I wade out of the ocean, wrap myself in the towel, and wring out my ponytail. Suddenly all the hair stands up on the back of my neck, as if I am being watched. I whirl around, but there is no one on the beach. When I turn back toward the apartment, I see a blur of movement, but it is gone before I get close enough to see.
It isn’t until I’m in the shower that I realize I have no shampoo and no soap. And of course, no food, since I ate everything that Abuela left me last night. With my skin and hair still unwashed, I pull on my jeans from yesterday and a fresh T-shirt from the stash I found in the linen closet and walk back into Puerto Villamil. I’m hoping something is open now. My goal is to stock up on supplies and provisions, and to find a post office where I can get stamps and mail the postcard I wrote to Finn. If I can’t get texts or emails or calls out to him, at least he will have an old-fashioned letter.
But Puerto Villamil is a ghost town. The bars and restaurants and hostels and shops are all still dark and closed. The post office has a locked metal gate pulled down over its entryway. For a heart-stopping moment I wonder if maybe I’ve slept through an evacuation, if the entire island is empty except for me. Then I realize that one of the businesses, while still dark inside, has someone bustling around.
I knock on the door, but the woman inside shakes her head at me.
“Por favor,” I say.
She puts down the box she is holding and unlocks the door. “No perteneces aquí. Hay toque de queda.”
It is, I realize, a market. There are baskets on the counter filled with fruit, and a few narrow aisles sparsely lined with shelved dry goods. I pull cash out of my pocket. “I can pay.”
“Closed,” she says haltingly.
“Please,” I say.
Her face softens, and she holds up a hand with her fingers outstretched. Five items? Five minutes? I point to a yellow fruit in a basket at the counter. Guava, maybe. The woman picks it up. “Soap?” I say. “Sopa?”
She reaches onto a shelf and holds out a can of soup.
Well, I’ll take it, but I can’t shower with it. I mime scrubbing my hair, and under my arms, and she nods and adds a bar of Ivory to my pile. I say every Spanish food item in my narrow vocabulary: agua, leche, café, huevo. There is little that’s fresh, which limits my options, and which makes me wonder how or if the people on Isabela will get shipments of perishables like milk and eggs. For every item I manage to communicate, there are two that she doesn’t have; the locals must have known things were closing down and stocked up. “Pasta?” I say finally, and she finds three boxes of penne.
There are worse fates than having to eat only pasta.
“Stamps?” I ask. I hold out my postcard and point to the corner.
She shakes her head, and points across the street to the closed post office.
On the counter is a small stack of newspapers. I cannot read the Spanish headlines, but the picture makes it clear—it is a priest in a church in Italy, blessing scores of coffins filled with Covid casualties.
This is what is coming to America. This is what Finn will be dealing with.
And I am stuck here.
The shop owner holds out her hand, the universal symbol for payment. I offer a credit card and she shakes her head. I don’t have any Ecuadorian money and I still haven’t found an ATM. Panicked, I peel off two twenties and hand them to her before she can renege and take away my groceries. She locks the door again, and I head off with my plastic bag.
I’m halfway down the main street when I hear a ping on my phone. I pull it out of my pocket and watch a torrent of messages from Finn roll onto my screen.
I lost you.
Hello?
Tried FaceTiming but …?
Bad Wi-Fi? Will try you tomorrow.
He’s texted multiple times since then, and finally seemed to realize that I still didn’t have cell service. The last message says that he’ll send an email instead, in case I find an internet café.
I look up and down the street at the tightly closed storefronts and snort.
But apparently, I am sitting in the one hot spot of service in Puerto Villamil, because when I check my inbox, somehow there is an email that has downloaded from Finn. I sit down cross-legged and start to read, absorbing his words like they are an oasis in a desert.
To: [email protected]
From: [email protected]
I can’t believe it’s only been two days. The schools are already shut down here, and bars and restaurants. We’ve got 923 cases in the city alone. Ten deaths. The subway is empty. It’s like New York is a shell, and all the people are in hiding.