Crazy Good Fortune Out of the Blue - 26*
When we returned to Costa Rica, Jane was back in the States tending to some business and visiting her kids, so we had a chance to spend some time with Horatio. I found Horatio to be an intriguing, exotic character. He looked like someone who might be president of an East Coast yacht club—he dressed conservatively and elegantly—and he was incredibly erudite. He was reading Cervantes’ Don Quixote (or “Donkey Hote,” as I read in a book once on student bloopers) in Spanish, and his book shelves were lined with great literature and books by philosophers. He was such an outstanding golfer that he played on the national Costa Rican golf team and even had a tournament named after him.
However, he had grown up on a vast working ranch in West Texas. His father died when Horace was pretty young, and he didn’t have any brothers, so Horace had to take over managing the ranch early on. Once when he was out rounding up some cattle, he got thrown by his horse and broke his back. He knew that he would probably die before anyone found him, so he crawled the three miles back to his house. “Oh, Horace was just a nasty old cowboy when I met him!” Jane loved to say. “You should see him all dressed up in his leathers, he looks so cuuuuute.”
Well, quite frankly, I couldn’t even imagine Horace in a dirty old scuffed-up pair of leathers. Deriving this image from his present one completely defied my powers of imagination, which are, from what everyone tells me, fairly spectacular. But shortly after our sojourn in Costa Rica, Horace began publishing these terrific, incredibly authentic Westerns. So it must have been true. He was a cowboy.
One of the things that Horatio enjoyed was taking Richard and me to this little restaurant in Escazú called Los Anonos. Horace, while he loved elegance and beauty, also appreciated simplicity. I think the simplicity of this sweet little restaurant is what appealed to him the most. It resided in a largish wooden building with little booths built along the walls for privacy. Each booth was rigged up with a light on the outside, so whenever you needed something from the waitress, you flicked it on and she would see it and come to the table. You filled out your own order on the pads they had on the tables, and the fare was typically but mouthwateringly simple and good: you had your choice of smoked pork chops, grilled chicken (always a leg and thigh—I don’t know what they did with the rest of the chicken), grilled corvina (sea bass), steak, or sausage. With every entree they served slaw, fried platanos, and refried black beans, along with these terrible fluffy white rolls that had the texture of a Styrofoam marshmallow. Aside from the rolls, though, everything was absolutely delicious. The waitress was this sweet, tiny, shuffling woman with an underbite and a hair net over her wavy, graying hair. She never said much, but she had a terrific smile.
I never saw Horatio upset about anything, but I had heard stories from Paul, mainly, about just how scary he could be when he was angry. Paul never got specific, but I imagined that Horace was probably like my dad in that he never acted out his wrath, he just blasted the object of his fury with extra-potent, plant-wilting, transistor-melting vibes. As I say, ninety-nine percent of the time, Horatio was the most congenial, easy-going, gracious man in the world. But I got the feeling that you didn’t want to cross him, not the guy who crawled three miles with a broken back.
It was very clear to everyone—his family, friends, and household staff—that Horace took exceptional care of his things, especially the things that he treasured. Once a year, Ana and Lijia would clean every single leather-bound volume in his library (and there were shelves and shelves of them) with vinegar and water. His clothes always looked brand new. And his canary yellow Mercedes did not have a single nick, dent or scratch anywhere on its gleaming, butterscotch body.
The worst trouble that Paul ever got in as a child involved one of Horatio’s prized possessions. One Christmas, Jane had given him an exquisite crystal chess set. The board was crystal and all the pieces were crystal, one set as clear as ice, the opposing set a beautiful, lustrous aquamarine. He kept it out, positioned on a table in a bay window so that the sun would stream in through the panes and light up the chess pieces.
“He loved that chess set,” Paul told us. “In fact, he’d go over every once in a while and pick up a piece and just hold it and look at it.” He shook his head ruefully. “It really was beautiful,” he sighed. “But … I had this pet monkey. And I don’t know what got into him that day, but he went really wild. I was playing with him in my room and all of a sudden, he just shot out the door and made a beeline for that chess set. Before I could get there, he’d smashed every single piece.”
Uh-oh.
“And the worst part of it was, my dad had always hated that monkey. So as soon as I saw what he’d done, I grabbed him up and hid in my room with him and took the doorknob off the door so no one could get in. When my dad came home from work and saw the chess set, he came screaming down to my room and pounded on the door for about an hour shouting that he was going to kill the monkey.” Paul chewed at his lip, clearly not completely over this little episode. “When he finally calmed down enough that I didn’t think he’d hurt it, I came out of my room. And then I had to have a little talk with my dad.”
“I’ll bet that was fun,” said Richard, who had, in fact, seen Horatio in a foul humor once or twice.
Paul twisted in his seat. “No kidding! And you know how sometimes when you’re really freaked out, you start to smile? You know it’s the worst thing you can do but you can’t help it? So when I went to see him, I was smiling. And man, did that ever make him mad!”
We resolved, Richard and I, never to do anything that might bring down the wrath of Horatio, not that we would anyway—Horatio was fair, generous, and kind. But to be extra safe, we avoided using any of the things that he cared about so that we wouldn’t risk screwing anything up. So one day, when Paul and Barbie had the jeep and Jane’s Mercedes was in the shop, and Horatio very, very kindly suggested that we borrow his Mercedes to drive to the Orosi Valley to have lunch, we felt deeply honored by his trust, but also somewhat apprehensive. I knew that we would be careful, but you just never knew what might happen on the road, especially in Costa Rica.
Still, we were at loose ends, an outing sounded like an awful lot of fun, and it was a beautiful day, not that there were very many awful days in paradise. So, promising Horatio that we would take exemplary care of his beloved Mercedes, we headed off to the Orosi Valley, an exquisitely gorgeous tropical valley, layered in dreamy, verdant fingers from the river that had carved it, festooned with brilliant swatches of fuchsia and crimson bougainvillea and dotted with picturesque little white-washed houses whose tile roofs were studded with plump pillows of emerald green moss.
It was an unusually warm day and the car had no air-conditioning, so I had my window down and my hair pulled back in a pony tail. We were making our final descent down a narrow, winding, gravel road, and on one side of us lay the valley, all spread out in its verdurous beauty while on the other side of us, my side, there was a sheer rock cliff, gullied out deeply along the road’s shoulder to handle the torrential rainfall during the rainy season. In the balmy heat, we almost felt drowsy, and we had both fallen silent while we took in the sights and inhaled the sweet, fragrant air laden with blooming flowers and rich earth smells.
This is why, when an extremely large fly flew in through the window and directly into my ear, I was startled, to say the least. Finding itself trapped in my ear momentarily, it frantically beat its wings, making an even noisier buzz than it had when it first collided with me. I shook my head in order to dislodge it and send it on its way, but as I did so, my sunglasses went flying off my head toward Richard.
Richard had heard the loud buzzing noise the fly made, amplified, no doubt, by the cupped construction of my ear. And then, out of his peripheral vision, he saw a dark, enormous (for an insect), flying object coming straight for him! He made a very strange noise in his throat, of panic and revulsion, an odd little “uhhhhughhhhhh,” and then flattened himself over against the door as far as he could go. When I realized that he was attempting to evade my sunglasses, I started to giggle, but in his efforts to save himself from whatever this horrible, gigantic, flying thing was, he lost control of the car!
Oh, man, one minute we went from a lovely, drowsy outing to a complete and utter nightmare. The car was fishtailing wildly, gravel skittering out from under our wheels. And the next thing I knew, we were rocketing toward the sheer rock cliff! I could hear the belly of the car scraping as two of the wheels dropped into the ditch and Richard appeared to be in a state of shock. He had frozen. Several probable fates flashed before my eyes, none of them good: a) we would smash into the sheer rock cliff and both be killed instantly; b) we would smash into the sheer rock cliff and both be maimed for for life; or c) we would smash into the sheer rock cliff and emerge relatively unhurt but Horatio’s lovely, flawless, canary yellow Mercedes would be totaled. I didn’t know which I dreaded most, probability (a) or (c). I could just imagine the headlines in The Tico Times: “Couple Dies in Effort to Escape Killer Sunglasses!!”
But death might be preferable to facing Horace after crashing his beloved automobile.
So, I said no. Literally. It was very strange. Time stretched out, just like it does in the movies or in those stories people tell you about where they lift trucks off of loved ones trapped beneath them or find their way off burning, crashed airplanes. I reached over, grabbed the steering wheel and shouted, “No!” to all those horrible probabilities looming. I remember listening to myself and thinking how oddly calm and firm I sounded. The next thing I knew, the car was swooping back onto the road. It felt like I levitated that car out of that ditch. I don’t know how we obtained enough purchase to get out of there by normal means, with only two wheels on the driver’s side touching ground. Either that, or some benevolent psychic agency intervened. By now, Richard had recovered his senses and he seized the wheel once again. He slowed down to about fifteen miles an hour while we drove down the middle of the street, our hearts pounding so hard I thought mine might shatter itself against my chest wall, so much adrenalin coursing through our veins that it’s a wonder they didn’t explode.
As it turns out, a campesino had been sitting on the side of the road, nodding in the sun when we lost control of the car. This poor guy had leaped to his feet, watching while we slithered all over the road and then plunged into the chasm of a ditch, only to bounce back out again. He had clearly braced himself for anything, not sure at all where we might end up. He stood poised on the balls of his feet, his arms lifted to give him extra balance, ready to jump in any direction in order to avoid getting crushed by our out-of-control vehicle. When we puttered past him as if nothing in the world had happened, he stared at us bug-eyed, wondering, perhaps, if we’d been seized by the devil.
The expression on his face seemed to tweak the adrenalin in my veins, turn it into something like nitrous oxide, and I began giggling insanely, unable to stop. Richard did not find this amusing. He probably could have handled five minutes of nonstop, hysterical giggling, but fifteen, twenty minutes began to wear on his already frazzled nerves.
“I’m glad you think that was funny,” he growled, looking more blanched than I’d ever seen him.
“It’s not that I think it’s funny,” I gasped. “I just can’t stop myself!”
“Well—try,” he suggested tersely.
“Teeheeheeheeheeheeheehee!” I replied. I wanted to stop, actually. My stomach muscles were killing me, but now, in the face of Richard’s disapproval, everything in the entire world became stupendously, outrageously, side-splittingly funny—the noise he made trying to get away from my sunglasses, the sunglasses themselves, the very concept of sunglasses as an object of fear and loathing … This would have been the moment in a detective movie for someone to give me a good, sharp slap and snap me out of it.
By the time we reached the restaurant, I had collapsed into a quivery, gelatinous mass of exhaustion and strained abdominal muscles. It really is terrible when you start laughing and can’t stop, like the time in my poetry class with the august and learned poet Robert Pinsky, who made a witty remark about the esophagus which cracked me up, but no one else was laughing, so I sat on my merriment for as long as I could but then burst out in guffaws right after he had moved onto the subject of orgasm.
When we got out of the car, we walked around it in trepidation, afraid we might have nicked the paint job in our wild ride, but we discovered that we hadn’t marred the Mercedes at all, much to our vast relief. The body retained its creamy, unflawed glaze, and Mercedes built for this part of the world generally had steel plates protecting the belly of the automobile, mainly, I think, for the car-swallowing pot holes. But in this case, it had coasted just fine along the rim of the ditch.
We had a pleasant lunch of grilled sea bass and French fries, drank a couple of beers to settle our nerves and then sat and watched the river flash by in the benevolent, tropical sun while bright yellow butterflies flitted around in the surrounding meadow. When we had finally, thoroughly calmed down, we made our painfully cautious and uneventful trip back to los Kelton.
And we never, ever, ever borrowed Horatio’s Mercedes again.
Above: More pics from the archives I found; Richard doing his Tarzan thing on a strangler fig vine in Monteverde Cloud Forest.
*Intro:
At the end of 1982, both Richard and I had been out of work for a year, despite constant looking, and the best we had been able to come up with was scrounging for odd jobs. It was an economic climate much like the one we’re in now, and we were feeling both dejected and panicked about what the future might hold for us. We certainly could never have imagined what happened next: a dream job in a dream country for a dream boss.
This is Chapter 26 of the memoir I wrote about the year-and-a-half that Richard and I spent living in Costa Rica. It was quite the adventure, living with a an eccentric and flamboyant heiress** from Dallas, her elegant and erudite husband who wrote Westerns, and their handsome, bad boy son, whom Richard used to babysit. Oh, yeah, and next door resided the safe house for Eden Pastora, aka “Commander Zero,” leader of the Contras who were waging a civil war with the Sandanistas in Nicaragua at that time.
This was a particularly golden era in Costa Rica’s history, before it became “discovered,” even before the introduction of television there, really (it started coming in during the time we lived there). It was wild and exotic and magical and amazing.
So once a week, I’ll be excerpting a chapter from Crazy Good Fortune Out of the Blue until I’ve told the whole tale. I hope you enjoy these stories!
**Jane, sadly, passed away not long ago, but she left a legacy as colorful as she was. In 1984, she commissioned one of the largest environmental sculptures in the Western Hemisphere, a set of standing stones in Arlington, Texas that were designed and built by sculptor Norm Hines. Caelum Moor has been a source of enormous controversy over the years, which I’ll write about one of these days. In the meantime, feel free to Google “Caelum Moor” and see what turns up. It’s fascinating.
Thursday, September 3, 2009