“
“My, this is getting personal.”
“I thought it was just getting interesting.”
I took another sip of water and said, “Yes, I loved her very much. I just never. .”
She waited for me to finish, then finished for me. “You never told her?”
“It took me a long time.”
“How long?”
“Almost two years.”
She made a face. “Why do guys do that?”
“I wasn’t trying to be cruel. We met when I was on the rebound. I’d had two serious relationships in less than a year and was burned both times. I was starting to think ‘love’ was one of those words that got tossed around a lot without much behind it. So I decided the next time I told a woman that I loved her, it was going to be forever. I didn’t realize it, but that little pact I’d made with myself had dug me into a hole. In my mind, telling Jenna I loved her would have been tantamount to asking her to marry me. So I couldn’t say it until I was ready to pop the question. Does that make sense?”
She looked at me with utter disbelief, then finally let out a short burst of laughter. It was little more than a hiccup, completely involuntary, but I was crushed nonetheless. It was as if Jenna and her seagull had dumped all over my head again.
“What’s so funny?”
She sipped her wine. “Don’t tell me you actually believe what you just said.”
“Yes. It’s true.”
“You may think it’s true, but here’s a news flash, my friend. You didn’t love this Jenna.”
“How can you say that?”
She was smiling with her eyes, but I could tell she wasn’t completely kidding. “When it comes to matters of love, don’t argue with the girl from Bogota. She’ll eat you alive.”
The waiter brought menus, but Alex didn’t need them. She ordered a traditional Antioquian dish for us to share, something that wasn’t on the menu but that she and our overly attentive waiter concocted together. Finally he left us alone.
I was still mystified and a little miffed by her reaction to my Jenna story, but I decided to turn the tables rather than push it. “You still have family here in Bogota?”
“I think so.”
“You don’t know?”
“My family’s pretty screwed up.”
“Isn’t every family?”
She smiled weakly but didn’t elaborate. “Come on,” I said. “I just laid my heart on the line and got laughed at. You can open up a little.”
She looked right at me, almost through me, as if deciding whether I was trustworthy. Then she just started talking, her dark eyes fixed on the candle’s flickering yellow flame. “I never knew my father. He was an Italian businessman who traveled back and forth from Rome to Bogota. My mother would see him one weekend a month till I was about ten. I always knew when he was coming, because I had to go stay with my aunt. For years my mother deluded herself into thinking he was going to marry her someday. Deep down she must have known he already had a wife back in Italy.”
“So your mother raised you alone?”
“Yes, my older brother and me.”
“You don’t keep in touch with them?”
“No.”
It was a flat “no,” the kind that didn’t invite inquiry.
She sipped her wine and asked, “Don’t you want to know why?”
“Only if you want to tell me.”
“My brother is dead. He was killed.”
“I’m sorry.”
“My mother thinks it was my fault, so she doesn’t speak to me.”
I wasn’t sure what to say. Almost reflexively, I asked, “Was it your fault?”
She looked away briefly. Then her eyes met mine and she answered in a soft, troubled voice. “I don’t know. After all these years, I still don’t know.”
The waiter interrupted with the first plate. It smelled delicious, and he refused to leave until Alex had tasted it and told him how wonderful it was. Her somber mood was suddenly gone.
“Enjoy,” she said. “With a meal this authentic, we must follow Antioquian custom.”
“Which is what?”
“While we eat, we can speak of nothing but the food. It’s an unbreakable rule.”
I wasn’t sure if that was truly an Antioquian custom, but one thing was plain: I wouldn’t hear another word about her estranged mother and dead brother. At least not tonight.
“
24
The NRA was laying down its weapons. Yankee fans were rooting for the Boston Red Sox. The French were eating English food and loving it.
Matthew was sure all those things were happening. His tent was leaking, he hadn’t bathed in three weeks, his daily food ration had been cut to one plate of beans with rat droppings and a canned fish product that even he, a lifelong fisherman, couldn’t identify. It had been three days since his clothes had been soaked in a rainstorm, and he could still wring moisture from them. The putrid overflow from the hole in the ground that was their bathroom had started oozing downhill toward Matthew’s tent, but the guards only seemed amused by his complaints. Joaquin was still in charge, the Canadian was losing his fight with infection in his severed thumb, and the Swede was sniping at the other captives, certain that he was next in line for torture. Each night the young Colombian woman cried for hours in the darkness, praying to the Holy Infant and whispering the names of her children. No one held any realistic hope of a prompt release. All that, and temperatures were dropping by the hour. Late afternoon had brought their first hailstorm.
This was the proverbial cold day in hell, and Matthew was living it.
It had amazed everyone, Matthew included, the way the Canadian had maintained his backbone even after losing his thumb. The stub was still bleeding when Joaquin had returned with a pen and paper, insisting that he write a letter to his wife. Will told him it wouldn’t do any good, that he and his wife had a firm pact: If he was kidnapped by rebels, never pay, no matter what. Only after Joaquin threatened to cut off his other thumb did Will finally acquiesce. With his left hand he wrote the exact words Joaquin dictated, an impassioned plea begging his family to break their no-ransom pact and cough up whatever money the kidnappers demanded. Joaquin had made a spectacle out of it. The entire letter was composed in front of the other prisoners, a form of intimidation, a demonstration of how even the most defiant prisoner eventually capitulated to the will of his captor. The Canadian dated it, signed it at the bottom, and handed it over to Joaquin. The boss man seemed pleased. Strangely, the Canadian had seemed even more smug as he returned to his seat around the fire with the other captives.
“I signed it ‘Mickey Mouse,’ ” he whispered to the others.
They were all shocked-Matthew, Emilio the Colombian, Jan the Swede.
“They’ll kill you,” said Jan.
“These idiots won’t even notice. I signed in real tiny letters. You need a magnifying glass to see it. But my wife will know right away it’s not my real signature. When she looks closely and sees what I wrote, she’ll know I was forced to write the letter and don’t really want her to pay a ransom. Pretty smart, huh?”
“Joaquin has your passport,” said Matthew. “He can check your real signature against the tiny scrawl you put
