“Here. Drink this. Now.”
I took the proffered glass and smiled.
I was in Lala’s kitchen, and even before I took a sip of her fiery Tequila Maria, the world was looking rosier.
Lala is my closest friend. For seven years we were inseparable, doing all the things that 8- to 13-year-old co-conspirators do when they are bent on taking the world by storm: sneaking Bacardi and Coke in the woods behind her grandmother’s swimming pool, hiding out in the school lavatory putting on frosted pink lipstick and black eyeliner, teasing the baby alligators in the Menger Hotel lobby. Then the world fell in, I moved away, and we didn’t see each other for 22 years.
I was in New York when I met Marco and came to this small southern college town. And who is the first person I meet at the first party I go to? Lala, of course. There she was, standing under the porch light, plumper, with crinkly laugh lines and shorter hair, but still with that tawny skin and the gold-flecked eyes she inherited from her Canary Island forbears. I’ve got red hair, violet eyes and a complexion that on a good day you could call creamy. We make quite a pair.
“OK, let’s think.” Lala sat down with a legal pad, a black Pilot Precise extra-fine-point roller pen, and a look of concentration. This is how she writes her new age “step” books. You know, Inside Out: 7 Steps to Self-Transformation or Hidden Treasure: 10 Steps to Finding the Buddha in Your Marriage. Naturally they are all best sellers.
“OK, let’s do,” I said. I took a sip of the Tequila Maria and leaned back in the creaky kitchen chair. The alcohol hit me like a velvet hammer. I was feeling warm and a little fuzzy. Lala’s kitchen is cluttered with books, paintings and pre-Columbian artifacts. Most of them are fakes, of course, but it’s a comfortable lair. I’ve always thought her house was more like an explorer’s than our own sleek glass-walled domicile.
“So he’s been gone how long?”
“Well, six days counting today.” I could see her writing a big “6".
“Did you have a fight?”
“We never fight. Sometimes I wish we did. No, I woke up on Tuesday and he just wasn’t there.”
I thought back to Monday night. We had made love for the first time in weeks and Marco's eyes had glittered strangely in the fire light. His hands had been urgent, even rough, as they moved across my breasts and between my legs. I shivered a little, remembering.
Lala was writing “WHY?” with a big question mark. “Hasn’t he been trying to get back to South America?”
“Well, yeah, but expedition money’s dried up.” I sat up. “Look, he missed my birthday. He’s never done that before. Last year when he was in Peru—“
She interrupted, “Are you sure he even knew it was your birthday? Sometimes he’s so, you know, absent-minded.” Lala casually twirled a strand of her hair. Now she was getting to the heart of the matter: Marco's neglectful behaviour. Still I felt like I had to defend him.
“You mean like when he’s getting ready to take off? He’s not really absent-minded. He’s just already out there in the jungle.”
I scooped up some guacamole. The kitchen smelled of fried tortillas and garlic. Lala is a great believer in the curative power of comfort food. As am I. For us, that’s Tex-Mex: guacamole, mashed with garlic, salt and lime, homemade tortilla chips and tomato salsa with a lot of onion, cilantro and Serrano peppers. If you’re doing the full cure, you also have to have chicken tacos, Mexican restaurant rice and frijoles refritos, but we were doing the short version.
I continued. “He’s thinking about his gear, how many days between villages, where there’s drinkable water, how he’s going to carry the specimen boxes. He’s already gone, mentally. This time, he was just…gone.”
There was a rustling across the room. I turned. Lala’s husband, Jack, had been sprawled half-asleep on the couch in the bay window. Now he was stirring. Jack is short, pear-shaped and his clothes are always rumpled. He looks like a cute aging teddy bear--until he smiles. Then you realize he has the razor grin of a hungry barracuda sneaking up on a school of plump little shrimp. Jack is the divorce lawyer you go to when you want to gut your spouse.
“Claire. What about money? Have you checked your bank accounts?” he asked impatiently.
“Um, no.”
“For Chrissake. What’s wrong with you? You’re not a fool. Did you look in the closets? Did he take his clothes? What about about his car—is it there or is it not?
“The Carrera’s gone. I can’t tell about the clothes.” My eyes began to sting.
“Stop it, Jack,” Lala said sharply.
“Look, there’s something else weird. My silver tea caddy is gone.
Lala pursed her lips. That means she’s thinking. “Is that even connected? Why would he take it?”
“Well I don’t know. After we got together, he spent a lot of time trying to figure out the writing on it, but he never got anywhere. Maybe someone else took it. It doesn’t make sense.”
“Hmmm. A missing tea box. A missing husband.” She arched one eyebrow and looked at me appraisingly. “The question is, which one do you want back?”
Editor's Note: SpiceTales is posted weekly, usually on Wednesday. The last installment, "SpiceTales: A Clue in the Peppercorns?" was posted on February 15, 2006.