 
TWILIGHT BREAKOUT

A Novel

By

Robert Bonomo

May 2000

Cartagena

For Natasha

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2009 Robert Bonomo

Cover Image 'Self-portrait with Manao tu papau', oil on canvas, by Paul Gauguin, 1893

'Not for the proud man apart

From the raging moon I write

On these spendthrift pages

Nor for the towering dead

With their nightingales and psalms

But for the lovers, their arms

Round the griefs of the ages,

Who pay no praise or wages

Nor heed my craft or art.'

Dylan Thomas

SUMMER

CHAPTER 1

The whining hum of a vespino called up to him from the street, drawing him to the window and orient-ing the end of the day. A well-dressed mother arrogantly pushed a baby stroller, her dyed blonde hair pulled back behind dark glasses that angrily crossed her face. The clothes fell with the authority of money.

Towards her bounced a teenager, jeans hung low, the young body exposing the mother. With great effort the heavy shoes rose and returned to the pavement straining the young muscles. A cane broke through the metal frame of the window as the nymph left it.

The tight skin pulled at his face as if the air had been sucked out of him. The only life left came from the small red feather rising out of the black band wrapped around his gray hat. His feet didn't leave the ground. He stopped to take the last drag of a cigarette, a deep drag that burnt through to the butt. A whiff of him reached the fifth floor window.

The scream changed notes, announcing the im-pending arrival of the big bike. It took the street hostage, the red mask covering the face of the hunched figure atop the machine as it sped through the neigh-borhood.

Big hair and bodies accumulated under an unlit sign that was difficult to read in the diminishing day-light. 'George IV' flickered through the neon. They looked like athletes in street clothes. The Indian fea-tures distinguished them from other pedestrians while the lone Iberian face lifted a shutter and unlocked the door. A few of the faces were familiar. Into the win-dow frame moved a policeman, raising the tension without consequence. His weapon moved sloppily on the hip, greasy hair escaped from under a dirty cap, the girls not raising their heads. The law's head made a slight turn. Four thin legs in very tight black jeans moved toward him, slightly hunched over, pathetically thin arms hanging out of the dirty shirts. The dark stains under both their eyes were visible from the window. The de-sexed pair, still under the spell of pleasure passed, defiant and distant, by the glance of the law.

He moved closer to the window, the bakery, fruit shop and old men in the bar playing cards coming into view. The bright green light of the pharmacy now il-luminating the near darkness, from under the ground came an anxious stampede. They broke the spell. The frustration infiltrating the street, their hunger and thirst evident. The money earned giving them no hope. He began to pull back from the window when something caught him, gripped him like a giant hand and dragged him back.

The big belt held the jeans around the thin hips, his head moving out of the window as he looked, his focus intense yet unintentional. A bolt of energy as she looked up, a quick glance that brought him a smile, a big smile, the first smile in a while, he was finally somewhere else. Her expression opening as she stood and stared, two faces meeting for a moment. Then she was gone, out of his view and into the great void.

The respite was short, making the return all the worse. The musty room, almost dark, swimming in sentimentality and desperation. The three-quarters-full bottle called from the shelf. It should do the trick for one more day. He didn't want to move, or think or lis-ten or watch. No, he was only in a mood to remember.

CHAPTER 2

I turned over, not wanting to wake up, the cheap sheets warm and rough. The poorly made bed coming apart. I was far enough along and I knew I wouldn't be able to get back to sleep. It was too early, but I didn't want to look at the red numbers, which I would see if I turned my head. The thirst returned. I had been dream-ing of drinking water. The three was clear, the minutes where hidden behind the brown water in the plastic cup. Sleep would be patient in returning.

With the pants from my suit on I walked down the hallway barefoot and bought two grape sodas. More ice in another plastic cup, the purple liquid squeaked between my teeth, quenching the thirst on my tongue while increasing it in my chest. The heat came from inside; it was too soon after the act to have a hangover, but I did, and until the internal oven was turned off I wouldn't get back to sleep.

The same double plays, the difference in state mak-ing them seem from a week ago, not three hours ago. Keys jangled with sloppy footsteps, very close, stabbing at my door. I would let him figure it out. The batting averages became stock prices. They talked about money as if it were the Super Bowl, which only made it worse. The sheets were stiff and moist. I was still hot and the thoughts of money made me nervous. With a pen and pad stamped with the hotel chain logo I began to write a list of numbers. I had been living on more than I earned for as long as I could remember and it was starting to interfere with my sleep.

Planning for me has always consisted of making up reasonable excuses for what I had already done. The numbers on a hotel pad were no different, but as Mass can sometimes soothe the soul of the unbeliever; I hoped the calculations would let me sleep. I forced the column to add up to my monthly net and felt the heat leaving. The sheets were softer and I found a movie on HBO that seemed like an advertisement for Sony. I didn't have a house like that and I never ate breakfast with anyone, it was Steven Spielberg world. The sleep gently rolled over me. I would cancel my appointment tomorrow, and with that thought I finally fell off.

CHAPTER 3

I looked down at the two plastic cups, one a faint yellow, the remnants of Bourbon with ice water, the other stained purple on the bottom.

"Yes, I'm sorry Tim, I've got a real problem at the hot dog plant in Palatka. I'll mail that sample to you." It was only a courtesy call anyway. "I'll take you to lunch my next time through." Thursday and a free slate through the weekend. Freedom. She was in the office at her desk, as usual. She would love dinner.

Five to twelve, my Ford Taurus the only company car still in the parking lot, no line at the checkout. A mysterious face from the subcontinent looked at me clad in the hotel uniform, only adding to the allure. The dark skin blended into a yellow in the white of her eyes. She seemed pliable and soft and I stared at her longer and harder than I should have. Liz.

"Mr. Lynch, that will be $89.64 please." She looked up at me then down in a girlish way. I couldn't help but smile. She showed me her white teeth behind big rare lips.

*

The saw-grass filled the horizon like the sea, the fenced-in highway guarding against the fierce nature hidden in the swamp. Five alligators sunned themselves together above a drainage canal on their side of the fence, dark clouds looming miles away above the coast of South Florida. I approached home out of the miles of nothingness enjoying the thought of the long weekend I had carved out. Monday seemed as far off as the budget I had written the night before and that I was going to part from that very evening.

The near edge of the dark cloud moved through a bright white sky. I looked forward to the downpour and the premature darkness it would surround me with, washing away the bad night and its worries. I lost my-self in a Marlins game on the radio, the studied pitch of the voices reassuring, the baseball banter hypnotizing me in the pouring rain.

*

I passed empty offices in the hallway, glancing at her as she read. The tired eyes behind the wire rimmed glasses, a few blonde hairs by her cheeks rebelling from the mass that was pulled back and hung in a short pony-tail. She seemed much more controlled and at peace than I could ever be. I was glad I had called her. "Ker-ry, almost done."

"Close the door." She tossed a pen on the desk, a fragile approach behind the glasses, a sad walk. "I'm all done. I was waiting for you." She probably looked better now than she ever had. The first signs of deca-dence in her face maximized her morbidity while announcing the eminent physical demise. "Todd's go-ing to stay with my mother tonight."

*

The room was dark with a slanted ceiling and walls lined with semi-full bookshelves. Serious, well-paid, smocked waiters navigated through the artificial room, steaks in hand. The tension of the miles was fading through the Merlot. My prime rib arrived bloody while I listened to Kerry talk about Todd's school. I was glad she had gotten the reproduction bug out of her system so she could play for something other than a future hus-band.

Kerry was the first woman I ever dated who didn't have any serious vices and could hold a job, the novelty of which fascinated me. Most serious women smelled something within seconds and would run for cover. When Kerry called back I followed through, knowing I would find something. But I never did and finally re-signed myself to the fact that she was the exception.

I stared at the crow's feet moving around her eyes looking for signs of irony, but she really believed and cared about what she was talking about and my search-ing expression left her thinking I was too. I was simply amazed that a person could be so interested in what a third grade teacher said. A merciful pause let me change the subject. "So, Kerry, what do you think about this stock market, it looks like it will never stop." She was a CPA, lingering worries.

"It doesn't seem like it's going to change anytime soon, people keep putting money in mutual funds, and the funds have to buy stocks, it's supply and demand."

"But what I don't understand is how company like IBM or GM can be worth twenty-five percent more this year than last year." I didn't know what I was talking about, and I was more interested in the Marlin's than the stock market, but I knew that Kerry felt good eating a steak and talking about money so I played along.

"You have to think of their value as investments over a certain period of time, not strictly their book val-ues." Why was this woman with me? A Republican accountant six years my senior, with an eight year old son.

"I was thinking maybe the markets are anticipating Bill losing to the Republicans, and all the tax cuts they're going to give when they get in." We never real-ly argued about politics and she could never have suspected what I really thought, but I liked nudging up real close to the enemy, drinking his booze and screw-ing his women.

"Bill Clinton has probably been one of the most fiscally responsible presidents we have had in a long time, it's easier for him since he is a Democrat." The Republicans are like the Cowboys, they never lose and even if they do, they're still America's team. The prime rib had come apart as if it were held together with Velcro, cold and red in the center, and washed back with a good wine. I was feeling too good to get upset about politics, apple pie and a Courvesier. It was my treat even though I couldn't afford it.

*

She had bought a new bottle of Maker's since I had polished off the last one. It made me a little nervous but I resolved to enjoy the content of the bottle and not the intentions behind its purchase. She talked about the house; I could probably be doing better.

"I'm thinking about having the bathroom redone, and putting tile down in the living room." The drinks were starting to catch up to me and I had the sudden urge to make a break for it, call some friends and maybe make a night of it. She wouldn't say anything now but she would later, especially after putting the kid up with her mother. I thought about the sex, chances were if I left it would be a dry night, 'console yourself with the sex.'.

"My mother said she knows a good plumber who could do the bathroom, but she told me the South American's were the best at putting tile down."

"The Julio's are great at that stuff." I got a, we think that don't say that stare, it was bound to happen. The right woman talking about caulking a toilet bowl could set a forest fire, but I had one of those clear mo-ments when you know, in the end, they all wind up being like Kerry.

CHAPTER 4

The rain was torrential. I held the rail on the bus looking at the exotic faces and bracing for sharp turns. The rain fell through an emerging sun. The city was strange, somewhere in Southeast Asia, I didn't know where, but I felt good. I got off the bus and found the car I had been using, the rain began again, a light driz-zle. I drove fast on the deserted double highway, suddenly realizing I was lost. I turned around and be-gan driving back to the city, seeing a golf course off to the right.

The fairways were completely covered in water. I took a small rowboat and rowed up the first fairway, spotting an alligator to my right. I confidently swerved the boat close to him to give him a scare; he backed up than began to slowly follow me, ten feet behind the boat, and getting closer. Terrified, I punched him on the snout with the paddle. The enormous creature retreat-ed, only to return with his mouth open, teeth raised like a footballer coming in for a nasty tackle. I hit him again, he retreated less. I hit him again and he barely moved back.

*

I knew he was looking at me. He had one leg tucked under the other and his little shoe was resting on the bench seat of the company car. The orange trees flew by as we sped across central Florida. He felt at home with the Pizza Huts and the Burger Kings, this was his country, Midwest monotony conquering an en-tire nation. Ft. Wayne, Indiana, and the way he said it, made me think of 300 pound women with pies in their hands. "So, John, don't you ever get tired of all the heat down here?"

"No, I'm used to it." He was definitely getting at something, no loose talk for Harry.

"It must be hard to put a suit on every day in this heat, with the beach so close." I felt like saying I a spent the whole day on the beach drinking Margaritas when he wasn't traveling with me. What he lacked in subtleness he made up for in persistence.

"I put up with it." I turned and looked him in the eye, he gave me a forced smile. I felt like crushing him.

"Back in Ft. Wayne I saw a bag of chick peas that was sold with a spice pack in it. It was in a little plastic bag, the company name I can't remember, but the city was Claremont, which is..." He fingered the map, his beady eyes glistening through glasses, lips tucked deep in concentration, "about thirty miles from here up I-4, let's take a look in a grocery store to get the name again. I wish I had brought the bag down with me." He was all business and he was making a lot of money. I was still on salary; my commissions didn't add up to my draw and probably never would. I was getting by, badly, but getting by on what I made and wasn't going to kill myself to make more. Harry lived for his com-mission reports, savoring them as if they were they were porno magazines. "John, you're young, you have a great territory, a territory with an enormous potential, if you work hard, follow up, find reasons to see the big accounts, you can make a lot of money. If you could get just one of the big chains in your area, Burger King, Arby's, Miami Subs, Kenny Roger's Roasters, their seasoning business would put you way into commis-sions. It could mean a lot of money. The small accounts like the one we're after now add up and with just one big one you are made." I couldn't get excited about the new Burger King cream cheese dip for their chicken fingers. One day they would figure that out.

"It's so true. I'm really behind those big accounts. I think one will fall in the next year. I told you about the Bourbon rib sauce we've been working on in the lab for Kenny Rogers Roasters, it's really exciting." I was making myself nauseous, but better to keep the boss lubricated. The smile was almost bursting from his face.

"You know John, even what were doing now, I mean think about it, investigating a lead I picked up in Ft. Wayne, it's really exciting. I can't believe they are paying us to do this." At night, with the wife snoring at his side, awake and looking at the ceiling, did he really believe it? I looked at him but could see nothing be-hind those little eyes and bleached lips.

"It really is." We pulled into a McDonald's drive-in to by him another coffee. At the window an enor-mous ass stared at me, then slowly maneuvered its way around until I saw a face. This man drank coffee all day, the capitalist drug; they want you to drink it and work like hell.

We arrived to the warehouse after having bought a bag of the chickpeas with seasoning. Harry gave me one of his smiles as he got out of the car; he came up to my shoulders. A slight tick snapped his head back as he looked at the secretary. "Hi, I'm Harry Irvin from the Maryland Spice Company. I saw your spice packets in the chick peas, and I was curious as to who made the packets for you."

"You'd have to talk to Skip." The jeans rose tall and wide around her thick body. She was used to salesman.

"Is Skip the manager?"

"Skip's the owner, he'll be back on Friday." She was done but Harry wasn't.

"Do you do other types of spice packets, say for lentils or pinto beans?" His head bounced as he spoke, no shame in the face of money.

"Sure, we do a couple."

"Could I see them?" The phone rang and she start-ed talking to a trucking company while looking for something on her desk. Harry stared at her and waited. The tension grew as she looked up, but Harry didn't turn to leave. He wanted his lentils. I stood in the mar-gin, curious as to how far he would go, either he didn't feel it or he didn't care. She finally put her hand over the phone.

"Like I said, Skip will be back on Friday." She handed him a card off the desk. He smiled and turned away. Persistence and a thick skin are what make salesman money and Harry had all three.

*

The silence was long and painful; he used it to wear me down and it was working. The beer hit my throat like a hand on a breast. We had been together four long days and the only thing left was to drive him back the next morning. He was on to me, but I just didn't know by how much. He would choose his mo-ment, getting it over with quickly was not his style; I was going to have to wait for him.

"You know the place we have in Naples, there are quite a few alligators, especially on the golf course around the water. They don't attack people too often, do they?" Lucky for me he didn't have a poker face; he and Carol were really worried about it. "A friend told Carol and I that to escape them you need to run away in a zigzag." Not even a hint of a smile. I was imagining a fifteen-foot gator biting chunks out of their asses as they ran zigzag through a sand trap.

"Just don't slip." Finally a little grin. I really hated him, but I needed coal to keep the flame of hatred strong and bright. "Harry, what do you think of Clinton sending troops to Bosnia?"

"For a draft dodger he is pretty quick on the trig-ger. I don't think I would want to get mixed up in that mess."

"It's kind of depressing though, don't you think, people getting massacred, genocide. I mean, think about all the money we spend on defense, for what?"

"It's just not our war, the Democrats love getting us in wars, look at Vietnam." He observed my guard go down. I was on my third beer and licking the last of my ribs. "Dave and I were talking about your territo-ry." Dave was the President of Maryland Spice Company. "And we are concerned about your follow up. We feel like you have not be giving the large ac-counts the necessary attention." I should have just taken it, but the beer rose and I squinted.

"For example."

"Well John, Kenny Roger's Roasters. You took a very long time to send in the barbecue sauce sample, and your weekly reports shows you had it three weeks before you gave it to them."

Someone should do the world a favor and bomb all the headquarters of fast food chains. I thought it but at least I didn't say it. I was far away, with the perspec-tive to see how ridiculous it was for two grown men to spend an evening together talking about the new Bour-bon-flavored Kenny Roger's Roasters barbecue sauce. Harry was right, but I couldn't give in.

"Harry, the technical support person who I have contact with, and who is very happy with our work, asked me to give him a few weeks once I had the sam-ple. They were reviewing all the quality control procedures for their suppliers. I believed him and I waited. I trust my customers and I feel confident enough with them to not have to force them."

"He's not a customer yet. But that's not the point, in general, if you work harder at those accounts, you will get one of them, but you have to make more calls, you have to be more persistent." Another forced smile. I looked at him and he waited. I wasn't going to say anything.

"We're in a growth market, people now have got to work longer and harder than ever before, most women have to work, everyday people are buying more pre-pared foods and are eating out more. This means more seasonings and spices. If you can make good customers now, the hardest part is done. You can later just take care of them and grow with them. Think of a Burger King, if you can become an approved supplier, then help them develop a new sauce for their chicken fingers for example, that could quadruple your salary for five or six years." I was supposed to be excited. Not that it bothered me to get rich on people gorging themselves with fast food. I could care less. Months to develop a new chip seasoning, maybe try to duplicate someone's ketchup seasoning, it was ridiculous. The surging ex-pression on my face must have resembled something like pity, when it was really disgust for this man and his existence.

"You keep at it and you will see results. Dave is going to send you to Spain again; he wants you to do some buying. He has a list of paprika suppliers he wants you to see, and you're also going to see an R&D center for a group that is thinking about breaking into the US market." I didn't want to let him see how satis-fied I was. He was looking for a reaction, after a long pause he continued. "It should be about a ten day trip."

CHAPTER 5

The late summer light was gentle on the manicured lawns and new cars. The new neighborhoods hypno-tized me into driving slowly and carefully. Kerry would have loved it, but they made me nervous; they were the perfect disguise for poorer, tackier pasts full of rental complexes and credit card debt.

From behind the green door appeared the puffy cheeks and soft hands of one of my best clients, Ste-phen Green. The fat on his wrists bulged around the gold watch with diamond studs and more diamonds glittered on a gold ring circling his manicured finger. "Welcome to our house, John." He planted the crutch and slowly raised the heavy cast, pointing with his head for me to walk through the hallway. An enormous sunken living room opened out of the hall; textured, wood framed furniture subtlety filled the space and very large windows showed the golf course through wooden walls. The kitchen above the living room opened onto it, creating one large space.

"John, how are you?" She said with a genuine smile and a strong Canadian accent. Her skin was deli-cate and shiny; her hair pulled back while her body seemed like it would burst through her clothes. A sweet voice and manners finished off a woman in her mid-forties who was absolutely at the height of her powers. She must have been stunning as a girl, but now she had a grace that met her age. I would normally have avoided an evening with Stephen, but since meet-ing her, I decided to accept.

"Hi Joyce." I attempted to put as much into a sim-ple smile as I could. When I had taken them to dinner she had worn a long skirt, the perfume was cutting without being sweet, but I was left with a doubt as to her shape below the waist.

"Would you like a Canadian Lager?"

"Great." She left a head on the beer and brought it down from the kitchen, the arc on the pants was ideal. I was glad I came. She offered her cheek with arms spread, beer in one hand and plate of cheese and sar-dines in the other.

"I love the house, it's great."

"Joyce has worked non-stop for months on it. She did the wallpapering, the painting, everything, and she has been taking care of me on top of it." He had metal coming out of the cast. I hadn't seen him since he fell of the roof off the house but I had been told he was close to having lost use of the foot.

"You look like you're doing OK."

"Thanks, I needed someone to tell me that, it has been a long journey, but I think I'm going to finally make it." The streets of Brooklyn were a distant echo in his voice, the words a little too well chosen. I hand-ed Joyce the bottle of Rioja and she walked back to the kitchen after giving me an approving smile, a quick glance at the mature yet firm rear filled me with pleas-ure as I sat next to Stephen and readied myself for business.

"Well John, we are here for business as well as pleasure, and we do have some pending issues."

"Listen, Stephen, on the million pounds of ground number one mustard, you wanted $.205 delivered, right?"

"John, that's the price I need, and I like you and I like Maryland Spice, but if you go higher I'll have to look around." His face exaggerated his words. I would act like an asshole for his benefit.

"Stephen, they told me to fight like hell for the half penny, but I'm not going to jack you around, $.205 de-livered."

"OK, I appreciate your honesty, but we are not done." I was starting to feel ridiculous again. "You told me it was steam treated, no ethylene oxide. This is very important. It was my key selling point, it is going into a salami and the Quality Control person wants nothing to do with ethylene oxide." Ethylene oxide is used to bacteria treat spices in the US, it is banned in Europe and Japan because they consider it a carcinogen. I had said that it was steam treated, but later found out it was treated with EO. Harry told me to lie, that they would never know the difference.

"I can guarantee you that it is steam treated, we are committed as a company to getting away from ethylene oxide. Should I have them write up the contract.?"

"Please, have it sent Next Day. I want to have the price secured. Have you seen Raj lately?" Raj was his West Indian ex-partner.

"Had lunch with him. I think I'm going to sell him some mustard flower, how are things going for him?"

"Great, and I'm his biggest fan. I want him to do well because I still have an interest in the company; I bought the house and the BMW from what he has al-ready paid me. Let me show you the rest of the house." He hopped up.

"It's all right. I can see it later."

"No, I insist. I need to walk some anyway." He was proud of the house, too proud of it, and I wasn't looking forward to the tour. "I bought the house from Tommy Anderson, the tail-back for the Bucs, he got traded and I got a good deal." He showed me every detail, ending with an explanation of an enormous ste-reo. He put on a Mandy Potemkin Broadway CD full blast, and then he looked at me while I listened, admir-ing my puzzled expression.

The table was impeccably set, cut slices of a pot roast rested on top of each other while Stephen's plate had a chicken breast, some steamed vegetables and a small salad beside it. "Stephen has to watch what he eats, but you coming was an excuse for me to break the rules a little bit."

"Darling, I don't really know how you can fill yourself with so much saturated fat."

"It's just one night." She and I were healthy and hungry and he was starving and fat. I wondered why she was with him; he was wealthy but so were a lot of people.

"You're Canadian, Joyce, is that right."

"Yes, John, from Nova Scotia. I grew up in a very rural environment; my father was a lumber jack.

"Do you ever go back, I mean you must miss it. I understand it's beautiful."

"It really is, it's a very different life, we had ani-mals, a garden in the summer, it was much simpler." She had me completely confused while Stephen looked on with a blank stare.

"How did you meet?" Fair question I thought, the pot roast was tender and juicy. Joyce and I drank wine while Stephen stuck to bottled mineral water. They were one of those couples that have choreographed how they answer certain questions, this one was clearly his and it came out like a comedy routine in a hotel bar.

"I was working in Toronto for General Mustard. I was the national sales manager. I was in a large super-market with my grocery cart trying some olives, Joyce put her olives in my cart and left, we didn't realize we had each other's groceries until we got home. We called the store, exchanged phone numbers to return the gro-ceries and that's how it all started." I laughed as naturally as I could, wondering how many times he had told it and what she now thought of it.

"Here comes the proud mother."

"Now Stephen, I just want to show John the new catalog, it's a mother's right. This is my son Danny who's a model, and this is the latest catalog that he's in." He was as handsome as she was beautiful and I immediately knew he was from a previous marriage.

"He's really making headway. I think he is going to have a future."

"John, this is a very nice wine." She said it without presumption.

"I can tell from the color, it's a fine wine. I have a large collection, it's in a wine refrigerator in the garage. I'll show it to you later."

"But can you drink?"

"Once in a while, I just don't make a habit of it. I subscribe to a few magazines and I try to keep up on the latest trends."

"Stephen is a real connoisseur."

"I have just tried some fantastic wines from Israel, really wonderful, weren't they Joyce?"

"Very good." She sensed a need to change the subject. "Tell me John, what did you get your degree in?" She knew the answer.

"Biology, but I never really used it. I came close to getting a second BA in American Lit, two classes left."

"Really, I was an English major. I still teach." A bond was created, mentally and physically and she was scared by how obvious it was.

"Let's sit on the porch for coffee."

"Offer John a drink dear." She smiled at me as she said it. We had finished the bottle of wine and she could smell the desire in me. She was used to my kind.

"What would you like?"

"A Jack Daniels on the rocks would be great."

We sat on the now-dark deck. Joyce left with three dogs, his leg was up and I was sipping my drink, grateful that he couldn't see my face in the dark night. "John, if you don't mind me asking, how much is Maryland paying you."

"Forty-six plus the car." I told the truth for no rea-son.

"I know you have a lot of good spice clients and I'm sure you want to be loyal to Maryland, but if you have any that you can't get for price or for other reasons I could be of help. I've been talking to some old friends at Indian Spice and they have offered me a very interesting brokering deal for spices, any business you send my way directly or by giving me the lead I can give you eight percent." I wondered how Harry would have responded. I didn't trust Stephen at all, but then I didn't trust anyone.

"It's an interesting offer Stephen, right now I can't think of anyone in particular, but I'll keep it in mind." I had thought of three buyers who bought only on price and I was calculating how much 8% of their business would be.

"If you're not going to be able to get the business for Maryland there is no harm sending it my way."

"Sure, I'm helping a customer of Maryland which is good for Maryland." I couldn't see his face in the dark but I imagined the moist smile of corruption.

"Of course I would never mention this and you shouldn't either. It could hurt you down the line." His soft, sticky threat was grossly intimidating. I sucked on a piece of ice from my second Jack on the rocks and decided to call it a night.

"I apologize for not showing you to the door, the foot is beginning to bother me, thank you for sharing a dinner with us. We really enjoyed your company." The silence was heavy as I walked slightly behind Joyce. We turned into a hallway that left the patio distant and invisible, entering a tall wide foyer that couldn't escape being kitsch. The smell of her hair mingled with her perfume and a lightness attacked me from my chest to my loins.

"I had a very nice evening, thank you very much." She leaned forward to give me a kiss on the cheek, my palm instinctively lowered to touch her waist but landed on her ribs, sending a jolt through me. She looked up, my hand palming her rib cage.

"Drive safely." I had come dangerously close to moving my hand up, but money is money.

CHAPTER 6

I savored the coffee after a full breakfast in a Cu-ban version of a diner. Spanglish out of the mouths of bottled blondes with large rears and sour faces clad in a cheap replica of a Denny's uniform. I was on the page before the horoscopes debating whether to skip them while I spread jelly on my last piece of toast. Once on the horoscope page I dodged them, finally reading Ar-ies but not looking at Gemini.

I was afraid of the horoscopes. If it was bad and something went wrong early in the day I would become paranoid, driving badly and generally being a wreck. I had no choice. I was too close to it to leave it.

Gemini (May 22 - June 21)

Health problems could be on the horizon. Watch out at work.

An old flame could reappear igniting a dormant passion.

I knew I shouldn't have read it. I paid silently, "Thank you." being a little too much for the recent im-migrant to get out of her frown. The uncontrolled steaming sprawl of Miami overcame me and the car drove itself north. There was only one old flame and she returned, a pleasant and constant memory back after a long respite. She arrived sweet and I felt her in my forehead and in my arms, for a moment I imagined I could think of her forever. The strip malls became palm trees and the highway suddenly lifted up into the sky. I rose with little traffic on the interstate above the squalor towards the high-rises of downtown.

I saw the eyes when I thought of her, the pro-nounced puffiness under them left a cloud of sadness over what was otherwise a sweet face. She had the ar-rogance of a beautiful woman, which matured to season the inherent soft ways. The exit was approaching rapid-ly, less than ten seconds to decide. A quick look right and the car swerved across two lanes to the exit . Once descended to the street I was full of doubt.

I had been interested in many women, interests that could last months and even occupy most of my thoughts, but I knew they had no magic potion to make me happy; it was sex and company and maybe a few laughs. There was a time I believed that a woman could give me bliss, pure, palpable happiness, and this was the woman who was going to give it to me. María Begoña Eguren, Begoña. I hadn't seen her in over three years and only knew where she worked through a friend. I parked in the building and walked across a large patio, the doors intimidating me into having another coffee in a café next door.

It had begun in high school, my last year. I can still feel the energy, the intensity of the most minor en-counter, it never became more, but she grew in me instead of fading. Two summers later I called her out of the blue. We met the next day and there began a summer in which the joy was real. She gave me pleas-ure, her small firm body was pliable in my hands and the eyes looked straight through me, the sadness only making me kinder.

I finished the coffee and walked through the doors and up an escalator, in front of me leaned a large glass case with the names of the law firms and banks in the building. I could see my reflection and I realized I should go the bathroom to spruce up. The gray was ev-ident above the ears. My father said it was one of the few Irish traits I had inherited from him, apart from the drinking. One day, three years after that summer she looked into my eyes and I knew she was gone, the mel-ancholy which always comforted me was now for me.

The fast elevator raced through the floors of the building pulling at my stomach. I moved my shoe on the clean carpet and could see my reflection distorted between the stainless steel panels of the elevator door. I felt her in my shoulders, waking in the early after-noon, French Chardonnays with smoked salmon on toast for breakfast. All out afternoons, the dusk on the bay, her smell. The door opened. I took three steps and stopped, looked right and saw the alluring receptionist guarding the entrance to the lush firm, the ocean wide and blue behind her. I thought about turning around, but her face carried me to her.

At a wedding she introduced me to her family and I felt as if I had arrived. One of those days when every-one wants to talk to you; all the women want you and the men want to be your friends, so they don't have to be your enemies. I was twenty- two, a few months away from finishing college, feeling unstoppable.

The receptionist had a sharp face and dark thin arms that fell lightly out of a yellow short-sleeve shirt tight on her small biceps. The short dark hair full of mousse. I looked hard into her eyes, to see if I was on. She held it.

"Could I see Begoña, Begoña Eguren please." Her short smile comforted my tentative voice, she hit a but-ton and we waited. The beginning of a word from her voice before it was cruelly funneled into a quickly lifted phone.

"Your name, please." The eyes bigger and stronger now.

"Johnny, Johnny Lynch." I noted the faint accent as she repeated my name. I braced myself for a bad answer, used to them from receptionists.

"Please sit down, she'll be out in a moment." The chair was soft and I wondered how long she would take, no matter. I had called her a few times in the last years, usually after too many drinks, but always pleas-antly. Since the look I never tried to be more than her friend and I had succeeded, without her and my pride I would have been finished. They were difficult years, long years fighting with my job, with drinking, fighting the look and not getting anywhere. All important things have to eventually be overcome if they are ever to mean anything and I had been able to overcome almost everything else.

I felt the sweat on my palms and tried to discreetly wipe them on my trousers, the seat was low and I arched my head up to look at a painting, an abstraction that somehow managed to look like something your grandmother would have in her parlor. The years after her now seemed almost ideal, strange and lonely years full of new and peculiar habits; it was a time when I learned to enjoy being alone.

An invisible hand grabbed my head and flung it right, she seemed taller, the eyes more pronounced, a counterpoint to the affectionate smile. A kiss and a hug, her chin then sunk into my shoulder and she pushed her hand into my back.

Protected behind dark glasses we walked along the dock toward a popular nightclub that also served lunch, the movement of her body coming back to me like an old forgotten song. She had all the accouterments of her class, the filthy rich class, and they bounced and hung as only quality does. I felt like I had taken a drop of acid, the bright light above us, the unspoken desire and easiness moving through the silence. Her small hand took mine, the thumb into my palm. "Johnny, you're getting old." I laughed hard and well.

The place was little too hip for me, she looked at me from behind a menu with a grin that said, "I know, but it's where everyone goes." A large gay waiter ar-rived. "Can I bring you a cocktail before lunch?" Her dark eyes danced from above the bags, with the caste came vice and she was going to indulge. He quickly returned, a vodka martini for her. I went for a gin and tonic. She watched me look at her lips, red staining the glass.

"Johnny, I'm getting married." A long, violent, sad and sentimental laugh that we shared for a long time, the waiter arrived only to send us off into another fit, unable to speak. And then a tear from the laughter became something else, only for a moment, disguised in a swift wipe of the eye, a blessed tear that will surely fill my final thoughts. "Where have you been?"

"I called you when I got back from Spain, right, sure, since then I'm working as a salesman. I've got a big territory, Florida, the Caribbean, Mexico and they let me do some buying in Spain."

"We're getting old, Johnny, I don't like it."

"It hit me at twenty-nine, like a two-by-four, for the first time there was no going back. I had to live with what was done. Who is he?"

"A Peruvian banker, very handsome."

"You look great, congratulations; I hope you have many sons." The cheeseburger went down in a few deep breaths, more drinks to round off the meal. We returned as we had come, a long empty space, the bright white sea wall beside us. The silence was now weigh-ing. A sidewalk split from the one we were on, leading to the garage. I put my hand on her shoulder. She lifted the glasses putting them into her hair.

"Do you think I'll be happy Johnny?"

"I hope so." I wrapped her head in my arm and kissed her forehead.

Someone wrote that our lives seem random while we live them but when we look back with perspective there appears to have been an order and a reason. If this is a story it probably begins here and as I look back on that day it was a beginning, an end, and the begin-ning of an end.

AUTUMN

CHAPTER 7

A dark orange light fell on the cold miles and miles of vineyards and tractors pulling carts full of grapes. I had the relax of a good meal and plenty to drink, the comfort of a renewed relationship. We knew each other well enough to not ask too many questions.

Almagro is one of the prettiest villages in La Man-cha. A Dutch style square, the streets lined with palaces and family shields. The pre-bullfight bustle of a town in fiestas, one bullfight a year, always good bulls and bullfighters, or at least the most popular ones. It was the first comforting chill after a long summer. We went to a pub which occupied the restored patio of a Andalusian-style home, the faces hard and Iberian; a strong contrast to the sensual lines of the Mediterrane-an. The booze had given me the moment of ecstasy before the onset of drunkenness, a stillness and peace that announced its brevity upon arrival.

I didn't like Irene, but I always wound up calling her, and usually spending few days with her before she would begin annoying me again. The boots and seven-ties style blue shirt with a large ring to pull up the zipper emphasized the years on her more than they should have. The exaggerated words and expression made me distrust her. "I've always done what I've wanted to, my mother has always tried to make me become part of her social class but I went to France when I was 18 and didn't come back for a year." The first time I heard that story it sounded good, but now I doubt it was a year and I'm sure it was financed in large part by the evil mother. "I worked in the fields, the vindemia, strawberries."

"Haven't worked too much since then, have you?"

"And so what, what you call work I think is ridicu-lous, my art is my work, and I work very hard at it."

"You're right, I was only kidding, anyway, when are you going to give me one of your paintings?" An acquiescent smile which quickly froze. She believed that her work was priceless and the thought of giving it away made her sick, as did giving anything away. The strength, and much of the money in her family came down through the women, the genius of her character was the combination of a progressive ideas with a feu-dal ferocity toward protecting all her possessions.

"I have some things in Murcia. I'll let you have one when we go back to the farm."

The smell of old men, cheap cologne and cigar smoke enveloped the entrance to the bullring, a minor scent compared to the odor of the beasts waiting in the truck outside the plaza. It's the first thing that comes to you when you arrive and marks all you see. Lots of black shoes with white socks and plastic bags with sandwiches and 1.5 liter water bottles full of wine.

The horseman in black held out his hat to catch the key from the president, then galloped out triumphantly. The first bull always catches me off guard, out of the fanfare and color the lonely sound of a single bugle an-nounces his entrance into the suddenly empty ring.

The most elegant symmetry between torero and bull is created with the cape, and after an emotionless faena from a washed up bullfighter, the second bull came out roaring from the corral. Small, well armed, his coat was a dark, shiny black and he had what in bullfighting terminology is called caste. All his instincts and strength to kill bravely what he considered a threat combined with the necessary physique to present the bullfighter with the possibility of triumph.

After a destructive tour of the ring the second tore-ro came out for his first pass with the cape, the bull ignored him and continued his violent circling, sudden-ly stopping and eyeing the bullfighter then charging him without provocation. The man throwing the cape out and backing away. With the second pass the man came closer without committing, the bull making a long turn back toward him. The bullfighter planted his right leg, his right hand swinging the cape out, the left knotting it to his waist, the head down and arrogant. The mans body tensed as the bull passed close. I quickly remembered why I loved the bull fights as the first cho-rus of "oles" began, more passes and more "oles".

"Joder, what elegance." Few are the Spaniards who can see something like that and not get emotional, even progressive artistic types. The faena lost emotion as it continued, ending with three failed attempts with the sword. No matter how well things go, the torero must kill well.

With the fifth bull returned the handsome young bullfighter from Malaga, the boyfriend of an attractive actress. He strode to the center of the ring to dedicate the bull that had demonstrated good qualities in the first two parts of the fight, the battle with the horse and the banderillas. Left hand on his chest, he held his cap out and slowly spun around, and throwing it behind him, a cheer when it landed upright. The public had been cold and unreceptive to the unconvincing encounters between man and beast, and the young man from Malaga was determined to change the mood.

Quick and nervous movements with his head, arms and legs trembling as he approached the bull which he had brought to the center of the ring, the intensity of his body increasing the emotion and making the bull appear more dangerous. The muleta in his left hand, the wood-en sword in his right keeping the cloth firm. The tall figure hovering over the bull, pass after pass, the "paso dobles" setting the rhythm, the emotion grew and the crowd, and I, were finally enjoying ourselves. The mu-leta wrapped in his hand, without protection he stood in front of the bull and swiped the sword down his head, twisting on his toes as he ended the faena while the crowd rose to a climax.

He returned with the steel sword, a few more pass-es to bring back the emotion, with a solid bang of the drum the music stopped, the bull squared in front of him. His feet were perpendicular to the bull, the muleta moved up and down to assure the animals reaction. With the shiny steel aimed at a point between the shoulders, the handsome torero turned his feet and bent his knee toward the bull, the horns hidden in the muleta, he placed the sword safely into a lung. The bull coughing up a river off blood and falling quickly. The crowd, eager for triumph, waved white handkerchiefs in approval, a reluctant president conferring the two ears.

A shame to see brave animal killed cowardly. He would never have done it in Madrid but they know they can get away with it in the villages and I suppose you can't blame them; he might have well just taken out a rifle and shot it.

The sixth bull was for the youngest bullfighter, something of a revelation that year. Known for his artis-tic interludes with the animal, his young face and curly hair offered an eerie contrast to the ferocious beast. He brought the bull capriciously and delicately across the ring towards the waiting horse, the picador ready, pique in hand, horse waiting for the bull. An arrogant and compact animal, one look at the horse and he was off, his head down, lunging into the lower part of the horse and pushing it back to the railing. The picador leaning into the bull, his pique directly in between the shoul-ders. The subalterns finally distracted the bull away from the horse, a constant stream of blood dripping down his black coat onto the orange sand.

In the last, now almost red light of La Mancha, the young torero performed the 'quite', testing the bull be-fore punishing it again with the horse. The bull's chest rose and fell heavily, breathing deeply with his mouth closed, the young man silent and still before him, the cape resting on his right leg. By lifting it slowly and firmly the bull began a very long pass by his side, catching sight of the horse again then charging violently from almost fifteen yards towards the horse. The pica-dor quickly setting himself, the horse faltered under the blow, falling sideways, the large picador protected by flowing capes; the bullfighter brought the bull back to the center of the ring.

Four more long and slow passes, the torero was growing with an exceptional animal, the "oles" filling the lingering moments between light and dark. The second horse stood at attention, the torero lifted his cap to change "tercios" when the bull took off at a full gal-lop toward the second horse, the picador leaning with his pique, the horse holding back the bull at a sharp an-gle.

The beast had managed to capture the crowd and terrify it, the fury of nature unleashed unto this delicate boy whose curls and small frame seemed a lure to dis-aster. With the muleta and sword in his left hand, he wrapped his right arm with his cap in his hand around his father, dedicating the bull to him. The last forebod-ing tug on his fathers back while the bull stood breathing heavy and eying one of the subalterns. The blood continuing to drip off the long hairs on his neck onto the sand.

He put the muleta close to his snout and elegantly brought him to the center of the ring in silence with quick coordinated motions only to leave him there and back off. He arranged the muleta then approached from twenty yards, the bull following the red cloth, the left hand securely on his hip, waist bent out toward the cloth. From ten yards the bullfighter jigged the cloth, the bull racing forward toward the still figure, head up and body turning as the bull passed him, three passes to the right, finishing with the left, the music began and the tension grew.

Once again from a distance he approached the bull but now to the other horn, the bull passing, making a last second lunge toward the bullfighter, almost nicking him. The young boy was too ecstatic to see it, but the crowd 'ohhed' in fear, another pass on the left, very close, the third lifting him up by the thigh and bouncing him on top of the horn. As he was thrown into the air a deep nausea curled my body, my arms trembled. The music stopped. The subalterns kept the bull away as the boy got up. He looked like a dazed fighter anxious for more combat. He was handed his muleta and he waved off his assistants as he approached the animal again, covered in his blood, a drip of his own running down his leg. He leaned back arrogantly and dropped the cloth by his side, completely still as the bull passed close, he didn't move while the bulled turned and ap-proached with the left horn, reaching with it but not arriving to the leg. The boy now turned and planted a leg and made a long, slow pass that was pure art. The music returned and the crowd was completed given over.

The man dominated the animal with art, as if they were one. The exhausted creature looking up, the faena had reached its end and the boy walked to the railing, pulling a shiny sword out of its sheath. His father eye-ing the president along with one of the older, slightly overweight subalterns. In spite of the art, the "suerte supreme" of a bullfight is to kill. One must pass over the horns and place the sword between the shoulders, mortally wounding the animal and bringing on its rapid death.

In his first bull the boy had lost two trophies by not being able to place the sword, having it bounce back after hitting bone. Four attempts and he finally killed by descabello, a sword with a "T" at the end which is placed in the medulla causing instant death. The father and the subaltern were instigating the crowd, and trying to manipulate the president to pardon the life of the bull, which is done very rarely for a bull that has shown extraordinary bravery battling the horses with repeated valiant attacks and performing bravely with the bull-fighter. While this bull had been special, the faena needed to be finished. It was the orgasm after a won-derful few hours of sex, if the beast escaped alive we would have been left unclear and confused. The presi-dent had given into the crowds desire for triumph in the fifth bull, and in a village that has one corrida a year people want to see everything, including a bull being pardoned.

It was the last light, red turning brown, a warning sounded from a bugle announcing that the torero only had five minutes to kill the animal or be fined. The crowd waved white handkerchiefs and jeered the presi-dent. The boy moving slowly waiting for the president to drop his white handkerchief signaling the pardoning of the bull. There was no choice but to kill, a final stiff shake of the head let the boy know there was no avoid-ing his obligation. The crowd resigned, the boy ma-neuvered the bull until it was squared, both front legs together. It followed him almost obediently towards his death, his horns once again becoming prominent, a counter puncher following the boxer, waiting for his moment.

The tension grew, the whole corrida, maybe the whole night stood in the balance. I was at the perfect angle, when he lifted the sword to aim, it pointed at me from between the horns. The crowd was tense and si-lent, a collective deep breath, the boy turned on his feet, brought the muleta back with his left hand, the horn passing inches from his chest, he put the sword all the way threw, 'hasta la bola'. His eyes wide, with both hands he violently waved off all his subalterns, scream-ing at them to leave him alone with the animal.

The bull stumbled backwards, turned toward the rail than collapsed with a slam that shook the ground, feet up, dead. The hysteria rose and I became part of it, we cheered and screamed and gave him both ears and the tail.

*

La Mancha is the land of wide, flat, treeless miles of vineyards and wheat. The excitement and rush mixed with alcohol for a high that I knew would last till late in the night. The rich red wines; dark reds and heavy aromas, always with free tapas.

"As a girl in a convent school they took me to the Prado. I was nine or ten, and I could not get over what I saw, I wanted to do something like that." I envied her ambition even though I knew it would lead nowhere. After what I had seen that afternoon I wanted something definitive, but once back at her house I lost the restlessness and regained a semblance of my earlier calm. I must have been very drunk but I don't remember it that way. "I remember staring at a Velazquez and felling a tickle rise from my stomach, lodging in my neck. I instantly understood how he used color." It came off as pure bullshit after what I had seen that day.

*

When I'm in La Mancha I feel like I am at sea. The monotonous and foreboding landscape wickedly hot or unbearably cold, the villages calling you to safety inside their clean and well kept streets. The people are dry, hard, difficult to crack and always prepared for the worst; Iberians and Moors, some more of one, some more of the other.

The house was built over a large cave holding huge stone vats for making wine, above the cave a patio rose to a glass covered roof over the second floor. The wine cavern, ever reminding one of the vice of Hell, kept the bottom floor cool in the summer and the upper floor was heated for the winter. It was the end of summer, between hot and cold, wet and dry, the smells called out from the cold dark months ahead but there was no doubt we were still under the spell of the sun.

The fire crackled under the fat of the lamb chops from a recently slaughtered animal from a family owned herd of sheep. Handsomely inebriated I remembered why I liked her, but only from the darkness of drunkenness and the exultation of the bullfight. Every-one has their moments and these were hers. Within the confines of her family's wealth she became more honest and direct, good bread dipped into the grease, washed back with a wine that had never known a bottle. I was getting a second wind and Irene was looking better, the years flying offer her with each new drink. "Chema is working all weekend to help build a camp for the city government, he doesn't stop."

"Do you still have his girlfriend living with you guys?" She put her disgusted look on.

"She says she is looking for a place, poor thing."

"But he gets upset when Ivan calls."

"He says that's not the way things should be done, we shouldn't have to talk to each other's lovers."

"But his lives in the house."

"It's only temporary, and he started out helping her. She'd had a difficult relationship with someone."

"There are enough horns between you two to start a bull farm."

"What are horns, what does it mean to "poner los cuernos", it doesn't mean anything to me. I like having more than one. In college, when I was living in Madrid, I would have one, and as soon as he left I would the other one would arrive ten minutes later." From around the door strode Doña Irene, convinced of her social and moral superiority. I looked at Irene's thighs, imagining her exploits.

"Where will he sleep?" Not looking at me. I felt like telling her.

"Mama, in a free bed."

"Good evening." I said with tone.

"Good evening." I couldn't have given a fuck if her father was the "cacique" of some shit-hole town at the end of the world. The bone of the lamb chop was almost on fire from the fat that was sending flames up from the wood chips. I flung it on a plate and filled my glass with Doña Irene's wine and watched her daugh-ter's thighs as one of her lamb chops continued to sizzle. From nowhere I felt vibrations of a screeching voice racing toward me.

"And what do you do?" Money, how illusive it was to incompetent inheritors, maintaining it was im-possible, but to make it bordered on the mystical.

"I'm a salesman for a spice company." The not-too-adept provincial mind quickly tried to categorize that somewhere between small storeowner and wheat broker, coming to a murky conclusion regarding a world below her. She could only admire the titled and very wealthy in a peevish jealousy of their money and status. She approached the fire, above the chimney a Virgin and Child, the house felt like a monastery, a mausoleum to a distant lone shark gone legit.

*

The stars shone down on the open patio of rose-mary and basil bushes, the music of the Gypsy Kings playing loudly, the town was in fiestas and few were sober. Irene looked out among the crowd, her two gay admirers smirking and tilting their heads in disgust, an-guish and general nausea.

"Did I tell you about my "Guardia Civil", he was so shy, he let me give him kisses on the neck for drinks."

"Did he have a belly? I love those 'Guardia Civi-les' with bellies, the green pants hanging low. I think we're scaring the American."

"You are."

"If you keep drinking like that your going to get drunk." I handed Irene another drink. "What have you been doing lately?" He asked with studied disinterest.

"Primitive sculpture. I just get into the wood and work, bang away at it. I like the feel of it." I was in the final stages of drunkenness, one last moment of calm before I fell into blackout zone. A dark, severely beautiful girl dancing Sevillanas with three boys slowly moved away from her companions, her eyes looking nowhere, her hands moving slowly. The night came down upon her as one of her hands lifted her long skirt, we were alone in a dry sea and a dark sky.

CHAPTER 8

From the flat, treeless plains of La Mancha we had moved off the high plain down to the Mediterranean and into the semi desert of northwest Murcia. Dry fields with withered olive and almond trees, a severe and barren landscape. Vicente's small country house had no running water or electricity. In the chimney crackled the flame under a paella; the rice still invisible in the duck and vegetable broth and the large mountain snails showing their brown stripes as they bounced in the liquid.

Vicente's goat eyes raced sharply as he kneeled above the fire jiggling the firewood to maintain the de-sired flame. He looked straight at me, sending a chill through me and reminding me of the look of the goats I had seen in his corral. A soft smile left a shaking head from behind a mass of curly hair, her healthy thighs filled faded jeans. I couldn't help but smile with her. Her balding, fiftyish husband spoke like a machine gun with a cheerfulness that lifted the room and an authority that honed minds. "I can't paint people screaming on bridges, not with this light, and this abundance. It wouldn't be right, our nature is too generous to dread."

"It's our decadence, not only the physical but the intellectual, after 1898 we had lost it all, but from the loss rose our elegance, something blatantly lacking in your culture." Goat man was trying to drag me into something I knew better than to get mixed up in. The rice was appearing from out of the water and I walked toward the painter's wife, Caridad. The old house had small thick windows with wooden shades. She handed me the hash cigarette from the stool were she sat with her knees rising in a 'V'. The goat eyes waited for a reaction than returned to the painter. "To have a culture one must first lose an empire, once the Americans lose theirs maybe something interesting will come out of there"

"Let's hope all your decadence can make a good rice." The wine flowed from several jugs, strong and rusty in color. Irene smiled at me. She had the prac-ticed look of an intellectual overseeing a conversation.

"But Pepe, I'm from here. I'm a Mediterranean. But those dark northern landscapes, heavy and deliber-ate, they seem more authentic. For me they are more artists than we are, they are more dedicated to what they do, maybe because they don't have this easy back-drop."

"Our best painters come from the Mediterranean, not Castile. How many good artists come from the north, most of them come from the Catalonia." I could see Caridad wanting to say something, from within the strong and sensual body.

"But there is no mystery in what we do, it's all very apparent, they have that dark, scary element, not always, but sometimes I like it, but when I lived in Brit-tany I missed the light and the color, now I guess I sometimes miss those rainy weeks." She was the most insightful of them all and I was already jealous of the Frenchman who had spent cold wet days in bed with her.

A lemon sprayed the rice while our collective, wet hunger climaxed from the hashish. A robust man, with a round face and small round glasses came through the curtain of the door, bottle of rum in hand and a smile on his face just in time to eat. There was an invisible grid over the paella, separating it in six equal parts, each spoon carefully maneuvering within its boundaries. The rice had absorbed the flavor of the duck and snails from the broth where they had previously been boiled, later the meat and snails were fried and then finished in the broth with the rice, some tomatoes and a few peppers. The smoky taste of the wood left a subtle backdrop to the exquisite dish.

Good rum filled empty coffee cups. I wanted to warm my ears between Caridad's thigh's but I settled for Irene's hand. Goat man talked and talked, using a big vocabulary and a lot of imagination. "The transves-tite breaks through all the sexual taboo's and stereotypes. He's the god of two faces, one smiling and the other frowning. There is a transvestite show in Va-lencia that attracts people from all over the world." I must have made a cynical face because I got a nasty goat stare. The rum was smooth. More hash, more rum. I was happy.

"Vicente, the rice was really great. I've never had anything quite like it."

"Of course you haven't, this food is our cultural inheritance, our past, which you Americans are trying to kill with your hamburger chains." I stared hard in his eyes till I saw fear, which he turned into a silly smile.

"Don't take it personally. He's talking about McDonald's, not you."

"I'll decide what a take personally, fat boy." I wasn't conscious of how uncomfortable I was making everyone, or how off I had gone, from almost bliss to near rage. I settled back into an uncomfortable silence, aware of the quick glances darting towards me, but con-fident I could turn things around. The day was young.

"La Paca", a small town named for the lover of an important man, Don Gonzalo, whose name remained that of Irene's family farm, and the nearby town, Doña Ines, named for his wife, a triangle in love and geogra-phy. The people in the big cities want the rustic look and the small town folk want the modern. Three post-ers of black and white nude women with red roses hung around the red Formica bar, red stools by its side and a black floor; electronic music beat through large speakers filling the ears of teenagers with heavy metal tee-shirts and earrings. The red light sparkled through the ice of seven whiskey glasses. We were hung over already and it wasn't clear where the day was going, the conversation had decayed into redundant gossip and I was thinking about Kerry. She was very good for mid-day hangovers, but before I could separate my head twitched and I looked into the light brown eyes of Cari-dad, a blank expression, only the almond ovals hanging a beat on mine. I smelled Bourbon but I was really smelling her, the painter was looking away but Irene was not. She justified the stare with a question. "This must be very different than where you are from."

"What I miss are the thunderstorms, the overpow-ering afternoon sun disappears into a wicked dark cloud, the windows begin..."

"We should call Marcos to see if he wants to meet for dinner." I stared at goat man again but he didn't look at me. Caridad glanced back and I felt her enter me, give herself to me in a glance. Irene watching smartly.

"They begin to shudder, the lightning strikes hold-ing a second on their targets before..."

"We need to ..."

"Go on," said the painter, waving off goat man.

"Before disappearing back into the dark clouds, what ten minutes ago was a raging, tacky, consumer metropolis is suddenly nothing but a dim shadow below a terrifying cloud. It's great, especially if you've had a bad day at work, it puts people into perspective." I was back in favor, and feeling good, like I had fixed a toilet.

"Why don't we go, I'm sure they would love your paintings." She undid the mass of curly hair, stroking it, the head moving with the hand, then back into a knot, she saw me looking. The serious stare ripped into me.

"Miami has to be the tackiest place I've ever been, I can't see them buying your paintings," added fat boy, goat man smiling. The worst thing about it was that he was right. Under more normal circumstances I would have agreed, but goat man and fat boy managed to get me again me off again, so I decided to ignore them with a grimace; there was to be no peace that day. The har-poon was cocked and I was waiting for a false move to launch it.

The heat rose out of the treeless mountains, only rosemary, thyme and espartos, "Sweet home Chicago" on the radio and I felt like I was in a road movie. Irene held the steering wheel with two hands, her head lean-ing forward, a quick glance at the stick shift before changing gears.

The shepherd dogs urged the last of the sheep across the road that rose to the large country home, adorned with family shield and tower. The day falling, the mountain chill giving me a tremor. She put her hand on my leg as we rose up the hill to the house, which from a distance appeared as an oasis flowering in the first elevation of the mountain. Water it had, plenty of it, evidenced in the poplars and cypresses that sur-rounded the home. The smell of sheep and goats accompanied us as we separated the large iron gates, across the patio and through the heavy door to an osten-tatious central stair case with a wooden banister that greeted you with a mouth full of teeth. On the wall be-neath the stair was a good sketch of Manolete, the prominent nose high above the swirling cape and angry bull, below them a cot for summer siestas in the coolest spot in the house.

Blood sausages smelled of anise over the flames of the large kitchen fireplace, two rabbits, killed that after-noon at goat man's, sat on a rack full of rosemary and thyme waiting to grilled. A three-room pantry led out of the kitchen, in the last room the smell of olive oil was overwhelming from a thirty gallon metal vat. Racks of wine from the Rioja, Ribera del Duero and La Mancha lined the walls, two large hams hung from the ceiling along with panceta and strings of sausage, the floor greasy with pig fat. "Take three bottles of 'Yuntero' and take down that ham." The abundance was breathtaking and reassuring. The smell of the perfume from her neck, sharp and sweet, in the cloud of oil and meat excited me. She seemed beautiful again, I looked in her eyes as I thought and she smiled, my tongue felt her throat. She shined dark, her lips larger. Beauty had succumbed to the instincts and I felt her warmth on my palm. "Later, bring out the ham."

A box with fifteen numbers sat silent above the re-frigerator, a reminder of a time when only the service used the kitchen and each the of the bells would bring someone to the room in need. The marble slab atop the kitchen table was arrayed in bottles, glasses, meat and tomatoes, reds, and the almost black of the blood sau-sages. My hunger over came me and I eyed each rack coming off the flames. I cut the ham, a piece for me, a piece for the plate. I remember trying to speak and be-ing stared at by blank faces.

*

An early shaft of light raced through the space be-tween the wooden doors to the balcony. A rooster with a cold let out a gargled crow and I could make out the arrow lodged in the breast of a women in a nun's habit, her face smiling, the drops of blood staining her blue habit in a frame above the bed. I remembered Caridad, I looked at Irene by my side, but I couldn't remember how I got to bed. A chill ran through me, a terrible fear that I had done something awful. I glanced again at Irene and this time her eyes were wide open. They looked straight ahead. She blinked for effect. I rolled over and put my arm on her stomach, the physical re-sponse would give me an idea of how bad it was.

"I can't believe you did that to me." The tears came steady, the first time I had seen her cry authenti-cally. The fear was clear in her voice. I was terrified. I had done something heavy. She looked at me again. "You're crazy, you don't even remember what you did, go look at the kitchen, my mother's furniture. We had to take Vicente to the emergency room, you're lucky he didn't call the police, go, go look at what you've done."

I remembered the constant talk and music of the night before, now the cold long halls of the mansion were loud with silence, a gloomy witness to my crime. The seat of the chair was almost horizontal with the back of it. The blood was auspicious in its absence. There was no turning back, the bridges had been burned. I would have like to maintained a relationship them but I knew it was over, though I guessed she would forgive me. I was empty and lonely but at the same time free of them, 'fuck them' I thought, rich pompous assholes. They'll think twice the next time. I was free again, the best feeling in the world, there were plenty of bridges to burn ahead of me. I had fought back the shame.

"Can you drive me to Lorca?" I dried myself with a towel as I stuffed my bag.

"It's 6:30."

"I'll hitchhike then." I knew I should have apolo-gized but I couldn't, something wouldn't let me, the ungrateful and violent guest. I drove and she looked ahead, not wanting to close her eyes waiting for the apology that wouldn't come. I was fresh and relieved, ready to move on, she was the last string. I tried to hate her but I couldn't.

"You should really apologize to Vicente, you were way out of line."

"Sure, I will." I accelerated out of the curve passed two cars, the car rising dangerously out of the curve.

"Caridad couldn't stop crying. You've got to con-trol yourself." A deep silence that encouraged her. I was without an excuse and she used Caridad artfully. "She's not used to that kind of thing. I don't know how you can ever apologize for that, such a good day, you had to ruin it." She was now enjoying herself and I was about to take the lame look off my face. I squinted and she returned to the silence.

The train was mercifully about to leave. I stared at the poster "Armed and very dangerous, members of the terrorist group E.T.A.". Large noses, dark eyes, two men and two women. I envied there double lives, their intensity and insanity; I wished I'd had some of that. "Adios" She gave me two kisses and turned away, a glance at her back then the poster, free again.

CHAPTER 9

The suds slid over the currents of the Segura River through the middle of Murcia city, the rank odor wel-coming me across the bridge toward the city center. A slight chill passed through the pedestrian streets, a wealth of beautiful women, young, very young and middle aged bid me good morning. What little hango-ver I had served to inspire me, yesterday seemed far off, stale and not worth the regret. A small, insignifi-cant hunger began, it would become more, but it at that moment it needed little more than an empanadilla.

The bakery was wide, dominated by pine, the smell of fresh loaves, the note of yeast in the moist air. Be-hind the counter a young, corpulent brunette with sinister dark eyes silently asked me what I wanted. "An empanadilla." After a short stare she went into the back of the bakery returning with a tray of hot rolls.

"They'll be out in a few minutes." She placed the rolls under the counter then stood up, her breasts high, the first curve of her waist visible before disappearing below the counter. Below her breasts rose the steam from fresh, warm loaves of bread, many sizes and forms. She silently stood behind her goods, a blank ar-rogant stare that fed my desire and reinforced her arrogance. Behind her a large framed picture of the "Fuensanta" with a flower held between the frame and the wall, the virgin's face radiant and beautiful inside a gold circle, her head crowned and the infant Jesus warm in her hands.

The erotic silence grew, her stare focusing more and more on my face, then on my eyes, my chest be-came tight, she finally moved again toward the back of the bakery to return with a tray of empanadillas. The white short sleeve pullover revealing a portion of her tan breasts, the white of the bra strap loosening as she bent over. The empanidilla placed in a white piece of paper, which she folded than swung around to close the ends. "Your empanadilla, my invitation, for "La Fuensanta"."

I've always loved Murcia, but I probably have never loved it as much as I did that day, in that moment. I wandered through the streets, admiring the tascas, hung with hams, counters full of fresh tomatoes and avas. It was just before eight in the morning, flocks of people flowed down the downtown streets, free of cars, the tower of the baroque cathedral dominating the skyline. The crowds grew and the false baroque facade appeared above a mass of people, light and concave, the plaza vibrating with the masses. I asked someone what was happening. "It is the romeria of "La Fuensanta", they are going to bring her from the cathedral to the sanctuary, she should be coming out any minute now."

The hum of prayer spread like a chant through the square, the crowd swayed while their pitch rose. I bumped into people who didn't acknowledge me, old men in grey sweaters with white socks and black shoes smelling of cheap cologne, their faces almost to serious to believe.

The masses rose to near hysteria, from inside the main door of the cathedral she rode above the shoulders of several men who held her up by horizontal poles, women began to shout. "Mirala, que guapa!" Old arms raised, faces hypnotized, from across the square came the chants and screams, her face smiled through the ceramic mask. She was radiant and gorgeous, more sensual than spiritual. The goddess of a land of beauty and abundance, fresh and bursting with tomatoes, the hams and the young girls. She drew me toward her, my eyes didn't leave her. "La madre de Díos!" All heads followed, behind her people barefoot, paying their pen-ance by following her on the long trek to the sanctuary, desperate for her sensuality and her beauty.

Time became redundant within my focus. I saw her for thousands of years in a moment, all the beauties I had seen and known were ugly and awkward com-pared to her. My desires and passions had finally found a doctrine, a sublime essence to my driving force. The moment finally faded, the morning lingered lonely without her, but she stayed with me like a women who stays with you all morning even though you'll never see her again. The thirst, a terrible thirst gripped me, tore at me, and a hunger. I wandered through the streets hung over from what I had seen, wanting to sit and eat and drink and think about her.

People bounced, their banter sharp with the morn-ing and the energy of a holiday. The aperitif began boldly and early for those looking forward to a special state that afternoon. The long wooden bar blossomed with ceramic bowls of tomatoes, artichokes, asparagus. Quail stacked without feathers, their small heads twist-ed and looking up, sausages, strings of garlic, scallions and chorizos hung from a pole above the bar. Three wooden beams crossed below the ceiling, from which swung more than forty hams, plastic cones clung below them to catch the fat as it dripped. A beer, a plate of boiled ham seasoned with oil, lemon and black pepper, avas and an artichoke cut small and grilled. The beers entered like the smoke from a long awaited cigarette, one after the other, my head finally rising, the music in the tasca filling me with rhythm. The alcohol, the hangover and the procession had me euphoric.

Across the bar stood two girls, one of whom had large lips with shoulder length brown hair, a seventies-look silk orange shirt and the same style nylon pants. I imagined her to be a final gift from the Fuensanta, the rich lips leading her dark eyes toward me, the grin leapt out to embrace her. A spontaneous smile.

"Your lips are magnificent." The giggles of young, healthy, pretty girls. The waiter slammed down a basket of bread, grilled asparagus and three beers, the foam flowing over the top from the impact with the ta-ble. My hunger must have been contagious, the girls quickly stabbing at the vegetables with their small forks; My Lady of the Lips, Mercedes, left long, slow, controlled glances on me; she had me back in the spell of the morning and months away from Irene and my crimes against humanity.

"I've got to meet my boyfriend, it was nice meet-ing you," said the friend with a smirk. Two more beers, I was drunk and so was she. I could see the joy rise in her soft skin through her cheeks to her brown eyes, young and plentiful, she was the tasca and the day.

"Let's go to the Plaza de las Flores," she said ex-citedly. The two squares are connected on one side, several bars, patio tables, and people standing inside and out. "Dos Marineras, y dos cañas!" A long wait in the peak hour of a strong aperitif. The "marinera" is an oval bread stick, with a type of potato salad spread on top, capped off by an anchovy, the best anchovies I've ever had, made by the people in the bar, small glasses of beer, the hunger and thirst continued to rise. "Dos Matrimonios y dos cañas!" A "matrimonio" is a boqueron in lemon and on top of an anchovy, pinched together with a toothpick. Mercedes let her hips and shoulders bump into me, my thumb explored the palm of her hand; I felt the thrill of the first contact, it ran up the back of my neck, over my head and into my eye-brows.

"I'd love to travel, to see America, the world." Her eyes big and hopeful with drink and lust. We sat at a table, the plate of octopus steamed below, boiled, than into the oven and sprinkled with the local paprika that I was supposed to be buying. More beers, and another plate of octopus.

"Come with me to the train station." The midday sun shined oppressively on us while we tramped across the city, my hand exploring her back, between the shoulder blades, up and down the spinal column. Eve-rything about her was young, plentiful and ripe. On a corner she turned, bringing her hands up my chest than putting an enormous, raspy tongue in my mouth, the fragrance of blossoming youth, the breasts rubbing my chest, the tongue continuing to explore and mingle with mine. The big lips wide open.

From the port hole window of the Talgo I watched her wave and turn, the body moving gracefully than turning again and smiling, a last glimpse of the lips. A second rate Hollywood movie was strangely comforting as I sat back in the comfortable chair and waited for sleep to come, and it came quickly and well, my mind clear and calm.

CHAPTER 10

A clean crisp light reflected off the dry river, its water replaced with football fields and a bizarre space ship that was the music hall. The lethargy of finally having slept a night. I was still tired after ten hours in bed and two coffees with an aggressive salesman. Across the river and through the arc, she should just be getting up, my first woman in Spain. Vice and more vice, but she became my friend and I wanted to see her; one of the few people I knew would always give me a big smile.

Amparo collected me one night soon after I had starting teaching English in Valencia like a nun rescuing an abandoned child. From that moment I always had a wild night out, a loan, a joint to smoke, and for a while, a roll in the sheets. The wool suit was baking me. I longed for the night, a ride on her Vespino, cutting through traffic to the apartment of some weird friend's house, then on to Valencia's temples, the discos that opened at five in the morning and functioned till noon. Much to tell to someone who could laugh at anything, who was never shocked.

The large wooden door I had rarely seen in the midday sun, no magic, only wear. The bell squealed but no voice returned, more squealing but no response. I had wanted to see her too much, it always seemed to work that way. Back to the street, the Vespinos raced through the traffic, cars chasing traffic lights on the wide avenue that wrapped around the city. I remem-bered the constant moan of traffic from her bed. Alone on the hot sidewalk I thought about returning to the hotel to make some calls but then decided against it.

I might have been their first customer, the late night pub that opened for coffee. I'm sure they remem-bered me but it wasn't their style to be friendly, only a change of pitch in their 'hola' to let me know they rec-ognized me.

"What can I get you?"

"A coffee."

"Haven't seen you in a long time." The strong dark face was attractive in an angry way, the brilliantly black hair short atop the small, athletic body.

"I went back to the States, over on business." A curt smile. I was surprised that she hadn't mentioned Amparo. Her husband was organizing the chairs around the tables. She moved to the end of the bar with the newspaper, the sun pouring in, not letting me remember what I wanted to remember: the laughs, the coffees that turned into whiskeys and lustful nights. A city I didn't like without the one person who made it bearable, the phone had been disconnected. Uncom-fortably I slid down the bar towards the waitress. She must have seen me but she didn't look up. I stopped halfway, my body leaning; my forearms a few feet far-ther down the bar than my feet. "Ah, have you seen Amparo lately? There's nobody in the apartment and the phone is disconnected."

"Amparo?" The hands remained gripped to the paper, the head not sure whether to continue my way or duck down below the pages. The husband looked up from wiping the table.

"Haven't seen her in a while? When was the last time you talked to her?"

"It's been a while." They had something to tell me but I wanted to say more before giving them time. "We were really close, but neither one of us was much of a letter writer. I called her a few times." They moved together, she behind the bar, he beside me.

"Give me a beer."

"Do you want something else?"

"Sure, give me a beer too." I didn't like it. I was afraid she had died, hopefully she had just got married. The pause continued while the beer poured out of the spout.

"What was your name?"

"Johnny."

"Amparo's not well. She's in the hospital."

"What's wrong with her?" I could feel all the con-fidence leave me. I was at the mercy of people I wasn't fond of. The sun became more invasive; there was no-where to hide.

"She's very ill, she has been there for awhile." He glanced at his wife, she didn't look back, her dark eyes uncompassionate.

"But what is it. I'm a friend of hers, tell me."

"We don't know, all we know is that she isn't well, she's really bad off. Did you sleep with her?" I knew then what was wrong with her and my face began to implode. I tried to swallow. I knew those were my last moments of hope. I tried not speak because I didn't want them to answer.

"She's got AIDS, doesn't she?" I was desperate for a denial but it didn't come.

"I think so," said the wife. I was numb, waiting for the blow. I couldn't blink. I just looked between the harbingers of death, the beer went without effect. "Do you want something else?"

"Bourbon, on the rocks, are you sure?" Stares, hard lonely stares. "When did she find out?"

"I don't know." responded the husband. Marilyn Monroe smiled at me from across the bar, how could she, there was nowhere to go. "An old boyfriend of hers died last year. I think that's when she found out, he had been a junkie." That horrible green shirt she gave me, it was his. I had worn it many a time. "Did you use protection?"

I said yes to not have to say no.

"Don't worry, it's much harder for a man to get it from a women then the other way around."

"Get tested, you're all right. I'm sure you're all right, get tested and you'll feel much better." From the depths of despair a ray of hope.

"Really, I mean are you sure?" She nodded. Va-lencia, its port, its floods, a sick city, a pot of boiling viruses. I didn't realize I had drunk the bourbon. They filled the glass. "How bad is she?"

"Bad, are you going to see her? She's alone, very alone, she didn't know anything about it when she knew you. She's in the University Clinic. I'm sure she'd want to see you." The thought of seeing how I would end up terrified me.

"I'll think about it, what do I owe you?"

"Don't worry about it."

CHAPTER 11

The sun pulverized the sidewalk and my wool suit. A city bus drove its passengers happily past me, their faces staring blankly out the windows. Whatever they were thinking about, I envied them. The lurid smell of the street radiated life, sour, putrid, but very alive. An-other bus, people stepping off onto the sidewalk, home to their everyday lives.

I walked in what I thought was the general direc-tion of my hotel, the streets gradually becoming less familiar, more gritty, a small park appearing out of an alley of run down tenements. The sun glared down on the parks lone inhabitant like a spotlight, the thin dark body hunched on a bench, his concentration immense on the syringe. He probably knew. He would under-stand, but he didn't care, he got around it by worrying about something else. Totally disoriented, I chose a street for no reason, desperate for violence, hoping someone would try and mug me. A cheap whore leaned against a door, offering a lazy lift of an eye. I walked angrily, two more, old, bedraggled hags. "Come on, baby." One reached out grabbing my wrist, I pulled but she didn't let go.

"Get your fucking hands off me." I said it in Eng-lish. My back and shoulders swam in sweat under the unbearable heat and stench, finally a familiar street and a bar that didn't look like a junkie's den or a whore-house. "A beer, and some sepia."

The bathroom gave me a dry heave. I urinated while trying to breath only through my mouth. On the bar sat a white plate with pieces of white sepia sprin-kled with spices, a glass of beer by its side. The old man behind the bar looked me in the eyes. I stared back, intently as I could, praying he would say some-thing, he held the stare. I put the beer down without moving my eyes, he turned back toward the kitchen, and his obese wife lifted her enormous chest in an at-tempt to breath. A cockroach ran across the bar, she looked away. If I could only get of there, what they had told me less than an hour ago seemed like a dream. If I could escape the neighborhood I felt like I could forget the whole thing.

I walked toward the hotel. Amparo was alone in one of those enormous hospitals, probably alone. The morning seemed ten years ago. I had wanted to see her, a Vespino raced by, a merciful cloud put a temporary filter on the sun. I hailed a taxi.

I tried to prepare myself for what she would look like, trying not to imagine myself in the same state. The taxi had a metal virgin and a Barcelona Football Club shield held to the dashboard with magnets. He was the typical white socks, black shoes, leather jacket, end of the key chain hanging out of the pocket Spaniard. He changed gears at the lowest rpm's possible, for once I was grateful for how slow they drove. The con-servative, reactionary taxi driver trying to milk every cent out of his expensive gasoline. A city prison ap-peared beside a roundabout, men hanging clothes on the roof. Finally the hospital, seven enormous brick build-ings. He left me at the main entrance. Swarms of men and women in white and the sound of clogs. I walked slowly toward a sign that said information.

Finally she silently looked up. "A friend of mine is here, how do I find out where she is?"

"Your friend is here, maternity, trauma, the cafete-ria?"

"Listen bitch, don't fuck with me, or I swear to god in heaven I'll jump over this desk and rip your head off, Amparo Paterna, were do I go?"

"One moment. You said Paterna."

Public health posters lined the dirty walls of the en-trance, men with socks, clogs and stained white uniforms, the women the same except for the socks. I walked without thinking, down the halls, up the eleva-tors. My head a blank, only realizing what I was doing when I saw the door. I stopped, my heart pounding, unable to turn back or continue. With an enormous ef-fort I took the first step toward the door, the second, stopping with my hand on the door, unaware if anyone was watching. The moments passed. I knocked with my left hand as the right one turned the knob. The light from the sun reflected off the white walls, the metal frame of the bed came into view, a foot, warm up pants deflated on the thin frame. The gaunt face was at least recognizable staring out the window, head phones shielding her from sound.

The bed approached but the head remained steadily away, my body caused a shift in the light, terror as her head turned. The large sunken eyes opened wide on my blank stare. "John!" I approached for an uncomfortable kiss on the cheek. "Joder tío!" The head shook. I couldn't think of anything to say, so I just shook my head hoping that she could see what I felt. She held my wrist. "I can't believe this, it's over. I'm just waiting for it to happen. I didn't know. I had no way of letting you know, I would have, have you been tested?"

"I just found out today, how are they treating you here?"

"All right, I mean, what can they do?"

"Do you need anything?" I looked for her in her face, a face that was almost gone, glimpses of laughs and shrieks. She could have been fifty years old.

"No, I'm okay, what are you doing in Spain?"

"Work, they sent me over for a few weeks." There was nothing to say, but to say goodbye was too defini-tive. I wanted to leave and forget her. The years were too many, our time together too frivolous for their to be anything to say. A nurse mercifully came in. "I'd bet-ter get going. I'll come back before I leave."

"I hope you're all right." Suddenly the fear ex-ploded in her face. I tried to put on a smile because the words didn't come out. I felt her on my back as I walked out of the room, unable to turn around.

The mass of families in the hospital cafeteria com-forted me, their raw smells and cheap clothes a link to someplace where life and death were less dramatic. I was grateful that I had to see a salesman that afternoon. The solace I had always preferred now gave me panic, anything but being alone. My eyes jumped from side to side and my arms tensed, too close to the limit, think about your odds, they're good, calm down, think about the debts.

CHAPTER 12

A generic hotel lobby, the European edition of TIME, pathetic articles that read like music videos. There had been a time when the international business environment had mystique, but I felt like a toothbrush peddler and to sell you need energy, lucky for me in this meeting I was the buyer. I couldn't imagine talking to this guy after the morning, a gorgeous creature passed, no reaction, I had always been able to reach out for something, an excuse, an escape. So much was the same, the world had continued as before, no blemishes, no health problems, Madonna and Bill Gates fighting for headlines; maybe I too was the same, maybe I was OK. I wanted to believe that if something was drasti-cally wrong with me, there would be a noticeable change in the world. The worst part of leaving is know-ing your exit will go unnoticed.

The hair clumped together in strands of shiny black, the light fabric of the suit bounced with an air of quality. A young cocky smile put the finishing touches on what was sure to be a real prick. "Would you like something to drink?"

I wasn't going to let wise guy give me any attitude. "A Jim Beam on the rocks." He came back with a cof-fee for himself, handing me the drink without a smile. I felt it all come back into perspective; he began to speak, my head leaned back, eyes spun taking in the whole room. The terror was now an experience, a drug, the words were noise, the shaking in the arms faded before beginning. I suddenly felt good, almost euphoric. The fear stared but I was able to stare back. I rose, knowing I would fall back, enjoying it all the more.

"Our paprika is the most consistent on the market, it gives the constant color you need for you snack cus-tomers while adding flavor."

"We're not interested in flavor." Inside a business skirt moved an alluring body, the Achilles tendon tight above the medium heels. I felt her, knowing what came after her created more tension. I wanted her before I returned to dwell on what I would have to dwell on. For the first time since that morning alcohol brought solace. Brochures opened on the table. I knew I had to let him add quality to his product before talking about price, he was doing his job. "Do you have samples with you?"

"Yes, I have samples of the 55 Asta and of the 130 Asta."

"It looks like you have a good quality product, the ISO 9000 is a good selling point, we'll need four con-tainers, if we can agree on price and if the samples meet our specs." A young waitress moved her bare legs quickly across the lobby, the heavily embroidered bra was visible behind the white shirt. I had visions of her pregnant.

"You can't compare are prices to the Moroccan prices, this is a different product."

"We need to carry Spanish product because some of our clients require it, just give me the best prices you can." It was a lie, if they wanted Spanish or Hungarian paprika we sold them Brazilian and they never knew the difference. Stroke the kid a little, it was a way to lose myself. Once into the hard numbers I did forget, when I returned I was disappointed that the price of paprika could take precedence over my life. I stroked enough so the kid invited me to another drink. I was practically guaranteeing to buy a few containers. Once I got back it would be the buyers problem. I would never have to hear from him again. The light had turned orange on its merciful trip to blue, comforting me in with the imminent darkness, a darkness spread over all of us, a fear and mystery that no one escaped. I would become less different, only to have the morning reveal my plague and my shame.

CHAPTER 13

The orange curtains flickered with the light of a television, well formed legs crossed to sustain the clip-board for a fortyish presenter. Her apparent function to heat up the emotions of the old and bearded intellects debating unemployment from behind their stability and respectability. I had tried to drink in a bar but it was too lonely, better alone than lonely. She turned, lifting the bottom leg over the top one, the skirt resting on the middle of the thigh. "In the United States there isn't an unemployment problem because there is a free labor market. Our laws to protect the workers only wind up leaving them on the unemployment line."

"We don't want the savage capitalism of the Amer-icans, with enormous class differences. That's what will happen if we free the labor markets, no health care, no job contracts, we'll be working 12 hours a day to just get by." They began to talk over each other, the legs tried to regain order, she was exciting me. What a piece, you knew she couldn't get enough, she was at that age, she loved it. The young studs were starting to turn her on. She'd have preferred a debate about football.

The weight didn't let me think, I tried tentatively, relieved that nothing could get through. I knew it would, but somehow the night protected me from it, the morning light would bring the terror, six hours. I was afraid to sleep, letting go of my mind was not advisa-ble; the uncontrollable terror of the dream world was an enemy to be avoided at all costs. Legs would go out tonight, dinner, a few drinks in the world of money and success, to worry over her problems. To live.

An American TV movie, the breakfast with orange juice, the kisses and big cars in suburban bliss, all to be shattered than put back together; learning something along the way of course. My movie wasn't going to have a happy ending, and it didn't start with orange juice for breakfast. CNN at 7:04 am, I had an hour and a half before getting the taxi to the airport. The smiling voice described a massacre in Africa, their day hadn't started with orange juice either. Light melted my shield, I had drunk my self sober. I couldn't bring my-self to shower; the daylight would accompany me across the world and I didn't think I would make it.

The sunglasses couldn't resist the glare. I felt pale and dirty, the words echoed in my head as I spoke them. The taxi driver's eerie silence threatened me, and though I didn't want to talk I asked the right questions to get him going. "Unbelievable, how could Barcelona play so badly with so many good players?"

"Mira,...Van Gaal...Nuñez,...Catalanes...! Mo-mentary interruptions kept him going, the city became country and then appeared the airport and the end of the monologue. Maybe I should have tried to enjoy the silence. The world was far too alive for my liking. I fell into myself and into the plane seat. "The flight to Madrid will take 50 minutes, pleas buckle your seat belts." Yes, time to buckle up.

Two hours in Madrid Barajas. I suddenly didn't want to leave. America is a place to live, not to die. The can of beer was fighting with me, a young girl, the skin on the shoulders tan under the thick flesh, long moist kisses with her boyfriend. She was definitely where she should be, and so was he, I would never be there again. I rolled my eyes to a mother feeding a ba-by, trying to control the toddlers by her side. She was a machine carrying out her duty, unaware of her futile fight to keep the genes alive, but fighting nonetheless. I didn't envy her, though I would have liked to have her. Were they all his? Maybe.

The steady studied walk of the stewardess, the uni-form tight were it should be, the tap of her shoes filling the silence of the long corridor. How many men lusted for her every day? I was just one more. I'd try anyway. I kept the eyes away till she reached the critical dis-tance, a calculated turn of the head and a long stare which she met instantly, for a second I had her full at-tention. She was mine only to continue her rhythmic stride down the hall and through the gate. Those were the instants that I would live for. From behind her skated a mop pushed by a wide blue uniform with painted nails and bright pink lipstick, her neighborhood reflecting off the institutional floor, the chunky body heating up the young lads and the old ones as well. A princess for a few years till she assumed the destiny of her bodily functions, the small hot apartments, the odors of sweat and baby shit, it would come and her reign would end.

The over-worked faces of flight attendants passed seemingly unprepared for a transatlantic flight, the plas-tic of the seat backs, the carpets; I found them all unworthy of the epic nature of what was about to occur. I longed to be young, nervous and looking for adventure. An unsettling attractive woman sat next to me, the plane backed out on to the tarmac while the emergency procedures were demonstrated on a film, for a brief moment we were all in the same boat.

The aircraft climbed, the fuselage rattling. I en-joyed my brief return to the common life, which ended much to quickly with the small bottles of Bourbon in ice filled plastic cups and curt quick smiles from the woman on my right. The first taste touched the far back of my tongue, the nausea rising, the sweat attacking my upper lip.

"Are you returning home?" She dipped her head before lifting it as she over-pronounced her words. I was sure she was crazy.

"Yeah, a business trip, how about yourself?" Hap-py to talk to someone.

"Personal matters." A short smile, this could be enjoyable, a stroll down madness lane. I had begun drinking without noticing, the body working again. Deference and interest are the two keys to opening the mad mind, become one of their humble subjects.

"I hope everything turned out all right for you, mam."

"Yes, I'm afraid they did." Afraid? The over-anxious pompous smile, from whom did she pilfer it? I would have loved to met the original. Here I would make a tactical pause while I hailed a stewardess for another miniature bottle. The breathing became specif-ic, the hand movements timed. Finally the head turned and stared penetratingly. I began to wonder if I should have kept my mouth shut, eight more hours, luckily I was still able to drink.

"My daughter is going to marry a Spanish artist, a renowned painter who just happens to be the son of a Marques." Was the daughter as nutty as the mother, probably not. I was imagining a junky who had painted a few discos; once a middle class brat who knew how to turn on the disdain to convince these two he was really someone. How much had he gotten out of her.

"Congratulations, that's great! She'll love living here, it's a wonderful country. What brought her here?"

"She's also an artist of course, a sculptor. She came over to do her last year in the university. She met Paco in an exhibition, he likes her work." I'm sure he did. "His style is eclectic." The tennis shoes with the slacks, comfortable American attire to travel with. Why was it so necessary to show the world how comfortable they could travel? Money, but not enough, the Celestine Prophecy on the seat back tray, next to the Virginia Slims.

"When's the wedding?" I asked happily.

She dipped the plastic mixer into her Vodka tonic, "December, I'm going to organize, it, small, two hun-dred people or so." How quaint. "Their relationship is more than a coincidence, the way they met, two people from so far away but on the exact same wavelength. Things are happening in the world you know." They certainly were.

"What do you mean?"

"There are certain people, more everyday, who are finding a new energy, an energy that will prepare us for the end, the rapture." She eyed me to see if I was one of them. I opened my eyes to let her know I was.

"I feel it, the coincidences, meeting you on this plane for example.." Kerry had read the book and loved it, had given me an exhaustive explanation and her copy which I could only read twenty pages of, the rapture part she hadn't mentioned. Maybe that was her twist.

"It's happening, we must be ready, do you know that UFO sightings are increasing every day...." I slipped into drunkenness while she rambled, pouring her insane mind on to my drunken one as Portugal passed below us and the Atlantic approached. The bright light off the white clouds, the night too far behind, and every minute farther.

WINTER

CHAPTER 14

A distant train horn somehow made its way through the closed window. Kerry was leaning up against a pillow, the post coitus ready to talk posture while I tried to imagine the train racing down a dark track, the conductor above the bright light. I was weak-er; Amparo alone in the hospital bed crept onto the train, as if she were a passenger. Kerry leaned her head back, to stretch it and at the same time let me know she was ready to talk. I would beat her to it, always a good strategy. When we don't love women it's so easy to do the right thing, only making it worse. "Did you miss me?" A long stretch and a deep kiss on my cheek.

"A lot, maybe one day we can go together."

"Definitely."

"Did you see any old friends?" Her face was younger in the dark and it gave me a glimpse of what she must have looked like at 20. The horror at what I could say became apparent, a bizarre urge to tell all.

"Sure, we had a good time." She cupped her breast with her left hand and brought it to my mouth, a pathetic attempt to show me we could also have a good time, but sufficiently out of the blue to excite me into sex. A laborious self-conscious sex, I watched her ap-parent pleasure, was it real or was it what she saw on television? Oh to have sex with a women who had never seen a television, it must have been easier to tell. I put her on all fours and watched her face, it became real somewhere between pain and pleasure, her desper-ate desire for affection, for family Sundays in the mall, Christmas shopping, not being alone. I could have been killing her, the condom could break or maybe it had already broken. I closed my eyes, remembered a whore, and came.

I was uncomfortable until she finally turned over, releasing her grip on me and fading into deep solitary sleep. It hadn't been easy but at least there had been no dreams. I knew I wouldn't sleep, not for a while. I was warm and until the chill came there was no sleep, not a chance.

Like a cool breeze on a dry summer day, a plane crash. Holly Gunn was about to have an orgasm as she related the still "unconfirmed" numbers of dead, too generic for my taste, but the excitement and death let me escape. Body bags were being loaded into ambu-lances, the occasional hanging limb, the pornography of death. One day my arm would be hanging off the white linen of a hospital bed, but it still felt good to see it on someone else. The fleshy arm of a middle-aged woman, maybe wrapped around someone in passion hours before. I was getting excited. Holly looked bet-ter now, morbo-generically speaking.

An overweight slob of a women anxiously told a reporter what she had heard. "It was like a bomb going off. I ran outside and saw the flames, it was awful." It was awful but she was enjoying herself like she hadn't in years. An injection of the horrible reality she had worked so hard to shelter herself from smacked her in the face. Not so refreshing for the passengers and crew but what the hell; she felt like a new woman.

The toilet received my urine on its purple porcelain, her anti-wrinkle creams eyeing me from atop a shelf. We certainly don't give up easily. Begoña was probably out of her mind on coke, but she wasn't think-ing about me, no doubt, she was thinking about someone else. I wanted to blame her, if it had only worked with her I wouldn't be pissing into this tacky toilet after screwing a single mom while dying of Aids.

The pornography continued, the orgy of reporters saying absolutely nothing that hadn't been said five times, a tragedy, that's what they called it. No, I was tragic; they were accident victims. I felt a tickle on my foot and in the flicker of the TV at the end of my long leg crawled a cockroach. I froze, horrified. I threw my foot, sending the creature to the floor, then reached for a magazine, but I couldn't do it. To much death for one day and for one life, and while it crawled under the couch I realized how fragile I had become.

CHAPTER 15

An enormous American flag waved proudly above a cascade of cables covered with small pieces of colored plastic which reached the ground to create the appropriate circus atmosphere to sell new automobiles. A Kmart mall, a pawn shop/gun-shop, an adult-video store, a grocery store and a drug store-liquor/store com-plex; a cornucopia of the not quite there side of Americana with a helping of Florida sunlight. "Loans, Dial 1-800-FREEDOM" singing on the radio. Nude dancing on the corner. Bring your Dolphin ticket stub and get a free drink.

I should have been roaming meat packing plants looking for new customers, but instead of feeling slight-ly guilty I was totally free. That was freedom, no loans needed, no putting off checking the voice mail. I didn't really care. To Sell or To Be Sold, that wasn't the question anymore. I still had a bit of strip mall land to traverse and I wasn't sure I could do it. I was going to have to work myself into state, get cocky. They were used to it anyway. The street number appeared from behind a billboard ad for a sports radio show, a lot of sharp New Yorkers who had never played a sport in their lives talking about baseball as if it were the stock market.

I parked and listened to a discussion on NPR, a group led by a young woman who had gone West to live as hunter-gatherers, no planting. Only grubbing and killing, she said it was man's natural state. Couldn't be much worse than this, not a joke or a laugh, this was serious stuff. They needed to go on Letterman. Keep the jacket on, they'll treat you better, it's for a life insurance policy.

The glass slid back, an angry fat face gave me a clipboard, at least she didn't ask what it was for. "Fill this out, please." Why should I expect a smile? I wa-vered to have myself tested for everything, but why, only more money. I didn't care about the rest, across the lobby sat a teenager, seventeen maybe, terribly obese. The plaid shirt was ironed, the enormous khaki pants with clean docksiders. A real spiffy getup for a junior in high school, the back arched, the passive ex-pression into nowhere, a blistering wave of pity crashed over me. His mother loved him, thank god, but who else. I imagined unknown depths of loneliness, not my kind, the wicked type; as much as I tried I couldn't get rid of it. I couldn't say fuck him. I felt like trying to be his friend, but the hopelessness was without end. I stood up with difficulty, staring into his face, his eyes down, once on my feet he looked up giving me a friendly grin, a wink came from nowhere as I continued to the receptionist. "The nurse will call you."

I thought about everything except what I was do-ing. I thought about the Marlin's pitching staff, what I would do for dinner, first an hour in the book store, then some rib's, it would be a fine night. Crisp, clear thoughts to take me far and away. The teenager was now repulsing, long gone was the compassion, hoping he would be called, relieved when he was. A quick smile as he walked out of the lobby and into the un-known.

"Mr. Lynch." A robust black body with braided strands falling on the aqua uniform rich with fertile muscle and an earthy aroma. She pointed to a thick white chair, "Take off your jacket and role up the sleeve on your left arm." A nervous glimpse, the word still not mentioned. "Let's see if we can find a good vein." Her tone was friendly. I couldn't say anything, watching the rise and fall of her breasts to the rhythm of deep breaths. Pain was not an issue, for the first time I watched the needle enter, the deep burgundy liquid fill-ing the plastic tube, the needle sliding out of the cotton ball, her tender hand bending my elbow. "That's it." An untrusting voice asked when the results would be back. "Come in on Tuesday."

CHAPTER 16

It didn't hit me till I reached the door. I had gone there as if I were going to McDonald's. The door fought me as I immediately picked up the antiseptic, air-conditioned smell of the lobby. By the time I reached the glass I was aware of what was happening. It mercilessly slid back, the face expressionless. "I'm here to pick up some results, my name's John Lynch."

"Please sit down for a moment." The eye betrayed her, not with kindness nor pity, but with disdain. I knew it. The wait was entirely hopeless. An enormous black woman opened the door, her face round and sad.

"Please follow me." A picture of a jogger with some senseless cliché below the outrageous obesity of the women. "I suppose you know what I have to tell you." It was anticlimactic. "Your cell counts seem good, which means the virus hasn't begun to effect your immune system, do you have insurance?"

"I've got a plan with the company." It came out mechanically, as if I were disconnected from my body.

"You need to get in touch with your doctor and have a complete check up and begin treatment, the quicker you begin the better off you'll be. OK, I know this must be difficult. Your going to have to contact the people you have had relations with or have shared needles with, this is vital to not allowing more people to get infected, please follow through on that." How many times had she done this, how many, how many had passed through this office. I wanted the moment to last and last, but it burned fast. "I hope things work out for you, and please get in touch with your doctor as soon as possible."

I left the office clean and light, almost a skip in my step, the pressure of the sales meeting vanished. A ter-rifying freedom, a new trip, it wouldn't happen tomorrow. I'd have to tell Kerry, that was almost the worst. I'd tell her I got a call from a girl in Spain I had been with, that I'd just found out. I prayed she was OK, this was not for her, as if it were for me. But it seemed much more appropriate in my case. I packed the shirts, an extra suit, the overcoat on my arm, how different it seemed. Nothing could have happened to me that day. I couldn't have an accident. I couldn't get into a bar fight; I was letting out a smell that let the tribe know I was on auto and not to fuck with me. A full hour and half at the Ft. Lauderdale/Hollywood Air-port. I had a long way to get drunk, the moment seemed safe, a haven against the onslaught of the fu-ture. I had always been in a hurry, and now I appreciated the slow percussion of time, its movement shed its skin, becoming something other than a line in space. A serious man in a gray suit picked up his brief-case and left the bar, shoulders hunched, thin hair back pulling at the squinted eyes, the big briefcase pulling him down. He not only moved forward, something moved against him, a breeze. I tried to stay as still as possible, not wanting to walk up the escalator of time, hoping it would take longer to get to the top.

The cigarette I had just lit, a deep drag and it burned, still seeming long, I left it in the ashtray, one habit I wouldn't have to give up. Time in cigarettes seemed like a long time, how many cigarettes were in a year, a month.

The cold on the curb waiting for the bus to the ho-tel, the northern light was comforting, almost dusk, and more authentic. From the curb to a picnic table full of crabs, Maryland style crabs, thrown on to the table atop newspapers. The hypnotic banging and cracking, the small morsels of pleasure, the spray, the hard and moist cracks of the shell, the long, tempting, and anxious road to satiety. My eyes glanced across the table, men and women from across the country, their distance and time converging on the table that became an unanchored moment, neither down nor up, windowless and obscure.

My Tuesday morning occurred but I couldn't make it fit into the evening. I was launched on a journey to a definite destination. The crabs that littered the table below reminded me how far they had come, from the Chesapeake Bay to my table. I was comforted by the transcendent quality of what was beginning, the fear of death only stimulating the scene, the relative aspect to my life had never seemed more clear. I could enjoy the moment, the crabs, the cold beer knowing that in other moments soon to arrive the vision would be a much more vulgar bundle of fear.

The party moved to the hotel bar where we were all more comfortable; a common ground for a team of travelers. People who spent three nights a week in ho-tels, as the alcohol flowed, space and time became irrelevant. We were as much in Kansas as we were in Portland or Houston, Louisville or Maine. It was 8:O0PM and it was 6:00PM and it was 4:30PM, we were coming and going, arriving and departing, drink-ing before dinner and afterwards on company money and our own. All of this could have been stopped in the snap of a finger, in an instant the flock could be brought home, but who dared to be the shepherd?

Laughing with Todd Harris, his small face and thinning hair electric behind the southern drawl. The words passed through me, my body was still and yet I felt close to Todd's Southern road stories. Lips high in an intentionally inauthentic smile, Harry Irvin moved between the two of us, our common boss.

"Ha Harry, haa you doing?" Harry focused his at-tention on me even though he looked and spoke with Todd. Todd he understood, but he worried about me, was I going to work out? Had I been a mistake? There was nothing social about this drink together, it was to see where we were, he had a excellent nose and he wanted a good first whiff.

"How are things in Florida, John?" The annoying 'a's and 'o's of the Indiana accent, the Midwestern movements. If it were only as important as he thought it was, how simple it could all be.

"Harry, everything is great, I'm really starting to enjoy my job. I think you'll like the results you're going to see." Tod looked wide eyed, Harry didn't change his expression. I worried I had gone to far, but I didn't force it. "The trip to Spain was really good. I think we've made some progress on a lot of fronts."

"Great John, I hope you can elaborate on that in your presentation."

"Absolutely." Our eyes met too directly, he was searching and I was provoking, not sure what I wanted to provoke, more time in the company or a conflict with Harry.

"I'll see you at breakfast, good night boys." He strode out of the room, all the boss.

"You are so full of shit, John."

*

"One of our largest customers, King Foods, has spent years attempting to get FDA approval for 'Kapit', what 'Kapit' does, for those of you who aren't aware..." Skip Burgess pulled at his thick mustache, his round body seemed strong in spite of the soft bulg-es. The thick hair didn't seem real above the western PA accent, the reality of his world of spices, potato chips and ketchup seasonings eased through the words. A geometry teacher talking about lines going on into infinity, a farmer talking about the rain. But instead of planes or crops we were in the world of 'Kapit', two story mills running twenty four hours a day, black pep-per and cinnamon forever grinding away beside us. The aroma very present for those of us not accustomed to being at the plant. The ancient desire for spices, treas-ure, power. But instead of sounding like the colonel describing his first battle Skip sounded like an infomer-cial. "...is to encapsulate the fat in snack foods allowing it to pass through the digestive system without being absorbed, creating a truly no fat product, zero fat. We have already developed many snack seasonings with 'Kapit' which we'll have ready for Snackxpo. The only draw back being the obligatory 'This product may cause gas.' which is unfortunate but King Foods is hard at work having it changed." Our Senators will be spending informative weekends at Golf resorts being convinced that some fat slob shouldn't be advised that if he spends ten hours eating 'Doritos' with 'Kapit' he will have gas.

*

Numbers, margins, percentages, net, gross...all af-ter a potato salad and roast beef sandwich lunch. Dave Stillman, our fearless leader, accountant to his very core. "Turnover is good, we have a lot of turnover but that's OK, were going to have more." We should all be shaking now, for whom will the ax fall, who will be deprived of spreading the glory of 'Kapit' through the free world. Was it always such a waste of time, did someone get something out of the salesman's reviews of their territories, the gossip, the speeches, the drunken nights, the bitter mornings. "America is changing. People don't have time to prepare meals, the products they buy continue to be more elaborated, not to mention the increasing amount of meals purchased 'prepared'." He emphasized the quotations with his fingers. He was becoming inspired. "Our market, especially in season-ings, remember, seasonings is were our profits lie, our market will grow with the country. We are part of a larger trend, if you as salespeople can capture the pic-ture, and go for it your future as well as ours will be bright. Have a safe trip home and keep working hard."

Tuesday had become Thursday night in a BWI bar waiting for a flight to Atlanta. One by one they left, flights to Dallas, to Chicago, to make connections West. They passed through Todd and me, drink by drink. "You really think Harry bought that shit about you loving your job?"

"I don't know, I think he liked it though, makes him feel good, like talking about Kenny Rogers Roast-ers new Bourbon BBQ sauce. I think he did."

"You're drunk! I have no idea what the hell you are talking about."

"Harry likes things that are clear, generic, up front, and that's what I gave him. He knows it can't be all that way but he'd rather I said that than I told him I'm having some kind of personal crisis. I just want to keep him going, not forever, just a little while longer."

"Be careful, you can't bullshit them forever, they're gonna find out if your fucking around or not."

"I know, I just want to keep them going for a few more months."

"Wouldn't it be easier just to work? Do the fucking job and that's it."

CHAPTER 17

"I'm sorry John, but From my boxers to a bathing suit with a mug of coffee in my hand, a brisk winter day in South Florida, the low seventies at 10:30AM. I anxiously checked for messages on the phone from which I had long since disconnected the ringer, nothing. The voice mail, the female voice that spoke to half of America everyday spoke fine words to me, 'no messages'. I was free till after lunch. Work had be-come a ball to keep kicking until I decided what to do. To continue doing the necessary to prolong my peaceful mission, live a comfortable life accumulating debt until the end, or give it up.

The black top stung my feet as I leapt across the parking lot. The pool had become my peace and my shelter. Long necked egrets strutting threw the bushes behind lizards, a big thighed women parting the water to carry herself across the pool until she moved on to the sauna. The warm water was mine for the moment, it felt like a bath as I plunged to the bottom looking for my goggles which I had thrown in before me. I mean-dered from one end to the other trying for a rhythm that would take me through a consistent swim. I kicked hard against the side of the pool and launched myself toward the other end under water, not beginning to stroke until halfway there. The current I had created beat against my cheeks, my mind anxiously reliving recent memories, ecstatic, dancing through the water. I grasped for breath at the other end, weary from the people in my mind, unable to separate Harry from Ste-phen's wife, Begoña from Kerry, work from the peace of the ducks, the calm of my apartment with the grind-ing of the mills or the ringing of phones.

Back under, a wicked kick, the goggles almost coming loose, another week with Harry, another sales meeting, for what? How could I eat with Kerry know-ing what I would have to tell her, and when would I do it, and what would she think of me afterwards, regard-less of the outcome. She had better be negative, for my sake. Another kick, tell Kerry, tell her today. Another kick, and with the water over my head went my job, and my condo and my car, they raced away through my hair and out into the chlorinated warm water. I'd fin-ished chasing down truck load sales of black pepper or developing a new Burgher King seasoning. Lump to-gether some money and take off, end it in Spain. When hope was gone and the pain had begun I would find a way to end it.

It all bled off me into the pool, everything. I was absolutely free. What would be was fine with me but there would be no wasting away in this miserable exist-ence until there was no existence at all. From the sauna I peered into the expressionless faces of the ducks as they shit on the rail like middle-aged women farting at dinner parties. My spirits rose and rose. I went from peaceful to exuberant. I was fearless and alive, even death, momentarily, had been vanquished.

On the way back my new energy allowed my to check the mail, more than a week untouched. No bills and four new credit cards with checks, with more on the way. I'd begun to fill out every credit card application that came in the mail, and they started arriving with a synchronicity I found alarmingly supportive of my new plan. I made the call to Kerry, a drink at six. The ecstasy quickly abated to a near panic, but I knew it had to be done. I quick report on the computer, the nerves were building, there was now no pressure to work, and I relished the work to end my work, the idea of tying it all up, of lying on the reports not to gain time but to reach the moment to quit.

Up shot the solitaire out of the menu. I felt I shouldn't continue to test the fates, it was blasphemous, yet I couldn't resist. The first game of solitaire, some difficult spots, but it worked out. I stared at the cards falling upon one another, another game. I knew I shouldn't have, it was desperate and pornographic, but it worked. I saw the combinations fall together I began to breath again, another check of the messages. I was free from their anchors.

I called in to confirm the new credit cards, opening up $16,000 dollars of credit in one day, and ordering more checks to later help me on my fantastic voyage. To spend, to forget, to give up all the responsibilities and obligations and to be free, the buying orgy would begin. A light lunch in a bistro in an upscale mall, no charging masses here, these folks at least tried to keep the rhythm within respectable parameters. Light wool pants that fell delicately through every contour, expen-sive cotton shirts, designer sports coats and a new casual suit, a few ties to match and two pair of very comfortable and stylish shoes; a few grand. Two new pair of Ray & Bans, one the hard look the other a little softer, now the watch.

To light a cigarette with a Dupon lighter while turning the leather band of a Patek Phillipe to show its face to whoever may be looking, or at the sheer noth-ingness, a beautiful sight with or without beholder. I packed the loot into my trunk like a criminal, which I suppose I was and drove away as if I had just killed my business partner.

The high of buying kept Kerry in the distance, so far I was afraid to return, a super bookstore on the right. I would bring some books with me, at least the ones I hadn't read. The final Mishima Trilogy, The Mahfouz Cairo Trilogy, I wanted stories that would go on and on, a John Coltrane CD and some Portishead. Getting home would be like Christmas, one last stop, the liquor store, Bourbon, beer and cigarettes.

I looked for possible thieves as I unloaded the car, the calculations came to $14, 350 give or take $100, relieved to have it all in my clean and finished apart-ment. I should have been thinking about the future, about not working, but the things I bought that day have always given me a feeling of beauty and elegance that I would never have traded for more cash. I justified it by knowing a few more credit card applications would soon appear, make today vanish into the financial twilight zone. Except for what needed to be tailored, everything was put away as if it had always been apart of my repertoire. I poured the Makers Mark with the watch on and lit a cigarette with the Dupon, alone, surrounded by beauty, loneliness, fraud, hysteria on the horizon and Portishead on the CD. It was sublime.

I picked at the ice waiting for her, she came in sleek and fit. I had never seen her like that, that smooth and attractive. The circular glasses giving the final touch to a quintessential woman aware of the impres-sion she was making, and I too aware of what I had to tell her. The problem with being able to seduce with the eyes is that they can't be ordered to refrain from transmitting other expressions. "What's wrong?"

"What do you want?" Her worry grew, there was no putting it off.

"Dewars on the rocks, what happened?"

"Let's get a booth." As I carried the drinks over to be placed on the small table I was aware that I was act-ing. I had to put on the right face, the fear of telling her covered all signs of my current ecstasy. "I had a call last week from I girl I had slept with while I was in Spain." The face remained direct. I think she began to suspect where it was going. I knew I had to offer whatever she needed, but I didn't want to suffer with her. I prayed she would leave upset, wanting to be alone, to see her pathetic would have been unbearable. "I had known her from before, she told me that she was HIV positive."

"Oh my god!" I wanted to reach out to her but I couldn't, I wanted to be far away. "Oh my god! Have you been tested?"

"I just got the results yesterday, positive. I didn't want to tell you till I knew my results. I can go with you tomorrow to get tested. I made an appointment for you in case you wanted to go. I'm sorry." She was blank and angry, for the moment angry at me, which was fine.

"I can't believe you did this to me. I have a fami-ly, my god!"

"Kerry, we've always used condoms. I'm sure your fine."

"I better be, I need to go, give me the address of the clinic, what time is the appointment?"

"I made it for eight, you can call and change it, do you want me to meet you there."

"No, I'll go alone, how long does it take to get the results back?"

"Three days."

I can't stay here any longer, I call you."

CHAPTER 18

The water from the sprinkler streaked my wind-shield as I descended on my approach to the gatekeeper. The look of a retired cop transplanted to a paradise for the useless and dying. "Daniel Lynch."

"One moment." The guard opened the gate to al-low me play golf with my father. To my right the stare of the speed police in a golf cart, old couples walking briskly, a Wednesday at 3:00PM. Time was stretching and twisting, people far and near may have been look-ing for me, calling me, but I didn't really know where or when they were. I was going to play golf in a re-tirement community with the 'soon to be dead' who moved at a different speed.

The condo instantly reminded me of Harry, was Harry a version of my dad? Would they get along? "Your sister is buying a new house, Westport, I'll see if I can get up to see them." He moved a little like him, the small compact frame, the way he raised the coffee mug. "Have a sandwich, how's the golf game?"

"Pretty weak. I need to start going to the shooting range. Dad, when did you start playing golf?"

"I was maybe your age, maybe a little older, all the guys were starting to play at work. I had always been a good athlete, good baseball player, you know, I picked it up pretty quickly." They all picked it up pretty quick-ly, and at the right age. Get them to work, to pay off mortgages, to play a game, a game that was so im-portant they would eventually sell their homes, give up their towns, families, states and future inheritances to their children and go to Florida to find the light, to be-come one with the creator of the round white ball and the perfect swing. Buy your piece of paradise, your condo next to the green basilica of your waning years.

"You play every day?"

"Just about, keeps me going." The appliances had no heart, white on white, I house without real cooking, without a woman. Only the antiseptic cynicism of a hard man growing old alone. Thank god she didn't ever have to know; she couldn't have been fooled like I was going to fool him. I sometimes caught him looking at me, and I knew he was debating what the hell I was, I spic, one of his, or some kind of weird cocktail. Mom for him was something out of a Tyrone Power movie and a guided tour to Europe, it used to bother me but I finally just agreed with whatever he had to say about her life and country.

The curtain opened on the sliding glass door, it clicked shut ten steps away from the golf cart. I strapped in the bag and changed my shoes, the idea of exercise began to make my alcoholic body nauseous as we bumped and hummed our way to the first green. He was driving with a look of a man going to the super-market to by a gallon of milk, the dutiful son by his side.

Alone at the first tee, at least there was no one to watch me shank my first drive. He swung the driver back and forth as if it were an ax, the choppy, graceless strokes of man who had learned late compared to my swing, which was pure aesthetics to which the balls did not respond. He herked and jerked, round went the wood followed by the solid sound of the ball sailing straight away, his self satisfied smirk as he plucked up his tee.

"So dad, how is Ron making so much money, buy-ing a house in Westport and all?"

"He's in investment banking, doing real well, you should have done something like that, you'd be making lots of money, why did you study biology?"

"One of those high school biology teachers who turned me on talking about body secretions."

"Not surprising." He thought biology was some-thing for women to study. "How you doing in that company of yours?"

"OK." He looked at me waiting for a longer an-swer.

"You kids are always changing jobs. I worked for two companies after leaving college, and I felt guilty leaving the first one."

"Times change." He approached the ball with his wedge hanging off his arm, 30 feet from the green. I was across the fairway between two trees in very tall grass, the hunched back, the thick white hair, almost clumpy, the blue pants. It wasn't my father, he was an-yone's father, there was nothing about him to make him mine. The jerky swing and up went the ball, the profile was unrecognizable, the stare toward the green cold and impersonal. I eyed him as he walked to the ball, not looking back, then an abrupt turn toward me, as if he knew. He returned from the warp, he was Daniel Lynch again, no longer the universal old man in blue pants.

Reading greens and playing chess have always had the same effects on me, mental meltdown. There are only so many moves or breaks I can combine until I just move or putt on instinct. I was trying to remember what would happen if I went right when I decided to just go right, and put more ass into it that I thought it would need, high low around and hung on the lip, couldn't have made a better 18 foot put with a super-computer. "So what do you think of this character we've got in the White House?" This wasn't a ques-tion, it was his introduction for his own personal Rush Limbaugh show.

"I love him dad, he feels my pain."

"Feel your pain, you could use some pain, playing golf at three with a hangover, but honestly, he's a whoremaster, a liar and a draft dodger, and the wife, my god, Lady MacBeth."

"Don't get literary on me, dad, I like her, if it weren't for the ankles, but Bubba likes the cocktail lounge look better, Paula Jones, good God! I mean Je-sus, he's the president, he could go for a little classier type broad."

"Your just like your mother, I think your both reds when you get down to it."

"Like I said dad, he feels my pain." His five iron bounced back and forth in a strange pre-shot ritual. If he only knew, Kerry called to tell me she was negative, then evasively ended the conversation.

The seven iron picked the ball up sending it ac-celerating through space, topping off and falling 170 yards away ten feet from the whole. "You should have made me play everyday, that's pure beauty."

"Make you do anything everyday. I think it's a miracle you go to work everyday, if you do, that siesta blood."

"Yeah, I could use more of the case of Busch and bag of Doritos variety." It went in bad, but he swal-lowed it. I realized he wasn't 40 anymore, couldn't put me on my ass even though he really wanted to. The silence stumbled down the fairway, as a kid you never know if parents are thinking about what you've just told them or their taxes, but as an adult we do.

"Case of Busch and bag of Doritos variety, huh." The worst possible scenario, the pissed off Irish-American defending his pride and honor. "Let me tell you kid..." The Lynch version of the Murphy defense. "that case of Busch and bag of Doritos blood is the blood that gets most the bridges built, the mail deliv-ered, the planes flown and the enemy killed, when all your European friends get their pants in a wad we Busch & Dorito guys are the ones that have to go get asses shot off so they can continue clowning around."

"This bag of Doritos is for you, dad."

"You little prick, if I were ten years younger I would kick your ass down this fairway."

"Relax. I'm only getting your worked up, a little too much ass on that putt." His six foot put rolled eight feet past the whole. "Last hole, winner pays for dinner, I'll pay the tie."

"Your on." Three hundred and fifty yard par 4. He wanted to beat my head in with the driver, and I wanted to win the hole. Dog leg left. I was pissed and feeling strong, the sweat had washed my body and I wanted to cut the dog leg, leave myself with a chip shot for the green. I exaggerated my stance to let him know what I was doing, he leaned against his driver, poker-faced, anxious for a shank. I sat over the ball, about to pull back, when I noticed I wasn't breathing, off the ball, a deep breath, an effortless swing. The ball left with a crack, slowly rising toward the large pine at the point of the dog leg, rising and rising, only nicking the top leaves and landing out of site. "That was a prime rib dinner, right, a descent bottle of wine."

"Wine my ass, Busch, a case of Busch."

*

The salads were lofty with blue cheese dressing and bacon bits. I had long given up trying to hide my bad habits from my father, and I ordered the second bottle of wine before the steak arrived. "Have you won the lottery, what's with the lighter and watch?"

"Some good business deals."

"Commissions?"

"Not exactly, stuff on the side."

"Be careful, if they catch you you'll be out on your ass, the Clinton generation." He shook his head.

"Well, it's something I wanted to talk to you about, these deals I've been doing with people in Spain have been working out real well lately, they've offered me a permanent position and I've decided to take it."

"Doing what?"

"Selling their paprika here."

"So you've been selling their Paprika instead of your companies." I wanted it to come out differently, to sound more like I was doing well, but the tone had been set and my fairy tale came out ugly.

"More or less, but only a few deals, do you know how many accounts I don't get full commissions on for all kinds of bullshit, fuck them, do you think they give a shit about me." He didn't want to start fighting again and neither did I.

"Your probably right, as long as it doesn't go on to long." He had enough shanty Irish blood to be genet-ically antiestablishment, even though he might not have realized it.

"A few months, then I'm gone, thing is I'll have to live their, because I'll be covering more than America."

"Going to sell the condo?"

"Yeah, I've got some equity in it. I hope I'll get some money out of it." But it was better for him to get some bad news one night that to have to watch it hap-pen, he'd probably think I was a gay junky. He liked having me around even if we did get on each other's nerves. It was better than being alone, his more or less planned out last years were having a wrench throw in them. I could see the disappointment, but he sucked it up. "I'd like to stay but they're offering me a lot of money."

"Why don't you rent the condo?"

"I could, but it could be a hassle, being so far away. I think I'll put the money in the market so when I come back I'll have a good down payment."

"You always did like it over there, didn't you?" I sipped my drink looking for comforting words. "Have you got a girl over there or something?"

"Kind of, I could never live there permanently, it would drive me crazy, but two or three years and than I'll come back, hopefully with a lot of money, I'll make sure and come home for Christmas. I got a pair of tick-ets to the Fish game on Sunday. You wanna go."

"Sounds good kiddo."

CHAPTER 19

I had been waiting too long and time had ruined what little was left of my ethics, which were no longer ethics as far as I was concerned. Over a million pounds of mustard in eight months, a half a penny could make the difference, a difference that reminded me of Ste-phen Green. An over-quote, a timely call from Stephen, he had mentioned eight percent of the gross. The calculator moved quickly out of the bag, the red numbers dancing to the excited rhythm of greed. What did I owe the people who employed me? Quite a bit: a lifestyle, credit cards, a car, drinking every night and very little work. They would eventually catch up to me but up till now they had treated me splendidly. I tried to build myself a dilemma, but it had no staying power. It was their language which left me cold, regardless of the dinners, the cars or the fat paychecks. I was tremen-dously far from them, separated by a sea of aseptic words and unclear expressions. The betrayal was too easy.

He had let me know the number he was looking for and I had got it from pricing. By the time they realized that they had lost the customer I would be gone. B&W pictures of round Midwestern executives stared at me from between articles on slaughtering pigs. The recep-tionist dressed in cheap poor fitting clothes, the hair puffy and blonde. No sentimentality, no regrets, my last trip to the slaughterhouse, kind people doing a creepy job.

"Tough game against Auburn."

"You can't give the ball away like that and expect to win, so John what have you got for me." He was anxious to close things up, too anxious.

"I've got the pricing for you." By not letting him know in advance the numbers were bad he would be-come more angry, the easier for Stephen to move in. I should have called him before, I was always thinking of things too late. "$.36 delivered." It went over awk-ward and heavy, the whole for Stephen was big, I just hoped he could get off his ass and fill the gap.

"That won't do. I told you I needed $.34. I'm sorry John, I'm going to have to look around."

"I did the best I could. I couldn't get them any lower." He was more loyal to the company than I was. From the first Seven-Eleven I gave Stephen a call, con-firmed the 8% of the gross and gave him the numbers. He would say he had spoken to me about it, come in with the right offer and samples. The best kind of mon-ey, the corrupt and easy sort. The layers of morality, the rules; they shed painlessly. My new finite, limited and immoral life gave me a freedom that seemed limit-less, as if I was flying above the world and the multitudes who were tied to a set of rules. You might say that I was never strong on the scruples, but they were there and they served some unknown purpose; but now they were nonexistent, as irrelevant as an old girl-friend who had gotten fat and lived in a trailer park.

The dark clouds on the horizon took the glare out of the sunny day, a book on time, a warped billiard ta-ble was how he explained it. Young teenagers played in the pool below my perverse eyes, the time of physics blended with the time of young girls. I wanted to think they were on a church trip to the nearby Busch Gar-dens. The Holiday Inn towels brushing the beads of water off the young flesh, my mind returned to the warped world of relative time, a comforting interpreta-tion. The moon a silver ball sliding endlessly around the warped space of a toilet bowl toward the earth. It was time for a swim, to share the water with the young creatures and their sinister monitors, bearded, over-weight, and secretly guarding pornographic fantasies of themselves with their young students. When I would have once hoped that there was more to the relation-ship, now the direct and lured interaction, as the earth to the moon, seemed healthy and fresh. Much more so than the stilted didactic one, and more timeless, or at least time warping.

The water reached my neck, tickling me below my ears, my eyes moved self consciously as if I were Willard in 'Apocalypse Now'. They weren't looking at me as they played excitedly in their temporary sur-roundings, between adulthood and childhood, the girl realizing her body, then forgetting it. Large drops made ripples in the water, they landed far from each other, heavy and deliberate. To my room, to be connected to the real world of messages and work only to rejoice in my freedom from it. The rain protecting me from their thoughts and dry words.

Stephen was efficiently brilliant, no messages, a three o'clock checkout without a destination. I thought east as I got lost in a mall parking lot. There was someone to see and a nice hotel on the beach. 'Blue', the perfect moment for a French film, and my favorite color. I left the day behind the glass door and entered the waiting room to the fantasy world where I pur-chased popcorn and M&M's, a retired couple and man alone my company.

It stayed with me through the steak and potato and launched me on a strange voyage across the state, leav-ing me to thoughts of rainy days playing football in the mud and of beautiful women whom I only knew for the duration of a long glance. The radio announced a 4:20 AM launch of the shuttle, a worthy destination for a day that kept growing.

The lobby of my usual hotel on Jacksonville beach was alive with swarms of Japanese tourists at 10:30 at night. I almost turned and left before receiving the an-swer to the obvious question, but I asked anyway. The clicking of the keyboard gave me hope, the expression-less face looked up. "How will you being paying for the room?"

"American Express. I was afraid you would be all booked up."

"We are, you got lucky, a last minute cancellation." The comfort of a familiar room, the green colors, the creak of a cheap bed. I had everything hung up and in place within minutes, a trot to the ice machine and I was on the bed, drink in hand zapping the tube. The bed began moving diagonally below me, the floor rising and falling. Was this the beginning of it, was something happening? It stopped, the calm after a big wave has passed, time and place finally catching up to my mind like a sling shot. I took a few deep breaths, making sure it wouldn't come back, enjoying the newly appreciated health, the fear of illness getting me out of bed and into the bar.

A small time waitress handling a big crowd with enough disrespect to make her feel important in front of her locals and a Thursday night NFL game which was being ignored amongst the excited space crowd. Seri-ous voices with studied cadences trading NASA anec-dotes. A Boy Scout crowd if I ever saw one, next to me sat a flip flopped local with a tee-shirt advertising a bar. The annoyingly happy faces forced my stare to-ward the long hared local, shoulder length black hair, blown dry, a ridiculous crown to an otherwise hand-some face. Our eyes met, his head bounced with a 'Hi, how you doing' grin that brought instant distaste.

"Your not here for the launch, are you?" I had the immediate feeling he was trying to pick me up.

"I am, actually, combining it with business." The 'Clintonesque' nodding of the head, he felt my pain and my profession. He could see inside me.

"What kind of business are you in?" The look of a fellow corporate warrior, don't bother about the Texas hair. I'm really just like you.

"The spice business, industrial spice's and season-ings." It came out dry and placid. The understanding nods.

"I'm in the same business. I work in commodities, John Smith, but my friends call me Smity." It was studied and delivered for the thousandth time. He had pyramid/multilevel marketing racket written all over him. "I work out of my house with the computer, that's why I can wear the hair. The Naval Academy got that long hair bug into me. How long are you here for?"

"I'll be leaving tomorrow." He grew with his de-livery, from the faggy bar fly to the ex naval officer commodities trader. The weird hair took on a Thorish command. I enjoyed watching him grow, giving him energy and esteem. "What kind of things do you trade?"

"All kinds of commodities, if it's sold on a market, I'll trade it, from currencies to orange juice." He was looking at me as if he was going to fuck me and enlist me in his sect. "Get us two more please." He said to the waitress as he got up. "I've got a conference call. I'll be right back." Touching my shoulder as he left. The waitress left a glance on me as she served the drinks. I suddenly felt pitiful, the magic of the morning, books, ideas, and the mystery of a space shot was melting into a drunken conversation with a gay pyramid scammer.

"Late conference calls, one of the downsides to my business, but then again I work for myself, no bosses, no lay-offs, no downsizing." I was supposed to be ab-solutely fascinated with Smity by now and ready to give it all up for the new magical life he was to offer me. I decided to play along.

"God, would that be great, no boss, no reports, but I would be afraid to live without a salary." I felt like the straw man in an infomercial. I even imagined my-self on TV at 3:00 AM. They would cut from me to an icy blonde, nice legs squeaking inside a tight knee length skirt 'Tell us Smity, how can John get over his fears?' A cleaned up Smity with a more subdued hair-do would let us know how to take control again of our lives.

"John." I had forgotten I had told him my name, nonetheless he used it with too much familiarity, a sneaky trick of the trade. "The world is changing rap-idly, most people our willing to live at the mercy of what's given to them, but some people want more, they want to create their own destinies, be the eagles, not ducks."

"Smity, I'm sick of being a duck."

"I know it sounds funny, but it's really true." He wasn't as naïve as I'd hoped. "Do you know how few Americans make over $100,000 a year, less than 5%, the rest are basically living from paycheck to paycheck. Why? Because they think they don't have any choice."

"Come on Smity, commodities trading is gambling, you win some you lose some, but you can't bank on that."

"The conference call I just had, part of a multi-marketing group I have, started with a small ad in US Today. I have five sales managers covering the whole country." The ad must have been a beauty. His glances were becoming to long, his sales pitch was getting con-fused with his pick up lines. I began to wonder if there was something faggy about me or did this guy just not pick up the signals.

"How much did you make last year Smity, if you don't mind me asking?" A conversation right out of a TV melodrama, one where I had been transported to. My existence was flanked between the evening news and a three-minute run of commercials. Two dimen-sional TV life and conversation. I physically felt less substantial, my problems were faint and unreal.

"Over a hundred thousand." The 'thousand' sounded tinny and unbelievable. The day, beautiful and sublime, raged against the silly night. I was reaching the point of no return, a few more drinks and I would sleep through the night launch. I wanted some-thing real and Smity had lost his sociological appeal.

"Don't you feel like an asshole taking advantage of idiots in those pyramid things. I mean, life is bad enough as it is." He laughed sadly. He was the ugly girl in grade school whom I just called a pig. The pain shrunk him, from Nordic warrior to rodent underclass scum. There was no turning back, no consoling words could repair the damage, though I wasn't particularly pained by it though I realized it had been too rough. I was no one to judge and as long as he had done no damage to me, who cared what he did to the suckers who called his '800' number. Since finding out I was positive I had been much more reluctant to do damage to people, under a strange superstition that the nicer I was the longer I would live. Trashing poor Smity took at least a month off. I would have to help some house-wives with their groceries without indulging myself in any impure thoughts.

A wonderful TV movie ended in familiar bliss just in time for me to get an early start on my trip to the cape. The traffic felt like 8:30 AM, but it was 3:30AM. They were going to see something strange and destruc-tive, not going to work. Life was more than the paycheck for at least a few hours, nothing more than being astonished by a powerful and frightening ma-chine. I drove east, the traffic building as I neared A1A, finally parking a hundred yards from the intersec-tion with the coastal road.

Across the water the shuttle appeared tiny, illumi-nated form what appeared as miniature spotlights. We were directly across the water from the launch site; I was cold in my dress shirt, shoulders tight against my ribs trying to keep warm. Time, as if aware of her pro-taganism, slowed down coquettishly, as if jealous of the shuttle, but proud of her place in the show, 4:20 AM. I was tired of looking at my watch, the cold, humid beach more and more uncomfortable. The crowd relatively silent, I wanted to think it was a respectful silence. The machine seemed completely autonomous and I had no sense of it being directed or flown by men, even the radio commentaries I overheard seemed to talk of it as an animal, not a plane. The hour approached, the minute neared, the second advanced, the white light was still. Time was playing the trickster, the seconds became minutes, heads turned, the murmurs rose, was the mission scrubbed, the expression of a face listening to the radio through headphones. "45 seconds!" The stares returning to the light. A giant match being lit behind it, the orange flare framed by the white spot lights, then an explosion that grew across the water, pure biblical violence speeding across the bay. The earth trembled, the ungodly sound brought its heat to the shore as the craft slowly rose from its pad, the night suddenly day, the gods demonstrating their dominion. Then the night began to regain its domain while the craft reached for the heavens, smaller and dimmer until disappearing into the black sky.

CHAPTER 20

My living room sheltered me from the heavy rain, after two years of projects the space's esthetic was fi-nally what I wanted. I enjoyed seeing it to the sound of the rain and the emptiness that comes from a good film. It was clean and finished, the look of my leather organizer impressed me on the wooden coffee table, a quick check of the messages, call Harry Irvin, when I got back, no matter how late.

"...Skip Burgess is going to be in your area the day after tomorrow, the Holiday Inn at..., 10AM."

"What does he want to talk about, just so I can prepare the meeting?" My voice was shaky, almost trembling. Even though I knew it had to happen, the timing worried me. Had they found out about Stephen? No matter how prepared one is the end is always vio-lent.

"Nothing in particular, he just wants to review your territory, you don't need to bring anything in particu-lar." It was clear. Thirty-six hours. A quick call to Todd Harris. He agreed. "John, buy a six-pack and watch the plane crash."

"What plane crash?"

"The 747 that blew up off Long Island, look, there isn't much you can do."

"How much severance do you think I'll get?" I could hear the desperation in my own voice.

"You'll get something, get drunk and worry about it tomorrow." He thought it was worse than it was. I couldn't tell him I was expecting it.

The flames bubbled on the TV. "The Crash of Flight 800.", the television title to the accident. I could feel the pre-flight atmosphere at Kennedy, the sun tak-ing a head start on the race across the ocean. The open excitement of the tourists, the tempered business travel-ers savoring their cocktails, the beautiful woman traveling alone, exquisite, delicate, to reunite with a lover. The calm, too calm stewardesses, resembling the same run down overworked beauty of the aircraft they worked on, mysterious and silly. That was probably my favorite thing in the world, the few hours before a transatlantic flight. If I was going for a while those last hours in the bar watching a ball game, knowing that in six months the names and averages would mean noth-ing.

I knew without knowing that all those types of people had been there, those conversations, the long looks at new and mysterious people. They were all nothing but chunks of burnt flesh floating in the Atlan-tic, tomorrow they would float up on the Jersey Shore and on Jone's Beach. I felt free, freer than I ever had, freedom was getting as close to where those people were without 'touching go'.

The impending release made my surroundings more intense, the same people whom I watched swimming everyday seemed trivial, trivial compared to my tragic and eventful life. But within moments I felt ridiculous, what was so eventful about getting canned and slowly dying of a horrible disease. I wouldn't have traded it all for a peaceful life with 'Betty' and a safe paycheck from the telephone company. I wasn't sure it made me feel any better but I was over the edge, and there was no going back even if I had wanted to.

The ducks shit in a row, the warm water beat vio-lently on my back while the high temperature of the Jacuzzi was making me dizzy. I lazily slid deeper into the water, time warped in the moist winter light, so lightheaded I lost perspective of myself without fear or desire to return. I stumbled out of the Jacuzzi and col-lapsed into the heated pool, which snapped me out of the daze. My mind returned as I sat under the water, the same water that had helped me decide to leave. I tried to feel it, smell it, find out if it was good or bad, if it had advised me well. The panic that had been long away, years and miles, almost forgotten, only to return. Looking up at the sky from below, it seemed to be there, across the threshold of the water. The bubble rose and burst into the air, an air filled with panic, panic of death and pain and suffering. I finally gasped for air, sucked in deep what most terrified me, focusing my mind with all its power on conquering the enemy, find-ing reasons and plans to escape the worst.

I called Stephen, he had closed the deal. I had a check in the mail and two more down the road, he was kind and up. Stephen would give me the equivalent of three months pay, hopefully there would be severance. The hope of dusk became the immediacy of the night, alone with a story I could tell no one, except Kerry. We hadn't spoken since her phone call telling me she was OK, but she was the only person with whom I could talk. She answered the phone with energy and hope, happy to be alive and happy to be speaking to me. "Wait, I'll be right over." It had been longer than I could remember that someone did that.

The knock on the open door. I was afraid to see her, her glasses appeared childishly from behind a large paper grocery bag. She removed a six-pack, a big bag of chips and a bottle of Jim Beam. "Just in case you were running low." As soon as I saw her I wished she hadn't come. All her life and hope only made me that much more dead. The beers raced nervously down my throat behind chips whose texture and flavor stood on the limit of the humanly consumable. The heat of awkward conversation. We were far away form each other, she talked as if it was our last conversation, with-out wit, without affection. I drank to not have kick her out.

"Oh really, he's playing tee-ball, he's got to be careful with the curve balls."

"Curve balls, on the tee?" Her face changing from the pensive executive to the semi-humored mom. "Have you thought about what you going to ask for?"

I couldn't tell her about Stephen, she wouldn't un-derstand the beauty of it. What I had thought of as a person whom I could talk to was really someone who understood nothing. She knew what I had, and very little else; like the sister with whom there is nothing more than the faint family tie which distance and time allow us forget, only to remind us within seconds of reuniting after thousand mile trips that there is nothing to talk about. "I'm going to try to keep the car as long as I can, and I thought about three months severance."

"Use the relationships you have with the large cli-ents to bargain, the non-compete clauses are very hard to enforce, try and let them think your going to the competition even if your not." The rhythm of the con-versation finally stopped completely, the words stopped forever, a strange wicked silence. I was afraid to look her in the eyes.

"I bet you've got to get up early tomorrow." I got up and walked toward the door. "Thanks for coming, I call you and tell you what happened." I've always hat-ed being alone in company. The door slamming was like a big debt being paid off. What I had to do was to be done alone, if I had thought about it I would have realized it, but that was the moment I came to grips with how alone I had always been and would be for what was left. It was a peaceful moment full of truth and calm, no more searching for something that I wasn't going to find, no more lonely conversation with people I had no interest in. From then on I knew my best conversations would be with myself. I began to think with 'we' instead of 'I". I had freed myself from people as well as money and work.

A long breakfast with the paper. It was the begin-ning, up till that moment there had always been the possibility of turning back, of staying. From the mo-ment they fired me there was no turning back. That strong sense of freedom returned.

I felt it in my heart and in my arms. I worked myself into an angry state, and checked it before it got to strong. More coffee, the day was cool, the Dolphins were off to a good start, 8-3, but they always got off to good starts. I left a big tip to try and get the Gods on my side.

The sun shown warm through the cool air, a crisp comfortable light. I had cleaned the car. I felt good getting in, no more McDonald's bags or hangover kill-ing cans of V-8 and empty boxes of cigarettes. I had my best suit on and was wearing Armani cologne. I felt smart and strong. I liked Skip, he was the man who hired me and he was the one who would fire me. Short, stocky, one-on-one he was clear and direct. I didn't want any scenes, just the severance and the car for as long as I could keep it.

The green uniformed receptionist looked up from behind the desk, like the many hotels I had walked through hundreds of times, after hours of driving. "Skip Burgess, please, John Lynch." He reached for the phone.

"Room 311, he's expecting you." I hit the elevator button, then I remembered the brisk cold outside BWI when I had flown up for the first interview, being very tired, leaving at 5:00AM from Ft. Lauderdale, almost falling asleep in one of the interviews. The upbeat talk, 'I really want to sell quality, not price." What a lot of bullshit. I knew it was bullshit when I said it, but it seemed completely ridiculous now. I didn't really know what I wanted when I got the job, though a lot of people probably thought they did, including these folks. These men believed in work, in paying mortgages and sending their kids to college. They weren't only giving me a job they were giving me a future, and now they were taking it away. But what bothered them was why I didn't do what I was supposed to do. It would remain a mystery to them even if I explained it: enough bullshit for one job, for one life.

The doors passed by each other ominously, the number appeared and I pulled my shoulders back and knocked on the open door. "Come on in John." He shook my hand hard, the light was powerful behind him through the window. Passed the bathroom a black shadow appeared from behind a small table.

"John." He didn't even have the balls to tell me he would be there.

"Hi Harry." He didn't raise his hand and I didn't offer mine. He made a half grin as if he were going to burp.

"Sit down John." We sat around a small coffee ta-ble, Skip closest to me on a couch, Harry next to him. "John, as you can imagine, we're not here to give you good news, you're territory is not doing what we ex-pected it to, a lot of it has had nothing to do with you, problems in Mexico, I know, but we have decided to let you go." I nodded my head, stared him in the eye and than looked at Harry. "I know this must be difficult, but sometimes when your life gets turned on its head it's the best thing that can happen." Not convinced of what he was saying, though it was true, he reached for more concrete solace. "Here are three severance checks, you will be paid normally through the end of the month, plus the three months."

"I don't have another car. I'll need this one for two months." They looked at each other happy for a problem to resolve.

"I think we can work that out."

"And I'd like a letter of recommendation, just say-ing I was let go because of market conditions or something."

"We can do that. I'll send them to you as soon as I receive your files, if can buy some boxes and send them UPS, put them it on this week's expense report, which will be your last one." It was winding up, it had taken just a few minutes. I had kept my dignity and so had they. "We'll come down with you, we need to check the car." Harrry had move to the bed to make a phone call, lying across it with his short legs hanging off and looking like a cheap whore in a suit. Skip moved out the door and we walked down the hall, it wasn't my place to say goodbye to Harry so I didn't. As we neared the elevator he came running down the hall, tiny, nervous, not wanting to miss a thing. His ridiculousness made me feel stronger. I broke the silence in the elevator.

"How long will you be here?"

"We're leaving tonight." We walked silently to-ward the car.

"Only damage was to the tire wall. I blew a tire on Alligator Alley, it ripped some of the fiberglass off."

"Get it washed before you return it. I'll call you and let you know how long you can keep it." I opened the rear door and laid my briefcase down on the back seat, than approached Skip.

"Skip." I measured the handshake to be firm but not aggressive. "Harry." Skip looked at me differently, as if he knew I had pulled one over on him.

CHAPTER 21

"You dialed...´Susan Kaplansky'." Susan Kaplan-sky had been given my voicemail. I was cut off. I no longer existed, no one had called to say good-bye, peo-ple I had talked with two or three times a week. I was now beyond the pale, in the never-never land of the ex-employees banished from paradise. The future seemed dark and distant, hidden in the approaching rumblings of an afternoon thunderstorm. Todd Harris had been given my territory and we we're meeting for dinner.

I was anxious to hear the company gossip, but to hear what I wanted I would have to wait as he spoke through the crunch of the lettuce, wiping bits of blue cheese dressing off his chin. His conversation was like a bad chess opponent, but I was happy to have someone to drink with. "God Damn, how the hell am I gonna get 80,000 lbs of black pepper, delivered to Mobile for $1.36 a pound. Impossible. I call....."

"How do you like humping around Julioville?"

"You sure didn't like it. MG Packers, your third largest account, Yolanda, says she hasn't seen your ass in six months."

"If you like her so much take her to lunch."

"Fuck that, what were you doing down here, you just lied your ass off on the weekly reports, didn't you?"

"I haven't been doing much lately. Go out to the pool, do some reading, its hard to get motivated. How many calls did you make today?" Morbid curiosity for how the other half really worked.

"Nine, nine real calls. Skip told me you had been jacking off. I can't see why they didn't fire you earli-er."

"Thanks asshole. You wanna go shoot some pool?"

"No, lets go to a titty bar. I've heard there are some good ones down here." It was the last thing on my mind, a Wednesday night at 10:30PM.

"Might be kind of slow."

"And the pool hall is going to be full of people, let's go, your old employer will pick up this tab." What I had remembered from a bachelor party hadn't really excited me as the bright lights danced on the dark six lane highway. The bouncer was doing his best imitation of a secret service agent.

"Good evening gentleman." Solid Patinum was an upscale nude bar, clean, hip without any strange smells and exceptional young ladies. A resilient blonde danced on the stage while the other girls mingled in the crowd and Todd talked.

"Aren't you going to miss America, they don't put SEC football games on there, do they?"

"Nope, but they've got soccer games."

"I don't know, seems like it would be easier to find something around here." The blonde that had been wrapping her strong legs around a pole to a top twenty song approached the table.

"Would you like a dance?"

"Hell yeah." His spontaneity was refreshing. She unnerved me with her long false stares as she danced her clothes off and climbed atop the table. Todd nod-ding his prematurely bald head to the music, a smart-ass grin running out the side of his mouth. The body was too real, the music, the hair, the glances were too per-fect, too cold. The body didn't call for me the way it should have. Todd slid the bill slowly into her garter belt, stroking the thigh muscle, beginning to enjoy him-self. Another round of drinks. I was entering the point were the alcohol can make everyday occurrences tran-scendental, which is the true beauty of drunkenness, when it very occasionally releases the clarity behind the disorder. It's difficult to be happy thinking about the future; alcohol puts us in the moment, making it the second drug of the capitalist empire. They give you coffee in the morning then booze at night so you forget that you've been busting your ass all day. Rare was the barroom full of drunk work-mates bitching and moaning that ever got up and really did blow up the factory.

A thin brunette, dark, her stomach collapsing under her ribs, the solid nose marking the Mediterranean face. She gazed on the world from always, a whore house in Pompeii to a Renaissance court, she didn't say or not say, no more than a ray of beauty in time. The legs and waist moved to a music with a rhythm that knew fash-ion, the great whore of the 'Mare Nostrum'. Her stare was for me, wanting me and believing only me. The thigh rose to my chin, the skin pliable under my moist hands waiting for the bill to be left.

"Do you want a drink?" They could drink with the customers between dances though they had to give a dance every half an hour.

"Can you wait a second, let me get my friend." A small, compact blonde, shy and sweet.

"Hi." She smiled at Todd. "I'm Kim." Tina was mine for as long as my moment would last and I was only moving in the moment, in the raucous laughter of drunken fun. Tina lifted Kim's bikini over her shoulder. Kim's long nails carefully unwrapping Tina's skirt, the dark eyes looking up in pleasure and arrogance. She was a queen being attended to by a willing and adoring court. From the green and yellow streaks in the dark eyes I saw myself, as she saw me.

The dances followed the drinks, following the laughter and the corrupt hands on young flesh. Time moved through Tina's graceful and polluted limbs, pull-ing and squeezing at every moment, expecting an end that only postponed its arrival. The guests slowly left, leaving the center of attention at our table, drinks for all the new arriving girls. "John, I'm not going to have enough to even pay for half of this, and I can't use the credit card because my wife will kill me."

"Todd, the whole tab's on me, you relax, spend your money on your baby girl." I wanted to be splendid in a moment that would mark an end. Eight girls in my court, all smiles and skin, my princess Tina beside me. Somewhere between the laughs and the bouncing breasts I took care of the tab on a credit card that I would never pay and we left.

CHAPTER 22

The escape. From work, family, credit card bills, I-95, Begoña, death, doctors, and maybe something worse. I was running. A well developed sense of es-cape, of the exodus, it's in our genes, always there waiting to be called upon. How many times had my ancestors escaped just in the nick of time? More than the ones who hadn't lived to be anyone's ancestors. They had escaped from approaching armies, from plagues, from weather and from cold; from fire and from hunger and from hate. I couldn't help but enjoy it. I enjoyed it because it was ephemeral, it was a moment of absolute freedom.

*

The apartment was obsessively neat; the furniture and some boxes carefully waiting to be removed. I sliced the envelope open with a steak knife, the final installment from Stephen, the last piece in place. I put the check in my wallet and I tossed the envelope into the garbage with seven unopened thirty-day notices. My eyes crossed the room picking up what was left, a few boxes to be lifted to the car, maybe the last trip. The project, begun months ago, was coming to an end, and I wanted to enjoy it like the last numbers crossed out in a complicated equation.

The phone rang out sharply by my side, all now screened, most of the callers being collectors. I waited thirty seconds than checked the message, a credit card, call the 1-800 number. Like the thief who could hear the sirens in the distance, time was turning her screws, keeping me on my feet. There were still things to solve, all was not done and I could still get caught. I imagined time in six months, slower, emptier, more me-thodical. And as the end approached, sweet and painful, seemingly unending yet undoubtedly finite. The sloppy footsteps clicked up the sidewalk. I waited for the pause, which was too long, then the strong thumping on the hallow door.

"John, how are ya, good, great, well I've got an of-fer, but before I give it to you I want you to remember that prices have been flat of late, it's a good offer, a re-ally good offer." The dirty binder fell on my wooden dining room table, he pulled his pants up over the mag-ical equator of his spacious belly, then handed me the offer sheet from behind a squeamish grin. I stared ex-pressionless down at this rodent who would surely outlive me.

"Sidney, didn't I tell you I wanted $92,000, wasn't that our agreement?" The offer was actually on the button, $85,000, my magic number.

"John, I told him, but it's a solid offer, he's pre-approved for the loan. He's put the down payment in escrow, you told me you were in a hurry."

"So I'm paying you a 7% commission to sell cheap, do you think that's fair? Why do I need a real estate agent if the only thing he's going to do is lower the price?"

"I want to close this deal, it's a good offer, look." He said as he stared at the table. "If you really don't think I bargained in good faith I'll lower my commis-sion by a point. That's money out of my pocket, you know." He grew as he spoke of the money.

"And the difference between $92,000 and $85,000, were is that coming from?"

"That price was too high, I told, you, too high for this market." He scraped at my violent nerve. I felt my jaw open, maybe a distant instinct from when we bit each other.

"I asked you if you felt comfortable with the price, you said yes, now the first descent offer comes along and you lower your pants, counter $88,000."

"I don't know if he'll go for it, I know my busi-ness, take the $85,000."

"If he accepts $88,000 it's really going to annoy me that you'll get more commission, go sell the apart-ment, call me when you've got a signature." REAL ESTATE AGENT, it has to be one of the most pathetic excuses for a job a man with any sort of pride can have. Selling with neither art nor intrigue. I reminded myself that Sidney would outlive me, probably made a lot more money than I did and wormed his way around to a pretty easy existence.

Alone with the winter light reflected off the moist green of the lawn, alone waiting for the furniture buy-er, surrounded by hollow chests and empty drawers, more than moving out I was moving in but in reverse. The space I had carefully created to near perfection was slowly coming apart, a building that is gutted behind the still standing facade. That day it would be perma-nently undone. Like the secret places I prepared as child for small plastic battalions or collections of toy cars. I didn't want anyone to know what it had been, the space and me, only the plants I would leave could remember. The transaction with Sidney would end the relationship, a signature and a new life would begin in the space that I had sculpted to be my own.

"Hey there John, Roy Sander's, we talked on the phone." He scared me. I couldn't tell if he was some kind of mobster, a hustler or just a rough furniture buy-er, the doubt maintaining the mystique and respect. "This here is Philippe." The long Haitian stare out of the bloodshot eyes. "Well, what do we got?" I showed him through the rooms, he carefully looked over the various pieces of furniture, jotting down a note for each one in a respectful silence only interrupted by an occa-sional and direct question. Philippe behind Roy, as if he were stalking the white boss.

"Would you fellows like a beer?" I asked, hoping to bring on a friendly negotiation.

"I'd love one." An innocent smile left the other-wise intransigent face of Philippe. I put the bottles with glasses next to them, watching my glass fill with foam while Roy wrote number after number. Philippe looked at a blank wall, Roy banged away at his miniature cal-culator, we watched and waited. I had no idea how much to ask for and I didn't want to bargain without knowing, it was more the convenience of getting rid of things than the money. The phone rang. I had a feeling it was Sydney.

"What?" I was being too cocky for my own good.

"John, I've got great news, Mr. La Casse has agreed to the terms and signed the revised offer sheet."

"Sydney, don't you think there is a thanks in store for me? I just made you $210.00."

"John, let's not forget I did some work here. Mr. La Casse wants to close as soon as possible, once the inspections and appraisal's are finished, since he's al-ready approved by the bank we just need to get him approved by the condo committee."

"I don't think he should have any problems, keep in touch Sidney." Roy and Phillipe appeared as a de-crepit dynamic duo as Roy sucked on his menthol cigarette. I could imagine them in a dark bar getting stoned drunk on an early Friday afternoon, Phillipe not understanding a word of the Roy's half imagined past, afraid of being so drunk, afraid of Roy and not wanting him to get angry.

Roy became docile. I would take what ever he of-fered me for all of it, including the TV and video, the stereo a parting gift for Kerry.

"John, $1,200 for the whole thing."

"Make it $1,500 and you've got a deal." I wasn't going to do it but it came out, he set a rhythm and a number to be danced with. His head shaking, a feigned frown, the deal was done.

"I shouldn't do it. All right, Phillipe, lets start get-ting this stuff in the truck. John, your last name, to write the check out to?" I was left in the near dark with plastic blowup mattress on the floor and the tele-phone resting softly on the tile, the sound and light new and refreshing. The walk in closet had become the staging area for the great escape, there stood the boxes of books and CD's to be mailed, the suitcases waiting to be filled with the clothes on the shelves above the hanging suits.

I played a game, turning back, what would I do. I worked out fruitless scenarios ending in ugly scenes with judges, doctors, policeman and my father. Midday dawns and midnight dusks, the days passed in a collage seen from the floor, the only place I could inhabit apart from the car, which was soon to be taken away.

I drove through industrial parks I had frequented as a salesman, around the Miami of Begoña, through dilapidated tourist areas which had finally found a personality only with their demise. I tried to record, to remember and to become sad and romantic, but I only got hungry and spent to the limits of the only credit that still worked on long lonely sushi dinners awash in sake. The physical existence of the place should mean some-thing. I wanted it to mean something, but I decided it didn't. It didn't mean anything to me, only my Dol-phins meant something to me because I had suffered with them too much for them not to.

One last toy to buy in the Magic Kingdom before I was eternally banished to an old world death and exile for my sins. The store that was an experience, you needed a special card to get in the high tech galaxy of purple colors and space ship like washing machines. West Miami, a constant stream of jets made their final approaches over the store full of Latin-Americans very anxious to spend lots of money on the toys they were denied at home. I need, I need, I needed too, one more toy, the portable short-wave radio. So sleek and sexy, digital and black. I approached the check out not sure the card would work, swipe, she looked at the register, silence, the machine engaged and out came the ticket. "Sign here."

That was it. I was ready to go. I had physical pos-session of everything I needed to live, including a bank check written out to me for $43,000 plus three grand I was taking in cash.

A rare winter rain crashed out of the sky, the famil-iar house had become unfamiliar, distant and unforgiving. In twenty feet I had become soaked, drops of cold water bouncing off the black plastic of the tuner, down the thin CD player and around the tape deck. The unhinging of the chain. "John, come in."

"You shouldn't have gone to all the trouble."

"Just let me get the speakers."

"Let me get you something to drink." A puddle formed on the floor, a floor I had seen on many nights, strange in the darkened thundering daylight. "When are you going?"

"Tomorrow, they're coming in the morning to take the car."

"Did you close on the condo?" She was between nervous and sad, no longer happy I was going, afraid for me.

"I week ago, they're letting me stay until tomor-row, they already have a set of keys. How is the kiddo?"

"Great, let me drive you to the airport, what time is the flight?" The tone had become motherly and I rushed to it like a boy with a fever.

"I've got to get a direct flight to Madrid that leaves at 5:30, I'll need to get their about 3:30 or so. I've got to go have dinner with my dad."

"I'll be by at 2:30." She would arrive on the dot. I was safe, safe for a moment before I returned to the abyss.

*

The last zipper on the last bag found its place, snug and secure. They stood attentively by the door, ready for the long voyage. I wore a dark suit without a tie, single breasted, with a yellow shirt, top button open, my Patek Phillipe now comfortable on my wrist, Armani rising from under my new shirt, black loafers, the Du-pon inside my jacket and a recent $50 haircut. The moment was flat, not knowing what to expect but sens-ing a lack of emotion. "Do you have someone to pick you up when you arrive?"

"Yeah." I lied. Nothing outstanding, the usual traffic, if they had known what I was doing would they have looked as we glided through the long bend. Soon speed would warp my time, send me to a new universe. I was practically there, looking at Kerry from another dimension. The approach warped the moment again, slower and slower, the hectic curb, a welcome relief of speed.

"I'd come in with you but I've got to get back to Todd." Hers was the hard part. The luggage at my feet, she approached after a mercifully silent pause, her embrace was violent and unknowing. She turned and rounded the car, letting me watch her go off around police cars and rental car mini-vans into the traffic.

The large creatures measured the landing strip be-fore dipping down to their final silent approach. I returned to the TV, it was 3rd and 10 and I was hoping for a last gift from Danny Boy. The kid next to me was asking questions. I would have brushed him off but his sadness longed for affection. He reminded me of a younger, nicer me.

"You've been to Spain?"

"My mother's Spanish, I used to spend summers there. I'd like to go back someday."

"So is mine. Maybe you will. I can't believe he fumbled the interception, hope springs eternal, shit, off sides again." The clock ticked for all of us, only Danny seemed to know how to take control of it. Bonded in our football devotion, one last chance, 3rd and goal from the 15. The seconds ticked away as they raced to the line of scrimmage for the apparent spiking of the ball to stop the clock . The bar was now surrounded, all eyes on the screen, we never completely lose hope while there's still time left. The quick count, the arm crashing downwards but the not the ball, a squirming OJ scoop-ing the ball up in the near corner of the end zone, it was a good omen I thought. "This time I really have to go, take care Parker."

"Good luck." I walked to the gate thinking the Gods were with me.

Spring

CHAPTER 23

The small, delicate fingers twined the ends of the paper with an attention not becoming of a man. There are things that we have to learn over and over again, for me it was that solitude was preferable to all but the most select, or sensual, of company. I knew that if I smoked it would mean a quick exit, the music lent itself to hip thirty year olds and despondent bartenders. "George, you've got to get them to sign something or they're just going to take advantage of you." He fin-ished rolling and gave me the honor of lighting up. Inma's maternal interest in poor George's problems made her unattractive. I was reminded of her last boy-friend, the ex-con who liked to ruff her up.

"But how? I'm just tired of being taken advantage of, the idea was mine."

"But the money is theirs." I added. She looked at me as if I were the bad patriarch.

"I know, but I set up the restaurant, found the place, the cook. I did everything, and now I can't even take 20,000 pts from the cash register." The frustrated English teacher in Valencia who spent all his money drinking and eating out decided to jump the line and see if he couldn't make some money where he had been spending it. He could always go back to teaching. The poor conversation wasn't letting me drink well. I or-dered another one anyway. "So, John, have you been looking for anything?"

"I'm still thinking about it. I just don't know about teaching again."

"Why did you come back? George told me you had a good job in Florida." The question occurred fre-quently, and I had my prepared answer but what frightened me was that I had forgotten why. It had been so clear before I left, the decision so cutting that I had never really thought why. I was just sure that I didn't want to die in America, it wasn't the place to do it. I was the whale who had found the beach but had forgotten what to do.

"I needed a change. I guess, life's too long to spend it all in the same place."

"Couldn't stay away, could you, he partied like crazy when we taught together."

"We live better here." As if she had ever lived an-yplace else. George was getting uncomfortable; we had never really had that much fun together, the occasional good conversation, but always over an after work beer. Our nights were different. I suddenly lost the anxiety to leave, the night and the city scared me and the bar transformed itself into a safe haven. "How's Nacho?"

"I don't know. I haven't seen him in along time, thank god."

"You have been away for along time." I just want-ed to let her know I still knew her.

"So you're back with Irene." She tried to set the trap.

"No, she's just letting me stay at her place, they have an attic they're letting me use."

"Is she still with Chema?" Irene's flings could have filled the pages of 'Hola'. That I was staying in a house that she owned with Chema, whom she had lived with for ages, while she was in Madrid with Eli didn't seem to go down well with her.

"No, she's with Eli, you know him, don't you?" I looked at George as he rolled another joint. The thrill of the escape was over and the idea of spending the rest of my life with these people was terrifying. I needed a definite end, a destination. They were happy to see me go, never a nice feeling. The lonely stroll home re-minded me of the hundreds of times I had wound up alone after having left home full of hope, hope to find women, to laugh, to have a good conversation, almost always to find myself alone. Kerry had always said I was anti-social, and maybe she was right. To connect with people, to feel friendship was something I had lost in youth.

The lights of the port lifted my spirits as I trudged on toward Irene's house. They were a door to the world, a universe that made me feel small, comfortably small. Through the port towards Cabañal, the small town beside the port. The streets were quiet, far from the outlandish night life of Valencia and I approached a suited man in front of me. The big black shoes remind-ing me of Harry, and all the Harry's I had known, the decided monotonous pace infuriated me, the city dis-gusted me. He didn't even have the courtesy to give me a nervous glance before he slipped his card through the slot to open the ATM machine. I turned the corner and stopped, fuck him, let them throw me in jail. I picked up half of a brick and waited for the door to open, but he had gone the other way and I lost my nerve.

The wide road that followed the beach was full of whores in the end of the night. I passed them on the other side of the street, waiting for one, then I saw her. Strong legs and wild hair, she strutted with force and I crossed the street. We walked up the stairs to the door of the house that wasn't mine. "You want a whiskey or something."

"Give me a beer." I gave in quickly, she had want-ed more, strange in a whore. She talked about her kid, hadn't seen her in months. She swore she wasn't a junky but I didn't believe her. "What kind of food do you eat in America?"

"Turkey."

"We had Turkey for lunch." She had been drink-ing but she wasn't drunk, from Pamplona.

"I knew a lot of Opus Dei people up there, what a bunch of pricks." The sun was beginning to rise on a dead calm ocean.

"My brother is an Opus monk, lives in one of their residences, he doesn't even go home for Christmas. He came down, tried to help me." Her thighs we strong and firm, big breasts and all that wild hair.

"It must be dangerous." I stared out the window drinking another whiskey. I had to bend over to look out the small window, my back was to her open legs. I wanted her to stay.

"Yeah, three Italian guys took me to their hotel the other day. I was sucking on one, whacking off the oth-er and the third guy is giving it to me from behind, but not up the ass, I don't like that, it hurts. They keep ask-ing me, come on, come on, let us give it to you up the ass. They start putting cash on the bed. I finally say yes, all three of them gave it to me. I thought I was gonna die, but what was I gonna do, you never know, once I met these Arab guys on a train, they wanted me to go with them back to Morocco, make some kind of fuckin slave out of me, a lot of weird stuff goes on."

"The first time you do heroin, what's it like, I mean, do you get sick?"

"You wanna do some?"

"Maybe."

"The first time you shoot up you usually throw up, you've got to be careful not to take to much."

"How do you know how much to take?"

"I'll show you, we can get some if you want." Watching the light on the water in the crampy attic I decided what the end would be, and it wouldn't be a bad one. A bottle of whiskey, a friendly whore and then whamo, a shot of pleasure and its all over.

"Not now, but maybe another day."

"Whenever you want, here, this is my number, you can always get hold of me. You know I don't usually hang around talking afterwards, can I take a shower?" I sat in the kitchen in the silence of the departure of someone I liked. Whores usually made me feel pa-thetic, but I had enjoyed her, the sex, looking at her and talking to her. She was my guardian angel who would bring me to a happy end.

The key rattled behind the door, the four-by-four maneuvered its way through the kitchen and into the patio behind. "Can you give me a hand?" Giving Chema a hand could sometimes be like joining the for-eign legion, or in his case, the People's Army. Seventeen four-by-fours up the stairs, the sweat poured off me and the edges of my perspective dazzled in white. I remembered helping my father as a kid, the silence, never knowing where the end was. Chema act-ed like Irene's father but he wasn't going to be mine for as much as he tried. He mercifully looked upon his prodigal son, his knee bouncing. "Let's go have some breakfast." I had a beer and a slice of tortilla while the boss went for more traditional morning grub.

"How's the trade school going?" He held a bu-reaucratic post in charge of giving the lost youth a skill and a supposed future.

"We're trying to get together a convoy to take medical supplies to the Sahara. We're still trying to get the truck." To save the world, what balls, if I could on-ly save myself, the man had no limits, all for the revolution. A strong thirst brought on a burst of clarity, the cold beer with endless cigarettes. Chema never held it against me. He spoke in a low voice, the eyes eva-sive. "Would you like to go?" The idea of running around the desert with a bunch of juvenile delinquents and Chema made me shiver, but I knew the truck would be a long time in arriving.

"I'd love to. I've never been to the desert." He liked the adoration, and I needed a place to sleep.

"Why did you leave, Irene told me you had a good job?" I decided he wouldn't have asked if she had told him.

"Things got out of hand, I owed a lot of money. I hated my job, I needed a change." Chema's life had been dedicated to rescuing lost people. I could feel the eyes begin to pierce me, my salvation was at hand. I was weak, tired, lonely and although I had always de-tested being part of anything, the idea of becoming one of Chema's lost souls was inviting.

"At some point you've got to put some reason into your life." The sun couldn't escape the morning cloud cover, what had begun as an overcast morning was be-coming a rainy day. "Any kind of revolution needs a goal, without one it's all senseless violence, you've made the first step, now take the next one." If only I could believe it, but the only force that kept me alive was my mental honesty, to fall into his trap would mean surrendering. I hadn't done all I had done to become someone's lackey. "When you feel like your ready, come see me, maybe we can find something for you." It was more than anyone had offered me in a long time.

CHAPTER 24

The long loud table quickly filled with plates of fresh anchovies and sardines, fried squid and grilled small clams. Beer, wine, snails, blood sausage; they kept coming and coming, George took the legs off the shrimp as if he were dismantling a watch. My palette growing steadily more ecstatic with each new delight. The blood shot eyes of Andrés searing across the table, his deep melodic voice setting the rhythm. My head was afraid to turn right to see what seemed to be to good to be true. I'd wait and let the night decide. Wine and more wine, laughs and food. I looked at her and spoke with her without ever really looking at her. The key moment in any seduction is the long, mutual look, the stare deep behind her eyes into the streaks of color and light that create the eye, the light hidden behind the color, the hope inside the black nothingness.

She listened, laughed and looked, which was all that I needed. My hand approached the ashtray, the drags on the cigarettes endlessly long, our pinkies mil-limeters away, mine dancing with anticipation, looking for a way to touch its feminine equivalent. I could feel the energy shooting between the fingers, finally I slid the soft bottom end of my pinkie over hers. She coun-terattacked and we began the dance of love amid ceramic jars of wine and a table full of food. "John, let's go to the bathroom." I bid a momentary farewell to my Lady of the Sea, María del Mar was her name and followed George into the bathroom. With his lips closed tightly he ripped the small paper in two, leaving me a lone strawberry to consume. "They're really strong, you might want to take a half."

"How many are you going to take?"

"A whole one." So did I. The shy smile was re-freshing and welcome, drinks were served and I revered in my good fortune. This night was the most I could have asked for. There was no dreaming left for me. Even on the most optimistic of nights, I had to settle with the pleasures a night could bring me. If I hadn't drunk so much I might not have taken the acid; from the bowels of my mind what death tainted horror could the drug extract?

Mar was a hairdresser, but unlike many of her co-horts, she refrained from excessive makeup and intricate hairstyles and offered the simple and sweet image of an attractive brunette in her mid-twenties. By the time we got up to leave I was feeling the effects of the drug, my mind was kidnapped by the forces of good. I would be for a night an angel of peace and happiness for Mar, only to turn into a rotting pumpkin come morning. The lights and sounds of the nightclub jumped and danced, all the faces were friendly and yearning, staring at me. I knew that they knew. I was convinced of it. I created a persona. I was the ambassador to the world of the frivolous from the empire of time. Conversations jumped out of peoples clothes and faces, the smiles were unanimous, my timing was infallible, all of this in a long circle around the club. Having been the ambassador of time I was permitted to live beyond the grasp of my master, at least temporarily. She glowed from between two friends, her smile warmer and lovelier.

I fondled the ends of her hair. "The hairdresser's hair, the soldier's blood, the surgeon's heart." She smiled understandingly, unquestioning. We were leav-ing again, the traffic terrified me. The driver was a boy I didn't know who spoke and laughed without stop. I curled my head towards Mar and gave her a long kiss, she responded with a smile and another kiss. My quite creator of beauty. "Mar, you bring beauty into the world instead of talking, your my angel." Only more smiles and kisses, my hands swept across her body and her breathing increased. For a moment I longed for a life with a partner and a family, a death in old age and grandchildren. Mine was the quick and potent strike and I accepted the challenge, convinced that I had a choice. She launched a passionate attack of kisses and hugs before we left the car.

The large bat symbol stared from across the parking lot, off bumper stickers, and from the sky above were it shone down from the spotlight that carried its image to the heavens. The hardcore dance music throbbed away at the spirits of the masses. I had the terrible sensation of descending into the depths of evil, of being initiated into a terrible sect. Inside roamed girls with dark lipstick and the boys with tight jeans and dark sneakers.

We danced and drank and kissed for hours, my trip rose and rose, she held my ears and squeezed. "Let's go back to the car." I swung the full condom onto the pebbles of the parking lot and fell back into her arms. The slam of the door woke me to the serious face of the now silent and serious driver. I worried if he was an-gry, but too nervous to speak. The yellowish light of dusk brought us through unfamiliar side streets and by early morning customers in bars. "Mar, I'll leave you here on the corner." Her last smile towards me was full of compassion and faith.

"Come by the salon, you know where it is, OK." Another long kiss and off she went. She looked at the car as we sped towards the beach. It slid quickly be-tween a truck and a taxi and the silent driver turned to shake hands, two kisses from the co-pilot and I returned to the world of being alone. The moist morning air coated the orange world with the distant drums marking a constant funeral rhythm. My state of mind, which had seemed to return to near normal had begun to expand again. I feared the morning's lack of strength, physical exhaustion. My worst enemy would then attack the weakest point of my psyche and leave me terrified. As this moment approached the acid made its return, a wave of energy swept through me brushing away the fear and loneliness.

A roamed through the still soft light grateful for the energy that protected me from my fears until I crossed the path of two policemen whose stare reminded me of my precarious state. The reflection of my pupils was enormous in the window of the negligee store, plastic legs covered with pantyhose faded into the enormous black hole at the center of my eye. My steps followed the careful banging of the drum 20 yards ahead of me. I continued beside the procession, the large wooden crucifix swaying above the pointed black hoods. I stopped with the procession. I had been delivered from the pounding rhythm of the temple of vice to the hypnotic and ceremonial beat of Good Friday. Christ would be crucified again this morning amidst the Roman pomp, a singular beat on the drum and it moved forward, the drummers expressionless, the caped and hooded men anonymously receiving for-giveness.

I had moved ahead of the hooded men in black, the whites of their eyes shouting out silently, begging for forgiveness or desiring hatred, until I reached a group of twenty or so older men walking ahead of the drummers and behind the large wooden crucifix which was carried on one man's shoulder. Old slip-on black leather shoes with white socks and key chains with a symbol of the virgin swinging outside the pockets. A leather weightlifter's belt connected the cross bearer with his burden by way of a small chain. I became ab-sorbed in the rhythm of the drums, and the pacing, from a third story window came cries of pity for a lost son; the older lady shouted for the crucified Christ, the procession stopping to accept her lamentations before slowly moving down and through the streets of the fishing village.

Christ had become alive for me. I deeply felt the agony of his suffering and of all our suffering as I trudged along with the procession completely emerged in the beating of the drum and the onslaught of death. Two men moved beside me and walked in rhythm with me, their eyes facing straight ahead yet I felt their atten-tion on me. The drum took a quick beat and stopped. One of the men placed the belt around my waist and the other secured it.

"Is it all right this like this?" I could only look down at the belt below the leather jacket that I had found lying on top of a garbage can. I was trying to draw some drug induced conclusion regarding the jack-et, my mind was everywhere except there. The drum began again and I returned to the cross which would still be mine, comforted by the two men at my side, close and closer I came to the passion of Jesus, the pain and worst of all the fear. I imagined the nails and the blood as we left the pavement and began to walk on the beach. The drums sounded the quick trill before stop-ping the procession, a small decorative pillow slid under the crucifix before the cross was planted on it, the belt undone and the man moved off to the side. My two guides brought me to the cross and clipped my belt to it, then motioned for me to wait. I stared ahead, afraid of the eyes upon me, back in the world without the drums, time had bloomed on the windy and chilly beach, sprouting limbs and flowers through and around the moment only to be whisked away with the snap of a drum. Off we went, the cross a noticeable strain, but not unmanageable. I became everyone and no one and the physical burden became lighter and lighter. Christ's pain turned to ecstasy, the momentary opening to the worlds, of everyman's cross regardless of when. What was at first a difficult sand to traverse now be-came a joy to suffer in, a quick drum beat, the procession stopped and I was replaced.

I strolled behind the procession for another half an hour, savoring the moment, before heading off for the town. The long bar was full of fathers and sons dressed in their procession clothes while others sat beside their instruments, holding enormous sandwiches filled with Spanish omelets or black and white sausage. The first tall cold beer had a magical effect on me, the fresh new pack of Marlboro's snapped open and I felt fantastic, ready to spend a morning drinking, terribly grateful to the fathers and sons for getting up and making the mu-sic and the processions. The smoke left my throat full of texture while drum music approached the street, gradually overtaking the moment until it completely captured it for an instant, only to leave us behind to look for new prey.

Beer after beer, new fathers and sons, the alcohol was breaking through the spell to return me to the world of fear and death that so frightened me. I stumbled home and poured a drink I couldn't finish before fading off into a sleep that would bring little peace when I was to awake that evening.

CHAPTER 25

The annoying rhythm of Irene's finger on the doorbell reminded me how comfortable I was lying on my back with a blanket up to my neck.

"May we, John, where are you?" She poked her head in the door. "Come on, get dressed, we'll be in the kitchen." The old smell of the apartment compli-mented the sparse furniture, makeshift book shelves and curtains. I walked down the hall and passed Irene and Joaquin on my way to the bathroom, warm under the thick sweatshirt, jeans and white socks that protected my feet from the stiff leather shoes. "Do you want a coffee?" I nodded, anxious for it along with my first cigarette.

I hadn't delved deeply into the scientific details of my affliction, hoping to avoid unnecessary morbidity. I usually was annoyed by intrusions into my personal af-fairs, especially by someone as self righteous as Irene, but in this case it was necessary. The chat Dad had to give you when you where a kid after having done some-thing especially idiotic, you suffered beforehand but felt great relief once it was over. It may have been in that very house were I contracted the virus, more than once we had been together there. Drunken nights full of hash induced laughing attacks. George's tapes and after dinner coffees that became long nights at the table. It was all coming back to me. It was the sud-denly sober glance over the wreckage and bodies of an accident, with the policeman asking you if you had been drinking.

"John, you remember Joaquin, don't you?"

"Sure, thanks for coming, I appreciate it." I cere-moniously removed the plastic wrap from the solid new pack of Marlboro's, then offered.

"You shouldn't be doing that, you know." I re-frained from the obvious response out of gratitude. Thick rain drops began to peck at the interior patio, thankful for their comfort. "I checked your social secu-rity card number and everything is in order, you'll have no problems, but you've got to begin to take care of yourself, the smoking, the drinking, your diet, exercise." Just what I needed, a healthy life.

"What about these new drug combinations I've heard about, it sounded like they were effective."

"On most patients they are, not all, and the long term is still not clear, but we may be able to turn this thing into a chronic illness instead of a killer. What we're going to do with you now is check you into the hospital for a full round of tests to see just were you are." My face broke out into a nauseous grimace. "It's only for two days, come on. You'd better get used to doctors and hospitals, because you'll be seeing quite of few of them, and the best thing you can do is bring a positive attitude toward it." And a bowl of sprouts.

"How about letting me invite you two to lunch, a paella down by the beach, will that be all right, you'll let me drink a little today, won't you?"

He raised his eyebrows exaggeratedly then shook his head. "But just today."

*

I couldn't help thinking about what the nurses must have thought of me, and with it came the first stabs of homesickness. A quick thought of how my dad would have reacted to seeing me in the hospital with Aids, or even any of my friends, quickly let me return to my usual state of gratefulness for where I was. Being alone in the room allowed me to enjoy the calculated silence and order of a hospital along with a Dashiel Hammet novel. I tried to remember how long it had been since I had eaten on a timely basis, snacks included, and I decided it hadn't been since my mother died. I hadn't thought of her and I was content to know she didn't have to see me in this state, though strangely enough I wasn't ashamed of myself. I felt like I had been the recipient of a terrible dose of bad luck.

Just to imagine the looks and thoughts of Skip and Kerry, the convulsive repugnance they would certainly feel for me. The tapping of the wooden clogs an-nounced her imminent arrival. The ankles were strong without being fat, a sure indicator of a robust, sensuous body.

She rubbed the moist cotton ball rapidly back and forth on my arm, my eyes staring into her cleavage. My soul yearned for solitary silence, yet the deteriorating body still longed for battle. The long strong neck rose majestically out of her chest between the distinguished presence of the collar bones. The long fingers of her elegant hand took firm hold of my arm, no cheap rings, only the engagement ring and wedding band, with dis-creet watch marking the seconds of my heartbeat. I looked away as the needle entered my vein, slowly moving my eyes back towards her. I admired the well structured face, imagining the sexual positions she pre-ferred, what she did and didn't do, her most shameful moment. Her eye lids rose high to allow the dark, al-most black eyes to pierce mine. She worked silently, only saying that it was over when she took out the nee-dle.

I had a memory, a memory of a path filled with wood chips on a fall day, the late summer light of an afternoon, the crunching sound of the wood below my shoes. I walked alone into a sensation of happiness, real happiness at being someplace that filled me with hope and adventure, a sudden feeling of excitement. The crisp stillness of that day, the touch of a chill hanging in the still warm air. If I then really knew what I was looking for maybe it wasn't too late, because what I desired was nothing but a timeless sense that dangled on moments, much more profound than beauty. The day passed from dusk to night and I no longer feared what lay ahead, my body became so light I felt as if would float away in the divine cloud of peace that had blessedly overcome me.

Joaquin sat on the bed with his clipboard to explain to me the results, and I was grateful for his soft ways and gentle words. I felt the heat rise into my face and my heart beat rapidly, his tone disclosed the presence of not altogether wonderful news. "We've done the tests we've needed to do and you can go home now." I thanked him for all he had done hoping in some way to put off the inevitable. "You are in relatively good shape, you have no illnesses and there is no obvious signs of the virus's progression. Your cell counts are slightly below average, which could mean that there is a possibility that you could see some effects in a relative-ly short period of time if we didn't begin treating you with a series of pharmaceuticals. I've written out which pills you will take and when, you can see that there are quite a few, but once you get into habit of it's really not that big a deal. But you must be absolutely strict about it, if not your wasting all of our time. We can fight this thing and give you a very high quality of life, but you've got to cooperate. You might want to go to some support groups that can help you adapt to the new life-style."

I was afraid to ask what the first symptoms might be, and how healthy I was going to have to become. I found solace in Blanca, when things got bad I could always use that escape. Surprisingly, the beginning of the countdown was less traumatic then I thought it would be and I felt that same sense of urgency that filled my last days in America. There was one more escape to execute, and I decided I would enjoy it.

CHAPTER 26

Frito's round belly bounced back and forth as we silently walked up the dirt driveway to the shepherds house. "Antonio!" Frito threw his head back as he spoke, chewing on a toothpick and breathing deeply. The old wooden door finally creaked open, Antonio looked up with caution before waving us in. The car-cass turned slightly on the rope from which it was hanging, the front legs spread wide, reminding me of the Jesus in Rio. The shepherd worked quietly untying a complicated series of knots to bring down the lamb after it had hung for a day. Frito picked it up, one hand between the thighs and the other on the neck.

The shepherd spoke almost angrily "Don't drop it." Frito made some noises that I couldn't decipher as we walked out of the house. After having returned to the farm from the town, the shepherd called us over to his house, and offered us a beer and some olives as he and Frito talked about the dinner that was going to be pre-pared the next day with the lamb and their differing theories on what should be added. Their hands were terribly large and rough. Frito the tractor driver and Antonio the shepherd; people who worked so much they seemed uncomfortable with themselves when they weren't.

"Let's go get some calamari." Burst out Frito. "You can bring John home afterwards." The shepherd rocked his head while Frito stared at him ready to ad-vance his cause. "Come on, your always alone here." His large jaw emerged triumphant with his grin while the shepherd moved slowly for his jacket.

"Frito, the only thing you do is think about food."

"I spend my life planning to eat."

The owner of the taberna moved slowly from around the bar, sliding his clogs across the dirty floor. "What should I put out?" He had spoken to me the day before, finally looking in my direction and only slightly moving his face to acknowledge my presence before sliding back to the bar.

Calamari, fresh anchovies, snails and the cognac colored local wine. "Eat more calamari, they make your cock grow." Frito's enormous face broke out into a childish grin and then a contortioned smile. Shouting to the barkeeper to bring another pitcher of wine, the bar man looking on with quite desperation at having to serve another nightly feast to Frito. "Antonio, hey, you too, you've got to go up to the Malvinas to see your girlfriend." Finally a faint grin from the barman. The Malvinas being the local area whorehouses, receiving its name due to the Latin American origin of many of the employees. I ate hungrily and thirstily before starting to drink bourbon, the shepherd looked at me for what seemed like to long before asking his question.

"How long are you going to stay?" I felt all six ears and eyes upon me.

"One or two months." Their heads nodded and they continued to eat. What I didn't know but would soon learn was the patience and stubbornness of country people.

"An American in 'La Paca'." And Frito laughed again. "Let's see if he marries Irene and becomes the new 'Señorito'. The uncomfortable isolation of not un-derstanding the unspoken fell slowly, not noticeable at first, but gradually more sticky and uncomfortable. The alcohol had given me an unfriendly and lonely buzz. I wanted to avoid all contact with these people and return to the lonely room in the palatial farm, far from the lies I was to about to tell. What had seemed like a healthy acquaintanceship became annoying. I imagined their reactions if they had known the truth and I was further distanced. They had been discussing the fate of a piece of land when Frito suddenly shouted. "Americano, your not drunk, are you"? I swayed my head to the right with an indifferent look, hoping to find I way to get back home, which didn't come till after two more drinks.

*

The long table swayed with hunger, the metal trays waited steaming for someone to get up and begin serv-ing. I had invited my friend Josep and his girlfriend down from Catalonia for the express purpose of having someone to speak with, but Josep was deep into ad-vancing Irene's brother's opinion of him and his American girlfriend She sat listening and not under-standing, looking my way for comfort but finding only disdain. She was a mirror to my past, America meant my escape, and she was the warden coming around for a look. The innocent and twangy Midwest accent float-ed in the air with an aftertaste of water drunk from a rusty tin can.

I delighted in the lamb roasted in the baker's oven atop half peeled potatoes, the meat sensuous and strong with the animal's flavor. We ate in a house Irene's brother Fabio had restored below the main house for the hunters. The old beams crossed above the room with the authority of their new stain, the new red clay floor had already begun to stain and the poor light enhanced the timelessness of the eighteenth century building. It had originally been the home of the patrons before an old farm house above it had been turned into the pala-tial home of the new owners with all the taste of Franco's 1950's. Those with no taste always have the option to restore someone else's, which in this case was a clear victory over the preposterous attempt at a palace that was the house above, which sat lonely and ridicu-lous upon the dry hill while we were below, surrounded by water which was collected there to be later used to irrigate the fields below. Cypresses and laurels gave shade and life to the terrace which looked out on the olive garden and wheat fields.

Josep nodded his tilted head across towards Fabio. "Who takes out the loan, the company you set up or your mother?" Irene looked in for an answer but Fa-bio's high voice went a pitch above normal.

"Well, the society's name is on the loan."

"But mom co-signed." Irene's anger was apparent and Fabio looked at her, this wasn't to be discussed here. Josep nodded with his lips pinched to let us all know he was aware of the subtle implications. The de-serts were followed by the drinks. Irene enjoying the absolute control she had over me, now there was no sex, which was my only power over her. Now that are relationship had become Mother Theresa helping the sinner I was completely at her disposal, no more telling her off, or leaving without saying goodbye; I was in-debted and therefore not worthy of her attention. Josep considered himself now an intimate of the family, no need to proceed through his friend, his invitation was directly from the top. Fabio's eyes darted occasionally at Charley, in an attempt to bring her into the conversa-tion, his interest in Josep pure courtesy.

"Charley, what are you doing in Barcelona?" He had asked, the alcohol beginning to take it's affect. The monster within from the generations of decadence gradually emerged, the wicked vice of moneylenders who had become borrowers, exploding in the last sparks of opulence. Josep"s middleclass mind had no idea what was in front of him, for he only saw the happy smile of the country gentleman. Charley's silly smile was much nearer Fabio's then Josep would ever want to know.

I eyed Fabio's wife with all my own insatiable de-sire, only frustrated by her knowledge of my case. Paqui's body spoke wonderfully of the perversion that possessed her loins. Dark and sensuous, I had no doubt she could have been had if it weren't for my precarious position. I took advantage of the pity she had for me to accept the nurse like smiles sent, that 'in other days and other fields...', while I listened to Josep.

"She's here to learn Spanish and maybe stay, right bunny?" The right bunny part in English.

"Barcelona is an incredible city, you have access to the entire 20th century, take advantage of the time there." Irene's charm was unfortunately always so del-icate, but in this case it was a direct hit on the always aching for praise ego of Josep, who in turn, sent a lob back to Irene.

"You don't know how good you have here, the si-lence, the space. Barcelona has become non-stop. Charley even says its worse than Chicago." A lob with backspin. "I"m thinking of moving out, buying a place on the coast."

"The big cities aren't livable anymore, Murcia is nice that way, big enough to have what you need but small enough to be livable." Josep offered his "how quaint are the country people look" and Paqui looked on with her "oh, these Catalans, with their weird ac-cents". Paco, the foreman of the farm had been attentively listening in, he had been born onto the farm when it was still owned by the original owners before it was lost to the present clan of money lenders who were so in debt that the favor would soon be returned. He had seen it all, the drunken generations of "señoritos" playing farmer while he kept things afloat skimming enough off to put away a nice bundle but not enough to ever get caught, which doesn't mean he wasn't suspect-ed. He spoke with all the awkwardness and humility of a country bumpkin, which did little to disguise the ab-solutely astute man that was wise enough not to despise the rich man's folly which had given him a lifetime of subsistence. He readjusted his hat before asking Josep the question that everyone wanted to ask.

"Tell me Josep, what is all this we read in the newspapers about the Catalonians wanting to become a country or whatever it is, are you people Spanish, or what, you'll be doing me a favor by explaining all this, because I really don't understand it." I admired how smoothly he had marked his territory, like the dog slightly raising its hind leg.

Josep now felt the stage lights upon him, and as all good attorneys, attempted to tailor the answer to his client, the deep breath, the Clintonesque pensive nod. "Paco, it's all about money, they want to keep as much as they can, that's all there is to it really..." I looked deeply at him for a hint of complicity, there was none. My gentle nod was answered with innocence. Strange-ly enough he was telling the truth, at least his version of it, which only annoyed me more.

Slowly we became six around the dark table, my silence had been noted and awarded with Fabio's rare generosity with the whiskey, and now that the help was out of sight he passed me the end of the joint, after it had made its way around the table. Charley was obvi-ously enamored with the country life, a place and a people much more in sync with what she had imagined Spain to be. The two of us meandered out to the ter-race, Josep out getting some air. We leaned against the railing, the almost half moon illuminating the olive trees to the sound of the wind gently caressing the cypresses. But the dominate note was the water falling into the large cement irrigation tank that looked like an old pool, the humidity making the air thick. She had the simplicity of people whose faces reveals their thoughts, and I knew she was thinking about home. "Don't you ever miss home, I mean, this is really nice and all but sometimes I just miss wall to wall carpeting and speak-ing English."

"Sometimes, but when I'm there I sometimes get-ting the same feeling about here, you'll see, it'll happen to you when you get back". As I spoke I became aware of myself speaking, canned answers that had lost all relevance to what I might be thinking in real time. I could feel myself returning to a moment when this idea had occurred to me. "Have you had much luck finding a job?"

"Not really, with the problems with working papers and everything, Pep's tried to help but the only thing I can do is give English classes and I'm not really into it." She swished her blond hair around with a quick nod of the head, which reminded me of girls in high school. She couldn't have been more than 25 anyway, adding to the illusion. "Pep's a great guy, but I don't know about staying."

"He can be a bit overwhelming sometimes though, don't you think. I mean, I don't know how you could spend all day with him." She nodded.

"In the beginning it was great, but the problem is he is always controlling me, where are you going, what are you doing. I mean, I can't even go out with a friend to the movies without him becoming suspicious, this Latin machismo is just too much sometimes." So the little trophy wasn't so tame as she looked. "I don't think I cand put up with it for too much longer."

"You seem like you're ready to head home." After walking her back to the big house I decided to find Pep. From the large house I walked down the paths full of sheep droppings toward the olive trees. A sweater was enough to keep warm and I quickly found him walking amongst the large old olive trees. He had seen me yet continued his pensive stroll; Pep liked to take care of his image in all moments, calculated spontaneity being his strong point.

"Did you talk to Charley?" The anxiety was run-ning wild. I was worried he might think I had tried something which only bothered me more since I hadn't.

"We talked a little, sounds like she's having trouble finding a job." He nodded in a way that almost looked truly spontaneous.

"That's what she told you, let me have a cigarette." I knew he had quit smoking but I wasn't going to fall in the trap of mentioning it, so I gave him the cigarette. "The other night I get home and she's not there, so I started to look through her things. I know I shouldn't but I did anyway. I know. I know, but anyway. I see she's got a box of condoms, a full box, in a bag, so she had bought condoms, ok, so what, when she came back I asked her where she had been and she said she was out with some friends, she said she was bored and there was nothing wrong with her seeing Americans once I in a while." He took a deep drag on the cigarette, as if he were smoking a joint, the stars were clear if not bright due to the half moon, giving the night a cheerful open character. "Fine, a week later she tells me she's going out, for me not to worry. OK. I go into her room again and I find the box of condoms, and there're three miss-ing."

"And she hadn't used them with you." He shook his head.

"So I now I'm steaming, the whole story was really starting to break my balls. I looked through everything, a checked the tape on the answering machine, rewind-ing it all the way and listening to the messages that hadn't been taped over, and I hear, 'meet me in La Vis-agra, I'll be the one in the red shirt.'." I didn't want to think it was as bad as it sounded.

"She's not an escort, is she?"

"So I'm waiting for her to get back, looking down for the balcony, and she finally arrives in a convertible BMW, gives the guy a kiss goodbye and comes in. When I ask her where she'd been she says she had been with a girlfriend having a few drinks. I blow up, called her a whore, told her about the condoms and every-thing, and she admitted it. She'd been working as an escort, just once or twice a week for a guy who had a whorehouse."

"And you're still with her." He shook his head then raised one eyebrow. "Give her a kick in the ass and get her out of your apartment." But as I said it I knew he was in love with her, in a bad way.

"She said she wouldn't do it anymore, that she needed the money. She really didn't have anything. I don't know." I felt like telling him a bad woman was like a car that's lemon, better to trade it in, but I also noticed he liked the whole thing, as bad as it was it made him feel absolutely dramatic. "She said she had done it Hong Kong when she was there, she really needed the money and it got her out of a bind. She met this guy one night when she was out and thought about doing it again, he wanted her to work in the club but she said no, only out calls. My god, if she has been with someone I know, can you imagine, hi, this is my girlfriend Charley. They'll think I'm paying her."

"You can't let her go, can you?"

"No, even when she talks about going home in makes me nervous." We had started the stroll back to the house, the shepherds dogs chained to the doors of the corrals. We opened the heavy door to the main house, and at the top of the stairs we parted and I walked toward the kitchen to get something to drink. The light was on; Paqui had both hands on the marble table top, her breasts dangling freely, Fabio behind her. They both looked at me with out pausing, the four eyes possessively on me, the pitch of their moans rising. I waited before turning back.

CHAPTER 27

I hadn't worn the dark wool suit I used on the flight over since I had got to Spain. Irene had allowed me to leave all my things in an abandoned storeroom in the farm house and she'd even given me a lock. The faint odor of mothballs still lingered, one uncovered light bulb hung from a stiff piece of wire coming out of the ceiling. Below the rights side of the house, which was reserved for bedrooms and a large office there was a large kitchen, several bedrooms and storage rooms. These rooms led to a patio which finally reached the other side of the house which was reserved for the main kitchen, dining room and more storage and maids quar-ters.

From the long hallway leading to the bedrooms I opened a door a to a poorly lit, rarely used staircase connecting the upper rooms with the workers living quarters below. My storage room was at the break in the staircase. The room was approximately ten feet by ten feet, a thin piece of wood crossed the room as an improvised pole to hang my clothes, my books stood upon a fruit crate on its side. The rooms filled my need for a place, that was all I needed, a 10 by 10 room, proud I was able to minimize things to such an extreme. I spent hours there organizing papers and looking through pictures of Begoña left in a worn copy of Crash.

The thin strap the Patek Phillipe comforted me as I looked at myself in a mirror, there I was, probably as good as I'd ever looked. I was incredibly calm, dan-gerously calm, the state of mind that doesn't look for trouble but explodes when it finds it. The dark shiny blue shirt went straight into the well fitted pants. I had lost the gut I had upon arriving, no longer did I feel left out or strange. I felt strong and decisive.

*

Fabio had his back to us while speaking to a cou-ple. "So, John, a nice farm they've got, I wouldn't mind spending a few months there myself, shit, go out in the morning, do some hunting, take a long nap, I love that view. You want to do a line, come with me." Luis didn't give me much choice. The entrance to the bath-room was a curved hall, with dark a dark tile floor and opaque glass. He passed me the credit card with four lines on it, and I sent two whisking into my nose, then we set up another round before heading back to the bar.

"Let me buy you a drink." The long wooden bar was tended by two long legged beauties with strong expressive noses and the olive skin. The relaxed service accompanied by retro music. The ceiling revealed all the cables and wires for the lighting, my heart was pounding hard, I looked at Fabio and he was wearing his look of vice. Louis's eyes were staring directly be-tween us to a beautiful ass behind me. I took a swift look, the jeans were the perfect frame for the strong thighs and the ankles, the ankles were so well formed that I was sure her face had to be balanced and defined. When she finally turned the face was horrendous, terri-ble, another theory down the drain. But they were fun while they lasted, and there are exceptions to all rules. A small girl behind her smiled at me, she wore a red wrap around skirt with a solid blue tank top, she began to walk toward us when I realized she had been smiling at Fabio and Luis.

"Hola, Fabio." The two kisses.

"John, my sister Mencia". Another two kisses, the thin cotton of her shirt rubbed against the wool on my coat, from her strong neck hung a silver chain, my eyes taking a quick glance below to find everything very well in order. "I'm going to the bathroom. I'll be right back."

"I'll go with you." A smirky smile ran out across my face, the joy of beauty was uncontrollable, the joy of plentiful youth for a man at the height of his powers. We all die sometime, I thought, and you'd never guess by the looks of me. Out of the side pocket of my jacket I removed the red pack of cigarettes and opened it to-ward her, the blue lighter placed the flame just below the packed tobacco and I watched as it crackled. Her thin wrist reached out and took mine, the small thin hands placed their fingers firmly on my watch, turning it over. I watched the dark eyes move quickly up and down.

"It's precious, my father has one, it was the en-gagement present from my mother."

"Your mother has good taste." She wore a pair of simple slip on shoes with practically no heel and I en-joyed the sense of being far above her. Fabio and Luis returned sniffing. "John, give me a cigarette, let's go, another round." He whistled obnoxiously at the bar-maid who took the order with her habitual cool. Slowly putting the long thin glasses on the bar, what we'd call ice tea glasses, then the different bottles of booze next to them. One by one the cubes of ice fell into the glass-es, she opened the different bottles of mixers, except for Mencia who drank Habana Club 7 with ice and lemon and my bourbon on the rocks.

"Fuck, its Susana. I'll be back in a minute." He raced off into the crowded swell of people, smoke and almost screaming voices behind the loud seventies mu-sic. Mencia began to sway to the sounds of "I will sur-vive". I moved my arms as I looked straight into her eyes.

"He's really in form tonight; let's see how he ends up. Last time we went out I had to save him from some girl's boyfriend after he pinched her in the ass. I kept telling him, you can look but you can't touch." Fabio's round body swayed as the words rolled out of his bearded face.

"And then he gets hungry. He'll go into the restau-rant and eat whole raw steaks, but I mean whole steaks, just eat the whole thing, a good case for mad cow dis-ease." She shook more in amazement than disgust, which led me to think what surprised her was the size, not the fact that it was raw.

"When we studied in Madrid together, he would go to a butcher shop near the Reitiro, buy quarter of a kilo of ground beef and ask for it in cone, and then he would go walking through the park eating the raw ground beef while he watched the ducks and the children play, what a guy." Her hair rolled in long curls down to the bare bony shoulders, her hand occasionally pushing a black wave away from her eyes. A free stool appeared behind me and next to the bar. Mencia jumped quickly to it, sitting on my left, leaving Fabio to my right.

I don't believe it's possible to seduce women. They decide whether they are interested or not, which in most circumstances is a split second decision, leaving no time to make ones case. What many people confuse with seduction is simply reading the signs. The female performs a display of feathers type of dance that, de-pending on the woman and circumstances, can be either obvious or subtle. Mencia had just done her dance, and I read it. Now the only thing left to do was respond with approximately the same intensity as the sign dance. Fabio, an expert himself, took careful note and meandered his way over to Louis. What worried me was that he would tell Louis about my condition, but he seemed more interested in doing a few more lines of coke.

My left hip leaned up against the bar while the heel of my right shoe rested on the crossbar of the stool. She almost immediately began to speak, forcing me to move my head close to her mouth, my eyes on her shoulders, my senses at an absolute peak. I could feel my hands running across her ribs, the energy vibrating between us. "I'm really getting hungry, always happens to me when I drink and smoke."

"Let's get something to eat. I'm always hungry too, one of my favorite things to do, do you know any-place open."

An ironical grin filled her small face, the thick lips wide atop the well formed, long jaw bone. "Let's finish the drinks and I'll take you to the restaurant, don't wor-ry. I cook the steaks. You know, I love your countries movies, especially the older ones, "The Big Sleep", "Double Indemnity", they're great. You could be one of those guys, with that smart ass look on your face." The translation a bit liberal. "How did you learn to speak Spanish so well, you almost don't have an ac-cent?"

"My mother was Spanish, she was from San Sebas-tian, what a mix, the old man is Irish and my mother was Basque, born with a Molotov cocktail in my hand." Her head shook slightly in amazement. Fabio and Louis approached with two girls, the party was on. My complicity with Fabio's imminent adultery let me know, with a quick look in his eyes that, that we had agreed to mutual silence.

"We're going to be in "The Cathedral", we'll see each other there."

I rolled up the large metal blind that covered the entrance to the restaurant, Mencia turned the keys to the sound of the bolts, we closed everything and she turned an interior bolt, "Just in case he gets hungry." From the circuit breaker she switched on the lights over the bar and for the kitchen, illuminating the hanging hams and the ceramic bowls full of artichokes, asparagus, sausages, eggplants and zucchini. The doors swung open to the large industrial kitchen. "Open a bottle a wine, anyone you want, how about a fillet mignon, with some grilled asparagus?"

"Sounds good." I walked toward the sound of the sizzling meat, approaching her from behind, wrapping my arm around her to place the glass of wine by her side, letting my hand slide up her side, and kissing her neck. She leaned back then turned to kiss me.

"You see, I at least cook my steaks." She took a drink of wine then turned to kiss me again. "I threw some of these shrimp on the grill, they're really fresh." In Spain there are many categories of shrimp, this one known as the 'Gambon' big shrimp, fished from Garru-cha, a fishing village in Almería. The color is dark red, almost purple and they measure about four inches and inch in width. "You just turn these over on the grill and that's it, if you cook them too long they get tough. She had a pot cover over the asparagus, the big steaks and the shrimp across the grill, my hand reached up to her breast as we breathed deeply the sizzling aroma.

We sat below the hams in the dim light. I lifted the peeled shrimp and placed it into her mouth. Our minds and bodies awash in wine, food and lust; she placed the end of the asparagus into my mouth, it crunched with flavor as she sent the whole shaft in, leaving me to relish the flavor on her finger. The passion grew as our plates emptied. She returned from the kitchen with two lemon mousses, light and fluffy, bubbly to the bottom of the cup. From behind the bar she served bourbon and rum in shot glasses, and I lit her a cigarette. "Anything else for the gentleman."

"One more thing." With both hands on the bar she lifted herself up and sat along the bar, below the hang-ing hams, sliding the bowls of vegetables away from her and motioning me to come up.

CHAPTER 28

The crowds moved in unison through the bright streets, the old legs lifted then dropped, the plastic gro-cery bags swinging, the loud chatter of older men who have been drinking but are still sober and the guttural sounds of people marking there territory. 'El Pueblo', the village, in Spain is the stalwart of tribal culture. Their 'fiestas', their foods, their customs, their women. What at first is quaint, original and traditional slowly wears you down until your dieing to walk up Fifth Ave. talking to yourself. It's them against whoever isn't one of them. This was their one bullfight a year, and they were in fiestas. Caravaca, face of the cow.

The fiestas were to commemorate the horses laden with wine that broke the the Moor's blockade of the city in the Middle Ages. Men would race beautifully dressed horses through the streets and up to the castle at the top of the town, free wine for everyone. A village in fiestas changes, it becomes something else, transcending the heavy weight of tradition and entering into a world of drunken pleasure, long meals, old friends and people from other places. I really don't think one can feel the release that occurs until you've known the psychological oppression of village life.

We had been out late the night before, getting home after the half an hour ride through tight curves and villages. Fabio's hair was still wet from his midday shower, his eyes red, his uncle Pepe strode beside us, rubbing his large eyes and taking long sniffs from his moist nose. The raucousness of the crowd accentuated our silence. "You said you've seen Jose Tomás."

Three beers returned me to the of the previous night's communal spell, dancing in the streets, chatting up everything that walked; I had entered into the magic of the fiestas. I felt very far from anywhere, content with being an escape artist. Still remembering the night with Mencia, which I had been savoring for weeks. She took away the desire to do more the chat them up. I had been careful, I'd used a condom and told Fabio not to say anything to needlessly scare her, for which he agreed, adding there was no use to scare his wife about anything either. I was at peace with all of my passions, ready to enjoy myself for as long as I could before taking a trip back to Valencia when I thought it was time. "I saw him in La Mancha with Irene, he's very good, slow, calm, graceful, if the bulls are halfway decent I think you'll enjoy him."

"Joaquin Vidal in 'El Pais' wrote an article on him the other day, and he doesn't throw compliments around, but he really spoke highly of him." Their was a loud crack then a thump that came from a street leading down from where we were, the sound of quick footsteps and the cries of fear. We moved with the crowd towards the intersection, the car stood looking down on the broken glass, the driver beside it, his hands on his head. The girl laid some ten feet away from the car, her bear feet and thick legs still, the shoes upside down beside her. Silent, one arm trembling and the pool of blood growing around her.

Nobody dared touch her as the crowd opened to allow the paramedics from the nearby bullring to get through. The man repeated "I didn't see her, I just didn't see her." A women put her arm around him while the paramedics action, which began frantic, waned to shaking heads. "Mother of God, the poor girl." The broken red moped sat silently next to the car, like a dead horse. We dispersed with the crowd while the girl was slowly lifted into the ambulance, off to see more death. The voices slowly began to rise, filled with the clichés appropriate for the scene, or the banter of names, so and so's daughter, cousin etc. The march went on, her sad end to be slowly forgotten.

I walked behind some bushes to urinate before en-tering the ring, they were high enough to block the view of the people walking above on the street. My stream rebounded off the hard dirt, drilling a small hole. A loud screech sent me jumping back, almost falling on myself pissing, the cat showed her teeth to me when I saw behind her the just born kittens. When I finally reached the line were Fabio and Pepe stood I was trem-bling at what more could happen that day.

The first five bulls had been irregular; there had been ears cut, boos, and loud applauses, a typical bull-fight in a village, entertaining without ever transmitting strong emotion which is the essence of a bullfight: the emotional communion between bullfighter, bull and the public. The crowd cheered the last bull as he came rac-ing out onto the ring, small and well armed. This was Jose Tomás's last bull and many were hoping for an inspired 'faena'. He stood behind the wood barrier watching carefully, his underlings throwing their gold capes out from behind the barrier to bring the bull to-wards the bullfighter. He finally stepped out, and the bull immediately went towards him, the first pass was abrupt with a bent knee. After passing him the bull sped around, the bullfighter's leg was now straight and the cape made a long slow swish to the sounds of 'olay'. Again, again, always slow and calm, the body erect and the head staring down. A fine start.

After a strong blow from the picador the bull stood breathing hard, the bullfighter waiting with his open cape, offering three slow passes that brought the crowd to its feet. Finally there was emotion but the doubt re-mained whether the bull would maintain its strength and allow the young torero to work with the muleta.

The banderillas had been placed and the torero walked to the center of the ring slowly, he unfolded the red cloth and began to approach the bull, which had recuperated from the previous punishment and seemed concentrated and alert, his head raised, the blood still dripping from his underside. The torero moved slowly toward him from 20 yards across the ring. Within his pain and suffering the animal launched into a gallop, raising his head, only lowering it as he passed into the cloth, the sun dipping, the orange light marking the ap-proach of night. The 'olays' rang out as the animal found courage and strength in his genes. The slow fae-na continued, the music playing, the bull rendering all his strength and will in a desperate attempt to destroy his assassin. The torero had made almost all his passes on the left side, the bull's 'good' side. After series of 'naturales' on the left the torero crossed his arm to fin-ish the series on the right, the bull dipped and the bullfighter rose above the animal and was thrown be-hind him to another collective sigh of fear from the public, the music stopped, the bull turned and forced his horn into the bullfighters back turning him over without puncturing him.

The bullfighter lay on the red speckled sand, the underlings leading the bull away from him. The animal stood, raising and lowering his large trunk to breath, looking on like a beat up boxer in the late rounds after he lands a lucky punch. I imagined his pain and des-peration, the blood flowing continuously from the picador's wound. He must have hoped that his victory would bring him peace, the bullfighter got up to the ap-plause of the public, chasing off his underlings and once again approaching the bull who looked on, now resigned to his doom, galloping slowly, into to the cloth of certain death.

The torero returned from the side of the ring with his shiny iron sword making a few more passes before stopping the bull whom he had squared in front of him. The music stopped on a drum beat, the sword was slow-ly raised to the exaggerated heaving of the animal's chest. One more lunge for life and the sword entered cleanly, leaving only the handle showing between its shoulders. He walked slowly to the railing as his legs began to give out, the crowd raucous in their applause, the white handkerchiefs flowing in a wave, the bull stumbled and fell. All eyes turned to the bullfighter who strode below the presidents balcony to raise the blood stained sword. An underling mercifully placed a knife into the back of the animals head, it turned over, legs raised in death.

*

The table rested outside the old house on the dry path that came down from the main house and went off around the mountain rising in front of us. The same house where we had eaten the lamb weeks before. No longer was I uncomfortable in the surroundings, it had just taken time for me to adjust to the rhythm of rural life. Work and eat. These were the two poles around which all was centered. Instead of working I read, drank and walked in the mountains, my insatiable appe-tite still accompanying me.

We were talking around the table after a 'merien-da', a snack between lunch and dinner. The 'merienda' had gotten carried away, three hours listening to Irene's mother talk about the 'good' old days, which meant the Franco era when the farm made fortunes. The subsidies from the European Community only served to pay the interest on the loans that would soon, as far as I could tell, wind up making farm property of the banks. Old abandoned houses specked the more than 8,000 acres, once inhabited by the many people needed to harvest and maintain the farm before mechanization slowly sent them to France or Barcelona, leaving only 4 or 5 people working full time.

What had began with Irene, her mother, Fabio and myself and now included the foreman Paco, the shep-herd and Frito. The shepherd stood against the door with a beer in his hand, his sheep 100 yards above on the face on the mountain, his dogs looking at him for directions. Bizarre noises came out of his mouth and his arm moved, the dogs immediately running up or down the hill to keep the animals in place while he en-joyed his beer. The sound of the bells around several of the sheep were constant, occasionally picking up speed when they all moved at once.

Empty plates and glasses filled the table, sad empty bottles rose into the silence that had finally arrived, announcing the end of the sentimental chat. The shepherd moved the animals down the mountain and the close to 500 sheep and 30 goats walked passed us towards the corrals. One of the maids began clearing the table while Paco and Irene argued about an old maid who had recently died, maids being a favorite topic of conversation. I excused myself and began a stroll to enjoy the last hour of spring sunlight.

I stepped across the vegetable garden below the house where we had eaten, the tomatoes and pepper plants were still young, waiting for their fruit to appear. I continued below a large Laurel tree nestled inside a patio protected by a stone wall, above which a water reservoir poured its water slowly down the hill to irri-gate the fields. I reached a circular metal tunnel that allowed access to the farm below the highway. It was big enough to allow a tractor to pass through and I made a sound to hear the echo ring around me, after which I heard what sounded like a baby crying, echoing in the tunnel. I continued and found a newborn lamb, minutes old, the mother having given birth but continu-ing on with the rest of the flock.

Usually the shepherd will leave the pregnant sheep in the corral if the thinks they are about to give birth, but this one must have escaped him. It lay on the ground, still covered in after birth, it cried out at me as it attempted to get on its feet, before falling, finally get-ting up again before stumbling and falling a second time. Once again it rose, this time more stable, calling out for me, then putting a fold of my jeans in its mouth looking for milk. I allowed it to continuing suckling on my Levi's while I began to walk the path toward the corrals, the helpless animal stumbling beside me. It fell two or three more times, but always quickly getting back up on the brand new wobbly legs until we reached a rock rise in the pass which the animal would never have been able to scale. "I don't know whether I should do this. I'm saving you only to later have you wind up on someone's plate." I tentatively cupped my hand and lifted the animal up the small incline, the shepherd visible now with the sheep drinking at the troth. He eyed me silently, taking the lamb from my hands and putting a tag on its ear. With that, he moved quickly toward one of the sheep who ran at the site of the shepherd. Finally under his control he opened the gate and kicked the sheep in a small coral with six other sheep and their lambs milking.

The shepherd worked quickly to separate the new mothers who had been grazing with their young, allo-cating a few of the young lambs to goats with bursting breasts. In the meantime I watched the hundreds of sheep, it was the moment before nightfall, with the shepherd out of site. All the eyes were upon me, over a thousand eyes looking for direction. The dogs resting on the ground occasionally growling at any animal moving to far from the group.

CHAPTER 29

He stumbled out of the chair towards the bathroom, tired of remembering, looking in the mirror he opened his eyes wide in his now thin face, scaring himself with his own intense stare. How many hours had he sat in the old vinyl chair, there were two fingers left in the bottle. The lonely dark street radiated an intense silence, poorly lit, the 'George IV' sign from the whore house the only distraction. It blinked its green lights in a series of three movements, girls walked slowly out, chatting with the men they worked with, their undecipherable voices reaching the window. The light finally disappearing into the darkness.

He became dizzy from leaning on the window, but he braced himself and remained to enjoy the silent peace of the now deserted street. Time lost its grip on his peacefully drunken mind, it seemed like a paradise without the noise and light to distract him. When the spell had passed he collapsed again into the chair, poured another drink and lit a cigarette. His face stared fixedly into the darker room until his eyes had adjusted and the spell returned. His hand opened a small leather phone book and the fingers began to move across the numbers, his head gently resting on the chair, the receiver by his side.
