“You’re not Hafiz.”
“I am not a lot of things.”
“You are certainly evasive, and vague.”
He sighs. “Of course, I need love. To love and be loved.”
“Who loves you?” She holds his eyes. Looks up into his face from the lip of the pool. She’s not going to let go.
“I don’t want to talk about this.”
“You don’t want to talk about it because Beatriz, Isabella, Selena, and even Juan are fictions. There is no love there, Columbus. They’re not real like this water.” She splashes water up onto the deck, and it fans into Columbus, smacks into him. “Even your kids are fictions. They don’t exist. They don’t love you.”
His voice diminishes. “I… I love. There is love in my life. I love my girls.” He gazes down the distance of the pool toward the far end, where the spring comes in. But there is no focus-his eyes are simply facing a direction.
Did he say girls? He looks utterly lost. Consuela stops pushing. She hadn’t planned to confront him. Did she go too far? She remembers Dr. Balderas’s assertion that Columbus must finish his story.
I love you, Columbus, she thinks. More than I should. More than you know. I want you well and out of here. I want you to be happy.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
It takes three days before he unlocks another chapter of his story. He arrives for breakfast in shorts and a gray T-shirt, sits down like nothing is amiss. Consuela does a double take.
“Is that-”
“Yes. It’s Columbus,” Benito says.
“He’s wearing clothes.”
“Yes.”
“I’m not sure if it’s a good thing or a bad thing,” Consuela says.
“Well, of course, it’s a good thing,” Dr. Balderas says. “Mother of God! He’s wearing clothes for the first time in months! He’s going to come out of this, Consuela.”
They’re in his office, and Consuela has just lost a second game of chess. They have an agreement between them about talking shop. They don’t-not for the first half hour of their games anyway. They leave it alone, talk about life, their lives, anything. Dr. Balderas has been telling the story of how he met his wife. They’d been at a poetry reading in Madrid. And the poet, a woman whose name he used to know but has now forgotten, was terrible- dreadful.
“She read a long, long poem about some deceased pet. It went on and on and on. In the end, we started laughing. Rude, actually, but my God, it had to be done.”
“A dead pet?”
“Yes, and a very long, sentimental poem. My wife and I were the only ones giggling. Everybody else either thought it was brilliant or they were too horrified to react. I don’t see a way for you to avoid checkmate, by the way. Five moves, if you’re careful.”
She sighs. “Okay, enough chess. Let’s talk about Columbus.”
“Well, I recommend not making a fuss about his clothes. It’s a good thing. Pretend this is how it’s always been.”
“That’s it?”
“That, and he must finish. He has to finish the story.”
They take their espressos out onto the upper deck. Columbus removes his shirt, a wild red Hawaiian-style massacre of flowers and swirls, but keeps on a ridiculous straw hat with a short, rolled-up rim. She rather enjoys this new, clothed Columbus. It’s a welcome change. God only knows where he got the clothes, the hat.
“It all goes wrong at the end,” Columbus says.
“What does?” She immediately knows what a stupid question this is and smiles at him knowingly.
“It’s the night before they leave. Columbus and Juan are sitting in some cafe in Palos pounding the wine. Columbus gets a note. I get a note. I was always getting notes from women. They just loved that lost-navigator routine. The romance of a navigator without a ship. Worked like a charm.”
The note reads only: “Meet me at Starbucks behind St. George Street at midnight.”
It’s unsigned. Columbus thinks he knows who it’s from but he’s not quite sure. He tips the messenger and then refills his glass with wine. It’s likely Beatriz. They already said their good-byes weeks ago when he came here to start outfitting the ships, but it is like her to come to Palos for the final night. He can’t even comprehend how much he will miss her. She is his rock. The one steady, unflinching thing in his life. Beatriz and the ocean. Regardless of any of the other dalliances, he loves her.
“We’re set,” Juan says sitting down. “We sail tomorrow morning.”
“All my gear is aboard? You loaded the wine into my cabin?”
“Yes to both.”
“Good. A toast, then.” He pauses. Smiles. “To whatever’s out there.” They raise their glasses and touch them together ever so lightly. Columbus looks at Juan and half smiles. “And may we please God, not cause some sort of catastrophe, some sort of horrible disaster, some sort of hellish nightmare in which everything dies but I am unaffected-”
“Cristobal. Breathe. Just take big breaths. It’ll be all right. You’ll be fine.” Juan refills Columbus ’s glass.
“I just have this feeling”- Columbus interrupts himself to gulp half the glass down-“that we are going to go against God’s will. We are going to find something beautiful and utterly destroy it, not because we mean to but, rather, because we are just too bloody fucking stupid.”
Juan refills his glass.
“We are too stupid to understand beauty.” Columbus is muttering now. “I do not understand beauty. I do not understand Beatriz. I did not understand my wife. I do not understand Isabella. Selena is a mystery. That pine tree over there. I do not understand that pine tree. This wine. I do not understand the color of this wine-”
“Cristobal,” Juan says. “Big breaths and you’ll be okay.”
He’s coming unglued, Juan thinks. On the night before he is to leave, his sanity has already set sail for parts unknown. I can only hope he’ll be all right in the morning. This has got to be the wine speaking, muttering.
The waitress, whose name is Lucero, comes over and leans into Columbus, giving him a good, long look. “The phone is for you,” she says, smiling.
“What? Where?”
Lucero points at the bar. “You’re the navigator who’s going to sea, aren’t you? You’re the one. You’re the leader.” She’s flushed with excitement, fawning.
“Yes, yes, we set sail tomorrow.”
“I just love sailors,” she breathes.
Columbus closes his eyes. For Christ’s sake. It’s raining women.
“The phone?”
“Oh, yes. At the bar.”
He leans on the bar, braces himself to hear her voice, and then picks up the phone.
