Ricardo
A tale from the road, plus an invitation for NYC readers
A quick announcement before today’s story: if you’re in New York City, I’ll be reading this Tuesday, August 20, at KGB Bar in the East Village, to support the launch of the 21st issue of KGB Lit. I’ll be reading an excerpt from my first published work of fiction, a short story, at 7pm, alongside a lineup of awesome writers:
Come say hello! I’m excited to share more info about the story soon, including where you can pick up a copy if you can’t make the reading. More to come. Business as usual in the meantime: here’s a quick tale from the road.
Around a year and a half ago, I worked at at a small hotel in a surf town in Costa Rica alongside a few fellow travelers I’ll generously call “colleagues.” We checked in guests, sold yoga tickets, and marked rooms needing fresh sheets. It could get a little hectic, but this was straightforward, monotonous work; standard hospitality fare.
Another of our duties was arranging transportation for guests. At reception, we booked taxis through a local company I’ll call “Taxi Playa.” Taxi Playa’s fleet consisted of a few different vehicles driven by a handful of locals we got to know pretty well. Nice guys who’d hang around reception between shifts or while waiting on guests. For a while, the minor, pleasant conversations with these drivers was the only thought I gave to the inner workings of Taxi Playa’s business model.
That changed a few months into the job, once I’d nailed it down and began working my way, as one does, down the rabbit hole of Taxi Playa’s operational apparatus amidst slow stretches at the front desk.
A quick peek inside Taxi Playa: to request rides for guests, we used the hotel phone at reception to send a message into a WhatsApp group with a few different contacts. Without fail, a message shot back in the group within seconds of each request to confirm every trip: Confirmado. Despite these bot-esque response times, the messages weren’t sent from an official business account; instead, a contact I’ll call “Ricardo” was the deliverer of each instant confirmation.
We knew nothing about Ricardo outside a mysterious WhatsApp contact photo: an image of a group of schoolchildren, lined up in two rows, all wearing matching white polos and beige khaki shorts. But the more time passed, the more impressed we at reception grew with Ricardo’s work. It was insane, this operation he seemed to be singlehandedly running; collectively, these taxis operated as reliantly and efficiently as any entity I’ve ever witnessed, always early, consummately professional, totally dependable. We couldn’t have been the only hotel using Taxi Playa, either—this was a borderline miraculous level of top-to-bottom organizational efficiency, with one man pulling all the strings. What was the secret behind this well-oiled machine?
Then, a few months into my stay, cracks began emerging within the Taxi Playa empire. It was a few minor slips at first: a cab arriving late to take a couple to dinner, a surf bus dropping guests off at the wrong beach. With each err, the very traits which had once made Taxi Playa appear Herculean began presenting as troublesome. We still trusted the service enough to use it, but Ricardo and the Taxi Playa machine had proven itself fallible; the same “Confirmado”s which had initially inspired so much awe started ringing slightly hollow, opened themselves up to new interpretations. I began associating the lightning speed of the replies with haste, not divinity; rote mechanism replaced pure astonishment. Had processing each order with Ricardo’s trademark quantum speed really been a sustainable practice? A few faults, framed even by the perfection Taxi Playa had upheld for so long, inspired much skepticism at reception, and we began questioning the entire operation. Because we associated a single individual with these flaws, all our attention turned to a single man: Who was Ricardo?
We found out one day in late January, when a Playa Taxi driver didn’t show, and couldn’t be contacted, to take a particularly cantankerous elderly guest to her zip lining reservation across town. Another driver finally showed up, 45 minutes late, but by the time he’d schlepped the woman to the course she’d missed her slot, and couldn’t book another (this was about as code red a situation we ever had at reception). Confused, disappointed, and, frankly, a little hurt by this incident, the culmination of what could only be called a steep deterioration in service, I scrapped together a tersely worded message in Spanish to the Taxi Playa group at the end of my shift, using the hotel phone to cover my ass. I sent the message and started closing out my shift.
Within three minutes, I heard the rapid scrunching of gravel, and looked up from the cash box through the leafy palms framing the front desk. Rising up the stony slant, straight in my direction, was a character I was positive I’d never seen before yet who was familiar enough to strike a particular chord in the part of my stomach reserved for separating real and dreamt. He was a boy, with bright red cheeks, baby fat padding the arms and calves poking out from his shirt and shorts. Huffing and puffing, he stood before me at the desk. Even slouched in my stool, I towered over him. His eyes were distraught, almost pained, as if he’d been inflicted personally by the wrong he’d arrived to amend. But easily, easily, the most distinctive quality of this person was youth. This was a child, perhaps a teenager, perhaps not (we took a poll later; guesses ranged from 11 to 14), who stood before me now and began delivering, in a soft, squeaky voice, an effusive apology, a tour-de-force monologue which, in the phrases of his Spanish I understood, conveyed the highest level of remorse for the events of the preceding week.
It was happening so fast, and as I tried to follow the words I was struck all at once, in the middle of his explanation, by the implication of his youth, a realization disorienting enough to scramble his already mostly-incomprehensible Spanish into total gibberish. This was Ricardo? The Ricardo? The one who never let a minute pass before responding to each taxi order, day or night, rain or shine? Then it hit me. The WhatsApp photo, full of kids. I looked him up and down, frozen in place in my reception stool, and recognized him now from that image; he wore the same white polo, beige khaki shorts. A school uniform. Hold on. Ricardo was—no, it couldn’t be. But yes, it must have been. All those responses, hundreds of messages smack in the middle of the day, Ricardo had been…in school?
His spiel was an imitation, I recognized, though I didn’t understand most of the words, an impression of someone he was trying to impress, as if that person were watching from around the corner, waiting to judge his performance with a raised chin and a score from one to ten. He wanted to make someone proud, someone who I was certain wasn’t there; I was the only witness to this show. A wave equally horrifying and hilarious washed over me, and I now felt as if I were being watched at that very moment by my own version of the ghost haunting Ricardo, pulling the strings, forcing him to dance, and I realized, viscerally, that if Ricardo was performing, well, what the fuck was I doing?
The thought struck me just as the boy wrapped up his monologue, cheeks puffing in and out, and I sat there, jaw slack, in a silence which enveloped us like a hot breeze. I searched his eyes for a glint, for any sign that the jig was up, but they stayed defiantly in character. So it was my turn to speak.
I understand. But don’t let it happen again.
I said with the placidity of an actor disgusted with his script, fed up with the director, ready to walk off stage. Ricardo gamely delivered a tiny nod and squished his way back down the gravel path to the parking lot. In a haze, I collected my things and slunk away from the desk. My shift was through.
I pondered the situation for the rest of the evening, and the next day I peppered the Taxi Playa drivers on their normal routes with the questions which had stretched my mind all night. What was going on here? Who was this kid? Why was he working for a taxi company? He’s in school? He responds to these messages, what, in the middle of class? But each driver, to a man, visibly retreated when I pursued my line of questioning, resorted to shrugs and subtle head shakes in response to every impassioned plea. Now that I think of it, in fact, they didn’t hang around reception much anymore once I started poking around. The only concrete detail to emerge from my investigation: Taxi Playa, a few drivers allowed, was founded by Ricardo’s father.
I stuck around for another month or two. In March, I left, having discovered just this one detail about Ricardo. That, it seemed, would be that.
Then, almost a year later—this past February—I returned to the town for a few weeks to visit old friends and escape the New York City winter.
A week into this return trip, one serendipitous thing led to another and I scored an invite to the wedding of a generous couple with invitations to burn. I got a friend to join me, but I possessed only a bicycle. I needed a ride.
I dug into my contacts and, with a dramatic flourish, pulled up Taxi Playa’s contact. Messaged with the place I needed to be and the time I needed to be there. The reply came instantaneously, no questions asked, delivered with the exultation of a band capturing the crowd once more with a hit on a much-anticipated reunion tour: Confirmado.
A few hours later, a white pickup pulled in front of my apartment. I’d caught a few of the other drivers around town, but through the truck’s tinted front windows I didn’t recognize the back of the head now waiting on me. I flip-flopped my way down the dusty hill in front of my apartment and unlatched the rear car door. An unfamiliar profile, buzzed sides, slicked back top, thick, curved sunglasses stretching well beyond his ear creases, greeted me from the driver’s seat. After a heavy, silent pause, I introduced myself.
The figure turned over his right shoulder, and I met a face I recognized not for its familiarly concerned, pleading eyes—his oversized shades belied recognition—but for the same rotund, rosy cheeks I’d once, not so long ago, scrutinized like a Seurat painting amidst a maze of white school uniforms. I shot my head in both directions, searching in vain for both a witness and a guardian angel. The road was empty. I strapped myself in and shut the door.
“Hola,” the mouth with a familiar upper lip, embroidered now by the germinations of dark peach fuzz, said, neutrally, in a tone only slightly deeper than the one I remembered. I nervously garbled out some greeting back. Chest puffing out under a spotless white polo shirt, swallowed up by the driver’s seat he proudly mounted, Ricardo straightened his back to set the car in reverse, completed a three point turn, descended the steep, dusty hill back to the main road, pulled over to pick up my friend, and, with hands just steady enough to fool anyone not laser-focused on how imperceptibly they quivered on the steering wheel, dropped us off at our destination. Safe and sound. I disembarked, let my friend out, and walked around to the slowly descending driver’s window. Ricardo and I stared at each other silently for a few seconds, through his dark glasses, his chin cut off by the bottom of the window frame. He extended his hand out, palm facing up. I handed over the fare in cash.
“Muchísimas gracias de Taxi Playa,” he said dispassionately. We didn’t exchange another word. He faced forward, pausing to roll up his tinted window, and swung back onto the road. I watched the white truck shrink into the distance. It could have been anyone behind the wheel.