Juan Carlos could handle it if I shouted at him in Spanish. With a Dutch accent because that's what I valued. I spoke six languages, but I made sure I was fluent in all of them with a Dutch accent. Because of the Dutch drug policy and football and our image of freedom and tulips, cheese, clogs, and windmills, I noticed that it was beneficial to be Dutch. Everywhere in the world, we Dutch had an advantage. Everyone talked about football, drugs, or tulips when I said I was from the Netherlands.
When I said I was from Amsterdam, it was usually ball. Young people have eyes on saucers. Kif, joints, dope, hash, grass, and marijuana were widely considered to be nice and give you something you didn't get from alcohol.
Why did I come to their country, people sometimes asked me when I had everything in the Netherlands? I had nothing in the Netherlands and that whole drug policy I couldn’t care less. When I still lived there, I sometimes smoked a joint, but since the coke killed my father, I didn't want anything to do with it anymore. I had smoked my last joint that time with Juan Carlos and had no intention of ever letting any illegal drugs pass my lips again. I was not too fond of alcohol either. I hadn't been drunk very often, but the times I was, I had felt terrible. I couldn't handle it, just like my father, who I had also found hanging over the toilet rim.
After I had finished my breakfast, it was time to rest so I could better plan my day.
I asked for the bill, which I put in my now-dried bathing suit. I kept all the receipts to be sure they could be trusted at La Perla. I returned to the beach for Las Urracas over the increasingly warm sand.
Like every morning, people ran along the tide line. Jogging was a popular pastime in Zihuat's mornings. Back and forth on the beach, some running with bottles in their hands, others had water bottles on a belt around their waist. The holidaymakers, mostly Americans who stayed in the cheap hotels and hostels in Zihuat, came onto the beach. Some carried coolers containing beer and soft drinks and lay on their air mattresses between the hotels' beaches and bungalow parks. Some of them I knew from all the years I came there and that they came there.
My bed in the second row of the beach was empty and waiting for me. There was a folded note from Juan Carlos on it.
Sweet Teddy, I'm sorry I laughed. It was just too crazy, but I'm sorry. Please forgive me. Why don’t you come over for a joint? I have new dynamite grass. Mucho amor, Juan Carlos.
Tears welled up in my eyes. This sweet note made me not angry with him anymore, which annoyed me enormously. But I let the tears flow, and I lay under my umbrella and looked at the sea my mother had swallowed. Because without the sea, there would be no sharks, and without sharks, she would still have lived.
I found it difficult to control and organize my thoughts. But why should I? I had heard that my mother was dead no more than two hours ago, and I had seen a horrific video on YouTube of her being pulled underwater by a tremendous blue shark. The hope I had always had to see her again, to lie in her arms one more time, to let her comfort me one more time, to hear her say that she regretted what she had done, the hope I had had to ask her everything and to hear that she had always missed me. That hope that kept me alive gave me the idea that I had to go on forever if she didn't know I had ended up in the right place.
That hope had vanished, and all my thoughts had vanished. Had I ended up in the right place?