by Jeanne Winer
She hesitated. “Maybe you could pray for Jorge.”
“Certainly,” I said, although I hadn’t prayed for anything since I was twelve, and even then I hadn’t believed it would help—it didn’t, I still had to go to summer camp. And after that, I gave up even the pretense of praying to an unseen, unproven deity. But so what? It was the least I could do. In the unlikely event some benign force in the universe could hear me, it wouldn’t mind that I was another Jewish atheist going through the motions.
By the end of the day, I’d had another manicure which I obviously didn’t need, a pedicure that I did, and a neck and scalp massage that was vaguely irritating. Right before bed, I agreed to let Sonia slather my face with a strange-smelling lotion that made me gag. As I turned out the light, I made a mental note to beg Susan to think of another project.
The following morning, Sonia took a bus downtown with her utensils. As I’d feared, no one was interested. In the afternoon, she tried the lobby of the Intercontinental Hotel, but the concierge immediately asked her to leave. From then on, she stuck to her friends and neighbors who occasionally traded food and other goods for her services.
***
Saturday night was the first time since losing Emily’s case that I fell asleep before midnight. I’d had a headache for days and wondered if I was fighting the flu. I slept deeply for at least four hours before I heard a voice—mine—ordering me to wake up. I opened my eyes and stared at the ceiling. This is an emergency, the voice said, your primary relationship is in trouble. Stop pretending that doing nothing isn’t doing something. I sat up against the wall, turned on the light, and tried to think. How long had it been since the phone call when Vickie hung up on me? What the hell was I waiting for? I scrambled off my cot, grabbed a notebook and a pen, and then sat down on the edge of the bed. I needed a plan. I looked down at the blank page on my lap and began to write.
Plan A: Pull your head out of the sand before you get so comfortable you learn how to breathe down there—it’s not your true home.
I stopped. Was I sure about that? No, of course not. I was blind and stupid and unsure about everything. Sometime in the last few months, my intuition had taken a leave of absence, perhaps a permanent one. Consequently, I knew very little. But I knew this: when you’re blind and stupid, preserve all options. I would write (and send) my girlfriend a heartfelt letter, not a falsely reassuring one, but nothing suicidal either. I chewed the tip of my pen for inspiration. I was a good writer, but this felt too much like a test. If I failed, I’d flunk my life.
Dear Vickie,
It’s three a.m. and I’ll probably be awake for the rest of the night. If you were here with me, I could lay my head in the crook of your shoulder and you could smooth my hair and sing me silly songs. I wish I liked the taste of rum; Sonia says a glass always puts her right to sleep. Although it’s hard to be back in Managua—I’m sure Maggie’s told you all about it—I don’t wish I was in some other country. I can’t explain it, but the emotional landscape suits me. If it were possible, I’d have our relationship frozen, like we did last summer with our membership at the fitness center. And then I’d have the time I need to think. I’m still waiting for clarity, but as usual she’s very late. While I wait for her, will you wait for me?
Love, which has never been the problem,
Rachel
Excellent, congratulations. I ripped the letter out of my notebook and placed it in an envelope with enough stamps to make it to the United States. Tomorrow, I would ask Sonia how to send it. Before turning off the light, I stood in the middle of the room and watched two geckos playing tag on the wall across from me. First, one would chase the other, both scampering madly as if their lives depended on it, and then all of a sudden, without any obvious signal, they’d reverse roles. Over and over, back and forth, chasing and being chased. Unlike humans, however, the geckos seemed endlessly content with their game.
As I climbed back into bed, I wondered what Vickie would do when she finished reading my letter. Would she wait like I asked? Sure, and a man with a big fat belly shouting “Ho, ho, ho,” would slide down my chimney in December, loaded with presents. Sorry, Virginia, but hot-blooded Italians do not wait. They get mad and call. It was easy to imagine the conversation.
“Rachel, how can you freeze a relationship?”
“I don’t know. I guess it’s a lot to ask.”
“Oh, now there’s an understatement. How long do you propose we do this?”
“I’m not sure, but I’d say three months.”
“I see. And what am I supposed to do during this period of time while you wait for clarity?”
“Just live?”
“Just live. I see. And can you at least promise that at the end of the three months you’ll return to Boulder?”
“It would be my intention, but I can’t promise. I’m really sorry, Vickie.”
“Me too, sweetheart. Well, have a nice life, Rachel.”
“You too, Vickie.”
After about ten minutes, I switched on the light again, grabbed the notebook, and wrote another sentence.
Plan B: Stick head back in sand and take a deep breath.
Waiting, I told myself, isn’t always a passive activity. For instance, sometimes when you’re climbing, it looks as if there’s no way you can make the next move. You stare at the rock in front of you and wonder why it isn’t rated much harder than the guidebook says. Your hands begin to sweat and your breathing gets shallow. You imagine a series of moves that all end in disaster. Better to do nothing at all. While you’re waiting, though, you’re still looking, but it’s different now because the pressure’s off. After a while, your eyes focus on a hold that seems almost irrelevant because it won’t get you more than an inch or two higher. With nothing to lose, however, you try it and suddenly the landscape is completely different. All kinds of holds emerge that weren’t visible before. Right.
Plan C: Cultivate a taste for rum.
I glanced at my watch; it was too late to try any tonight. I turned off the light, attempted to lie still with my eyes closed, gave up and decided to take a shower. In a few more hours, I’d be meeting Allen and Liz at the community center. To celebrate our fourth Sunday in Managua, we’d decided to try the famous buffet brunch at the Intercontinental Hotel. If the dollar store was open—fat chance, it was never open—we’d stop on the way back and buy some vitamins, shampoo and Kotex for our hosts.
***
Every Sunday, the Intercontinental Hotel offered brunch to the public from nine until noon. During that time, for eight dollars, you could eat as much as you wanted. We’d intended to get there by bus, but after three of them passed us by with people hanging off the sides, we broke down and took a cab. We were dressed in our Sunday finest, which meant jeans and a Hawaiian shirt for Allen and loose cotton pants and pastel blouses for Liz and me.
When we arrived at nine thirty, there was a line stretching out the door of the restaurant and into the lobby. The hotel was nondescript but surprisingly modern with floor-to-ceiling windows, white arches and columns and polished marble floors. We could have been in Los Angeles, Mexico City or San Jose. An old Nicaraguan woman with a limp took our money and showed us to the end of the line. The men in front of us were dressed casually in the kind of clothes that are advertised in travel magazines, suits that are always tan or white, never wrinkle, and are equally appropriate for a brunch or an important business meeting. According to Estelle, many of the people staying at the hotel were journalists from the United States and Europe, here to chart the ongoing war between David and Goliath. They’d been waiting off and on since 1979 for either the United States to invade, or for the Sandinista government to collapse from within.
At first, the line didn’t move at all. Allen kept shifting his backpack from one arm to the other, tapping his feet, and sighing. Finally, he said, “I feel a little funny being here.”
I nodded. “That’s because you’ve stepped out of one milieu where you don’t fit in but yo
u wish you did, into another where in fact you do fit in but you wish you didn’t.”
Allen looked a little confused. “I think I understand what you just said.”
Liz laughed. “Do all lawyers think the way you do?”
I shrugged. “If they’ve been at it long enough.”
“Oh boy,” Allen muttered, “I can hardly wait.”
Liz was surveying the spacious sunlit lobby. After a couple of seconds, she said, “You know, it does feel funny to be here. There’s too much dissonance between this world and the barrio. I vote we eat quickly and get the hell out of here.”
Allen and I both concurred. As the line moved forward, we stepped into the restaurant and caught our first glimpse of the buffet, a huge table heaped with all kinds of fruit, cheese, bread, rolls, salads and desserts.
“Wow,” Allen breathed. “I feel like Dorothy standing before the Emerald City.”
Immediately, I knew which of Dorothy’s two compatriots Vickie would think I was. When the line moved again, I clanked forward to keep up with my friends. If I only had a heart. But that was unfair. Just because it was temporarily lost and out of radio contact didn’t mean it wasn’t there.
The restaurant was packed. I was glad at least some of the diners were Nicaraguan. Everyone was seated around elegant tables with white tablecloths and wineglasses, eating, drinking and chatting. There were huge potted plants everywhere and bright sunlight shining into the air-conditioned room. It was lovely, or it would have been, except for the surrounding circumstances. Context, I decided, was everything. But then, how was this different than anywhere else in the world? In New York City, homeless people rooted around in garbage cans behind restaurants where the customers drank two-hundred-dollar bottles of wine. No, I thought, it’s like this everywhere. This is the way the world is.
Finally, we got close enough to grab a plate and begin mentally choosing our food. As anyone experienced at buffet knows, you have to survey the entire table before you make your move. When it was this crowded, there was no going back and forth. At the far end of the table, two men in blue uniforms were lifting metal covers off platters of scrambled eggs and bacon. Suddenly, I was ravenous. My mouth, like Pavlov’s apolitical dog, watered involuntarily. As I reached for a hunk of bread, however, my true-blue liberal soul rebelled. Oh, oh, I thought, I might not be able to do this. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Allen hesitating before a platter of crackers and cheese, his hand wavering in midair. Then, Liz came up behind me.
“I know this sounds ridiculous,” she whispered, “but I feel too guilty to eat. Isn’t that ridiculous?”
I shook my head. “I can’t do it either.”
Allen sighed next to us. “I could probably eat half this table, but I keep thinking of my family, especially the kids. How can I gorge myself when they’re so hungry?”
Liz nodded in agreement. “Well, shall we get out of here?” She turned to put her plate back.
“No, wait,” I said. “We’ve already paid. Why not stack our plates with as much food as possible, load it all into Allen’s backpack, and take it home to our families?”
Allen’s face broke into a big smile. “That’s a great idea,” he said, grabbing a handful of cheese and dropping it onto his plate. Liz was already piling fruit and vegetables onto hers.
“I’ll concentrate on this,” she told me. “Why don’t you go for the bread, rolls and crackers? Nothing perishable. We have a long way to go in the heat.”
“Aye, aye, sir,” I said.
As we were leaving the restaurant, a Nicaraguan man in a blue uniform stepped out in front of us. In English, he told us he was sorry, but that no one was allowed to take food from the premises. Allen and Liz both looked at me.
I imagined the most pompous lawyer I knew—a guy from Denver who always wore bow ties and sweater vests—and tried to sound just like him.
“Well,” I said, “I’m sorry too, but we’ve paid good money and unless there’s a sign posted in some conspicuous place that informs us of your policy, you have no right to stop us.” I glanced pointedly at my watch. “Ah, we’re late. So, unless you’re prepared to refund our money, we must be going.”
For a moment, the man looked around for help, but none was available. He checked again, and then dismissed us with a wave. We hurried through the lobby past a group of North American nuns chattering in English and out into the heavy tropical air, which in contrast to the hotel seemed impossibly hot.
“¡Qué calor!” I said, fanning myself the way Sonia did when she uttered the same words every morning, as if the heat that day was something new and entirely unexpected.
On our way home, we decided to stop first at Sonia’s, lay out the food on her kitchen table, and then divvy it up from there. Sonia watched as we unpacked item after item and was suitably impressed by how much we’d managed to stuff into Allen’s medium-sized backpack.
“Please,” Allen told her after we’d spread everything out, “take whatever you’d like.”
Sonia leaned over the table, examining the loot. “Could I have a couple of carrots and a radish?” she asked.
“Absolutely,” he said. “How about some crackers and cheese to go with them?”
Just then, we heard the front door open and a few moments later, Tomas staggered into the kitchen looking for Sonia. The front of his shirt was torn and he stank of rum. There was a cut over his right eye, which had bled a little.
“Hola Tomas,” Sonia said, smiling gently. “¿Cómo estás?”
“Muy bien,” he replied, but he didn’t look it. I think he was surprised to see so many strangers in Sonia’s kitchen.
We offered him something to eat, but he just shook his head. At that moment, a truck backfired twice in front of the house, the sound loud and unexpected. Tomas screamed and pushed the table over on its side, scattering food everywhere. Before we had time to react, he’d dropped into a crouch behind the table and was shouting at us. I couldn’t understand what he was saying, but it definitely sounded hostile.
For a moment, the four of us simply stood there in the kitchen, looking confused. Then we saw the gun, a large silver and black revolver. It was raised above the rim of the table and was pointed directly at us.
“Oh my God!” Allen squeaked.
We ran to the farthest corner of the patio and huddled in front of the high cement wall. There was no place to hide. We were all bent low but if he’d wanted to shoot us, it wouldn’t have been difficult. We were less than thirty-five feet away from him.
“Jesus Christ,” Allen said, putting his arms around Liz and Sonia. I was right behind him searching for something to use as a weapon—a rock or a piece of wood—but there was nothing.
“Do you know if the gun is loaded?” Liz asked Sonia in Spanish.
Sonia shook her head. “I’m not sure.” She paused to think. “Sometimes it is.”
Allen obviously understood her answer. “Sometimes?” he repeated in English.
“Sí,” she said, shrugging.
For another couple of minutes, Tomas continued shouting and waving his gun at us. So far, he hadn’t moved from behind his barricade.
“What are we going to do?” I asked.
Sonia shook her head again. “He’s not here with us.”
“I know,” I said. “But we have to do something.”
“Maybe the gun isn’t loaded,” Allen said. His shirt was dark with sweat and his shoulders were trembling, but I could hear the anger in his voice.
“But what if it is?” Liz asked. “I’ve seen dozens of crazy homeless people in the emergency room. You can’t predict what they’ll do. Some of them can be very dangerous.”
Tomas was now shouting political slogans in a singsong voice, repeating the same phrases over and over, his words too slurred to entirely understand, but we got the gist: we were the enemy that had to be defeated.
“Fuck it,” Allen said. “Let’s call his bluff.” He stood up and took a couple of steps forward. Immediately, we
heard the unmistakable crack of a gunshot and the high-pitched sound of a bullet smashing into the wall a few yards above our heads.
“Shit!” Allen said, dropping back down again.
“Are you okay?” Liz whispered.
He was crouched a few feet in front of us, his hands covering the top of his head. “I’m great,” he muttered.
Liz turned to me. “You’re a climber, right?”
I nodded.
“How hard would it be to climb over the wall and get some help?”
I studied the wall behind us. It was less than fifteen feet high with plenty of footholds. I could get over it in five or six quick moves. “No problem at all,” I said.
“No way,” Allen whispered. “He could get lucky this time and hit you.”
“Stop being a guy,” I told him, then explained the plan to Sonia.
She thought for a moment, and then nodded. “Find Amelia. He’ll listen to her. She was with him during the takeover.”
Before Allen could stop me, I turned to the wall, picked out my first couple of footholds and began climbing. I was up and over in a flash. Tomas didn’t even try to shoot me.
Luckily, Amelia was at home and after I’d explained the situation, she rushed back to Sonia’s with me, entering through the front door. I stayed out of sight in the living room and just listened, hoping she’d be able to reach him.
“Tomas?” Amelia called. “It’s me, Amelia.”
He didn’t answer.
“Tomas?” She took a couple of steps closer. “It’s over, Tomas. We won.”
This time, he answered. “We won?”
“Yes,” she said. “The Guard has fled. We’ve won. You can come out now.”
“Where’s my wife?” he called. “Where’s Miriam?”
Amelia hesitated. “She’s dead, Tomas. She gave her life for the cause. Come on out now.”
“She’s dead?”
“Yes, but you already knew that, Tomas. It was a long time ago. We buried her in that cemetery in Leon, the one with the beautiful trees. Hundreds of people came to pay their respects. Remember?”
