“What?” I blink. “For how long?”
“I don’t know,” he admits. “But there aren’t any flights out of Santa Cruz … ?or even Guayaquil, for that matter. The government isn’t letting any incoming planes land, either.”
I let my tote slip from my shoulder to my elbow. “So I can’t get home,” I say. The words feel like they’re being torn from my throat.
“You can’t get home right now,” Gabriel corrects.
“This isn’t happening,” I murmur. “There has to be a way.”
“Not unless you swim,” Beatriz says, sunny.
“I have to get back to New York,” I say. “What am I supposed to do about work? And Finn. Oh my God, I can’t even tell him what’s going on.”
“Your boss can’t be mad at you if there’s no way for you to get back,” Beatriz reasons. “And you can call your boyfriend from Abuela’s landline.”
Abuela has a landline? And they’re just telling me now?
My life has been a series of telephone poles one after the other, benchmarks of progress. Without a road map of the steps that come next, I am floundering. I do not belong here, and I cannot shake the feeling that at home, the world is moving on without me. If I can’t get back soon, I might never catch up.
I’ve been on an island for two weeks, but this is the first time I’ve really ever felt completely at sea.
Gabriel looks at my face, and says something to Beatriz in Spanish. She takes the tote from my arm and carries it into the apartment while he leads me upstairs to Abuela’s. She is sitting on her couch watching a telenovela when we come in. Gabriel explains to her why I’m here, again in language I don’t understand.
Oh, God. I’m stuck in a country where I can’t even communicate.
He bustles me into the bedroom, where there is a phone on the nightstand. I stare at it. “What’s the matter?”
“I don’t know how to call home,” I admit.
Gabriel picks up the receiver and punches a few buttons. “What’s his number?”
I tell him and he hands the phone to me. Three rings. This is Finn; you know the drill.
When I glance up, Gabriel is shutting the door behind himself.
“Hi,” I say out loud. “It’s me. My flight’s been canceled. Actually, every flight’s been canceled. I can’t get home now, and I don’t know when I’ll be able to. I’m sorry. I’m so fucking sorry.” A sob rises like a vine through my sentences. “You were right. I shouldn’t have left.”
I am so mad. At Finn, for telling me to go. At myself, for not telling Finn to go fuck himself when he said it. So what if we would have forfeited money on a vacation? In the grand scheme of things, losing dollars is nothing compared to losing time.
I know I’m not thinking rationally—that Finn isn’t the only one to blame. I could have told him that if things were going to be worse, I would rather have shouldered them by his side than been somewhere less risky without him. I could even have been smart enough to get right back on the ferry that was dropping me off on Isabela as soon as I learned that the island was about to close.
What I’m truly angry about is that when Finn told me to go, he meant the opposite. When I said I’d leave, I wanted to stay. And even though we’d been together for years, neither one of us read between the lines.
There’s really nothing else I have to say, which surprises me, because it’s been so long since we have truly talked. But Finn is drowning in reality and I’m in a holding pattern in paradise. Be careful what you wish for, I think. When you’re stuck in heaven, it can feel like hell.
“As soon as I find out more, I’ll tell you. Not that I know how,” I mutter. “This whole situation is just insane. I’ll keep sending postcards. Anyway. I thought you’d want to know.” I stare at the receiver for another moment and then hang it up and afterward realize I hadn’t said I love you.
When I step into Abuela’s living room, Gabriel is sitting next to her on the couch. He stands when he sees me. “All good?”
“Voicemail,” I say.
“You’ll stay in the apartment, obviously,” he says, as if he’s trying to make up for his reaction when he first found me here.
“I don’t have any money—” That jogs a new worry in my mind—as sick as I am of eating pasta, I don’t even have enough cash to feed myself.
“And we’ll make sure you have food,” Gabriel says, reading my thoughts. He bends down and kisses Abuela on the cheek. “I don’t want to leave Beatriz too long.”
I follow him out the front door, onto the porch. When he jogs down the steps, headed toward my apartment in the rear, I call his name. He turns, looking up at me, impatient.
“Why are you doing this?” I ask.
“Doing what?”
“Being nice to me.”
He grins, a streak of lightning. “I’ll try to be more of a cabrón,” he says, and when I blink, he translates. “Asshole.”
“For real, though,” I press.