by Mary Hogan
“Am I right?” I asked. “A must-see?”
Rising into the sky like a pile of glowing Christmas gifts were thirty rectangular towers of various heights. The Alhambra—the palace of Muslim kings—and the stone fortress of the Alcazaba within it, occupied the entire mountaintop. Its celestial color—a shade between pink and orange—was a stunning reflection of Spain’s luminescence. Light unlike any other.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Paul rub his knees.
“You okay?” I asked.
He nodded. Then he said, “Mind if I sit this one out?”
“What? Why?”
“My sixty-seven-year-old body is saying hello.”
I swallowed a groan and arranged my features into a compassionate look. “Want me to stay with you?” God forgive me, I didn’t mean it.
“Of course not.” Paul probably didn’t mean that, either. “Go,” he said. “Be inspired. I’ll be right here when you get back.”
Of that there was no doubt. My Paul was a there sort of guy.
“Speed through!” I said, gaily, waving goodbye.
With the sun high and white, I marched up the cobblestoned hill, bought a ticket, stepped through the giant carved wood door of the Alhambra palace and lost my breath. As the kings had planned. From floor to ceiling, every inch was decorated with swirling blue and yellow geometric tiles, plaster wall carvings as intricate as lace, horseshoe arches, eddies of wood inlay in vaulted ceilings, slender columns with capitals bursting in vegetal glory, engraved Islamic inscriptions. Spain’s diverse history before my eyes. Not to mention the mind-blowing view of the Sierra Nevada and the whole of Granada below. I took a thousand pictures before racing back down the hill.
To Paul. My there kind of guy.
Chapter Eight
IT WAS A HEAVENLY ENDING TO A DIVINE TRIP. THE SMOOTH Andalusian highway was a straight shot to Granada’s Federico García Lorca airport. With Paul at the wheel, we gave ourselves plenty of time to catch the flight. Cracking the window an inch, I inhaled the hot Spanish air.
“Do you have that map?” Paul darted a glance from the driver’s seat.
“What map?”
“The rental-car guy gave us a map.”
“I thought the airport was a straight shot?”
“It is. I think. I want to be sure. I haven’t seen a sign in a while.”
I checked the glove box, the center console, the backseat. Nothing. Our packed suitcases were stowed in the trunk. I bit down on a flash of impatience. If my husband hadn’t known how to get to the airport, shouldn’t he have made sure the map was in the car? Shouldn’t we have ponied up the extra cash for a GPS? Or a prepaid cell phone with international service?
“I have to pee,” I said, curtly. “Pull off at the next exit and I’ll run into a café and ask.”
Paul hesitated. A cliché male, he hated to ask for directions. Even when it was me who did the asking.
“Or we could take a leisurely drive to Gibraltar?”
In silence, Paul flicked on the blinker and crossed over to the far-right lane. At the next exit, he left the highway. He wound around a corkscrew loop that deposited us onto a congested street. Orange construction cones detoured traffic into a bottleneck. Horns honked. My bladder puffed up like an overinflated life raft, pressing against the nerves.
“There.” With a waggling finger, I pointed to the first café I saw. Its sad chiffon curtains let me know we were on the outskirts of a town. A jackhammer pummeled the pavement nearby. The air smelled of tar.
“Crap. No parking,” Paul said.
“Parking? Just pull over. I’ll run in and run out.”
A muddled look clouded Paul’s face. Irritated, I snapped, “Shall I pee into the seat?” Adiós to my good mood.
Inciting a cacophony of horns and Spanish gestures, Paul pulled into an alley next to the café and stopped. He rose both eyebrows at me as if to say, “Happy?” Then he pointed to a sign that read, “No estacionar.” No parking. Already out of the car, my hands flew into the air.
“Circle around, then. I’ll be out in five minutes.”
Leaving my purse on the floor of the passenger seat, I ran for the entrance to the café. A bell jangled on the glass door. Inside, the air smelled of steamed milk.
“¿Baño, por favor?”
“Solo para clientes.” The young woman behind the high counter regarded me blandly. She had a possum face with tiny features crowded into the center of it. Eyes large and round and black. There was only one customer in the café, a man hunched over greasy fried eggs.
“Espresso, por favor.” A small price to pay for a (hopefully) clean bathroom. The possum flicked her head toward the stairs. I took them two by two. Without taking the time to lock the bathroom door, I unzipped my jeans with hands flapping like a hummingbird’s wings. Yanking down my underpants, I landed on the toilet at the exact moment my bladder let go.
When I returned downstairs, relief flooding my face, a miniature white cup on a coaster-sized saucer waited on the glass counter. A curl of lemon peel sat like a piglet’s tail beside it.
“Muchas gracias,” I said on the exhale. “¿Cuánto cuest—? Oh.”
Only then did I remember that my purse was still in the car. “Mi, um, wallet, con mi marido . . . en el coche.” I pointed outside. “¿Momentito?”
The possum shrugged lazily. “Life,” she seemed to say in her Spanish way, “isn’t as serious as everyone makes it out to be.”
Leaving the espresso on the counter, I hurried outside.
Paul wasn’t in front. I turned to look in the alley. So vivid was my expectation of seeing him idling there, I could feel the heat of the chrome handle on my curled fingers, hear the hyena cry of the car door as it swung open, smell the refrigerator cool of the air conditioner.
He wasn’t in the alley, either.
Traffic rumbled past. Sunlight bounced off oncoming windshields. I stared down the one-way street, listening for a tooting horn, watching for the flash of a waving hand.
Our rental car was white, wasn’t it? Or was it a light gray?
The Spanish sun bore down on my head. I was wearing airplane attire: loafers, cushioned socks, jeans, a thick long-sleeved shirt. Flying always made me cold. Now, sweat prickled my back. The shadow of a headache lurked behind my eye. Are you kidding me? Two weeks of guzzling red wine and I get a headache now? Before a transatlantic flight?
The possum stepped over to the café window, her expression cloudy with suspicion. I slapped one hand over my heart. “Lo siento,” I called out. I raised my forefinger and repeated, “Momentito.” A full euro tip for her, I thought. Maybe all of our excess change?
If Paul didn’t get there soon, it would be too late for me to take the sumatriptan I had in my purse. In this heat, a headache could morph into a migraine in minutes. I had to catch it before it grew beyond the point of no return. Judge Paul Agarra was so damned law and order, he was unable to park in a no-parking zone for five minutes? Didn’t the policía have better things to do than ticket a husband waiting for his wife to pee?
Anger began to roil like lava. Where the hell was he?
Is that him?
That’s him!
No, that’s not him.
In two-minute increments, I waited. Is that him? No. Damn. I racked my brain for the make of our rental car. Golf? Or had I seen the Peugeot logo? It was a lion, right? Or was it a bear? Rubbing the pulsing vein on my temple, I beat myself up for not paying attention at the rental-car desk. When did I become a woman who blindly followed a man?
Fifteen more minutes passed, then twenty, then thirty. Then, who knows how long? Spikes of pain jabbed at my temple. Fear overtook my anger. With each passing moment, I felt sicker. Something awful had happened. Sometimes you just know. If Paul had a flat tire, he would fix it and show up; if he smashed the car, he would leave it for the tow truck and show up; if he felt dizzy, he would stumble down the sidewalk and show up; if he had a heart attack, he would wake up in the emerg
ency room, yank out his IV, call a cab, leave the hospital in his flapping gown, and show up. My husband would crawl on his hands and knees to get to me. Never would he leave me standing on a corner unless he was unconscious or worse. Of that, I had no doubt. None.
My job was to stay put. Be the constant variable.
I watched. I waited. My headache was gone. In its place, the dark tentacles of a migraine wrapped themselves around the veins in my temple and squeezed. A sucker on one of its pointed tips attached itself to the back of my eye and pulsed like a festering sore.
Chapter Nine
PANIC ENGULFED MY BODY. MY WHOLE HEAD HURT. FRANTIC instructions flew through my mind: call Isaac, call John, call Pet Camp. Nearly two hours had passed. We’d missed our flight to Málaga. Soon, we’d miss the flight home. I’d already dashed into the café to ask the possum to call the police. “Mi marido,” I’d sputtered, trying not to burst into panicked sobbing. “Él es sesenta y siete.”
Sesenta was sixty and setenta was seventy, wasn’t it?
The possum nodded and I ran back outside.
Is that him? No. Him?
John should be informed, shouldn’t he? Would he fly over from Boston? Should I ask him to? Would he call his mother? I could picture Brenda stomping into Spain in her Birkenstocks, smelling of lotus incense. She would make it all about her.
“Whenever Paul and I traveled, we spent time together.”
In a sickening realization, I remembered that John’s number—along with everyone else’s—was in my phone, in my purse, in the car where my husband was probably trapped, waiting for the jaws of life. What the hell was the name of John’s company? Something Interface? Acid churned in my gut, burning waves of dread. I was an awful stepmother. A terrible wife. Bad things happened to people over sixty. Did Spanish hospitals take our insurance? How could I contact anyone without money, a credit card, a passport?
My migraine jabbed at my face like a stiletto blade.
Just then, red lights flashed in my eyes. A blue-and-white police cruiser pulled into the alley and stopped. Two male officers stepped out. I ran to them. In a jumble of Spanish and English and some accidental French, I explained what had happened. We were on our way to the airport, I had to use the bathroom. My husband was circling around. He was hurt. We’d missed our flight. I’d been standing on that corner for hours.
They stared as if they didn’t understand.
“Tengo, um, um . . . fear. ¿Una heart attack, peut être? ¿Accidente? Hospitals?”
“¿Se fue al aeropuerto?” The older of the two officers crossed his arms in front of his chest. They both wore cornflower blue shirts and black pants.
“Did he go to the airport? Is that what you’re asking?”
“Sí.”
“No. Of course not.”
“¿Cuánto tiempo has estado casada?”
I stared, baffled.
“Husband,” he said in fractured English, “marry muchos años?”
“How long have I been married?”
“Sí.”
“Veinte y dos años. Twenty-two years.”
“¿Tal vez, él está con otra mujer?” Now, the younger officer chimed in. He slid his sunglasses atop his thick black hair.
“¿Otra mujer? Another woman? Is that what you’re asking? Has my husband run off with another woman? No! That’s crazy. Something awful has happened. I know my husband. He would crawl on his hands and knees to get to me. Por favor, I’m begging you, please call the hospital.”
The police radio attached to the older officer’s shoulder crackled. He stepped away. I felt my veins grow cold. I braced myself for bad news. When the officer returned, he mumbled something to his partner then turned to me. “Ven con nosotros.”
“Come with you?”
“Sí.”
“You’ve found him?”
“Sí, sí.”
I gasped. “Oh my God. Is he alive?”
“Sí. Ven.”
Exploding into tears, I flung my arms around both cops. I waved at the possum who’d stepped out onto the sidewalk. I pressed my palms over my heart. A gesture that I hoped said “Thank you” as well as “I’m sorry for not paying for the espresso.” I hadn’t touched it. Could she reheat it for the next customer? Use it for a cortado?
Scrambling into the backseat of the police car, I bit the inside of my cheek to stem the flow of tears. Not that it did. My cheeks were shiny wet. My nose ran. I wiped my face and nose on my sleeve. I didn’t care. My husband was alive. Even if he was paralyzed from the neck down or crippled by a stroke or in need of painful rehab, I would take care of him. If he needed my kidney, it was his.
“What happened?” I blubbered. “¿Accidente?”
The young officer swiveled his neck in my direction and said one word that would forever alter my marriage: aeropuerto.
“You’re telling me he’s at the airport?”
“Él ha estado allí durante más que dos horas.”
I didn’t need a Spanish lesson to understand what the police officer was telling me: Paul, my man, my there kind of guy, had been at the airport the whole time.
Chapter Ten
THROUGH A DIRTY WINDOW IN THE SUBTERRANEAN AIRPORT police station, I saw my husband sitting in a vinyl chair drinking coffee from a throwaway cup that read Saimaza. My rolling suitcase rested beside his against the wall. My purse hung from the back of his chair. Tears spurted from my eyes as I pushed through the glass door and ran to him, slapping my hands over his body to make sure he was real. “Are you okay? What happened?”
We threw our arms around each other. I wept into the mossy aroma of Paul’s shirt, the smell I thought would kill me if I never breathed it in again. “What happened? What happened?”
“Where were you?” Paul whispered into my hair.
“What?”
He repeated, “Where were you?”
When I pulled back, I noticed his dry eyes. The unsettling thought flared that he was working up tears. The way a baby does when he falls down and is more shocked than hurt.
“Where was I? What do you mean? I’ve been standing on the corner where you left me.”
Both police officers looked away. They were loitering in the background with the airport officers. Apparently, crime was low in Andalusia. The young officer quietly said something about the otra mujer.
“What happened, Paul?”
As abruptly as they’d started, my tears dried up.
“I tried to drive around the block,” he said. “There was construction. A detour. It was impossible to get back to where I was. I figured the one place you knew I would be was the airport.”
“What?”
“You know, because we had that flight.”
“What? You left me and drove to the airport?”
“I saw the airport sign when I tried to circle around. So I followed it. Because I knew you would know I was there.”
Unable to formulate words, I dropped both arms to my sides and stood with my mouth hanging open. Paul draped my purse strap over my shoulder and bent down to grip the handles on our rolling bags. He said, “There are commuter flights every hour at ten past. If we rush, we can make the next one.” He then rolled out of the police station without another word. I felt a cartoony sensation, as if I’d been whacked by a two-by-four and was vibrating back and forth. As if bluebirds were whistling around my head. Through the window, Paul waved me outside. He pointed to his wrist even though he wasn’t wearing a watch. In an unstable gait, I followed him. The Spanish cops stared at me. Were they waiting for a tip? I spluttered, “Gracias. Lo siento.”
Regarding me with pity, the older officer said in English, “Cell phones. Not expensive.”
Out the door I went, following Paul, my there kind of guy. Incredibly, his face was animated in a smile. “I told the airport police you were lost. That must be how they found you.”
On that warm afternoon, I felt my body grow cold.
“Lost? I wasn’t lost. I was standing where yo
u left me.”
We passed through the electronic doors into the airport. With purpose, Paul marched up to the ticket counter and said to the agent, “I found her!” To me, he said, “When I checked in to see if you’d boarded the plane, she was incredibly helpful.”
“You checked in?”
Paul didn’t answer. The female agent smiled and said, “I’m happy to see you’re okay, Mrs. Agarra.”
In a fog, I reached into my purse for my passport. Slowly, my brain began to process what I was hearing. While Paul bought two new plane tickets and chitchatted with the agent—“That Alhambra, what a sight. Have you been?”—I felt icicles form on my heart. I grabbed the handle of my rolling bag and pointed myself in the direction of the security line.
“Hold up, Fay.” Paul jogged to catch up. “We both have pre-check.”
The bright airport light hurt my eyes. By now, my migraine was part of me. As if I’d been born in pain and nausea and had known no other existence. In the short security line, I rubbed the stiff muscles in my neck.
“The rental car.”
“It’s okay,” Paul replied. “I returned it.”
“How much did they charge for the late fee?”
“Late fee?”
“It was due before one.”
“It’s okay. I made it in time.”
I nodded slowly.
“My purse.”
“I gave it to you. It’s right there.”
“You didn’t see it on the floor by the passenger seat?”
“I saw it when I returned the rental car.”
“On time.”
“Yes.”
“So, you knew then that I didn’t have money. Or a passport.”
Darkness descended over me. A slowly lowered blackout shade. Paul gaped, pug-eyed. “Don’t you think I’ve been through hell? I pounded my hands on the steering wheel. I tried to loop around. Don’t you think that tore me up? Why are you being like this? I said I was sorry. I tried to find you.”
“No.” My voice was spiked with ice shards.
