Boy Crazy
I would be lying if I said that I didn't watch Katrina as she descended the steps into the water, illuminated from the blue LEDs along the pool's bottom edge. I'd told her I had every plan on ogling her, and she was definitely enjoying the attention. When she got deep enough, she set her glass on the edge of the pool and started swimming. I got a little laugh when it occurred to me that she was doing the breaststroke, but yeah, I was sure it was an unintentional non-verbal word play.
I watched Katrina swim for a few minutes, then set down my own wine glass and joined her in the water. It was really a tiny pool, not deep, long or wide, but big enough for the two of us to have fun, splashing around for what turned out to be over an hour.
When we finally had enough, we relaxed on the chaises with the towels, letting the still quite warm night air dry us off.
"Can I tell you something?" Katrina asked as I poured us the last of the wine.
"Go ahead, but I have to warn you, I'm not Brazilian," I told her.
"Um, what?"
"Oh, it's something a friend of mine told my little sister a couple of years ago. She asked if he could keep a secret, and he said that of course he could- after all, he was from Brazil," I explained.
"Brazilians can keep secrets?" Katrina asked, still baffled.
"Joachim seems to think they do," I said with a shrug.
"Well, it doesn't matter if you're Brazilian or not, since this isn't really a secret, I guess," Katrina said.
"I'm all ears," I told her.
"You were right about the sex thing earlier. Like, I told myself that if, you know, one thing was going to lead to another…" she said, trailing off. I waited for her to continue, sipping my wine. "I can tell, like, you think I'm sexually attractive, right?" she asked, and I made an 'Mmm hmm' noise in affirmation. "So, like, you'd totally do me if you weren't married?"
"Absolutely," I confirmed. "Kat, you're hot A.F."
"Thanks!" she said, smiling at the compliment.
"So, out of idle curiosity, why have you been trying so hard the last couple of nights to get me in bed?" I asked.
Thinking about it for a moment, Katrina finally spoke but didn't look at me when she said, "I guess two reasons. One, you're like, the first girl I've ever actually, um, thought about having sex with," she admitted.
"The other reason?" I prompted, when her pause stretched on.
"Oh- I guess because you've been playing hard to get," Katrina confessed. "Maybe the challenge? Don't get me wrong- I liked Emmy the one time I got to meet her in Miami, and I wouldn't really want to do her dirty, but I know you guys had a sort of, um, open relationship?" she said, her voice rising to make it a question. "And I was thinking maybe she'd give you a hall pass, since she already knows we've been swimming naked together and all."
"First off, we never had an open relationship. That wasn't what it was about with Angela," I said, trying not to be irritated at Katrina for misunderstanding what the three of us had. "We were faithful to each other, the three of us. I was one hundred per cent faithful to Emmy before Angela came into our lives, and when she did, the two of us took her in together."
Sitting upright, Katrina's eyes widened. "I didn't mean- I mean… Oh, Hell, I put my freaking foot in my mouth, didn't I?"
"Kat," I said. "It's O.K. I know you didn't mean it to be any sort of insult, really. But what you need to understand is that Emmy and I both fell in love with Angela together, and she fell in love with the two of us as a couple. Emmy and Angela weren't, um, 'sister wives' or anything like that. The three of us were in a mutual partnership. I loved Emmy and I loved Angela, and the two of them loved each other and they both loved me. We were all three faithful to each other."
"Well, since I've already shoved my foot deep into my mouth, I may as well run with it," Katrina laughed self-deprecatingly. "So, like, how does that even work? I guess I just don't understand how polyamory can be faithful."
"They were my wives. The two of them. I did married-type stuff with both of them, singularly and all three of us together. Stuff like grocery shopping, going for drives with the top down, fixing dinner, whatever. What made our relationship different than most is that I had two people to share my life with, not just one."
"I guess I just didn't understand," Katrina said, her voice soft. "The way everybody made it sound, it was a lot more…"
"What everybody?"
"Well, the tabloids," Katrina admitted. "I don't really read those things, you know? But, like, I knew you, and when Angela…" she said, catching herself. "When that thing happened in Atlanta, it was all over the place. It was all anybody could talk about for a while. They were calling Angela your surrogate, your mistress, your…" Katrina said. "I didn't know what to really think."
"She was my wife. My wife, and Emmy's wife," I said, my voice making it clear there was no debate on the subject. "She was going to be the mother of my child- my child, and Emmy's child. I was going to grow old with her by my side. We were going to attend our daughters' college graduations together. I was going to hold her in my arms when we were both old and gray."
"I'm sorry," Katrina said in a little voice. "I didn't mean-"
"No, I know you didn't," I assured her. "And I know our relationship was… unconventional, and that maybe a lot of people judged us without understanding it, but it felt natural to us."
"You and Emmy still have each other though, right?"
"We do," I agreed. "But that doesn't mean we don't both miss Angela every single day that goes by."
"I'm sorry," Katrina said, her voice soft. Then, after a moment, she asked, "Do you want me to go?"
"No," I replied. "Really, it's O.K."
"Still, I really am sorry for being insensitive, and…" Katrina trailed off, sitting up and hunting around for her clothes. "It's late. I should go back to the hotel."
"I'll walk you back," I told her as I got dressed, too.
"I had a nice time tonight," Katrina said as we walked, her mood still subdued. "Thanks for dinner, and for letting me rant about Paul. And thanks for the swimming."
"Thanks for keeping me company tonight," I replied. "I'm glad you called me up."
"How long are you going to be here in Colombia?" Katrina asked.
"Probably leaving on Friday, maybe Saturday morning," I told her.
"That's a few more days, then," she said. "How about I treat you to dinner tomorrow night? The restaurant at the hotel that we went to that one time?"
"I don't think tomorrow night would work," I said. "I'll be spending the day with the in-laws, and with Mamá, that means dinner for sure."
"Thursday night, then? Since that'll be our last chance?"
"Sounds good," I said as we arrived at the hotel built into the shell of the old convent. "Text me the details."
"Good night, Leah," Katrina said, a bit awkwardly as the hotel's sliding glass doors opened.
"Good night," I replied back, and turned and left.
It was late, but there were still a few people out and about, mostly heading home from bars or nightclubs. I stopped at a cart and got some of that lime coconut drink that's so popular, enjoying the sounds of the night and the tasty drink as I walked.
Crossing the plaza near my house, I spotted a Night Child street vendor packing up his cart of handmade bracelets and similar jewelry. Pleased to see that this was a local who had forgone the makeup, I walked over to talk to him. My Spanish wasn't great and neither was his English, but it worked out just fine anyway. I asked him to make me two beaded bracelets with the name 'Angela' spelled out on them, and paid him very generously for the cheap trinkets.
"Gracías, mi Reina," he said as he pocketed the cash.
"Que te vaya bien," I told him.
"Tiene que tener cuidado- las calles pueden ser peligrosas," he said, urging me to be careful walking late at night.
"Yo soy la mas peligrosa en esas calles este noche," I told him, no doubt butchering the language. I am the most dangerous thing on the streets tonight.
A bit taken aback, the vendor simply nodded and returned to packing up his cart.
I was on a conference call when my front doorbell rang. Well, I say 'front doorbell', but the home's integrated security system actually chimed from my iPad, with a video feed of the four girls outside the door.
"I'm sorry, something just came up. I need to bow out," I told the others on the call and exited.
The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.
When I'd told Cecilia she could bring a few friends over, this was about the upper limit of what I'd imagined, so I was pleased that she hadn't brought half her class. Four, I could deal with. Ten, there would have been no way.
"Hey, Cecy," I said when I opened the door for the girls. "Bien Venidos."
When Cecilia made her introductions she referred to me as her cuñada, which I knew meant sister-in-law. Her friends were named Maria, Bianca and Dulce, and Cecilia said she'd known them since they were kids.
I resisted the urge to point out that they still were kids, but really, it wouldn't have been fair of me. The four girls were at the age that they were clearly young women now, and in just a couple of years would be legal adults. Still, their school uniforms did their best to make the girls look young.
I ushered everybody into the kitchen for snacks and drinks, amused by their oohing and aahing at the little bit of the house that they saw.
After everybody had had a little bit to eat and drink, I led them on a tour, skipping the wine cellar. They didn't need to see that.
The four girls chattered away like mad as they gaped at the house. To Cecilia's credit, she spoke in English more often than not, just to keep me involved in the conversation. I could more or less follow what the girls were saying, but it was nice of her to translate every so often.
After a while one of the other girls recognized what Cecilia was doing and did her best to speak in English as well.
"Mrs Farmer," Dulce said. "Your house is very beautiful."
"Thank you," I told her. "Please, call me Leah."
"Leah," Dulce said in agreement.
When we got to the rooftop pool, the girls exploded. The sheer amount of words that the four of them had pouring from their mouths completely overloaded any translation circuit my brain might have had and it just turned into indefinable sound, a lot like those giant trees in some of the plazas around town that have so many birds in them that you can hardly hear yourself think with all the noise of the birds chattering to each other.
"Leah, can we swim?" Dulce asked, looking longingly at the pool.
Surprised, I looked at Cecilia. "I told them you had a pool, but they didn't believe me," she admitted. "I told them to bring bikinis."
"In that case, go ahead," I said. "There's a bathroom you can change in right there," I said, pointing at the little gym. "There are towels in there, too. I'll go down and get some more drinks," I added. "It's plenty hot today."
When I returned to the upper deck the girls were all splashing in the pool and having a great time. I wasn't worried about their safety in any way, since the pool's deepest part was only five feet or so (a meter and a half, probably).
Still, I wasn't going to simply leave them unattended while they swam, so I opened one of the umbrellas and sat in the shade nearby with my laptop. I'd missed the end of the conference call, but that was O.K. I'd said and heard all I needed to. I was busy taking notes on a purchase proposal for a convertible office building in San Francisco that Sheryl had developed when Dulce came over to talk to me.
"Leah?" she asked, clasping her hands together and holding them in front of herself, her elbows nearly touching.
"Yeah? Si?" I corrected.
"Can we have more of those- galletas?"
"Claro que si," I told her. "Bebidas tambien. Tu sabes donde estan." Of course you can have more of those cookies. You know where they are, I told her, tilting my head to indicate that she should go get them.
Checking to make sure she actually felt confident enough to go down and get the snacks, I was amused when she went back to the pool and grabbed Cecilia.
Watching the two of them go for the elevator instead of the stairs, I marveled at how remarkably tiny their bikinis really were. Thinking that there was no way Mamá had bought that little bikini for Cecilia, I returned to my computer.
When the two came back up a few minutes later Cecilia put a fresh, cold bottle of Coke on the table for me before carrying the rest of the goodies over to her friends. When the other two got out of the water, they all decided to come over to the café table where I was sitting to eat.
Seeing them like this, wearing very minimal bikinis, made me rethink my assessment of their development. The four were very clearly young women, at least physically. Bianca in particular had a very grown-up figure, but the other three weren't far behind.
I suddenly realized that I was about their age when I started dating Chris and the two of us had started having sex not all that much later. These girls could very well be in sexual relationships already. Sure, Grace had been a horny little thing in her last couple of years of high school, but I didn't know if I was ready to deal with a sexually active Cecilia. I didn't even want to imagine Mamá and Papá's reaction if Cecilia got knocked up by some kid in LA…
"Leah?" Dulce asked, getting my attention. I was fascinated to realize that she had orange eyes, which looked beautiful with her milk-chocolate coloring.
"Yeah?"
"Cecy says that you will take her to London for a week?"
"Yeah, we're going Friday after school gets out," I confirmed. "We'll be in London for Easter break."
"I would love to go to London," Dulce said, sighing. "I would love to travel to Europe."
"I've been to a lot of places," I told her, "But I like Cartagena enough to buy a house here, so that tells you something."
"I have been to Caracas," Bianca said. "My… tia live there."
"Aunt," I told her. "Your aunt lives there," I corrected.
"My aunt lives there," Bianca repeated.
"Cecy has been in Los Angeles and Nueva York," Maria said archly. "But I have been to Barranquilla."
This got her friends to laugh, since it clearly shut down any sort of one-upmanship they were playing.
"I'm looking forward to London," Cecilia told her friends. "I will bring you all back presents."
"Para mí, uno de los ositos de Paddington!" Maria said. Her English was clearly the worst of the group, so I found it amusing that she wanted an icon of English literature.
After a bit more of this the girls resumed playing in the pool and I got back to studying the office building conversion proposal.
The four of them splashing in the pool like little kids was so at odds with the barely-there sexy bikinis they were wearing it brought a smile to my face. The girls might be entering adulthood, but they still slipped back into childlike play in an instant.
Cecilia grumbled a little bit when I informed her that we were going to walk each of her friends home. "It's starting to get dark," I told her.
"They can walk by themselves," Cecilia protested. "It is safe."
"Perhaps so," I conceded. "But I wouldn't feel good about letting them walk home alone."
She looked as if she were going to complain a bit more, but didn't actually give voice to her objections.
All four of the girls lived in the walled city, so we took a somewhat zig-zagging path back to the Castro household, seeing off the girls one by one. Bianca was the last, just a block and a half away from the Castro family home.
Walking that last block, Cecilia said, more or less out of the blue, "Bianca used to be my best friend, but I think Dulce is, now."
"What changed?" I asked, more to make conversation than anything else.
"Bianca has gone… crazy for boys?" Cecilia said, making it a question since she was unsure of her English phrasing.
"Boy crazy," I confirmed.
"Yes, she has become very boy crazy. She doesn't have a boyfriend, but she flirts with every boy she can. Outside of school she wears sexy clothes and makeup, too."
"It's the age," I said with a shrug. "The rest of you aren't like that?"
"Maria, Dulce and me, we like boys," Cecilia admitted. "But we can talk about other things. Not Bianca. Boys are all she thinks about."
Smiling at Cecilia's resentful tone, I asked why Dulce had become her best friend and not Maria.
"Dulce is smarter. Maria isn't stupid, but Dulce is smarter," Cecilia said, as if that explained everything.
At dinner I told Mamá and Papá that Cecilia and her friends had had a good time swimming and then playing billiards at the new house.
"Which friends?" Mamá asked Cecilia.
"Bianca, Dulce and Maria," Cecilia replied.
"Bianca…" Mamá said in a disapproving tone. "You should- tienes que passer tu tiempo con Dulce, mejor que con Bianca."
"Si, yo sé," Cecilia agreed.
"Cecilia told me that Bianca used to be her best friend, but she's gone boy crazy," I said.
"That girl is going to be pregnant before she is eighteen," Mamá said, shaking her head. "She has no sentido."
"Her parents are very worried for her," Papá added. "They don' know what to do with her."
Changing the subject, I mentioned Dulce's unusual eye color.
"Yes, many in her family have eyes of ambár," Rafael agreed. "It is uncommon, but not very rare here, particularly among those with mixed African ancestry."
"I'd never seen eyes that color before. With her striking looks, she could be a model."
"She is very pretty," Mamá agreed. "The mother of Dulce was considered a rare beauty when she was young."
My meeting with the elders in the Barrio Albornoz went well the next morning. Everybody seemed very pleased with the progress we were making on the community center, and when I told them that I wanted to bring the teachers to Cartagena soon so they could get to know the people there, several people volunteered to host them until permanent lodging could be found.
After the meeting I had lunch with Ricky at the home of one of the elders. It was a small, white-painted cement block construction with a tin roof, like most in the barrio. We ate on the covered back patio, looking out over the small back yard. Along the back wall was a big double sink, where the family did their washing. The whole yard was shaded by a large tree I didn't recognize, keeping it relatively cool despite the hot day.
"Reina," Maria Del Carmen, our hostess said, as she set a plate of fried fish and plantains down for me, along with a glass of that same coconut lime drink that was everywhere in Cartagena. After me, she served Ricky, then her husband and herself.
I'm not a fan of seafood really at all, but there was no way I would ever tell that to Maria Del Carmen. I dug in and ate with gusto, which seemed to please her and her husband.
I did my best to speak in Spanish, and Carmiña, as she insisted I call her, and her husband Carlos (who wasn't a Night Child) both did their best to speak slowly and carefully for my understanding. Maybe a bit too slowly and carefully, but I appreciated the effort as much as they appreciated that I was trying to speak their language.
We talked about some of the changes that had already happened in the neighborhood, and Carlos said that if nothing else ever got done, at least the streets were repaired and the streetlights fixed.
"I would like to learn some of the old songs," Carmiña told me in slow, clear Spanish. "The songs that my grandmother sang to me when I was a child."
"This is what we want the Night Children of Cartagena to remember," I told her. "This is very important to us."
"We have lost so much," Carlos agreed.
Katrina texted me in the afternoon to say that she was stuck at the office and would be until six, but she'd come by the house after she got done. That was fine, I told her, and to just ring the doorbell when she got there.
Because of the fact that South America is farther east than most people recognize, Cartagena is in the same time zone as the Eastern US. This meant that my work hours were from noon to eight in the evening, in theory. Katrina arriving at seven would be about perfect.
To my surprise, Cecilia came by the house right after school, a bit before three.
Sitting at the kitchen table for her after-school snack, she asked me if Dulce could come to London with us.
Surprised by the question, I told her that there might be a problem, and there were some questions to answer before I told her yes. First off, Dulce would need permission from her parents, and of course, a valid passport.
"She has a passport," Cecilia confirmed. "I know she does. Her family went to Miami last year."
"O.K, that's a good start," I said. "But getting permission from her parents is mandatory. I'll need them to sign and notarize a paper saying that their daughter can travel with me as her guardian."
"You do not need that for me?" Cecilia objected, but it turned into a question about midway through.
"Yes, I do, and yes, your parents have already given it to me," I told her. "Since we're leaving tomorrow, they would need to get it done as quickly as possible. But now, and I want you to think about this for a bit before you answer… Why do you want to bring Dulce to London with you? If you just want to show off that you have rich family members who can do this sort of thing on a whim, well… that's a terrible idea."
"No, that isn't it," Cecilia said quickly, but I waggled a finger at her.
"Think about it for a bit before you answer," I told her as I got up to cut up some more of the amazing papayas I'd gotten earlier.
When I sat back down, Cecilia said in a very serious tone, indicating that she'd given the question some thought. "It is true that they aren't rich like you and Emmy, but Dulce's family is not poor. They have maybe the same amount of money that we have. They did all go to Florida last year. They went to Disney World and Universal Studios. I don't think that I would invite her to go to London with us simply to impress her."
"Then why?"
Surprised by the question, she shrugged. "She is my best friend, and I will not get to see her next year. I will be in Los Angeles with you and Emmy. I would like to do this with her, and I know that she would love London."
"You've never been there- how do you know you'll even like it?" I asked.
"Angela loved London enough for you to buy her a house there," Cecilia said. "This is all the proof that I need."