“What’s on the agenda for tomorrow?” I asked.
“I thought that after all the travel today, we’d take tomorrow easy. We’ll sleep in, do some shopping in town, eat a nice lunch, and then, for after lunch, I made us a reservation at the Spa at Esperanza. It’s one of Latin America’s top spas.”
“This just keeps getting better,” I said.
“Even better than Utah?”
“Never heard of the place,” I said.
He grinned. “Would you like a strawberry daiquiri?”
“Yes, please.”
“I’ll be right back.”
He stood and walked into the kitchen while I just looked out over the city. About five minutes later he returned carrying two glasses with halved limes on the rims. He handed me one and sat down next to me.
“Thank you,” I said. “I keep looking down at the water expecting to see a bunch of squid legs sticking out.”
He laughed. “They’re tentacles, not legs. And I’m sorry I told you about them. I didn’t mean to ruin the water for you.”
“Was that all true?”
“Every word of it.”
“That blonde would have liked to pull you under.”
He looked at me with an amused grin. “She was just being friendly.”
I took a drink of my daiquiri, then said, “Yeah, right. If we’d been there much longer, she would have ended up in your lap. I wanted to clock her.”
“I’m glad you didn’t,” Andrew said. “I think that guy she was with was in the Mafia.” He took a small sip of his drink and set it down. “I like seeing you jealous.”
“I’m not jealous,” I said, sounding like a liar even to myself. “Maybe a little.”
He lifted his drink. “You should try this. It’s virgin.”
“You’re drinking a virgin daiquiri?”
He nodded.
“I noticed that you don’t drink much.”
“I used to. Especially whenever things went bad.” He looked at me dolefully. “Back then, a lot of things were going bad.”
“What kind of things?”
“Marriage. Family. Business. Pretty much everything that mattered.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “But today was a perfect day. Thank you again for talking me into coming here.”
“I knew it would be good for you to be here,” he said. “And me.”
“You know me,” I said.
“I’d like to.”
I looked out over the bay, then closed my eyes, feeling the warm wind pressing against my face, brushing back my hair. I breathed it in and felt right with the world. After a few more minutes of silence I said, “It’s been a long time since I’ve felt like this.”
“How is that?”
“Happy.” I looked into his eyes. Then the words came out. “In love.”
He just looked at me. I suddenly felt awkward. “I’m sorry. I—”
“I feel the same,” he said. “You just beat me to it.”
His words sounded like joy. I set down my drink and nestled into him. We stayed that way for nearly an hour. Finally I said, “I’m tired. I guess I’ll go to bed.”
He kissed me on the forehead. “I’m going to sit out here a little longer. Good night.”
“Night,” I said.
We kissed and I got up and went to my room. As I lay in bed I couldn’t believe that I had told him that I loved him. I hoped it wouldn’t ruin our trip.
Chapter Twenty-Five
When I first met Andrew, I took him for an attractive, simple man selling Christmas trees to keep the lights on. Not the case. He’s attractive, but he’s also smart, cosmopolitan, and possibly rich. He not only provided my plane ticket and accommodations, he’s also paying for all my meals and activities. Today we went to the Spa at Esperanza. (I think I spelled that right.) It was a day of perfect pampering. It was the perfect everything.
—Maggie Walther’s Diary
In spite of Andrew’s invitation to sleep in, I woke early. Andrew must have been exhausted because I peeked into his room and he was sprawled out on top of his covers asleep and lightly snoring.
I put on my walking shorts and a tank top and went out walking, first around the complex, then all the way down to the edge of the beach and back. I passed a cactus garden with more than thirty different varieties of cacti. I had never realized how beautiful cacti were. I had just always thought of them as something painful to avoid. Maybe there’s a metaphor there.
When I got back to the condo, Andrew was sitting outside on the patio drinking coffee.
He smiled when he saw me. “Where’d you go?”
“Just on a walk,” I said. “I walked down to the beach and back.”
“I was afraid you ran off with someone else.”
I walked over, sat on his lap, and kissed him. “I like seeing you jealous too.”
A half hour later we drove downtown and parked just a little east of the mercado. The area was crowded with tourists patronizing the area’s street vendors, clothing shops, and restaurants. After we had walked around a while, we went to the flea market, which covered several acres and was filled with vendors hawking pottery, clothing, cheap jewelry, electronic gadgets, and all the usual touristy knickknacks. I didn’t buy anything except a shaved ice and a hat, as the sun was frying me.
After the flea market we walked over by the marina and found a place to sit beneath the shade of a palm tree.
“There are so many boats,” I said.
“I counted them all once,” Andrew said. “Not that it means anything, since the number changes hourly. There were a hundred and forty-seven.”
“What prompted you to count them?”
“My OCD. I’m always counting things. Maybe that’s why I got into finance.”
“Have you ever sailed?”
“I used to,” he said. “A lot. Back when I had a boat.”
“You owned a boat?”
He nodded, his expression looking slightly nostalgic. “A thirty-five footer. I called her A Meeting.”
“A Meeting?”
“That way, when I was out playing and my clients called, my secretary could say, ‘He’s in A Meeting right now.’ ”
I grinned. “Brilliant.”
“I loved that boat. I had to sell her when the business went down.” He sighed. “I still dream of retiring in a little place on the sea with a fishing boat, just big enough to go in deep waters. Something about the size of Hemingway’s boat.”
“Hemingway the author?”
Andrew nodded. “Hemingway loved the sea. He had a thirty-eight-foot fishing boat called the Pilar, after his second wife’s nickname. He was an avid, if unconventional, fisherman. They said that he took a tommy gun with him on his boat to shoot sharks if they tried to feed on his catch.
“Once he and a friend caught a thousand-pound marlin, the largest either of them had ever caught. As they tried to bring it in, sharks came after it. Hemingway got out his tommy gun and started blasting them, but his plan backfired. The shooting created so much blood and chum in the water that it drew hundreds of sharks in a feeding frenzy. They ended up with only half their prized catch.
“It ruined the men’s friendship, since Hemingway’s friend blamed his use of the gun for the loss of the biggest fish he’d ever caught. On the bright side, the world benefited, as it became the impetus for his book The Old Man and the Sea.”
“You are a surprising font of knowledge,” I said.
“I read a lot,” he said.
“I’ve always wondered what it is about men and boats.”
“I’ve wondered too,” he said. “Maybe we’re just naturally wired with wanderlust, and the sea is our last viable frontier.”
“Do you have wanderlust?”
He didn’t look at me. “Sometimes I dream of disappearing,” he said softly.
I looked back out over the marina. “My father’s boat looked kind of like that one.” I pointed to a sleek, twenty-plus-foot vessel in a slip across from us. “At least that’s how I remember it. I only saw it once.”