1
I woke very early the next morning. Wind Surf was nearing Tunisia and I wanted to see as much of it as possible. We were not scheduled to return for the foreseeable future. While I had bought myself a measure of future on Wind Surf with the previous night's auction, its duration was far from certain. One auction does not a career make. Yet hope is the most powerful motivator of all. Thus I felt good waking for a pre-dawn, coffee-laden stroll on the open deck before the ship docked.
The Tunisian coastal air was humid and smelled different than the sea, different than the European coasts of Greece or Italy. The immensity of the Sahara was on the wind. Wind Surf slid quietly through the choppy gulf towards the fabled desert, towards a sprawl of orange lights hugging its slender green edge. They twinkled unappealingly through a brown haze smothering the sea.
I sipped from my steaming mug, alone and quiet, on the forward bridge deck. Yet I was not alone.
"Good morning," a cheery voice greeted from beside me. I turned and was shocked to see I had been joined by none other than the captain of the Wind Surf.
"Why, good morning sir!" I called back enthusiastically.
Noting the energy in my voice, Captain Turner commented upon it. "You seem happy as Larry this morning. No doubt due to all those sales last night."
Though I had no idea what 'happy as Larry' meant, I presumed it was good. "I should be surprised you know about that already," I said, "Yet I am strangely not. But speaking of sales—if you pardon the pun—I've been meaning to ask someone of authority what the names are for Wind Surf's. I presume they aren't main-topsil-jibs or whatever."
"They're one through seven," he answered. "Not very romantic, I'll grant you, but imminently practical."
"Nomenclature aside, it's a pleasure to work on an actual sailing vessel."
"It is that," he agreed, smiling again. The poor arrangement of his teeth did nothing to lessen their charm. Captain Turner was a portly man of middle to late years. Beneath his captain's cap sprouted short curls, unruly and besieged with grey. His was a plain face, looking less a dashing captain's and more a pragmatic fisherman's. He placed his hands upon the rail and joined me in regarding the approaching port. The humid air was soft and quiet, the moment ripe for reflection, conversation.
"Have you always captained sailing ships?" I asked. "I'd imagine there aren't so many anymore."
"Oh, not always," he answered. "But when offered an opportunity to work under sail, how could any captain worth his salt refuse? As a lad growing up in Portsmouth, I was struck early by the romance of sail. I used to moon over the HMS Victory—Admiral Lord Nelson's flagship during the Battle of Trafalgar, of course. Oh, how I dreamed of captaining one someday, much to my mother's consternation. She forbade me joining the Royal Navy, but there wasn't a lot of opportunity in Portsmouth that didn't involve the sea. I wanted it so badly I made my way up through the hawsepipe."
"As a lad surrounded by a thousand miles of farmland, I never dreamed I'd be talking to a ship captain someday," I replied. "Or have the gall to ask him what a hawsepipe is."
He smiled again. I could tell this was his usual expression. It was a welcome change from the predominantly Italian and Dutch captains I had heretofore worked with. While the source of their temperament was fundamentally disparate, a chronic lack of smiling was inherent to both.
"A seaman's expression," the captain explained kindly, "to evoke an image of a dripping boy whose ambition is so desperate as to drive him up the anchor chain, through its pipe, and onto a ship's deck for a chance at a job. Yet for me it was quite literal."
"You wanted it that badly?" I asked, impressed. "No wonder you made it to the top."
"Oh, not compared to Admiral Lord Nelson," he mused. His ruddy cheeks bobbed with fond recollection.
"One can look at a sailing ship as a tool and, if so inclined, reflect that it was the most influential vehicle in human history," Captain Turner explained. His tone was not didactic, but pleasantly open to the sharing. "Sailing ships rediscovered the continents and far flung islands over which men had scattered over millennia. Sailing ships made the human world one again, and they did it—from discovery, to trade, to conquest, to empire—in just a blink at the end of their days. Imagine all that, in just the last five of the fifty centuries during which boats with sails have plied the waves. What poor Portsmouth lad wouldn't want to be a part of all that before it's gone for good?
"In my early days there were only a few fleets of working sailboats left in isolated corners of the world," he continued. "For most of us sailing ships are just a part of history, a part as removed from our experience as the industrial revolution blacking London's streets."
"But not for us stalwart few," I offered, intentionally glib. "Dare I ask if your mother ever joined you on a ship you've captained?"
Captain Turner chuckled. "Certainly not. But I am proud to have my son aboard. I don't know if he'll ever have the chance again to learn a ship of sail."
A smudge of orange to the east slowly rose red. The rugged silhouette of a ship against the bold brown and orange and red caught us both by surprise. Not just any ship, but a fully rigged sailing ship, the very subject of which we spoke.
"I have to say it," I said reluctantly, "That scene looks startlingly like a painting from William Turner."
"Why so it does," Captain Turner agreed with a laugh. "My favorite artist, not surprisingly. At least that was one profession of which my mother more thoroughly disapproved than sailing."
I was pleased to hear I wasn't the only one with a mother distressed over her son's piratical ways. Though small, it was desirable to have a connection to this accomplished man of the sea.
The ship slid closer, revealing three tall masts fully rigged with sails. The hull gleamed a rich, shiny black, the sails a drab off-white straining in the brown wind. It cut an impressive figure against the dramatic sunrise.
"Now those sails are tonsils," I observed.
Captain Turner pointed to each individual sail, enthusiastically identifying each. "The two triangular sails on the front are the jib and the flying jib. On the foremast there is the fore topgallant, the fore topsail or tops'l—not tonsil—and the fore sail. Behind the mast, those triangular sails are the staysails: the main topgallant staysail, the middle staysail, and the main topmast staysail. A fourth, the main staysail, fits below but is furled."
Without a pause Captain Turner proceeded to identify over a dozen sails. His uneven teeth smiled enchantingly, revealing his joy to discourse his knowledge to someone genuinely interested.
"I hope there's not a test," I laughed, admitting defeat.
"All the large, square-rigged sailing ships that parade as tall ships today are purposefully scaled-down versions of the last big sailing ships," Turner continued. "Rigged much shorter than their ancestors for safety's sake. A short rig means the ship has less sail than her hull can carry."
"For safety's sake?"
"Oh, yes. Those wooden clipper ships that figure so prominently in our imagination were nary one hundred and fifty feet long. Windjammers—their descendants—were of the same idea but, being constructed of iron and steel, grew to monstrous proportions. So monstrous they became sailor killers.
"The Preussen, a five master, was the largest engineless sailing ship ever built, over four hundred feet long with well over an acre of sail. Rumor had it that no deckhand would ship for two successive voyages onboard. She was too hard on her crew. And the Thomas W. Larson, the largest American-built schooner at almost four hundred-foot—made of steel, like the Surf—with seven masts, rolled over at anchor while waiting for a fair wind in the Scilly Isles. Killed fifteen of the seventeen men on board."
"Why were the sailors so scared of the Preussen?" I asked. "Scared it would roll over, too?
"Not Preussen," Turner answered. "But those square-rigged topsails had to be set, reefed, and furled by hand in the old days. Very dangerous when at sea in a storm. Eventually they built rolling yards that turn from the deck. Sails can now be automatically rolled up to furl and unrolled to set, and they can be reefed safely in strong winds by simply rolling in a portion of their area."
"Reef meaning only half open?"
"That's correct."
"So that requires power," I pointed out. "What about all these ships I hear losing power?"
"Modern, sail-less cruise ships, you mean."
"Yeah, I guess that's what I was thinking," I admitted. "But can masts get hit by lightning or anything? I assume it's computer controlled and not some sailors who pull levers or anything."
"You mean assuming the backup generators are not working?" he asked lightly. "Computers begin reefing automatically when power is lost. The sails are furled completely, automatically, when anything of that magnitude goes wrong."
"But no power...?"
"We have tanks filled with oil under pressure," he finished, now smiling broadly. "We store energy, even at sea."
"I had no idea," I mused, impressed.
The captain's lips tugged at a smile, indicating his pleasure at sharing an interesting tidbit usually expressed only in technical terms among knowing colleagues. At least that's how I liked to think of it. No doubt he was just wasting time until we arrived at port. As we did so, Captain Turner turned to me and said, "I know you assist in shore excursions. After the majority of passengers have left, perhaps you would be so kind as to help out the officers, as well?"
"Of course. What can I do for you?"
"We need a dead body," he replied with an amused smirk.
2
"It's hard to find dead Americans," the slender man said from behind a paper-cluttered desk in a desk-cluttered office. His presentation was so deadpan I almost questioned if he had made a joke at all. "Thanks for being a team player."
"My ex-wife frequently described me thus," I quipped. "Unfortunately I think she was referring to the bedroom."
There was no question whatsoever that I had made a joke. Whether it was funny or not... well, the XO's strained courtesy smile answered that question. Alas, my jokes generally prompted such reaction.
The XO, or first officer, was a Dutchman named Emmet. He was the slight, handsome man I first saw in a boiler suit upon the bridge. He had been painting railings. Unlikely as this act was in a man of his rank, his later participation in the ill-fated match of tug-of-war was downright shocking. Emmet was a man who chipped in anywhere and everywhere he was needed. Yet despite such a hard working attitude, he did not chide Barney for playing guitar on the bridge. In short, Emmet was unlike any XO I had ever met. Not that I'd met many—only when I was in trouble—but I was familiar with many.
Of second officers, however, I knew more than a few. And like all things Surf, Barney, too, was unlike his big ship counterparts. Besides his proclivity for Bon Jovi, he easily had the physique of a lumberjack. He pounded me on the shoulder and roughed me up as if old friends.
"You've got the easiest job of them all," he boomed. "Stick with me and we'll make sure you're good and dead."
"Exactly what my ex-wife said," I said, taking one last stab at an ex-wife joke. Can't have enough of those.
Via the crew stairs, Barney descended down into the forward bowels of the Wind Surf. We passed all manner of hallways and storage areas I had not known existed. On a big ship there was always more compartments, but on this tiny vessel it was a surprise. Like living in a small house for months and discovering a new room. Eventually Barney stepped into a chamber so large it was a wonder it fit into Surf's narrowing bow. He slapped the wall to ignite the lights, half of which only flickeringly obliged. The still-dark recesses revealed a nondescript metal bar. Behind hid a kitchenette; dark, cold, forgotten. Obviously once a crew bar, the room now hosted a raucous pile of tables, chairs, and rolling desks.
"Find a spot you like," Barney said. "Don't climb into a cupboard or anything, though. That's not realistic. Just lay down and play dead. Easy. Don't freak when the lights go out and things get nasty."
Seeing me raise my eyebrows, Barney explained further. "We're going to simulate a fire as realistically as possible. The fire team won't know if anyone is below decks or not and will systematically search every room for unconscious victims. Our fire team is really good, so it shouldn't take more than twenty minutes. What makes this drill more accurate is that you're our first American."
"Why does that matter?"
"The fire team only has experience hauling out other crew members, and they're all Asian. In a real fire, a guest passed out from smoke inhalation won't be ninety pounds. You're about two hundred, which helps us create a much more accurate scenario. When they come for you, don't make it too easy for them. Be dead weight. Cool?"
I picked my way through the detritus of the dead crew bar to become a dead crew member. Propping my back against a cupboard, I splayed my legs out. From the doorway Barney snapped off the lights.
Darkness swooped in, solid, tangible. This was not the absence of light, but the presence of a thing. Just a few minutes of such absolute black made even an egomaniac feel small. Not scared, but small, insignificant. This was not a place for living men, here, deep below the surface of the sea. I strained to hear a sound, any sound, but there was none. Not even the slap of waves made it into the pit where I lay. I fancied I was in a sensory deprivation tank, but for the sharp tang of back-bar alcohol and solvents stabbing my nose.
After an interminable time, my ears tickled with the muted call of the ship's intercom announcing to passengers the impending fire drill. Don't panic at the alarms, the muffled voice said. Don't panic at the smoke.
Smoke?
A minute later, another sense tickled. The air became chemically dense. The smell was not of smoke, but something equally unpleasant. I mulled over what it could be when I was scared out of my wits by the ship's alarms suddenly blaring. Hearing the ship's horn blasting the fire alarm was nothing new—I'd heard it every cruise for years—but hearing the alarm in my current environment was something else entirely. It was downright unnerving. Red emergency lighting pushed at the black from below rather than above. Though dim, the illumination was sufficient to see the hallway outside. The red opening pulsated in a rapidly thickening haze.
Smoke curled into the chamber, first slow, soon robust. Tendrils of white crawled across the ragged carpet, claiming more and more of the room. Behind the vanguard was a supporting wall of swirling grey, gradually thickening until I could no longer clearly see out into the hallway. The red remained, wavering, undefinable.
Only slowly did time tick, tick away. The simulated smoke became hard to breathe. Not only did the unceasing klaxon urge me to rush into the red, so, too, did instinct. The sensation was so powerful my legs twitched, itching for action, for escape. Yet I remained, having been charged with death. After twenty minutes came a flicker of a different color. A beam of yellow wandered across the reddishness of escape, then left. Eventually it returned with a companion. Then both vanished. Disappointment flashed through me. They had overlooked my room.
From the glow materialized two phantoms of black. Backlit by blazing red, each cut a dramatic figure in full-on fire gear, complete with oxygen tanks and face masks. Thickened by heavy layers of fire retardant gear, they seemed to move in slow motion. Beams from handheld searchlights roamed the smoke-dense room, lighting across old, clustered junk. Revealed in streaks were fallen stacks of chairs and tables upended upon each other, cobwebs flashing. I was living a movie thriller: the heroes had just discovered the killer's creepy lair.
A beam of light fell across my legs. Another zeroed in. Two bulky forms pushed through the thick directly towards me. Heavily gloved hands grabbed me by the shoulders to haul me bodily from the floor. I drooped and flopped as awkwardly as possible, feet dragging uselessly on the floor. Undeterred, they slung my arms over their shoulders and hauled me out. Between the deafening klaxons their respirators labored. Though much taller than my saviors, both men worked as a single unit to compensate. No words were exchanged. None were needed; both knew what the other was supposed to do.
It was a very interesting experience, this playing dead. I left with a much greater understanding and, thusly, a much greater appreciation for how well prepared the crew was to handle a variety of situations. Fires have always been a ship's greatest enemy, more so than rogue waves and certainly more so than pirates. These weren't waiters playing with fire hoses. The ordeal the fire team maintained as routine was most impressive. But then, to be honest, I always wanted to be a fireman. They're totally badass.
3
Tunis exceeded my expectations mightily. It was clean and organized, pretty and prosperous. Despite the local language being Arabic, many spoke English. Everybody spoke French. The tour guide had been given explicit instructions to knock our socks off, as this was Wind Surf's first visit and a return depended greatly upon the favorability of the tours. Thus Cosmina got the finest treatment. She strutted like a rooster until I thought she would crow.
The guide began by plying us with treats. We dined on a variety of dips, like hummus and baba ganoush, with huge mounds of brown, yellow, and even red dates. The reds were crisp and tart, like apples. Another local specialty was green tea with pignoli. I like pine nuts just fine, but in my tea? That seemed bizarre and was definitely not to my taste.
"I will show you everything!" the slender man in a dark, Western-style suit boasted.
"Any old rocks will do," Cosmina said sarcastically. "And Brian really gets off on limestone."
The driver's whirlwind tour was all but useless. A full catalogue of sites flashed by in moments, highlights blasted like bullet points, with no time to see if any of what was claimed was true, or even self evident. After hearing about twenty or more fascinating things—and seeing none of them—we arrived at our first destination. The first full stop was a village called Sidi Bou Said. Apparently it was famous for its art scene. I was mildly annoyed I hadn't heard of it, but readily admitted that my knowledge of African art—North or otherwise—was very poor.
Something about Sidi Bou Said struck me as off. The village was certainly picturesque enough, with a tight cluster of buildings perched atop buildings perched atop a cliff. The whole assemblage—maze-like layout, steep stairs for streets, vibrant bougainvillea—reared over the harbor for phenomenal views of the Mediterranean. The flagstones were swept clean and the walls whitewashed to such a degree that the city seemed somehow fake. Like Disneyland before the gates open, everything had been tidied and polished to a level unlikely had anybody actually lived there. And, indeed, we saw no people at all. No tourists, no locals. Baby blue and closed was every door and every shutter, like a paranoid Santorini. The mimicry would have been complete were it not for the geometric flourishes of an Arabic nation.
We did not spend much time in Sidi Bou Said, however. The guide had been tasked to show Cosmina everything there was to offer, and by God he was going to do so in record time. We flashed past the luxurious Presidential palace—assuming you could really call the Tunisian autocrat a president—the nicely rebuilt Roman theatre, and the only moderately impressive Carthage Museum. Finally we stopped at a roadside curiosity instead of zooming on by. That's when things went bad. The driver pulled over to a curb along a busy street to show us something not everybody has to offer: a graveyard for sacrificed babies. A big graveyard for sacrificed babies. Perhaps the driver should have stuck to his previous method of all talk and no see.
"Are you kidding me?" Cosmina exclaimed, having unconsciously adopted the expression that so annoyed her in Malta. She ogled down at the excavation. Buried and forgotten for millennia were crumbling stones indicating entire crowds of the unfairly slain. Though shadowed from the Saharan sun by gently swaying palm trees, there was little sense of peace when contemplating row upon row of innocence lost, or, rather, taken. The far side was bounded by a wall that held an even larger cemetery.
"It is very sad," the guide agreed solemnly. "This was during Phoenician times, long ago. Barbaric, but a piece of history that must not be forgotten."
"No history should be forgotten," I said. "Barring my first marriage. Oh! Who's killin' it with the ex-wife jokes? I am, I am!"
Strangely, nobody was laughing. I was tempted to add that dead babies always ruin a good joke, but sensed—finally—that would be in bad taste.
"Filthy Muslims love killing," Cosmina muttered, dripping vitriol. Hard eyes locked on the ancient forest of headstones, she cocked her head to light a cigarette. The end flared red hot. After a long drag she finally looked at my surprised expression and said, "What? You like Arabs? I thought you were American."
"I think you're taking it too seriously," I said. "This happened probably close to three thousand years ago."
"So that makes killing babies okay? It's not like they've improved since then."
"Who's 'they'?" I said with as much patience as I could muster. "'They' have been gone for thousands of years. The Carthaginians were not Muslims. They weren't even Arabs."
"What the hell are you talking about?" Cosmina exploded. "We're in North Africa, aren't we? I'm talking about people killing babies and you're talking about... I don't even know what! Fine, they weren't Arabs. Africans. Happy?"
She ground out her cigarette with a sharp twist of her foot. "Thank God the Romans won."
The guide wisely slipped back to the car. We followed, still locked in combat—er, conversation.
"Don't go lying to yourself that Romans didn't kill babies by the boatload," I pointed out. "We're talking about the Bronze Age, here. It was fairly common. And, I might add, these people weren't Africans. The Phoenicians were Semites."
"Semites," she said flatly, slamming the door. "As in Jews."
She obviously wasn't interested in anything I had to say. I had encountered this before. The truth was that few people were capable of talking about religious human history without getting emotional. They get suspicious of those who do. But even though guilty of making a crude joke at a bad time, I was still right. I said as much. "Yes, they were Semitic."
"How the hell would you know that?" she challenged.
"I have a university degree in history," I explained in a not particularly gentle manner.
"Art history," she clarified. "Not real history."
"Art history is not about painters as much as their influences," I retorted. "Roman art, culture, and ideas came from Phoenicia centuries before they started emulating the Greeks. That's because Phoenicians were in Italy before the Romans were. Nobody pops up in a vacuum. And this land is also very, very old. Successive waves of people came and went. So don't think for a minute any of these groups are the same as today just because they live in the same place... or have the same label."
Now it was Cosmina's turn to stare at me, open-mouthed. Her emotions were running high, very high, probably brought on by visiting such grisly ruins. As usual when anger takes over, strikes have little to do with the subject at hand.
"I brought you here because I thought you liked ruins, and instead you preach to me over a goddamn Phoenix graveyard full of dead African Jew babies and tell me Christians did it. I'm talking about dead babies and you're talking about the influence of pots and shit! Don't you get emotional over anything?"
To concede to her last point, I shrugged. That was definitely the wrong mannerism.
"Don't you blow me off," she screeched. "You preach all high and mighty to your girlfriend, too? I'm sorry, ex-girlfriend? No wonder she left you. Jesus!"
"Moving along!" the guide finally said, gunning the engine and screeching away from the curb.
While Cosmina fumed in the backseat beside me, I tried to just let it all go. Visiting foreign cultures brings us face to face with our own lack of knowledge. That makes many people feel vulnerable, and a cornered animal lashes out. Unfortunately travel also brings us face to face with the closeted ethnocentrism we all have to some degree or other. Cosmina saw something abhorrent in a land of different people and lashed out at a target that fit modern stereotypes: Muslims killing innocents. The fact that Muslims weren't to blame didn't matter much.
The simple truth is that most people don't like something different. Most people eat the same thing for breakfast every day for years on end. When you suddenly pluck them out of entrenched routines and drop them into something different, most scramble for what they know. Sometimes it means jumping on McDonald's, sometimes it means jumping on stereotypes. And most stereotypes—especially about 'others'—are shallow, ignorant, and frequently third-hand labels. This particularly applies to the dinner table taboos of religion and politics. Such inaccuracies weren't just in foreign lands, but also close to home. Case in point: Abraham Lincoln stood for a further reaching central government—the very antithesis of his modern-day Republican party. Labels are best left to canned goods, not people. Unfortunately canned goods have just as little chance of shaking off their labels.
Since Cosmina was already demonstrating a remarkable ability to offend people, I chose not to react to her antagonism. I also chose not to educate her about her comment regarding how 'the Romans won'. The truth was that while the Romans did eventually win their struggle against the Carthaginians, it was only after they lost and were shown mercy. Yes, mercy out of North Africa. The Europeans repaid it by utterly massacring almost everybody in sight. Ah, the good old days. It was a bizarre piece of history that few knew, yet had a direct impact on the entire world as we know it.
The Romans and the Carthaginians fought many battles with many armies over many countries. There were heroes on both sides, but perhaps none more interesting than the Carthaginian general Hannibal. He famously led a force over the Alps towards Rome—a feat in itself that none thought possible. Hannibal cleverly used elephants in the front ranks, which scared the bejesus out of the Romans who'd never before seen their like. He attacked the army of Rome and won. He could have, and probably should have, invaded the panic-filled and generally defenseless city. But Hannibal didn't sack Rome: he chose mercy. If he had finished with the kill, the entire Western world—and thusly the entire modern world—would not be as we know it. It's staggering to imagine how world history would have played without Rome.
Whereas Hannibal hesitated to strike an endgame, the Romans did not. They regrouped and eventually conquered Carthage. This, the Second Punic War, should have been the end of it. But the rhetoric was so intense in the Roman senate—"Carthage Must Be Destroyed!" being a battle cry uttered ad nauseum—that a third and final conflict occurred even after Carthage surrendered. This time Carthage was utterly razed to the ground and the Romans slaughtered eighty percent of the men, women, and children who lived there. To make sure resurrection would not happen, they plowed vast quantities of salt into the earth to prevent agriculture. Salt from Venice, maybe? Wrong millennium. Anyway, the Romans took over the land and called it Africa. Yes, that's where the name came from. Eventually the Romans rebuilt the area to their taste. And tasteful they were: they constructed bathhouses sky high.
Soon we were walking the fabled streets of once mighty Carthage. Cosmina took pains to avoid me, which suited me fine. Alone I strode through the thick walls of the great public baths complex. Many walls were still intact as bricked mounds capped in wild flowers. The complex was huge in scope and scale, including a wondrous frigidarium—cold chamber—with columns reconstructed to their original sixty foot height. The vaulted ceiling once reared one hundred feet above the tiled floor. Modern man may be used to air conditioned auditoriums, but the Romans were doing it in 150 A.D.! Who says engineering isn't awesome?
Despite being the gateway to the Sahara, Carthage was built overlooking the sea and, thusly, subject to its weather. The sky was locked in drab grey, with several militant thunderheads circling around to systematically strike every inch of ground. Their fuzzy purple bottoms dropped sheet after sheet of rain, polishing everything like the Cleaning Bubbles.
I escaped the rain courtesy of an archway of stone still strong. I was not alone, but kept company by a stray kitten. He peeked out from behind two Corinthian capitals—the caps above pillars—which rested on the ground. Seeing me seeing him, he rubbed his forehead on their elaborate floral edges, smoothed by passing millennia and, apparently, amorous felines.
Surrounded by the ashes of Eden, it was an appropriate time for reflection. Yet I didn't reflect upon what I came here to, what I wanted to. Those colossal hunks of stone wrestled by earlier men into luxurious function reminded me strongly of the first time I had visited North Africa. Three years ago I had spent a heady week in Egypt with Bianca. Since then we had chased each other over half the world, enacting strategies that would have made Hannibal green with envy. In the end Bianca even allowed herself to be caught. That was right about when I told her to stay away. I stewed yet over that turn of events. A reckoning would come soon, I knew.
Ah, but Bianca would have loved this place. She, too, got off on limestone. She should have been with me. Then again, even had she joined me on the Surf, she would not have seen Carthage. Her presence would have precluded Cosmina's favors. No, I was here for one reason and one reason alone: Cosmina wanted a Green Card, and this lonely American was her best shot. The fact that we didn't particularly like each other didn't faze her in the slightest.
I looked past the rain-spattered bougainvillea and saw Bianca's smile in an empty niche. No, I saw the echo of her smile. What I actually saw was the irascible Cosmina glaring at me over heavy puffs of cigarette smoke.