Specially since Alana comes in tomorrow, I shouldn’t allow myself attraction; but I want this girl madly, this local who works at the internet cafe. So, yesterday, when she sat next to me at the computer and said hello into the sand in my ear, I told her that her boyfriend was a baby. I think.

I used the wrong word; I’d meant to just say he was young, which still would have been a dig at him, but baby is too mean. I had been at the beach that afternoon with her boyfriend and his brother and an older party-guy with a burn and wide smile and good, bad jokes; your cool uncle who wants you to drink beer. He employed the two boys at a job that was never explained to me.

I got very drunk and they had pot and we ate pizza there. Way too much pizza. The lady at the beach bar is from Canada and her homemade pizza takes and hour-and-a-half to make. When we got back into town, I stopped at the internet café on the way to my cabina and told the sexy girl there that her boyfriend was a baby, when I meant to say that he was young.

The cultural difference here encompasses sense-of-humor. Sarcasm is largely a white man’s sport. Sarcasmo. But this girl at the internet café laughs at the right times with loud, high trills and bird calls. And when I talk to her the Spanish comes right and comfortable and she even said to me, "Sabes mucho Espanol": You know a lotta Spanish. I didn’t know how to tell her she was bringing it out of me.

Then, I’m not sure I said it right but I told her, "Cuando hablas, cantas." it was suppose to mean, "You sing when you speak." A pretty good one, I thought, if I said it right, either way, she liked it. She looked so much older than her boyfriend at the beach. I wobbled out of the café through the drunk dust, to my cabina and slept until 7 a.m.

The next morning my new friend John returned. He’d been living next door but had taken off for a couple days to fetch his roommate, his roommate’s girlfriend and their tiny baby. When I woke they were all outside the cabina eating breakfast with the Costa Rican family who own the place and Tim. Tim is an important cast member. The most important so far. He is German and he looks like Axl Rose. In the first weeks I was here I saw him on his bicycle around everywhere with his nose leaning forward, something important; he does seaturtle research. He’s the only one here whiter than me.

I finally met Tim at El Rancho, where I met Milton Chapman. I connect with Tim more than others, though he is not sarcastic either, he is sensitive and true, he will tell me when he is glad to have my company, that he enjoys spending time with me. I sat down and told them what I’d just said to the internet café girl, about her boyfriend.

"You don’t want to get your ass kicked or somesing by someone with ten years younger than you or somesing." Tim said.

"He’s a lot better looking too." I added.

They were eating fish which takes much concentration so I didn’t talk. A big piece of garlic baked fish with too much beans and rice and thick milk coffee all for $2 should shut a person up. There was the slow trickle of breakfast customers and as they waited each one asked to hold the baby. The Ticos would stretch out their arms and take the baby and walk off around the corner. Babies and passports go for roughly ten-thousand dollars on the black market. But stay calm. They always came back. And the whole time the Tica women sang fast Spanish into the baby’s ear and she was amazingly contented by their voices like music boxes. We ate our fish as every Tica women pulled the same magic with the baby. The baby cried with the men, but it was extraordinary to my white eyes, that the men even wanted to hold her.

When 16 people had taken turns with the baby, and we were done with our breakfast, we decided on the beach again. The husband of the woman who owns the cabinas, owns a taxi service; a nice 4 X 4 Toyota with a wrestling cage of rollbar safety and cushioned benches he just installed yesterday. He was still busy eating so he gave the truck keys to his perfect 15-year-old daughter to drive us all to the beach.

The exchange rate on flesh is 15-years here for 18 in America. Last week I was with the three traveling white girls and we were invited to a girl’s 15th birthday. It was suppose to be a big event, someone made a joke, "A coming out party. When she’s ready to be offered up as a woman." I haven’t figured out if this lore is exaggeration or truth. I haven’t determined. I know I could go with a 17-year-old here and no one would remark. But the traveling white girls wouldn’t go to that party with me.

John and his roommate and his girlfriend and their baby and I watched through the back window of the truck at the brown girl’s long perfect arm, covered in baby daughter skin, shifting gears while her shoulders were brushed with shiny coal hair. Down the almost-roads. There were monkeys hanging in the trees finally. I hadn’t seen one. I still haven’t seen a volcano and I’m still not sure if Milton’s woman on the beach was a prostitute. But I saw some damn monkeys. They were cute.

The truck slammed around and the baby wasn’t crying. She has a big expression with the wet mouth open, confused, always. Or crying. But in the rough truck her thin hair blew up in the wind in a crazy spike but she didn’t cry. And I thought about Andy, and moving to Ft Myers with Andy and her daughter. Andy asked if the kid was gonna drive me crazy and I said NO OF COURSE NOT, really loud but I wonder if I thought about it. Any confused, wet mouth would grate on me after some time. I think Andy’s kid is older, though.

Yesterday, before I got to see this baby up close, I idealized my life with Andy, with her kid. I was thinking I wanted to teach her words, fill her so full of words that the other kids think she’s retarded. I pictured Andy’s daughter, whom I haven’t seen, standing next to me by the oven in a kitchen I haven’t been in yet. Andy is cooking and she says to her daughter, "You’re sure getting a vocabulary, little lady."

Then I prompt her daughter, "What kind of a vocabulary do you have?" I ask her.

She replies, to her mother, "An EXTENSIVE vocabulary!"

But there was no idealism on the beach as John’s roommate and his girlfriend took turns going into the water. One sat on the beach, protecting the baby, the sun goalie, blowing cool air into her spiked hair as the other parent battled real waves. I wondered what it would be like to not have a chance to go in the water together during an afternoon at the beach.

I smoked a joint walking down the sand to meet them and on the way I hooked away from them because rule #2 is: KEEP DRUGS AWAY FROM THE BABY. Yesterday I was walking down a sly side street in the village smoking a joint and looked up to notice I was passing outside a classroom of 8-year-olds in black pants and blue shirts. There are no windows in the classrooms of their school. They felt very close. I ran with my joint. I didn’t make eye contact with any of them.

When I stepped into the water, I was thoroughly stoned. The Costa Rican waves pushing me around, working me over, it makes me so happy. A saline head enema; it’s uncomfortable at the time, but you own clarity for hours after. Walk into the big waves sometimes, swim under them most often, ride one in on your belly, for hours, slammed again and again. One climbed up and up and covered the sun, lit from the back, and inside were a flock of stingrays. We scrambled in every direction, then up the beach for whiskey and pizza and more people wanting to hold the child.

I was drunk again in the afternoon when we returned. The sunscreen worked, I wasn’t any more colorful. I stopped in the internet café before sleep. The sexy girl wasn’t working. I read an email from Todd, the guy who published that little story of mine in his Literary Journal, Almost; the only thing I’ve ever had published. Todd wanted to know, "Did you really meet a famous author there? Who?"

I wrote back, "A semi-famous author." But I didn’t tell him who it was.

Then there was an email from Alana: