"Coconut Flan," by Catherine Lacey

"This was the litany that she, in her faltering Spanish, and he, in his native Spanish, repeated at the airline counter, the airport information desk, in the security department, the luggage department, and then to various voices on the phone. They described the thing that had been lost, and all the things inside the thing that had been lost, recited this list like a prayer, or a spell."

"What was an embassy, really, and what did it do? Calling the Embassy was something that rich people did. People called the Embassy when they had friends at the Embassy, college buddies named Teddy, ambassadors who owed them a favor. No one owed Daria anything. But no, Andrés said. People called the Embassy when they lost their passports, sunburned tourists who'd done something stupid-and the moment the Embassy took Daria's call that was who she officially became."

Daria's black leather pouch vanished after the plane landed, before she and Andrés reached the taxi stand. The pouch held her passport, residencia card, credit and debit cards, Metrobús card, house keys, a small Polaroid of Andrés, two pens, and seven thousand pesos in cash. She felt an urge to dump her bag and search, as if childish rituals might make lost things reappear. She and Andrés recited the list of contents at airline, information, security, and luggage counters and over phone calls, treating the list like a prayer. Walkie-talkies and silences produced no recovery, and Andrés suggested calling the embassy to replace identification.

Read at The New Yorker