Guardian of Lies

SEVEN

Sometimes it’s how you back into things in life that is most unsettling. It was how I met her, over the bananas in the produce section of a small market on the main drag up in Del Mar, not far from the racetrack. It was a Saturday morning and I was headed to the races to hook up with some friends. A cup of coffee in one hand and a bag with a muffin trapped under my arm, I was busy trying to separate a single banana from three others when she caught me in the act.

“Could you help me, seńor? Por favor?” She stood there looking at me, maybe five foot six in heels, shimmering dark hair past her shoulders, dimples, and a smile that could start a war.

“Ahhh…” She looked down for a moment, collecting her thoughts, translating in her head. “Do you know…umm…do they have plantains? You know plantains?”

I must have given her a kind of dull look. It wasn’t because I didn’t understand the question.

“Plantains.” The way she emphasized the word with the fingers of each hand at the corners of her mouth, full lips, a dark-eyed beauty, visions of Catherine Zeta-Jones descending from the big screen to haggle with me over bunches of bananas. She could read the stupidity of it all in my face, and she laughed.

“Ahh. I don’t know.”

I wasn’t sure if I had a clue as to what a plantain was, but if I could have invented one in that moment I would have done it.

She had that shiny, well-scrubbed look, the girl you dreamed about when you were twenty, the one you didn’t even try and date because you knew it was all a vaporous wet dream. The only place you could truly hold her was in your delusions. She would vanish the moment you touched her, tapped to go to Hollywood or hustled off on a modeling contract somewhere. Why bother to break your own heart?

She picked up one of the bananas and held it up. “Similar but larger.” She spread her hands about eighteen inches apart.

Habla espańol?

Un poco. Only enough to get in trouble,” I told her.

She laughed. There was something magical in it. I sensed by the way she smiled and instantly sized me up that it was not the first time she had seen this kind of confusion from men. It was in the air, surrounding her, atoms of volatile ether. It should have been a warning. To her, it was nothing unique, just part of nature, another fly in the trap.

“I need plantains to practice some recipes for a dinner party in two weeks. I am cooking for friends,” she said.

“Am I invited?”

She looked at me, a kind of twinkle in her eyes. “Nooo. Well, maybe. But only if you can help me find plantains.”

We talked about what she was cooking.

She called it a typical Costa Rican dinner. She asked me if I understood, but I didn’t.

“You know, I don’t know if I’ve ever seen any of those-plantains-here in such a small market. You might find them in one of the larger grocery stores in San Diego.”

“Oh, no, es too far.” Her face fell but only for an instant, a momentary and put-on pout, until her facile mind seized on another thought. She sniffed a little toward the large paper cup in my hand. “Café? Umm, smells good. What is your name?”

“Paul. Paul Madriani.”

“Ah, very nice name. Madriani.” The d and the r tripped off her Latin tongue with a musical quality I had not heard in a while. “Italiano, no?”

“Sí. And this Italian is about to have breakfast.” I held up the banana and grabbed the bag from under my arm. “Would you like to join me?”

She looked over her shoulder, toward the door. “My friend is doing business at an office down the street. He will be a while. And your coffee smells very good. I suppose it would be okay.”

“If you’re sure he won’t mind.” Looking at her, I was suddenly getting visions of a jealous guy holding a loaded pistol to my face.

“Who cares?” She gave me a kind of indifferent smile and grabbed a banana.

Breakfast it was. She picked out a muffin and we headed for the checkout. Outside at the kiosk, I bought her coffee and we planted ourselves at one of the umbrella-shaded tables.

“You know es difficult to find good coffee here. My friend. Sometimes I think he is loco. He has only instant coffee in his house. Es poison.” The seriousness with which she said this made me laugh.

“Es true. I tell him. No good. He has casa grande, a big house, and a cook. Mexican.” She glanced over and rolled her eyes a little. “And instant coffee. I tol him it’s going to make me sick. I ask the cook about plantains. She looked at me like I’m crazy. She says ‘bananas on steroids.’ She will not cook them. Doesn’t know how, she says. Very stubborn woman. I doan think she likes me.”

I gave her the name of two or three larger grocery stores in the area and told her she might not have to go all the way to San Diego to find them. She didn’t have anything to write on.

I found one of my business cards in my wallet.

Then she couldn’t find a pen in her purse.

I reached into the inside pocket of my sports coat and pulled out a pen. I handed it to her and she wrote the names of the markets in tiny script on the back of the card.

“So you’re not from Mexico?” I’m making small talk. The answer is obvious if she’s making a typical Costa Rican meal.

“Oh, no. Costa Rica. San José. Before that, Puriscal. In the mountains. Have you ever been to Costa Rica?” She took her eyes off her writing for a second to look at me.

“No, but I’ve heard good things. It’s supposed to be very beautiful.”

“Oh, sí. Es beautiful. I love my country,” she said. “I cannot wait to go back.”

“How long are you here?”

“I don’t know. I thought thirty days. But now it looks like it’s going to be longer.”

She finished writing, picked the business card up, and turned it over. “What is this Madriani and Heens?”

“Hinds. Madriani and Hinds is a law firm.”

“You?” she said.

“I’m Paul Madriani,” I told her.

“You’re abogado?”

“If abogado is a lawyer the answer is yes. I’m one of the partners.”

“I am impressed. Very good.” She looked at the card and thanked me for it. “Ah, and I see your name is on the pen as well.”

“We have the pens printed with the firm name and address for clients.”

“Very nice. You don’t mind if I keep it?”

“Of course not.”

She clicked the point of the pen closed, dropped it in her purse and continued to look at the business card as she felt the embossed letters with the tip of her finger.

We talked for a while. She told me about her friend and his business selling rare coins, that he often took her shopping. While she enjoyed this, she was getting tired of it now and missed her family. Then she turned the tables and started her own inquisition.

In ten minutes’ time she learned more about me than some of my friends who have known me for years. She was a Latin litany of questions, where I lived, what I was doing in Del Mar, whether I was married. This as she checked my finger for a ring. When I told her I was widowed, she said she was sorry, and before she could take a breath asked if I had any children.

She was not shy. Still, there was a kind of charm in the innocence of it, as all these questions seemed to come naturally to her, like water from a fountain.

“I have one daughter,” I told her.

“How old?”

“She’s in college, and if I had to guess, I’d say maybe just a few years younger than you.”

“So you think I am young?”

“Like most things in life, age is relative. You are certainly younger than me.”

“Why are American men all like this?” She cradled the coffee in both hands and shrugged her shoulders. “I don’t understand. Why do they say I am young and they are old?”

“Maybe because it’s true.”

“Who cares? Makes no difference,” she said. “How old do you think I am?”

“No. No. I don’t play that game.”

“What game?” she said. She looked at me as if she didn’t understand.

“In this country, guessing a woman’s age is a good way to get in trouble,” I told her.

She laughed. “Nooo. I won’t be angry. Please.” Before I realize, she’s reached across the table and brushed the back of my hand with the long nails of two fingers. “Tell me.”

Like a man who has lost a leg, the sensation of her fingernails on the back of my hand seemed to linger long after she had withdrawn her hand from mine.

“Tell meee.” She smiled and gave me a sideways glance, the full two-dimple show, coquette.

“How would I know?”

“Make a guess.”

“I don’t know.”

“Come on.” She put the cup down and grabbed my hand with both of hers. She wasn’t taking no for an answer.

“Let me see. Twelve.”

She gave me a look as if she might slap me. So I looked at her closely. She turned her face, first one side and then the other.

“Hmm. If I have to guess, maybe twenty-two.”

“Aw, you are not serious.” She pouted a bit.

“Am I close?”

“I’m not telling.”

“No, now you have to tell me.”

“No.” She looked at me with her big, oval dark eyes. The way she sipped her coffee and looked at me over the top of her cup, the calculating gaze, told me that I had probably underestimated by a few years, but not much.

“They must have found the fountain of youth in Costa Rica,” I told her.

She gave me a puzzled look. “Esscuse me?”

“Never mind.”

“I know some lawyers in Costa Rica. In San José there are many.” She looked at my business card. “ Coronado, where is that?”

“Down the coast, just a little south of here. It’s across the bay from San Diego.”

“Ah. And what type of legal work do you do?”

“Mostly criminal trial work.”

“Really? That must be interesting. You must be very intelligent to do that.”

“It has its moments. Sometimes it’s interesting, sometimes it’s stressful, and there are times when it can be boring.”

“So if I get in trouble, I could call you,” she said.

“Well, you have my phone number now.”

“Yes, I do.” She slipped my business card into her purse with the pen.

We finished our coffee. I had to run to catch my friends. We said good-bye. That was nearly two weeks ago.