Page 28 of Out of Office

Gino whipped out his cell phone with a flair, and started typing, then flashed his phone on my face, gesturing me to hold it. My heart skipped a whole stanza.

“Go ahead, send the email. This is the business mailbox for the transportation company.”

Suddenly my hunger disappeared and the bibimbap decided to start a party in my stomach. My heartbeats were audible, and I tried to pretend I was okay.

“Oh wow, you’re down bad,” he said.

“I’m no—Yes. Yes, I am. I dream about him nightly.”

“Email him, Gen.”

“Okay. I will.”

And with Gino’s help I typed an email reaching out to Adrián, my fingers shaking the entire way.

Fourteen

Adrián

The bang of dominoes on wood startled me out of my thoughts.

“He’s gone again,” Shakira said and bumped me with her foot as I sat beside her at the square domino table, my hand swimming in my eyes. I couldn’t make sense of the game or what to play next.

“Julín, can you sit in for me?” I stood up, and everyone groaned in annoyance. I had warned them I wasn’t good company earlier tonight when Julín came through with Shakira, practically dragging me out of the efficiency to come to Shakira’s house to hang out and play. I hadn’t wanted to leave my spot, even considering getting in the car and hitting the road to Colón to spend the weekend with my family, but Shakira wisely convinced me to stay put. The drive at night not the wisest choice with how my head was right now.

Julín walked by me, grumbling, and sat at my open spot, quickly assessing my hand and banging his chip to continue the play.

The game flowed while the guys and Shakira continued joking. I couldn’t be bothered. I had carried a void inside since Genevieve left five weeks ago. That night before, when she told me she was going to erase my phone number, then grabbed my cell phone and did the same, I almost tackled her and kissed away her sadness, begged her to stay. I didn’t have much to offer a woman like her. She wasn’t wealthy, but she was determined and had carved out a comfortable life for herself in a country full of comforts. I wouldn’t be able to offer her that same quality of life she had in Florida, and we both knew it.

So here I was, moping around, sitting on the porch of one of my oldest friends, as I suspected I’d let the woman of my life slip out of my fingers due to pure life circumstances.

“I won!” Shakira whooped, and the guys grumbled their annoyance. Julín said a few choice words and pushed back the chair to get a beer out of the cooler. Shakira came to me, with her bright smile, tanned brown skin glowing, her long braided ponytail swinging back and forth, and Tito and Fufo stayed at the table arranging the dominos.

“So, are you gonna continue to bring the room down?” Shakira offered me a cold Atlas, sat on the bench, and clicked her bottle with mine.

“So supportive.”

“This is me giving you support. You’ve been a shell of yourself for five weeks. The aunties have been asking where you have been every Sunday for the cookouts,” Shakira said, referring to her mother and aunts who sold Afro-Antillean food on Sundays. “Julín and I kidnapped you today in an attempt to cheer you up, but I can see we failed.”

“Well, I have a lot on my mind.”

“Okay, dark and mysterious. I know you like that girl you were driving around. Julín told me.”

“Julín thinks he knows all my life.”

“Listen, he told me what Claudia told him, and it seems you were pretty sweet on the lady. There is nothing wrong with accepting that. What I don’t understand is how in the era of the internet, cell phones, and cameras, you haven’t stayed in touch with her.”

Shakira had a way of worming her way into the heart of any topic, and I didn’t have the energy to spar with her tonight.

“I don’t have her phone number. And she doesn’t have mine.”

Fufo and Tito guffawed at the domino table, entangled in their own one-on-one game, while Julín hovered, watching them play and offering some commentary. On this bench, though, silence reigned.

“So, after spending more than four months driving her and then two intimate weeks together, you both forgot to exchange numbers?”

“No, we had each other’s numbers, but she asked to erase them because we both knew we had no future together.” A bullshit ask if I had any say, but I wasn’t a man to push my attentions on anyone closed to them. But maybe I should have said more, opened up about how much I would miss her, of how she made me hope...

“And...why is that?” she asked in the same tone I imagined she used with her kindergarten students when they did something incredibly outrageous.

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