Isidro Ayora, Ecuador
August 20th 1997
It was a longer walk than she remembered. But the smells, the sights, the sounds of the children, they were the same. She walked up the road, left at the block of stores that had grown from one tiny village corner store, at the crossroad that had sprung from a dirt-and-mud wide spot to grow proper pavement and even a stoplight. She waved to several people, some of whom were familiar. They grinned and waved back, whether they knew her or not. Two shirtless, shoeless children clad in faded shorts pelted past her laughing, their skin browned and fine, soles of their feet black as coal. They whooped; chasing something she couldn’t see. But then, children were half in and half out of the world anyhow.
That’s one of the things it took me too long to realize about him, she thought. That he was always childlike in the most basic-
Her thoughts broke off as her house came into her view. It hadn’t changed at all. Not from her memories, not from Ossirian’s painting. As she got closer, she realized a man was standing in the side yard, a brush in hand, painting the wide outside wall of the ramshackle house in which she’d been born.
His hair had gone a little gray, and he was more solidly muscled than she remembered, but the curls were-
The curls were the same.
Her skin prickled with gooseflesh as she studied him.
He stopped painting as he heard her footsteps. He didn’t turn. He studied the wall intently.
She stood next to him and examined his work. She said, “Painting houses still.”
He said in clear, unaccented English, “It’s fitting work.” His voice was plain, unpretentious, devoid of the flamboyance and verve she had known.
She nodded.
The sun shone down on them, and they said nothing. He turned to her, and she him, and his eyes were different. The same color, but less ethereal, more focused and solid. They were green still, but the harder jade of a cats-eye marble shooter than the bright morning green of the misty jungle.
She was unsurprised. Toefler had told her. She had called him from Brazil after Brent had gone home. She had told him that she had seen it. The final work. The masterpiece. A photorealistic painting of her childhood home. That and a small note to the side, written by finger, his finger, in the same paint that now tinted the wall of her childhood home. ‘Call Hans. Now. Answer his questions. -O’ And when she did as the note bade her, to contact him immediately, he had asked her if she had learned where Ossirian had obtained a 1948 Tucker, an antique vehicle that had formerly resided in Toefler’s own garage in Germany.
And then he asked her what kind of car she would most like to be driving.
She had had time to sit with the shock of it, but it was a shock still. She said, voice breaking, “Ossirian-”
“Chris.”
She blinked and fell silent.
“It’s just Chris. I’m Chris now.”
She thought about it. She weighed it, and spoke it aloud. “Chris.”
He smiled, and it wasn’t his old smile, either. It was something new. It was something just for her, and she realized it. She realized all of it was for her.
He took her hand. “I’m sorry it took me so long.”
She smiled at him, tears threatening. “It’s been but a moment,” she breathed. “Everything’s only a moment.”
He nodded. “I’m sorry I couldn’t tell you right away. It needed to look right. Toefler-”
“Toefler,” she whispered vehemently, fondly.
He nodded. “Toefler.”
“The bastard. He let me think-”
He grinned at her. “Please don’t talk about my best man in that way.”
Her eyes popped and she gasped. “Are you getting-”
She broke off.
He reached for his pocket.
Overhead, the sun shone down upon them, the jungle burst with lush sounds of leaves and wind, the scent of the greenery and the dirt and the paint enveloped them, and all was as it had to be.
THE END