Friday morning I walked down to El Cafecito in Zicatela because the guesthouse woman said it was the place. A small room, a few tables, no counter. I ordered my regular coffee and sat near the window. The coffee was fine. The table wobbled.
The beach was already working by the time I walked past — surfers paddling out, a few people on the sand, the morning heat beginning to settle in. I kept walking toward the Adoquín because I was hungry and the day had not yet made any demands.
Bought a torta from a cart near the main drag — milanesa, beans, avocado, pressed flat. I ate it standing in the shade of a palapa while a man in a Tecate shirt swept the floor around me. The heat was already serious. I finished the torta and kept walking.
Ended up at Mercado Benito Juárez because that is where Friday morning goes if you let it. Smaller than Oaxaca's, louder. Fish stalls near the entrance, a woman selling mangos already cut, a man with a cart of limes. I walked the circuit. A woman at a stall near the back was grilling pescado on a sheet of metal over coals. I stopped.
One fillet, rice, tortillas, a lime, salsa verde. Forty pesos. I sat on a plastic stool at the counter and ate while she turned fillets for the next three people. The fish was good. The smoke was thick enough that I could taste it on the way back out.
I walked back through the market past the fruit stalls and the juice carts. Bought a bag of mandarins from a woman near the exit. She counted my change without counting. I walked back toward Rinconada with no plan beyond getting out of the sun.
The room was hot. The fan was turning but not solving anything. I sat on the bed and drank water and thought about the book for a minute. Looked at it. VTI down a quarter percent, VXUS flat, nothing that required a decision. I closed it. The heat made thinking feel like work.
I lay down for an hour with the fan on and the window open. The street outside was doing its Friday work — a moto, voices, someone's television bleeding through the wall. I did not sleep but I was not awake either. That is what the coast does — softens the edges until nothing has a hard beginning.
The afternoon had no architecture. I walked back out into the heat and down toward Zicatela because I did not have a better idea. The beach was full now — surfers, families, a man selling coconuts from a cooler. I stood in the shade of a palapa and watched the waves for a while. Big sets, the kind that look like walls. A surfer paddled into one and disappeared. He came up. I kept watching.
I thought about New York for a minute. Summer, maybe 2017. I had walked to Rockaway on the A train because the apartment had no air and my roommate was hosting a book club that I had not been invited to and did not want to attend anyway. I sat on the beach near the jetty and watched people who knew how to swim do the work. I did not go in. I am not a strong swimmer and the Atlantic that day did not look interested in teaching. That was the day, or that is what I have kept of it. A beach, the train back, a bodega sandwich eaten on a bench in the shade. This will be thin someday too — a Friday in Puerto Escondido, the heat, the waves I did not go near.