Caller unknown, p.19
Caller Unknown, page 19
She broke in on his reverie. “You look familiar,” she said. “You a student?”
“Miami Dade, prelaw,” he said. “You?”
“I’m a Romance language major. French… and Spanish.” She laughed at that—more than two-thirds of the student cohort were fluent in Spanish.
“Suena interesante,” he said. She shrugged. He pressed on blindly. “Don’t you get to study abroad?”
“Sure. I spent some time in France.”
“Oh?”
“It was OK,” she said, but her eyes dropped to the counter, as if perhaps she didn’t want to talk about it.
He plunked some ice into the spritzer. It was odd that she had said she’d spent “some time in France” rather than a year as would be customary for an exchange student. Why? “Anywhere interesting?” he asked. There was a strange relentlessness to him suddenly—he had to know.
“Paris,” she answered, not looking up, sighing and quirking her mouth a bit. He set the drink on a coaster in front of her. “Paris” contained a host of exotic, and, with that sigh, mysterious possibilities.
She extracted a pack of More from her purse and drew one out. “Got a light?” she asked.
He took a Bic lighter from his shirt pocket and fired it up. She steadied his hand with her fingers for a beat as she drew in and then exhaled an elegant stream of smoke through her nose. He watched it drift away, a beautiful wraith.
“What’s your name?” she asked.
“Martin… Martin Cruz.”
“Nice to meet you, Martin. I’m Sarah, Sarah Cuervo.”
She presented her hand. It fairly disappeared into his as they shook.
“You travel much?” she asked.
“Never left these shores,” he answered.
“Where’re you from?” she asked.
“Minnesota, St. Paul,” he said.
“Cold,” she said.
“I don’t go back anymore.”
“Oh?”
“Both my parents died in a car wreck when I was a kid.” For some reason these lies seemed particularly clangorous when spoken to her. He watched to see if her face registered suspicion.
“That must have been tough,” she said, as if she meant it, her eyes never leaving his.
Something was thawing inside him. He went with the flow; let go a bit. The conversation was nothing special: campus, living arrangements, professors, friends—of these last, none shared. Her fashionista friend Emma who had lent her the finery for today was mentioned more than once. In the past he had found these conversations with other customers pointless and they had died a natural death. But he felt something alive beneath their banal exchange. The conversation was just a game. The pointlessness seemed to have a point. Why? Where was her date? If it was a date?
By now other customers were trickling in. Some got as far as his end of the bar. He served them unconsciously. Each time he returned for a bit of glass-polishing in front of her. The pleasantries, if that was what they were, continued. After some twenty minutes she looked at her watch. She took one last sip of spritzer and placed a five-dollar bill on the counter. “Keep the change,” she said.
He couldn’t read her expression. “Not waiting anymore?” he asked.
She shrugged again. “I guess some people aren’t worth waiting for.”
“I’m sorry,” he said.
She smiled. “Don’t be. Anyway, who knows, maybe I came in just to flirt with a bartender?”
She slid down from the bar stool. The words left his mouth before he could stop them. “Would you like to go out sometime?”
She had begun to walk away but she turned, her eyes fixed on his for a beat. He had a heart-yawning moment when he thought she was going to make an excuse, but then she took out a scrap of paper from her purse, took a ballpoint from a holder on the bar and wrote a number on it.
“Call me on that,” she said matter-of-factly and was gone.
Apart from Gloria’s and Jim’s, it was the only number he never forgot.
He left it well into the next day before he called, asking himself if he really wanted to do this. He found he did. At about noon he swallowed, picked up the telephone and dialed.
Maybe his choice of first date was not a good one. It was Tom’s party. He didn’t know Tom that well. Just played racquetball with him occasionally. In fact, probably all Tom knew about Ed was that Ed was a lot better racquetball player than him, which was hardly a basis for a close friendship.
Why had he chosen to meet her in the most public arena he could think of? Loud music, loud conversation, a crush of bodies, a fug of beer and Hirondelle wine. After years of hiding was he trying to prove that he could meet someone openly, like a normal person? He remembered the shrinks: there was no normal—particularly for an Apostle.
He had been there an hour and he was sure she was a no-show. The telephone conversation had been fleeting, and nervous on his part. Maybe his gaucheness had put her off? He nursed a beer, leaning against the kitchen sink, apart from the others in the living room. He thought of leaving. This had been a mistake.
She came to him out of the cloud of cigarette smoke and strobe lighting like an apparition. Lovelier for it, even more beautiful than she had been in the bar. She planted herself squarely in front of him, so close he could feel the heat coming from the buttoned front of her printed jersey midi-dress.
“So you’re Martin, the friend of Tom’s I’ve heard about?” she playacted slyly and smiled. He had the impression of her dark hair and body, lipstick red but not too red, a few imperfections on her skin beneath the foundation, but really it was only her brown eyes, her dark-brown eyes, he saw.
“Want another beer?” she said. And on inspection, he seemed to have chugged the last of his beer some time ago.
He gathered himself and said, “Sure, why not?” He had to repeat this as he found he was whispering and the music outside the kitchen was deafening. Afterward, when they went into the living room, the music proved welcome. No conversation possible. You could only shout, cup your ear, not hear, shrug, and smile. It suited him. He had no idea what he wanted to say.
They had ended up just dancing and then, when a slower number came on and everyone else started getting in clinches, they did too.
When they left she said, “Come on, my apartment’s not far and my roommate’s away.” So he had ended up at her place without him knowing how he got there, and they were on her bed, necking furiously now, hands wandering, buttons, zips, and clasps being undone, and then he was in her and the bed was rocking and creaking loud enough, he was sure, to wake every single one of her neighbors.
After that he had seen her nearly every day. As if she had absorbed him into her bubble; a happy bubble, the outside world muffled, distant. For once the loneliness was gone and it seemed to Ed that it would only come back if he ever questioned his luck.
He never did ask her who she had been waiting for in the bar that day.
Ed didn’t have many friends on campus. His life was self-contained, compartmentalized. He didn’t socialize with Sarah’s friends. They met at strictly arranged times. He only met Emma, the friend who shared their small, off-campus apartment, a few times.
One day he arrived at what he thought was the prearranged time to find only Emma there.
She suggested coffee and a chat while he waited for Sarah to get back from class. Evidently there had been a mix-up with the times. She would not be long, she insisted. In fact, Sarah didn’t appear for over an hour. It was quite an hour. Emma was surprisingly keen to talk about Sarah. Perhaps overeager, he thought later. Perhaps Emma had an agenda. Perhaps she didn’t like her roommate. Or maybe the few times they’d met she’d taken a shine to Ed.
She began by saying her roommate was so lucky to have found him, given what had happened to her in Paris. There was a pregnant pause. Ed must have looked blank. He realized that Emma wanted him to follow up. He knew he was in a dangerous position if he did; he would ask those unasked questions that he had neglected for so long.
“Sure,” he said, noncommittally.
“You know, you’re kinda cool not letting something like that get in the way of things.”
Emma was raising the stakes.
“I guess,” he replied, still neutral. But his interest was nevertheless piqued.
“I mean, Sarah was really destroyed by that guy, you know?”
Ed had a sinking, cold feeling in his gut.
“But, now you’re around, she’s living again—you know what I mean?”
However much he didn’t want to hear the story, Emma seemed intent on laying it out in small increments, like a death by a thousand cuts. And in an hour there was plenty of time for Ed to hear it not once but twice, if Emma had cared to repeat herself.
She told the story with qualifiers like “as you know,” “as Sarah no doubt told you…” when it must have been clear from Ed’s expression that this was the first time he had heard any of it.
Sarah had elected to study in Paris, at the Sorbonne, in her third year. Being bright, attractive, only twenty, and away from home, she might have decided to just have a good time. But for the first month or two in the French capital she had diligently applied herself to polishing her language skills, going to lectures on French literature and writing papers.
As the semester ended, one of the tutors, a reader in literature called Alex Leroy, kept her talking after a lecture and invited her to a colleague’s party. Emma laid on the description at this point: Alex was a soulful-looking man, with dark spaniel eyes half covered by a flop of dark hair, dashing Gallic charm, both bohemian and urbane. He was eight years older than Sarah, had the air of a man of the world, a man who knew a lot of women, but maybe had been a little hurt by them too. Before she knew it, they were in a relationship.
It was not too long before Sarah was due to return to the States for the vacation. That evening there was the dash to Charles de Gaulle in his deux chevaux, the tearful parting, the scrap of paper with her home phone number pressed into his hand. Ed thought of the scrap she had given him at the Over and Under, which he still kept in his wallet.
Back home she waited for his call. Each day making excuses to herself why he didn’t.
She took an early flight back. That cold January morning when she called from her apartment, he seemed surprised to hear from her. He couldn’t see her immediately. He had something important to do.
At the university Sarah asked around. The story came out gradually: it appeared Alex was well known for dating female pupils. At least three others, she discovered. He had been with one of the other girls over Christmas: that was why he hadn’t called, why he had delayed seeing her on her return.
Sarah went to her apartment, where the Gauloise-smoking old concierge gave her the same world-weary look of condolence with which she greeted all the girls with mascara-smeared eyes ending their tragic love affairs.
Sarah had returned to the States without finishing her year in France. When the fall came she was certainly not looking for any more romance, just concentrating on her studies. But toward the end of that semester she had met Ed…
They both jumped when Sarah came in. She halted at the threshold and stared at them, as if guessing what had been going on. Guiltily and slowly Ed rose from the couch, where he’d been sitting next to Emma.
“Hi,” he said. He suddenly didn’t know what to do with his hands, so wiped them on his jeans as if they were dirty and thrust them into his pockets.
Sarah silently placed her study books on the coffee table.
“Shoot, is that the time? I’m late for class,” Emma exclaimed. She was suddenly all bustle, pushing herself off the couch and grabbing a satchel of books. She paused for a mere second or two to apply lipstick in a mirror and was gone with a cheery “Goodbye.”
Ed stood awkwardly as Sarah went into the kitchenette. “You want coffee?” she asked coldly.
“That would be good,” he answered.
She busied herself with the ground coffee and the French press. “What were you talking to Emma about?”
“You know, this and that.”
Sarah slammed the measurer on the counter and coffee flew everywhere. “Don’t give me that shit, Martin! You were talking about me, weren’t you?”
Ed looked down, unable to reply.
Sarah took a stride or two toward him until she was so in his face he couldn’t avoid her stare. “I thought so. Well, Martin, number one—if you have something to say, say it to me. I don’t like being discussed behind my back. Number two—I don’t belong to anyone, least of all you. You know, life’s too short to suffer dicks, so maybe you should just leave now.”
“Listen, Sarah, we were just chatting, OK?” he finally managed to say.
“Just chatting? Right. You know she has a thing for you?”
“Emma?”
She flushed, angry again. “Don’t give me that crap. She’s always giving you the eye. She almost had her hand on your zipper when I came in.”
“We were just sitting, nothing was going on.”
“Yeah? Well, tell me one thing. Emma is a Class A fantasist. I bet she was spinning you some pretty wild stuff about me, wasn’t she?”
Ed blushed slightly. “It wasn’t like that. We were just talking student stuff, you know?”
Sarah harrumphed, but he could see her mood was gradually subsiding.
“Let me fix you some lunch,” Ed volunteered quickly. He had become a pretty dab hand at cooking. He wiped up the spilt coffee, then rummaged through the contents of the refrigerator. There were the makings of quesadilla and red salsa. He busied himself with a frying pan and a bowl. Thankfully there were a couple of cans of Pabst in the refrigerator too, and they drank those with the meal.
The storm had passed but Ed was disturbed by the glimpse of the hidden Sarah he’d just seen. They went into the bedroom, almost as a reflex: Emma was out so they had to have sex. They went through the familiar moves but, even when she arched her back and came, Ed’s mind was far away. He was not in the moment and found he could not climax. That was a first. A big struggle was going on inside his mind. Sarah had withheld the truth from him. Perhaps he was just some kind of rebound from this Leroy guy. There was enough in Emma’s story to have convinced him of that.
On the other hand, who was he to judge? His whole life in Miami was a giant lie, one he dare not confess to anyone, even, for the moment, to Sarah. That glimpse of her volcanic temper was certainly no encouragement to probe further into her past. It was clear she wasn’t going to volunteer any more information to him than he was going to volunteer to her.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
The relationship survived more moments like the one after Emma’s revelation. And in time, of course, he had to tell her the truth about himself.
Sarah’s mother died shortly after they met. He had attended the funeral with her. She was an only child, her father long gone. The New Jersey graveside was not crowded; the Cuervos were apparently not a numerous clan, or a social one—even at the wake the few uncles, aunts and cousins barely engaged with one another. A nodded acknowledgement and couple of sentences were the sum total of most conversations. Most of the mourners sat silently sipping coffee. Maybe the whole family held secrets? An uncle explained to Ed that there was a little money for Sarah, the sole heir. Enough for an apartment.
Her newfound, modest wealth bought a pretty, small walk-up in Matilda Street in Coconut Grove. Outside, the walls were made of light-blue clapboard. Spanish oaks and palms shaded the streets. The nightlife was open and easy. Ed abandoned Overtown without regret. Even with the relentless study, life was good, mainly spent outdoors, in palm-shaded cabanas or on sun-kissed beaches without winter.
Three years passed. In that time he got his JD, then passed the Florida bar exam. Ed had achieved everything he had set out to do in the seven years since he’d arrived at the Greyhound station in the fall of ’79.
But success brought danger. His photograph was in various yearbooks and magazines again. Half of him was pleased, half paranoid at the attention. In his last year he had interviewed at law firms specializing in international tax law. This specialization had been chosen carefully: unflashy, not public-facing. He was a reserved young man who gave little of himself but had an air of quiet determination about him that fitted the profile of some of the more staid firms. Offers came in. One firm, Merriweather’s, had an opening in Miami as a junior associate in the tax law department.
He was interviewed by a panel of senior partners. Three gray men in gray suits, studious, humorless. In contrast, the head of HR, Maria Benzema, who sat in, was dressed in fashion more suited to the Over and Under than Merriweather’s: an Emilio Pucci kaleidoscope print that was like a psychedelic trip for the eyes, with pretty much all the hues of a tropical island. She had her hair up in a topknot and wore bright red lipstick and some exotic eyeshadow. Despite being at least twenty years older than him, she appraised Ed with a look that he took to be a little more than professional. Anyway, his looks wouldn’t get him this job if the partners had anything to do with it. It was probably out of his league. The interview was just good practice.
The gray partners droned on: tax planning, or, if you wanted, “avoidance, never evasion,” was the name of the game. Some travel would be required, mainly to Caribbean tax havens like the Caymans, Panama, the Bahamas, and others. His Spanish would be useful. They asked some technical questions about US tax regulations and the IRS. He barely remembered his answers.
The interview concluded. He stood, as did Benzema. “Mr. Cruz, would you mind waiting outside the door for a minute?” she asked with a smile.
As he sat outside there were murmured voices behind the door. Then Benzema opened it and ushered him back in.
