The Portuguese have a word: saudade. Saudade is a longing for what was, but also for what never was: a time, a place, a fantasy, a hope, a man or woman or an in-between. It’s a dreamy, wistful sadness, the essence of their fado. But, because the Portuguese are an old people, old and wise in life, that sadness can also be a pleasure.
Back in the bad old days before cars came with electronic back-seat drivers with clipped English accents forever suggesting turns you’ve just missed, it was possible to take a wrong turn. And when that happened your natural tendency – at least if you were male – was to plow on ahead, denying that you were lost. But eventually the signs that you’d taken a wrong turn would begin to accumulate.
In Austin, Texas, life had opened its hands and offered me a choice. I could go on as I had been, digging the hole ever deeper. Or I could go with the girl in the window.
Austin was a low point. Not my first or my last, but very low. Low as in sleeping under bridges, low. Low as in checking laundromats for loose change, low. I was in my early twenties, and in the first depressing weeks of my life as a fugitive from justice. To make it all worse I was perversely reading Crime and Punishment. A bit on-the-nose as a book choice, but I’d found a paperback copy in the Trailways station, which is where I kept my stuff in a locker and showered in a sink. Good times.
I got a job in a restaurant and started earning money legitimately, performing actual work and being paid in tips. So, no more bridges, and I was able to get a foul, roach-infested apartment, just off the University of Texas campus.
One night as I was coming home I glanced up and saw a girl in a window. In those days, I had not yet become the suave ladies’ man I became in order to suavely ingratiate myself with marks. And I certainly did not make a practice of randomly deciding to knock on the doors of women I saw in windows.
But for whatever reason, and I never did come up with a satisfactory motive, I immediately went over, knocked on her screen door and after some hemming and hawing, we went for a beer.
And afterward we kissed.
It was not my first kiss. It was just the best.
The next night we slept together. And that, too, was the best, not because we engaged in theatrical displays of acrobatic love-making, but because I was already halfway in love.
I told her everything. Told her I was a thief. That I had jumped bail. I was compelled to be honest, like she was Wonder Woman and I was wrapped in the Lasso of Truth. There was something different happening, something I had not experienced before. I knew, and she knew, in ways that are hard to describe, that we worked.
I have no superstitions. I don’t do faith. I don’t back sports teams, let alone religions. I am a stand-alone, a guy who takes a position off to the side the better to observe and exploit. But that first night it was as if my head had been turned for me, and my eyes focused for me. Like the great Hand of the God I did not believe in had reached down and said, ‘There, you stupid, self-destructive fuck, go meet that girl.’
We had a three-week affair. We were inseparable. But she was graduating college and had a job offer in Maryland. I had no ties to Austin. There was no reason I couldn’t go with her to Maryland. No reason at all.
Faced with a future of love and friendship and all that good stuff people think is so important … Well, the God-I-Don’t-Believe-In had it right: I was a stupid, self-destructive fuck, and out of habit I had cased the restaurant where I was working. It was a hangout for Texas politicians and lobbyists, and I had seen thick envelopes surreptitiously exchanged. I knew a money-making opportunity when I saw it.
The GPS of Divine Direction was telling me to turn right. I heard it clearly. I knew it spoke the truth. I knew, that’s the thing. I knew.
So naturally, I turned left.
As I stood now on my terrace gazing out at the dark Mediterranean and the night lights of Paphos, I heard a voice singing and saw that Chante had walked outside onto her smaller patio, which was below and to the right of mine. She was smoking a joint and singing a melancholy French song with lyrics of loneliness and loss.
‘Not helpful,’ I muttered under my breath. I stepped back so she wouldn’t see me.
I had a feeling not unlike the turning point in Austin, of being on a knife’s edge. I had a terribly embarrassing thought: what if I actually did something … good?
This was followed immediately by the darker voice within me wondering if I was being spoon-fed by Agents K. and D. Had they sensed some inner core of decency they could exploit by deliberately hinting this was all about kids?
The two voices – Gollum and Sméagol – debated in my head. The Clash had framed my dilemma perfectly: should I stay or should I go? I could call Dabber and we could sail away on the good ship Aussie Cliché.
It would mean the end of David Mitre. The end of my made-up city of New Midlands with all its colorful characters. No more Joe Barton, cynical private dick with a heart of gold and the obligatory drinking problem. I would have to rebuild from the ground up, new name, the enormous time-suck of creating a new identity …
Even before I started writing I knew that my life was a book, the Martin DeKuyper story, written by Martin DeKuyper. For a long time now the probable ending had been, ‘… so he was sentenced to ten years and served three before taking a shiv to the kidneys.’
A different ending tantalized me now: ‘… so the FBI let him go in recognition of his service, and he lived happily ever after, writing books and marrying the girl in the window.’
Gollum sneered at that.