Missing in Action
It was 6:15 p.m. I realized that Alex was missing. He had left hours ago to register M for the tournament. I couldn’t call him, our cell phones weren’t working here. Now it was dark, and we were hungry. What happened to him? Moe and I went down to the front desk to talk to Tina. Tina was one of three Tinas working at the resort. There was Alevtina, Augustina, and Valentina. She was Augustina. She explained who I could talk to about my missing husband, and how to get there.
Punta del Este by Lamplight
As I said, it was dark. We walked out of our “enclave” and onto a road with, again, absolutely nobody on the road or anywhere in sight. It’s true we were there in the offseason but still, it’s a tad unnerving to be walking around a foreign country at night with your young daughter looking for your missing husband. We walked in the middle of the road, moving from pool of light to pool of light cast by the streetlamps. I felt like I was in a movie.
We came to another white building which wasn’t far at all but only seemed far because I was nervous. The security person in this building greeted us from on high – literally. She was standing in a loft at the top of a flight of stairs. I could see she had a whole office going on up there. She welcomed us up, sat us down, and offered tea and cookies which we accepted. I answered all of her questions. Yes, he is in good health, etc.
Mystery Solved
Eventually, everything was brought to a happy and satisfactory end. It turned out that in addition to registering Maureen for the tournament in Punta del Este, he also went to the El Dorado Supermercado and got twenty pounds of food. He got lost coming back in the dark, and his arms almost fell off carrying all that food.
When he finally located our building, thanks to the full-throated and lusty barking of the frogs, he was dismayed to find the place dark and his family absent. While standing there utterly flummoxed, Tina appeared in the doorway (because our phone wasn’t working) to tell him that he had a message from “Graciela”. Graciela? Who is Graciela? Graciela is the security person. So he made his way over to us where we all sat and drank tea together, and then we finally went out to eat something.
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