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that also advertises air-conditioning. I’m paying for this trip with money I’ve saved from my scholarship stipends and from the little bit that I have in the bank from odd jobs I had throughout high school, so there isn’t a lot of wiggle room as far as my budget is concerned.
    I made a reservation before I left home. Over the phone, the man I spoke to told me at first that the hotel was booked. We were speaking to one another in Spanish so I wasn’t sure whether I misunderstood. Then he said, “I’m joking, of course! We have plenty of rooms. You want to go to Costa Rica? No rooms. But in Panamá we have plenty of rooms. How many nights?” I started with one. I had given myself three weeks for this trip, but who knew what would happen? I didn’t want to commit to anything for too long. Besides, he assured me, extending my reservation, even by increments of one night at a time, would be easy.
    It’s almost ten o’clock by the time the taxi pulls up in front of the building. A doorman with a gold name-badge that says “Hernán” opens the car door and, through the night air, carries my suitcase up the stairs from the street.
    The lobby is small and sparsely decorated with two club chairs and a potted palm tree. A room off to the side houses a small bar, the bottles lined up against a mirrored wall like at an apothecary. Hernán places my suitcase on the floor by the front desk before stepping back a polite distance. I check in with the attendant on duty, who hands me a key for room 308. “It is the top floor,” he says. “I hope you will enjoy it.”
    Hernán follows me up the flights of stairs, thumping my suitcase behind him. I could have managed it on my own, but I don’t want to offend him by saying so. At the door, I tell him thank you and try, as gracefully as possible, to hand him a folded dollar bill for his trouble. Hernán takes it, then starts back toward the stairs.
    The room is plain but clean. It smells faintly of disinfectant. There’s a twin bed with a beige bedspread hanging low enough that it brushes the tile floor, a small television set on top of a white wicker dresser, a private bathroom with a standing shower, an air-conditioning unit perched in the window. The few times my mother and I have traveled, we’ve gone by car, and we’ve stayed in motels, and we’ve done that only if there was no way we could have pushed through the dark and our exhaustion to our destination. My mother never wants to stop and pay money to sleep. My room now isn’t much different from those—if anything it’s nicer—except for the fact that I’m in it by myself.
    I lay my suitcase flat on the floor and turn on the air-conditioning, waiting as it gurgles to life. On the ground below, there’s a lighted alley lined with a row of trash cans, and across from it, apartment buildings with ironwork balconies, almost all of which are strung with laundry.
    I’m about to step away from the window when I see something move. A guy holding a bucket filled with flowers scans the length of the alley, then settles himself against one of the trash cans, lowering his face into the petals. After a few minutes, he gets up and walks away, cradling the bucket against his hip.
    I don’t know what to do with myself. I don’t want to unpack, since I’m not sure yet how long I’ll be here. I don’t want to call any of my friends, since nothing has happened yet to tell them about. I’m not hungry. I’m not tired. I take a deep breath. I need to relax. I need to remember my plan. I told myself that as soon as I got here, the first thing I would do was find a phone book. That should be simple enough. I open the dresser drawers and in the bottom one, next to a pad of paper with the words “Hotel Centro” along the bottom edge, bingo. Okay. Out of my orange bag, I pull my father’s letters and lay them on the bed. His return address is in the upper right corner of each. I lay the phone book on the bed next to the letters