An Ordinary Drowning, Book One of The Mermaid's Pendant Read Free Page B

and get a beer and dinner.
So he settled on Isla Encantada, which was back near the dive shop. It sounded
more appealing anyway, even if Culebra had turned out to be far from enchanted.
    He
regretted his decision to walk into Dewey after taking an hour to get there. If
he hadn’t stopped at The Happy Landing Café for a bottle of water, he might
have passed out along the way. A lone black stallion standing along the highway
oddly tempted him, but when he took a step in its direction, it bolted.
    The bike
shop owner had just stuck his key into the shop’s lock when John came limping
up. He smiled and opened up anyway, chatting the whole time it took John to
fill out a form and for him to swipe John’s credit card. John didn’t have the
same luck with the dive shop, however. It was already closed even though it was
only four-thirty in the afternoon. He didn’t mind. If he didn’t get a cold
Medalla in the next ten minutes, he might combust and his ashes float away on
the wind over the harbor, Ensenada Honda. He was that dry.
    Isla
Encantada had none of Señorita’s refinements. That is to say, it wasn’t pastel.
It didn’t have strings of white Christmas lights and tropical flowers. There
was no Hemingway doppelganger at the bar. The tables were wooden, their
surfaces pockmarked and oiled by countless palms and fingers. It didn’t serve
Nuevo Caribbean cuisine with thin-sliced plantain chips and entrees drizzled
with garlic-scented sauce. No, Isla Encantada served traditional tostones ,
monstrous pastelillos de carne , paella teeming with shrimp and
spiny lobster, and heavy arroz con dulce . This was a place Culebrense
sons came to eat when they couldn’t eat their mother’s cooking. John, who
wasn’t a Culebrense son but the boyfriend of a virulent vegetarian, restricted
himself to estofado de garbanzos , a thick chickpea stew with pumpkin and
cabbage. He washed it down with Medalla and ice water. He tried to pace
himself, but he drank more beer and water than he’d ever consumed at one
sitting.
    He sank
against his chair back and looked around the dim restaurant. A barrel-chested
Culebrense with a hairy caterpillar of a mustache stood talking to a younger
Culebrense behind the bar. Four young men sat at one of the ten tables in the
dining area. A small dance floor with worn, sooty parquet took up the rest of
the space. John grimaced at his reflection in the floor-to-ceiling mirror on
the far wall. He wondered what kind of musicians used the stands waiting in the
corner.
    Too bad
no lovely señoritas sat sipping sangria at the bar. Not that it
mattered, anyway. He wasn’t as smooth as his friend Stefan. Or maybe not as
carefree and immoral. He could never seek out a one-night stand, Zoë or no Zoë.
At the thought of his girlfriend, John looked around the bar even though she
wasn’t there. That’s when he saw the old woman at a table by the door. She
nodded at him and raised her beer bottle. John nodded back and shifted his gaze
away. Something about her gave him the willies.
    The
barrel-chested man approached with a Medalla.
    “ Hola,
mi amigo . Medalla?” He didn’t wait for John’s answer, just set the bottle
next to John’s empty. “May I?” He gestured to the chair across from John.
    John
shrugged and nodded.
    “So, you
like our island, señor ?” The man had brought an extra Medalla for
himself. He sipped it and waited.
    John
shifted in his seat. His backside ached and he found himself thinking about the
hard campground where he planned to sleep tonight. “I dunno. Haven’t seen much
of it yet.”
    The big
man nodded. “Not much to see, unless you like seabirds and turtles.”
    “Playa
Flamenco as amazing as they say?”
    “ Sí,
señor . Not so much when the beachgoers from the mainland infest it like
sand fleas. They will be gone tomorrow. Then you will see for yourself.”
    “Weekend
only?”
    The man
nodded. “My name is Tomás. I own Isla Encantada. You like my wife’s