The old man had been living in Toluca longer than its eldest resident, Doña Alicia, could remember. Even so, in the small Mexican coastal village, locals considered him an outsider. He was, in fact, a gringo, but it was impossible to tell he’d come from El Norte, and not, say, the capital, Mexico City. His skin had grown dark and leathery from the sun. Speaking Spanish, his accent and use of slang mimicked the locals. Tourists assumed he’d been born in that beautiful place, on the edge of the Pacific, south of Puerto Vallarta.

Locals had given him the nickname, El Viejo, the old man. He spent nearly every afternoon nursing a beer that turned warm and flat, sitting at the same table on the red outdoor patio of the Toluca Hotel’s restaurant, in a corner, close to the sand.

Tolucans claimed it was a secret where he’d come from, though one thing was certain.

“He writes books,” Octavio Lopez, who owned nearly all the money-making businesses in Toluca, liked to tell tourists. “Those books are famous, but people don’t know where the writer of those books lives.”

The Tolucans were aware that a woman visited the old man from time to time, leaving with pages he had written since her last visit.

“He lives on the money from the books,” Octavio often said.

 Sometimes, visitors who stayed overnight in one of his little palapas up the hill asked Octavio for the old man’s name. 

“Everyone calls him José,” he would answer. “Or El Viejo.”

***

The old man inched across the red patio. His right hand clutched the knob of an elaborately carved wooden cane, purchased from a local artist. Before he bought the cane, José had been reluctant to admit needing assistance. He’d fallen twice, warned by the doctor who treated him in Puerto Vallarta that a third tumble might be his last. 

Marla, his literary agent, urged him to leave Toluca and relocate to San Francisco, L.A., or some quiet suburb, where there was good medical care and help. José looked at Marla, an attractive brunette pushing fifty, and said, “You don’t understand.”

Marla wanted to know what she didn’t understand, and he answered with a question. 

“If I can’t live where and how I please, then what’s the point?”

Marla didn’t respond.

By now, José had lost track of how many years he’d spent in Toluca, even though nothing was wrong with his mind. His habits were much as they’d been. Each morning, he woke up just after dawn, to the birds’ raucous cries, a rooster crowing and barking dogs. He brewed a cup of strong black tea, to which he added one and a half teaspoons of sugar. After several sips, he sat back, savouring the sensation of caffeine zipping through his brain, what he thought of as someone flicking on the lights. Once he felt his lights lit, he pulled a partially written manuscript from the drawer, and skimmed the last several pages. Planting his feet firmly on the floor and straightening his back, he inhaled deeply, slowly exhaled, and began to write.

But just before starting, José never failed to plant a large, tattered straw hat on his head. If anyone witnessed this and asked, he would have said, “Can’t write without it. It’s my lucky hat.”

Luck is what he told people who were curious about his success as a writer.

“The muse keeps deigning to visit me,” he would say. “If she ever quits, it might be time to throw away my pen.”

José wrote for exactly four hours, the happiest time of his day. He had been lonely once, but rarely experienced that melancholy now, because he used his time alone to escape.

“I can go anywhere I want,” he once bragged to a group of young women, who’d sailed down on the big boat that morning. “I never have to leave, you see. And I can always come back. It’s a little vacation every day.”

The women looked to be in their late twenties or early thirties. They smiled and nodded. José could tell they didn’t understand what he was saying. Probably none had experienced a single creative moment, filling every second with people or music or the TV, to keep from facing the emptiness José believed was part of everyone’s life.

He rarely thought back to the time before he’d come to Toluca, since he’d mostly managed to wipe away that life. At the time, he hadn’t been sure he could make it in a foreign place. If Toluca hadn’t worked out, José figured he could head to Cuba, like Hemingway.

But as he liked to say, he’d been lucky.

***

Sarah Miles strode up the beach, stopping feet from the restaurant’s red patio. She was of medium height and slender, with short, dark brown layered hair, brightened by red highlights. A little over a year before, Sarah had sailed to Toluca, after an overnight stay in a colorful Puerto Vallarta hotel. The purpose of the trip was to heal, following a failed relationship with a man named Marcus. At the time, she briefly flirted with the idea of giving up her work promoting films and musical performances, and her rent-controlled flat in a small, worn-down building in San Francisco, and settling in this picturesque village on Mexico’s Pacific Coast, lacking modern conveniences, including electricity, cars and roads. The fantasy had been lit, in part, by a foolish affair with Chele Lopez, Octavio Lopez’s oldest son. Chele happened to be more than two decades younger than Sarah.

Her feelings for Chele did cool when she spied him kissing a woman on the beach, a woman much younger than herself. That sighting convinced Sarah to hire a motorboat for the hour-long sail to Puerto Vallarta, and then board a Mexicana flight home.

But back in the life she’d left, Sarah ached for tropical air and the brightly-coloured flora and simple Toluca life. She struggled through the emptiness of her work and single, childless life, daydreaming of the white sand beach, clear aquamarine water, and mornings on the patio of her palapa, sipping coffee and watching the palm fronds dip and sway.

As on her previous stay, Sarah hadn’t made a clean break from San Francisco. She simply took a month sabbatical from work and held onto her flat. Since it was available, she booked the same palapa owned by Octavio Lopez, with its sweeping view of the coast. One thing had changed, though. Before leaving San Francisco, she packed a half-dozen blank notebooks, with stiff black and white covers, in her olive-green duffle bag, and vowed to spend solitary hours trying to write, not press releases, calendar announcements and ad copy, but something more creative. 

In communications with Octavio Lopez, Sarah had carefully avoided asking about Chele. On her previous trip, the day she arrived in Toluca, the young man with the astonishing olive-green eyes had been standing on the beach, holding a large white board that read, Bienvenida Sarah! This visit, when she rode in on a motorboat from the large ship anchored off-shore, Chele’s father, Octavio, was waiting.

The first words out of his mouth were that Chele had moved to the capital, Mexico City, to be with his fiancé, Marisol.

***

Sarah arrived at the restaurant patio just after noon. She noticed a man seated at a corner table, next to the sand. He had a full head of long white hair, combed away from his face. His arms were slender. Seeing him, Sarah recalled Chele mentioning a man living in Toluca, who everyone claimed was a famous writer. She’d never seen him before now. 

The man was looking out toward the water, his fingers wrapped around a tall glass. An elaborately carved, wildly painted cane leaned against the table. He looked fragile, as if he might break apart in a sudden fall.

As soon as Sarah got close to his table, she nodded to the man and smiled.

“Hello,” she said. 

He shook his head, then shifted his gaze, looking around the patio, before settling on Sarah.

“Oh,” he said, shaking his head, as if dislodging thoughts from his mind. “Hello.”

Sarah asked if he minded her joining him.

“Not at all. Did you just arrive on the boat?”

He gestured toward the water, and Sarah turned in that direction. The long white tourist boat was anchored yards from shore.

“No, I’ve been here a few days.” 

“Oh?” His eyes opened wider. “You’re a brave one, staying in Toluca.”

Sarah shook her head.

“Not brave, really. I just needed a little getaway.”

“Hmmm,” the old man said, lifted his glass, took a sip, and set the glass back down.

“But you’re lonely now,” he suggested. “Not much going on here in Toluca. Not like Puerto Vallarta.”

“You live here?” Sarah asked, assuming he did, but figured this might start a conversation.

“No,” he said, surprising Sarah. “I’m like you. I just came for a little getaway.”

“How long have you been here?” she asked.

The old man laughed.

“You know,” he began. “I’ve forgotten.”

***

Sarah’s first several mornings were spent staring at a blank lined page. She had tried willing Toluca to inspire her, but nothing of the sort had happened. A writer needed a subject, and she couldn’t find one. For years in her public relations business, the work had been clear. 

But she’d been doing that work for over a decade and was good at it. In fact, promoting clients had become too easy, leaving her feeling bored. Maybe this old man would share some secrets about moving into the literary life. 

After a quick sip and then another of a thick, creamy Piña Colada, Sarah felt the rum warm her. She silently chided herself to relax and enjoy the moment. The patio was shaded by a roof of dried palms. The breeze felt enticing. This was how she should spend her time in Toluca, savoring the beauty and serenity, not forcing herself to write.

“So, how did you pick Toluca for your getaway?” the old man asked.

Before giving Sarah a chance to respond, he said, “I am José. And you are?”
“Sarah. I came here to get away.”

“Many people do. At least, that’s what I’ve seen over the years.”

A grin lit up his lined tan face.

“So, you’ve been here for years? I thought you came for a getaway.”

“Well, that’s how it started,” he said, and gave her a funny, not quite smile.

***

Late afternoons, Sarah joined José on the patio. Her attempts to write hadn’t progressed. Mostly, she filled blank pages with all-too-familiar complaints about her stagnant life. She hadn’t gotten any tips about writing from José. Instead, he had been subjecting her to questions. 

After several days of this, Sarah finally managed to turn the conversation back to José. For the first time, he seemed eager to talk.

“I was where you are,” he said, when Sarah asked how he ended up in Toluca. “I had a life I didn’t want. I couldn’t see a way to make a little change here or there. I needed to throw the whole thing up in the air and let the pieces land where they might.”

He shifted his gaze away from Sarah’s face and out toward the water.

“I wanted to be left alone,” he said. “I didn’t want to answer to anyone.”

He paused. In the silence, Sarah noticed the clacking of the palm fronds, striking one another in the breeze. She could hear waves rolling in, and music drifting down from somewhere up the hill, with the one-two beat of the cumbia, popular in this part of Mexico.

“Such a long time ago,” José commented, breaking the silence between them.

***

In the hours they spent together, Sarah’s interest in the old man slowly and subtly shifted. She no longer wanted to use José, to learn how to write. Instead, she had grown interested in him as a person, and especially how he’d managed to create a completely new life.

“A long time ago,” José said again. “I don’t know if I would have done the same thing now or not.”

Following this confession, Sarah studied José’s face. She didn’t know if thinking back to that time had made him happy or sad.

“I was young then,” he said. “But I saw myself as old. I had a good job, teaching at the university, and two children and a wife. A nice house. I could see if I didn’t make a move, that was going to be it for me.”

He laughed.
“I was up for tenure. Do you know what that means? They give you a job for life.”

He shook his head and picked up the half-drunk beer, took a sip and swallowed.

“For life.” He practically shouted the word, as he set the glass down on the wooden table, almost hard enough to shatter.

“I had to get a cavity filled the day before I would learn if they’d granted me tenure. Do you know, I still remember which tooth it was?”

At that, he reached two fingers to stretch out his mouth, pointing to a molar in the back, on the right side.

“There was an article in some travel magazine about Puerto Vallarta. It talked about all the things you could do there, like take a boat down the coast to this idyllic village, Toluca. There was a photo of this beach. You could tell that the water was perfectly clear.

“I had the strangest feeling looking at that photo. I could actually feel myself here.”

He stopped speaking and Sarah waited for what might come next. He smiled, turning his head from side to side, as he looked out toward the water, up the coast and down.

“I’d been writing a bit by then. Oh, just little things. Nothing formed exactly. Trying to write stories, though nothing had quite come together.”

He shook his head and laughed.

“I’d already left my life. I wasn’t crazy, though I started to fear I might lose it, if I didn’t make a big change. Writing was an escape, you see, but it wasn’t enough. When I looked at that photo and felt myself being in this place, I knew I had to go.”

“Wow,” Sarah said. And then she asked, “Did you get tenure?”

“I did get tenure,” he said, and pushed his chair back. 

“I did,” he said again, then used his right hand to palm the knob of the cane. His left hand on the table, he slowly stood up.

“Nice talking to you,” he said, and proceeded to shuffle across the patio, to where the path began, a few feet behind the restaurant.

***

A few days later, Sarah left the beach, where she’d unfurled a thin bamboo mat and laid a turquoise and white striped beach towel on top, then plodded through the soft dry sand to the red patio. Expecting to see José at his usual spot, she was surprised not to find him there.

Maybe he’s running late, she thought, settling down to wait.

A half-hour passed, while she amused herself watching tourists jump in the waves and others sunning themselves close to the water. Without her companion of the previous days, Sarah wasn’t in the mood for a drink. 

When forty-five minutes had passed, Sarah got up and walked to the bar.

“Have you seen José today?” she asked the bartender, Manuel.

“José? You mean El Viejo?”

“Yes. The one who always sits at the corner table.”

She pointed across the patio.

“He’s gone,” Manuel said, shaking his head.

“Gone? What do you mean? Gone from Toluca?”

“Yes. I hear they took him up to Puerto Vallarta yesterday. In the afternoon.”

“What for? What happened?”

“One of the Lopez muchachos found him on the trail. Must have been after he left here.”

“Do you know where they took him?”

“To the hospital. That’s what I heard.”

Sarah rushed to the beach and gathered up her things. The poor old guy, she thought. What if he died? She was just getting to know him. And now he was gone.

***

The small white hospital sat at the top of a hill, blocks from the commercial section of town. Sarah only had the man’s first name, José, so she wasn’t sure she’d be able to locate him. Octavio had said José was breathing when his son Rodrigo found the body crumpled on the trail. Rodrigo had sprinted home, told Octavio what he’d found, and the father hurried back to the spot with him. Enlisting a neighbor’s help, they carried the old writer down to a motorboat docked offshore and rushed him north. Octavio had planned to check on the old man in Puerto Vallarta but hadn’t yet. 

“An old man named José,” Sarah repeated to the young woman at the front desk. “He’s a gringo. But he lives in Toluca. He was brought here two days ago.”

The woman’s long thick hair was meticulously styled and curled. She peered at a white sheet of paper, running the squared, sparkly nail of her index finger down, and then up again.

“No José here,” she said, shaking her head.

“I know he’s here,” Sarah insisted. “Is there someone else I can speak to?”

Since she was in Mexico, Sarah assumed she could offer money to some higher-up, and that might get her what she wanted.

***

Marla had arrived in Toluca a day before José collapsed on the trail. As was the literary agent’s practice, she stayed only a few hours, before catching the tourist boat back to Puerto Vallarta. She stepped onto the dock in time to enjoy a chilled glass of chardonnay on the balcony of her room and watch the sun set. Once the orange orb had dropped and the sky darkened, Marla would grab a quite bite to eat at the restaurant downstairs, diving into the latest pages she’d retrieved from José while she ate.

Marla knew she would miss these getaways once the inevitable day arrived when José was no longer writing or alive. Though she’d tried more than once to convince him to move back to the United States, she secretly hoped he would stay in Toluca. The trips to pick up his work gave her a brief, once-a-month respite.

Sitting on the balcony watching the slowly sinking sun paint the ocean pink and orange, she sometimes thought back to meeting José, all those years ago. Weeks before, Marla’s husband Brett had left her for a woman he’d met on a flight to L.A. from New York. After Brett admitted the affair and announced he was moving out, Marla dropped down into a deep funk.

Her closest friend, Bev, suggested she try some sort-term therapy. Though she doubted it would help, Marla agreed. Once a week, she sat in a soft, pale gray leather chair and wept, in between relating how she’d always worried Brett would leave her.

Following each sorrowful session, she felt lighter. Encouraged by her therapist, Jill, Marla treated herself to some little thing each week – a piece of chocolate cake at the café down the street, a new sweater, or an inexpensive pair of dangly earrings.

Marla had noticed the man sitting in the same corner, each time she stopped in the café. He had several piles of loose white paper spread across the table. As she watched, he scribbled away.

While she stared at him, he paused in his work and looked up. From his vacant stare, she imagined he was pondering what next to write.

A moment later, his gaze met hers. Warmth rushed to her face. She turned away, embarrassed to have been caught staring. Before she knew what had happened, he was standing next to her table, waiting, she later realized, for her to look up.

“Do you want to know what I’m writing?” he asked.

From the start, Marla assumed he might be hitting on her. Even though she felt lonely and wouldn’t have minded a brief affair to take her mind off Brett, this guy wasn’t her type. He was also old enough to be her father.

She did want to know if those scribbled-on pages contained anything worthwhile. She had recently gotten a job at a literary agency, and needed clients, preferably with work she could sell, and quickly, to major publishers. Otherwise, in addition to feeling miserable about her husband leaving, she would find herself broke. 

***

Sarah searched the patio for an empty table, disappointed at finding every one occupied. She wasn’t in the mood to leave the hotel, in search of dinner. Tables were filled with couples and small groups. In a resort town like Puerto Vallarta, hardly anyone travelled alone.

About to step off the patio and walk down the street, she spotted a woman she hadn’t noticed before, sitting by herself. The woman appeared to be working, with a pile of papers in front of her.

Sarah walked across the patio and stood quietly next to the table. She hoped the woman would notice and look up. When she didn’t, Sarah cleared her throat.

“Excuse me,” she said.

The woman’s head remained bowed. 

“Excuse me. Sorry to bother you,” Sarah said, a bit louder.

“Oh,” the woman said, and raised her head.

“I’m sorry if I startled you,” Sarah apologized.

“That’s fine.” 

The woman turned the top page sideways.

“All the tables are full. I wondered if you’d mind sharing.”

Marla gathered up the pages, turning down the right-hand corner of the top sheet, and sliding the pile into a black nylon briefcase, next to her chair.

“Not at all,” Marla said.

“This can wait,” she added, inclining her head toward the briefcase.

***

Every morning, the old man moved slowly, leaning over a black metal walker, as he wheeled himself out to the garden. In the brief time he’d lived in the cottage, identical to other brightly-painted, compact homes located behind carefully tended gardens, at the back of the facility, he had become familiar with the trees and plants in the pleasantly soothing landscape. Though he missed his days in Toluca, he managed to feel happy outdoors, with the sky so blue above him, he couldn’t come up with a word to adequately describe its color.

Here at Spring Gardens, they knew the old man was Lawrence Sheehy, the famous novelist. That was the same name the hospital in Puerto Vallarta had registered, when he’d been admitted six months before, following a stroke.

As fate would have it, the novelist’s decades-long effort to bury the person he’d been before settling in Toluca hadn’t succeeded. An American passport with his full real name and photo was found in the palapa’s top drawer of the dresser by Octavio Lopez, along with pages of writing Sheehy had never turned over to Marla. The passport led the hospital staff to the American consulate, where a few well-placed phone calls located an ex-wife and two daughters. The eldest daughter, Eliza, made arrangements to move the stubborn writer from Mexico to a care facility in Northern California.

***

“If you write it, I will take a look,” Marla informed Sarah, handing her a cream-colored business card. “I’ll tell you something, though. Writing a novel is hard.”

Sarah thanked Marla, knowing the literary agent was right.

***

Each month, Sarah looked forward to the drive from San Francisco to Sonoma County. She especially enjoyed the trip in the fall, when on exiting the freeway, she was greeted by displays of red, yellow, and orange leaves on the trees, and fallen across sidewalks and lawns.

Trees bordered the narrow, winding road that led to Spring Gardens. Sarah kept her eyes peeled for a stand of maples, their crimson leaves glowing in the October light. This was her signal that the left turn into Spring Gardens was coming up. 

They always took a long slow stroll on the winding path, passing other cottages, small apartments, and flowers, trees and shrubs Sheehy identified for Sarah. Often, they passed other residents sitting or standing in front of easels, painting. Occasionally, another elderly man or woman would smile at Sheehy and say hello, glancing at Sarah and back at the novelist, trying to determine if they might be related. Some seemed to be waiting for an introduction, which never followed.

Sarah wasn’t sure if Sheehy knew who she was. On her first visit, Sarah reminded him of where they’d met and why she had come. He found the news amusing that he’d once gone by the name José and lived in a small village on the Mexican coast. More than once, he told Sarah that sounded like a movie.

Returning to San Francisco, Sarah would scribble her impressions of the old man, the look of the trees, and something about people moving from season to season, being one person in youth, becoming another in middle age, and a different one later in life. The writing, and her trips to visit Sheehy, had given Sarah a purpose she’d lacked before. She still promoted films, concerts, and dance performances, even renting an office and hiring an assistant to handle clerical tasks and answer the phone. Occasionally, she met men and went out with them for drinks or dinner. But she never expected any of these relationships to last.

Once a year, Sarah flew to Puerto Vallarta, where she joined Marla for dinner, on the patio of the Siete Lunas hotel, where the literary agent always stayed. Instead of handing Marla pages from the novel she’d been writing, as José had done each time the agent came to Toluca, Sarah emailed her latest drafts, at least a week before she planned to arrive. That gave Marla time to read before seeing Sarah in person.

By now, the two women were accustomed to the ritual. They enjoyed sitting on the patio, sipping icy margueritas, with salt caked on the thin glass rims. The following morning, they would walk to the dock, Sarah carrying that old olive-green duffle bag, the long strap hanging over her right shoulder, while Marla brought a small tote for the day, with her bathing suit, a cover-up, and a striped beach towel.

The moment they reached Toluca, Marla would hit the beach, while Sarah headed up the hill, stopping once she reached her familiar palapa. In the days that followed, after Marla returned to Puerto Vallarta on the boat, Sarah would enjoy several meals at the Lopezes’ house, hearing the latest news about Chele’s growing family in the capital.

Two weeks would pass like a few hours, with Sarah writing in the morning as she sipped her coffee, and lying in the sun every afternoon. There would be many moments in which Sarah would imagine giving up the life she lived in San Francisco, for this quiet existence in Toluca.

But the time would come. Early one morning as the sun was inching up, she would make arrangements with one of the men hanging out by the shore, to take her in his small boat back to Puerto Vallarta.

***

Sheehy took his last breath several months before a series of devastating fires, spread by powerful offshore winds, destroyed thousands of homes not far from Spring Gardens. Marla was the one who notified Sarah of the novelist’s passing. She mentioned in her email that no funeral service was planned, as the family believed Sheehy wouldn’t have wanted the fuss.

Sarah still made the once-a-month drive to Sonoma County, since it had become a regular part of her life. Instead of driving out to Spring Gardens, she made a right turn a quarter of a mile before and headed up the hill to a lovely park. Some days, she got out of the car and walked around the lake, recalling how her life had changed after meeting the man known as José in Toluca. Other days, she plopped down on a green wooden bench and watched ducks and swans float past.

The writing continued, along with the emailing of drafts and meeting Marla in Puerto Vallarta. While Sarah still held onto the hope that one day Marla would announce that the work was done, and she was ready to try and place the novel with a publisher, Sarah knew this probably would never happen. Even so, neither she nor the literary agent wanted to abandon their relationship or the comforting habits they still held onto.