Roadmap Part 10

CHAPTER 23 - QUID PRO QUO

My days have chained into a pleasant rhythm, sometimes with hassle, more often without.  The upstairs doggies' nails are muted and as for filming, who knows if the helicopters overhead are special effects or police? Since I used to live five miles away, I slip back easily into the City Life and its ambience.

Unlike Topanga, nobody here ever runs themselves a bath on the other side of my bedroom wall at odd hours, nobody cooks next to me in the kitchen, nobody turns up the volume on their MTV.

Maybe it's the wood interior of his home or his Ansel Adams mountain stream prints or maybe it's my pleasant morning routine of eating cereal on a small bench outside, watching the morning mist drift through the pines and listening to roosters crowing from one of the Mexican homes below--one cat purring on my lap and the other at my feet.  All I know is that every aspect of Shane's home has brought me peace.

At night, I fall fast asleep in his small, warm bed, wrapped in calm.  As if his arms are still around me.  It's all perfect.  Too perfect...some would say.

Mercury is still very retrograde.  I have to take my car to the dealer every weekend.  They keep it all day, then announce that they'll have to order a part.  Then the part doesn't come in. "Your Mercury's in retrograde!" jokes Tony when I call him.  His plane leaves in two days. Gathering my laundry and stopping on the way for some Thai takeout, I head for Topanga.

No sooner do I begin my descent into the moonless canyon, then I realize that everything's changed. All summer long, entering the canyon was like driving into my own private world, escaping the madness.  But now...

Has it only been a week?

What's happening to me? I don't really live in Echo Park.  Yet, as I bump along the rocky trail to the foot of the hill where The Relationship House still stands, I can still feel the pull of My Little Joshua Tree on the other side of town.

I'D RATHER BE AT SHANE'S.  A bumpersticker.

Meowing greets me as I get out of the car and then I see her.  The cat is pressed miserably against the slats of Edward's deck railing, bleating at me.  Her face is dirty and she's skinny.  She chases me with accusatory meows as I climb the steps.

The sign on the shut kitchen door says:

KEEP THIS DOOR CLOSED

CAT SITUATION OUT OF CONTROL

                  Cat Patrol

I take a step back and bump into the orange tabby kitten and the black spotted kitten that live next door now. When I left, they were both invading the kitchen regularly, eating our cat's food. How can I open the door with my arms full of laundry and food? I put them down in the deck chair in front of the bathroom's fishbowl window, next to the kitchen door and turn in time to see through the uncurtained bathroom windows…

Tony peeing. 

"Oh, shit!" I shouldn’t have yelled. Now he knows. Truth is, I couldn't see anything because his back was to me, but I'm still embarrassed.  I go into the kitchen and he walks in saying, "So was it really good to see me again?" I fall against him in a laughing hug. He follows me to my room as we talk. I hear him say behind me "Quid Pro Quo," and turn as he hands me the bra that just dropped out of my laundry bag.  Now we're even.

xx

In the kitchen dishing out the curry, I notice it.  Steaming on the stove, the telltale clay pot.  I ask Tony:  "Who's doing herbs?"

"I am.  They say I got 'too much heat.'" 

So he went to Chinatown?  Without me?  My disappointment is quickly overridden by Tony’s gratitude.  "I just want to thank you," he says.  "I haven't felt this good since I was eighteen.  And I know it's the medicine."

His eyes are brighter and clearer than I've ever seen them...his energy fresher.  He even looks happy.  I never noticed that he wasn't happy before.

At the deck table eating panang beef curry, we catch up as if we haven't seen each other in years.

"How's Boris?  Do you ever see him?"

"I had to write him for the second time and tell him not to contact me.  Still, he calls:  to ask, 'Can you check a mole for me? Do you know of any jobs?' I offered to put in a personal ad for him so he can get another woman to do all that."

Tony goes in the house muttering, "I should have asked about the weather."  Comes back with a glass of water.

"So did you spend the weekend with Minh?"  Last week, he told me that he was "really into" this Vietnamese woman and that he was planning a weekend adventure.

He shakes his head, spearing a lump of spicy sauced beef, "She didn't return my call.  I don't need a sledgehammer."

"Could it have anything to do with your leaving the country in four days?"

"She just broke up with somebody. She's not ready for commitment and neither am I.   How's life at Shane's?"

I tell him how Shane said I’m not really white.”

"Of course not!" Tony howls.  "You're Chinese!"

Very funny.

Then I reveal Shane's pet peeve about Caucasian men being with Asian women. Tony replies bitterly, "I'm no threat. Asian women run away from me."  But he adds that Shane's comments sound racist.

"Where's Edward?"

"Busy," shrugs Tony.  "Getting ready for Indiana."

"How's Suki handling it?"

"Haven't seen her."

"Is Carmelita around?"

"Oh, yeah..." He rolls his eyes, then looks past me at the exquisite hills and says, "Remember when you said, 'You ain't seen nothin', yet.'?"

It's clear he's seen plenty.  I raise an eyebrow, "Are you...?"

"She's a roommate and Eva's niece and she's too young. I know she's got a thing about older men, because of her dad and all..."

Eva's suddenly in the doorway, mumbling something.  It sounds like, "My phone broke so I left you one with a long cord."

I'd called Tony from Shane's and asked him to hide my phone. It had occurred to me that Renato or Carmelita might use it if they stayed in my room (as I told Eva they could). While I was putting the takeout on dishes, Tony had said, "I put your phone away, but I have to tell you that the other day I saw another phone in its place."

Across the deck, I call to Eva, "I don't want anybody using my phone."  She makes a disgusted noise, waves an angry hand at me and goes back in the house.

I turn back to Tony, confused, "What was that?"

"Just ignore it," he says and keeps talking.

xx

We divide labor in the kitchen.  He's washing and I'm drying when Eva bursts in weeping and trembling, "Nobody would ever use your phone. How can you accuse me? Why are you acting like this? Is it because your bed isn't made?"

I've never seen her fall apart like this. Even so, I realize through my shock that this has nothing to do with me. Somewhere, at the core of my being, I'm still seated under Shane's camellia bush with two cats watching the sunrise.

I hug her, but she's unhuggable, "Eva, I didn't look at my room. I'm not staying so I don't care if the bed's not made."

But she pushes me away, jaw set, "How dare you accuse…"

"I'm not accusing. Really, Eva."

"The tone of your voice.  The way you said, 'I DON'T WANT ANYONE USING MY PHONE.'"

Now wait just a...I can kiss ass with the best of them, but...

"I have a right to ask that." My heart is pounding, but I keep going. "It's my phone bill. I don't know who's in my room. You'd do the same thing, Eva, you know you would." She simply glares at me before going in her room and shutting the door.

After I throw my laundry in, I head for my room.  When I pass Tony's door (where he lies sprawled on the bed), he says, "You're missin' the game."

Leaning in his doorway, "Isn't it great how I don't give you things anymore?  Here you are going to China and I haven't given you a present."

He looks miserably up at me as if to say, "Oh fuck you."

Kneeling beside him, I give him the Bull's Eye I had hidden in my hand, and repeat the story I'd told Shane about how I believe it reversed my luck (but I don't tell him that my car stalled immediately afterward).

He rolls it between his fingers, just as Shane did, enjoying its woody skin, "It feels good in my hand.  These things are expensive, aren't they?"

"Oh, yeah, real expensive," I tease.  "No, just a dollar.  But it's worth it."

He stands and hugs me as the phone rings.  While he talks, I go to visit Eva.

xx

I find Eva sitting on the floor cutting out magazine pictures while Carmelita tries out a new hairstyle, admiring herself in the closet mirrors. Once again, I try to explain, "I'm already paying the phone at Shane's.  I don't want to have two phone bills."

But she remains rigid, eyes on her snipping scissors, "What you suggested is offensive to me, to Carmelita." Because, it turns out, Carmelita is staying in my room.

Next to me now, Carmelita tilts her head in imitation of an offended adult, "I would never use that phone."

"Of course you wouldn't,"  I agree. "But I didn't know who would be in that room.  You were expecting Renato..."

"Renato!" Eva crumples the glossy ad into a crinkly tiny ball, "Renato is not staying here.  Renato has no place to stay, that is his problem!"

So Renato has no place to stay.  Change the subject.

"So, Carmelita, did that hunk show up, yet?"

Two weeks ago, to cheer her up, I'd predicted that she'd meet a gorgeous man who would fall for her ("You are extra normal?" she'd replied.)

She groans at the ceiling, "Ayee, no!  Just this awful guy who keeps calling.  Oh, my God, if that is who you saw, I will die!" She smiles back at me, "This guy you are with now, is this that same guy, the one that was here?"

"Yes."

She claps her hands, "And you really like him?"

"Yes, I really do.  He's great."

"I'm so happy for you!"

When I describe the Chinese restaurant, how attentive he was, Eva narrows her eyes, "Who pays when you go out?"

"We both do.  We split it."

She looks as foreboding as the Grim Reaper, "Be careful.  You don't want to wind up the way you were.  Maybe I am not an artist so I do not understand, but be careful about him letting you pay for stuff."

Her words hit me in an area I haven't thought about: money. My Achilles heel.  But I also have to wonder why she feels compelled to throw cold water on my happiness.

"Tony has been in an awful mood," Carmelita complains.  "Yesterday in the kitchen, he slammed the refrigerator so hard!"

"Maybe you remind him of the girl who just dumped him."

She looks at Eva, "Como?"  Eva translates my joke into Spanish.  Carmelita laughs, pleased.

"Okay, cut out the girl talk..."  Tony lumbers in.

"Oh, yes, we are trading makeup tricks," cries Eva laughing. "And talking about our periods!" Carmelita laughs with her.

To me, he says, "Halftime. C'mon I'll show you how to run my car." I've offered to run his car for him once a week,  as I'm doing with Shane's.

xx

As we trip down the stony path to Tony’s car, he says, "Man, it's good to see those two laughing.  They haven't been getting along."

He shows me how the clutch works, how to unlock the steering wheel, leans back in the seat and shakes his head skeptically, "I'm not sure if this is really necessary."

"It's a prophylactic measure."

"God, thanks for reminding me!" From the dashboard, he grabs a pad and writes "CONDOMS" on a packing list. At my laughter, he responds seriously, "Hey, at least I'm not a jerk."

We stand at my car, as I say good-bye, trying to memorize him, sensing involuntary closure. Graduation.

In the car, I roll down the window.

"I think I've figured out what the most important relationship in The Relationship House is..."

He leans his face into the window,  inches from mine, "What?"

"The one we have with ourselves."

We look at each other—two people exhausted by our own fire—clear love passing between us.

In my own car again, I pull out of the parking area and call to Tony, "And don't get any ideas about asking me to pack up your stuff because you've decided to stay over there."

The look on his face says he's thought about it.

***

Back at Shane's nest again, I wrap myself in the quilted comfort of the two hungry, but grateful cats and revel in the uncomplicated order of his home. To be alone after years of companionship is a rediscovered luxury. Here there are no handmade signs telling me what to do, nobody talking in the next room.  And once again I slip into a deep, undisturbed sleep.

CHAPTER 24 - ECHO PARK

Not even a postcard from Shane. But then again, Eva's postcard from Columbia arrived a week after her return. And Boris's used to take forever whenever he'd go off to Moscow (always without me because I could never afford it). What I'm secretly praying for, in my silly girlish way, is a letter. To know what he's experiencing so I can experience it with him.

I skim through my days on a flying carpet of confidence. Strangers smile hello or want to talk to me. Then a call comes in from Shane's Credit Union:

"That's fine that you slid your blank check under our door, Mr. Fukunaga, but you didn't endorse it." When I call back to ask if she can sign it, she dryly replies, "We're not in the forgery business." No, but I am. I ask her to mail it back and I'll air freight it to him in Italy for his endorsement. A few days later, it comes in the mail.

I've already vowed to myself not to invade his privacy. But this is an emergency, I rationalize, as I look on this tiny desk for something with his signature on it. The first thing on the pile of papers is on orange stationery.

It was awkward seeing you in Chinatown yesterday.

I found these poems of yours and thought you might like to have them.

I can’t help but read one:

I bent down to pick up a quarter

and I found a hair -- yours

Long.  Strong.  Asian.

Soap and water can wash the sheets

but they can't wash away the memories...

The note is signed "Grace." The date on it reveals Shane was already involved with me by then. I shouldn't be reading this. It's too intimate. Too scary.  And none of my business. Why is it left so casually on top of everything? If I knew I was getting a housesitter (who was a new lover), I'd hide stuff like this. Unless I wanted it to be seen.  Or unless I didn't care.

At last I find what I’m looking for—a credit card receipt with his signature on it—and I forge his name on the blank check.  I'm trying to ignore the nagging concern that this is a "wifely" duty, and allow myself to feel pride at having handled this crisis so easily and creatively.

From then on, I try not to poke through his stuff (that letter cured me), but I do like to study the bulletin board in his kitchen, which is covered with photos and mementos. There's an affectionately smiling Shane holding a baby, two toddlers playing together, a wedding photo of the three brothers and their father, all decked out in tuxes (Shane is by far the handsomest with his shit eatin' grin and actor's good looks, like a young Jack Nicholson).  Before he left, he showed me a book he'd bought for the plane:  on siblings.

"I've been thinking," I told him, "it must have been tough on you to be the youngest for seven years and then have a baby brother come along. Now all of a sudden, you're an older brother, not the baby anymore."

"It was weird."

"Did it give you any inner conflicts?"

"Of course I'm conflicted," flicking the ash off his cigarette. "I'm an actor."

xx

These days I amuse myself by looking through his videotapes. The first one I pop into the VCR turns out to be Thirtysomething. The last episode. The one we talked about that first night in Topanga. The one with the "wipe."  I have a tape of it, too. So much synchronicity has to be a good thing.

When I discover his actor's reel, it's like uncovering buried treasure.  For one thing, despite the photos on his bulletin board, I find I have trouble recalling what he looks like. In fact, I'm somewhat startled to see photographs depicting his Asian features. Could it be that just as he doesn't think of me as "white", I don't think of him as "Asian"?

I run the tapes over and overfreeze framing, slow mo-ing, re-running. There he is playing a cop, a storeowner, a lab technician. Then I unearth a tape that turns out to be the piece he performed about his soldier uncle's death in France.  He never mentioned it was taped.  Why didn't he show it to me before he left?

I push "PLAY"...

Looking as conservative as he does when he goes to work—suit and tie—Shane casually ambles on stage with a box and says:

"I came into possession of my uncle's letters twenty-four hours ago and the first time you'll hear them tonight will be the first time I hear them." 

As he said in the restaurant that night, the last letter says, ""P.S. Don't worry, I'll be back." He places the lid back on the box and explains how his uncle was killed: “The shrapnel entered the base of his spine and then proceeded to melt.  I always wondered...how long did it take my uncle to die?"

Meaning he's contemplated this death over and over, as if he were the one lying on the battlefield of Bruyeres. If I hadn't found this, would he have eventually told me? I see now that he is haunted. I see how he and his siblings must have grown up hearing their mother talk over and over and over about the horror, the loss.  This trip to France is obviously a landmark in Shane's life. Why did I happen to meet him at precisely this moment?

The day after we became lovers, I returned home and told Eva about Shane's uncle. She shivered and said, "I just got a deep chill, the kind I get when there's heavy past life karma." Whose past life? She didn't say.

He finishes by putting a cynical hand in his jacket pocket, "I grew up with a war nobody understood or wanted to fight for. And I have to wonder what would cause people to crawl out from behind barbed wire that their own country put around them to fight and die in another country so far from home."  Then he pauses, head down, contemplating.  "Must have been a different world then."

So much anger.  So much pain.  Switching off the VCR, I check the itinerary he left me.  Today he toured the Sistine Chapel.  In another week, he'll stand again at his uncle's grave site with his family to re-live the agony, and refresh his hostility toward White America.

CHAPTER 25 - KAIULANI

 "Yeah, well, fuck 'em if they can't take a joke, isn't that right, Hiro?"  Kaiulani is waving her chopsticks at the sweet-faced Japanese man who smiles enigmatically as he slices the halibut behind the bar of Namida Restaurant.  After a two-hour wait (we were bumped in favor of a Japanese couple who came after us), Kaiulani is raving drunk, with the emphasis on "raving."

I am surprisingly sober.  I don’t drink when I’m feeling good.  Kaiulani on the other hand is in a rage. She returned a month ago from the Bahamas with the intention of packing up and moving there.  She'd met a man.  A podiatrist who swept her off her feet in a casino, made incredible love to her and told her that he wanted her to have their child.

"It's perfect.  I want a child...I'm half-Hawaiian…I’m an Island Girl… "

Two weeks ago, we sat in this same bar while she celebrated her forty-sixth birthday with Champagne, next to her twenty-six year old ex_lover and loyal friend, Sammy Gold.  New York Jewish and good natured, Sammy is a on-spec sitcom writer who's sold one script.  He picks up cash with valet parking, startling drivers as he opens their door with "Excuse me, do you know the way to San Jose?"

That night on her birthday, in the Namida parking lot, Lani pulled our heads to her chest, "You guys, you guys, promise me you'll visit me in the Bahamas!  Promise me!"

Days passed.  No letter from the podiatrist.  No phone call.  For a month.  When Lani was close to panic, his letter came. Expressing his "concerns." She called him. He called her. They talked and talked until they decided.  She'll go back at Christmas so they can work it out. 

With way too many Sapporos under her jeweled belt, Kaiulani's spewing abuse at nearby males—the closest one being Sammy. "You cheesy dog!You fucking coward! Why don't you come to the Bahamas with me? Meet this guy."

"I don't want the competition," he smiles. His girlfriend isn’t in attendance and never is when he’s with Lani.

Nibbling her “whalesize” crabmeat hand roll, Lani swoons, "Oh, Hiro, this is so GOOD...Hiro, you have outdone yourself!"  Then to Sammy, "I'll tell you why you won't go.  You're chicken.  All men are fucking chickens."  She cackles like a deranged chicken, drawing harsh looks from the Japanese couple at her elbow.  The Caucasians on my right chuckle.

I want to vanish. Seeing this scene through the eyes of these soft-voiced, respectful Japanese, we look the epitome of vulgar white assholes.

Under her barrage, Sammy slumps and raises a comic feeble finger, "Check." Everybody laughs. Except Kaiulani. The bill paid, Kaiulani sings out, "We've got to go check on the brownies!" They've dumped a fistful of marijuana into some brownie mix and their final result is cooling on Kaiulani's stove.  I feel as far away from Kaiulani's scene as I felt from The Relationship House on my last visit.  But we've been friends a long time.  Maybe if I can take her to Shane's...let the sanity of the place seep into her veins...

I wait for Lani and Sammy while they go up to her place.  Sitting on the steps of her building, I find myself feeling blissful at my excellent new relationship.  All I want is for Shane to come back.  I want love.  Love that works.

They reappear like naughty kids, carrying steaming chunks of brownie in napkins.  "I don't think it worked," Kaiulani says.

"I'm chewing on a branch," Sammy munches, as he walks us to my car so I can drive Kaiulani to the peace of my new home in Echo Park.

xx

After I show Kaiulani Shane’s rock garden, I do a little dance, "For the first time in a long time, I'm happy. I don't know what this is, but even if it doesn't 'work out', I'll always be grateful."

Shane's cozy kitchen calms Lani.  But we only talk of men, men, men.  Her cloud of tawny hair is pulled straight back and the light from above makes her look tired.

"I'm so damn fat," she says, unwrapping a salted plum.  "I found out it's this fertility drug I'm taking. Maybe I'll just go to the Bahamas and fuck him to get the baby."

She's brought her Relationship Tarot Cards. We sit cross-legged on the living room's hardwood floor and I lay them out between us. The first card makes me shudder. It warns that there's a secret shadow that will make things rocky.  Grace? His racism? Or...

I don't want to play anymore.

Cleo cuddles in my lap, as if to reassure me. "That cat is absolutely crazy about you," Kaiulani says.

CHAPTER 26 - MONSIEUR FUKUNAGA N'EST PAS ICI

Cleopatra is drooling. Her tongue is hanging out and her breathing is too fast.  Oh, God, please don't let her be sick...

With "Don't tell me, I don't want to know," ringing in my ears, I frantically flip through the Jello Pages (as Carmelita calls them). It's Sunday. I locate a nearby Emergency Animal Clinic. They advise me to bring her in immediately.

First, I go to a pet shop and spend ten bucks on a cardboard cat carrier.  Unschooled in these matters, I stand on the patio and try to put her inside, but she pops right out and I chase her around the back yard until I finally give up.  She crouches in the open field behind the house with a look that clearly says, "And to think I trusted you."  Then she runs away.

I can't find her anywhere.

In a panic, I call Kaiulani.

"Is she eating?"

"Yes."

"Then she's probably not that sick.  She'll come back.  She just got scared."

I decide to buy that.  I send Cleo a mental message, "Just come home and we'll forget all about the vet."

She shows up for dinner.

Exactly one week later, she stops eating. And she's drooling and dirty and her tongue is hanging out. This time I try to put her in the cat carrier inside the house.  Again, she pops right out.  I chase her through all the rooms until at last she hides under the red velvet Victorian couch, behind some hidden junk.  Pushing aside the couch, I grab her as she weakly tries to get past me.  To hell with the carrier, I'm putting her straight into the car.

With "How could you do this to me" meows scraping my eardrums, I drive onto the freeway and arrive fifteen minutes later at the clinic.

The woman behind the counter warns, "You'll have a long wait."

We wait and wait.  Finally, they put us in a bare room with a sink and a metal counter, where Cleo curls up (quiet and drooling) and allows me to Reiki her with my hands.  Through the walls, I can hear the shrill, machine gun voice of the vet as she talks to the pet owners, "If it's kidney failure, we can do this.  If it's a heart, we can do that."  And to her flunkies, "Shave his legs all the way to here."

An hour has gone by when the flunky opens the door, "The vet will be with you in forty-five minutes because _"

"Of emergency surgery."

Standing there for the next forty-five minutes, I have plenty of time to think.  Am I doing the right thing?  Housesitting is always a commitment.  The only problem is, I'm starting to feel it.

At last, the vet shows up (explaining the gory details of the two dogs she's just worked on) and the dialogue that follows does not ease my suspicion that my fist is sinking eeper and deeper into the Tar Baby:

"Who's her usual vet?"

"I don't know.  It's not my cat.  I'm housesitting."

"You should always make sure you know the vet before someone leaves an animal in your care."

"Okay."

"Are you prepared to pay for any and all fees?"

(up to my neck now)  "Yes."

Then comes the diagnosis:

"Well, it could be that her bad tooth is bothering her, causing her to drool, in which case she'll require dental surgery or it could be her metabolic system is disintegrating, but we'll have to run extensive tests to be sure, or that ulcer on her tongue may be indicative of some minor infection, which could be cleared by antibiotics..."

"How much are the tests?"

"Two hundred dollars."

"How much is the antibiotic?"

"Fifty dollars."

Fifty dollars later, I'm toting Camellia back to the hills of Echo Park with the vet's last words in my head:  "Lock her up for a couple of days because cats tend to disappear after vet visits."

Damn.  There aren't any parking spaces close to the house, so I park half a block away.  No sooner do I lift her out of the car, then Cleopatra claws my chest as she makes her Great Flying Escape.  Where she goes, I don't know and at the moment don't care because I'm too busy checking the deep bloody scratch between my breasts.

  So the cat has disappeared, I'm out fifty dollars, and I now own a liquid antibiotic only a cat could love. Dabbing at my wound with mouthwash (the only antiseptic I could find in his medicine cabinet), I go to the living room and check the itinerary over the phone ("I've got the names of hotels, but no numbers," he'd told me). There's something I need to know. In my own neurotic way, I have to have reassurance. There's a side of me that hates this side, but right now this side has all the pull. I want to call Shane and ask, "Exactly how much does this cat mean to you?  I need you to tell me that I can stop worrying about her"

You've come a long way baby, I think ruefully. Still, I have to hear his voice.

It takes two tries to get International Information, but at last I've dialed the long string of numbers to the hotel in Nice.  The ringing is so distant I might as well be calling the moon. "Monsieur Fuk-u-na-ga, n'est pas ici," the concierge informs me after assuring me he speaks not a word of English. Leaving a message would strain both my French and this Frenchman, so I resign myself to whatever Cleopatra has in store for me and hang up.

I find her sitting in the doorway of the kitchen. Her calico coat looks cleaner and she's hungry. That injection they gave her at the clinic must already be working.  For the next few days, she keeps her distance but eats steadily (I mix the antibiotic in her food), until she's finally curled in my lap again while I eat.

How easily cats forgive.

A few days later, Shane leaves a message on the machine, sounding typically laid back and warm, "Carrie, this is Shane calling you from Paris.  How are you?  I hope you're doing well.  Sorry I didn't call ya earlier, but we've been running around Paris. It's been a great trip, it's just been fantastic. I hope you got my postcard. I'll be calling you to give you flight numbers so you can pick me up. If you want to call...if you need to call...here's the number where I'm staying." He rattles off a long long distance number. "You can call and ask the International operator what the heck all these numbers mean.  I can't tell you when to call, we're in and out so much.  It's the 'French life, you know."

I play the message over and over, feeling my heart dilate a little more each time.