After the End

by Brenda Barrett

  Enrique raised his head. "Spoilsport. Let's shower together."

  Colleen giggled. "Yes, sure."

  Enrique drove up in the hills past the Bluefields area and into the hills of Beeston Spring. The farther up they went, the wilder the place became. In some areas there were breathtaking views of the sea.

  "In any other country this would be prime real estate," Enrique said to Colleen. "All this untouched greenery and sea views would be the envy of some developer."

  Colleen glanced at him. "You have been to a lot of countries, haven't you?”

  "Yes. I have listings all over the globe. I not only sell the property; I make sure that I take some spectacular quality photographs. Not the poor fuzzy stuff you see on a lot of realtor's sites. I made sure I did a photography course before I even started the business. I have a high turnover rate for my properties. But then again, I only sell the best."

  Colleen nodded. “I saw you in operation when you were photographing the villas. I think you do great work."

  "Thank you," he grinned at her. "You have passed the first wife test of supportiveness."

  Colleen said contemplatively, "Why, thank you, husband. If you weren't here at this time to sell your parents’ villas, I wouldn't have met you again."

  "And what a tragedy that would be," Enrique said, frowning. "I am hoping that fate would have played a hand and we would have met otherwise at another time."

  "Maybe I would have died from Maureen's incessant nagging to move on," Colleen giggled, "or in a fit of desperation at Miss Lou's nagging, I'd have married Larry the food guy."

  Enrique growled, "Tell me about Larry the food guy."

  "He plants yams in the hills here." Colleen laughed, "He has a thing for me. Only problem is, he has around twelve children for eleven different mothers. He is always promising me that I will be his very last girl."

  "Oh my," Enrique laughed, "so I am guessing Larry would have been no competition?"

  "Nope." Colleen cleared her throat. "Have you had many girlfriends?"

  "Before you, hardly." Enrique touched her leg. "You are not going to believe this, but between building a business and having a crush on a girl from high school, there was only room for casual relationships."

  "Oh, before I forget," Enrique slowed down as a herd of goats crossed the road, "Daddy gave me the deed to that villa as a wedding present. It's now our villa; it will be our home away from home."

  "Just like that?" Colleen asked in awe.

  "There are five others." Enrique shrugged. "He gave us one. You like your independence and I like knowing that you are living at our place when I am gone."

  He glanced at her. "I am going to have to leave sometime in the future for a little while. Until we sort out your passport issue. I can't believe you don't have a passport."

  "I have never needed to travel." Colleen chuckled. "You don't have to let it sound as if I am in the Dark Ages. Lots of people don't have a passport."

  "Well, you will be traveling," Enrique said, anticipation lacing his voice. "I want to show you the world."

  "So this is how it feels, after the end," Colleen whispered, putting her feet up on the dashboard.

  "What?" Enrique looked at her legs.

  "Nothing. Watch the road, Rique!" Colleen flexed her legs.

  He laughed. "Seductress." Then he slowed down. "I like that name, Rique."

  The sun lit up his eyes, making them appear lighter as he glanced at her, and Colleen felt a tingling of warmth inside. This was what memories were made of. They were creating their own memories.

  *****

  When Colleen drove up to the bungalow where her parents lived, they were on the veranda with a visitor. She groaned out loud to Enrique.

  "I wanted to speak to them alone, before the introduction. Now we have an audience. My parents always have people over."

  Enrique squeezed her hand. "We'll do this together. Come on."

  When they got out of the car, her mother stood up and clapped. "It's Colleen!"

  She smiled a broad smile and hurried down the steps. "You must have read my mind," she said, hugging Colleen to her. "I was so longing to see you."

  She turned to Enrique. "Hello."

  "Mama," Colleen said quietly. "This is Enrique Lopez, my husband. We got married last weekend."

  Her mother put her hand over heart in shock, and then turned to Enrique.

  "Well, well. You really know how to shock me, Colleen."

  "Hello Mrs. Perry."

  "Call me Doreen," she laughed apologetically. "My husband Colin and I are terribly unoriginal; we combined our names when we had Colleen."

  "Oh," Enrique smiled, "I never knew that."

  When they walked up to the veranda they were introduced to her parents’ pastor, Pastor Jenkins, a burly man in his fifties who was just doing the rounds with his parishioners. He was new to the district but very interested in Colleen and Enrique.

  Her mother blurted out their recent marriage, and her father was obviously shocked. This sparked a barrage of questions from the pastor.

  "Are you in the family way?" Pastor Jenkins asked before Colleen could sit down.

  Colleen sat across from him and almost choked on her answer. "No, I am not."

  "So why did you get married without your folks knowing?" Pastor Jenkins asked curiously. "And to a man of, er, a different race?"

  Colleen bristled. "That's none of your business."

  Pastor Jenkins shook his grizzled head. "Fast marriages and incompatibility don't make for a good combination."

  "Who says we are incompatible?" Colleen snapped.

  Her father cleared his throat and butted in before Colleen took on the new pastor in an argument. "Pastor J, maybe we should continue the visit another time?"

  "Okay," Pastor Jenkins got up reluctantly, his eyes roaming over the lot of them. "Maybe I should offer a word of prayer for this sudden union?"

  "We were already blessed, thank you," Colleen said waspishly to the minister. Somehow she didn't think she wanted prayer from somebody who was so quick to judge her.

  He retreated, leaving her and her parents and an embarrassed-looking Enrique on the veranda.

  "Sorry about that." Her father held out his hand to Enrique. "Nice to meet you. I am very sure we would have heard about this new marriage if we had functioning cellular phones. We really have no decent signal up here. We usually have to go down to the town square to get a strong enough signal."

  Enrique nodded. "It is lovely to meet you two. I am responsible for rushing Colleen into marriage. If there is any blame to be dished out, I am the one that should get it. I wanted to tie her to me as fast as I could."

  Doreen laughed. "Okay then. A man who knows what he is about. I like that. Colin and I had a long courtship but I have seen where it works both ways. So tell us everything. Where did you two meet and everything...we are dying to know. Do you want something to eat?"

  *****

  After they were plied with food and spent a good chunk of the day, they headed back down the hill.

  "I like your folks," Enrique said. "They are cool, and your father knows a lot about farming for a fisherman."

  Colleen grinned. "My folks like you but then again, they like everybody. They are genuinely nice people."

  "Thanks a lot, Colleen, for bolstering my ego," Enrique said dramatically. "For a moment there when we first arrived and we had the super-awkward encounter with Pastor Jenkins, I began to fret that things would be off to a rocky start."

  Colleen laughed and then sobered up quickly. "Pastor Jenkins had a point, though--suppose we aren't compatible outside of the bedroom. Suppose we..."

  Enrique laced his fingers with hers. "O ye of little faith, we are more than fine. I am sure of that. Marriage is hard work and you and I are going to work at it."

  Chapter Eight

  It was week three and the honeymoon was almost over. Colleen was feeling melancholy; Enrique had to leave for New York. He had what sounded like urgent bu
siness. Whoever he was talking to on the phone was urging him to get back into the office. She could hear him trying to fit urgent tasks into his schedule and working around others.

  She didn't want him to leave. It was hard to believe how absolutely attached she had become to him in such a short period of time. She stretched languidly on the bed. They had just made love. He was in the shower so she hugged his pillow close. He was singing in Spanish in the shower. It was a love ballad. She recognized the words te amo.

  What was she going to do with her life when he left? Could she return to her job at Sea Breeze? She was not particularly the lady of leisure type and sitting and reading by the beachside all day didn't appeal to her. She would drive herself stir crazy. Maybe she could bake up a storm. The kitchen here was well equipped for her to run a catering business if she wanted to. That's what she had always wanted to do, especially pastry and cake decorating. Her teacher at the pastry school had said that she was an outstanding student.

  She heard when he turned off the shower. Enrique came out of the bathroom with a towel wrapped around his torso.

  "Hi gorgeous," he smiled at her. "I wish I wasn't going back day after tomorrow." His hair was wet and plastered to his head. He went into the chest of drawers and pulled out a track bottom.

  "As soon as you get your visa, you are coming up. If I didn't absolutely have to go in, I would stay here with you. Apparently, a very important customer wants to buy another high-end property and will deal with no one else."

  "Okay," Colleen said slowly. Melancholy was dripping from her voice.

  "I love that you are going to miss me." Enrique sat on the bed and caressed her face. He kissed her knuckles one by one.

  "We have business today. We need to go to a bank and open an expense account for you. I also need to get you your credit card. Colleen Lopez."

  Colleen shivered when he purred her name like that. "I want to see your first name coupled with my last name on all your stuff," Enrique said softly.

  "You don't have to open an account for me," Colleen insisted. "I can return to my job at Sea Breeze."

  Enrique laughed. "Are you for real, Colleen? I have no problem with you working but I am sorry, I already told my mom, who told the general manager over at Sea Breeze, that you resigned your job. You are one of the bosses now."

  "Why did you go over my head?" Colleen asked, becoming agitated. "What am I to do all day while you are away?"

  "Go shopping. You need a new wardrobe. Use your credit card." Enrique got up. "You don't have to work if you don't want to. I have an apartment in Kingston. You can stay there sometimes; you could be closer to your friend Maureen. I also have a house in Montego Bay. Travel, do all the things that you have always wanted to do."

  "I don't think that kind of lifestyle is for me." Colleen ran her fingers through her already tousled hair. Her lips were slightly swollen from his kisses earlier.

  Enrique groaned. This need for her was nowhere near fading.

  "Colleen, it is only for a couple weeks, till you get your visa and we can be together. God, I wish it were days instead of weeks."

  ****

  He kissed her at the airport in Kingston and then said goodbye. She had felt tears gathering at the sides of her eyes. She would miss him, so much it actually physically hurt. Colleen sat and stared through the window while Renata, who had dropped him at the airport and was now driving them back to Kingston hummed along to a song on the radio.

  "Okay, you have grieved for five minutes," Renata said after a while. "I have been assigned to you as companion for a whole week."

  "What?" Colleen frowned.

  "Brother's orders." Renata gave her a thumbs-up sign. "And I am happy to obey him, some of the time. So I am to show you the Kingston apartment. Then I should take you clothes shopping, and then I should hook you up with the family driver, Nelson, to teach you to drive.

  "Oh and I should not in any way forget to take you to the embassy for a visa as soon as you get that passport. I think that's about it."

  "There he goes again arranging my life behind my back," Colleen mumbled.

  "You have any better suggestions?" Renata asked.

  "No...well, I had complained that I have nothing to do."

  "Then there you go," Renata said, "the guy loves you to distraction and he wants you happy. Embrace it. Girl, what you both have is so rare. I wish Irwin would take a hint and love me to distraction like Enrique loves you.

  "I was so stupid, a couple years ago I was in a female power mode and I told him that I didn't want to get married or have kids, I just wanted to live in the moment...I shouldn't have said it. Never tell a man that you don't want to get married when you really do. Now I am hitting thirty and I want kids but Irwin is of the mindset that he doesn't want any since I don't want any."

  She laughed and drove a little too fast for Colleen's taste.

  Colleen breathed a sigh of relief when they reached a gated complex in the hills of St Andrew that Renata said was Enrique's place.

  "Now whenever you come to Kingston, you can stay here." Renata opened the apartment and showed her around. "Now on to clothes shopping. I am liking this girls’ day out, aren't you?"

  Colleen nodded vigorously, trying to quell the headache that was throbbing behind her eyes.

  ****

  "So how is the day going?" Enrique asked her anxiously, three weeks later. He called her two, sometimes three, times a day. She was back in Whitehouse at the villa, with a new wardrobe and a new visa. She knew that was what he wanted to hear, so she decided to string him along a bit.

  "It was okay." Colleen walked out to the veranda and sat in one of the stuffed chairs. "The weather was awful in Kingston. Sometimes hot and sometimes..."

  "Colleen!" Enrique gritted. "Don't kill me with suspense."

  "I got it," Colleen squealed. "I got it!"

  "Thank God. I am booking your flight now," Enrique said, a note of relief in his voice. "I have missed you so much it isn't funny. How does tomorrow sound for a flight?

  "You move so fast," Colleen said. "I just got back from Kingston."

  "Then take the plane from Montego Bay," Enrique said. "Have Malik drop you at the airport. Pack light. When you get over here we can go shopping."

  Her life was a whirlwind, Colleen thought after she hung up the phone with Enrique. She went into the house and pulled out her brand new suitcase from the closet. Ever since she met Enrique there was no time to sit down and to just breathe.

  The past weeks Renata had taken to filling any dead spots in her day with a mass of activities. When she was not available Maureen filled the spot. She had no time to sit down and think and to assess. She liked to assess. She liked things to move slowly so that she could catch her breath.

  She headed to the kitchen got a drink and turned on the stereo. She realized that she hadn't listened to the radio in quite a while; she used to love doing that when she lived with Isaiah.

  She caught her breath. Isaiah. She hadn't thought about Isaiah for weeks. That was a world record.

  The song Missing You, Tina Turner's version, came on and she found herself feeling nostalgic for Enrique. She put down her drink and headed for the suitcase. She was really missing him.

  ****

  They were the happiest couple in the LaGuardia Airport when Colleen finally cleared customs. Enrique grabbed her to him so tightly that she felt as if some of her bones were going to crack.

  "You missed me," Colleen said when he eased the pressure hug.

  "Like the deserts miss the rain," Enrique grinned. "How was the flight? I wish I could have been there for your first plane ride."

  Colleen grinned. "It was okay. Uneventful. Quiet. I want to pee. Do you live near here?"

  Enrique grinned. "Near enough. I live in Tribeca. It's just twenty-five minutes away. Come on. Let’s get your bag and get out of here."

  "So this is my city," Enrique said after they drove for a while. She was looking through the window, her eyes round as
saucers. There was nothing in Jamaica to prepare her for this. Every building was so tall and imposing looking. There were so many things to see.

  "I was born here." Enrique entered the highway.

  "You were?" Colleen asked. "I never knew that."

  "Sorry, I never told you before. We are learning about each other bit by bit." Enrique switched lanes. "The Lopezes, my father's family, are old New Yorkers. My father left here for Jamaica after I was born. I was about three. My mom didn't like it here. Apparently she functions better in the island sunshine. My grandfather and his brothers still live here, though; you'll get to meet some of them."

  "I learn more about you every day," Colleen said, squeezing his hand.

  "We learn about each other." Enrique kissed her hand. "I hope you like it here." His mouth tightened. "I will make sure you like it. Three weeks without you was hellish. It’s as if you were always in my life."

  "I am sure I will like it here," Colleen said, looking through the window. "I know I will."

  *****

  Five days later, Colleen sat in the apartment and looked around at the white walls and the splashes of color and expensive furniture and felt lost. There was a beautiful view of the Hudson River and Gardens, which she could see clearly through the floor to ceiling windows.

  The three-bedroom apartment had an open concept living room-kitchen space. She could stand near one of the windows and look around at everything. The apartment was tastefully and professionally furnished. She felt overwhelmed; maybe it had something to do with the rain and the fact that it had rained on and off since she got there.

  The place only felt even remotely like home when Enrique got back in the afternoons. In her five days there he had to fly to another state and she had sat in the dark living room, feeling lonely and displaced for the whole evening.