BLACK CITY (Ulysses Vidal Adventure Series Book 2)

by Fernando Gamboa

  I closed my eyes, clicked my tongue, and accepted. Continuing with this conversation was beyond me.

  “I’ll be there, Mom. See you Saturday.”

  “Don’t forget.” That was her last warning before she hung up and silence took over the apartment once more.

  I knew perfectly well that my mother would ignore me and invite Lara, Laura, or whatever her name was. I would choose the scruffiest clothes in my closet and of course I would not shave a single hair off my face for that dinner. Just as on two prior occasions, the girl in question would endure with her nose wrinkled until dessert. She would then take her leave with a hasty “I hope we meet again,” sounding more fake than a congressman’s oath.

  What was not fake at all was the incipient headache that I felt right behind my eyeballs. I tried to remember if there was any ibuprofen in the medicine kit when Jason Marz’s well-known guitar notes sounded again on my cell. I was starting to dislike the guy.

  I reached the bedside table with eyes closed and bit back a retort as I answered the phone.

  “I’ve told you I’ll go, Mom,” I grumbled, “Please, let me sleep.”

  “Oh, sorry.” It was a man’s voice. “I’d better call you some other time.”

  “Professor?” I asked changing my tone immediately and opening my eyes as I recognized Eduardo Castillo. This was the retired Medieval History professor who was as good a friend to me as he had been to my father before.

  “I didn’t know you’d be sleeping,” he apologized.

  “Yeah, well… no, not any more. It doesn’t matter. What’s up?”

  “How’s everything over there?” he said in a lugubrious tone, instead of answering my question.

  “So so. But you do sound a little off. Is anything wrong?”

  A long silence at the other end of the line led me to think so.

  “Can you come to my place?”

  “Of course, Doc. When?”

  Another long silence.

  “Could you come for dinner, around nine?”

  Although close to sixty he boasted enviable good health, but for a second I feared there was something wrong with him.

  “Are you sure you’re okay?”

  “Yes, don’t worry. Can you come?”

  “Of course. I’ll be there for dinner.”

  “Thank you,” he said, and hung up.

  This time I remained staring at the screen for a few seconds. I had no idea what was going on but I had never heard him talk like that.

  My stomach was growling like a hungry wolf and I didn’t feel like cooking. So I went down to the Chinese restaurant across the street hoping they could make something for me, in spite of the hour.

  Fortunately they took pity on me and twenty minutes later I had already gulped down a sizable dish of “three delights” noodles and was toying with my fork on the porcelain plate, thinking. If my life had not touched rock bottom yet, I was sinking as fast as if my feet were weighted down by an anchor. I was wandering through the thick fog of my ramblings when I realized I was the last customer in the restaurant. The five Chinese waitresses were looking at me impatiently with arms crossed. So as not to get on their wrong side I paid the bill and left a generous tip. From there I went straight to El Náufrago, a hidden bar with the appropriate name of “The Castaway,” in the heart of the Gothic Quarter. There I could settle down with a tequila and wait until it was time to meet the professor for dinner.

  The little bar in the old quarter of Barcelona had a few wooden tables, postwar sepia photographs on the walls, wrinkled paper napkins and sawdust in the corners. It was still owned by Antonio Román, a veteran smuggler who must be well over ninety and who had left the business in the hands of his grandchildren.

  Diego, surely the only one who had taken on the responsibility, was tall and lanky. He wore a white shirt and sported a ponytail and a goatee. He was stolidly polishing the counter and raised an eyebrow in an old-friend’s greeting when he saw me walk in.

  “How’s it going, Ulysses?” he asked as I sat at the counter. Then, before I had time to reply, he turned to reach for the bottle of José Cuervo at his back.

  “Could be better.”

  While he served me a shot of tequila, he spoke without looking up.

  “You didn’t follow my advice, did you?”

  “What advice?”

  “To call her, what else!”

  “I can’t.”

  “You don’t want to,” he retorted, shaking his head. He left it at that when another customer raised his hand for a beer.

  He was right, of course.

  Without meaning to, but also not doing much to avoid it, the image of Cassandra Brooks sitting across from me at one of those same tables came to my mind. I remembered her talking to me with her delightful Mexican accent and smiling with those emerald eyes that had bewitched me from the moment we met until the day she left with a vague “see you,” dragging her small red suitcase down the hall of my apartment.

  Since then I had been in a state I could only describe as paralysis. I was numbed in spirit and will, with my heart dry and just enough enthusiasm to open my eyes every morning.

  The irony of it was that I had caused the separation myself.

  After many years traveling the world without a steady partner or anything like it, I had grown used to that absolute independence which meant I did not have to share decisions or explain myself. As a result, after a few months of living together, the moment came when I had an irresistible urge for freedom that made me run far away for a while. I traveled to some quiet spot where I could rethink the direction my life was taking without seeing Cassie’s face at breakfast.

  When I returned three weeks later from Vietnam, she was still in Barcelona, but things were not the same again. I was still sinking in a sea of doubts—incomprehensible even for me—and soon after we reached the inevitable conclusion that we should go our separate ways. No matter how much it hurt.

  And it did.

  The worst thing was that Cassie was hopelessly disappointed with the inexplicable failure of a relationship she had given so much to. From that moment on, she decided to sever all ties and never see me again. She even deleted my phone number from her contacts list and my name from her social networks. She made the point crystal clear that she wanted nothing more to do with me.

  Through some common friends some time later, I found out that she had been able to get back her old life, at least professionally. She threw herself into her specialty as a marine archeologist and was given a post of responsibility at a digging on the coast of Cádiz, in the south of Spain.

  Meanwhile, I had remained beached like an old sailor watching the last ship leave the harbor and asking himself what on earth he is going to do from then on. Wherever I looked ahead of me my future seemed as gray and dull as that evening in Barcelona.

  Until recently my adult life had consisted of wandering between the tropics of Cancer and Capricorn. No worries whatsoever about the future or what I had left behind. As a result I had practically no friends in my city, and those that remained were all married and totally committed to lives they did not like, just as the last time we had met.

  But now, when it came to listening to the endless chain of topics that came up at reunions: marriage complications, how cute their children were, or how unfairly their bosses treated them, I did not have the patience. Nor was I in the mood.

  It was not that I did not care. But those were things so alien to my own life that most of the time I had no idea what they were talking about. And to be honest, it did not really matter.

  Sometimes, after repeatedly hearing them say how lucky I was to be able to do what I did and live the way I did, and how they wished they could do the same, I would try to explain to them, innocently, that of course they could if they wanted to. It was only a matter of prioritizing certain aspects of life and not letting themselves be carried away by routine or someone else’s expectations. To choose what they “really” wanted to do and the
n try to achieve it. Not as a pastime or weekend activity but as a permanent attitude and in all aspects of their lives, to find their own way rather than follow the crowd.

  Bluntly put, to make the most of their lives.

  Unfortunately, it was then—usually after sentences like “don’t be afraid to follow your dreams” or “live each day as if it were your last, because it may very well be”—that they began to eye me as if I were a Hare Krishna with a shaven head and a saffron tunic, trying to convince them, with a pamphlet and a plate of cookies, to abandon everything and follow the precepts of the Bhagavad-Gita.

  So, there was not much to scratch on that side.

  The irony was that I had not been following my own advice in the past few months either.

  In fact, not even the possibility of going back to my old life as a wandering diver, acting as instructor for tourists in exotic places, thrilled me at all. For better or worse, that was a closed chapter in my life, and now I had to find myself again and decide what to do from then on.

  But the truth is, I did not have the remotest idea what. At the most, finish that glass of tequila and maybe a couple more.

  To my chagrin I had understood too late that in spite of not being able to live with Cassandra, it was even harder to live without her. I had lost my north. And in spite of my mother’s usual scolding to make me move on, and even her efforts to arrange blind dates for me, I did not have the least interest in finding a substitute for my Mexican girl. I knew I would never find one.

  “I miss her,” I whispered, gazing absently at my glass.

  “You don’t say…” replied Diego with sarcasm from the other end of the counter.

  Joao Gilberto’s Desafinado was coming from the small loudspeaker in the corner of the bar. It felt as if he were sticking a thousand needles in my heart to the rhythm of bossa nova.

  “I’m an idiot,” I said, and gulped down the last of my tequila.

  “We all are,” Diego agreed, philosophically.

  The liqueur burned my throat, making me breathe deep. “But I’m not going to call her.”

  “If you say so.”

  We both remained silent.

  “What’s past is past,” I declared as I tossed back another shot.

  Diego shrugged as if to say, It’s up to you, pal.

  I put some money on the counter, tapped my fingers, and left.

  Since I had come back to live in Barcelona, rarely a week had passed without the professor inviting me to eat at his house to reminisce about our past adventures and duly exaggerate them as we drank copious quantities of white wine. But on this occasion, as I pushed the heavy iron door of his apartment building at the Eixample and entered the shadows of the lobby, a shudder ran down my back. I had the feeling that something really bad had happened which would affect me too.

  The old wooden-railed elevator stopped abruptly on the fifth floor. I walked out on to the dark hallway where a dying lightbulb illuminated an old plate that read: EDUARDO CASTILLO, PROFESSOR OF MEDIEVAL HISTORY.

  I rang the bell and the door opened immediately. Eduardo’s familiar figure appeared on the threshold. He was wearing his usual vest over a checkered shirt and bow tie. This time, though, he did not show the broad smile he used to greet me with and his worry showed clearly in his blue eyes, behind his old fashioned tortoise shell glasses.

  “Ulysses,” he said as he shook my hand. “Thank you for coming and forgive the urgency.”

  He led me to the living room and I sat there in front of the table, feigning unconcern.

  While he went to the kitchen to get some fresh coffee I let my gaze wander, remembering our common adventures and how they were linked to that room with its oblong table of dark wood.

  As usual, books were the absolute owners of that house. They occupied not only the shelves that reached the ceiling but chairs all over the house. Piled in a mysterious order, they impregnated the apartment with that distinct smell of history and literature which is normally only found in lost corners of ancient bookshops. To my left a wide window let the scant light of that autumnal evening fall on the beautiful world map in ochre tones that covered practically the whole wall in front.

  “Milk and three sugars,” said the professor as he came out of the kitchen carrying a small tray.

  I took my cup and waited in silence for him to speak.

  He took a couple of sips, distractedly. And it was then that I noticed the marked shadows under his blood-shot eyes.

  He finally spoke. “How’s everything, Ulysses?”

  “Fine, I think,” I replied surprised by the vague question.

  “I’m glad, I’m glad…” he said into his coffee dregs.

  “Err… Doc, are you going to explain why you’ve called me today or will I have to guess?”

  The professor raised his gaze as if he suddenly realized I was there.

  He smiled apologetically. “Yes, of course. But would you mind waiting just a little?” He checked his watch. “Shouldn’t be long now.”

  “Shouldn’t be long? What? Who?”

  Just then, as if it had been rehearsed, the doorbell rang and my host got up to open the door.

  Without stopping to wonder who the unexpected visitor might be, I took my coffee and went to the window. The poplars that flanked both sides of the street were almost bare. Their dry fallen leaves made a carpet of browns and yellows, lending color to the omnipresent blacks and grays of the people and facades of that part of the city.

  It looked like it was going to rain and I was thinking I should have brought an umbrella. The door closed at my back and I turned around to greet the visitor. An unmistakable voice reached me from the end of the hall.

  “Ulysses?” it said in disbelief. “What on earth are you doing here?”

  With my heart in my throat I suddenly found myself staring at a face I thought I would never see again in my life. I swallowed with difficulty.

  “Hi, Cassie,” I mumbled.

  3

  Cassandra was sitting across the table from me now, as beautiful as I remembered her. Her blond curly hair was cut shoulder-length and her naturally tan complexion was slightly sunburned. Her big emerald green eyes stood out in her face and looked at me harshly, as if demanding some sort of explanation from me.

  “Are you going to tell me what this ambush is all about?” she burst out without warning. “I hope you haven’t made me fly all the way from Cadiz just to have a pinche coffee with you!”

  “Don’t you look at me,” I protested. “I didn’t know you were going to be here either.”

  “Oh, yeah, sure!”

  “What are you hinting at? Do you really believe I would’ve organized this to see you again?”

  “You tell me!” she said with the expression of an angry bulldog. “The professor asks me to hop on the first plane to Barcelona without telling me why. And who do I find waiting for me in his living room? You!”

  “Cassie,” I said trying to keep cool. “I swear on my mother’s life that I didn’t…”

  Just then the professor came out of the kitchen with more coffee.

  “Wait a second,” he interrupted in a conciliatory tone. “Before you kill each other, hear me out and you’ll understand why you’re both here.”

  “I’m all ears,” she grumbled.

  The professor put his cup on the table and sat between the two of us looking downcast.

  “I have called you because something terrible has happened and I need your help.” His voice sounded worried.

  Neither Cassie nor I said a word, waiting for our host to explain himself.

  “Have I ever told you about Doctor Valeria Renner?” he asked after a while without taking his eyes off the table.

  Cassandra and I exchanged puzzled looks and shook our heads.

  “Ah… sure. That was so long ago… And only your father, my best friend, knew about it,” he said looking at me.

  “Knew what?” I asked, intrigued.

  The professor was playin
g with his spoon in the coffee dregs.

  He cleared his throat. “Well, you see… There is a special connection between Valeria—Dr. Renner—and myself…”

  “Órale, Professor.” Cassandra smiled. “Keeping secrets, are you?”

  “When?” I asked, surprised. “How? I never saw you with any woman.”

  “It was a long time ago, Ulysses.”

  “But, how come you never talked about her?”

  Eduardo Castillo scratched his head, visibly uncomfortable.

  “Well, you know… I’m very jealous of my privacy, and I didn’t want anybody at the university to know anything about it. Besides, I never had the chance to introduce you to her.”

  I frowned skeptically. “In all these years you didn’t have a chance?”

  “Valeria is an anthropologist,” he said, “and she spends a lot of time doing field work. But the reason why I’ve never spoken about her is… because she has no interest whatsoever in seeing me again.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” said Cassandra, sympathetically.

  I patted his shoulder. “I see… But here we are to help you get out of this. You know what they say: There are plenty more fish in the sea—”

  I stopped talking at the professor’s baffled look. “What are you talking about? What’s this got to do with fish?”

  “Well, Doc… I was just trying to cheer you up. I know how hard it is when you end a relationship, at first everything looks dark. But you’ll see, in time you’ll find someone else, and then…” I winked at him.

  “Ulysses,” he said, sitting up straight, “You’re getting it all wrong. You both are.” He looked at us and added, “I haven’t brought you here to comfort me about being lovesick or anything of the sort!”

  “Oh! Well, then…?”

  As he used to do when he had something important to say, the professor stood up and began to pace around the living room, as if he were in class again.

  “Dr. Renner,” he said looking out of the window, “is at present one of the most renown anthropologists in the world. She has published dozens of articles that are common reference at various universities, and has written a couple of books that are among the most influential in her field.” He took a thick volume of a thousand pages or so from one of the shelves beside him. “Including the famous Sociology and Anthropology of the Chamula People.”