Second Chances (34 page)

And though she makes no move to leave the room just now, she continues to imagine those conversations.

She even imagines telling them about her five cats, which, back in the other San Sebastian, Celeste is looking after.

The night before, after dinner, as they lay against each other in the regally broad and very lumpy bed, Polly thought about the extreme affections of the flesh, her skin against Victor’s warm skin as Victor began to snore. (Victor, like all the men of Polly’s experience, always fell asleep first.) Polly imagined their skins pulsing separately,
their bodies entirely joined. Not violently, as in sex, but absolutely. Wedded flesh.

And it would be this, this simple—but not simple: infinitely complex—this warmth of the skin that she would badly miss if Victor should not come back.

I’m not ready for that lack. I can stand it, but please don’t make me, Polly prays. To no one.

As, at that most unlikely moment, in the corridor she hears first the lively footsteps, unmistakable, and then the voice of Victor. His knock. “Let me quickly come in, I have much to tell you.”

Midnight in Managua. In the pitch-black, crowded, fetid, deathly still air, Sara, between coarse damp sheets, can hardly breathe, much less think or even possibly sleep. The night is filled with traffic, fumes. And animals. Indistinguishable machines emit strange lights, at intervals. Something, someone shrieks: birds, or cats? Dogs? Humans?

Sara believes that she will be awake for the rest of her life.

Somewhere near her, Alex breathes, too hot to touch, his shoulder a ghost-white shrouded hump. In the corner of the room are shapes of furniture, what could be chairs, a table, a dresser. Or anything: guards with guns. Dead tigers.

Whatever we are doing here I don’t want to do it, Sara thinks. I’ll be killed. Tortured. Before this, always the worst thing in my mind has been the Mexican jail. This is worse. Much worse.

I don’t want to go north. Or anywhere. I’m too afraid.

The most immediate smell in the room is that of sex, the once-familiar sea-bog scent, slightly stale. And at first, at this post-midnight, pre-dawn time of pure horrors, Sara thinks, Oh, disgusting. Dirty sheets. Until she remembers that it was she and Alex who made love here. Incredibly, after those hours of excruciating travel. In this awful hotel, this room, this bed. This murderous, murdered city. She and Alex, now perhaps three hours ago, maybe only two, fell upon each other like high-school kids. Tearing at clothes. Ravenous, devouring. Until they lay apart, more like disaster victims than fallen lovers.

And now the terrifying day lies ahead of them. In wait for them, a jungle of hours, impenetrable, alien. A sleeping assassin.

*  *  *

The day that appears now to have lasted forever began for Sara in San Sebastian, in total darkness, but with for her a curious lightness of the heart, as though she were only meeting Alex in Mexico City for vacationing. For some tropical touring, in this dark December weather. In innocent southern climes.

She had slept well, enough sleep despite the punishing early hour, after a happily casual dinner with Celeste. Both Edward and Dudley had been invited, but Dudley was off dining with her beau, as Celeste liked to put it, and Edward was nursing a very bad cold.

Was Celeste glad to get rid of her? That thought occurred to Sara, first to be dismissed, and then rephrased: she may simply feel that we have spent enough time together, is what Sara came up with. Celeste is eminently a realist, and our being together has served its purposes for us both. I am rested and much less frightened, ready now to make some other life. And Celeste is apparently recovered from whatever fears were plaguing her. And from Bill, the Bill Priest episode.

Celeste even has said, “If you see Bill in Nicaragua, say hello. Or on second thought, don’t.”

“It’s a fairly large country,” Sara told her.

“But it does seem awfully far for you to go.” Celeste allowed herself a small frown. “You won’t mind if I worry just a little?”

An early dinner, sound sleep. As she prepared and then gulped down some coffee, closed her suitcase and went outside to wait for the airport van, Sara was surprised to find herself feeling so well. So almost carefree, only anticipating a trip full of interest. With Alex. And possibly—well, probably, love. Sex. Surely it has been in both their minds, during all those long sexy late-night conversations?

The air trip became very beautiful just a few hours out of Los Angeles: dipping blue views of the sea, with strange green shapes of land, and then range after range of great bare wrinkled mountains.

She was going to an interesting place, was what Sara thought then. Traveling with an old friend, an old lover who is himself very—well, interesting. And we may do some good. “Think of us as investigators,”
Alex had put it to her. “I’ve managed to find out quite a lot here and in Washington. The point is, there’s a lot of other aid getting through to the contras. Private funds that the CIA may or may not know about.”

“But why me? Or even why us?”

“Because of what I already know. I can tell you more about it on the plane.”

“Okay.”

“And because—well, it’s something for me to do. An important action. And something to do with you, if you want the whole truth. I want us to be together.”

This line of reasoning carried Sara all the way to Mexico City. To Alex, whom she wants to be with.

They were going to have an adventure with a purpose, then. Together. They were going to the new Vietnam. To Nicaragua.

Alex, as planned, got to Mexico City before Sara did. Wrestling her way off the plane with her bulging backpack, then pushing through the surging crowd, Sara without much trouble spotted Alex. Taller and fairer than anyone in that enormous room, it was easy to see his light tangled hair.

Tired Alex, who came toward her, grasped her, and kissed her mouth.

“Oh—”

“Well—”

“Here!”

They breathed excited syllables at each other, they laughed, and turned in the direction of the main terminal.

How conspicuous we must be, Sara thought, aware of her own height, and her very North American style: short uncurled hair, un-made-up face, her dark shetland sweater, her jeans and running shoes. And taller, thinner, blond Alex, also in jeans, shetland sweater, old tweed jacket. Their sixties uniforms. Few in those gigantic, human-packed dirty spaces were dressed as they were. No others were as tall and confident, nor, quite possibly, as loony.

After some confusion it turns out that their plane does not leave for over two hours. They have all that dead time to kill. And with
almost as much trouble as it took to find the proper airline windows, they locate a big bar-restaurant, and then a small corner table at which to settle, or try to, for that time.

The room is crammed with travelers, mostly Americans, with all their varieties of luggage piled near their feet: tennis rackets, diving equipment, or—alternately, black embroidered sombreros, confetti-covered donkeys.
Piñatas
. The spoils of travel.

They order beer and American sandwiches.

“We could just go off to some Mexican beach instead,” Sara says. She is aware as she speaks that this is just what she longs to do, if only for a week or so. And then, if they had to, they could continue to Nicaragua. They could, among other things, get used to each other again. She realizes that Alex is making her slightly uneasy. Not speaking, he is giving off messages of such intensity, he is possessed of such an urgent sense of mission.

“Maybe afterwards” is his response to Sara’s half-idle suggestion, although he does just barely smile.

And at that moment Sara understands an odd fact, which is that she herself has made no plans for what comes after this trip. I guess I’ll go back to New York and look for work, she tells herself, as though she had known all along that this would be her course. She understands too that she has committed herself in some final way to Alex. To Alex in New York.

Out of nerves, at least partly, she begins to tell him about Celeste. “It’s amazing in a way how fond of her I was—I mean, I am. I could so easily not be. All those years when Emma went on and on about how great Celeste was, I couldn’t see it. She just made me impatient. All those clothes.”

“Do I ever get to meet her?”

“Well, sure. Of course.”

But when? And how remote San Sebastian already seems to Sara, and how curiously familiar the Mexico City airport. For a moment she has the fantasy that she and Alex and all the other stray, tired, mostly unhappy-looking humans in this room have been together forever. They will always be together. This is eternity.

The sandwiches are dry and terrible, tasteless. “At least the beer’s good,” Alex remarks between bites. And then, “Were we here before, do you think, on our way to Mexico that time?”

“I doubt it, don’t you? We were such political puritans in those days. So correct. I don’t think we would have killed time in a bar.”

During those several hours of waiting, in Mexico City, they only talk to each other in that scattered way. They do not discuss or elaborate on their purpose, possibly because they are already so committed to it, simply by being there.

After eating, and prolonging a second beer, the sheer weight of all the people and heavy objects in that room begins to press upon them, and so much smoke, and noise. They pay up and leave, and they then begin in an idle way to wander through the huge, crowded, filthy-floored terminal, stopping occasionally to relieve the weight of their bags, Sara’s torn backpack, Alex’s somewhat newer model. Or to look at something, some especially garish display of jewelry, for example, or some gaudy paintings executed on black velvet.

Thus, it is in front of an open stall whose shelves hold lines of pink pottery dogs, all sizes, all grime and fly-speckled, quite monstrous, really, that Sara and Alex have their only conversation having to do with their mutual project.

“It’s a small town north of Managua,” Alex tells her as Sara notices for the first time how gray his hair has got, the blond now streaked with lines of white. “A village, really,” says Alex. “Near a place called Sébaco. But the thing is, I’ve met Max Gómez in Washington, and we sort of got along.” He grins. “I saw to it that we did. So now he’ll almost have to talk to me. To us.”

“My Spanish isn’t so great,” Sara reminds him.

“Gómez was CIA.”

“Oh.”

“We spend the night in Managua and then pick up the chopper as early as we can the next day. I’ve talked to the pilot.”

“Good.” However, why should the fact that Alex has talked to the pilot be reassuring? “I’m still not crazy about the idea of a helicopter,” Sara tells him.

Alex smiles down at her. “It’ll be okay. Trust me.”

At that moment, despite gray hair and devious political intentions, Alex presents a face of such innocence, such innocent goodness, that Sara is deeply moved by him, and she understands then that this is why she is going along with him. At the same time, she realizes that she is very scared. We are not cut out for this. Neither one of us is.

*  *  *

Back at the airline counter, they find that their plane has been delayed again. It now leaves at four-ten, giving them another hour to get rid of, somehow.

Although they agree that they are both still a little hungry, going back to the bar where they were seems out of the question. And so after some walking about (inquiries are felt to be useless) they find another public room: darkened, with a bar and small tables, at one of which they sit down, depositing their luggage on yet another dirty floor.

No food is served in this place, and so they order margaritas. This seems both correct and celebratory—for what celebration they are not entirely sure. “These are so good!” they say to each other. And, “We almost never drink margaritas, delicious!”

They each have two, and by the time they finally board the plane they are both a little high.

“There’s a lot to be said for flying drunk, I think,” says Sara as the plane at last zooms upward, through the noxious gray cloud cover, the fuming waste of Mexico City. Bumpily upward to the pure clear sparkling blue sky.

“Oh, right!” says Alex.

Sara is at a window, Alex next to her on the aisle, and since the plane is half-empty they share great privacy. “Oh, this feels royal!” Sara says as they climb above fleecy gilt-edged cloud banks, as somewhere below them the sun begins its descent into the sea.

Alex pushes back the armrest between them, once the seat-belt sign goes off. Quite naturally they hold hands, and begin to kiss.

It is after an especially prolonged and passionate kiss that Alex, slightly breathless, says, “You’ll come and live with me after this, Sara, won’t you? Please. I don’t want to be without you anymore.”

“Yes, of course I will. I want to too.”

They begin to kiss again, as Sara with a part of her mind understands that this is all along what she intended. I have always loved Alex, she thinks. We can really make a good life, probably. Maybe even have a child together? Would that be crazy for me, at forty? Lots of women do, these days. “Alex, I do love you truly” is what she says to him. As she wonders, But
is
it too late?

“Me too,” he tells her.

Below them before too long are the rich green shadowed hills of jungle, endless growth. Mysterious depths of forest, hiding animals, villages. Impenetrable.

As they sail on through the sky.

“We should try to get some sleep,” says Sara, too late: they are beginning their descent. Down to Nicaragua.

Sara thinks, Oh dear, I’ve drunk so much. I’ll never get to sleep tonight.

In January rain arrives, a savage, continuous deluge, ravaging the coast and flooding rivers, and a terrible cold sets in, so that Celeste and Dudley and Edward are not able to take what they have spoken of as their New Year’s walk (Dudley and Edward, recalling the year before, have initiated this phrase) until the middle of the month. And at that time, suddenly for a few days the weather shifts, the storms are all blown out to sea and they are treated to dazzling clear blue skies. Healing weather for three elderly people in need of balm, though this is a judgment that none of the three would dare to make, self-pity being for them a known and dangerous enemy. But they have been severely battered, these three, indeed as though by storms, by dreadful and most unanticipated blows.