Life and Other Near-Death Experiences(29)
I took another sip. “I quit my job, emptied our home so I can sell it, and booked a ticket here.”
“Ay, mija, I know about bad husbands,” Milagros said. “Let me tell you about my third, José. I got really sick at work one day. My boss told me to go home because he was worried I was going to infect all my students. I had a fever and could barely walk, but when I called José to see if he could pick me up and drive me home, he didn’t answer. So I took the bus back and dragged myself into the house. When I got to my bedroom, who did I find but that hijo’e puta with my best friend—”
I gasped.
“—and her husband, too!” Milagros whooped. “I mean, que pervert! Sorry if that’s your kind of thing,” she added.
“It isn’t,” I assured her. “What did you do?”
“With Miguel? Claro, I divorced him,” she said, crossing her arms.
“Miguel? You mean José?”
“Miguel, José—what’s the difference? All that’s left of that man is my version of his story. What I’m trying to say, mija, is that eventually the pain goes away. Then one day you think about it and it’s funny. Te prometo.”
“That’s what everyone says.” I did not volunteer that I no longer had the luxury of waiting around for such a transformation to happen.
Milagros again topped off my glass and motioned for me to walk with her to the beach. “Don’t worry, it’s safe,” she said as she locked the patio gate behind us.
We stood in the sand, drinking silently as the sun lowered in the sky, cutting wide swaths of sherbet pink and cornflower blue in its wake.
Three months ago, Tom, Jess, O’Reilly, and I had celebrated the end of summer by commissioning a charter boat to take us out on Lake Michigan. The evening seemed to stretch forever, until we glanced up and saw that the sun had dropped, almost at once, and was hovering just above the skyline. Within seconds, it was between the jagged teeth of the city’s buildings—then gone before we’d really had a chance to take it in. I was beginning to feel that, like the sun, my life had slipped past when I was turned in the wrong direction.
“Why Vieques?” Milagros asked after a while.
“My father told me that my mother loved it here.”
She nodded, understanding what I had not said. “I lost my mami too early, too. Yours was a smart woman to love this place.”
I watched as the western waves swallowed the last of the day’s light. I’d barely made it to the island, but I had made it before it was too late. Certainly that meant something. Didn’t it?
SIXTEEN
I woke the following morning with an excruciating headache, rum scum coating my tongue, and the urge to do something constructive. I suppose when you’ve already cashed in ten of the estimated hundred and eighty days left of your life, there’s a smidgen of pressure to push through your hangover and make it count.
I downed a bowl of coconut granola, threw on some sneakers, and applied bug repellent to my skin. Then I hopped in the Jeep and headed for a hiking path I’d read about in one of the tourist booklets lying around the beach house.
The path was part of a recently formed national park on a section of the old naval grounds, but other than a metal sign designating that it was open to the public until ten p.m., it was almost impossible to differentiate the park from any other overgrown area I’d encountered thus far. I left the Jeep in a lot adjacent to the sign, then ventured over to what appeared to be a dirt trail. As per usual, Paul’s voice whispered in my ear, warning of predators, but I hummed loudly to drown him out. What could be nearer to God than nature? Surely here of all places I would be safe and protected.
As I stepped over a downed tree, I found myself imagining what life was like for the island’s early inhabitants, before there were roads or vehicles or Quick-Marts for purchasing drinking water that wouldn’t cause a bout of gastroenteritis to be reckoned with over a hole in the ground. As I forged ahead, the path became increasingly unkempt, and branches whipped against my face as spiky vines lashed my limbs. Smelling a meal, swarms of thumb-size mosquitoes deftly maneuvered around my swatting and jammed their stingers into my skin, as though the DEET I had applied were barbecue sauce.
I wasn’t trying to be a pioneer woman. I didn’t go camping and fishing for fun, nor did I even pretend to enjoy rugged outdoor activities, as my former colleague Corey did because her husband was disturbingly aroused by camouflage-covered mammaries. But I was trying to learn more about why my mother found this lot of sand in the middle of the sea to be so magical, and the verdant parks were part and parcel with the island’s identity. So I pressed on.
It wasn’t long before the narrow path deposited me at two wider trails, both of which looked well maintained, as though they might even be the handiwork of a landscape architect. I was elated: finally, a hike I could manage! I chose the path on the right.
I’d gone about a quarter mile when I heard a loud rumbling. For a moment I expected to see more wild horses—perhaps a whole herd, I thought as the noise drew nearer.
Instead, I found myself staring down a very different sort of horsepower as a yellow pickup truck barreled straight at me. A group of kids were yelling out the windows, and as the vehicle approached, I saw that the truck bed, too, was filled with rowdy teens. I stepped to the right, out of the center of the path, but then the truck veered left, directly into my path. Did the driver not see me? Was this some sadistic game of chicken? The only thing I was sure of was that I needed to move. Immediately.