The bicentennial-not a good year for Gerry Ford, I’m afraid. Here, Chicago’s arctic cold, stress of finals, and media hype over the upcoming presidential primary elections belonged to a different planet. Six days of fun in the sun to look forward to, or so I thought. Same as many other North American college students on semester break, we had come to Mexico to soak up some rays and vegetate in Escondido-a small rural town, good-bang-for-your-tourist-buck, 300 kilometers southeast of Acapulco. ”Ī connecting flight in Acapulco and a dozen petty arguments later, we arrived in Puerto Escondido on a small prop plane that chased goats off the dirt runway. After we’d checked our backpacks at the Mexicana Airlines counter, passed without a hitch through a metal-detector test, and realized that our K 16 gate assignment must have been at the very end of an endless corridor, Mila was raising her voice-”Roman, will you quit rushing me! You are such a pain in the. By dawn, the Jefferson Park bus had dropped us off at O’Hare Airport. Since 3 a.m., when we’d rolled out of bed in our one-bedroom apartment in Chicago and argued about first dibs on the bathroom, we’d been bickering tit for tat. And the way your hair looks so dark and your curls fall around your face. A couple of yards away, Mila was staring at me with an intent dreamy look. Reaching bottom, I kicked off the sandy floor and shot into the air.
Come and get it, I thought, then ran full blast ahead and dove underwater. The undulating tropical heat helped me to make up my mind. Somewhere in the sea, I heard a shark ringing a dinner bell.
I may have been on the greyhound side of lean, but I also come fully equipped with broad shoulders and a nine-inch height advantage on Mila. Her head popped up again, and she whipped her long tangled hair out of her eyes. “I don’t plan on being on the short end of any Great White’s feeding frenzy.”Ī huge wave blindsided Mila and knocked her somersaulting underwater. “Come on, Roman!” she yelled over the thundering breakers. Her blond head reappeared bobbing and floating on the surface. Then, just as a wave was about to wipe the pug-nose-cute off her face, she knifed into the curling wall of water. Mila bounded past me in her green paisley bikini, skip-running and splashing straight ahead for a swim. Up and down the glistening beach along the overgrown weedy foothills of the Sierra Madre Mountains, Norte Americano “hippies”-so called by the Mexicans-bodysurfed, riding monster waves toward shore. A strong riptide pulled on my ankles, burying my feet in sand. I stood knee-deep in the foamy surf, shading my eyes and looking out over Escondido Bay for any sign of a dorsal fin.