My NYC pal Spencer glommed on and the three of us trickled south along the Honduran coast. Turned out Spencer was repairing a splintered heart. He got no sympathy from sullen Ivan.
One day at a restaurant on a beach Spencer and I shared lunch as we watched Ivan strolling in the surf, inevitably swirled by excitable kids like gulls around a fisherman’s haul. Spencer, the grandson of an American President with his own trust fund and a loft in Tribeca, said, “What makes Ivan cool? Kids never come near me.”
Our tribe ripped apart when Spencer returned to NYC. Ivan slung on his backpack and left to meet an Aussy buddy at a bus depot. Before leaving Ivan offered me his copy of On The Road. “I want it back,” he said, and he made me promise I’d mail it to an address in Melbourne. I swore I would and we awkwardly hugged goodbye.
I bought a ticket to Roatan and there I joined an unofficial commune in a forrest of palm trees. I rented a hammock for a dollar a night and here I read and jotted notes.
Books to travelers on the Gringo Trail are a currency and I traded down for The Firm. Mentally I drifted, wondering how I reached this path leading nowhere in particular. Was I a reader, was I a writer, was I a paperback book rustler?
Weeks into the void I suddenly remembered I had interviewed at a women’s magazine for the position of book reviewer. A dream job! And I had somehow forgotten. Shock bolted me upright and I spilled out the hammock.
Spencer lost his girl, Ivan lost his book and I lost out on that job. Yet, somehow I feel certain none of that changed one jot of the rest of our lives.
Image by talented Serbian
Alexander Mihaylovich
currently exhibiting at (click here)
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