Beatriz holds out her hand. “Give me your phone.” I hold it out, and she taps through the settings. “The hotel has Wi-Fi.” She nods toward a building in the distance. “I put in their password—but it shits out more often than it works, and if they’re closed, they probably turned off the modem. If you still can’t connect, you could try getting a SIM card in town.”
I take back my phone, and Beatriz reaches for another bottle. A rogue wave soaks her arm, and she pushes her sleeve up before she remembers the red weals left by the razor blade. Immediately, she claps her palm over them, and juts her chin up as if daring me to comment.
“Thank you,” I say carefully. “For talking to me.”
She shrugs.
“If you wanted to, you know, talk … ?again …” My eyes flicker to her arm. “Well, I’m not going anywhere in the near future.”
Her face shutters. “I’m good,” she says, yanking down the wet fabric. She looks at the postcard, still in my hand. “I could mail it for you.”
“Really?”
She shrugs. “We have stamps. I don’t know about the post office, but fishermen are allowed off-island to deliver what they catch, so maybe they’re taking mail to Santa Cruz.”
“That would be …” I smile at her. “That would be amazing.”
“No big deal. Well. Gotta go check in with the warden.”
When I glance up, I realize we have walked all the way to town.
“Your father?” I clarify.
“Tanto monta, monta tanto,” she says.
I wonder if the reason Gabriel is keeping such a tight rein on Beatriz is because he knows she’s cutting. I wonder if he isn’t angry, but desperate.
“Could you stay with your mom instead?” I blurt out.
Beatriz shakes her head. “She’s been gone since I was ten.”
Heat rushes to my face. “I’m so sorry,” I murmur.
She laughs. “She’s not dead. She’s on a Nat Geo tour ship in Baja, fucking her boyfriend. Good riddance.” Without saying another word, Beatriz slings the bag over her shoulder and walks down the middle of the main street, scattering startled iguanas in her wake.
The proprietor of Sonny’s Sunnies speaks English and sells more than sunglasses and sarongs. She also sells Tshirts and neon-bright bikinis and SD cards for cameras and, yes, SIM cards for international calling—although there are none in stock at the moment. I can’t believe my continued streak of bad luck. She’s right there where Beatriz said I’d find her, on the main street of Puerto Villamil, just before noon. The door is wide open and Sonny is sitting behind the cash register, fanning herself with a magazine. She is round everywhere—her face, her arms, her swollen belly—and she peers at me over an embroidered mask. “Tienes que usar una mascarilla,” she says, and I just stare at her. The only word I understand in her sentence sounds like eye makeup, and I’m not wearing any.
“I … ?no habla espa?ol,” I stammer, and her eyes light up.
“Oh,” she says, “you’re the turista.” She points to her face. “You need a mask.”
I glance around the store. “I need more than that,” I tell her, making a small pile on the counter—Galápagos tees, two pairs of shorts, a sweatshirt, a bikini, a face mask made of cloth with little chili peppers printed on it. I add a guidebook with a map of Isabela. When I show her my phone, she shows me a SIM card that will let me make local calls on a local network, which I buy even though I can’t imagine who I’ll be calling or texting locally. No, she tells me, she doesn’t sell stamps.
Finally, I pull out a credit card. “Do you know where there’s an ATM on the island?”
“Oh,” she says, putting my card in one of those old machines that create a carbon copy of it. “There’s no ATM.”
“Not even at the bank?”
“No. And you can’t use a credit card there to get cash.”
I look at the minuscule amount of money I have left, after paying Abuela—thirty-three dollars. Minus ferry fare returning to Santa Cruz … ?as I do the math, my heart starts pounding. What if my cash supply doesn’t last me for another week and a half?
My panic attack is interrupted by the jingle of the bell on the door. In walks another woman in a mask, carrying a toddler. He squirms in her arms, calling out to the shop owner until he is set down on the floor and races toward her, clinging to her leg like a mollusk. She swings him onto her hip.