBYE, Atlanta. Good riddance, Miami. The stewardesses driving their little cocktail wagons seem like old friends, my only allies against the New World Order. And then the continent is suddenly gone and I am in the airport in San Juan, Puerto Rico, amid that faint diarrhea-and-leather smell, the urchins on me like flies, the chaos, the poverty, the humidity, the rust, the whirling vectors of tropical disease, beriberi and elephantiasis, and my stomach roiling and pitching. My stomach feels like a bile sac. My skin is a dry rash of puckered follicles. I think I might get hives. Through the looking glass, new language, no one knows how to wait in line.

      At baggage claim one of my suitcases comes down the chute in an unzipped pile, my underwear strewn across the conveyor belt behind it. Humiliated, I scramble after my belongings. An airport employee in a blue blazer with gold epaulets who speaks crisp Caribbean English taps me on the shoulder and suggests I try the casinos. I glare at him. What kind of twit does he take me for? Doesn’t he know what Freud said: “A dream about money is a dream about shit”? This is not spring break or carnival. I am not some bumpkin in his Bermudas in search of mai tais and a suntan. This is not a game. This is not a vacation. He’s lucky I don’t produce my French knife. It’s ten inches of razor blade. Is it here? Yes, thank goodness it wasn’t stolen. I zip up my bag and dash to catch the next flight. Soon this will be all over, I tell myself. Soon I will stop running and start living. I really hate this trip. The thought of rejoining Mountain and the stewardesses blithely navigating their cocktail wagons are my only comfort.

      Soon, however, there are no more stewardesses. Only angry, jabbering pilots with shredded cigars crammed into their faces. They leave the cockpit doors open, make no announcements, and swig vengefully from metal flasks. The sea grows bluer and then impossibly blue. I deboard my last plane and ride in a cab through a disturbing forest. The definition of civilization blurs.

      It is late afternoon when the four o’clock ferry bumps against the dock of Poisson Rouge, a mist-wrapped volcano cooling in a crème de menthe sea. It is very much the picture postcard that Mountain sent me, though larger than my encyclopedia study led me to believe. This is my new home. I envision myself in loincloth with a machete, a fire on the beach, the riddles of life unraveling, the clear and benevolent eyes of God smiling down. The sun is setting. The waves skim up the silver sand to crisp against my ankles. A pot of clams and wild potatoes steams upon the fire.

      Now at once there is a tumult, people scraping baggage and slapping on hats. Four yammering men jump over the rails with ropes. I stand to disembark. My legs and stomach begin to throb from dread. Normally I enjoy traveling. It’s the arriving part that doesn’t agree with me. I shuffle trancelike down the dock, a bag in each hand, Mountain’s weathered postcard in my back pocket. No one pays me any mind. The sun on my skin is kingly and indolent as oil. The air is as heavy as the warm towel the barber lays over your face before he brings out the razor.

      Before my eyes can assemble a complete picture of the world I am about to enter, black clouds suddenly form out of nowhere and cover the sun. I know that it will not rain. According to the several detailed pieces I read about this island, outside of the monsoon season several months away, this is a comparatively dry landmass, with even cacti flourishing in the more arid spots. My forecast complete, the sky rips open and the rains smashes down. Everyone dashes for cover. I huddle cold against a crude, three-color mural of an angry African face painted on the stucco wall of Meng’s Sail and Scuba Rental, the rain clanking and plonking off the shelf of corrugated roof above my head.

      All my fellow passengers are picked up by friends or the hotel shuttle, or whisked away by cabs. Before long I am the last remaining member of the ferry crowd. Now I will find Mountain. Though I have no idea where he might be, he should be easy to find. Broad-shouldered and tall, with that jaunty honker and those jolly blue eyes, he will stand out like Charlemagne among these mostly diminutive black natives. There are only 3,700 inhabitants on the whole island, and three thousand of them live in this enchanting bay town. The minute I ask someone he will say, Oh yes, Mountain Moses. He lives over on such and such.

      As quickly as the rain came it is gone. The sun lazily reclaims the sky. I heft my bags and stroll into the shady, still-damp plaza to rest on one of the wooden benches next to a stone drinking fountain whose sluggish jet tastes of sow bugs and moss. Under the cool mahogany trees I am grateful for a chance to collect my thoughts and catalog the town square: the scuba rental place, a small customs booth, an info booth, a duty-free shop, a post office, a gift shop, and hallelujah: a bar called Harry’s. If the drinks are cheap at Harry’s, I think the odds of finding Mountain there are very good. And no sense in leaving the matter in suspense. I leave my bags on the bench and saunter over.

      Harry’s is early Tijuana, stucco and corrugated iron roof, but when you step inside it is more the flavor of an English pub, with long tables full of blond yachting youths and native men slapping down domino tiles with malicious grins. The bar itself faces a long, bamboo-framed, green-tinted window that overlooks the bay. There is no sign of Mountain, inside or out. I resist perching for a quick drink or three, although I realize the calming effect of the alcohol maybe invaluable. I ask the barman if he knows of a Mountain Moses. He lifts his chin at me as if I have recited something enthusiastically from 101 Dalmatians. “Don’t know ‘im,” he says.

      “Thank you,” I say. “I’ll be back.”

      I return to my baggage. I feel briskly the fool and definitively alien, my stomach shriveled to the size of a pea. This is perfectly inane, not at all what I planned, a tourist trap in the middle of the Barbarian Sea. The rent on a single apartment up on that hill probably exceeds what I would pay for twelve beachfront apartments in Solana Beach. But Mountain, I suspect, has found something better, cheaper anyway. He will have answers. I feel compelled to speak with him this moment.

      Down by the waterfront at the edge of the plaza I spy a pay phone on a pole. The bay is packed with sailboats, a shrimper, a trawler, a few yachts, a small freighter, one pleasure cruiser plowing its way toward the dots of land west. The clouds hang like prison towers in the sky. I look all around the pay phone. No book. I think of calling information. The glyphs in the front of the phone are indecipherable. In any case, the telephone is rarely a solution to a problem, only a connection to more problems, which in turn only create more problems. I resign the possibility with relief. Mountain, I know, would not have a phone anyway.