Emmy And Me

Ashley and I didn't end up doing much of anything that night besides going out for dinner. I took her to a really good Izakaya place I knew in San Mateo when she admitted that she had no idea what that even was.

She'd never eaten at a traditional yakitori restaurant at all before, so the experience was a lot of fun for her. We shared a bottle of soju with dinner, since she was now old enough to drink. Ashley was hesitant at first with some of the items on the menu, but after trying the pork cheek and chicken cartilage she had to admit they tasted good, even if the idea was a bit off-putting. She had no issues with the quail eggs wrapped in bacon, though.

"How did you even find this place?" Ashley asked as she slid a piece of grilled duck breast off the skewer and onto her plate.

"Recommended by a friend," I said, helping myself to some more crispy chicken skin. "I never would have found it on my own."

"No, I wouldn't think so," Ashley replied. "Tucked in the back of a plain-Jane strip mall in San Mateo? I mean, who even goes to San Mateo?"

"We did," I said with a shrug, refilling her glass to finish off the bottle of soju.

"O.K., point taken," Ashley admitted. "So what's next after dinner?"

"No plans," I told her. "Dinner here takes quite a while, so I figured this was it."

"So, you've wined me and you've dined me, but now you're not gonna sixty-nine me?" Ashley demanded playfully.

"Nope," I said. "The wining and dining is all you get."

"Humph," Ashley said, crossing her arms and pouting. "One of these days I'm gonna get you naked."

"Don't hold your breath. You'll turn blue."

"If I had balls, they'd already be blue," Ashley replied, and I just had to laugh.

Driving her back to her apartment, I asked if she wanted to go to the speakeasy with me the next night.

"Don't you usually go on Saturday night?" she asked.

"When I'm in town I go Friday and Saturday nights," I explained.

"So you want me to come tomorrow night but not Saturday?"

"Saturday, too, if you're up for it," I told her. "But I can understand if you don't want to go two nights in a row."

"No, I'll go," Ashley said, thinking about it. "I have that dress you bought me- I can wear that Friday, but maybe that metal mesh thing on Saturday?"

"If this is a ploy to get me to take you shopping for another nice outfit, it's working," I laughed.

"That wasn't what- but you know what? I'll take it," Ashley said. "I might have to save that mesh dress for a special occasion, when it's just you and me."

"You do that," I said as I pulled up in front of her apartment building.

"Some day, Leah Farmer, some day."

"But not tonight," I told her with a laugh.

"When is the guitar auction?" I asked Emmy a few days later. I had my laptop open in front of me and I wanted to try to get my calendar set.

"The nineteenth of April," Emmy answered immediately without having to check for confirmation. "It will be on a Friday, but viewing will be the workweek beforehand."

"Alright," I said. "If we head straight to London from Cartagena, really the last day we can go down to Colombia would be right around the beginning of April. I really should spend a couple of weeks there…" I said out loud, thinking about what needed to be done. Obviously we needed to spend plenty of time with the Castros and get settled in to the new house, but I wanted to see how the various construction projects were coming along and to meet with the local community leaders to get their thoughts on how things were progressing.

"We should be done recording by then…" Emmy said, sounding doubtful. "If we are not, you should go without me and I will join you when we finish."

"Realistically, what are your chances of getting all the recording done before April one?" I asked, since things just seemed to be dragging on a lot more than Emmy and the boys had expected.

"I do not know. Certainly I hope that we would be done by then, but…" Emmy said with a wry smile and a tilt of her head. "The way we are recording this album is very different than we have in the past, and everything seems very much harder."

When the date approached to head to Colombia, neither Emmy nor Teddy Bear could go. Emmy was becoming more and more frustrated with the slow pace of the process in the studio, but was too much of a trouper to tell Jackson that he was on his own and she was leaving. I respected that, as much as I didn't look forward to a couple of weeks without my beautiful wife.

"I have told Jackson that I will need a few days off for the auction, and he and Lee agreed that we all need a little break," Emmy told me one evening. "But I am more and more convinced that we will still be in the studio in July."

"How is it sounding, though?" I asked. "Are the results worth it?"

"It is hard to know," Emmy admitted. "I believe it will be eventually, but right now we are far from the end of the tunnel, so it is difficult to see any light."

"That sucks," I said.

"It does," Emmy agreed. "I do not think I want to record this way ever again."

It was very hot when I landed in Cartagena. It wasn't humid, which was good, but hot hot hot. The pilot had announced that it was ninety-three degrees Fahrenheit, or thirty-four centigrade.

It was a pretty serious wall of heat when I stepped from the air-conditioned terminal, making me very grateful that I'd packed the lightest summer clothes I had. It had been unusually warm in Los Angeles, but that meant a high of eighty degrees, so quite a bit more comfortable.

"They say the weather will be warmer this week," Ricky told me when I commented on it. "It will cool off a bit when the rainy season starts at the end of the month, but for now…"

"How have things been?" I asked, but I'd been reading his reports, so I wasn't expecting anything new.

"Good," he replied. "Really good, actually. We've hit a few of the expected roadblocks, but nothing a little bit of pressure and money haven't been able to sort out."

"You got that problem with the pier in Tierra Bomba sorted out?"

"Yeah," Ricky said, nodding. "And it wasn't even us directly that sorted that shit out. It was the locals there. They somehow talked the guy in the transportation department into signing off on the work. I haven't asked exactly what was involved."

"That's actually really awesome that the locals are getting involved that way, rather than just sitting back and letting us take care of it," I replied.

"There's been a lot of that," Ricky said. "We've had plenty of volunteer labor for a lot of our neighborhood improvement work. Now that they see we're putting our money where our mouth is, they're happy to get involved."

"That's freaking excellent," I said. "I'm really glad to hear it."

"Hey, Leah, I know you said I could stay down here as long as I want… I'm kinda thinking I want it to be permanent. I've really fallen in love with this place," Ricky said.

"How has it been, running the show down here?" I asked.

"It's been a learning curve," he admitted.

"Do you need more help?"

"Maybe," Ricky finally said after thinking about it for a long moment. "You're gonna be here for a couple of weeks, right? I want to talk about long-term plans, after you've had the time to look over what's already been done."

"Fair enough."

After checking in to the same hotel as before, I made my way over to the Castro house.

"Why do you not stay here?" Mamá demanded once she'd sat me down and put food in front of me.

"You know I love staying here, Mamá," I told her. "But I'm going to be staying in our new house once I get the locks changed, which should be tomorrow. I didn't want to just stay here one night and then leave again."

"Why not?" she asked. "This will always be home to you."

At a loss for words, I stood up and crossed the kitchen to give Mamá another hug. I held her for a while, and she held me just as tightly. When we finally parted, she gave me a little swat on my butt.

"Go," she said, pointing to my chair. "Eat. You are too skinny."

When Cecilia got home she gave me a hug, too. "I wish Emmy could have come to visit," she said, impressing me with how improved her English had gotten since the last time I'd been there.

"Yeah, she does, too," I agreed.

"I have something to show you," she said, before bolting upstairs to her room. She came back a few minutes later, changed out of her school uniform and into a crop top and linen pants combo that looked really good on her.

"These are my grades so far this year," she said, handing me some papers. "And these are from my English teachers," she added, handing me a couple more sheets.

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It took me a moment to recognize that the grading system was a ten-point scale, but once I had that figured out I could see that Cecilia's grades were really solid.

"A few more months like this, and it's LA for you," I told her. "I've contacted the school up there and told them the situation and they're holding a spot for you. Keep working hard, Cecy."

"I am working very hard," she said. "I want this very much."

"It shows," I agreed.

After dinner, despite Mamá's protests, I went back to the hotel. Finding myself in the hotel's classy bar for a nightcap, I was surprised to run into The Most Interesting Man and his daughter, plus another guy with a clear family resemblance.

"Leah?" Katrina said when I walked in. "Leah!" she exclaimed as she stood up and came over to give me a hug. "What are you doing here? Here, come over and meet my brother," she said, taking my hand and pulling me to their table.

"Paul, this is Leah Farmer- the one I told you about," she said, giving him a meaningful look. "Leah, this is my baby brother Paul."

"Nice to meet you, Paul," I said, shaking his hand, then shaking his father's. "Emiliano, it's nice to see you again. How's business?"

"Busy," he replied with a smile. "What brings you back to Cartagena?"

"The usual," I replied, taking the offered seat. "Family, business, you know how it is."

"Yes," he said, nodding.

Just then the waitress came over to ask if I would like a drink, so I ordered a Cuba Libre with Havana Club.

"Havana Club may not be the best rum," Emiliano said with a smile, "but it is very authentic in that drink."

"And I can't get the real stuff in the US," I agreed. "At least, not officially."

"I am scandalized!" he laughed. "And people call me a smuggler!"

"Does it count if it's for personal use?" I asked. "Asking for a friend."

"I think there may be exemptions in that case," Emiliano said, still smiling.

"Seriously, Leah, why are you here in Cartagena?" Katrina asked.

"Just what I said," I replied. "Emmy and I were planning on visiting family, but she got hung up in LA because their recording is running way over schedule, so I came alone."

"It's um, Angela's family, right?" Katrina asked, not sure how solid the ground she was treading might be.

"That's right," I said, nodding my thanks to the waitress when she set my drink down. "As far as we're all concerned, we're still family, despite what happened."

Paul looked as if he wanted to say something, but his father spoke first. "That is a very Colombian attitude," he said. "Once you're accepted as part of the family, it is forever."

"Mamá and Papá are really wonderful people," I told him. "Emmy and I are very lucky to have them in our lives."

"The support of family is very important," Emiliano agreed.

"Angela was the one who-" Paul started to say, but Katrina elbowed him viciously.

"Pablo, no digas ni una palabra mas de eso," she hissed at him. "Te mataré si no te callas!"

I knew enough Spanish to understand that she just threatened to kill him if he didn't shut up, so I said, "No, it's alright, Kat. I appreciate it, but it's O.K."

"He needs to think before he opens his fat mouth," Katrina said venomously, staring daggers at her brother.

I did confirm to Paul (or Pablo, whichever was his real name) that Angela had been killed right after the Downfall concert in Atlanta almost a year before, and yes, those videos online were real.

"I have heard of these videos, but not watched them," Emiliano said.

"Don't, Papí," Katrina said.

"When she twists that one guy's-" Paul started to say, but Katrina elbowed him again.

"Shut. It," she said, and her tone of voice stopped him cold. Standing up, she reached out for my hand. "Come on. Let's go," she said, so I made a 'what can you do?' face at Emiliano and got up to leave with Katrina.

"He can be such an idiotsometimes," she fumed as she led me out to the poolside bar. It was still very warm out, even though it was ten o'clock at night.

"Kat, it's fine, really," I protested.

"Like, he's seen the videos. He knows you could break him in half as quick as lightning, but he still has to try to goad you…" she grumbled. "Some day that mouth of his is gonna get him killed."

"But not tonight, and not by me," I assured her.

Katrina took a deep breath, releasing it slowly. "I know you think I'm some sort of pampered party girl," she said. "I know you think I don't have a really good understanding of the dangers of the world, and honestly, that time we spent here last year was sort of eye-opening," she continued, "but Paul lives in some sort of other world where he can get away with anything by saying, 'sorry, bro, didn't mean it that way'," she said, dropping her voice an octave and making it sound dopey.

"Kat," I said, resting my hand on hers. "Yeah, he was being insensitive, but I'm over it. Tired of talking about it, sure, but it's not like I'm going to fly into some sort of rage and suplex him into the terrazzo just for being an ass."

"Good," Katrina finally said. "It'd break Mom's heart if her precious baby boy had his head caved in."

We let a long pause lengthen, sipping our drinks. I finally broke the silence by asking what she and her brother were doing in town.

"Working during spring break," she said. "Dad wants us to spend some time in the office here so we get a feeling for how it is at this end. Paul is nearly worthless, but Dad hopes his frontal lobe will kick in one of these days and he'll stop being such a man-baby."

"So once you've done your time here you'll work mainly in the Miami office?" I asked.

"Exactly. Dad still wants his family out of Colombia as much as possible, but he understands that we- well, I do, anyhow- need an overview of the whole business, and half of it happens here."

"Makes sense," I admitted. "Your dad is priming you to take over eventually?"

"No, not me. That'd be my older brother. He's definitely the right choice. No, I'm probably only ever going to be senior VP of something, and that's it. I'm perfectly O.K. with that," she added. "All I want is a nice house on the water and a nine to five."

We wound up sitting out there by the pool until they shut the bar at midnight, just talking about nothing important at all.

The next morning I was up early to beat the heat. Jody and Maggie picked me up in the truck to take me down to the property I'd bought just north of Barrio Albornoz. I wanted to see for myself how the construction was coming along. Sure, I'd seen the photos that Ricky sent me every week, but still…

Even as early as we got there the construction workers were already at it. I was pleased to see that at least a quarter of the laborers were Night Children showing their faces, as I'd hoped. None of the skilled trades were, as far as I could tell, but that was fine for now. Trade schools were on the agenda, and with time and training there were better-paying jobs to be had for them in the future.

The front security fence and gate were done and looked good, and the renovation of the old office building was nearly complete. One of the two large warehouses hadn't really been touched yet and was being used to store construction materials and equipment, but the other had been renovated structurally. The crews were busy converting the interior from one giant open space into the classrooms and so on that would make it a complete training center. Around back was the area that had been graded for a soccer field and basketball court, but none of the sod or pavement had been laid down yet.

The old concrete pier had been patched up as needed, so I was happy with that. It would do well enough for when we started our regular boat service to Tierra Bomba.

"It all looks good," I told the general contractor's site supervisor. My Spanish was still pretty poor, but good enough for that. They were following the plans, the project was on schedule, and all the exterior work would be done before the rainy season hit in earnest. I couldn't ask for more.

Our next stop was the old warehouse in Albornoz that I wanted to refurbish into a school and community center. This was a much smaller, easier job and I was very pleased to see that it was nearly done. All of the framing, plumbing and electrical work was done, the windows were installed and the weedy lot was cleaned out and graded for the soccer field and playground.

"It will be ready by August," the foreman assured me.

"I've been promised two teachers from Spain," I told Maggie as we walked around. "One for the school in Tierra Bomba and one for here."

"A school needs more than one teacher," she objected.

"These are specifically teachers of our history, culture and language," I clarified. "We'll hire locally for Spanish, math and science teachers. It'd be nice to find Night Children for that, but I doubt that's in the cards."

Ricky did his best to lower my expectations on the boat ride to Tierra Bomba.

"Everything is much slower over here. It's simple logistics- we need to bring everything in by boat. The island has no real supply source for much of anything. Look at this, for example," he said as we approached the crumbling old pier that we wanted to fix up. "We have to bring in the stone, the concrete, even the cement mixer," he said, pointing off to one side where the materials were stacked, waiting to be used. "This pier, now we have the clear go-ahead, it'll still take a while. We've got no shortage of available labor, but…" he said, holding up his hands in a 'what can you do?' gesture.

A small crowd met us once we got off the boat. A few were my original crew, but most were locals. Some I recognized, some I didn't. A few were Night Children showing their skin, but a lot weren't Night Children at all.

One of the non-Night Child locals asked me (with Ricky as interpreter) if the school we were building was going to be open to all children.

"Yes," I told her. "We're building this school for the Night Child community here, but if you want to send your child to our school, we will welcome them. The people of Bocachica have sheltered us for generations- it is only fair that we should do what we can for you, too."

Before Ricky translated what I'd said for the woman, he told me, "From my research, there might be five hundred school-aged kids here in Bocachica. There is no way the school we're building can handle that many."

"We were thinking maybe a hundred kids at the most," I mused. "How realistic is it that non-Night Child kids will get diverted from the school that's already here?"

"I don't know," Ricky admitted.

"Is there anything wrong with the existing school?" I asked. "Can we see it? Maybe we're approaching this the wrong way. Maybe we should convert our new school to an adult education and trade school, and plow our money into the existing school here…"

"It's a public school- government funded," Ricky objected.

"But is it funded well enough? Would the folks who run it turn away money from an international NGO just because they're funded by tax money?" I asked.

Turning to the woman who'd asked the question, I told Ricky to tell her that I was going to do some research and figure things out. My goal, I told her, was to ensure the children of the area had the best possible education with respect given to the cultures that have made it what it is, and it was still up in the air as to what that looked like.

We walked the ten blocks uphill to the existing school, and in the mid-day sun I had quite a sweat going. It had to be nearly a hundred degrees, and the humidity was higher than I was used to. Not brutal, but noticeable.

The school itself looked better than I'd expected, and when we introduced ourselves to the secretary (or whatever her job title was) at the front desk in the office, she knew who I was. She was quick to get Ricky and myself in to see the Director and Vice-Director. They knew who I was, too, making life a little easier. We made niceties for a bit, but the Director surprised me by suggesting we all have dinner that evening and talk in a less formal setting. He offered to give me a tour of the school's campus, so that's what we did for the next hour or so.

A few things stood out to me and the Director seemed responsive to the idea of financial assistance for the school, so when Ricky and I left, I had a lot to think about.

"Why do you think he wanted to talk over dinner, and not there in his office?" I asked as we stopped in at a little market to get ourselves some cold sodas.

"I can think of two reasons," Ricky said as we sat in the shade on the store's covered porch. "The first is that he wants his cut, and he feels that accepting a bribe in his office might be a bridge too far."

"Wouldn't he have wanted to talk alone, and not with the vice principal there if that was the case?" I objected.

"Maybe," Ricky admitted. "The second thought I had is that he may not be in a hurry to go through official channels for the assistance- maybe because he doesn't want anybody in the department of education to skim off their share."

"So you're thinking it boils down to corruption at one level or another," I said with a little chuckle.

"I'm from Mexico City," he said with a shrug. "First thing you learn, all public employees are corrupt."

"Yeah, maybe," I conceded. "It really does seem to be a thing down here."

"Everywhere," he countered.

We met with the two school directors at a beachside restaurant with a nice, cool breeze coming from the water. Thankfully the two of them both spoke English fairly well, making the conversation easy.

I said that my non-profit organization wanted to help the children of Bocachica, and wondered if somehow supporting the school was the best way to do it.

"All of the children? Not just the- very black?" Carlos Estensoro, the Director, asked.

"Let me be very clear," I said as our beers were delivered to the table. "My primary concern is the population of Children of the Night here on Tierra Bomba, yes, but I understand that this group has been here for generations and has intermixed with other races. At this point there is no good reason to separate the children by the color of their skin. Any who wish to learn more about this culture and how it has contributed to Colombia and the world is welcome."

"I see…" he said. "So, how are you thinking you can help?"

This started a long conversation that seemed to support Ricky's earlier hypotheses. Neither of the two of them ever came out and asked for cash, but there were certainly hints.

I had gone in with the idea of embedding our Night Child teacher in the school, but it became obvious to me that it wouldn't be well-received, so I never mentioned it. In the end, I committed to material aid such as textbooks and similar learning aids, as well as free school uniforms for all the kids. These things would be purchased by my NGO and given directly to the school (or the families, in the case of the uniforms). This might have left a bit of a sour taste in the mouths of the two school directors, but I wasn't going to line their pockets.

"What did I say?" Ricky asked on the boat ride back to the mainland.

"Yeah, I know," I admitted.