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  I laughed long and hard as I accepted one of the cans of soda, then drained half of it in one long swallow. “Gracias,” I said as I rubbed my chest to subdue a huge burp.

  “You looked like you could use it.” He sat on the opposite end of the bench and took a fairly long drink of his own before saying, “And if you’ll forgive me for saying so, you look like you could use a new shirt too.”

  As I glanced down at my stained and seriously ripe T-shirt, the morning came rushing back, the carbonation from the Coke rumbling in my gut, hard and uncomfortable. Releasing a deep breath, I dropped my head back and stared up through the leafy branches of the trees.

  “Disculpa, m’ijo. I didn’t mean to make you feel badly.”

  “No…you didn’t. I just…” Had managed to forget, again, what was going on in my life. God, I was getting good at that. Too good.

  “Perdoname.” I stood from the bench and retraced my steps to a store I’d noticed before the domino players had caught my attention—one of those mercados that carried a little bit of everything. Five minutes later, I resettled myself on the bench, wearing a vintage-style Cienfuegos baseball club T-shirt. With a practiced flick my wrist, I tossed my old one into the nearby trashcan.

  “I’m sure it can be washed.”

  “Of the stains, probably.”

  “I see.”

  “I doubt it.” I picked up my soda, the outside slick with condensation, and drained the already warm remainder in a couple of quick gulps.

  “It doesn’t take a genius to see that you have something troubling you. Something difficult going on.”

  “You a priest or something?”

  “Yes, as a matter of fact.”

  He laughed as I stared at him sitting there in jeans and a polo, his Marlins ball cap turned backward. “A priest named Tico?” was all I could come up with.

  “My given name is Alberto, but because I was a Junior, I was always called Albertico, which, by the time I was a teenager, was just plain ridiculous and didn’t do a thing for the girls, so I shortened it to Tico. Luckily, that stuck.”

  “A priest named Tico who dated girls?”

  His eyebrows went up. “Wasn’t always a priest, tú sabes?”

  Visions of ancient, wrinkled Father José who’d been my parish priest growing up crowded my memory. I tried to envision him dating. Or human.

  I couldn’t. This cat, however…

  Tilting my head until it rested against the back of the bench, I closed my eyes and said, “My wife’s got cancer.” It was easier to say it with my eyes closed.

  “Ay m’ijo, I’m sorry.”

  I opened my eyes and slid a sideways look at him. “And please don’t spout some pious crap about God’s will and how He works in mysterious ways and there’s a blessing in disguise, blah, blah, blah.”

  He kept his stare fixed on the domino players. “My father had cancer. I was so damn angry at God that He would allow this to happen to a man—a good man—who had never done anything other than work his ass off to provide for his family. I was angry to the point where I nearly left the priesthood. Cancer sucks, Nick. It turns your world inside out and makes you seriously examine everything you ever thought was important. Made me really question my faith, you know?”

  Somewhere in the middle of what he was telling me, I had turned my head back and closed my eyes again. “Not my faith I’ve been questioning. No offense, Tico, but it’s pretty far down the list.” As in, not even on the list. Kath and I hadn’t even been married in church—we’d gone the fancy hotel wedding route.

  “I said everything you ever thought was important.” His voice was mild with only a hint of “you fool” in it. “For you, I’m guessing it’s your wife who’s first and foremost.”

  “That’s just it.” I kept my eyes closed, praying that it would continue to make this easier. “Thing is…I find myself forgetting what she’s going through, even if it’s for a couple of hours. Because when I do think about it, I’m pissed as hell. I’m mad at the world, and I’m mad at myself. I’m even mad at her. Isn’t that fucked up?”

  The skin around my eyes felt tight and itchy as I realized how profane I was being with a man of the cloth. Any minute now, Sister María Ignacia was liable to swoop down, metal ruler in hand, and rap me a good one. Tico, however, didn’t seem to notice—or if he did, didn’t seem to mind.

  “Are you feeling guilty, because you let yourself forget?”

  Was I? I thought about that as I opened my eyes and pushed myself to a more upright position. Rubbing my lip with my thumb, I finally said, “Yeah. I mean, ninety-nine percent of the time, it consumes me, then boom—it’s like it doesn’t even exist. Then, I remember. And it’s even worse.”

  Surprisingly, Tico laughed at that while I stared at him, confused—and getting ticked.

  “Man, if I had any doubts you were Cuban—or Catholic—they’ve just been dispelled. Martyrs, the bunch of us.”

  Okay, he had me there. Couldn’t count the times my sisters and I had referred to our mother as Joan of Arc—never when she could hear, of course.

  “However, I’m getting that it’s more than just guilt-fueled anger, Nick.” His voice was gentle, but insistent, and if I’d had any doubts that he was a priest…

  “It is. She’s…I’m…” I couldn’t believe I was telling all of this to a stranger. But he wasn’t just a stranger. He was a priest. And maybe it wasn’t the quiet, wooden booth in the back of Our Lady, but a bench in Little Havana served as a pretty decent substitute.

  “I don’t know.” A short, harsh breath escaped as I shoved my hands through my hair. Guess I couldn’t tell even a priest. At least, not yet.

  Tico must’ve been a really good priest, because he didn’t push anymore after that. The two of us just sat there for a few minutes more, letting the scene around us ebb and flow, the surrounding noise more than serving to fill the silence.

  Finally, he said, “I need to be going.”

  Nodding, I stood with him, offered him my hand. “Sorry I laid all of that on you.”

  He shrugged and smiled as he shook my hand. “I asked. It’s what I do. And I enjoyed meeting you.”

  “Me too.” And was more than a little surprised that it felt genuine.

  Still holding my hand, Tico studied me.

  “How long has it been since you said a Rosary?”

  “Couldn’t begin to tell you.”

  “You remember it though?”

  Now I found myself laughing. “Twelve years of Catholic school, man, what do you think?”

  “I’ll take that as a yes.” He smiled, then his expression went thoughtful. “You know, it’s not just about penance or obligation. I’ve actually found it’s a great tool for meditation and just finding a quiet place to go in your head.”

  Once again, I felt the muscles around my eyes twitch. “Honestly, I don’t even have a clue where my rosary is.”

  With his free hand, Tico reached into the pocket of his jeans then turned my hand over, dropping the string of ebony beads with its silver cross into my palm. “I know you can find a rosary in any one of the mercados around here, but let me save you the trouble. At least until you can find yours or take the time to buy the right one.”

  “Tico, I can’t.” Not like I was a rosary specialist, but even I could tell the one I was holding wasn’t just some supermarket special. The beads were smooth yet irregular, sign of a lot of years of use.

  He shrugged, closing my fist over the rosary. “Sure you can. Because I expect you to return it to me. I hang out here every Wednesday—watching the viejitos and doing that waxing poetic thing. Or you can drop it by the office.” He pulled his wallet from his pocket and extracted a card. I took it in my free hand, looking down at it.

  Gésu Church, Rev. Alberto “Tico” Martinez, S.J.

  “A Jesuit.” I looked up, shaking my head. “Should’ve known.”

  He raised his eyebrows to which I answered, “High school.”

  “Which on
e?”

  “Saint Peter’s Prep. Jersey City.”

  “I’ve heard it’s a good school.”

  My turn to raise my eyebrows. “You know it?”

  A sad smile crossed his face. “I was a teacher, m’ijo. It was my first calling, and I loved it like nothing else, working with kids, encouraging them to think and to dream beyond boundaries, real or imagined. But remember what I said about questioning everything I thought was important?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, after my dad got sick, I decided I wanted to minister rather than teach.”

  Admittedly, it’d been a while, but my memories of high school were actually good—and powerful. Like it was yesterday, I remembered all the discussion and arguing and learning going on in the most challenging atmosphere I’ve ever experienced. College had been a total cakewalk after four years of Jesuits. The priests who taught us—they were rare individuals, man. I couldn’t imagine that mundane, everyday ministering would really do it for someone who’d been accustomed to working in that sort of high-charged, intellectual atmosphere.

  “It’s different. But satisfying, Nick. Teaching was for a different time in my life, you know?”

  Guess what I was thinking was pretty obvious. “I’m sorry. None of my business.”

  He snorted. “Oye, I’d question it too. I did question it. My entire first year out of teaching I wondered if I’d completely lost my mind.”

  “I can relate to the losing your mind part.” My fist tightened around the rosary.

  Tico placed both of his hands around my closed fist. “Try it. I’m not saying you’ll find any answers—at least not right away. Mira, truth is, you might never find any answers. But at least it gives you something to do. Now remember—I expect to get my rosary back.” Releasing my hand, he turned and started walking away, pausing only long enough to call back over his shoulder, “It was my father’s.”

  Libby

  September 23

  At a casual glance, it appeared he was just leaning up against the vending machine—trying to decide what he wanted. Then I noticed…

  B-7.

  Again, B-7.

  Once, twice, a third time, I watched him press the same two buttons. Nothing impatient, not checking any other combinations, not pressing the return button, retrieving his cash, and starting over. Just B-7, steady and almost rhythmic, his other hand braced against the machine. It was that other hand that gave him away—belied the exterior calm. The fingers curling and uncurling with the same steady rhythm with which he kept pressing B-7.

  “I don’t think that Mountain Dew is quite ready to be culled from the rest of the herd.”

  He pressed the buttons a final time before turning to face me.

  “Okay then. I can see why you’re so hot for the caffeine jolt.” A month on and the circles under his eyes had evolved from the dark smudges of a few sleepless nights to deep bruises that marred the otherwise even olive of his skin, giving the impression of a man caught on the losing end of a brawl.

  “Come on, though, we can do better than Mountain Dew. That stuff’s nasty.”

  His voice was soft as he replied, “But it’s here.”

  I suppressed a sigh while tensing myself against the familiar clench grabbing hold of my stomach. Here. Not just in the hospital, but on the same floor, presumably just a few feet away from his wife’s room. He was still beating himself up over the need to forget. Or at least get away, if only for a while.

  “Starbucks is barely half a block away.”

  He looked doubtful—and stubborn. “An hour, Nick. No one, least of all your wife, would begrudge you an hour.”

  “She doesn’t get an hour away from it.”

  “She sure as hell won’t if you’re there reminding her twenty-four seven it’s what she’s living with.”

  I flinched at the hurt and anger I saw reflected in his eyes, but I didn’t look away or back down. He needed to hear this. We all did. How even the patient had to find ways to cope and forget. For Ethan, it had been in writing his columns. For months I’d berated him for working when he should be resting or eating or maybe sitting outside under a damn palm tree and inhaling fresh air until he finally, calmly, and in the way only he could, had pounded through my thick skull what it was he was feeling. He’d written a column about how writing was his salvation. That I was his saving grace, but writing allowed him to escape into the realm of himself as a normal man for a while.

  It was the first column of his I’d read cold in years, since we often proofed each other’s work. But that one he’d sent in without any input from me. So I’d sat there and read it over my morning coffee, just like the rest of South Florida, and, probably like the rest of South Florida, had felt tears gather in the corners of my eyes. Had fought to keep them from falling as I wondered over how insensitive his wife must be that she couldn’t see how he needed his work—his own little slice of normality.

  Not that it meant I still didn’t wrestle with the guilt—except now it was at not understanding exactly what he needed, at not being able to gracefully give it to him without question even once I did know, because I still worried that he was working too hard and wearing himself out. Added, of course, to the guilt I already felt at needing my own time away. Because I was nothing if not thorough.

  “Nick…it’s an hour.” He was shaking his head, yet didn’t resist when I grasped his arm and led him away from the vending machine.

  “What about Nan?”

  “She’s not here today.”

  “Marilyn?”

  “She hasn’t been going out—wants to stay with Ray.”

  “But you’re not badgering her?”

  “It’s different.”

  He stopped then, his gaze following my glance across the nurse’s station to a closed door on the opposite side of the floor, then back where he studied my face for a long moment.

  “Shit.”

  I took his arm again, led him toward the elevators. “Don’t dwell on it. Like I said, it’s different. For everyone.”

  His mouth was pressed into a thin, hard line, his brows tight over his eyes in a matching line looking like he was about blow. Whatever it was, though, he kept it in—opting instead for quiet. Worked for me. I was happy to do nothing more than walk, taking deep breaths of air tinged with salt from the nearby bay and colored by the exhaust of the traffic streaming past us. Beside me, he walked with his face turned up slightly, as if the feel of sun hitting skin was a foreign sensation—something he hadn’t experienced in a while.

  Settled in armchairs, we drank coffee and ate muffins while watching the people streaming by on the other side of the window going on about their lives.

  “Please tell me Lawrence has shown up.”

  I turned away from the window. “No.”

  Marilyn and Ray’s son—first class trial attorney and first class asshole. Had never once come to see his father during a hospital treatment despite the fact that he worked all of twenty minutes away. Asshole.

  Nick was methodically shredding a napkin, long strips of paper falling into his lap. “What’s so fucking important he’s constantly blowing them off?”

  “Big trial coming up. There’s always a big trial coming up. Or a client dinner. Lots of witnesses to interview. I honestly don’t know what the hell else.”

  “Little twat.”

  Nice to know I wasn’t the only one calling him names without really knowing him.

  “How bad is it for Ray, Libby? Really?”

  “I honestly don’t know that either.” I set the uneaten half of my muffin on the low table between us—chocolate with sawdust aftertaste didn’t do much for me. “I haven’t seen Marilyn much lately and when I have…I just can’t bring myself to ask anything—even in the most oblique of ways. She seems so fragile, like having to face up to the inevitability might just break her. I can’t do that to her.” I resumed staring out the window as I sipped at my coffee—tried to mask the slight tremor that ran through my hands an
d made the muscles in my legs tense in response.

  “Why do you do it to me, Libby?”

  His voice dropped again, to something soft and tinged with only just a hint of anger. More curious.

  “Because," I said carefully, "unless I’m wrong, and if I am, please forgive me, you’re at a different stage of the game. You don’t have an inevitability yet. Not like Marilyn.”

  Not like me. But I didn’t say that, because I didn’t want to think of it that way. I couldn’t. Not anymore than Marilyn could.

  I turned in my chair, drawing my legs up under me. “And no one should have to go it alone, Nick. Even if it’s what you’re accustomed to doing.”

  “Hey, I’ve been a team player all my life, Libby. I get what that’s about.”

  Despite the serious nature of the topic, I had to fight to keep from smiling, although I could feel the corners of my mouth twitching. “It’s equally hard if you’re accustomed to being the one taking charge and making things happen.”

  Bingo. His eyes widened, jaw dropping just a bit as he stared, then shook his head, rubbing a hand across cheeks that looked as if they hadn’t seen a razor in a few days.

  “How the hell do you know so much?”

  “I don’t know that I do.” I shrugged and drained what was left of my coffee. “But most of my life has been spent observing. An only kid, mostly hanging around adults. Part of two different worlds yet not fitting in either. Basically, I was this little shadow who just sat back and watched the action around me unfold. I didn’t interact with life all that much until Ethan.”

  And with that, my reprieve was over. Stay away too much longer and I’d begin to feel the bite of the loneliness. Gnawing and insistent and messing with any illusion of control I might have. Standing, I collected our trash, then returned to the counter and picked up a Frappuccino and muffin to go.

  “Man, I thought I needed the sugar rush.”

  I smiled up at Nick. “It’s for Ethan. The sweetness helps with the aftertaste of the meds.”