Chapter 8 #2
He shrugged. “It’s always a possibility.
” And without another word, he guided me back into the Jeep, turned on the engine, and started down the Road to Hell.
I could see its blood-covered maws opening up for us, smiling.
Sweat trickled down from the small of my back to my thighs.
All I could see out the windows was gray, because the fog was thick and the rain was kicking up dust. My body was at an extreme angle pointing down, and I was hanging on tight to the door so I wouldn’t go flying out the windshield.
Blood shrieked in my ears, rain lashed at the windshield, and the wheels whined against the rocks.
We started rounding a boulder and hysteria took a hold of my body.
I’m going to die, I haven’t accomplished anything with my life, and my parents are going to go bankrupt repatriating my body!
Why didn’t I buy the good travel insurance?
! I closed my eyes and braced for impact.
And then, curiously, we weren’t tumbling down a cliff, and we didn’t seem to be descending. I opened my eyes. The cliff was gone! The road was level! We weren’t dead! Adrián hit the brakes and we both opened our mouths and shouted:
“Yes!”
“We’re alive! YES!”
And then, out of nowhere, I leaned over and kissed his lips.
“Oh!” he said, surprised, but evidently in a good way.
“Oh!” I said, embarrassed, and surprised, but not in such a good way.
“See,” he said, putting his foot back on the gas. “That wasn’t so bad. It just looked bad.”
“Right,” I said, thinking that if I was ever going to take up smoking, this was the time. “It was nothing.”
We sat silently in our separate parts of the Jeep. I was too embarrassed to look at him and much too embarrassed to speak. I couldn’t believe I had kissed him. I was supposed to be resisting romantic entanglements!
“I think that’s it,” said Adrián, pointing toward a sign that said Café Bavaria.
“Looks like it.” I rolled down my window and put my hot face out.
Cool air rushed at me, turning my cheeks even pinker.
I snuck a look at Adrián. He sure did look good, his muscles tensing as he expertly shifted gears, his hair flying in the breeze.
Would a brief fling count as a romantic entanglement?
Adrián turned right onto a little access road lined with banana trees. At the end of the road, there was an iron gate. Adrián parked next to it. I jumped out, relieved to have my feet on terra firma. Adrián came up to me. “Thank you,” he said.
“For what?”
“For this.” And then he leaned over and kissed me. Heat exploded all over my body with little popping sounds. Blood rushed out of my head and swelled all the cells in the more sensitive parts of my anatomy. My lungs began to fail. Adrián pulled back and looked into my eyes to see if this was okay.
He’s still young , I thought, my resolve wavering. Maybe he will reject his bourgeois ways. He looked like he was coming in for the kill, so I started hiccuping, flushed beet red, and then said something incomprehensible. Adrián looked utterly bewildered.
I pushed open the iron gate, and we walked down a long drive with trees on both sides forming a canopy.
I’m sure Adrián was thinking I was nuts, because after all, I had initiated the first kiss, and if he asked me about it, I would have said, Yes, I am nuts .
It’s not that I didn’t find Adrián attractive.
In fact, I was turning bright red with the thought of his lips exploring other areas , but lust was not a sufficient determining factor.
One had to use reason. One had to use one’s better judgment.
One had to stop concentrating on Adrián’s lean muscles rippling under his clothes .
I had to get a hold of myself. I was here to work. I was here to find purpose in my life. I was here to stop being controlled by stronger personalities. I was not here to become the girlfriend of a risk-courting junior hotel mogul... or was I?
“Nice day, huh?” said Adrián, searching for a way out of this terrible discomfort. The normalcy of his voice brought everything back into perspective, and the blood returned to my brain, where it belonged.
“Sure is.” And in truth, it was glorious.
Sure, the humidity must’ve been 90 percent, but the landscape was stunning.
Costa Rica was like a box of crayons with all the ugly colors thrown out.
We walked down the drive until we saw a Costa Rican–style plantation house, blinding white in the sun.
It was surrounded by palms and jacaranda trees and had a massive wraparound veranda.
Light reflected off the many windows and flitted across the manicured lawn.
“Wow,” said Adrián. “That is big.”
That was an understatement. It was massive.
How could only two people live there? Were they planning on having forty children to form two opposing soccer teams?
I took out my Canon and snapped several shots of the plantation house, doing my best to evoke images of corruption, greed, and exploitation.
I posted one quickly to Instagram (#cafetales #corporategreed #eattherich).
Then Adrián and I headed toward the house.
I looked around for the coffee fields, but they weren’t visible.
The plantation and its trees blocked the entire horizon.
When we reached the veranda, we were met by Mr. Dieter Hess, third-generation inheritor of Café Bavaria, and new husband of Tía Marisol’s sister Ana.
He was of indeterminate middle age, German ethnicity, and dressed in an immaculate white linen suit that fit exactly on his spare frame.
He had a comb-over; tiny, circular, steel-rimmed glasses; and a manicured mustache.
His handshake was limp and his palms were clammy. He gave me the creeps.
“It’s so nice to finally meet you,” he said to Adrián, in German-accented British English, as he led us from one indistinguishable hallway to the next.
It was difficult for me to participate in the conversation because I was trying to keep track of where I was going.
I was also trying to figure out what was behind all the shut doors.
What do you do with so many rooms? Keep them empty and lock the doors, or buy useless stuff to fill them?
“Ana was anxious for me to get acquainted with the family,” he said. “But we’ve been on a whirlwind of a trip. Berlin, Hong Kong, Dubai. You know how it is.”
Adrián was nodding agreeably, unaware that we were both outclassed and out-moneyed.
Adrián’s parents were wealthy, but this was on a whole other level.
This was has-a-chauffeur/personal chef/gets-invited-to-Davos money.
I covertly cleaned the dirt from beneath my fingernails.
Should I start getting professional manicures?
At what age is it necessary? And why do we have to pay for that shit when men don’t?
Dieter stopped walking and opened a door.
We entered a sitting room that looked out onto a courtyard with palms and orchids.
The moment I sat down, a maid appeared out of nowhere with coffee.
I took a steaming cup and checked out the collection of photos above Dieter’s head.
They were old black-and-whites of men in uniforms, circa 1940.
“I’ve spent two months every winter here since I was a child,” Dieter said.
“But imagine—I barely speak three words of Spanish!” Adrián smiled as required, but I don’t think he thought it was funny.
“This could’ve caused dire marital problems, but fortunately Ana speaks both perfect English and a smattering of German.
We met at the Oxford and Cambridge club.
” Adrián still looked calm, unaware that we were out-educated, too.
“I suppose it would be marginally helpful if I learned the language, but we spend most of the year in Berlin and London. But you didn’t come here to learn about my life! You want to know about coffee.”
I nodded, then noticed an ornately framed photo above his head. Were those German soldiers? Oh my god—was one of them Adolf Hitler?!
“People often assume that coffee grows best in hot climates, but this assumption is false. Coffee grows best above nine-hundred meters, where temperatures range between fifteen and twenty-eight degrees Celsius, quite a bit cooler than one would suppose.”
No. Who would put up a framed photo of Hitler? It had to be a different German soldier... with a short, thick mustache.
“People also assume that coffee is indigenous to Central America, when indeed, it is not. Coffee was brought to the New World by Spanish, French, and Portuguese colonists. The original coffee came from Ethiopia and Arabia.”
Wait. Wouldn’t any German soldier from the ’40s be a Nazi?
“When the first coffee plants were brought here to Costa Rica, they were considered purely ornamental. Colonists used the plants to decorate their patios and courtyards. They had no idea of the future significance of the plant.”
HOLY SHIT—the soldiers had eagles on their pockets—these were Nazis!
“I don’t know how familiar you are with coffee bushes, but they are lovely. What with their green glossy leaves, seasonal snow-white flowers, and blood-red berries, they can be quite breathtaking.”
“How did coffee go from being an ornamentation to the mainstay of the economy?” asked Adrián, in Spanish, oblivious to the photos of war criminals .
Dieter answered, belying his claim to zero Spanish comprehension.
“Demand was soaring in Europe. And the climate and soil conditions here were perfect—it was as if God had destined Costa Rica for coffee cultivation. By 1840, coffee had become their largest crop. It was carried through the mountains by oxcart, all the way to Puntarenas, where it was then shipped to Chile, and from Chile, shipped to Europe.”
I still could not believe the whole wall was covered with SS. Was Dieter descended from Nazis?