Amazonia Read online

  Amazonia

  T. Jefferson Parker

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  Amazonia

  T. Jefferson Parker

  My name is Austin Fodder and I am twenty-four years old. It seems like a lifetime ago when, fresh out of the University of California, Irvine, I applied for a job at Authentic Adventures Travel, which was located just a few miles from the campus. I had never seen myself as part of the hospitality industry. But the online job description for a travel agent trainee called for a four-year degree, computer and writing skills, and an “adventurous spirit.” With dual majors in computer science and comparative literature, and a three-day cruise to my credit (Long Beach to Ensenada), I walked into AAT late that afternoon for an interview, my head held moderately high, believing I could do the job.

  The agency was on the fifth floor of a mirrored tower in Newport Center. The elevator was swift and silent; the floor of the AAT lobby was red marble; the receptionist told me to have a seat. I did, and read through Authentic Adventures, a glossy magazine featuring new, classic, and future destinations. There were lots of pictures: placid-looking lagoons, jagged mountains, dense jungles abruptly ending at beaches on which colorful tribesmen stood. And quotes from happy travelers. According to my online research, AAT sent clients to properties all over the globe. None of the places were familiar. Many had names with exotic apostrophes, such as ‘Atlotl-Ton or B’att and all like that. The AAT slogan, which appeared on the cover under the title was: Real Won’t Wait.

  I was collected in the lobby by a very tall young woman who introduced herself as Ivy Slattery. We walked down a long hallway and she slowed her stride to match my average-length legs. She held a black tablet to her chest with both hands, reminding me of Jamie Frost in eighth grade, who held her backpack to her chest in that same way, in order to—I think, but will never know—hide her breasts. The hallway walls were hung with dramatically enlarged photographs similar to those in the magazine, with quotes from AAT clients superimposed on them. There were also oversized images of the satisfied travelers’ faces. Everything was upscale and costly. Ivy’s heels on the marble made an authoritative sound. I wanted the job.

  “Don’t let my father intimidate you,” said Ivy. “And don’t try to tell him anything but the truth. He’s got a very keen ear for bullshit.”

  Ivan Slattery was a large man with long gray-black hair pulled back into a ponytail. His black suit hung shinily on his big frame. He had a wide nose with large pores visible even across the desk, and black, close-set eyes. He didn’t look like he could be Ivy Slattery’s father.

  He confirmed that I had a current passport and was at least competent with a camera—not a phone camera, he insisted, but a real one with a decent zoom and fully waterproof. I felt as if opportunity’s door had been opened because I did have a current passport (used once, on the Long Beach-to-Ensenada cruise) and owned a waterproof camera (still in the box, grad gift from Mom and Dad, with note that encouraged me to “see this beautiful world”). When I told him I was competent with it, his black eyes bore into my face and I remembered what his daughter had told me about trying to fool him.

  “We have a fam trip set for a very promising new destination,” he said. Ivan Slattery had a rough, fast voice, almost a growl. “My last available agent has contracted some mystery ailment. Again. I can’t do the fam trip myself. It’s going to have to be you, Houston.”

  “It’s Austin, sir. What is a fam trip?”

  “A familiarization trip. It’s them trying to impress us. If they do, we’ll sell the destination. If they don’t, we won’t. Either way, you take the trip, see the sights, hear the pitch. They’ll take good care of you, believe me. Be as demanding as you want. Act impressed but not overly. Your job is to document it all for me—and I mean thoroughly—and report back. Simple.” He leaned back, folded his hands over his stomach, and smiled cagily. “I have a good feeling about this place. In fact, I have already instilled early interest in some of our more adventurous clients. That is how my business works. I’m always two steps ahead of the game.”

  “Great. What’s it called?”

  “Playa Amazonia.”

  “Very cool. What country is it in?”

  Ivan tapped something on his tablet then raised a thick finger and stabbed one more key. “You figure it out. I just sent you all the information. You leave LAX tomorrow at six a.m. Don’t forget the passport, and pack according to the instructions. Get a good night’s sleep, Houston. I’m counting on you.”

  Ivy rode down in the elevator with me. It was just us. She held the tablet to her chest and smiled at me not only as if I’d accomplished something important, but as if she’d known I would. I looked up at her. She had a slender face, eager blue eyes, and her hair was honey-blond. “I’m very happy for you,” she said. “And very proud.” She hooked a falling wave of hair behind her ear, then offered that hand for me to shake. It was cool and small-boned and thrilling. My heart swelled with the spirit of adventure.

  I arrived at the Playa Amazonia airstrip late the next night. A driver in a white van met me off the plane at the end of this (my third!) flight. There had been a re-routing and long delays. My phone had failed hours earlier and the van driver spoke no English, so I knew neither the local time nor my specific location. I looked at the sky but the night was starless. The airstrip lights were smothered in mist, and the air was warm and humid and smelled of ocean. Tired, I loaded my heavy suitcase into the van while the driver sat smoking sullenly. Despite my fatigue—and with reluctance to admit it, since I myself have never been regarded as “easy on the eyes”—I couldn’t help but notice that the man was unapologetically ugly. The last leg of the journey was a long ride on a white sand road so narrow that we would have had to pull over to let an oncoming vehicle pass. This did not happen. The headlights skittered across the dense greenery, but everything else was dark.

  I woke in my room at the Playa Amazonia Hotel at 9:38 in the morning. The room was bright and clean, ground floor, with white walls and a salmon-colored tile floor and dark wood window frames and shutters. A small lizard stuck to the ceiling cocked his head and looked down at me. There was a vase of daisies on the table by the window and small native paintings of huts and beaches and jungle birds. Standing in a tall woven basket near the door were two umbrellas made of what looked to be local materials: handles of cane and canopies of thick braided palm fronds. I opened and closed one of them—smooth and well built.

  I took pictures with the camera Mom and Dad had given me. I was happy to see the room service menu printed in both English and a language I didn’t recognize, though the prices were high. Still dazed by some twenty-plus hours of travel and only a few hours’ sleep, I did remember that my appointment with Mr. Troels was at two in the afternoon in the Playa Amazonia central square. My phone was still not working, even after charging while I slept. I stood on my porch and looked out at the unpeopled patio and pool, then to the wall of jungle rising beyond. Birds cawed and trilled from within, and small animals, perhaps monkeys, appeared briefly then vanished. It was hot. I took more pictures, remembering Ivan Slattery’s insistence on thorough documentation, and remembering Ivy’s cool hand against
mine.

  I seated myself for lunch in the hotel cafe. Two local-looking men sat in a far corner, huddled up to a small table and talking intently. Again, I’m not one to throw stones, but I should note that both men were vastly overweight. My waiter was older and dark-skinned with short, straight gray hair.

  “Coffee please,” I said.

  “Yes.”

  “Sir, what country are we in?”

  “No.”

  Having been a waiter in a Mexican restaurant during my college years, I spoke just enough Spanish to confuse Spanish-speaking people. But it’s the only other language I knew any of at all. “En que pais estamos nosotros?”

  The waiter looked at me, puzzled.

  “Estamos en Brazil o Colombia? O Peru?”

  “No.” He shrugged and left. Frustrated, I strode over to the two-top where the men sat. They acknowledged me only after I’d stood there for a beat and I had the feeling they’d been discussing me.

  “Good morning, gentlemen.” They looked at each other, then back at me, with mild offense on their faces. “My name is Austin Fodder. Can you tell me, please, in what country is Playa Amazonia? En que pais estamos nosotros?”

  “No.”

  “No.”

  One of them opened his hands in a sign of helplessness, his eyebrows rising. I noted that the men had thatch-topped umbrellas, which leaned in the corner behind them. They were smaller than the ones in my room, frayed with use. Back at my table, I wondered at the sudden rains that must fall here if the locals carried these rustic umbrellas even on such sunny days as this.

  After a meal of grilled fish, brown rice, and toasted white bread, I walked into town. A few cars passed, all older though apparently well cared for, as you might find in Cuba. Playa Amazonia was set on a hillside behind a long sand beach. The town was small, but still larger than I’d imagined. Palm trees swayed over fragile-looking wooden buildings and the sidewalks rose and dipped with the sudden elevations and declines.

  There were people out and about, mostly women but some men, too, all dressed in the older, more-formal fashions of poor but proud countries. Most were brown-skinned and dark-haired, but I saw fair blonds also. And all of them, young and old, moved briskly, as if in a hurry—heads up, alert, and often glancing toward the Playa Amazonia beach. I saw that nearly everyone carried a thatch-domed umbrella. The only people not carrying them appeared to be the few tourists, such as myself. I looked up at the cloudless blue sky and wondered again at the swift storms that must hit Playa Amazonia virtually without warning. I also noticed that the signs here in town—there were only a few—were all written in the same difficult language as the room-service menu back in my room. I stood outside a small market trying to make sense of the handwritten prices tacked over bins of produce: Xysccl—1.355 and Lmj’ak—2.116. Just outside the market’s front door was a tall basket of native umbrellas: Y’ap—14.457.

  The central square lay between the town and the beach. It was little more than dirt with benches around the perimeter and a stand of skimpy palm trees in the middle. It seemed to need a church or temple or something meaningful to complete it. There were trash cans and a water fountain and a few people hurrying through, each carrying a y’ap, but no one pausing or even slowing down. Again, I saw mostly women. Also some older men and boys. But the young-to-middle-aged men I saw were very few. And they were conspicuously challenged in obvious ways—some filthy, others obese or malnourished, others deformed or seemingly insane. But even these less fortunate souls were in some kind of purposeful hurry. I wondered if this country (whatever it was!) might be grindingly poor. It was possible that Playa Amazonia was the coastal capital of some destitute and forlorn country, and that these fast-moving people were the national equivalent of Manhattanites.

  Mr. Troels was a short, slender man who appeared in the central square about the same time I did. He transferred his y’ap and we shook hands. His accent was heavy but his English was good. “I hope that your flights and accommodations were excellent.”

  “Flights bad, room good.”

  He smiled. Mr. Troels had a scruffy, thin beard and dark-brown hair that needed a trim. His accent sounded Dutch. “Come.”

  He led me down a street to a two-story wooden building and held open the door. The aroma engulfed me: a bakery. It was hot and powerfully fragrant and the racks of baked goods were picked over pretty well by then. Stout, flour-dusted women glanced at us. Mr. Troels waved me up the stairs and I followed him, the women watching me as I climbed.

  His office was sparsely furnished and looked as if he was moving either in or out. On the desk between us sat a vintage landline telephone, black, with a tightly spiraled cord. There was also an older desktop computer, the kind with the bulbous monitor, white with ground-in dirt. Through the windows I could see the beach and the glittering silver ocean beyond.

  “Mr. Troels, please keep me from feeling like a moron, but what country am I in?”

  “Playa Amazonia, of course.”

  “I thought it was a town, a destination.”

  “Yes. Playa Amazonia is also the name of the capital. The nation itself has been a self-governing social democracy since 1894—the smallest on the continent. Once a Dutch colony. The language is a native one.”

  “Then we’re in South America?”

  He smiled and lit a cigarette. “Well, Mr. Fodder, where else could we be?”

  I’m sure I blushed badly (lifetime curse). The thought crossed my mind that if Ivan Slattery could see me right now he’d fire me on the spot. And that Ivy’s pride in me would vanish. I was their representative here. I took a deep breath and reminded myself of my dual degrees from the University of California, my “A” in Critical Theory 100, and my Long Beach-to-Ensenada cruise, on which I’d helped to break up a casino fight and later won close to $200 (in ship credits) at blackjack. “Well,” I forced a chuckle. “That’s exactly what I’d figured, Mr. Troels, but I couldn’t get one person to confirm it for me.”

  “The language, yes—impossible.”

  “Please impress me, Mr. Troels. Why should Authentic Adventures care about a country that takes twenty-odd hours to get to, has an unhelpful populace, and where—apparently—it rains so suddenly and heavily the locals carry wooden umbrellas even on the sunniest days?”

  “Ah, good questions. For starters, we have the most beautiful beach on Earth. You will be more than impressed by it. The diving is without compare, the fishing superb—both deep sea and inshore. At exactly three o’clock each afternoon, the wind arises from the west and it blows very hard. As a result, this is the new kite-sailing capital of the world. Kite sailing, as you probably know, is the fastest-growing sport not only in America but in the world. Oh, Mr. Fodder, the hiking, gliding, birding, bungee-jumping, kayaking, and river running? Utterly superior to what your adventurers have ever experienced! I have devised a slogan for Playa Amazonia: The Best is Always Found Last. Do you like it? By the time you leave here in five days, you will have had a taste of all these things. Just a taste.” He put his fingers to his lips in a French way (judging from movies). “In addition, our little capital of Playa Amazonia is in reality a very friendly place, once you settle into the native rhythms.”

  I tried to imagine what Ivan might say based on the half hour I had spent with him. “Facilities? I haven’t seen one dive shop, or kite-sailing school, or fishing charter, or even a restaurant or bar with customers in it. A total of one hotel.”

  “What did you expect?”

  “A destination!”

  Mr. Troels sighed and slumped and finally spread his hands in the same helpless way that the man at the cafe had done an hour ago. “I was very clear with Mr. Slattery that we are developing.”

  “Then I’m sure he told you that Authentic Adventures can’t sell developing. That would be like a restaurant trying to sell only recipes.”

  Mr. Troels looked into the space above my head. “This has been a terrible misunderstanding. I was most very clear.”


  “Things don’t always translate.”

  A very long silence followed. Then, “So long as you are here, you still must see the natural resources and beauties of Playa Amazonia.”

  I considered but wasn’t really sure what to do. I was here. Maybe I should at least document the great potential that Mr. Troels saw in this place. The decision was Mr. Slattery’s, not mine. “May I use your phone to call Mr. Slattery? My smartphone is useless.”

  “The desk phone doesn’t work. It’s a…decoration.”

  “Then I will go home early.”

  He sat back, diminished. He cleared his throat quietly. “Perhaps since you are here you would at least see our beautiful and someday famous beach.”

  I felt badly for him, but more badly for myself and my failed mission. “I’ll go see the beach while you find a way to make my travel arrangements. Please, this language is insurmountable for me.”

  “Take this y’ap. I bought it especially to welcome you to Playa Amazonia.” He brought the thatch umbrella from the floor beside his desk, stood, and presented it to me with a sad sigh. It was larger than the one in my hotel room, and surprisingly heavy.

  I walked the streets to the main boulevard leading down to the beach. The thoughtful gift umbrella was in my hand but my heart was heavy with the whole unnecessary mess. “I have a good feeling about this place,” Ivan had said. I took some pictures, as if this justified something. The boulevard was wide and covered in pavers and closed to cars. Pedestrians kept left and right like vehicles, most of them with y’aps (at least I felt more like a local now), heads up, looking often toward the beach where I was going.

  The boulevard was long but as I finally came closer to the beach I saw that it was tawny sand, the color of a lion. From here, the beach stretched as far as I could see. There were dramatic outcroppings of dark rock along the shore, spires and arches and plateaus sculpted by centuries of wind and water. Beyond, the ocean was turquoise-blue and flat as a mirror. Above it sat puffy white clouds with flat bottoms, reminding me of the last few pastries in the bakery racks. I stepped out of my lane and stopped to macro-behold Playa Amazonia. Mr. Troels had been right: it really was the most beautiful beach I’d ever seen. I had seen Laguna Beach. And La Jolla Cove. And Pebble Beach. And the Mendocino Headlands. But this beach, even at a distance, had their world-famous features—all in one! I decided right then that I should stick to my original plan, stay the five nights, and see if any other of Mr. Troels’ claims about Playa Amazonia, even if they were future-specific, might potentially be true.