Chapter 3
CHAPTER THREE
Cody didn’t want to accept the breakup at first. He told me I’d regret my decision. He said I’d never find a relationship like the one I had with him. The thing was, I didn’t want another relationship like that. One where my needs weren’t even an afterthought.
My dad took the news about me leaving worse than Cody; it was like I was breaking up with him.
He would only speak to me in clipped sentences, then pass the phone to Mom.
His disapproval of me was so total I couldn’t bear to examine it.
I clung to the belief that this was rock bottom for us.
Surely, things would get better. One day, he’d be proud of me again.
The rest of the family was only slightly less upset.
Grandma threatened to cut me out of her will, Aaron said he’d be needing that loan repaid soon, and Jackie kept emailing me State Department Travel Warnings for any country in a thousand-mile radius.
Mom was the big surprise, however. She sent me three bottles of sunblock and some very trendy flip-flops.
But all this familial disruption was the price I had to pay for freedom.
I wondered, when literal birds flew the nest, what did the mom and dad birds do?
Did they give their bird offspring the cold shoulder?
Or did they tell their baby birds that yes, they were ready to fly?
I spent the next few days reading everything I could about Costa Rica and the coffee trade.
I also rewatched Matías Khalil’s TED Talk on capitalism in the age of AI.
Matías was a mesmerizing speaker. He used his voice like a classical pianist. One moment he was practically whispering, the next he was thundering.
“Capitalists justify their riches by saying they’ve earned it,” said Matías, his voice low and measured.
“By taking risks with their capital, by working harder, or by being more innovative. But in the future, when AI does all the work, when humans effectively cease to contribute to the economy—what would be the rationale for one person to have more than any other?” He mopped wavy hair off his brow, his voice now loud and assured.
“With no human ‘work,’ we’ll need a new framework for distributing resources.
Will we finally realize that our value as humans comes not from our labor, but from our souls? ”
Damn. He was so inspiring. And uncomfortably cute.
Late twenties. Floppy hair, long eyelashes, and actual dimples.
I couldn’t believe I was going to be working with him.
Some light Google-stalking revealed he was a committed vegan, avid recycler, and dog foster dad.
There were quite a lot of female friends in the pics, but he appeared to be single.
I stopped myself—what was I doing?! I just got out of a relationship.
I did not need to be checking someone’s relationship status, much less that of a coworker.
I had a lot to prove with this job. It was somewhat curious I’d been hired despite my thin work experience.
I tried not to think about that too hard.
Or why the last hire dropped out. I was so used to asking myself, What could go wrong?
What if instead, for once, I wondered, What could go right?
* * *
Who was I fooling? Optimism was not in my birth chart.
When my “direct supervisor” Sadie took me to the airport Friday morning, I was already nervous.
It was five a.m. and the entire bay was blanketed in fog.
That meant the pilots would be relying exclusively on their computers.
The only thing I trusted less than computers were the people who had to interpret them.
I patted the Xanax in my pocket. I would be needing a lot of pharmaceutical assistance to make it through this flight.
“Here,” said Sadie, at the edge of the security checkpoint.
“This was Grandpa’s.” She placed a black velvet jewelry box in my palm.
I lifted the lid. It was the necklace he had always worn.
Two golden snakes with flashing tongues, wrapped around a staff.
Caduceus—the symbol of medicine. The alchemy of turning illness into health, bad into good.
“How’d you get this?”
“He gave it to me right before I went to Amsterdam.” Sadie lifted it out of the box and unhooked the clasp. She stood behind me and pulled it around my neck.
“I can’t take it,” I said. “It’s yours.”
Sadie hooked the clasp and it fell to my chest. “Don’t you know the story?”
“No.” I didn’t know most of his stories.
“A wounded soldier gave it to Grandpa during the war. The soldier’s mother had given it to him for protection.
Anyway, it wasn’t much of a good luck charm, because the soldier’s wound turned out to be fatal.
But Grandpa had risked his life to bring the soldier into the camp hospital, and the soldier wanted him to have it.
” I felt the cool gold against my skin. “Grandpa never felt worthy of it. He felt guilty that he couldn’t save that soldier.
But he said his memory inspired him to try harder, to be braver. I hope it does the same for you.”
I touched the point of the staff. Could anything alchemize my fears into courage?
“Thanks, Sadie. And thanks for...” God, I hated getting mushy. But I was feeling mushy. “Thanks for always being on my side.”
“Of course I’m on your side! We’re family.”
“It doesn’t always work like that.”
“Not on the surface, maybe. But way down deep. It does.” She gave me a huge hug and pushed me into the line. That was the way a mama bird was supposed to send off her young, I was sure of it. She waved at me until I was out of sight. Was that water in my eyes? Ugh, I hated getting mushy!
After I made it through the shockingly matter-of-course violation that is airport security, I walked to my terminal, caressing my gold chain.
I had no idea how I would ever feel worthy of that necklace if even my own grandfather didn’t.
He was an actual hero; I was afraid of my own shadow.
But my anxiety manifested atypically. I hated the idea of giving into my fear even more than I hated being scared.
So I still did many of the things that frightened me.
It was exhausting and excruciating, but I didn’t know any other way to be.
Would moving to a foreign country miraculously change that?
As I mastered a second language, would I also master my anxieties? Myself?
My phone started buzzing as I boarded the plane. It was Suzanne. I still couldn’t believe I was on a phone call basis with Suzanne Lyon .
“Dee,” she said. “Glad I caught you. Ignore the list of cafetales I gave you in the training packet. Matías or I will email you a new one.”
“Something wrong with it?”
“We’ve decided to narrow our search,” she said, breezily. “We want to avoid the northern parts of the country, near the border.”
That sounded not great. “Something happening at the border?”
“Well, part of the reason we’re opening a Truth Trip in Costa Rica is that we’ve had to close the one operating in Nicaragua.”
Uh. “Why?”
“A bit of unrest, you could say. There’s increased drug trafficking throughout Central America. Costa Rica is more stable than Nicaragua, but we’ve still encountered some... irregularities. Better safe than sorry.”
Better safe than sorry?! There had been no mention of unrest or irregularities in my interview. Oh my god, is that why they hired me?! Because I was the only one naive enough to take the job?
“Anyhow, didn’t want to worry you. Just avoid confusion. Also, while I make the decisions about the Truth Trips, Matías, being on the ground, will have actionable information. You’ll be in touch with him regularly. Okay, gotta jet, have a safe flight.”
A safe flight? What was the point of a safe flight if, when I landed, I would have to avoid drug traffickers ? This was not what I signed up for. I signed up for organizing tours of coffee farms. Nice, peaceful, drama-free coffee farms.
The person behind me coughed politely, wordlessly telling me to get a move on.
I took my seat—a middle one, of course—next to a businessman with a red tie and a nasty bronchial infection.
I considered my options. The plane hadn’t left.
I could still deboard. Berkeley probably hadn’t processed my notice of withdrawal yet.
But before I could properly assess the situation, the flight attendants announced they were sealing the cabin. A Central American woman wearing a large cross around her neck walked down the aisle, coming straight for the empty window seat next to me.
“ Perdón ,” said the woman, wriggling into the seat. “There’s so little foot space,” she continued in Spanish. I smiled at her, then gripped my armrest as the engines roared to life. “I used to be scared to fly,” she said, looking at me with pity. “But not anymore, because I’ve accepted Jesus.”
I kept quiet, because I didn’t want to have the Jews-killed-Jesus conversation.
I figured telling her my parents were nominal Jews who said “Jesus was a communist” and “Religion is the opiate of the masses” would upset her.
Or at least cause her to crack open the worn blue leather book she was taking out of her purse.
“You know that Jesus died for our sins?” she said.
“Mm-hmm.”
“And he bled on the cross and suffocated on his own blood, all to redeem us?”
I nodded.
She gave me a piercing gaze. “ Pobrecita .” She patted my hands and put the book on my lap. “If you receive the Lord in your heart, you will never know fear again. Can you do that now?”
I shrugged noncommittally.
“ Oye , when you’re in danger, say, ‘ Senor , cover me with your sanctified, precious blood.’ He will protect you.”
“That’s it?”
“That’s it. Keep this Bible. I want you to have it.”
I looked at the Bible and wondered how what she was saying was possible. All I had to do was repeat a couple of magic words and Jesus would make sure nothing happened to me? What an appealing idea.
I thanked her, ordered a scotch on the rocks, and used it to chase down my Xanax. Religion was okay, but I preferred modern drugs. As my head began to swim, I vaguely wondered if combining had been a bad idea.
Soon I was having a psychedelic dream about Jesus, who looked and sounded a lot like Mandy Patinkin. I had just accepted him as my savior when someone started shaking me.
“Wake up,” said the old lady. “We’re landing soon.” As I shook off my brain fog, I wondered: Did my dream count? Had I converted to Christianity? Or to the religion of musical theater?
“ Por favor, senores pasajeros , please put your seats in an upright position,” said a voice over the speakers. “We are preparing for landing.”
Suddenly the plane made a radical tilt; this was no normal descent. Bottles and purses rolled down the aisles. A hundred and fifty people started screaming; me the loudest. And then, just as suddenly, we were at a normal angle again. I sighed with relief.
But then the cabin tilted two hundred and thirty degrees and the screaming resumed. I put my head between my knees.
“ ?Dios! ” screamed the Costa Rican passengers, clasping their hands together and bending over their laps.
“Help!” screamed the Americans, clutching their iPads.
“ cover me with your sanctified blood!” I shouted.
The plane righted itself. It worked!
We continued in a gentle descent and then rolled to a stately halt. The old lady beamed at me, truly happy I was no longer going to hell. A cheerful male voice came from the speakers. “It’s been a pleasure serving you. Please fly Tropical Airlines again.”
Sure. Right after I get Alzheimer’s. I joined the rush to exit the plane.
As we stepped onto the tarmac and into the muggy air of Alajuela, I felt like I’d been smacked in the face.
The air here was not the nonentity I was accustomed to.
This was a presence that fought back with diesel, decaying green, and surprising density.
But I didn’t have time to wrestle with something as mundane as air, because the old lady who had saved my soul tripped over her shoulder bag, sending fifteen brand-new Bibles flying onto the pavement.
“ Perdón ,” she said, her face turning the same shade of red as the airplane seats. When I bent down to help her pick up her books, she broke out into a beatific smile. “ Que Dios te bendiga. ”
“God bless you, too.”
We entered a cavernous room with shiny beige tiles.
She headed to the returning nationals’ line, leaving me alone in the visitors’ line.
It was while standing in that massive queue, full of families and couples and tour groups, that I realized the extent of my solitude.
I was in a foreign land with nothing to hold onto but the holy book of another faith, the sneezing man’s business card, and the name of the host family that was supposed to greet me in the airport.
I had wished for independence. Now would I find the courage to take it?