Chapter 17
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
You can’t refuse the morning. Even if you sleep in, the afternoon will get you, and even if you manage to escape that, too, there’s the night. And while I was depressed, I didn’t have the luxury of bed rotting; I needed to finish organizing the minitrip.
First, I had to push all thoughts of Adrián out of my mind.
I did this by listing all the reasons it couldn’t work.
We were politically incompatible, we didn’t share the same values, and we didn’t live in the same country .
Why hadn’t I focused on that one? That was huge! Okay, I was hanging onto that.
I went to work on arranging the social activity.
Costa Rica was known for its outdoor adventures, but we couldn’t have older donors keeling over from heart attacks.
That would be tragic, and of course, bad for donations.
So I chose ziplining. It seemed adventurous, but was actually pretty tame.
As I was finalizing things, my phone buzzed with an email: Matías.
My pulse quickened. I hated myself for being excited, but it is a universal truth: there is nothing to take your mind off a failing romance like the hint of a new one.
TO: Dee Blum
FROM: Matías Khalil
SUBJECT: Let’s get serious
Hoping you had a magical Christmas. Or Hanukkah... or Festivus? We haven’t discussed religion yet. I feel like we should. Where are you on the Big Guy/Lady? I think it’s useless trying to figure out the unknowable. So I try to focus on what I can do here . I’m a humanist.
Actually, that’s something I admire about you. Your commitment to humanity is so intense; that’s why you feel the ups and downs so much.
Anyhow, these conversations are better had in person, don’t you think? I look forward to a time when we can chat about this, about everything.
He admired me?
* * *
TO: Matías Khalil
FROM: Dee Blum
SUBJECT: Higher Powers
I guess you could say I’m a pagan Jew. I converted to Christianity on the plane to Costa Rica, but I converted back to Judaism pretty quickly.
There was chocolate involved, which is a condition that is true for most of my decisions.
But truthfully, no religion really fits me.
I guess it’s the problem of evil. I know this isn’t a groundbreaking thought, but it’s just so hard to reconcile a kind god with all the suffering in the world.
I can’t wrap my head around it. But then there are these times—these times when I feel something divine—and even though it continues to not make “sense”—I know it’s there.
But maybe I’m just hoping? Wow, I’m rambling.
I should just delete this. But somehow, I don’t want to?
I hit send before I could overanalyze it. It was terrifying to be so vulnerable—but also exhilarating. Somehow communicating via email made it easier to open up. However, I knew on some level, this was crazy. I didn’t even know him!
But was it true that I didn’t know him? Sure, we’d never met in person .
But we had shared our deepest values with each other.
Maybe I didn’t know if he took sugar in his coffee, maybe he didn’t know if I liked my eggs runny or hard, but he understood me .
That was something I had never experienced.
This sense of really being known—it felt like flying.
I couldn’t bear to examine my feelings too deeply; I was hurtling down a highway with my eyes closed.
And there was the inconvenient fact that I hadn’t completely let go of Adrián.
I was a mess; torn between two versions of how I wanted my life to look.
A life of revolutionary adventure with someone like Matías, who would know my thoughts before I even had them.
Or a life of fun with Adrián, who would always watch my heart but might never understand it.
Which world did I belong in? Until I figured that out, how could I figure out with who?
But those were future problems. I had current, urgent problems that needed addressing.
I needed to find enough evidence to get Café Alegre off the minitrip, and hopefully enough to also get them decertified.
Suzanne had made it clear that we needed concrete, irrefutable proof.
At first I had been upset, but now I was glad she had pushed me to be better. We needed to make our case undeniable .
I knew one person who might have that evidence: Tomás.
Problem was, I had no idea where he was.
The last time I had seen him was when Adrián and I had dropped him off at the bus station downtown.
So I took the bus downtown and got off near the Central Market.
I figured Tomás and Mario would still be looking for work, and downtown was fairly small.
I had been wandering the market and surrounding area for a few hours when I heard, “ Macha! ”
I jumped, surprised to hear the Costa Rican equivalent of gringa . I turned to find two teenage boys on a corner selling plastic chickens that lit up and cried, “Kikiriki!” which is how Spanish-speaking roosters say, “Cock-a-doodle-doo!” I couldn’t believe I had actually found them!
“Do you remember me, Macha ?” Tomás asked, giving me the effusive hello-goodbye kiss.
“Thanks for giving us that ride.” Already his Spanish had changed.
He’d adopted a city accent and seemed to have aged ten years.
“We’re doing great here. In a few months, we’ll have enough money to get our brother and sister, and maybe in a year we’ll have enough money to go to the US. ”
“Really?” I studied his clothing. He did have very nice Nikes.
“Yes. And we owe it to you. Let me give you a chicken.” He reached into the tray of kikirikiing chickens and handed me one.
“No, really, I?—”
“Please.”
“But I?—”
“We wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for you. We’d still be picking coffee.” A shadow passed over his face as he remembered. But he shook it off quickly. “We’re much happier now. We’re entrepreneurs.” He placed the chicken in my hand. “You have to take it.”
“Thank you.”
Energy infused his wiry body, and he leaned in closer to me. “Do you think I could sell these in the US? Is there a good market?”
I almost started to laugh, but when I saw the earnestness in his face, I gulped. “Yes.”
“Really? Show it to your friends when you get home. Start a buzz, so when I arrive, there’s a demand.” I saw him collecting three more chickens. “Please take them.” He thrust them at me. “Give them to your friends.”
“But you should sell them.”
“They’re a present.”
I didn’t have the heart to refuse him. He clearly believed in his business venture 100 percent, and what did I know about sales anyway? What he lacked in product, he made up for in chutzpah. He started wrapping the cooing chickens in newspaper.
“Did you find your mom?” I asked.
Tomás didn’t look up from his wrapping; he just pulled the ends of the strings tighter. The package began to buckle at the ends. After a moment he spoke. “No.” He handed me the package.
I felt a pang in my chest. Tomás had been forced to become a man before sixteen, selling plastic chickens to make enough money to raise his siblings. What a contrast to Cody. At sixteen he’d received his first luxury car.
“But I will,” he said. Tomás’s optimism was inspiring. I would not bet against him.
“I believe you. Hey,” I said, in a lighter tone, “do you think I could ask you some questions about Café Alegre?”
“Well, I am hungry.”
“Great. I’ll take you and Mario to lunch.”
“Somewhere with beer?”
I hesitated. What the heck. This was surely a lesser crime than kidnapping.
Twenty minutes later the three of us were sitting in La Joya, a mariachi gathering place and restaurant.
While a Mexican institution, mariachis were still popular in Costa Rica.
It was afternoon, so it was pretty empty, but occasionally a white-and-gold suited man would wander by with a violin.
The tables were made of thick, dark wood, and the ceilings were high.
We ordered three Imperials and some nachos—a rarity in Costa Rica—from a waitress in a full skirt and petticoat.
The nachos came smothered in sour cream.
“You mentioned Café Alegre violated Ethical Coffee International regulations,” I said to Tomás. “Could you elaborate?”
Tomás took a swig of his beer and leaned over the table.
“They don’t pay minimum wage to the pickers.
They fire people who complain. They make kids work.
But other than that, I guess they’re okay.
” A mixture of sweat and condensation from the beer bottle formed a mustache of droplets above his mouth.
“Like, in comparison to working for sugarcane harvesters.”
Mario nodded as he crammed his mouth with nachos.
“And what about the organic regulations?”
Tomás laughed. “There are more loopholes in the list of approved chemicals than there are prostitutes outside the bus terminal. And your shade-grown coffee? You have one tree in the fields? That’s shade. It’s greenwashing.”
I twirled my beer around; maybe the pesticides I had seen were just the tip of it. “I heard that over the last two years Café Alegre won a lot of new contracts. Do you know anything about that?”
“Oh yeah. Two years ago a bald dude with a handlebar mustache came from Portland. We got a huge contract with him.”
“Was it an Ethical Coffee International sale?”
“Sure. In name.”
“You think Alegre accepted less than Ethical Coffee International price minimums to get the contracts?”
“Yes. I overheard Manuel talking to my mom.”
My suspicions were correct. I watched Tomás proudly sipping his beer. This kid was extremely bright and had a deep knowledge of business practices. Maybe he would do well selling his chickens in the US.
I peeled the label off my beer. “So Alegre is definitely violating a few regulations.”
“Not a few. Several. Manuel also buys conventionally produced coffee from other farms. It’s their surplus, so he gets it cheap. Then he slaps a Café Alegre label on it and sells it as ‘organic’ and ‘fair trade’ for an Ethical Coffee International premium.”
I paused, taking it in. “Wow, that’s so brilliantly evil. Do you know which conventional farms he buys from?”
“There’s a few. The biggest one is owned by some gringo with a weird accent,” said Tomás. “Not American.”
I felt a gnawing in my stomach. “German?”
“Yes! You’re totally psychic!”
Dieter. Ugh. “Is it Café Bavaria?”
“Doesn’t ring a bell.”
Huh. How many German-owned coffee plantations could there be in Costa Rica? Then I remembered all those hundred-pound bags I saw in the mill. “Fuerte?”
“That’s it!”
I let the chip I was holding fall into the sea of white. “Fuerte must be the name of a shell company for Bavaria’s surplus.”
Tomás nodded and reached for his matches. I wondered if he had just started smoking since he got to the city. The way he held his cigarette was awkward.
“So,” I said, “Alegre is taking their ill-begotten gains from the surplus conventional coffee and using that money to stay afloat while they illegally undersell the ethically produced competition. It’s a loss leader strategy to achieve market dominance.”
Tomás took a deep puff on his cigarette and coughed. “I never thought about the big picture, but yeah.”
“But how do they get away with the pesticides and labor abuses? Isn’t anyone checking on the farms?”
“They can’t police all the farms. The inspectors come out, like, once every three years?”
“Do any of the other co-ops know?”
He shrugged. “If they did, what could they do?”
I set my beer bottle on the table. I realized what they could do. What we could do. “They could take the proof to Ethical Coffee International. So Café Alegre could be decertified.”
Tomás looked dubious. “Maybe.” Tomás tried to blow a smoke ring.
“If they had the guts.” He blew two more fuzzy rings and lowered his cigarette.
“There’s a lot of money in this. Which means there’s a lot of people that would be really pissed if Alegre got decertified.
” He put out his cigarette violently. “A lot of people who would do whatever it took to stop it.”
“Then why did you want me to make a report? If nothing can be done?”
“I don’t really care if you make the report. I’m already out.” He leaned back in his chair and signaled the waitress for another beer. “But I didn’t say nothing could be done.” He leaned back over the nachos and tapped my beer bottle. “I just said I didn’t know anyone who had the guts to do it.”