Week 20 - Tourist Season

Tourist Season

Matthew Ryan Fischer

The surf came crashing against the rocks. It was the first thing Lisa noticed in quite some time. The waves. She could hear the waves. Over and over and over again. Things were sounding rough. Rougher. It must be late. Or maybe a storm was brewing. She always imagined the surf got rough late at night or when trouble was coming. The waves hadn’t sounded like that during the afternoon on the beach. Not like that. They were calm and quiet and it had been a perfect day to lie in the sand and get her feet wet. But things were different now. It was dark. Late. And things were definitely getting louder and louder.

Or at least that was the way it seemed when Lisa really thought about it. A crescendo of noise. A ‘crash-endo’ she joked to herself. That hardly made any sense. It didn’t have to. Lisa was drunk and she liked to make bad jokes to herself when she was drunk.

Things were wobbly. She wanted it to stop. Her vision, her equilibrium, her concentration – everything was off. She wanted it to stop. She knew enough to know it wasn’t going to stop. Not for a long time. She hated this moment – the moment of drunken clarity where she could realize she was too drunk for her own good and that nothing was going to fix that for hours and hours yet. Maybe she could sleep. It seemed like that might be the easier thing to do. Lie down in the sand and close her eyes. She wanted to, but she knew she couldn’t.

Sarah should have been there. Sarah was good in these sorts of moments. Sarah.

Lisa looked around. She had almost forgotten Sarah. She wasn’t sure where she was. She was on the beach; that much was obvious. But she hadn’t been there all night. She couldn’t have been. She remembered dancing at the bar. Lots of dancing and lots of drinking. She wasn’t at the bar anymore. She knew that. Sarah had been with her before. Maybe she was still there now.

Lisa tried to stand up. She wobbled. Dizzy and disoriented, she sat back down in the sand.

There was a bonfire and music. And men and women dancing and drinking. Not the same as the bar though. She repeated that to herself. She wasn’t confusing things. She wasn’t blending things together. She had been at two different parties tonight. At least two different. She had been drinking and had been browning in and out for a fair amount of time. She couldn’t be exactly sure she had only been to two different parties tonight.

 It was spring break. She was supposed to be drunk. She was supposed to have missing moments of merriment. That was what vacations were for.

That’s what she told herself. And she agreed. She was sure Sarah would have agreed if Sarah had been there to agree.

Sarah was missing. Where’s Sarah?

“Where’s Sarah?” she finally said out loud.

“Don’t worry baby...” said a heavily accented male voice. A man’s hand was suddenly resting on her arm. “Just relax.”

“Where’s Sarah?” Lisa drunkenly mumbled again. What she really meant to say was “who the hell are you?” Lisa didn’t have a boyfriend. She didn’t know who this man was and didn’t know why his touch was so familiar.

Seven days. Seven days in the Caribbean. Seven days of escape and fun and free will. Lisa had never left the states before. And this was spring break. Spring break was supposed to be all about fun and free will. Tropical islands with tropical drinks sounded like the perfect spring break solution.

It had been Sarah’s idea. Sarah’s RA was going to chaperone the trip and it was supposed to be safe. The island was supposed to be safe. Lisa knew it to be safe. She had heard the horror stories. She was no fool. It was a chaperoned trip to a tourist town on a tourist island, with a reputation for treating its visitors to a good time.

Lisa suspected Sarah had decided on this trip for none of those reasons. Nick was going on the trip too. And Lisa knew Nick and knew Sarah had a thing for Nick. Lisa hadn’t expected to see much of Sarah at all once they got to the island. She thought the two of them would be off together. And they had been at times. But they were there with as a group and there was partying to be done as a group as well as the private partying that could wait until later.

Perhaps Sarah was with Nick, back at the hotel. Nick wasn’t anywhere to be seen either. Lisa tried to remember where the hotel was.

They had ridden on a bus to get to Florida. They had taken the bus. It was cheaper than a flight. Much cheaper. Flights were getting more and more expensive. They could afford the vacation and they could afford a group rate on the bus and boat to the island, and so there was little left to debate.

Lisa had never been to Florida before. She didn’t really think that this trip counted either. The bus reached Florida during the middle of the night and she had slept through most of the state. She had woken up to find the bus at the harbor in Miami. It wasn’t dawn yet and they couldn’t board the boat yet. Lisa was groggy then and she was groggy now.

The boat was her gateway to the new, the exotic. All she had felt was great anticipation at the thought of what was to come next.

It was going to be a great week.

It had been a great week.

Lisa didn’t have a boyfriend. There were other boys on the trip. She didn’t know them all. Sarah knew more, but Sarah didn’t even know everybody on the trip. It wasn’t a trip of friends. It was a trip of people that signed up on a sign-up sheet in the dorms. Still, some of them were really nice and a lot of fun. During the bus ride Lisa thought that maybe, just perhaps, there were one or two that she would fool around with. They were fun and looked good enough. She was on spring break after all.

This man with his hand on her arm had not been on the bus. He had not been on the boat. He was an islander. Lisa thought hard and could almost remember him from one of the bars. They had been dancing. She could remember dancing.

The beach seemed full, even though it was night. There were bodies and boys everywhere. It was a good time. The drinks were flowing and it was a good time.

But Sarah was missing. Sarah wasn’t at the beach and she wasn’t dancing, and Lisa definitely knew she didn’t want this strange man’s familiar grasp on her arm anymore.

“Where’s Sarah?” she asked no one in particular. Without waiting for a reply she began yelling Sarah’s name. “Sarah?! Sarah!”

She and Sarah had been at the beach. She could remember Sarah was there before. Earlier. At the bonfire. There had been boys and booze and a bonfire. And not always in that order.

They had been at a bar earlier. Much much earlier. There had been tropical fruit and rum and rum and iced fruit drinks and fruit soaked in rum and rum soaked in fruit. There had been a lot.

They had been at the bar and they had drank and danced and they had met the natives. The natives were restless and there was new prey in town.

They had come to the bar with their travel companions, as part of a group. But they had left with strangers.

They were dancing with boys and getting drinks. They were mixing drinks and dancing and native music. And there had been a beach and there had been a bonfire.

And Sarah had been dancing with someone. Not Nick. Definitely not Nick. She had been dancing with someone, a native, a man. Not a boy.

She had been dancing and now she was gone.

“Where’s Sarah?!?”

“Calm down, baby. Don’t worry.”

Lisa pushed the strange man off her and stood up.

“Where’s my friend? Where is she!!” she screamed in his face.

She kicked him back when he moved to stand. She kicked the strange man away and ran off into the crowd.

There were people dancing and drinking and it was almost dawn.

“Where’s Sarah?!?”

No one was answering her.

Dawn was cracking and the waves were getting louder. The noise was everywhere and no one was paying any attention to her.

Where’s Sarah? Where’s Sarah?

People were leaving the beach. The morning vendors were arriving with their fruit to sell. Lisa saw a surfer heading for the water. The loud waves, the loud and powerful waves, and this man was going to conquer them all.

Lisa ran to the water. She ran after the surfer and to the water’s edge. She didn’t know why, but something in the water was stirring.

“Help me! Somebody help me?! Help me find my friend!”

The surfers looked at her. The dancers looked at her. The stranger that had been holding her arm before looked at her.

Lisa was all alone.

*                             *                             *

Vicente didn’t like being woken up early. He didn’t like being woken up at all, but liked it even less when it was extra early. Occupational hazard, he supposed. It was barely dawn and Renaldo was at his door bringing him more bad news before the day had even begun.

Vicente yawned a massive yawn and rubbed his eyes. His shoulders ached. He was exhausted. He hadn’t been sleeping. He never slept well during tourist season, and it seemed like tourist season only got longer every year. Or maybe he was just getting older. Whatever. He was tired. It was tourist season, which was fun, for seemingly everyone, except him. He was law and order and tourist season meant there was alcohol everywhere. All the time. He was always always busy. Always.

“What is it?”

“Trouble on the beach.”

Vicente hated trouble. He hated it even more than he hated being woken up extra early.

“There’s always trouble on the beach.”

There were tourists and drinking on the beach and when you put those two things together, then invariably something was bound to go wrong. Always.  

There was trouble that Renaldo could handle and then there was trouble trouble. Vicente knew Renaldo knew the difference, but he was still holding out hope that he had been woken for no reason and would be allowed to go back to sleep.

“Not like this…” Renaldo informed, letting his voice trail off slowly. He didn’t say it. He didn’t need to say it. Vicente heard the words anyway. Without saying it, what Renaldo meant to say had been said. The silence just hung in the air, dripping, and foreboding. The silence was to quantify the trouble and indicate that this was real trouble. Not any of that normal trouble. Real real trouble.

Real trouble – on an early morning such as this, it was exactly that which Vicente did not need.

To be continued...