Love in Central America

by Clancy Martin

  TWENTY-THREE

  SADIE TOLD ME a story. She was just out of residency, and she had divorced her first husband. Her guru—Sadie’s a Buddhist—was coming to Galveston. He wanted to see her, but she did not want to see him. She did not want to see him because, as she said, she was “tired of feeling strange.” She wanted to just be a normal person, whatever that is. Her friends thought having a guru was corny. Sadie wanted to be like every other Texan psychiatrist, and to go to the depression conference in Dallas that coincided with her guru’s visit, so that she would have a good excuse to avoid him.

  The Buddhist community in Galveston—there is such a thing—was stirred up about it. People were driving down from Houston and Austin to see him speak.

  She was ultimately persuaded to stay for her guru. He was staying with a wealthy host in Galveston and the household was being taken care of by several beautiful women from Tyler, Texas. The women of Tyler are as beautiful as one imagines the women from Texas are intended to be.

  She was taken to see him in his room. She said for most of her life when she saw her guru, she rarely said anything. On this occasion, she started to cry, because she was divorced, bulimic, and her life seemed chaotic. Also, and more to the point, she cried because she thought she was ugly.

  Her guru was quiet for a long time, and then he asked her why she was crying. She was too upset to answer, and she just cried more.

  He said, “Do you have a boyfriend?” She shook her head.

  “Why don’t you have a boyfriend?” he asked.

  It occurred to her then that she had been divorced for almost three years.

  He said, “Is it because you are sad? They want a happy girlfriend.”

  She said that she was happy when he told her this, because she knew that it was true.

  When I left my first husband for another man, it was only because my husband was sad, and the new man was happy. Every time I walked into the room he lit up. The reason your marriage ends can be that simple.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  THE YEAR WAS coming to an end.

  “Where should we go for New Year’s?”

  “Nicaragua,” I said. Paul had taken me there before we were married. I wanted to see what it would look like, now, with my new eyes. And if it looks the same, I thought, maybe I’m meant to be back with Paul.

  In Leon we stayed at a perfumerie with only one guest room. The high ceilings had beams, there was a chandelier over the freestanding tub and another chandelier over the four-poster bed, and the sun porch looked down on the little main street of the town. There was not much to do and we had too much time to talk. Whenever we knew we should be talking we had sex.

  We were downstairs having coffee. The woman who ran the perfumerie made the coffee and Eduard invited her to sit with us. She was an American who had fallen in love with a local boy and now they were having a baby.

  “The owners wanted to invite you to their home for New Year’s Eve,” she said. “It’s their other hotel, at the ruins. It will be a nice group.”

  The owners were both former models, an Argentinian and an Italian.

  I didn’t want to go but I knew that Eduard did, so I agreed.

  “Did you see how disappointed she was?” I asked Eduard. “She wanted to be invited to the dinner party.”

  “I don’t think so. I think she wanted to stay in town and watch the fireworks with her family,” Eduard said.

  “Maybe so.”

  It was funny, I thought, that his account of what the manager wanted to do was just what I wanted to do, and vice versa. I don’t know which one of us was right. But it was characteristic of us that we assigned to other people the motivations and desires we suspected in each other.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  THE HOTEL BY the ruins, where the models lived, was an hour from Leon. We found it as the sun was setting. It was next to a small lake but there were no mosquitoes because it was winter. A bonfire was burning and you could hear the occasional splash of a crocodile in the lake. The table was set for twelve.

  We met the host and his wife.

  “Eduard,” she said. “I’m so glad you came. My husband told me about you two.”

  Her husband was often in and out of the perfumerie. We had seen him several times, sometimes with a very beautiful Czech model who was clearly strung out on heroin. I could see the husband and the junkie were having an affair. The shockingly beautiful junkie was at the dinner with her boyfriend, a musician. But she could barely hold her head up.

  “I’m sorry,” the host’s wife said to me. She was sitting next to Eduard and her face was a bit too close. She had a lovely Italian accent and had recently had a baby. I was intimidated, and she was watching me carefully.

  The host’s wife said to me, “I think I don’t remember your name?”

  “Her name is Brett,” Eduard jerked forward. “It’s strange. It’s a boy’s name.”

  The hostess leaned across Eduard and shook my hand. “Happy New Year,” she said.

  TWENTY-SIX

  THROUGH DINNER EDUARD sat rigidly while the other couples relaxed and held each other. When I tried to touch him he pulled away.

  “You see how they are together? That’s how normal couples act,” I told Eduard quietly. He didn’t respond.

  The owner’s three-year-old daughter was still up, and she played and threw herself on her parents. I thought about Paul’s boys.

  Eduard was drinking white wine and I kept refilling his glass. I thought he might relax and enjoy himself. It was a New Year’s Eve party. We should try to have fun.

  When I went to the bathroom I saw bottles of wine on a stand and I took one to the bathroom with me. I used a nail file to push the cork in and hid it in a cabinet under the sink. I checked my teeth to make sure they weren’t purple from the red wine.

  We were a hit at the party—I put on the best show I could, to prove to Eduard that I belonged. The junkie’s boyfriend and I talked about Almodovar movies, impressing each other. In a slightly different life, I thought, it might just as well have been this one.

  When we left Eduard was happy. He’d had a nice time. He was drunk and had his arm around me, and was laughing. We were imitating people at the party the way we liked to. They’d invited us to spend the night, but I whispered in his ear: “Can you imagine waking up to these people?”

  In the jeep, before we drove off, I turned to him and said, “Her name is Brett. It’s a silly name. It’s a boy’s name.”

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  WE FOUGHT THAT night—we missed the fireworks—and all the next day, between having sex and me hurrying off “to buy a Coke Light.” I was doing shots of tequila at a bar a couple of blocks from our place. Then we drove south, to the very southern end of the country, and had four tranquil nights in a guesthouse owned by some ex-pats in a town so small that no one knows it’s there. It is hidden in a wildlife preserve and the other guests were marine biologists from California who swam a mile in the ocean every morning, and had come to snorkel and scuba dive on the reef.

  We took a kayak out. We saw a sea turtle in the water and we tried to keep up with it in our kayak. Every time I thought it had disappeared he found it again hiding near one of the many little reefs and coral buds. We went a long way out, trying to reach a point that was miles from our hotel—I knew we’d be lucky if we made it halfway—and stopped on a deserted beach, and walked for a while, and looked in tide pools. I wanted to show him an octopus hiding. On one beach a woman came out and told us we had to move our kayak, and then we saw that it was a small hotel, and the beach was nude. The woman was loud and rude because she thought we had come to look at naked people. But there was no one but us anywhere you looked. We held hands as we walked and we kissed and I wondered if I should make love to him in some hidden spot—I had often made love to Paul in the sand, and it had always been awkward and fun—but I was tired and I didn’t want to. When we were back in the water I asked Eduard if he could do the paddling for a while and I lay back
and closed my eyes with a towel under my head. When I asked if he wanted help getting us back to the house he flexed his bicep for me and I laughed. The tide was against us and the sun was going down so after half an hour or so I started paddling again.

  We made it back just as the sun set. He pulled the kayak up and lifted it into its wooden stand. I leaned the paddles against the side of the house. We had sex in the hammock.

  “This has been the only place I really like in Nicaragua,” he said. “I liked all our places,” I lied. “But this was my favorite.”

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  EDUARD HAD MOVED out of his condo and bought a house. He was having a housewarming party. I wasn’t invited.

  “I already bought my ticket. I’m going to be in town. If you want me to stay with you I will. Or if you want some space I’ll stay in a hotel.”

  “Of course you’re staying with me,” Eduard said. “I’m excited that you’re coming. I’m just not ready to make a public announcement that we’re a couple.”

  “Everybody already knows, Eduard. All of your friends know more than I would have told them, if I lived there. You’re the one who talks.”

  “I’m not ready for you to meet Grace and Reynaldo.”

  They were a famous couple in Panama, in their seventies, real money—Reynaldo’s father had supplied the concrete when they built the canal. They were both recovered alcoholics. They had been friends of Eduard’s for years and were like parents to Eduard. They had tried to make him stay at their place during the breakup with Lurisia. I had the impression that they thought well of me. When Eduard quoted them back to me they were usually speaking in my defense, or at least in defense of the possibility of our relationship. Unlike his other friends, who always seemed to me to insist that we were doomed.

  “All of my friends think you’re a falling down drunk.”

  “Eduard, please. All of your friends are falling down drunks.”

  He was quiet for a minute. Then he said, “You’re right. Fair enough. Except Grace and Reynaldo. It’s true. They are all alcoholics. It’s not like you’d be the only drunk there.”

  “And Grace and Reynaldo understand. They quit drinking for a reason.”

  “I know.”

  He was good about that. If I disagreed with him, he’d listen, think it through, and if he were wrong, he’d revise his opinion. There aren’t many people like that.

  In fact most people are just the opposite. The more you disagree with them, the more committed they become to the lie they’re telling you, or themselves, or the both of you.

  There was something Eduard wasn’t telling me. I asked him if Lurisia was coming to the party and he said, “I doubt it. But it would be fine if she were. She’ll bring her new boyfriend.” She had started dating a poet. I supposed they had met in her clinic.

  TWENTY-NINE

  I FLEW DOWN. We christened the house. The day of the party Eduard was meeting a potential for lunch. He was a very successful developer and he was considering moving from his banker to Eduard. This was the man who would renovate all the hotels in Cuba, when it finally happened, and build the new ones. He had already signed a contract for the Peninsula Havana, and a Four Seasons Resort outside Santiago de Cuba.

  “Just stay in bed,” he told me. “I’ve got to hurry.”

  I wouldn’t let him out of bed until we’d had sex several times, and finally he stopped us and said, “Really. I can’t be late for this.”

  “I’ll come with you.”

  “You can’t come with me.”

  “Not to the lunch, dummy. I’ll ride in the cab and work while you’re at your lunch. You can meet me after.”

  We still hadn’t figured out whether I could come to his party, or where I was going to spend the night if I wasn’t invited. After a year of hiding things from each other and the people around us, it was a habit. We could leave something unspoken right until the moment of crisis.

  When we got out of the cab I kissed him and wished him good luck.

  We agreed to meet at a pizza place we both liked after his lunch.

  He hurried away, walking that “important businessman” walk of his that he walked sometimes and didn’t suit him.

  I found a restaurant to have a coffee. It was a nice place and they were empty except for me. The owner was opening wine bottles for his waitstaff to try, so they would know what to recommend, and he offered me a glass. I accepted, and he continued to offer me glasses from each new bottle. I warned him that my guest was arriving soon, and I didn’t want him to know I had been drinking. He avoided me after that, and a waiter brought me a glass of water.

  When Eduard came, I was drunk.

  He told me the developer wanted to do business. He looked at me. I looked back at him and smiled. I didn’t bother to try to hide the fact that I was drunk, or to lie about it. I shrugged.

  “So I’ve been thinking, and I’d like a thirty day break,” he said. He sat down. He paused. “I mean, Brett, what am I supposed to say at this point?”

  “It’s over,” I said. “We don’t need a break.”

  I wouldn’t have had the courage to say what we both knew was true if I hadn’t been drunk.

  The waiter came. I ordered him a glass of champagne to celebrate his new client. They’d promote him to senior partner for this one. They’d give him a piece of the bank.

  “You may as well have a glass, too,” he said.

  I ordered a second glass. We toasted. He took a sip of his wine, and then put down his glass and said, “I can’t do this, Brett.” He walked out. I looked at the champagne and realized I didn’t want it either. But I sat there and drank the two glasses and paid the check.

  THIRTY

  MIGUEL’S ON HERMOSA opens at 11 a.m. and was walking distance from the library. It was under new management so they didn’t know me from the old days and wouldn’t chase me away. The bartender poured me real drinks. I had five vodka sodas and I don’t remember leaving the bar. I had to meet a real estate agent about a house I wanted to rent. During the walk I realized how drunk I was and I called Sadie.

  “Tell me honestly,” I said. “You can hear I’m having a bit of trouble.” She made that kind noise she makes.

  “I have a meeting. About a house. It’s important. I have to have a house. I promised Paul. Do you think I can go?”

  “I think maybe you should skip it this time. Are you going to be okay? Do you want me to call you a ride home?”

  “No, I’m okay. I’m supposed to already have the house today. I’m supposed to take his boys tonight.”

  “Maybe you could take a nap? Brett, I think you should text Paul to change the day, then go back to the hotel and lie down for a bit.”

  “Sadie. Usually if someone’s in a bad situation, they don’t want the truth.”

  I went to the bar at The Raphael. I had to pick up the boys at Paul’s at five. I found out later that they bounced me from The Raphael bar that afternoon.

  When I checked back into the hotel a few weeks later my favorite bartender told me, after I apologized: “That’s fine. But I can’t serve you down here anymore. It’s from the management. You’ll have to use your mini-bar.” He was stern and I wondered if I’d taken off my clothes or invited him up to my room. I have lost bartenders that way before.

  THIRTY-ONE

  I REMEMBER PARTS of the drive to get the boys. The auto parts store on El Novio and Hermosa. Telling myself not to take a left there. The red light and the cop who waved at me while everyone honked. An Outkast song on the radio. I was elated and turned it up. Headed the wrong way on a one-way side street near Paul’s house and trying to do a three-point turn, then giving up and taking the straightest way.

  I don’t remember arriving at the house, or how I convinced Bella to leave, or what game or movie I started playing for them. Thinking back on it now, I expect they were hungry for dinner. Or maybe Bella had made something.

  Bella called Paul, and I do remember when he got to the house. I think I as
ked him not to shout in front of the boys. I can remember him putting me in his car. He told me I had been lying down in the kitchen with macaroni and cheese boiling over on the stove.

  “I want to spend the night here!” I screamed, and Paul said, “Brett, you are not well right now.” His ten-year-old stood silently, immobile, in the front door of the house. He was following his father’s requests carefully and quickly. The sunlight was bright and Paul wouldn’t listen to anything I said. “I’m okay,” I told him. “Please let me stay. Yes I had a couple of drinks. But let me stay. Paul, please let me stay. I just want to stay.”

  THIRTY-TWO

  AFTER PAUL DROPPED me at The Raphael I ran a hot bath. I called room service and asked for a shaving razor and a bottle of scotch. I took all my valium, broke the bit of razor out of the plastic, and called Eduard. The veins were slippery little devils and with the sliver of razor I was only able to get the ones on my left wrist. It’s harder than it looks. I cut the thumb and fingers of my right hand doing it.

  When we got off the phone Eduard called Paul, and soon, as the water was turning pink and all the light in the room seemed to go pink along with it, Paul and the manager came in the bathroom, and they lifted me up out of the tub like I was a bubble and carried me to the hospital.

  THIRTY-THREE

  WHEN EDUARD WAS still living with Lurisia, we were walking in Panama City, in the shade in a park, under the purple trees, holding hands, and he said: “I enjoy living a double life. I don’t want to face the truth.” He was being playful but he meant it. I said, “That’s almost exactly what Anna Karenina says.”

  The illusions we depended on about love and each other were necessary to keep us going. Yes, it all collapsed. But afterwards, I think we both wondered, will I ever have something that good again?