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.Day?”She looked them over.Eyes, cameras.“I know people who could eat the lot of you for breakfast.”“Thanks, thanks, that’s great, Ms.Day …”She crossed the beach.Up the old familiar stairs to the walkway.The stair rails had aged nicely, with the silken look of driftwood, and the striped awning was new.It looked like a good place, the Lodge, with its cheerful arches and sand-castle tower with the deep, round windows and the flags.Innocent fun, sunbathing and lemonade, a wonderful place for a kid.She stepped into the bar, let the door shut itself behind her.Dim inside—the bar was full of strangers.Earth-cooled air, the smell of wine coolers and tortilla chips.Tables and wicker chairs.A man looked up at her—one of David’s wrecking crew she thought, not Rizome, but they’d always liked hanging out here—she had forgotten his name.He hesitated, recognizing her but not sure.She ghosted past him.One of Mrs.Delrosario’s girls passed her with a pitcher of beer.The girl stopped, turned on her heel.“Laura.It’s you?”“Hello, Inez.”They couldn’t hug—Inez was carrying the beer.Laura kissed her cheek.“You’re all grown up, Inez.… You can serve that stuff now?”“I’m eighteen, I can serve it, I can’t drink it.”“Well it won’t be long now, will it?”“I guess not.…” She was wearing an engagement ring.“My abuela will be glad to see you—I’m glad too.”Laura nodded toward the crowd from behind her sunglasses.“Don’t tell them I’m here—everyone makes such a big deal of it.”“Okay, Laura.” Inez was embarrassed.People got that way when you were a global celebrity.Tongue-tied and worshipful—this, from little Inez, who used to see her changing diapers and knocking around in her bathing suit.“I’ll see you later huh?”“Sure.” Laura ducked behind the bar, went through the kitchen.No sign of Mrs.Delrosario, but the smell of her cooking was there, a rush of memory.She walked past copper-bottomed pans and griddles, into the dining room.Rizome guests talking politics—you could tell it by the strained looks on their faces, the aggression.It wasn’t just the fear.The world had changed.They had eaten up the Islands and it had settled in their belly like a drug.That Island strangeness was everywhere now, diluted, muted, and tingly.…She couldn’t face them, not yet.She went up the tower stairs—the door wouldn’t open for her.She almost walked into it headlong.Codes must have changed—no, she was wearing a new watchphone, not programmed for the Lodge.She touched it.“David?”“Laura,” he said.“You at the airport?”“No.I’m right here at the top of the stairs.”Silence.Through the door, across the few feet that still separated them, she could feel him, bracing himself.“Come on in.…”“It’s the door, I can’t get it open.”“Oh! Yeah, okay, I can get it.” It shunted.She put her sunglasses away.She came up through the floor and threw the hat onto a table, into a round column of sunlight from a tower window.All the furniture was different.David rose from his favorite console—but no, it wasn’t his, not anymore.A Worldrun game was on.Africa was a mess.He came to greet here—a tall, gaunt black man, with short hair and reading glasses.They gripped each other’s hands for a moment.Then hugged hard, saying nothing.He’d lost weight—she could feel the bones in him.She pulled back.“You look good.”“So do you.” Lies.He took off the glasses and put them in his shirt pocket.“I don’t really need these.”She wondered when she was going to cry.She could feel the need for it coming on.She sat down on a couch.He sat on a chair across the new coffee table.“The place looks good, David.Really good.”“Webster and Webster, we build to last.”That did it.She began crying, hard.He fetched her some tissue and joined her on the couch and put his arm over her shoulders.She let him do it.“The first weeks,” he said, “about the first six months, I dreamed about this meeting.Laura, I couldn’t believe you were dead.I thought, in jail somewhere.Singapore.She’s a political, I told people, somebody’s holding her, they’ll let her go when things straighten out.Then they started talking about your being on the Ali Khamenei, and I knew that was it.That they’d finally gotten you, that they’d killed my wife.And I’d been half the world away.And hadn’t helped.” He put his thumbs into the corners of his eyes.“I’d wake up at night and think of you drowning.”“It wasn’t your fault,” she said.“It wasn’t our fault, was it? What we had was good, it was really going to last, to last forever.”“I really loved you,” he said.“When I lost you, it just destroyed me.”“I want you to know, David—I don’t blame you for not waiting.” Long silence.“I wouldn’t have waited either, not if it was like that.What you and Emily did, it was right for you, both of you.”He stared at her, his eyes bloodshot.Her gesture, her forgiveness, had humiliated him.“There’s just no end to what you’re willing to sacrifice, is there?”“Don’t blame me!” she said.“I didn’t sacrifice anything, I didn’t want this to happen to us! It was stolen from us—they stole our life.”“We didn’t have to do it.We chose to do it.We could have left the company, run off somewhere, just been happy.” He was shaking.“I would have been happy—I didn’t need anything but you.”“We can’t help it if we have to live in the world! We had bad luck.Bad luck happens.We stumbled over something buried, and it tore us up.” No answer
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