It was me and Bob in Panama City on a stopover on our way to Bocas Del Toro. Bob was John who we called Bob because he liked to finish everything he said with “back to you, Bob.” Adopting the habit as one’s own had an intoxication. Much like youth. For us, youth was in the rearview. I was pushing 40 and Bob was 67, but no normal 67. He was one of the rare few. One of those who had it. He still lived like he was in his 20s and how it was possible could not be explained.
Bob and I met in New Orleans. Bob arrived in 2007. Me in 2010. Bob left Philly on a winter day. He was scraping his windshield when the scraper broke. He tried to finish with his credit card and it snapped. By the time he reached the gas station he remembered he didn’t have a credit card. He called his boss to tell him he couldn’t make it in and was fired. So, he moved to New Orleans and never left.
I was long since gone, living in The Bay Area with a wife and young daughter. But Bob and I stayed in touch and went on a trip a year.
After checking into the RIU Plaza Hotel we walked down the street and had Negronis at the Bar Blue inside the Hilton. The Negronis hit fast, and we sat gazing out of the big windows at Panama Bay. In the distance we could see the Cinta Costera and the people walking and bicycling along the island path. We ordered two more Negronis and things got blurry after that.
We took a cab to the Casco Viejo and wandered the 500-year-old streets until we found a restaurant that suited us and was willing to give us a table. There was a magic to that part of town that would make much of Europe jealous. It reminded me of the French Quarter, but cleaner. And of course it was very Spanish.
The restaurant was new Peruvian. I kept going on and on about it and ordering more things and at some point, I realized I was talking to no one because Bob had disappeared.
After Mazamorra Morada, a B&B and a coffee I took a cab back to the hotel.
I paid the cabbie $30, which was absurd, but there’d been much confusion about my pronunciation of the hotel’s name. Initially, we ended up on the other side of the city and he tried to kick me out, but I clung to the door handle as the valets at whatever that hotel was tried to rip it open. Finally, they realized I wasn’t getting out and the cabbie took me where I was going.
The drive back was filled with a pulsing tension. I rolled down the window to let in the humid salt air and the cosmopolitan city glowed tropical and white against the darkness.
I was asleep when Bob resurfaced. He had cocaine. It was not good. Down a dark alley a cabbie took him. Bob opened his wallet, blooming with hundreds, and said, how much? The guy plucked one note out and said this much. Bob said, hey gimme that back. The guy laughed.
As the cab sped off Bob realized he’d left his phone on the dash.
The plane to Bocas Del Toro was a flying casket. My bloodstream was more booze than blood. All I could think about was the Caribbean and a cold Panamá.
There are whales down there, Bob said, peering out the window. I can’t see them but they’re there.
That’s right, Bob, I said. And so many other creatures. A whole planet teeming with life.
I’d emailed the hotel and told them to have a golf cart waiting. Write Bob on a piece of paper.
When we arrived, no one was waiting, so we walked the half mile to the hotel through the slums. Flyers were posted on every electric pole for a pub crawl across three islands that was happening that day. A tour guide on a bicycle named Leo attached himself to us.
I’ll show you where the hotel is, Leo said.
Don’t need you to, I said. Got it on my phone.
You’ll need a boat captain, Leo said.
Okay, I said. We will call you for that.
There was a man being unpleasant to his dog along the way. Taunting it while it was tied to a tree.
Hey, look there’s another tourist, Bob said. What’s he doing without a guide?
I stopped to grab a couple Panama beers at a grocery and the kid behind the counter gave me back a $20 and $1 as change from a $10. Despite knowing the tremendous error he’d made I pocketed the money anyway.
The Hotel Palma Royale was nice by Bocas standards but shit by any other. There were buzzards gliding above the palm trees. Ominous though it was, I couldn’t stop laughing while Bob prattled on about needing a map. He also required a machine that operated on Windows ‘95 to contact AT&T about his phone. Despite my insistence, he was convinced he could not contact the company on my Macbook.
Endless he went on about the map until he found one in the lobby. It was one of those cartoon ones.
After settling in Bob wanted to go out and watch The Masters but that was a pipe dream. The swaying palms and passing boats would have to do. The heat was oppressive. The humidity overwhelming.
Bob needed cash so we asked about an ATM. A cashier pointed in a general direction. Another did the same. Eventually Bob got money. The streets had been ripped up or maybe there never were any. Two construction workers were beating on something in the street. The infrastructure was putrid. I couldn’t make sense of what anyone was doing. Water shot out of the ground like oil.
Bob was always on the lookout for hookers. He had a beautiful woman in New Orleans 20 years his junior but didn’t care. In Central America every local is one decision away from prostitution. What’s your body worth was the question. $50 seemed to be the going rate.
Pop a Viagra, Bob, he’d say.
The virility he had at his age astounded me. I’d mostly lost interest in sex in my late 30s. Perhaps it was the marriage or perhaps it was the child. At some point I stopped caring. It had been all about the challenge before that. And I was happy to be settled. For so long I’d been a mess. How many women did I have to sleep with? How many did I have to forget? How many did I have to fall in love with before I was numbed completely from the heart out? 3 or 4 had nearly ended me. Luckily one died and therefore her clutches weakened, and in the memories of our time together I found a sort of fondness instead of standing bitterness and regret.
Bob lined up a water taxi to the Aqua Lounge where all the 20 somethings were. The Aqua Lounge was the last stop on the pub crawl which had started at 11:30. It was a three-minute ride from Bocas Town over to Isla Colon.
Most of the crowd were young and European. Women wearing next to nothing including inhibitions. Arriving and seeing the carnage was a shock to the system. It was that thumping music from which you could not escape in Latin America, and the wild, sexual dancing. A cavalry of Latin men arrived with flamethrowers and danced beneath their fire. In the middle of the bar was a pool, lit up and perfectly blue and the women kept diving deep below before returning to the surface.
My initial thoughts were those of an old man who could no longer tell anyone’s age, yet the young man still clinging to life inside of me could not help but gaze upon them lustfully.
Bob stood in the smoking section watching.
I don’t think there’s anything for me here, Bob, he said.
Despite his youthful exuberance there was no way to hide he was the oldest man there. Another older guy from Norway, probably early 50s, asked Bob for a light and they started to chat, and Bob’s spirits rose, so we stayed, drinking beers and making small talk and giving shirtless young men lighters when they needed one.
At some point a young woman tapped me on the shoulder and asked if I was Dutch.
No, I’m American, I said.
Ten minutes later her friend tapped me.
Are you sure you aren’t Dutch? No, I said.
It’s incredible, she said. You look just like my friend’s father and then walked away.
The small crowd around us laughed and even though I was the father of a young daughter, I felt an indescribable pain in being mistaken for the father of someone her age and for a moment I found it difficult to breathe.
Do me a favor and pull the knife out, Bob, I said.
Are you sure you aren’t a father fucker? Bob said. That’s what you should have said.
During the night, something stirred me from a dreamless sleep. It was Bob in his room screaming fuck this over and over. I wasn’t going in there. I checked my phone. It was 4:30 in the morning.
Around 8, I attempted to wake Bob for breakfast. I feared him dead. He was still under the covers, and I couldn’t tell if he was breathing, but after I said his name a dozen times he leapt up and seemed to continue whatever he’d been saying the night before about Derek and The Dominoes.
We stepped onto the balcony outside the room and Bob waited while I went to the lobby to get our breakfast voucher for a restaurant down the street.
When I returned Bob was staring off into the distance. At first, I thought there were low clouds floating over Bocas Town. Boats bobbed offshore with people staring.
Christ, it looks like Apocalypse Now out here, I said.
Building’s on fire, Bob said.
I laughed.
No, building is on fire.
I turned to where he was looking and the hotel down the street was burning down along with several buildings adjacent to it. The streets were filled with locals watching.
A25-year-old German woman had been at the bar crawl then various clubs until 3. Back at the hostel beside the hotel she started cooking chicken and fell asleep. That was how the hostel and the hotel and the two restaurants burnt to ash.
I’ve got to call AT&T, Bob said.
The breakfast restaurant was beside the burning hotel, but it was open, so we sat eating eggs and bacon and drinking coffee as fishermen wearing fireman’s jackets sprayed the flames. Burning debris fell around us like snow. Strange as it seemed there was a calmness to it and the air smelled like the 4th of July.
This egg doesn’t look anything like the one in the picture, Bob said, holding up a menu that’s corner had caught on fire.
Leaving breakfast, we booked a tour to Zapatilla Island when Leo passed just as we were exiting. The boat’s captain, Porras, materialized behind him. We followed Porras to the dock, stopping to buy a 12 pack along the way, then hopped on a 20 ft. panga with a few other tourists.
As we idled away from Bocas Town charred remnants of the still burning hotel floated all around us.
And to your left is the great Bocas Town hotel fire of 2024, Bob said, which was met with uproarious laughter.
To reach Zapatilla you boat around the islands Solarte and Bastimentos which are mostly rainforest jungle and sparsely inhabited. At the tip of Bastimentos is Crawl Cay and the Restaurant Soles where we stopped to leave our order for lunch on the way back.
While waiting to get on the boat Bob struck up a conversation with a woman named Ilyn who was from Belgium.
She asked Bob where he was from and he said, Philadelphia, you got a problem with that? Which made her laugh.
By the time we were back on the boat, Bob was in love.
At Zapatilla you had to sign in. Bob searched for Ilyn’s name and found it.
Her last name’s got 3 I’s and 4 O’s, Bob said. If we get married her name would be Ilyn Egan.
We walked down the beach. It was untouched. The water was clear. There wasn’t anything out there but tourists. It was a national park. By the beach there were no waves, but several thousand yards away you could see the open sea where large waves crashed against a sandbar.
Bob took to simply screaming, Ilyn.
We took a swim then went up to the beach for a smoke and there she was walking up the beach.
Bob ran into the woods and picked a tropical flower.
As she passed, he handed it to her and invited her to smoke a joint. Bob had managed to secure a half oz of dirt weed the night before.
The first thing he said was, you know if we get married your name is going to be Ilyn Egan.
For 20 minutes Bob told his best stories.
My favorite involved the band The Cars. It was 1976 and Bob was in the Merchant Marines. He arrived in Boston to board a tanker ship destined for France. The Cars had just come out and he bought a cassette. The boat stopped in Rotterdam, Netherlands and at a club Bob gave the DJ the cassette. The next night it was everywhere. The way Bob tells it, he was the reason The Cars became famous in Europe.
After Ilyn left, we smoked another joint. When the joint was out, I fell into a haunting introspection and despite the beauty of my surroundings could not escape thoughts of death. Not just my own. But of my little daughter’s, who was barely 16 months old. Thinking about how she, like all of us, will have to face death and that I am the reason she will face it.
After lunch Bob sidled up to the cabana bar.
How much for a shot of tequila, he asked the bartender.
$5, the bartender said.
Very good, Bob said.
The bartender placed a shot in front of him with a lime and salt.
Bob paid him $5 and $5 more for his troubles.
15 minutes later, on the boat, Bob looked up. I forgot to do my shot!
$10 for a fresh piece of Panamanian air, I laughed. Back to you, Bob. The guy they love to see coming.
Wilson Koewing is a writer from South Carolina. His stories have appeared in a variety of print and online journals including Pembroke Magazine, The Journal of Compressed Creative Arts, Gargoyle, New World Writing and Wigleaf. His books JADED and QUASI are available from Main Street Rag/Mint Hill Books and Anxiety Press, respectively. His third book, ROLLING ON THE BOTTOM, a collection of dark short stories is forthcoming from Cowboy Jamboree Press on January 14th, 2025. He is currently at work on completing PANAMA AND BOB as well as a new collection of short stories titled SAN ANSELMO STORIES. He lives in San Anselmo, California with his family and their hound, Odie. @jadedwriter_
High Horse 