by Sarah Price
Chapter Five
The car ride seemed to drag on forever. From the back of the limousine, she felt small and quite out of place. It was too big and open and far too fancy. She wished that she could just blink her eyes and be home. She missed the farm buildings, the animals, the smells, and, above all, her parents. She missed the peace and tranquility of her familiar and quiet surroundings. She missed waving crops and blue skies, a landscape free from the crowdedness of big, bulky buildings and swarms of people. Staring people, she thought. She was tired of people staring at her, and her head was still reeling from when they had departed the hospital only thirty minutes ago.
Alejandro sat opposite her, his back to the driver and his cell phone pressed to his ear. He spoke in a language that she didn’t understand, but the words flowed like rapid-fire music. She liked listening to the strange words, full of s sounds. The end of each sentence seemed to lift as if hooking into the next sentence. There was music to these words, music that she never noticed before she had met Alejandro. And she liked the way it sounded.
He pressed a button on his phone and glanced at her. Or, rather, she imagined that he glanced at her from behind his dark sunglasses that reflected her image. She could see herself in the reflection; her plain blue dress seemed too plain compared to the beautiful leather seats and sleekness of the limousine. “You are comfortable, sí?” he asked. “Would you care for some water or iced tea?”
Amanda shook her head. “Nee,” she said softly.
“Neah?” he repeated.
She smiled, despite her discomfort. “No, I meant.”
“Ah.” He nodded his head once. “In Spanish, no is the same as in English. I suppose in Deitsch, it’s different, sí?”
“Ja,” she said and smiled when he laughed at her. “Sometimes it’s nein, too.”
“Nein?”
She shrugged and turned her face toward the window. The scenery looked ugly and depressing. Cramped buildings. Gray sidewalks. Lots of people. There were so many stores with signs pushing sales and discounts. Garbage cans overflowed on street corners. The buildings were too tall. The streets were too crowded. And no one knew one another or seemed to care. She couldn’t imagine living in such a big, dirty place, so far from nature and so disconnected from the earth.
“The city is ugly,” she said, surprising herself and slightly ashamed when she heard the words come out of her mouth. But she meant it.
“Sí,” he acknowledged. “This part is ugly.”
“How can people live here?” She turned to look at him, surprised that he was staring at her.
He tilted his head, hesitating before he answered as though thinking about her question. “I suppose it’s not so bad,” he started. “There is a lot of life in New York City: theaters, museums, restaurants.” She didn’t look impressed. “People like culture, and cities tend to have a lot of it. Maybe it’s not so ugly after all. Some of the buildings have beautiful architecture, no?”
“I suppose,” she said, but he could tell that she didn’t mean it. “Why did they steal my picture?” she asked, abruptly changing the subject.
He wasn’t certain that he had heard her properly. “Steal your . . . ?”
“My picture. Those people stole my picture with their cameras. They didn’t even ask,” she said, the disapproval apparent in her voice.
“No, they didn’t, did they?”
Earlier, when they had left the hospital, there had been a crowd of people outside, waiting as if someone had tipped them off that Viper was leaving with the young Amish woman. He had been pushing her wheelchair out the door to help her get into the limousine that was waiting to take them back to Pennsylvania. But the crowd was too much. Security had to come out to push people back. Alejandro had kept a serious face, his focus on helping Amanda to the car. Amanda, however, had ducked her head, shielding her face with her hands. She wasn’t used to that much attention, and she certainly didn’t like people taking her photograph.
Now Amanda looked at Alejandro, wondering how he could be so nonchalant about such crowds. “And you don’t mind?”
Alejandro shrugged. “I’m used to it, I guess.”
Her mouth fell open. Used to people stealing his picture? It was so invasive and bad mannered. The people had no qualms about shoving cameras in his face, and he was used to it? “That happens a lot to you?” To her surprise, he responded by laughing, a hearty and full laugh that confused her. She wasn’t certain why. It was just a question, she thought. Not meant to invoke laughter. “Is that funny?” she asked.
“Ay, Princesa,” he said, reaching over for a bottle of chilled water from the ice bucket that was next to his seat. “It happens all the time to me.”
“Why?” she asked.
He raised an eyebrow at her. “Good question,” he responded. With one swift gesture, he uncapped his bottle of water and put the lid on the seat beside him. “Good question, indeed.” But he didn’t answer her.
“Don’t you mind?”
He shook his head. “No.”
His answer surprised her. She frowned. “No? Just no?”
He smiled at her. She liked the way he smiled. Only one side of his mouth curved up at the corner. It was such a mischievous smile and reminded her of her younger brother when he had been caught doing something naughty at the farm. That smile had gotten him out of a lot of trouble when he was little. Amanda missed that smile.
“Just no,” Alejandro said nonchalantly, then looked down at his cell phone. How could he explain to her that every photograph that was taken of him created a new fan in his world? Good news, bad news: it didn’t matter. When it came to fans, exposure was everything. Publicity was publicity. “Excuse me,” he said politely before lifting his cell phone to his ear and engaging in a conversation in that strange language that she couldn’t understand.
Sighing, she looked out the window at the passing buildings alongside the highway. They were in New Jersey now, and she thought it was also a very ugly place. The buildings were formless, and many of them had broken windows and spray-painting on their sides. She wondered why Englischers would find satisfaction in defacing the sides of their buildings.
“What do you find so interesting out there?” he asked.
She hadn’t been aware that, his phone conversation now over, he had been watching her. In fact, she had been daydreaming and didn’t realize that he had finished his phone call. “You get a lot of phone calls, ja?” He nodded but didn’t speak. “Don’t you find it annoying to be interrupted so much?”
“I hadn’t thought of it that way,” he replied truthfully.
“We don’t have telephones,” she said. “And I’m glad. I would not like to always be answering that thing.” She frowned for a moment, deep in thought. Her eyes seemed to grow darker, and she looked up at him. “People steal your photos and also your time with the constant interruptions.” She paused, staring at him and chewing on her lower lip. She was thinking, putting pieces of some unnecessary puzzle together in her head. “Is there any part of you that is left for you?”
And there it was.
Her words stunned him. What a question. He had never looked at it that way. Is there any part of you that is left for you? Would anyone care if he were gone, replaced by this fictitious brand image, an image created by paparazzi, the media, the fans, and his own manager? Every move he made was orchestrated. Every interview perfectly scripted. Is there any part of you that is left for you? Yet, once she had asked the question, he knew that was exactly how he had been feeling. In his world, Alejandro had disappeared, and the only thing left was Viper. Unfortunately, he suddenly realized, he was more Alejandro than they knew.
“You know,” he said slowly, “you’re right.” He looked at the phone and pressed a button. “For the next three hours, it’s off, and that’s the way it will stay. Off!” With a great flourish, he tossed it onto the seat be
tween them. “Just say no to technology!”
“I don’t think you can last that long,” she teased, her brown eyes shining. “You’re always on it.”
“Really?” he replied, a playful tone in his voice. Yet he knew that she was right. The gadgets ruled his life as much as the crazy schedule of interviews, meetings, concerts, and clubs. “Well, we shall see who wins, sí?”
For the next hour, they talked. He found that it was easy to talk to her. She had a very direct way about her, her answers to his questions honest and pure. There was nothing about Amanda Beiler that spoke of playing games: no half-truths, no dishonesty, no exaggerations. For Alejandro, that was refreshing. He found that he could relax in her presence—be himself—and that, too, was refreshing. He was so used to people who wanted something from him that it was hard to know who was a true friend or who was just using him for money or fame. No one ever seemed to really care about what was going on inside his head. With Amanda, their dialogue seemed much more focused on real conversation, not peripheral topics that masked ulterior motives. She was refreshing, indeed.
When they crossed into Pennsylvania, Alejandro watched her staring out the car window. Her chocolate-brown eyes seemed to drink in the lush green trees and rolling hills. She smiled to herself, and he wondered what she was thinking. There was such a serene expression on her face; he suspected she was thinking about how glad she was to be returning home.
Home, he thought. As he let the word roll around inside his head, he could only think of the endless suites at fancy hotels with room service and housekeeping. He envisioned his bodyguards and staff of assistants, his entire entourage. When he thought of the word home, nothing popped into his mind. Nothing, he realized, that made him feel the way that Amanda looked as she stared out of the window.
The last part of the ride was quiet. He continued to watch her, his eyes drinking in her growing excitement as buildings disappeared, replaced with open farmland upon which horses and cows were grazing. As they neared her family’s farm, they began passing horses pulling simple black boxlike buggies. Alejandro found himself enthralled with the musical rhythm of the horses’ hooves against the macadam. When he looked over at Amanda, she looked like a smiling angel.
Nearly three hours after they had left New York City, they finally pulled off the road and turned down a narrow lane. Alejandro noticed that she sat up straight and seemed to become more energized. He was sure that her leg was bothering her, and he reminded himself to make certain she took her medicine when she was situated in her parents’ house. From what little he had learned about her culture, he was fairly certain that her people accepted fate without question and that would most likely include accepting the pain without taking the medicine.
The limousine began to slow down. He looked out the window and caught his breath. The farm was immaculate. If he had imagined a small, dilapidated farm like he was familiar with, back in Cuba, he was more than pleasantly surprised. The large barn was painted a bright red with white-trimmed doors and windows. There were large yellow flowers alongside it that contrasted brilliantly against the red barn. The driveway curved around the barn and dipped down behind a small hill where the plain white farmhouse stood. There was a large garden on the side of the house with vegetables growing. And in the driveway was a small gray-topped buggy.
“This is home?” he asked, lifting his sunglasses off his face to peer at her.
“Ja!” she said, smiling. Her face glowed with excitement.
“Isn’t quite what I was expecting,” he said softly, sliding the glasses back on his nose.
The car stopped by the farmhouse, and Amanda sat up in the seat, anxious to get out and see her family. The driver parked the car and got out, walking around to the trunk for the wheelchair. Alejandro waited patiently, amused by Amanda’s impatience. She was practically bouncing off the seat, her eyes scanning the farmhouse for any sign of her parents.
And then they saw them.
The door of the house opened, and an older couple emerged. The man wore simple black slacks and a white shirt, a straw hat on his head. He had a long white beard that hung down to the center of his chest. The woman wore a plain green dress with a black apron tied around her waist. She wore the same white prayer kapp on her head, covering her neatly combed hair, which was pulled back from her face. Amish, Alejandro thought, highly curious and feeling a bit anxious in these new surroundings.
The driver opened the car door and bent down, reaching inside to help Alejandro get out of the car. Once outside, he stretched his back, then pulled gently on his beige jacket. His white pants were creased from having been in the car for so long, but he felt ready to meet her parents.
“Ach vell now,” the father said as he approached, a smile on his face and his eyes shining. “That’s some car you have there, young man!”
Alejandro reached out to shake the man’s hand. “Alejandro Diaz, sir. We spoke on the phone.”
“Ja, ja,” the man said. “That we did.” He glanced down into the open door of the car. “My little girl somewhere in there, or is she lost in that fancy car?”
“I’m here, Daed,” she said, peeking out as best she could.
“I have a wheelchair for her, sir. Might be easier to move around since the cast is up to her thigh.”
“‘Sir,’ eh?” He pulled at his beard and stared at Alejandro. “That’s a bit formal, don’t you think? You can call me Elias, and this here is my wife, Lizzie.” The woman at his side nodded her head but didn’t speak. “We want to thank you for taking such good care of our Amanda. God has a way of providing in times of need, ja?”
Alejandro crossed his hands in front of him, his feet planted apart as he stood before this man. “Well, I felt a little responsible, to be truthful. It was my driver that hit her.”
“That it was,” Elias said, nodding his head. But he kept smiling. If Alejandro had expected the parents to be angry with him, he was pleased to be surprised. Again, he thought. That’s twice in less than ten minutes. Elias rubbed his hands together and bent down, looking into the car again. “Let’s see about getting her out of this fancy house on wheels, then.”
It took a few minutes to get Amanda out of the limousine. Her leg felt heavy and awkward. When it was clear that she couldn’t do it on her own, Alejandro gestured to her father to step back. “¿Permiso?” he asked but didn’t wait for a response as he knelt on the floor of the limousine and lifted her into his arms. “Easy now,” he murmured, his one arm under her legs and the other supporting her back. “Hold on to me, Princesa.”
“Oh,” she gasped, color flooding her cheeks. But she put her arms around his neck, avoiding the stunned gaze of her parents.
Carefully, Alejandro backed out of the limousine, and then even more carefully, he carried Amanda over to the waiting wheelchair. Gently, he set her down and started to stand up. But she was still clinging to his neck. He smiled to himself and reached up to touch her hands. “You can let go now,” he whispered softly, his breath brushing against her ear.
Embarrassed, she looked away, her cheeks still crimson.
Her mother was quick to cover her legs with a small quilt that she had been holding in her arms. “You poor dear girl,” her mother said, tucking the quilt around Amanda. “I never should have let you come home without your sister. Traveling alone through that big city? Terrible mistake! You must have been petrified!”
Recovering from her discomfort, Amanda turned toward her mother and reached for her hand. “Oh no, Mamm. Everyone was so kind and took such wonderful care of me! The nurses and doctors were very attentive.” She glanced over at Alejandro, her eyes sparkling. “And Alejandro was there every day, talking to the doctors and making certain I was doing just fine. If it weren’t for the pain and this lumpy thing on my leg that I’ll be dragging around for a while, it was quite the grand adventure!”
Lizzie stood up straight, her hands pl
anted on her hips and her mouth twisted in a grimace. She stared at her daughter with a look of complete disbelief. “A grand adventure, she says!” She repeated and looked at her husband. “Did you hear your dochder? A grand adventure!”
Elias laughed and put his hand on Amanda’s shoulder. “Ja vell, let’s have no more grand adventures, Amanda. You had your mamm worried half to death!”
“I knew you shouldn’t travel by yourself,” Lizzie complained.
Alejandro stood quietly, watching Amanda’s parents fawn over her. He had his hands crossed in front of him, taking in the peaceful surrounding of the farm and feeling the love of Lizzie and Elias for their daughter. He could hear the cows in the field and horses in the barn. There were soft noises everywhere, reminders that he was no longer in the city but in a place where he might just be able to relax. No paparazzi, no fans, no phone calls, no interviews. Birds were chirping in the nearby trees, and he could hear the song of the cicadas traveling from a distant field.
Elias gently pushed the wheelchair toward the house, talking to Amanda in Deitsch. The words sounded musical, flowing together with lilts and dips. They were halfway to the house when Elias stopped as if he had forgotten something. He looked around and frowned. He glanced over his shoulder and saw Alejandro, still standing by the open car door, his hands crossed in front of him.
“You’ll be coming inside, ja? Have some nice meadow tea and shoofly pie?” Elias said.
With a simple nod, Alejandro followed them into the house. He was still taking in this wonderfully strange environment. The smells, the colors, the sounds . . . everything was new and different to him. He was so used to airports and big cities that he hadn’t been in the countryside for years. He was feeling himself relax, just being away from the craziness of his busy life.
The house was dark. Green shades were pulled halfway down the windows in the large kitchen. The walls were painted a softer color of green, but they were bare, all except a calendar that hung by the back door. The kitchen table had a simple green-and-white-checkered tablecloth on it with a basket of fruit set in the center. Everything was tidy and neat, clearly a well-cared-for home. It was a lot different from the farmhouses he remembered from his childhood in Cuba.