James Siegel - Detour

“Pablo!” Paul had to shout his name once, twice, three times, before Pablo finally turned around and noticed that the two people whom he was supposed to stick to like glue were out of breath and falling dangerously behind.

“Sorry,” he said almost sheepishly. “I’m used to . . . how you say . . . giddyap .” He smiled.

“That’s okay,” Paul said. “We just don’t want to lose you.”

They’d made it through the sliding front doors and were on the outskirts of a vast parking lot directly adjacent to the terminal. A sea of cars, dotted with small eddies of slowly strolling passengers, seemed to stretch endlessly in all directions.

“What’s that odor?” Joanna asked.

Paul sniffed the air; motor oil and diesel fuel, he was about to say. But Joanna possessed an uncannily accurate sense of smell, more an olfactory intuition, so he kept quiet.

“Ahh . . . ,” Pablo said. “Wait.” He gently placed the suitcases on the cracked pavement, then walked a good twenty feet to what appeared, at least at this distance, to be some kind of ticket booth.

It wasn’t. He returned holding two tightly wrapped packages trailing tiny plumes of steam.

“Empanadas,” he said, handing them to Paul and Joanna. “Pollo.”

“Chicken,” Paul whispered in Joanna’s ear.

“Thanks,” Joanna whispered back, “I’ve eaten at Taco Bell too.” Then she asked Pablo, “How much do we owe you?”

Pablo shook his head. “Nada.”

“Thank you, Pablo—that’s very generous of you.” Joanna took a bite of her empanada, then was forced to lick a dollop of red sauce which had trickled down past her lower lip. “Mmmmm—it’s really good.”

Pablo grinned. Paul thought that his face looked tender and tough at the same time—or, at the least, weathered.

“Wait here, I go for the car,” Pablo said out of deference to their obviously inferior constitutions.

“He’s sweet, isn’t he?” Joanna said after Pablo had disappeared into a row of Volkswagens, Renaults, and Mini Coopers.

“Yes, maybe we should adopt him, ” Paul answered. He took her free hand and squeezed—it was sticky with perspiration. “Excited?”

She nodded. “Oh yeah.”

“On a scale of one to ten?”

“Six hundred and eleven.”

“That’s all, huh?”

Two minutes later Pablo reappeared behind the wheel of a vintage blue Peugeot.

TWO

Their lawyer had booked them into a hotel with a French name, an American-style ambience, and an upscale Bogotá location. The area was called Calle 93, crammed with fashionable boutiques, high-rise hotels, and hip-looking restaurants with blue-tinted windows.

Their hotel was L’Esplanade, a name reeking of French chic, but its lobby coffee shop had Texas steerburgers and Philly fries on the menu.

Their tenth-floor suite had an unimpeded view of the surrounding green mountains. When Joanna pulled up the shades and made Paul look at them, he couldn’t help wondering if armed insurgents were looking back. He decided not to share those feelings with his wife.

They’d been dutifully warned about coming to Colombia, of course.

Their original lawyer had urged them to try somewhere else.

Anywhere else.

Korea, he’d suggested. Hungary. How do you feel about China? Colombia, he’d insisted, was too volatile. The sale of bulletproof glass was a national growth industry, he’d added.

But Korea or Hungary or China could take up to four years.

In Colombia it was two months. Max.

After waiting five long and agonizing years to become parents, four more years had seemed intolerable. Desperation arm-wrestled prudence and won hands down.

They were promptly steered to another lawyer, who specialized in Latin America.

His name was Miles Goldstein, and what he actually seemed to specialize in was enthusiasm. He was warmly effusive, seemingly indefatigable, and unabashedly committed. In this particular case, to bringing two dispossessed and suffering factions together. There were babies out there who needed homes; there were couples out there who needed babies. His mission was to make both parties happy. A handwoven sampler hung on the wall directly above his desk.

He who saves one child saves the world.

It was hard not to like a lawyer who subscribed to that kind of thinking.

Miles assured them that while Colombia wasn’t an oasis of peace, the capital city was pretty much no problem. The struggle between leftists and rightists had been going on for thirty years—it had become just another feature of the landscape. But that landscape was mostly north, mountainous, and far away from Bogotá. In fact, according to a recent survey in Destinations magazine, a photocopy of which Miles produced from his desk drawer and handed to them, Bogotá was safer than Switzerland.

You’ve really got to watch your back in Zurich, Miles said.

PABLO HAD BEEN TRUE TO HIS WORD.

He’d driven them up to the doorstep, then flew inside with their luggage, forgoing the proffered help from an obviously pissed-off bellboy. When Paul and Joanna followed Pablo into the loud Art Deco lobby, a fawning concierge with dyed-blond hair and a slight lisp was waiting to show them to their room.

Pablo promised to return in three hours to take them to the orphanage.

After he had left, Paul laid himself out on the generously sized bed and said, “I wish I could fall asleep, but I can’t.”

Two hours later he woke up and said, “What time is it?”

Joanna was over by the window reading the latest issue of Mother & Baby magazine. Paul couldn’t help remembering that she’d begun her subscription over four years ago.

“Sorry you couldn’t sleep, honey,” she said.

“I guess it caught up with me.”

“I guess.”

“Did you nap?”

“Uh-uh. Too jazzed.”

“What time is it?”

“One hour till Pablo comes back.”

“One hour. Well . . .”

Joanna put the magazine facedown and smiled at him. The cover was a startling close-up of a newborn’s eyes: baby blue. “It’s surreal, isn’t it?” Joanna said.

“ Surreal ’s a good word.”

“I mean, in one hour we’re going to meet her.”

“Yeah. Shouldn’t I be pacing or something?”

“Or something.”

“Well, I would pace. But there’s not enough room. Consider me mentally pacing.”

“Paul?”

“Yeah?”

“I’m so happy. I think.”

“Why just think ?”

“Because I’m so scared.”

It wasn’t like Joanna to be scared of anything—that was his department. It was enough to get him off the bed and over to her chair, where he shook off the pins and needles in his legs and leaned down to hug her. She put her head back on his shoulder and he smelled equal parts shampoo, Chanel No. 5, and, yes, the slightly acrid odor of fear.

“You’re going to be great,” Paul said. “Wonderful.”

“How do you know?”

“Because you’ve been babying me for ten years, and I don’t have any complaints. Because I say so.”

“Oh well, if you say so . . .”

She lifted her head and he kissed her full on the lips. Nice lips, he thought. Beautiful lips. She was one of those women who look good falling out of bed—maybe better, since makeup seemed to cover up her features rather than do anything to enhance them. Pale, lightly freckled skin, with powder-blue eyes—the kind they hand-paint on delicate porcelain dolls. Delicate, however, wouldn’t necessarily be one of the adjectives he’d use to describe Joanna. Strong, smart, focused, was more like it. On certain occasions he’d been known to refer to her as Xena, warrior princess —always affectionately, of course, and usually under his breath. She’d be thirty-seven in less than two weeks, but she still looked, well, twenty -seven. From time to time he wondered if she’d always look that way to him, if generally happy couples tend to see each other the way they were back when, till they suddenly wake up around sixty or so and wonder who that middle-aged person is sleeping next to them.