Modern hygiene doesn’t stand a chance in a place like this. I mean, that monkey up in the tree is literally scratching its ass right now. The other day, I saw one that had arranged a pile of grass and sticks back there like it was performing rear-end street art. And then the rain comes pouring down, and all our drinking water ends up collecting from the surface runoff. If the pox wants to track me down, it knows my address.
From the balcony I watch Dania hold court by the pool, jacaranda petals stuck to her thighs, vape plume curling into a lazy question mark (her universal sign for “intrigued but bored as hell”). Right above her, the monkey HOA scratches its collective ass in plain sight, but she’s oblivious. Queen of poolside daydreams.
Me, I’m up here in boxers, on coffee #3, legs still buzzing from the 5 a.m. solo death-march Dania branded “uncivilized.” My feet are hosting a fungal Jackson Pollock I’ve dubbed Nietzsche’s Itch (persistent, pulsing, life-affirming dermatological nightmare). When she flips me that lazy two-finger salute, the little bastards pulse a message in my toes: S-I-N-G.
“Come on down, Livingston.”
Then—thunk.
A sodden envelope belly-flops onto the pool tiles, sealed with wax and a pressed jacaranda bloom like it’s crime-scene evidence. Dania’s plume wilts into a dubious spiral, and she nudges the thing with a manicured toe—coral polish, zero chips, the pedicure equivalent of a corner office. She reads it aloud in that breathy jazz-baritone she saves for turning heads:
“Cascada Esmeralda. Bring the diva. She owes the river a song.”
Inside, there’s a map on a banana leaf, fresh ink, still bleeding. The monkeys overhead go dead silent, like they know the plot just thickened.
A jacaranda petal drops onto her sunglasses like a purple mic drop. My feet throb in ersatz applause: D-E-S-T-I-N-Y.
I clomp down the stairs in resort flip-flops that slap like dying ducks, fungus feet smacking the concrete and leaving tiny abstract paintings with each labored step.
“What the hell do you suppose this is, forest boy?” she drawls, stretching her vowels out in the poolside sun.
I tear it open, and the banana leaf unfurls—actual veins running through it like topographic lines on a treasure map sketched by a lost cartographer. Ink’s still swimming.
Cascada Esmeralda. Emerald waterfall. Cave. Spanish galleon sunk in freshwater. Bring the diva. She owes the river a song.
My pulse starts doing the Macarena. I thrust the map at her like it’s the Dead Sea Scrolls rolled in guacamole.
“Dania, my chlorinated queen! This is our exit visa from lounge-chair limbo. Jungle trek, waterfall, sunken treasure, maybe even karaoke! We roll out at 1400 hours.”
She finally lowers the vape and peers over her heart-shaped sunglasses. One eyebrow arches perfectly, like a slightly edgy economic forecast, and she exhales a smoke-ring heart before popping it with a finger gun. “Livingston, I booked this trip for lounge chair lizardry. My glutes haven’t seen vertical exertion since spin class in 2019. You want me to swap the infinity pool for infinity bugs? Your glo-toes have taken charge of your brain.”
The river says you owe it a song. This isn’t spam. No, no. This is destiny on biodegradable paper. Plus, the jacaranda dropped it. Trees don’t pull pranks.” My feet pulse approvingly: Y-E-S.
She flicks her vape into a coconut shell and twirls her tiny drink umbrella like it’s a trophy. “Trees also drop monkeys. And monkey butt art. Hard pass.” Well. I’ll be. She notices.
“I’ll carry the backpack. I’ll spritz you with DEET like you’re a supermodel on a shoot. We hit the waterfall, you sing whatever the river wants, and we’re back by happy hour. Duty-free rum on me. Chocolate-dipped existential mango included.”
A monkey overhead detaches a nut and wings it like a fastball. It pings off my coffee mug. Omen? Sign? Divine heckle?
Dania sighs. “You’re serious.”
“As Nietzsche’s Itch in August.”
She studies the map for a beat, then my feet, then the jacaranda like it’s a hostile witness in court. “If I get leeches in places leeches have no business leeching, I’m billing you for a spa day in Cabo. And I’m wearing heels.”
She stands up. Slow. Regal. Holsters her vape like a sidearm. The pool reflects her silhouette like a diva ascending from her watery throne. The monkeys applaud with a fresh round of butt-scratch percussion. My feet flare: G-O.
Dania’s fully upright now, a vision in sarong and skepticism, swapping the vape for the banana-leaf map like it’s a hostile takeover document. She flips it over. The back is blank except for a faint watermark: a tiny etched mermaid with umbrellas for scales. The jacaranda rustles, and a petal avalanche buries her flip-flops in purple confetti.
“Fine,” she concedes, her voice like a merger announcement. “But logistics, Livingston. I’m not spelunking blind. We need provisions: SPF 1000, a portable bidet, and whatever counts as Uber Eats in this verdant void.”
I salute with my coffee mug, dented from the monkey fling. “Already on it. The backpack’s packed—machete, matches, duty-free chocolate. I’ll play sherpa; you be the muse. The river wants a song? We’ll workshop the setlist en route. Start with something fluvial.”
She snorts, a sound that’s half bark, half purr. “If it’s karaoke, I’m billing overtime. And if your foot fungus starts glowing like a rave, you’re on your own.” She twirls her tiny umbrella trophy.
We raid the cabana: she snags a wide-brim hat that could double as a satellite dish, and I lace up boots that whisper sweet nothings to Nietzsche’s Itch. The resort path snakes out the back, the paved paradise fading into dirt-road rebellion. Monkeys tail us like paparazzi, chittering odds on our survival.
Half a click in, the jungle swallows the pool vibe whole. Vines hang around like forgotten punchlines. Dania’s heels? Miraculously swapped for resort Tevas. The girl is pragmatic in the face of a pedicure apocalypse. Sweat beads on her brow like an accountant at a deposition.
I carve her initials into a vine with a couple swoops of the machete. Eye roll.
The trail takes a sudden sly dip into a ravine, where sunlight fractals through the canopy like a jazz riff on quantum tan lines. A distant roar builds, neither lion nor thunder, just the waterfall warming up. The map pulses in my pocket, ink shifting like it’s alive. Or maybe just happy to see me. Ahead, the bend swirls in a subtle vortex. We improv a quick mid-hike duet teaser - Love Shack - she all breath and heat, me all bass and chill. Bang bang, on the door baby.
Dania stops at the ravine’s lip, Tevas digging into moss like anchors. The air is thick and humid, electric with crushed orchids and something ancient, like river stones humming old lullabies. That distant roar isn’t simple; it’s layered with a melody under the rush, tickling the spine. Familiar, yet feral. She tilts her head, hat brim casting a shadow like a question mark.
“You hear that?” she whispers.
I nod. The machete dangles loose. The banana-leaf map’s gone warm in my pocket, pulsing like a second heartbeat. Nietzsche’s Itch throbs in rhythm, faint green veins flickering under my sock. The jungle’s winking at us.
We push closer, and the vines part like theatre curtains. There it is: Cascada Esmeralda, an emerald veil sheeting down over a grotto mouth in a perfect arch of petrified barnacled galleon timbers glowing with algae. Dania’s eyes widen behind her heart sunglasses.
“So I’m supposed to sing now? No way. This is one weird fever dream. I’m not crooning to a waterfall.”
But she’s inching forward, drawn like a moth to neon nectar. I cajole her: “Something personal, like that breathy ‘Fever’ routine you did in the shower this morning, the Peggy Lee thing. The river’s flirting—flirt back.”
“You’ve been eavesdropping on my showers? Creep.” The diva facade gives way to a momentary smirk. Then, “I sang that at Grandma’s wake. It broke the tension.” The jungle leans in. Monkeys perch like gargoyles. My feet are flaring: N-O-W.
She steps to the water’s edge, mist kissing her skin like foreplay. The tunnel is ankle-deep and rising. She inhales deep, her diva diaphragm kicking in, and lets it ring out. Intimate at first, voice cracking on an abuela memory before she recovers:
Never know how much I love you...
Peggy Lee, velvet and vice. Her voice weaves the spray, low, lazy. Like smoke around a saxophone. The humming harmonizes, rises, resonates. Algae spells out the lyrics in turquoise script.
...You give me fever...
The gate shudders and blooms open like a wooden lotus. Beyond: a liminal tunnel of bioluminescent, shallow glowing water leading to... what? A sunken salon? Galleon ghost bar? A river realm where songs are currency and duets are futures contracts? She trails off breathless, sarong clinging like a second epiphany. “Holy hell. I just opened Sesame with a jazz cover.”
The portal pulses an invitation. My fungus feet glow brighter. “Told you. Your voice is the skeleton key to the weird. After you, songbird.”
She steps in, water lapping her ankles, Tevas certain as sunset on the stones. I follow, machete sheathed, heart jitterbugging. Our eyes lock in the glow. A spark, a would-be near-miss kiss.
The gate seals behind us with a watery sigh. No turning back. The tunnel spits us out into a hidden cove, where the river widens into a lazy oxbow, water clear as absinthe over polished pebbles. Sunlight filters through a canopy cathedral, dappling everything in lazy leopard spots. Dania’s still humming the tail of “Fever,” her voice echoing off the vines like a satisfied cat.
Then we hear voices—not birds, not monkeys, but human, rhythmic and rising from the riverbank like steam off wet stone.
We creep forward, machete half-drawn. And there they are, maybe fifteen of them, skin sun-kissed to mahogany, bodies painted in river-clay spirals and leaf dyes. No REI gear, no gadgets—just hair woven with feathers and fishbones, loincloths from bark cloth pounded by someone’s great-great-grandma. They’re crouching at the water’s edge, chattering to the silver darters in the shallows like old pals swapping gossip.
“Oye, hermano plateado, where’s the fat worm today?” one elder croons, dipping a finger to his favorite minnow, Rumplescale. The fish flips and splashes approval—full-on fluent piscine patois. The tribe nods sagely, like the critter just dropped stock tips.
The cargo-cult vibes hit hard: necklaces of bottle caps and faded Polaroid scraps, long-ago tourist flotsam turned sacred. And the song—they’re murmuring it off-key but obsessive, like a mantra from a cracked cassette washed downstream decades back:
“Don’t worry... be happy...” Bobby McFerrin, remixed for the river.
Dania freezes, then knows. Gut-level, dream-logic. Her eyes spark. “That’s our encore!”
The tribe spots us. Gasps ripple through, but no spears—just curious head tilts, like we’re the afternoon show. The elder steps forward, palm up, offering peace or perhaps a dance.
Dania doesn’t hesitate. She wades into the shallows, water kissing her calves, and belts it pure and unplugged—breathy jazz now laced with island lilt:
“Here’s a little song I wrote...
You might want to sing it note for note...
Don’t worry... be happy...”
Magic erupts. The tribe ignites into a wild dance—hips gyroscoping, feet stomping mud into abstract art, arms flailing like boozy jazz singers. Fish leap in sync like cymbals. Whistles pierce the air. Reed pipes join the jam. It’s a flash mob from the Pleistocene, cargo-cult ecstasy.
As she hits the chorus - “Ooh-ooh-ooh-ooh-ooh...” the elder locks eyes with her and flashes a gap-toothed grin that sparkles like wet gold. Then the whole frenzied dance goes silent.
He sweeps one arm wide downstream, jabbing a finger at the half-buried wreck of an old galleon poking up from the silt, its cannons crusted over with barnacles like ancient, salty scars.
He grinds his thumbs together in that universal cheapskate mime, flicking like he’s scraping pennies from a beggar’s palm. Then he warps it into a plump, pulsing heart thump right over his sternum. The price isn’t cash, it’s real heart, your true feelings poured in. Next, his lips pucker and he exhales a wispy note that spirals upward like a smoky saxophone riff.
“That’s the debt! Your joy belted out loud.” His two fingers sprout imaginary boots and high-step a jaunty parade across the humid air—heel-toe, heel-toe—until they strut straight into the swirling opal mist curling off the oxbow’s lazy curve.
Dania trails off, the whistle fades, the tribe collapses into giggles and splashes. The school of minnows applauds. She’s soaked, sarong clinging like an epiphany.
“Livingston, we just crowd-surfed a cargo cult. The river wants an encore!”
The cove pulses with energy, the path ahead shimmering open as water parts like a sly grin. My feet etch “T-R-U-S-T” in the mud.
The tribe ushers us through a curtain of hanging lianas, their fishbone necklaces clinking soft approval. There, lashed to a kapok tree knee-deep in glow-water, sits a bamboo cage: a “ghost” made flesh, but no specter. A man, sun-bleached, unraveling, eyes wide as saucers full of storm, sitting on a makeshift couch above the water.
He’s lean and feral-edged, with a beard that’s a tangled manifesto—he whispers to individual hairs as “cabinet advisors,” naming them after failed ventures (”Minister Mango, your report?”). His clothes were once-expensive linen, now a patchwork of mud and myth. Grandiosity radiates off him like heat shimmer—his posture regal even in confinement, fingers drumming the bars as if conducting an invisible orchestra. The tribe pokes him playfully with reed sticks, chattering to the darting fish for commentary. The minnows flip, amused.
Dania and I exchange the look: this dude’s one vine short of a swing. He spots us and leans forward, voice a hushed conspiracy laced with velvet delusion. “You... you’re the ones. The river sent you. I knew it. I am the river’s chosen, you see. Came up from the mouth bearing gifts of the modern world—watches that tell more than time, songs that bottle joy. They crowned me. Almost. But envy... always envy. Take me to the mermaids.”
Dania circles slow, a poetic predator assessing prey, twirling an umbrella that popped out of nowhere. “Mermaids, huh? And what’s the catch, Your Majesty? Besides the obvious—you’re caged for a reason.”
He rattles the bars, undeterred. “Amusement. That’s all. These primitives... savages with savvy. They humor the god-king until the novelty fades. But you are modern minds. You understand grandeur. Help me out, and the mermaids are yours. Their song... it’s the ultimate happiness. The river’s magnum opus.”
We know it instantly: he’s a walking fever dream, too strange for open air, liable to declare war on sweet potatoes or knight an iguana. But mermaids? The map warms again, fungus feet pulsing in a curious rhythm, syncing to his delusions. The tribe watches, expectant.
I lean in, large and in charge. “Details first, Emperor. Sketch the path. Then we talk freedom.”
He grins, teeth flashing in the dapple. “Down the oxbow’s throat, where the water turns milk-opal. Submerged arch—galleon ribs. Sing the happy to the conch gate—they part for joy. But hurry. The tide of sanity waits for no man.”
Dania meets my gaze. “We’re not springing him. Not yet. But directions from a madman... could be the jungle’s best joke.”
We huddle near the cage, river lapping our ankles. Dania’s eyes flick from the madman—still consulting Minister Mango—to the tribe, then to the fish schooling in lazy figure-eights. And, lo and behold, modern logic kicks in. Why bargain with the delusion when the savvier locals have the hotline to the source?
I nod at the elder and mimic his fish-chat gesture, his finger dip, his earnest stare. “Oye, hermanos plateados. The kook’s got mermaid intel. But he’s locked tighter than a tenure review. What’s the override code?”
The tribe grins, purple taparrabos flapping in the river breeze. The elder crouches and coos to Rumplescale: “¿Qué dice el río, amigo? ¿Cómo sacamos la verdad del rey loco?”
The fish flips—splash, pause, another splash. The tribe erupts in interpretive dance, reed whistles piping a frantic riff. The elder translates in poetic pidgin: “Sing Wooly Bully to the cage-man. Old gringo song from sky-bird drops.”
Dania snorts, dry as desert wit. “Wooly Bully? Sam the Sham, 1965? That’s the skeleton key? Fine. If the fish say jump, we ask ‘how high’”
The madman perks up, grandiosity flickering curious, beard hairs twitching independent. “Wooly? Bully? I... I know this incantation! My cargo!”
The tribe forms a semi-circle, fish leaping percussion. Dania starts breathy with diva bravado, me harmonizing bass like a gutter baritone:
“Uno, dos, three, four...
Hatty told Matty, ‘Let’s don’t take no chance...
Let’s go to the Wooly Bully!’”
The cage rattles. The madman’s eyes glaze ecstatically, he is helpless. Hips jerk, feet stomp like a deranged pharaoh at a hoedown; the beard dances independent. The tribe whoops, fish splash cymbals.
“Watch it, watch it now—Wooly Bully!”
He cracks mid-chorus, words tumbling in a delirious torrent: “Down the opal bend—left at the kapok twins! Submerged galleon bow—mermaids nest in the hold, tails braided with gold chain! Sing happy to the conch gate—they part for joy! But take me—I’m their herald!”
The dance collapses in giggles and splashes. He slumps spent, truth-serumed by sheer absurdity. The tribe nods approval. The elder whispers via Rumplescale, “this guy is a fish-whisperer!”
The galleon surfaces the way a secret does: slow, inevitable, barnacles flaking off like old confessions. Cannons stare blind through algae lace. The hold gapes, exhaling faint turquoise light and a low, expectant hum.
At its mouth, a living portcullis of conch shells the size of manhole covers, lips sealed but vibrating hard enough to rattle our teeth. The message is simple and ancient: prove the joy is yours to give.
Dania doesn’t negotiate. She steps forward, water to her waist, and starts the whistle hook of “Don’t Worry, Be Happy” so soft it’s almost private. I slide underneath with a low, wry second. My feet flare green, Nietzsche’s Itch keeping perfect time. The conches slide open.
They’re not one siren but a dozen—remade in emerald and pearl, tails flicking slow bubbles that rise like lazy smoke rings. Gold watch-chains from the galleon’s loot are braided into their hair and fused to their wrists like permanent swag. The lead siren has a melted Rolex scar that matches the faint white scar on Dania’s wrist. She tilts her head, amused, wise as Rumplescale the minnow, and answers in a river-old counter-melody: stolen joy only comes home when you give it away first.
She offers the conch horn on a scaled palm. It glows warm, alive, impatient. Dania’s fingers close around it. The contact is a low electric thrum, the kind that starts in the sternum and ends behind the eyes. The siren gives a single nod, almost shy, then a scaled high-five that rings like a struck bell. The pod folds into laughter and green water and is gone.
The gate seals. The path back opens with a wink of current.
We surface clutching the horn, soaked and strangely quiet. The cage downstream is empty, a single ripple where the madman used to be.
Dania lifts the horn, breathes once like she’s tasting the note before it exists, and blows. One low, perfect river baritone rolls out across the oxbow. Mist detonates from the hold—thick, opal, smelling of orchids and distant thunder—and swallows us.
Inside the mist, the world goes bright and weightless. My fungus feet glow soft disco green. A conch-shaped scar brands itself into each of our palms, warm as a secret handshake. The mist bursts like champagne.
We’re suddenly poolside again. Jacaranda petals float down like they’ve got nowhere to be, while the monkeys overhead keep up their lazy butt-scratch drum solo. The lounge chairs are empty, a couple of Dania’s old vape ghosts still curling in the air.
Except one chair isn’t empty anymore. The elder from the tribe is planted dead center in Dania’s spot, bark-cloth getup looking oddly regal, fishbone necklace rattling against a frosted cocktail. He’s spinning the little umbrella (one purple petal stuck on top like a crown) the way a king tests a new orb.
He takes the tiniest, most suspicious sip. His eyes go full Saturday-morning-cartoon wide, beard does a little tremble, and in this perfect hoarse whisper that still somehow fills the whole pool deck he says:
“Always wanted to try a Mai Tai.”