Waiting for Columbus

“Have I become your sister?”

“My sisters are all at home in Genoa.”

“ Genoa. Well, I did not know that. You have family out of this country. Keeping secrets, are we, my love? I thought we had no secrets. I thought we shared everything.”

“We shared one evening-”

“And a night and a morning and an early afternoon.”

“Yes, of course, a beautiful time, but a short time.”

“And now you are leaving me.”

“Cassandra, I am leaving everything, everybody. Not just you. I have two sons. And I have a wife.”

“You have a wife?”

“Well, it is fairly common knowledge.”

“Not to me. You didn’t think it important to share that piece of vital information with me?”

Columbus leans back in his chair. “There was not an appropriate time to share my life’s history with you.” It would not be wise to volunteer any information about Beatriz or Selena, he thinks. Not now. Not ever.

“We could make the time, if only you would not do this thing tomorrow.”

“Cassandra, it is set. I sail tomorrow with the tide. There are three ships. And there are many men counting on me. The king and queen are counting on me.”

“And what of me? Were you going to leave without saying good-bye?”

Columbus begins to feel very twitchy. He does not like the way this conversation is going. She seems to be calm but there is some sort of violence hidden under the skin. Perhaps her voice is too calm. “Well, I will remember you. I will take you with me wherever I wind up.”

“And what about my love?”

“Your love?”

“Yes, I love you, Columbus. I love you like life itself. I have always loved you. I have always been waiting for you. All my life I have waited.”

“But I have not seen you for seven years.”

“And I have loved you all that time.”

“It’s been seven years!”

Her voice changes to something frozen and hard. “And during that time how many others have there been? A dozen? Two dozen, my love? A hundred, my love?” Her hands are in white-skinned fists on the table.

“But I must leave tomorrow, and I cannot take you with me. You understand that I have been waiting for this moment for all of my life? Would you deny me this voyage?”

Columbus stands up. He’s through with this. This is ridiculous. He was hard-pressed to even recall her name and now she is talking of love!

Then the waiter with the slender mustache is standing beside him, whispering in his ear. “You must sit down, Senor Columbus.” Columbus looks at the waiter, measures the strained seriousness of his voice, and sits.

Cassandra looks across the table, speechless. Not only is she being shunned; she’s being interrupted and ignored.

The waiter pulls up a chair beside Columbus. He has a small, white towel draped over his left shoulder.

“What’s going on?” Cassandra says.

The waiter’s voice is just loud enough. “If you want to stay alive, you’ll shut up and drink your wine.”

“What-”

“It’s your faith, Columbus. The inquisitors. The university. Your obsession. Your belief that you can do this despite the known facts. The inquisitors are coming for you. They say you are possessed. They say your ideas about the size of the world are heretical. They may be here already.”

“Who are you? How do you know-”

“I’m a friend who wants to see you set sail tomorrow.”

“Okay,” Columbus says. “You’ve managed to scare me. What do you want me to do?”

“When I leave your table, wait one minute and follow me behind the bar and out into the kitchen. Wait there. We’ll get you to your ship.” The waiter stands up, smiles, claps Columbus on the shoulder. “I’ll bring you another bottle right away, sir,” he says.

Cassandra watches the waiter’s back as he moves toward the kitchen, and then she faces Columbus. “You’ve planned this to get away from me,” she says. “I’m not going to let you run off. I love you. I shared my body with you, as if we were married!” Columbus is counting to sixty. He’s only at thirty when it all changes.

“I have been completely true to you, my love… are you listening to me?”

He risks a look over his shoulder. Cassandra’s voice slows down-he can’t understand what she’s saying. The waiter is moving in slow motion. He’s behind the bar, but he has not gone into the kitchen. Instead, he flips the towel off his shoulder-in a suspended arc-and drops it on the floor, like he’s starting a race or signaling for some event to begin. The towel seems to take forever to hit the floor. The waiter is off, almost running down the passageway toward the front of the restaurant. Is that right? Columbus is thinking. Should I still go into the kitchen? What’s going on?

Two strands of fear pound through his body. He can’t breathe. He fears the Inquisition-he has been pushing the edges of tolerance with his desire to redefine the map of the known world, and he has been vocal about his doubts in God, his growing disdain for the religion behind which the Inquisition hides. He also fears the waiter may have been lying. What if there’s something else going on? What if? What’s in the kitchen? Then the waiter, moving toward the front of the restaurant, turns toward Columbus’s table-it’s such a fleeting glance. In that micro-fraction of a second their eyes meet, and Columbus knows something is about to happen. One of the girls at the next table is eating ice cream-smiling, laughing. The waiter is going in the wrong direction, hell-bent to get out of the room. Columbus pushes his chair back. It scrapes the tile floor-groans, tips over with a bang. He has to see who’s in the kitchen. He has to see. He has to know. His legs are leaden. He can’t move fast enough. He glances back. Cassandra is standing, her mouth open. The mother of the two girls is half standing, watching him. The waiter is almost at the front door. Columbus pushes through the kitchen door. It’s empty. An acrid burning smell. Dull, stainless-steel appliances. Chopping blocks. Racks of knives. A cardboard box on the counter against the wall. Stacks of plates. A pot of something boiling on the stove. A broken plate in the middle of the floor. A frying pan on a gas burner with its contents burned-the smoke beginning to fill the top of the room. The kitchen is vacant. Nobody is there. “Shit.” He turns around. Stands still for a second. There isn’t a waiter in sight. Come on, Columbus tells himself. Move! Everything in him is screaming to get out of this restaurant, but he runs toward the table with the girls instead. He looks toward the front of the room. The waiter is near the door, pushing his way through four men putting on coats. He has to get to the girls and their mother. He’s got to get in between the kitchen and their table. He’s acting on instinct and adrenaline and fear doubled. Cassandra is nowhere in sight. The mother looks surprised to see him running directly toward her. She’s gathered her girls in close, an arm around each daughter. She’s leaning toward the door, like she’s going to get out of the way of this madman. No, he thinks. Not them. Not these girls-not this woman. No! Columbus dives at them, pulls them to the floor, and the explosion pushes the bar, the wall, and most of the kitchen into the dining room. The air around him seems to be moving in both directions. Something jars his back, his spine. He feels the impact-a sharp pain and then nothing. A table smashes into his head as it flips across the room and through the window. The sound of breaking glass. Dishes smashing. Screaming. The cafe empties quickly, chaotically.

Gabriel is one of two agents whose assignment was to follow Columbus and keep him safe. He was on the street when the window blew out-a shower of shattered glass sprays across the road. Car alarms honking up and down the street. He’s frozen for a split second as he figures it out. Then he’s moving against the flow of people- moving through, toward Columbus. At the same time, he’s screaming into a tiny microphone in his sleeve: “It’s a bomb. He’s down,” he says. “Code red, goddamnit. The subject is down. We need backup.” Gabriel moves past the mother and daughters. They were behind Columbus, he thinks. Maybe Columbus is all right, too. The woman who was at Columbus’s table comes out of the washroom, looks around, and heads for the door. She slips and falls near the doorway, gets up, and disappears into the street.

Columbus opens his eyes. He can’t see anything except the ceiling. He can’t move his body. He can’t move his arms or legs. He can’t see the girls or their mother. He can’t lift his hand to shield his face from the overhead sprinklers. He blinks the water away the best he can.

A sort of odd silence folds itself around the remaining disorder. Somewhere in the background he hears horns