C Box: Blue Heaven

EDUARDO VILLATORO pressed his nose against the window of the Southwest Airlines flight to Spokane from Los Angeles, via Boise. Below him was an ocean of green broken up only by lozenge-shaped lakes that reflected the sky, and snowcapped mountains that rose in the distance, the tops of the peaks at eye level as the 737 descended. He had only seen so much green once in his life, years before, when he had flown to El Salvador to bring back his mother. But that was jungle, and this was not, and El Salvador had silvery roads slicing through the green and an ocean holding it in, and he could see no roads, and that realization began to create anxiety in him that was only released, slightly, when squares and circles of farmland finally appeared and the flight attendant asked the passengers to put their tray tables in the full-upright and locked position.

He had been keenly aware as he boarded the connecting flight in Boise that he was the only passenger wearing a suit, even though it was his old, lightweight brown one. He had removed his tie on board, folded it neatly, and put it in his pocket. The other passengers, mostly young families and retirees, seemed to pay no attention to him, but in a deliberate way. He was very aware of them , and it took him a while to realize why. He was the only person on the plane who wasn’t Anglo. This phenomenon was new to him, and he couldn’t decide what he thought about it. A big part of his success in his career had always been that he didn’t stand out. This allowed him to study the people around him and the situations they were in without being observed himself. The last thing he could be called was exotic or flashy, not where he came from. This wholly white world might be a little tough to blend into.

He raised his arm and shot his cuff to look at his new gold watch. He was grateful he didn’t need to reset the time, since Spokane was Pacific time as well. He didn’t yet know how his watch worked. There were several knobs and buttons, and he assumed he would need to work a combination of them to reset the time, date, alarm, and other functions if he needed to. The dial would light up at night, someone pointed out to him. Unfortunately, he had left the instructions for the watch in the packaging it came in, after he’d opened it and slipped it on to the apparent delight of his former coworkers, who clapped while he did so. They had all contributed to buy the retirement gift, and Celeste, his longtime partner, had taken it to a jeweler to have the back inscribed:

FOR 30 YEARS OF SERVICE

WHILE WAITING for his two bags to arrive on one of three carousels in the airport, Villatoro continued to study the people around him. Families had rejoined, and there was excited chatter. A soldier in desert fatigues had returned from Iraq, greeted by balloons, hand-drawn posters, and his extended family. Villatoro nodded at him, said, “Thank you for your service.” The marine nodded back.

If Villatoro were to characterize the residents in a general way, he would say they were plainspoken and blunt. Flinty, maybe. He noted how many of the men wore cowboy hats and big buckles and pointed boots, and how it looked like clothing on them and not a costume. Women and children wore bright colors and opened their mouths wide when they talked, as if it didn’t matter to them if anyone heard their conversations. As the bags began to spit out onto the carousel, he saw the flashing of their clear blue eyes.

At the rental car counter, a boy with moussed hair and a starched white shirt and tie told him the company could upgrade his reservation from a compact to a midsize for only five dollars more a day.

“No thank you.”

“But it looks like you’ll be in the area for a week,” the boy said, looking at the reservation on his computer monitor. “You might be more comfortable in a larger car. I’m sure your company would understand.”

“No,” Villatoro said. “There is no company. I’m retired, as of two days ago. The compact, please.”

The boy looked hurt. Villatoro could see a blackboard in the office behind the counter that listed all of the employees by name with check marks to indicate how many upgrades they’d sold. He looked at the boy’s name tag, saw his name was Jason, and saw that Jason was leading the pack.

“Arcadia, California,” Jason said as he keyed Villatoro’s license number and address into the computer. “Never heard of it.”

“It’s a small town,” Villatoro said. “About fifty thousand people.”

“Is it near L.A.?”

Villatoro smiled bitterly. “It was swallowed by L.A. like a snack.”

The boy didn’t know how to answer that, and Villatoro wished he hadn’t said it. Too much information.

Jason said, “You wouldn’t believe how many folks from L.A. we rent to.”

“Really?” Villatoro said.

“A ton of them have moved up here,” Jason said, pushing the button to print out the contract. “Have you ever been here before?”

“Spokane?” Villatoro said.

Jason corrected his pronunciation, “It’s ‘Spoke-Ann,’ Mr. Villatoro, not ‘Spoke-Cain.’ ”

“And it’s ‘Vee-Ah-Toro,’ not ‘VILLA-toro,’” Villatoro said back, smiling.

WITH HIS KEYS and an agreement for a red Ford Focus in his hand, Villatoro started to pull his bags through the door to the rental lot but stopped until Jason looked over.

“May I please get a map to Kootenai Bay?”

“I’m sorry,” Jason said, tearing one off a pad and using a highlighter pen to mark the route. “It’s easy. You just take a right out of the airport and follow the signs to I-90 East.”

“Thank you,” Villatoro said.

Jason handed him the map and a thick, four-color real estate booklet. “I assume you’re looking for property.”

“No,” Villatoro said, taking the booklet anyway, “I’m here on business.”

“Really? What do you do? I thought you said you were retired?”

“I am,” Villatoro said, not really lying, just not telling the entire story. The boy was more forward than he thought proper.

“Oh,” Jason said, puzzled.

As he walked out onto the sun-baked lot, Villatoro thought he’d said half-again too much, and chastised himself.

VILLATORO POINTED his little red Ford Focus toward the mountains to the east and eased onto the interstate through tree-shrouded on-ramps. He passed a large sign and fountain that read:

WELCOME TO THE INLAND NORTHWEST

Spokane itself seemed surprisingly old and industrial, the downtown buildings rising out of the trees with a sense of purpose that had likely been forgotten, Villatoro thought. He saw an exit for Gonzaga University-he had heard of it, something about basketball-and another that said Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, was only fourteen miles away.

As he drove he pushed the scan button on the AM radio in the car. As it swept the stations, he heard snippets of Rush Limbaugh, Laura Schlesinger, Sean Hannity, Bill O’Reilly, and Mark Fuhrman, famous from the O. J. Simpson trial, who obviously had a local talk show. That discovery astonished him.

Acres of outlet malls marked his entrance into Idaho, as well as strip malls that looked just like the strip malls in L.A., with the same fast-food places and convenience stores. He had replaced palm trees with pine trees, but this was all familiar. In a way, he was relieved.

But when he turned north at Coeur d’Alene, the strip malls thinned, and the forest seemed to shoulder its way back toward the road, as if to intimidate the drivers, he thought. It certainly worked with him. Forty miles later, the trees broke, and he was on a long bridge crossing a huge lake, the sun streaming through the windshield with an intensity he wasn’t used to. On the other side of the lake, twinkling through a pine forest, was the town of Kootenai Bay, and beyond that, thirty-five miles north, was Canada.