The Loss of What We Never Had

by Carolyn Thorman

  Alfonso must have heard the car for he waited for us in the doorway.

  You can spot psychosis by the quivering hands, glassy stare, sunken cheeks and disheveled clothing of its hosts. Paint-smeared jeans rode low on Alfonzo’s hips. Despite the heat, the sleeves his filthy jersey hung to his wrists. The angled ropes of gray dangled to his shoulders; threads of a beard drifted down his chest. Skinny arms, skinny legs—the guy was a spider.

  He rubbed his palms together, then held one out to me. “You here to buy?”

  “Maybe.” I shook his scaly hand.

  A quick Spanish style embrace with Juan, and Alfonso ushered us into a stadium of a room where sunbeams glowered through the skylights. White chairs circled a white table, and canvasses, everywhere, rested against whitewashed walls. Fencing foils hung over a mattress on the floor, and on a coffee table next to the mattress, a handgun lay atop a map of Spain. The air smelled of linseed oil with a turpentine kick.

  “You want to talk Spanish or English?” Alfonso asked.

  “Her Spanish is hopeless,” Juan said.

  Alfonso drew out a chair and with sweeping gestures, cleared the seat of imaginary dust.

  I lowered my bag onto an empty chair. “Juan mentioned you studied design in New York,” I said.

  “Hey, Juanito, you told her everything?” Alfonso turned from Juan and leaned over me. His warm breath smelled of yeast. “He tells you what I do with my sword?” His laugh a soft cackle. “Get it? Sword?”

  “Cool it, ‘Fonze.” Juan set the wine on the table. “Go get your sherry glasses.”

  Alfonso motioned to a cardboard box beside the two-burner stove. “Help yourself.”

  Juan looked down into the box. “I’ve been telling you for years, Fonze, buy some god damned furniture.”

  “Who needs it?”

  “You always say that,” Juan grumbled.

  Juan held up a wine-stained paper cup. “No glass-glasses?”

  “They were spies, and I killed them,” Alfonse said.

  Alfonso drew an imaginary vertical line on the table. “Call this the Pope.” He drew another line parallel to the first one. “There’s Obama.” His finger zig-zagged between the lines. “Here’s me, stuck in the middle.”

  Juan rolled his eyes.

  Alfonzo’s delusion of importance. A delusion that could twist around the mind like a boa constrictor wraps itself around a tree. Arguing with him would make the problem worse, for in the process of defending the delusion Alfonzo would just dig in deeper. If I could reduce the underlying anxiety, the problem would resolve itself.

  I smiled at Alfonso. “Paper cups are a good idea. No dishes to wash.”

  He held up his cup. “Here’s to money.” He wiped his mouth on his sleeve and poured a refill. Then he strolled to the refrigerator, opened it and took out a bottle of Hennessey. “Let’s get stronger.”

  I covered my cup with my hand.

  Juan shook his head no, his cup still half-filled with sherry. Alfonso topped his own with brandy.

  “What kind of painting would you like?”

  “Something for over a fireplace.”

  Alfonso winced as if irritated, and I realized I had trivialized his art. He glanced at the ceiling as if for inspiration, got up and began sorting through the canvasses propped against the wall. He pulled out an oil of a cockroach in a woman’s fist.

  I pretended to admire it. “Not quite what I had in mind.”

  He set the work aside and resumed flipping through the stack, one picture after another. The window air conditioner exhaled icy breath and shivering, I wished I had worn something heavier than a cotton shirt. Alfonso slowly considered each canvas. Some were of abstract designs in primary colors. Others black and white streaks. His only way of communicating, I thought, with a wave of empathy. He expressed ideas he could not explain in words. An isolation that would be painful, complete, and oh, so lonely.

  A spasm that lasted only an instant shook his entire body, most likely a reaction to antipsychotic drugs. I wondered what he’d been prescribed.

  “You okay?” Juan asked from where he sat at the kitchen table.

  “Don’t ask,” Alfonso said, his eyes fixed on the canvas in front of him.

  “Do you have a landscape? “I asked. I heard the jingle of keys and spun around to see Juan toying with a keyring.

  Startled, I asked, “We’re leaving?”

  “I have to get with a guy in town.”

  “You’re leaving me here?” My skin crawled as if a tarantula climbed my spine. “I’ll come with you.”

  He stepped away. “This is personal.”

  “Wait,” I called and followed him through the entrance to the landing outside. Not wanting to be overheard, I closed the front door. “The man’s a time bomb. Paranoid as hell and dangerous if he decides I’m the enemy. “

  Juan started down the path. “Oh, come on,” he said over his shoulder. “He’s a bit off, is all.”

  “You see the gun on the coffee table?”

  “Only one.” Juan faced me. “Look, you’re a doctor for crazy people,” he said. “Which explains why you see crazy everywhere.” His boots crunched in the gravel driveway on his way to the car. He unlocked the driver’s side, slid into the seat and thrust the key in the ignition. “Just don’t get him excited,” he said above the rattle of the engine.

  I was being set up. I went inside to join Alfonso. While pretending to be absorbed in the roach picture, I searched for clues for what was going on. The chronology. First, Zak insists I go all the way to Rocio to buy a picture when there are galleries up the kazoo in Marbella, some even selling Alfonso’s stuff. Then Zak reneges on being alone with me in the car. Finally, Juan splits and leaves me with an armed schizophrenic.

  “Let’s see another,” I said.

  Alfonso presented an oil of a stork inside a Coca-Cola can. “I call it, ‘Flight in America.’”

  I smiled and in a teasing tone said, “A shame America doesn’t have storks.”

  He lifted the painting higher. “Buy this for a reminder for the storks you never had and lost.”

  “I’m really not fond of storks.”

  “Then look around for a picture of something else you didn’t have.”

  The sun dropped toward the rim of the world. The rosy light slid to the floor. Alfonso held up a canvas depicting knives raining from clouds.

  Knives I didn’t need. “Let’s go back to what I never had,” I said. “What’s the asking price for the stork?”

  Alfonso gazed at the floor, either calculating the cost or deciding how much the traffic would bear. He looked up. “Ten.”

  “Dollars?”

  “Ten one-hundred euros, please.”

  “A thousand?” I shook my head. “No can do.”

  He drew himself to full height. “You don’t like my work.” He slammed the canvas against the stack.

  One look at his flushed face curdled whatever was in my stomach. The air conditioner was taking a brief rest, but goosebumps rode my skin.

  Without warning Alfonso crossed the room, reached under the mattress, drew out a pack of Ducados, and sat with his legs crossed. In an abrupt change of mood, he said, “You’d be pretty if you fixed your hair.”

  Anger chasing peace through his brain, then a turnaround with peace in hot pursuit.

  Squinting through the cigarette smoke, Alfonso studied me. “Shorter hair with the front cut on a slant.” he drew a diagonal line across his forehead. “French-people style. For the face, you’ll want more color, lipstick. I like lipstick. Cadmium red—y
ou’ll need a lot. Juan tells me you’re a spy.”

  I kept my breath steady. “I’m wondering what painting to take home. So many beautiful choices.”

  “Juan said you work for the ocean police.”

  “Why would I do that?”

  He winked at me as if saying, we both know why. When he refilled his paper cup with Hennessey and polished it off, it occurred to me that with drugs and alcohol he was well on his way to a blackout, and if he passed out, I could escape. I lifted the bottle, poured, and looked up at the gun aimed at my head.

  The pistol was snub-nosed and matte-black. I don’t know squat about weapons but judging from the trembling in his hand, it must have been heavy. I slowly set the brandy and paper cup on the coffee table. Don’t get him excited. I held out the cup that was filled to the brim. He shifted the weapon to his left hand and lifted the drink with his right.

  I motioned to the mattress. “May I sit beside you?” Quickly, before he caught the shaking of my knees, I sat and crossed my legs to mirror his position. He drained the cup and lowered it to the floor.

  Just as I leaned to pick it up, the shot split the air. Glass shattered behind me. Splinters of sound crashed through my brain, proof I was still alive. My bones went soft, everything limp except my jaw holding my chattering teeth. Alfonso stared at the gun as if amazed it worked.

  Then he burst out laughing, rocked back and forth tossing his ropy hair. He closed his eyes, opened them only long enough to gasp, “You should see yourself,” and went off again.

  A buzzard’s laugh would sound like this.

  Watching him wipe his eyes on the hem of his sweatshirt, I ran down my options. Pounce and grab for the gun, and I’d get it in the chest. Or dash for the door and get it in the back.

  He pulled himself together and sat upright. The dying light in the room cast a ruddy glow to his features, He nodded to the TV and spoke to the dark screen. “Hey, Samsung, don’t look at me like that. I’m only teasing.”

  “What does the screen say back?”

  The bitterness in his eyes told me my attempt to play along fell flat.

  He raised the pistol. “Don’t humor me. Are you buying my stork piece or not? I’ll do you a one, two, three to make up your mind. One comes first.”

  I swallowed the dry saliva in my throat. I’d told myself when the time of my death came, I would not cringe. Tell that to every nerve in my body, each cringing like a child waiting for an injection.

  A last-ditch effort. “Get real, Alfonso. No one carries around a thousand euros. I have a hundred on me you can have.”

  “Yeah?” His voice soft. The room was in twilight but for the glint of the white furniture gleaming like wicker bones. Alfonso’s words came as the sound of the night itself. “Show me.”

  “After you give me the gun.”

  Silence.

  Taking a chance, I reached and put my hand over his hand holding the weapon. The warmth of his dry skin radiated from his flesh to mine. The muscle quivered as he tightened his grip. I stroked his wrist. The soft hairs atop the bone.

  “Your work speaks to me.” A partial truth.

  He hesitated, then quickly, as if acting without thought, passed me the gun. The corrugated handle was damp from the slime of his palm. My spine loosened from the knot my terror had tied. The gun was indeed heavy, and I looked around for a place to put it.

  I got up, went to the kitchen, and groped for the light switch over the counter. How normal the cottage became under the overhead fixture? A toaster, a clock.

  I dropped the gun in a side pocket of my carryall and zipped the top closed. Then I dug through the center compartment for my wallet. A creak of the front door and I heard Juan’s voice.

  “I’m back.” Juan’s eyes moved from Alfonso to me, to the coffee table where the gun had been, then back to me. “Why aren’t you with the tourist tour? Bassem said—” Juan stopped himself. “I mean, I thought you would be gone somewhere else.”

  “Somewhere where?”

  Ignoring my question, Juan went to the painting of the stork. “This the one you picked?”

  “Juan, where did you go?”

  “I’ll explain in the car, later.”

  Fat chance.

  “We need to start back,” I said. “We can put the painting in the trunk.”

  All at once, I wanted no reminder of Alfonso, Juan, Rocio, none of them. “Forget it. I’m not buying anything.”

  Juan shrugged. He and Alfonso exchanged a few words in Spanish, and anxious to get away I hurried to the door. Halfway down the walk I realized something needed to be rectified, and not allowing myself to dwell on what I was doing, or why, I returned to the house, passed Alfonso in the doorway, and lay the hundred euros on the kitchen table. Alfonso’s eyes were impassive. In them, I saw the same indifference I saw in the metal toaster, the Formica table, and the TV set in the corner with no reception and its brain turned off.

  16

  Whenever Zak stood before a work of art, he imagined instead of him admiring the object, the object was admiring him. Take the fountain in front of him that was carved by Lalagos, the sixteenth-century genius whose statue of an angel brandishing a spear presided over the square in Malaga. Zak distinctly saw her lips part and heard her say, “Go.”

  I’m trying, I’m trying, Zak thought. But, as Chairman Mao said, it’s a protracted struggle. Despite what the media said, in Zak’s opinion, the Sons of the Emir were not entering Spain seeking freedom, justice, or opportunity. They wanted his stuff.

  He looked around the square for his crew and spotted them in the corner café. He crossed the flagstone and waved to Antonio, Juan, and Carlos who were grouped along one side of the table, then to Bassem who sat alone on the other. He pulled out the empty chair next to his for Zak.

  “The barbarians are at the gate,” Zak said, reaching for a menu. “Who was it said that?”

  Bassem tore open a packet of sugar. “You just did.”

  “I mean,” Zak said, “someone like Cicero or Homer.”

  “Don’t know either guy.”

  Fair enough, for how would Bassem know history? Toughened in the streets of Cairo, he was one of the Knight’s best. His jacket hung aslant as if his body was trying to adjust to European styles after years of wearing a kaftan.

  Today all the men wore black tee-shirts and jeans. Antonio was the only one with a hat. A John Deere baseball cap worn backward.

  “Get that fucking thing off your head,” Zak snapped.

  Antonio jammed the cap in his pocket.

  Zak studied his team. Good Catholic men, Zak thought with pride, men who put bread on the table, drove their grandmothers to mass and would kill for the church. Zak’s title, conferred by the Archbishop, was Commandant of Andalucía. Appointed, mind you, not elected. “Democracy is for peasants,” the Archbishop said. “Everyone knows peasants can’t manage fiscal affairs. So how can they choose a leader?” At first, Zak found the reasoning overly judgmental. Until he got to thinking about it. It was true, he decided: the distinguishing characteristic of the poor was their inability to acquire or retain money. Successful political movements needed creative fiscal management to survive.

  The Knights were supported by the Diocese, by contributions, and by grants from provincial governments who knew full well they were funding a terrorist outfit, but disguised the purpose of the awards with vague goals like, ‘strengthening the infrastructure.’ They funded work-scopes with enough wiggle room to permit anything, including stock-piling weapons and training volunteer militia. The Knights, as an organization, was beginning to come together. Zak believed not only Spain, but he himself on the brink of a ne
w era of discipline, duty and love. Duty, he knew. Love? He was working on it.

  A waiter approached, and Zak ordered coffee. The guy tucked the menu under his arm and drifted away. All eyes around the table were following a woman in shorts pushing a baby carriage across the square. When she disappeared behind the fountain, Antonio leaned across the table. “How far are we going?”

  “Antiquera,” Zak replied.

  Busy brushing crumbs from his tee-shirt, Carolos said, “Juan, why don’t you drive?”

  Juan lowered his newspaper. “Don’t look at me. I’m here to deal with the kid.”

  Bassem shot Zak a significant glance and unzipped his nylon jacket to reveal the butt of a Beretta

  “Not unless we need it,” Zak said.

  “Or want to.” Bassem flashed him a grin. “Tell me, Senor Zuko, who tipped us off where the kid is?”

  Zak would never even think of going into the discussion he had with Paige. “Forget it,”

  He got to his feet and waited for the group’s attention. “Listen up. Everyone has a hood?”

  A few shook their heads no, and Carlos drew a handful of balaclavas from a Carrefour’s shopping bag.

  “Remember I’m the only one to deal with whoever’s in charge,” Zak continued. “You—Juan, Antonio, and Bassem, back me up. Carlos, you park at the emergency exit and stay Our partners from Fidelity Teleco did a super reconnaissance and timed out the site’s interconnectivity, so no worries on that score. with the car. Keep it running. No security was seen when the techs were there, but don’t think we’re home free. I was told to expect a French doctor, a receptionist, and possibly clients, or patrons, whatever they’re called.” Zak looked directly at Juan. “Be sure to get all the medical shit that comes with the kid.”

  “What if he’s just had surgery? Or is intubated?” Juan asked.

  Zak closed his eyes, opened them. “That’s why you’re here.”