Waiting For Columbus (43 page)

“Bathroom,” she says quickly. In a flash she’s in the hallway. In scant seconds she’s standing in the bathroom with the door locked. The lock click echoes in the small room. A strip of fluorescent lighting sparks to life, hesitant and yellow.

Breathe, Consuela
, she tells herself. She slides down the wall so her buttocks rest on the floor, her feet still flat on the tile. Her forearms rest on her knees.
This can’t be
, she thinks.
How could I be so stupid?

Even with the air-conditioning and the cool tile on her back, Consuela is sweating. She can feel the wetness on her back, and under her arms.

Why hasn’t Columbus slept with Isabella? It’s a story. There must be a thousand ways to tell a story in which this lust is consummated. There was plenty of opportunity. Just make up some motel room in Barcelona, or Madrid, or Marbella. Find some clever way to shake off her bodyguards. Wear disguises. But Columbus has not told this story. Their relationship is taut with sexual tension. It’s restrained, withheld, and ultimately forbidden. Just like …

It’s me. I’m Isabella. Oh, fuck
.

“Does he know who he is?” Emile sips his coffee. Dr. Balderas had been pleased to show off his new Italian espresso machine. When Emile had asked for a café cortado, the doctor jumped up and made one for himself, too.

“Not yet,” Dr. Balderas says, “but we believe he’s close.”

“How close?”

Dr. Balderas hesitates.

“Look, it’ll take us a few days, perhaps as long as a week, to confirm who he is. But if he is this missing Canadian, I’ll have to let the Canadian embassy know we’ve found him. They’ll want to notify his family. And eventually, sooner rather than later, they’re going to want to take him home.”

“How much can you delay that process?”

Emile smiles. “Depends on how convincing an argument you can make.”

“Nurse Consuela is supposed to be here.” He looks at his watch. It’s not quite eight thirty.

Consuela is guarded when she arrives at Dr. Balderas’s office. She hesitates at the door. She does not know how to feel about this Interpol agent. It’s possible he holds the key to Columbus, and she’s not sure she wants the key.

Emile stands when she comes into the office.

Well, that’s old-school Cary Grant, she thinks. Nice. So far, her mother would approve.

He reaches out his hand. “I’m Emile Germain. I’m with Interpol. I’ve been chasing your Columbus patient for a few months.” He smiles. “I’ve had other cases along the way but he kept pulling me back to Spain.”

His handshake is firm, not overpowering and not lame. His eye-glasses
are folded flat in his shirt pocket—they look like they might be wire-rimmed reading glasses. Consuela looks at his shoes. Her father always harped about how you could tell a lot about a man by the way he took care of his shoes—or didn’t. He’s wearing stylish, brown dress shoes, slip-ons—more pointed than any pair of conservative wing-tipped oxfords. The shoes are not polished. But they’re not in rough shape, either.

“Do you know what happened to him?” Consuela sits across the room from the two men—she wants space.

“My office identified four files out of our database—all of these men are possibilities. We need time to confirm his identity, but judging from these pictures, I’d say we’ve got a pretty good idea. We think he was in Madrid on March 11.”

Dr. Balderas breaks in. “Everything fits, Consuela. They think he might be a Canadian.” He hands her four pictures inside a red-and-white Interpol folder, which she flips through quickly. The pictures are fairly conclusive, though not 100 percent. The man in the pictures has short hair, or his hair is covered by various hats. He wears glasses in a couple of the photos. The eyes seem to be right. Consuela returns to the first one. Yes, this one certainly looks like him.

“I thought …” Consuela says. She inhales sharply. “He’s not Spanish? He’s Canadian?”

“Yes, and this creates a bit of a problem,” Dr. Balderas says.

“You mean beyond the fact that he still believes he’s Columbus,” she says.

“Well, that and the fact Mr. Germain is going to have to report in. He’ll have to let the Canadian embassy know we’ve got one of their people. I’ve let Mr. Germain—”

“Emile, please,” Emile says.

“I’ve briefed Emile on our progress. I’ve given him my opinion. I’ve told him that based on your reports over the past couple of weeks, and the changes I’ve witnessed in Mr. Columbus, that he’s close. And we’d like a little time.”

“Nurse Consuela?” Emile says. “You seem to be crying.”

“Oh shit,” she says, wiping away her tears. “It’s nothing. I’ve been weepy for days. I’m a little overwhelmed. This is great news.”

Emile crosses the gulf between them and hands her a handkerchief. It seems to be an honest gesture, not ostentatious. It’s just something he does when women around him cry. Consuela looks at it, then up at him. He shrugs. “My mother insisted her boys always carry a handkerchief. Old habits, you know?”

Consuela takes the handkerchief and dabs the corners of her eyes. “Thanks.”

“I’d be interested in your opinion, Nurse Consuela. How close do you think he is to coming out of this?”

She stands up and crosses the office, looks down into the courtyard. These windows need cleaning, she thinks. A fly skitters along the glass. I’ve no idea, she thinks. “I’m not a doctor,” she says.

“You see him every day—have seen him almost every day. Right now, I’d value your opinion more than any doctor’s—no offense intended.” He nods at Dr. Balderas.

“He’s close to finishing his story. It’s almost done. But I don’t know if he’s ready to face whatever it is that happened to him.”

“I think,” Dr. Balderas says, “what Consuela is worried about is the reality. We could pressure him to face his reality and push him even further away—lose him completely.”

“How much time do you think you’ll need? I can be exceedingly slow when it comes to my paperwork.”

Consuela smiles.

“We need a week, maybe two,” Dr. Balderas says.

“Okay. That’s not a problem. I’ll need at least that long to run the DNA. There are no fingerprints on file for this alleged Mr. Nusret. I’m having a file on him forwarded to your e-mail account, Dr. Balderas, but let me tell you what I know …”

“Well, you could tell him it’s a standard test—that the same test is
being done on every patient in the institute.”

Consuela smiles. “He’s delusional, not stupid. What do I tell him when he asks what the test is for?”

“Tell him the test is looking for influenza antibodies,” Emile says, “that this test will help with the development of a flu shot.”

“Is this in any way close to ethical?”

“You’re responsible for his well-being. This test will help us be sure that he is who we think he is.” Emile is surprised to find himself feeling envy. He’s envious of Columbus because he gets to be with Consuela every day—well, every day she works. He looks over at Consuela. Clearly she is weighing the ethics of this test. Emile finds himself liking her more for her hesitation.

“Okay,” she says. “Okay. I’ll get you a DNA sample.”

“One more thing,” Emile says. “What time does your shift end?”

“Are you asking me out on a date?” She shakes her head as if this would be entirely out of the question.

“Well, we could call it business, but it’s been a long time since I’ve
had a glass of wine with a woman who pushes me on the ethics of my job.”

“No,” Consuela says. “I couldn’t possibly go out and talk about business. But I’d love to see what an ethical glass of wine looks like.”

“I have a home in Paris,” Emile says. He catches the waiter’s eyes and holds up his thumb and forefinger for two more glasses of wine.

Not a house, or a flat, or an apartment, Consuela thinks. “That sounds like code for a woman is waiting for me in Paris,” Consuela says. She stops. “I’m sorry, that’s none of my business.”

“It’s all right. It is actually a pretty homey apartment. There used to be a woman there, but she took her leave two years ago. And I’m outside the realm of relationship right now.”

“That’s a very odd way to say you’re single, Mr. Germain.”

“I’d be willing to step back into that realm for someone like you, Ms. Lopez. You did say Lopez?” Shut up, you idiot, Emile tells himself.

“I didn’t say.”

“Oh? I’m sure Dr. Balderas introduced you as Consuela Emma Lopez.”

Consuela shakes her head.

“Well, it must have been on your name tag.”

Consuela smiles and shakes her head again.

“Okay, I asked around. I dug around a bit,” Emile says. “I know about that stop sign in Barcelona—the one you ran in 1997.”

I looked you up, too, she thinks. Consuela can’t help wondering where Emile was shot. She finds his eyes. Is there hurt there? Is he still damaged there? Gray eyes, with shards of hazel. The same confidence she sees in Columbus’s eyes. An even self-knowledge. A groundedness. Yes, Columbus is deluded. But still, he has these same eyes. This Interpol man has not shaved in three days. She wonders if this is by choice. He has a strong, narrow nose. Brown hair with an undercurrent of gray.
Even when he places the small wire-rimmed reading glasses on his face, he’s attractive.

“I think I’m flattered,” Consuela says.

“Well, I’d like to know about you, beyond your work, beyond Columbus. Where were you born? Have you lived in Sevilla all your life? I want to know your story.”

Consuela sips her wine. “Well, I like to read.”