“But if you find him so stimulating . . .”
“Not that way.” She smiled, at ease. “Why don’t we go upstairs and I’ll show you who I love?”
Mike was over for dinner the next night. Things had become considerably more mellow between Sean and Kyra after the riot in Barcelona. She seemed to defer more to him now, and showed less of her bitching nature, at least in public. But that’s not quite fair. To be honest, we hadn’t heard them fighting in their room for several days.
Except for Lea’s excursions into town, I was enjoying the vacation for the first time, spending a couple of hours each day reading or talking to Berta or Sean. I wasn’t really worried about Lea’s infatuation, and felt sure that it would pass quickly. Still, I wasn’t exactly excited to see him come up to dinner.
He was hardly a threat by age alone. Surely, he was no more than twenty-five. I admit that he was darkly handsome, whatever that means. His features were smooth and regular, his limbs long. His hands gave the impression of being strong and dainty at the same time. I wondered if perhaps he were gay. That would be ironic. But, as I said, I wasn’t really jealous.
Lea was forty, and while she was a very attractive woman to my eyes, I doubted whether she would be to a boy who should be dating teenagers.
The strangest thing about my attitude through all this was the feeling I had that I was in some play. There was nothing to bring it all to life for me. It wouldn’t be quite true to say that I didn’t care, but there was none of that sense of urgency that Lea had spoken of.
What would come of it all, anyway? Probably in two or three months Mike would have gone away, and Lea and I would be planning to go back to California and our real work. I felt that all these motions would be gone through, but nothing would make much difference.
Certainly the flow of our lives, which we’d worked to keep even all these years, would continue as before. That wasn’t such a depressing thought. I only marveled at how wound up Lea and I seemed to be in what was, I felt sure, merely an interlude.
I had no way to explain, then, the incredible hostility I felt toward Mike when I came down and found him sitting next to Lea on the couch. I suppose I was civil enough, but I was unable to join in their conversation or even to look at them for any period of time. Luckily, Kyra was with Berta in the kitchen, and Sean and I took our drinks and walked out to the front.
It was definitely chilly outside, and getting darker earlier. We stood in silence. Finally, Sean spoke. “I love this country.”
And he was right. The trees were thinning out beyond the courtyard wall, and a faint, cool breeze brought on it a trace of the smell of leaves, burning somewhere in one of the vineyards. “But I sure hate the fucking winter.” He laughed to himself.
After a minute, he jerked his head toward the house. “What’s going on with you two, if you don’t mind my asking? The kid?”
“Yeah. I guess so. I just don’t understand why she has to spend all her time talking to him.”
He nudged me along toward the gate, and we walked together. “He’s got a story. Whether it’s true or not, I don’t know, but it doesn’t really matter. He believes it. I know the guy, Doug, and he’s not a bad sort. I strongly doubt if he’s going through all this rigmarole to put the make on Lea. Christ, I sound like you counseling me the other night.”
In the growing darkness I looked at the big man next to me. He was becoming a real friend.
He went on. “Maybe Lea just needs to hear right now that somebody is interested in his own life. You can forgive me or not for saying this, but it sure as hell looks like you guys have not found much to get excited about lately. Sometimes, these endless days off will do it to you. I remember when I first left my job, I got incredibly depressed for the first couple of months until I got the hang of seizing the time I had. Set myself a goal, even though it was arbitrary, and all of a sudden, I wasn’t half so depressed. But it seems to me, though, that you and Lea don’t have anything really to go back to the States for, and nothing here is that interesting for you, so you’re both ripe for a little adventure. She’s maybe better off than you, being more gullible, but you gotta fool yourself a little. Take some pleasure in small things. It may not mean a whole lot, but it’s a start, and blah, blah, blah, here I go again. I’m sorry. I don’t mean to be so bombastic.”
I shrugged, sipped my drink. “No, it’s good to hear you talk. You seem in great spirits, by the way.” We were walking back to the house. “One of these days we’ll both be in good moods at the same time, and won’t know what to do with ourselves.”
“Mutual suicide,” he said, laughing. “Go out at the peak.”
“Or the nadir?”
“Doubt it,” he said, still laughing. “Only way to go from there is up. But you’re right. Things are really good right now. Of course it might turn around any day, but well, let’s just leave it at that.”
Again, he turned conspiratorial. “Now, about this mutual suicide . . .”
“Come on,” I said, “let’s not joke about it. There’s nothing worth killing yourself over. It all passes.”
He still spoke through his smile, but there was a sober undertone. “Oh, I don’t know. I could think of something.”
But then Kyra came out the front door and joined us, and the talk turned to lighter things.
At dinner, we were all “on,” and consequently it was a pleasant enough evening. Sean was especially perky, and kept us laughing at Berta’s expense, talking to her and translating for us what he said were her replies. It was clear, though, that they both enjoyed the game, and Berta understood enough English to get back at him a time or two. My respect for her had grown by bounds.
Kyra sat next to Mike, and it surprised me that that drew no response from Sean. He sat next to Lea and conversed with her, when he wasn’t teasing Berta. I was content to sit at the end of the table, saying little.
It wasn’t until the coffee arrived that the talk came around to Mike’s plans. It had been no secret among us before this, but somehow whenever it had come up, we’d let it drop. Now, with him here, it seemed a good time to clear the air.
Sean began in his usual bantering tone. “So you’re looking for some help in this quest of yours, heh?”
Immediately you could feel the tension around the table. Kyra sipped at her coffee, looking down. Lea stared first at Sean, then at me. Berta cleared her throat and got up. Mike put down his cup carefully, and seemed to shrink back into himself.
“I hadn’t exactly advertised,” he said.
“Well, what is it you need?”
“Do you all know what this is about?” He looked at me and Kyra, seemed to fumble for a minute, then went on. “It’s really more a question of deciding to do something now that I’ve been planning for several years. In fact, I’ve done more than plan, but it’s just that something has kept me from going about it full time. Mostly, I guess, the fact that once I did it all-out and failed, then that would be that. The whole thing would be over. I’d be forced to admit it, and that would be hard. Maybe up until now it wouldn’t have been possible at all.
“But lately I’ve come to realize that I’d be just fooling myself as long as I didn’t give it everything I had. Might as well know the truth for sure, even if the truth is that she’s dead.”
“What makes you think she isn’t?”
“Douglas!”
“No, Lea. It’s a fair question. Really nothing definite, I guess. She might be.” That haunted look came over him. “She might be.”
“Well,” said Sean, “even supposing that you find her alive and well, I’ve got two questions: how come she never tried to find you, and what are you going to do about her when you find her?”
“I know,” he said. “I know. Maybe the best answer I can give you right now is that it’s the best thing for me to do, for myself.”
I wanted to ask him, then, why he was involving us so deeply, but checked myself.
“But to answer your questions, number one, I don’t think, if we find her, that she’ll have been free to look anybody up. In fact, I’m sure of that.”
Sean shrugged. “Maybe she just would be embarrassed to have anyone know what she’d gone through.”
“Maybe, but I doubt it. I know her, or knew her. Anyway, the other part of the question is the tough one, since I really don’t know what we’d do if we saw each other again. For the first couple of years, I just naturally assumed that we’d start up again where we had left off, but now that strikes me as pretty unlikely.”
“The whole thing does to me,” I said. “How the hell do you intend to go off halfway across the continent and find a girl who’s been lost for—what is it?—six or eight years? Jesus! What a way to waste a year or two. Aren’t there police you could contact? Somebody’s got to have more organization and information than you do.”
“I have certain connections that I’ve built up over the years. I think I’ve got as good a chance of finding her as anyone else.”
“Yes,” said Sean, “all that’s fine. But even then, what?”
Kyra spoke up. “I really don’t see the point at all if there isn’t some great personal thing anymore going on. I mean, if you don’t plan to take care of her, even marry her, then what’s the point?”
“I might do just that.”
“Oh, Jesus!” I said. “Someone you haven’t seen in all this time? How do you know—”
Suddenly Lea, who’d been quiet, shouted, “Shut up! All of you just shut up! I’ve listened to all of this for long enough. I’ve also talked to Mike much more than any of you, and let me tell you one thing. He loves this girl. Maybe it isn’t realistic anymore, but it’s got more going for it than all of your cynical selves pretending that your reasons for doing things are any better than his. I hope he finds her, and I think if he does, he’ll love her, and maybe marry her. What does that matter? Stranger things have happened. And even if it doesn’t, what is lost?
“Douglas, you say it’s a horrible waste of a year, but it seems a whole lot better than our last few months. At least something’s alive. Something’s going on and changing. Maybe that’s enough impetus right there to do something, quote, stupid.” She stopped and glared at us.
“Whoa, Sis,” said Sean. “Relax. We’re not so much coming down on Mike as just wanting to know if he’s thought out what’s gonna happen even if he succeeds.”
“Well, it doesn’t come across that way.”
“I should have never brought it up to anyone else,” said Mike. “It’s just my affair.”
“It’s not so much that,” said Sean again, “but you have to admit that deciding now to look for her isn’t the most predictable thing you could do.”
“Her getting kidnapped was predictable.”
“And what’s so horrible about wanting to help him?” asked Lea.
“I’m all for helping him, my dear,” I said, “if I could only figure out what it is we’re supposed to do.”
But that question never got answered. Kyra stood up and said she’d had enough of this bickering, and why shouldn’t we all get up and let Berta clear off the table. Sean announced that he would probably be finishing the first draft of his book within a few weeks, and the talk, rather forcedly, drifted to that.
Afterward, Mike was in some hurry to leave, and we let him go. The four of us then sat together in the front room having some after-dinner brandy. Kyra then got out some cards and we played a desultory hour of bridge.
“You know,” Sean said, “I’m sorry I started that unfortunate talk at the table, but I wanted everybody to be screaming, ’cause with this damn ear I can’t hear a goddamn thing.” He smiled at us all. “Better when it’s out in the open anyway, huh?”
I took Lea’s hand on top of the table, and felt her answering pressure. She looked peeved but not really angry. “You’ve got a banana in your ear,” she yelled at her brother.
“What?” he said, grinning. “I can’t hear you.”
Upstairs, I said, “The main problem is that I don’t believe it. The whole bit. The story just doesn’t ring true to me. What I think is that he’s a mixed-up kid, and I’m surprised and upset to see you so involved with him.”
“Would it help any,” she asked, “if we found proof that the girl had been kidnapped?”
“Some, maybe.”
“Well, what do you want?”
“I want you to be my wife.”
She sat next to me on the bed, and rubbed my shoulders. “I am your wife. I’m not his lover. Douglas, he’s fifteen years younger than I. That’s quite a bit, don’t you think?”
“Not really.”
“Then you’ll just have to believe me.” She tousled my hair. “The idea . . .”
When we were in bed and the lights were out, I could tell we were both wide-awake.
“What is it?” I asked.
“Look,” she said. “To set your mind at ease, let’s go into Barcelona’s library and look up the old newspapers and see if there’s something in them about Mike or Sharon. That ought to verify things, at least. Besides, we haven’t spent a day together in a hell of a long time.”
So the next day we drove through a thick fog into Barcelona. Winter was making bolder and bolder inroads along the coast. The reference librarian spoke English perfectly and she informed us that they had back issues of major papers on microfilm on the second floor.