Page 27 of The Deepest Lake

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Mauricio’s face is stony as he unpacks loads of groceries transported from San Felipe and San Marcos, a neighboring village.

I whisper to him. “¿Qué pasa?¿Qué tienes?”

Cans of tomato sauce, onto the shelf. Thunk, thunk. Industrial-size can of pozole. Thunk.

I try again. “What’s wrong?”

It’s not about me working for Eva. We settled that yesterday, and quickly, when Mauricio found out I got the job and would be moving into a cottage with Gaby and Mercedes, just across the yard from the guest cottage he shares with Eduardo, the head gardener.

Mauricio’s a practical guy. His surprise quickly mellowed to cautious acceptance. It’s better for both of us if no one knows we are anything other than coworkers. In fact, secrecy adds spice. And yet today, he is cranky at the whole world.

“El orfanato,” he mumbles, head still stuck in a cupboard.

So that’s it. He’s indignant about the three boxes of running shoes, collected from the last round of workshop participants, that he wanted to deliver to the orphanage before the other errands. Eva said there wasn’t time before the guests’ arrival. The priority is transporting food in, garbage out.

The shoes have been sitting around forever. The new group of writers will arrive and bring yet more shoes and clothes. What’s the point, if they get pushed into a garden shed because the staff is too busy to deliver them? I know what Eva’s answer will be: cash matters more. She keeps collecting clothing because it makes the workshop participants feel good, but handing over a few hundred dollars every few months would be much more efficient. With apologies to Mauricio, Eva’s view makes practical sense.

While he continues slamming cans around, Chef Hans and Barbara are going over printouts of emails. During moments like these, I remember that Mauricio is three years younger than me, which is fun when you’re out dancing or hanging out, and less fun when you’re working side by side. I’m glad I haven’t raved about him to anyone yet, least of all Mom, who would want to prove her open-mindedness by acting happy that I’m having aventuras, in both senses of the word. If I never see Mauricio again, post-Atitlán, there’ll be no reason for anyone to hear about our fling.

Hans reads aloud while Barbara, Eva’s accountant and house manager, makes notes on a steno pad: “Kosher, one; celiac, one; vegan, two; ‘Shrimp give me hives,’ one.”

I chuckle. “So just don’t eat them, right?”

Hans wipes his thick fingers on his apron. He looks at me, and I look down at his black Crocs, the biggest shoes I’ve ever seen on a human being. “Food allergies are serious.”

“No, of course. You’re right.”

Hans ran kitchens in Ibiza (the raves must have been brutal) and opened his own restaurant in Los Angeles, but it went out of business. Then he spent some downtime in prison—“a ridiculous trumped-up charge,” Eva assured me. That’s where she met him, at a one-time prison workshop on the Power of Story as Liberation. Now Eva flies Hans into Guatemala four times a year for the workshop gig.

“Hey, Barbara,” I say. “Eva wanted me to make a video of you for the socials. Congrats on your memoir coming out soon, by the way.”

Barbara looks up from her steno pad. She has a square-shaped head, capped by thinning mouse-brown hair. Scowling puppet lines connect her nose to her chin.

“I mean . . . you must be really excited,” I say. “What’s it about?”

Barbara turns her steno pad around, so it’s pressed against her chest. She sighs. “My husband was an asshole.”

That can’t be enough for a memoir. I keep waiting.

Barbara looks at Hans with a hangdog expression and then back at me, as if she has no choice to explain.

“When I came to Lake Atitlán with about thirty shitty pages, I said to myself, ‘Barbara, you tell the truth about what this asshole did and if you can’t finish, the lake’s right there.’ It’s cold, it’s deep, it’ll do the job.”

Hans snorts. I can’t tell if they’re both pulling my leg now. But then I look at Barbara’s miserable face. She isn’t joking.

“He took my money, my health and my dignity,” Barbara continues in the same relentless monotone. “I’m a quadruple survivor. First, abusive infidelity. Then breast cancer. Then HIV. Then bankruptcy. All from him. Not the cancer, unless you assume the cancer came from the stress. But definitely the rest of it.”

I should have been getting this story outside with the video running, because I doubt she’ll be willing to repeat herself.

“I’m sorry. So, Eva taught you how to write about all that.”

“Not at first. First, Eva taught me how to breathe. How to take a shower and remember to eat, to sleep. Then she gave me a job. Then when I was halfway sane again, she looked at my pages and said, ‘This isn’t it. Start over.’”

Hans is tapping his big Croc, waiting for our chat to wrap up so that he and Barbara can resume dietary planning.

“That must have been hard,” I say.