Jake Foley lived on a highway that locals joked had a curve for every day of the year. It was a two-lane road, with captivating views of what awaited you below if you fell asleep at the wheel or were stupid enough to take it on under the influence. Like a skinny snake, it wound through the cordillera heading toward Guayama and the southern coast. Foley lived no more than seven miles from Baná, but on that road it felt farther. As a truck roared past me, and both my Civic and I shook, I cursed any man crazy enough to live in such a forsaken place. The invitation was for seven, but I had called and told him I was running late. With an exasperated sigh, he said the food was getting cold, so get my ass up there.
By the time I was getting closer, it was getting colder and darker. As my luck would have it, a heavy fog started settling in. I had never seen anything like this in Puerto Rico, or anywhere for that matter, and driving in it was not fun. I had taped Jake’s directions to the dashboard—no GPS will get you there, he said—and after circling a few places and turning here and there, I managed to find the long ascending driveway that led to his chalet, now almost covered in mist.
He met me at the door, wearing jeans and a flowery shirt out of some Hawaiian movie. Barefoot, he ordered me to take my shoes off and leave them on a rubber pad near the doorway. It’s been my experience that westerners who have this fetish about taking shoes off inside the house have traveled or lived extensively in areas of the world where this is a custom.
A quick pan of the man’s crib confirmed he was an aficionado of East Asian culture. I wouldn’t have figured Foley for a lover of any type of art, and not someone who collected anything other than paychecks, but in the foyer and throughout the living room, he had pieces of jade sculpture, Japanese lacquer vases, Chinese ceramic vases and Sumi-e paintings. On one wall he had mounted a calligraphic representation of what he told me was the Chinese character for fate, which looked like a man standing and leaning forward at the furthermost point of a sailing boat’s bow.
Mounted on a large wall was an impressive collection of masks from the Far East, including a frightening Indonesian one with big teeth and large ears, and several Maori ones. Placidly, and alone, a Nepalese bronze Buddha sat on the middle of a credenza, contemplating the entire scene, which included my big toe sticking out of the hole in my right sock. Foley came back with a bottle of Beaujolais and two glasses. I shoved my foot under the large, square wooden coffee table.
“Well, had to re-heat the food. What the hell took you so long?” He said this as always in that soft tone that would belie any agitation.
“Jeez, Foley, you live out here in the freakin’ boonies.”
He laughed. “You made it at least. People never visit me; they use the highway as an excuse.” He poured two hearty servings of wine. “Hell, I’m kinda glad, to tell you the truth.”
“Don’t like our colleagues?”
He shrugged his shoulders, dismissed the entire department with a wave of the hand and a roll of the lips. “Don’t need to see them day and night.”
“You’re barely on campus, though,” I said, cringing inside after I said it, because I didn’t know how he would take it.
He laughed. “Right out of Notre Dame, I came to PR with a doctorate in Anglo-Saxon literature. So, I accepted my obsolescence early, learned to be another brick in the wall.”
“And now you teach writing.”
“Makes me feel like I’m doing something worthwhile.”
“You teach the other stuff too, don’t you?”
“A Shakespeare course for the majors, here and there. Early Brit survey.” He took a slow sip from his glass. “They couldn’t care less about Beowulf.”
I had barely taken a sip of the Beaujolais when he signaled me to dinner. It was a chatty one, and I found Foley to be as fascinating a conversationalist as he was mysterious. When I mentioned the art, he described his travels in that region of the world, beginning as a child with his military family. His father was a naval officer, stationed in Yokosuka for an extended period, but with stints in Hawaii and San Diego. Young Jake got to see a good portion of the East, and by the time he was off to the University of Virginia for his undergraduate degree, he had an extensive collection of what he called touristy junk. But that initiated his love for the serious art collecting that would come later.
For such a world traveler, he prepared pretty pedestrian food. He started us off with lentils, made from an old family recipe. Not a big fan, but they were tasty along with the homemade bread—he was surely a man of many talents. The main course consisted of steak, potatoes and string beans. The steaks were done to perfection, and the rest of the meal was actually good. I asked where he learned to cook, and he answered that his wife was a horrible cook, so it was either learn or starve.
“The woman has no sense for the subtleties of flavors and taste.”
I remarked how he didn’t have any pictures of family around the house.
He sat back on the chair, elbow over the top rail. “Don’t have kids, unless you count the dogs, and the wife has custody,” he said, smiling. “The missus and I are separated these days.” Not divorced, he made it clear, because both of them couldn’t help being old school Irish Catholics.
“There’s just so much love in any human being, Rennie,” he said. “Then like a well, it dries up.”
After he cleared the table, he poured himself another glass of wine and told me I shouldn’t have any more since I had to drive down that highway again, in thicker fog. I wasn’t going to argue. But then, he said, “Well, maybe have a wee bit more to toast,” and he poured me two fingers worth.
He told me that he had something for me. And, suddenly, I remembered that there was something important he had wanted to tell me. He came back dangling some keys.
“To your house,” he said, a bright smile on his face, lifting his glass. With his left hand, he offered me the keys.
“No way,” I said.
I stood up and grabbed the keys, mystified.
“Don’t leave me hanging, Falto.”
I raised my glass and clinked.
“Thanks,” I said, not clear what was going on. “But, how?”
He downed the wine and threw himself back on a large armchair. “You sure ask a lot of questions.”
“But, it’s just so out of the blue. Did Ledesma have anything to do with this?”
Foley snickered. “Martirio is a good lawyer, but he had the legal system to contend with.” Then, he widened his blue eyes, which now appeared glossy and reptilian.
“Please sit down, Rennie,” he said, and I realized that I was still standing, so I set the keys on the coffee table and sat down quietly.
“The Riveras were trash and they were playing the system. You know it, everyone knows it.” He said this as softly as if he were conducting mass, his hands moving gently here and there, almost making the sign of the cross. But I could see in his eyes the malice that accompanies any justification of means. And it worried me, even scared me. Foley was adept at reading people, and he quickly saw this.
“Oh, no harm was done to them,” he said, but in a way hinting it could have been arranged. “Mr. Rivera had quite a rap sheet, suffice it to say. He had no problem moving his butt out once we explained the options.”
“Who’s we?”
Here, his eyes fluttered, closed, and he exhaled loudly, sat back on the armchair and slanted his head toward me.
“What difference is it to you?”
“It involves me, somehow, doesn’t it?”
“But, of course.”
There was a pause, for whatever he was saying to sink into what he clearly perceived as my thick head. Then, he leaned toward me, his sinewy frame moving closer to me. He sat at the edge of the chair, legs spread, arms dangling off his thighs, hands folded as if in prayer. Lifting his face, he tugged at his ear, then stared at me.
“You’ve been talking to the Congreso,” he said, as a matter of fact, as if he were commenting on the weather. “You’ve been organizing.”
“What does it matter to you?”
He smiled, laughed, shaking his head. “Okay, Rennie. Here it is. You keep this up, you’re going to be in a heap of trouble.”
“That sounds like a threat.”
He shook his head emphatically. “Advice from a senior faculty member.”
“What happens if I don’t stop?”
“Let’s just say the rector is not too happy with you getting politically involved.”
His self-assured, smug tone was beginning to irritate me.
“I see.”
“Do you, Falto? I don’t think you understand half of what’s going on. It’s a mess, and your mother is partly to blame.”
“My mother?”
“Her law firm is initiating a class-action suit against the university and the U.S. Defense Department.”
Stunned, I sat silently, as he let that sink in.
“I think you have some thinking to do,” he said.
Still shocked, all I could do was nod absent-mindedly.
“The clean-up is getting done, Rennie. No one needs flak at this moment. It will only make matters worse. Talk to your mother, reason with her.”
I sneered, then laughed. “You don’t know my mother. I barely know my mother.”
“Well, it would be a shame for you to end your career, and so much damage done all around, based on her misguided zeal.”
“Misguided? You think all of these cancer cases are nothing?”
“There’s no link whatsoever, Rennie.”
“My mother seems to think there’s a case.”
“Don’t be stupid. Tenure-track positions are hard to come by, especially for someone with only an MFA and scanty publications.”
He picked up the keys and handed them over to me. I stared at the keys in his palm, then at his stern face and those eyes that had become cold and distant.
“Be smart,” he said.
I took the keys and said I was leaving. He escorted me to the door. As I struggled, hurrying to put my shoes on, I looked up and saw a framed copy of Caedmon’s Hymn hanging on the slender foyer wall. Tying my shoelaces, I looked across the hallway into his opened bedroom. On an end table, I noticed a large, framed picture of him and Rita Gómez, heads together and both smiling.
Foley returned with some leftovers. “Here, I know what it’s like to be a young bachelor.”
He thanked me for coming, bid me goodbye. “By the way, buy yourself some socks, man,” he added, and then told me to drive carefully.
I shuddered to think that people like this guy exist. One minute he’s threatening you and the next he’s showing concern for your nutrition and safety while standing in front of a religious poem hanging on his wall and cheating on his wife, whom he would never divorce. He had it all philosophically figured out, his world-view all wrapped up like a Christmas package.
The fog had intensified, like cotton gauze running across my windshield. I had to drive slowly and was happy to note that most of the minimal traffic was heading in the opposite direction. Whenever a car was behind me, I would slow down to a crawl and let it pass. The locals were more adept at fog driving than me.
I kept thinking about Foley’s words, the fact that Julia was litigating against the university and the U.S. government. I didn’t know what to do, and decided that tomorrow I would give it some thought, that was, if I made it through that foggy night. But as I drove closer to Baná, my exhilaration grew as I absorbed that my parents’ house was finally mine. I hated to think that in a way I was in collusion with Foley and whomever he represented. As much as I despised them, the Riveras, or anyone for that matter, should not have to be bullied that way. It frightened me to think he could do that, that some authority had empowered him to do it, and that that authority could do something to me or Julia.
But at the moment I hit the intersection heading to Baná, I gripped the keys in my hand and could not wait to enter the house and see it. The streets were deserted, and it was late. In a matter of minutes, I parked in front of the little house. I opened the small gate and, shivering, perhaps feeling something like the presence of my parents, I opened the second gate with one of the keys. My eyes became teary, and I felt silly getting so emotional, but I did.
I unlocked the front door and flung it open, flicked on the lights and saw, spray painted in black across the living room wall, in Spanish, “SHOVE IT UP YOUR ASS MOTHERFUCKER.”