Life and Other Near-Death Experiences(39)

“Cheers,” I said, and took a sip. It made me cough, but the liquor spread its heat through my chest and into my stomach, the latter of which instantly stopped hurting. Forget painkillers—I was going to have to drink around the clock.

“Anyway,” I told Milagros, “you can’t be in love with someone you don’t even know.” I knew Shiloh’s last name, that he’d survived cancer, and that he was the proud owner of one saline-filled testicle. However, I had no idea about the everyday minutiae of his life. What was his place in San Juan like, for example? Did he have siblings? What was the deal with his wife?

“Mija,” said Milagros. “That’s not how it works. Do you respect him?”

“Yes,” I admitted.

“Do you miss him when he’s gone?”

“I suppose.”

“Well, then, there you go. Though you might need more than a week to make a decent decision.”

A week didn’t sound so awful to me. Since walking into Dr. S.’s office, most of my decisions had been made in less than an hour—and more often than not, in a few short seconds.

Milagros continued. “My point is, don’t count it out just because it’s new. I only knew my last husband, Luis, for two months before we got married, and I’m pretty sure that if he hadn’t hit his head and fallen into the sea during a fishing trip, it would have been forever for the two of us.”

“I’m sorry, Milagros.”

She waved off my sympathy. “That was long ago. This man who’s been visiting you, he looks nice, and you deserve to be treated well. He does treat you well, doesn’t he?”

“Yes,” I said. At the very least, I was no longer concerned that I was a pity lay. “But . . .”

“But what?” she said. “Time will tell you the rest.”

I held out my glass. “If you say so, Milagros.”





TWENTY-ONE


Shiloh came by the next morning as I was rolling out of bed.

The sun hit me square in the face when I opened the door, and I squinted at him like a mole rat. “You’re up early.”

He leaned in to kiss me. “Hi to you, too. Do you have plans for the day?”

“Let me think.” I scratched my head. “Um, that would be no.”

“Great. How do you feel about going to San Juan and maybe spending the night?”

“Depends on how we’re getting there. Because if you say ‘plane’ . . .”

He laughed. “I can’t fly right now, remember?”

“That doesn’t mean you don’t have a pilot friend who wants to see if we’re death-proof.”

“We’ll take the ferry. Puh-lease?” he said, mock begging.

I looked him up and down. He was in another ratty T-shirt, but the thin cotton accentuated his chest muscles in a most appealing way. And although I could detect only the faintest hint of soap, his pheromones must have been powerful because I had to stop myself from sniffing him. I wrapped my arms around his waist. “All right. But don’t kill me.”



The ferry was every bit as choppy as Shiloh had said it would be; by the time we docked in Fajardo, I was amazed that the toast and coffee I’d eaten for breakfast hadn’t resurfaced. Fajardo was a good forty-five minutes from San Juan, and the cab ride from one city to the next did little to soothe my stomach. While the driver himself was adept, the other cars wove around us in a way that made me wax nostalgic for Chicago traffic.

As we traveled away from Fajardo, the landscape shifted from lush mountains to freshly paved roads and cul-de-sacs to crowded housing projects where laundry dried on cords and children clustered on stoops. An hour later, the driver dropped us off at a bustling neighborhood a stone’s throw from the sea.

“This reminds me of some of the beach towns outside of LA,” I told Shiloh as we walked past a café.

He nodded. “This neighborhood is called Condado. And this,” he said, unlocking a wrought-iron gate, “is where I live when I’m not in Vieques.”

Behind the gate was a well-tended garden shaded by large palm trees, and beyond that, a stuccoed building with canopied terraces on each floor.

“Charming.”

“Don’t say that before you’ve seen my apartment,” he said, and led me up a set of stairs.

We stopped in front of a thick wood door, which Shiloh opened. “It’s not much,” he said as we stepped inside, “but it’s mine.”

I loved it on sight. Large windows bathed the terra-cotta-tiled floor in sunlight, and the sky-blue walls were hung with framed music festival posters and Puerto Rican folk art.

I admired an intricately designed guitar-like instrument that was placed on a stand in the corner. “Do you play?”

“The cuatro? I wish. That was my grandfather’s.”

“It’s beautiful.”

A teak platform bed tented with mosquito netting took up the majority of his bedroom. “I don’t have air-conditioning,” he explained of the netting, “although being this close to the water, I don’t really need it.”

I nodded and attempted not to look at a photo on the narrow dresser, which showed Shiloh with his arm around an attractive woman.

He gave me a look that said he knew exactly what I had been thinking. “That’s Raquel—my sister. Carla was my ex-wife, and you won’t find photos of her here. Or anywhere, for that matter.”