Joan Didion - The Last Thing He Wanted

These had not been easy shipments to assemble.

He had put these shipments together on credit, on goodwill, on a shared drink here and a promise there and a tale told at the Miami Springs Holiday Inn at two in the morning, on the shared yearning among what he called “these fellows I know for a long time” for one last score.

He had called in all his markers.

He had put himself on the line, spread paper all over the Southeast, thrown the dice just this one last time, one last bet on the million-dollar payday.

The million-dollar payday that was due to come with the delivery of the June 26 shipment.

The million-dollar payday that was scheduled to occur on the runway in Costa Rica where the June 26 shipment had just been unloaded.

One million American in Citibank traveler’s checks, good as gold.

Of course I have to turn around half to these fellows I know a long time who advanced me the stuff .

Which complicates the position I’m in now .

Elite. You see the position I’m in .

Five, ten years ago I might never have gotten out on a limb this way, I paid up front and got paid up front, did it clean, that was my strict motto, do it clean, cash and carry, maybe I’m getting old, maybe I played this wrong, but hell, Ellie, think about it, when was I going to see another shot like this one .

Don’t give me goddamn hindsight .

Hindsight is for shoe clerks .

Five, ten years ago, sure, I might have done it another way, but five, ten years ago we weren’t in the middle of the goddamnest hot market anybody ever saw. So what can you do. Strike while the iron is hot, so you run a little risk, so you get out on a limb for a change, it’s all you can do as I figure it .

So anyway .

So what .

You can see I need this deal.

You can see I’m in a position where I need to go down there and make the collection.

It was the figure that broke her heart.

The evenness of the figure.

The size of the figure.

The figure that was part of what she believed to be a delusion, the figure that had been the bel canto of her childhood, the figure that was now a memory, an echo, a dream, a romance, an old man’s fairy tale.

The million-dollar score, the million-dollar pop, the million-dollar payday.

The pop that was already half owed to other people, the payday that was already garnisheed.

The score that was not even a score anymore.

I’m in for a unit, my father’s doing two, Wynn Janklow would say to indicate investments of one and two hundred million dollars.

Million-dollar score, million-dollar payday.

She had gone her own way.

She had made her own life.

She had married a man who did not count money in millions but in units.

She had turned a deaf ear, she had turned her back.

It might be you’d just called from wherever.

In the creased snapshot she had taken from her mother’s bedroom her father was holding a bottle of beer and her mother was wearing a barbecue apron printed with pitchforks and the words OUT OF THE FRYING PAN INTO THE FIRE.

Or it might be that you hadn’t.

She remembered the day the snapshot was taken.

Fourth of July, she was nine or ten, a friend of her father’s had brought fireworks up from the border, fat little sizzler rockets she had not liked and sparklers that made fireflies in the hot desert twilight.

Half a margarita and I’m already flying, her mother had kept saying.

This is all right, her father had kept saying. Who needs the goombahs, we got our own show right here.

We had a life and now we don’t and just because I’m your daughter I’m supposed to like it and I don’t.

What’s going to happen now, her father had said on the day she brought him home to the house in Sweetwater. Goddamn. Ellie. What’s going to happen now.

I’ll take care of it, she had said.

By eight o’clock on the morning of July 2 she had already checked out of the Hotel Colonial and was in the taxi on her way to the San José airport. By eight o’clock on the morning of July 2 she did not yet know that her father’s obituary had appeared in that morning’s Miami Herald, but she did know something else.

This was the third thing she already knew.

She had asked for her passport when she checked out.

Her own passport.

The passport she had left at the desk the night she arrived.

For the authorities, for safekeeping.

The clerk was quite certain that it had been returned to her.

Por cierto, he had repeated. Certísimo.

The airport taxi had been waiting outside.

If you would look again, she had said. An American passport. McMahon. Elena McMahon.

The clerk had opened the safe, removed several passports, fanned them on the desk, and shrugged.

None of the passports were American.

In the mailboxes behind the clerk she could see room keys, a few messages.

The box for her room was empty.

She considered this.

The clerk raised an index finger, tapped his temple, and smiled. Tengo la solución, he said. Since the passport had certainly been returned to her, the passport would doubtless be found in her room. Perhaps she would be so kind as to leave an address.

I don’t think so, she had said, and walked to the open door.

Buen viaje, Señora Meyer, the clerk had called as she was getting into the airport taxi.

When she landed on the island at one-thirty on the afternoon of July 2 the sky was dark with clouds and the runway already swamped with the rain that would fall intermittently for the next week. The Costa Rican pilot had mentioned this possibility. “A few bands of showers that will never dampen the spirit of any vacationer,” was how the pilot had put it in his English-language update from the front cabin. It had occurred to Elena as she sheltered the unfamiliar passport under her T-shirt and made a run for the terminal that these bands of showers would not in fact dampen the spirit of any vacationer, since there did not seem to be any vacationer in sight.

No golf bag, no tennis racket, no sunburned child in tow.

No anxious traveler with four overstuffed tote bags and one boarding pass for the six-seater hop to the more desirable island.

There did not even seem to be any airport employee in sight.

Only the half-dozen young men, wearing the short-sleeved uniforms of what seemed to be some kind of local military police, lounging just inside the closed glass doors to the terminal.

She had stopped, rain streaming down her face, waiting for the doors to slide open automatically.

When the doors did not open she had knocked on the glass.

After what seemed a considerable length of time, once she had been joined outside the glass door by the crew from her flight, one of the men inside had detached himself from the others and inserted a key to open the door.

Thank you, she had said.

Move on, he had said.

She had moved on.

Gate after gate was unlit. The moving sidewalks were not moving, the baggage carousels were silent. Metal grilles had been lowered over the doors to the coffee bars and concessions, even the shop that promised OPEN 24 HOURS DUTY-FREE. She had steeled herself on the plane to make direct eye contact when she went through immigration but the lone immigration official had examined the passport without interest, stamped it, and handed it back to her, never meeting her eyes.

“Where you stay,” he had said, pen poised to complete whatever form required this information.

She had tried to think of a plausible answer.