SEVENTEEN
A few moronic teens would not be allowed to ruin my vacation; at least that’s what I told myself the next morning as I drove to Isabel Segunda, Vieques’s primary town. Even after a solid night’s sleep and a long shower, the previous day’s shock had not worn off, but I was confident that a good cup of coffee, a baked good or three, and a change of scenery would help soothe my nerves.
Isabel Segunda was larger than Esperanza, and filled with pastel-colored shops, government offices, and more churches than I had ever seen in a single location. After strolling up and down a few blocks, I came upon a blindingly pink café, from which the scent of heaven itself—baked dough and sugar—wafted out. I walked in and sat at one of the bar stools that lined the U-shaped counter.
“What smells so good?” I asked the woman behind the counter.
“Mallorcas,” said a voice.
I did not turn around as I responded. “Really?”
“Yeah, that’s really what they’re called,” Shiloh said, perching on the stool next to me. His hair was damp, as though he, too, had recently showered, although his T-shirt was at least two decades old, and his cargo shorts looked like they might walk off without him.
“No, really as in, you really couldn’t have picked a different place to get coffee?” I muttered, barely looking at him. “Don’t you have a plane to fly into the ocean or something?”
He smirked. “Actually, I’m on leave while the FAA investigates our little incident. So no, I will not be expertly landing a plane next to the beach in order to save your life again anytime soon.” He turned to the server. “Hola, Cecelia. Dos mallorcas, por fa, y tres cafecitos.”
Just when I’d girded my loins, he had to go and speak Spanish. “Mind telling me what you just said?” I asked.
“I ordered you a coffee. You do drink coffee, don’t you?”
“I am to coffee as you are to pelicans,” I said. “I hope you asked for one of those mahor—”
“May-jor-ca,” he said. “And of course I did.”
“Excellent. So, given your spicy accent and knowledge of the local baked goods, I’m guessing you live here?”
He grinned. “I live a lot of places. My company has an apartment that I stay at between flights. The rest of the time, I stay at my place in San Juan.”
“The vagabond life. Interesting choice for a man your age.”
“I’m forty-two, and that’s a pretty judgmental thing to say for a, uh, twenty-nine-year-old woman traveling by herself.”
It was my turn to grin. “My male chaperone wasn’t available this month.”
“I bet he wasn’t. Something tells me that Tom guy would have been happy to escort you here.”
My smile evaporated. I didn’t want to think about Tom, which was proving far more difficult than I’d anticipated. I’d spent six thousand, five hundred, and some odd days with him (not that I was counting). Wasn’t the newfound knowledge of my Lilliputian lifespan enough to banish him from my mind?
“Sorry,” Shiloh said quickly. “I see that that one’s off-limits. No more talk about the guy whose name rhymes with bomb.”
In spite of myself, I laughed. “Thanks.” When I looked up again, those warm brown eyes of his were staring at me again, with no intent of looking away. I felt a jolt of wanton, unsettling excitement, then looked away with relief as the server slid white ceramic plates toward us, each topped with a huge buttered bun dusted with powdered sugar. She placed three small paper cups of coffee between the plates.
“Those are the smallest coffees I’ve ever seen,” I said to Shiloh. “Please tell me you ordered two for me.”
“You’re welcome to them, but I’m warning you, this place has the strongest espresso on the island.”
“If you say so.”
He sipped one, then turned to me again. “Hey, I never did ask you. What brings you to Vieques?”
“Lots of things,” I said vaguely. I bit into the bun, which all but dissolved on my tongue.
“Not bad, right?” he said.
I nodded and washed my mouthful down with a swig of coffee, which was every bit as strong as Shiloh had warned. “So you’ve been here”—he counted on his fingers—“four days now? Have you had Isla’s conch fritters yet?”
“What’s a conch fritter?” I asked.
“Oh, my. You’ve never had a conch fritter? We’ll have to fix that. Do you have plans tonight?”
I eyed him suspiciously. “Maybe. Why would you want to go to dinner with me?”
He cocked his head. “As you keep pointing out, I almost killed you. It’s the least I can do, don’t you think?”
Sure, since you know I have cancer. “Okay,” I agreed, but only because I had nothing else to do. (That was my story and I was sticking to it.) “You know where I live.”
He winked. “That I do.” He pulled his sunglasses out of his front pocket, grabbed the bun from the plate, and took one of the coffees. “See you tonight, Libby.”
I watched him saunter away. He had broad shoulders and a high, firm ass. I had an uncanny capacity for catastrophe and a history of choosing the worst possible partners, both real and imagined.
It wasn’t until he was gone that I realized we hadn’t agreed on a time and I had no way to contact him. In fact, I didn’t even know his last name, and frankly, I was in no position to attempt to act like a normal human for a sustained period of time.
This was a very bad idea.
Just after seven, I heard tires rumble in the gravel outside the beach house. After one last glance in the mirror, I swung the door open and found Shiloh standing there.
“Hello,” he said lightly. He had on the same shorts from earlier, but had swapped his T-shirt for a crisp butter-colored button-down. I was wearing a sundress, which I felt stupid about, as it seemed very date-like and this was not a date.
“Hello,” I said as I locked the door behind me. “Do you want to drive or should I?”
“Why don’t I, since I know where it is?”
“That’s fine,” I said, standing stiffly in front of his Jeep. The easy-if-barbed banter of our café conversation was long gone, and I lamely tried to think of appropriate ways to interact with him, which made me even more uncomfortable.
He opened the passenger door and offered me his arm, which I accepted, but not before adding, “You don’t have to do that.”
“I know,” Shiloh said, giving me a curious look as he closed the door behind me.
“So, Chicago,” he said as we backed out of the drive. “I haven’t been there since I was in my twenties. Is it still cold?”
“Like the Arctic.”
He laughed as though this was actually funny, and I decided I was right about the cancer pity. I’d have to put an end to that. “How’d you end up there?” he asked.
I tugged a curl, then sat on my hands so I would stop fidgeting. “Um . . . honestly? My ex. His best friend was already in Chicago, and he thought it would be a good place to launch his career.”
“And you?” he asked. “What did you think?”
I wanted to be with Tom wherever he was. But there was no way I was going to admit this. “I thought I would like it. And I did, until a few weeks ago.” I was grateful when he didn’t ask me to elaborate.
We pulled up at a restaurant tucked into the hillside, right off the side of the road. The banisters and awnings were strung with holiday twinkle lights, and as we entered, I saw that most of the tables were in an open-air courtyard.
“Hermano, how’s it going?” the bartender called to Shiloh.
“Bien, Ricky, bien,” he said, and started rambling in Spanish. At which point he stopped being the guy who almost killed me and started being the one I wanted as my main course. Yes, I’d heard his romance-language routine at the café, but this was different. He was having a full-blown conversation, and it
shifted his whole demeanor. His hands flew around. His laughter deepened. He oozed confidence and, you know. Sex.
“Sorry about that, Libby,” he said as the hostess seated us at one of the booths in the open-air courtyard. “He’s chatty.”
“And you’re very fluent in Spanish,” I said, a bit accusatorially. It wasn’t that his being bilingual was such a surprise. It’s just that his English lacked the lilt I’d grown accustomed to since landing in Puerto Rico, so I had assumed he was from somewhere else. “You’re Puerto Rican?”
“Yeah,” he said. “My mom’s a Nuyorican—her parents were from here—but my dad was born and raised in Fajardo.”
“And were you raised here?”
“My parents split, so I was shuffled around way more than most kids like to be.”
“Oh. Sorry.”
“Hey, what can you do? Anyway, that was ages ago for this old man.” He smiled, and as I instinctively smiled back, a sharp zing shot through my hinterlands. I glanced away, acutely aware of the inappropriateness of the tingles I was feeling. My already pathetic judgment (see Ty, et al.) had undoubtedly been further weakened by the week’s events. What’s more, Shiloh knew I was going to die soon, so any relations between us would be laden with sympathy—or worse, the understanding that I would be an easy and extremely short-term lay.
I was relieved when the waiter appeared, although slightly disappointed when he started speaking to us in English.
“Am I allowed to order for myself?” I asked Shiloh, eyebrows raised.
“As long as you order the you-know-whats.”
I glanced up at the waiter. “An order of conch fritters and the tuna steak.”
“And to drink?” the waiter asked.
“Something strong.”
“I’ll have the same entrée and a Corona,” Shiloh said.
The waiter brought me a tumbler filled with guava juice and rum, which was tastier than Milagros’s rocket fuel, and which relaxed me to the point that I was able to chat about trivial things with Shiloh until the fritters arrived. (For the record, they were as edible as anything battered and deep-fried, but not particularly earth-shattering.) I had just started on my tuna when Shiloh asked, “So, is this trip a pre-chemo celebration?”
My head jerked up in surprise, and then I put my fork down—just to be on the safe side. “Pre-chemo? Um, no. I’m not going to get treatment.”
He looked stunned. “You’re not? Why not?”
“Because I don’t want to do that to myself.”
“It’s not that bad. Definitely preferable to dying.”
“I told you already, the doctor said it wouldn’t matter. I’m toast.”
His eyes flashed with an anger I hadn’t seen in him before. “Ef your doctor. Get a second opinion.”
“I already consulted Dr. Google, who confirmed that no second opinion is going to stop my guts from turning to rock-size tumors while my skin falls off,” I said matter-of-factly.
“You don’t know that for sure.” His face was getting slightly red, and a thin layer of sweat had formed on his brow. I wondered if someone close to him had died after receiving bad medical advice.
I shrugged. “Listen, I appreciate your concern. But I’ve had more than my fair share of experience with cancer, and I want to live out my final days in the most pleasant way possible. Chemo and radiation don’t exactly fall under that umbrella.”
He took a long swig of beer, then held my gaze. “If God, or whatever you believe in, wanted you to be dead, why aren’t you at the bottom of the sea right now? I’m a decent pilot, Libby, but now that I’ve had a few days to sit on it, I’m going to call that landing a minor miracle.”
“So all that talk about life being a near-death experience was crap, huh?”
The heat of his anger was instantly replaced with a cool distance as he sighed and leaned back in the booth. I, too, was having a quicksilver shift, as desire gave way to a rush of irritation.
“You are exasperating,” he muttered.
“Lucky you, you won’t have to deal with my exasperating tendencies after this evening,” I shot back.
The waiter came over to take our plates. “How about dessert?” he asked. “Or another drink?”
“No,” Shiloh and I said at the same time.
EIGHTEEN
I would spend the rest of my vacation in solitude. After all, I had tried human connection and failed spectacularly. Sequestering myself away from all potentially irritating and/or murderous people, I reasoned, was the only way to protect what was left of my dignity and enjoy the little time I had left on my trip.
Said plan was rudely interrupted by Tom’s repeated calls. (I did turn the ringer off, but it was not enough to silence the repetitive buzzing or dim the screen glowing in the middle of the night as Tom phone-stalked me with a vigor he had never applied to many aspects of our marriage, including but not limited to adhering to our budget; attempting to fix things that broke in the apartment; and marital relations, particularly of the nonmissionary variety.) Seven calls later, I realized that he would not leave me in peace until I spoke with him, so the evening after my dinner with Shiloh, I finally picked up.
“Libby, why have you been avoiding me?” Tom.
“Gosh, I just don’t know, Tom.”
“Tell her you’re sorry, you idiot.” O’Reilly, hissing in the background.
“What the hell is O’Reilly doing listening in on our conversation?” Me, obviously.
“Li—” Tom.
“Listen to me, you piece of spit. If you’re going to have the balls to break up our marriage, then have the balls to deal with the fallout.”
“But I told you, I don’t want to break up our marriage.”
“He loves you, Libby!” O’Reilly.
“You’re my best friend.” Tom.
“I thought I was your best friend!” O’Reilly, who I was certain was blasted. Apparently Tom had been forced to lower his liquor standards because O’Reilly was sheltering him.
“No, Tom, I assure you that I am not. Best friends share secrets with each other.” Me, attempting to ignore my eyeballs, which had started to drip in an unfortunate way.
“I am so sorry, Libby. I never meant to hurt you.”
“He really didn’t, Libby!” O’Reilly, hollering in the distance.
“Shut up, Michael.” Jess.
“I don’t care if you’re sorry, Tom. Sorry doesn’t help at all. Please, do not call me again unless you’re able to borrow a vehicle from Marty McFly and go back in time and undo our entire relationship. Now go away.” Me. Click.
I went for a stroll on the beach to try to shake it off. You are bigger than this, you are better than this, I told myself, but that only made me think about Tom’s mantra phase, during which he read stack after stack of self-help books in an attempt to catapult himself out of his internship rut and into a real job. In hindsight, it occurred to me that Tom’s positive self-talk probably had very little to do with employment.
How long had he been deluding himself? The very morning of my D-day, he woke me up by kissing me and telling me he loved me. (Just thinking about it made me start to cry again. Did he suspect that he would soon tell me the truth? Was his love really guilt sandwiched in the affection that comes from spending so many years with another human being?) The whole thing was incredibly confusing. During childhood, Paul liked trucks and guns and football, all the stereotypical boy things, but we were barely into our first month of kindergarten when he proudly told my parents that he wanted to marry Michael Jackson. Our family was religious—church on Sundays, prayer before meals, memorizing large chunks of the Bible together—but though those around us were quick to condemn homosexuality, my parents never tried to convince Paul that the way he felt was wrong, so he never tried to hide who he was. Thus, the concept of coming out later in life seemed like somethi
ng that happened on television.
Moreover, though Tom’s father was a mouthy drunk who didn’t hold back on his views of any and all perceived forms of sexual fornication, Tom happily flouted him in so many obvious ways—his calm demeanor, his big-city life and love of beautiful things, his alcohol aversion—that it never occurred to me Tom would feel the need to conceal such an integral aspect of himself.
While I might have given him a mouthful on the phone, I sort of felt bad for him. I definitely felt bad for us. If only it had happened at a time when we could have worked through it together in some sort of healthy manner—not that I would attempt to turn him straight, as I knew I was more likely to run into my mother riding a unicorn down Michigan Avenue than to expect Tom’s sexuality to be deprogrammed, like it was a DVR. But I didn’t want to hate him. I wanted to comfort him, as I had when his father showed up to his graduation party trashed, or when he was fired from his first postgrad school job after three disastrous weeks.
Correction: I wanted to want to comfort him.
Or perhaps this desire was the ghost of Libby past, trying to deceive me as she had so powerfully managed to do in so many aspects of my life.
Raj called on the way back from my walk. “You won’t believe this!”
“Try me.”
“You have three offers on the apartment.”
I smiled; the universe did owe me a favor. “Who offered?”
“Two couples and a single mom.”
“Excellent. Let’s go with the single mom.”
“Don’t you care what they’re offering? The mom’s offer is the lowest.”
“Get the papers drawn up.”
“You’re in charge,” he said, but I knew he was not pleased.
Life and Other Near-Death Experiences Page 10
