9. Lazy Day in Paradise

I opened my eyes to a shaft of light flooding in the room through the slightly opened drapes. Where was I? Oh yeah; the Canary Islands. I roll over on my side to look at the other bed. Cerstin is blinking her eyes.
“Morning.” I volunteer softly.
“Oh John…”
“How do you feel?”
“Sick.”
I could tell that this was going to be lazy day, which actually suited me just fine. The less I had to walk the happier I was going to be. Cerstin stayed in bed for most of the morning. I did walk down to the market to get stuff for breakfast. The whole way down the steep incline I audibly reacted to each sore, tentative step.
As I was coming out of the market Radiger literally ran past me without breaking stride. He was either just starting, or just ending a morning jog.

I set out breakfast on the terrace and made coffee. My cell phone chirped. I had a text message from Alina. She was writing to say how nice it had been to see me in Manchester and to thank me for video taping her act in the circus. Even allowing for the clipped and cryptic nature of most text messages I had to smile at how bad her written English was. It took several attempts to decipher her meaning. I suppose that’s unfair. I should have marveled at the fact that she wrote English at all seeing as how she never took the subject in school. I flashed back almost 13 years to when Jennifer and I first met her while we were performing with the Moscow Circus in Japan. Alina was 10 years-old and she would come to one of our rooms and we would sit with her and teach her English. We bought her a Russian-English dictionary that she carried around with her.

Cerstin was up now though barely functioning. She joined me for breakfast and then went back to bed. I cleared off the table and tidied up the kitchen a bit. I went out again to find the post office to buy stamps and stopped into an Internet café to check my e-mail. I actually felt a little guilty about intruding on my island experience by being so “modern”, particularly after commenting on the tourists that needed cable TV, but I suppose it’s just an excepted thing now. Not much in the way of e-mail. Tom had sent a link to the local TV station in Washington state that was covering the news of Charlie’s death. It seemed so surreal to be sitting where I was, a stones throw from the beach, and viewing a streaming video account of a young friend’s funeral.

I called Alan in Manchester to see if he would be joining me to visit Bob Doe, an RAF pilot that flew in the Battle of Britain. He said that he had really wanted to go but that Tina had to go to London that weekend and that he had to stay with the kids. I could tell that he was very disappointed and probably a little pissed. I assured him we would both go together the next time I was there. That eliminated my easy solution as to how I was going to get down to Sussex to meet Bob Doe. So, as long as I on the Internet I checked the United Kingdom Mapquest site to get directions from Gatwick airport to Bob Doe’s house in Sussex. It seemed relatively easy. About 26 miles away and the suggested travel time was 32 minutes. I could probably take a cab.

When I got back to the apartment Cerstin was stirring again. She felt like lying out on the terrace so I prepared a lounge chair for her and set up the umbrellas so the sun wouldn’t bake her. I brewed her some tea while she snuggled under a couple of blankets to keep her warm from the slightly cool breeze. I sat out there with her. I read “Spitfire Ace”, the companion book to the British TV series that inspired me to contact some of the RAF pilots in the first place. I wanted to prepare some intelligent questions so that I didn’t sound like the fawning, star-struck history geek that I was.

The day past by uneventfully. By early evening Cerstin felt well enough to go out for dinner. We walked to a restaurant that was surrounded by yet another field of bananas where we had a romantic, candle-lit dinner; only without the romance. The discussion finally got around to the nuts and bolts of our relationship: or lack thereof. In her eyes I wasn’t a strong enough man for her. I didn’t “use my elbows” enough to stick up for myself. For instance, why didn’t I insist on a new room when we were in New Orleans and the accommodations were so below par? Why didn’t a look for a job when I was in Berlin? Why didn’t I push harder to get a photo exhibit in Oxford or to find an agent for my book? Why didn’t I fight when Jennifer said she wanted a divorce?

Good questions. Unfortunately, not only didn’t I have any answers, I knew that whatever I might offer up in my defense would be too little, too late. She did her best to pay homage to our first year together. She admitted how wonderful it was and how, even now, she is saddened that it can’t be like that again. Of course I disagreed; convinced that if you wanted it to be it could. I said that I understood her concerns and that I had no expectations that this time together would rekindle old flames. For me it was more about spending time with someone that I truly cared for and with whom I felt I had lost a connection. The way things had just drifted apart wasn’t a fitting way for us to end. I told her that she would always have a special place in my heart and mind and that if we had gotten together at either of the two opportunities we had had last year we might have been able to avoid the awkwardness we were feeling now. In my heart I knew that love could win the day. What I wanted to tell her was how I had planned on proposing to her in Berlin. But that would have been a cheap shot and she would have just thrown it back at me. It was then that I discovered that reality has no room for romantics.

Somehow we made it through dinner. The serious talk gave way to small talk. I can’t honestly say whether or not we walked home arm in arm on this evening, nor do I remember looking up at the stars. We didn’t stop for an absucher. We went home and went to sleep in our separate beds.