Ordinary World (27 page)

I balled my hands into fists and jammed them into my pockets.

“You didn’t just go there,” I said between clenched teeth.

He looked down at the ground. Ashamed, possibly.

“And by the way, Julian’s harmless. It’s not like he’s some jet-setter. It’s not like I’m surrounded by all these beautiful people who are dying to fuck me.”

David looked up at me, his eyes still dark. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“How’s Carmen?” I asked in mock sincerity.

“You think I’m fucking Carmen?”

“No, I don’t. But I know how much Carmen and others like her want to fuck you, and I’ll bet my salary that every time she’s in your vicinity, she tries. Even via phone or email.”

He didn’t deny this.

“Nothing’s changed since the old days. At least
that
hasn’t changed,” I said.

“Everything’s changed,” said David.

“I’ll say.”

“Make up your mind, Andi. You either want me, or you want Devin. Or you want Sam. But you can’t have all three.”

“Don’t you dare start handing me ultimatums!”

“I’m hanging on by a thread here, Andi!” he yelled. “Don’t you get that?”

I looked at him, startled. “What do you mean?”

“Do you have any idea how I’ve been trying to hold on?”

“Hold on to what?”

“To you! To
us
! When I saw you in Rome, all I could think was, ‘Thank you, God. Thank you for giving me a second chance with her.’ And I’m sorry that that comes at Sam’s expense, I really am. But nevertheless, I got it and I’m desperately trying not to fuck it up. But I don’t think I can take much more of this. I can’t take your little yo-yo game, and I can’t stand the idea of you being with anyone else.”

“I don’t wanna be with anyone else,” I insisted.

“But you don’t wanna be with
me
, either,” he retorted. “And that’s what’s driving me crazy.”

“That’s not true,” I said, although I could hear Melody’s voice in my head questioning otherwise.

David put up his hands in surrender. “Go to Peru, Andi. Go finish Sam’s novel. Go live your life.” He started to walk away.

I had to consciously think of the name before I called out, “David, wait!”

He stopped and turned around.

“Where are you going?” I asked.

“To find my car,” he said with a contorted laugh, and turned around again. I sped up after him.

“Don’t go,” I said.

“Sorry I ruined your coffee date.”

“Stop,” I commanded.

Without looking at me or stopping, he called out, “I’ll call you later.”

***

I didn’t hear from him for the rest of the day. Or most of the following day, either. Finally, late afternoon, I called and left a message on his cellphone, my voice shaky.

“There is no way I am getting on a plane tomorrow and going to a foreign country while we’re mad at each other like this. There is no way in hell I am going to let what could be the last words between us to be ‘stop’ and ‘I’ll call you later.’ Because you never know. Lives are torn apart by much more loving words and gestures.”

Two hours later, David called me back.

“Come over now,” he ordered.

I went to his place, and the minute he opened the door, he pulled me in and kissed me hard. Saying nothing about the fight, or anything else, we had makeup sex not unlike the sex we’d had in Rome. Hot. Intense. Orgasmic. And yet, it wasn’t exactly as enjoyable as in Rome—more like intense enough to get lost in it. I knew we were both using it as some sort of escape and avoidance. Funny, I never thought I’d ever use sex in such a way. That I’d ever
have
sex in such a way. As we panted and moved, our bodies intertwined, I couldn’t help but think about Sam. I tried to imagine that I was making love to him one last time, that we were having the best sex of our lives right before he left for the damn cider. It had taken all my energy to call out David’s and not Sam’s name.

Early the next morning, when David took me to the airport, I felt like a ten-year-old girl being dropped off at summer camp, pulled out of the protective clasp of his embrace. Sitting on the plane, waiting for takeoff and the Dramamine to kick in, I recalled the night before and felt flushed before my eyes welled up.

At least I wasn’t leaving angry, I thought. At least Sam didn’t leave angry that night he’d left. He’d left each of us wanting more. And for all I knew, maybe that wasn’t much better.

Chapter Thirty-one

Lima and Miraflores, Peru

J
ULIAN HAD WARNED ME ABOUT TWO THINGS IN Lima: taxi drivers and spare change. The taxi drivers will take you for a ride (both literally and metaphorically) if you don’t get aggressive with both pricing and destination, and some illegitimate drivers have even been known to take tourists to seamier parts of the city, where they would be dropped off and mugged. Fortunately for me, David employed a travel agent exclusively for his business trips, and it was through that agent that he had arranged for me to have a five-star hotel suite and a tour guide. The guide’s name was Manuel; he met me at the Lima airport and drove me to my hotel. Manhattan drivers have nothing on the Peruvians—Jeff Gordon wouldn’t even be able to keep up. Between the Dramamine and flying nerves and bad airline food and now the slalom ride to the hotel, I thought I might wretch.

The second warning had to do with a strange phenomenon of a shortage of spare change in that everyone seemed to need it but no one seemed to have it. At least that was the case ten years ago, when he spent a summer touring the country. “I don’t know if it’s still a problem,” he said, “but just in case, hoard it.” Buy a soda with a ten sol note. Buy a platano with a five sol note. And be careful: counterfeiting runs rampant in Peru.”

            The plane ride took twice as long as it did to Rome; to say I was happy to land was an understatement. As in Rome, I spent my first day in Lima getting acclimated and letting jet lag take over and sleeping. This time, because of Sam’s novel, I had more of an agenda. I didn’t want to simply be a tourist on vacation—I wanted to talk to locals, observe the culture in action, and capture sights and smells and tastes for the benefit of the reader. My Spanish was better than my Italian, and Julian had often made me converse with him in Spanish even when we went out for coffee so I could practice.

            On the second day, Manny picked me up and took me to various places in Lima. The people were warm and friendly and hospitable toward me. The kids loved my iPod. The girls loved my hair. The men loved my curves. I spent hours outside watching, writing, describing every detail down to the color of the street. Like Rome, Lima’s surroundings had an organic feel to it, full of browns and sepias and greens, save a burst of color here and there. I could picture Sam here, taking it all in, having a blast, getting into a game of soccer with the kids. He loved to go anywhere he could be both an observer and a participant. He wasn’t afraid of the foreign.

Manny invited me to his house for dinner and to meet his wife Marta. She was striking: young and tan-skinned and lean, with tresses of hair the color of blackberries falling way past her shoulders. She made a dinner consisting of
ceviche
: fish marinated in lime juice and chili peppers, served with corn sliced in cross-sections on a cob twice as thick as Long Island corn, with fat, white-yellowish kernels tasting less sweet and more starchy. Afterwards we drank
mate de coca
, a kind of herbal tea made with coca leaves, which, for some reason, gave me a splitting headache. I popped two Tylenol and washed them down with bottled water—Julian had commanded me to stay away from the tap water (“even when you brush your teeth, use bottled”).

The following day, Marta took me to Miraflores, a suburb of Lima. The density of Rome or Manhattan was not found in Miraflores, where many of the older buildings were more like sprawling haciendas combined with a variety of cool, modern architecture. Julian said that many of the original buildings had been destroyed by earthquakes and replaced by more modern concrete and steel structures. Marta and I visited stores and street vendors selling art and clothes and touristy items. I thought of David when I saw the art, and bought one of the smaller pieces.

I appreciated and enjoyed both Marta and Manny’s company quite a bit, and both spoke English very well. I seemed to be more sociable than I had been in Rome. As always, I missed Sam, but in Peru the pain had decreased to more of a dull ache in comparison to the vice-grip of grief that I had experienced in Italy. Maybe it was finally getting easier.

            And yet, I missed David, too. I’d called him when I arrived at the hotel, and sent him a postcard once a day, always including a new phrase I’d learned in Spanish:
No more mate de coca, please—it gives me a headache. I don’t watch American Idol. On behalf of my country, I apologize for McDonald’s.

On the night before Manny and I were to begin our journey to Machu Picchu, Marta asked to give me what seemed to be a tarot card reading, and I obliged, albeit surprised, considering that many Peruvians were quite religious. I hadn’t had a tarot card reading since my early twenties, when I attended what was known as a “psychic fair” at the Marriot in Smithtown, Long Island, and among other clairvoyants, fortune tellers, and aura readers, met a then-unknown John Edward, who told me that the spirit of my grandfather wanted to know why I was taking a semester off from college. All I had wanted to know was the name of the man I was going to marry. John Edward told me that my future husband’s name was, incidentally, Edward; two other psychics said it was Glenn; and a tarot card reader asked me if I’d ever been a lesbian in a past life.

            Marta and I sat face to face at the small, square table covered with plum-colored fabric. She lit a homemade wax candle and set the cards in a formation I’d never seen before, sort of like a clock face. She then turned over the first card to her top right. The pictures were colorful and artistic, almost like stained glass or mosaic drawings, with Spanish words that I didn’t recognize written on them.         

Marta spoke to me in English. “It says that you experience a loss that was too painful for you. Your soulmate left you for the afterlife.”

            I took out my wallet-sized photo of Sam, faded and full of creases and smudges where I had caressed his face with my thumb countless times, and showed it to her.

            “El amor de mi vida,” I said. “Fue mi esposo.”

            “It says that your husband is your eternal soulmate and came to live with you on earth so that you may recognize him in the next life. He is with you always, guiding you, but you are too blinded by your pain to follow.” Marta looked up at me. “If you ask him where to go, he will take you there.”

            Tears came to my eyes. I shivered, feeling as if Marta was seeing me undressed or reading my diary. She turned a third card.

            “It says you need to be alone. It says you need to sit in… unknowing, I think you say.”

            “I don’t understand,” I said, staring at the cards. “Yo no comprendo.”

            Without looking at the cards, she said, “There is another man in your life, yes?”

            It occurred to me at that moment that there were an abundance of men in my life: Sam. Devin. David. Joey. Tony. Jeff. Piero. Julian. My dead father.

            “Si,” I responded. “El se llama
David
.” I said, using the Spanish pronunciation of his name.

            “You need to not need him. You need to know how to live with yourself.”

I paused for a beat to take this in.

“Do you mean that I need to learn how to live by myself without turning to him for comfort?”

            “Si,” she nodded.

 “Do you mean I have to break up—
end
the relationship with him? No mas con el otro hombre?” My ninth-grade-level Spanish sounded ridiculous.