Chapter 8
There’s time till 6, plenty of it. I still don’t know what to do with it, so I start to walk hoping for some inspiration to fill me in. I am strained, but the warmth of the sun revives me a bit at a time and I begin to be optimistic, perhaps even happy. Maybe I’ve found a lead, that guy – Lee – he seems to know something.
I decide to head towards the ocean. When I reach it after about a good hour walk I find myself a bench and sit there, my gaze melting away into the waves. I smell the salt. I listen to the seagulls. I feel the mild breeze on my face. I just let myself live, drenched by the primitive sensorial joy of the moment. I tilt my head backwards, closing my eyes. The rays leak through my closed eyelids, sending a myriad of red dots through my optical nerves, before all goes black, slowly, seamlessly…
“Damn me if I am wrong! You’re back all right, aren’t you?”, I hear a voice say, hovering somewhere above my head
I open my eyes halfway and realize I’ve been sleeping a dreamless sleep for who knows how long. My vision is blurred, but I get a feeling for the scrubby face of the man who’s speaking to me and who looks like a homeless.
“What?”, I mumble
“Jesus!”, he exclaims
I’m fully awake now, and I stare at the man questioningly. I sure don’t know him.
“Well, if you are not Veronica you’re pretty damn similar to her”, he says
I jump up, suddenly.
“What did you just say about Veronica?”, I ask, trying to sound chill
“Do you know her?”, he asks in return
“No…who is Veronica?”, I insist, my heart pounding
“She came here often. She was nice, she asked what I needed and brought it to me. She listened to my old stories…my old, old stories…”, the man says, almost talking to himself now, shaking his head and laughing sadly
Then a fit of cough shakes him, turning his face red and bending his body.
“We should get you some cough syrup”, I say, my words echoing as an inane attempt to heal the man’s life
He can’t speak for a moment, but when the fit ceases, “You’re like your sister”, he tell me
“My sister?”, I repeat
“Veronica”, he says
“Is she not your sister?”, he adds after a pause
“I don’t know…I don’t know anything anymore”, I whisper
“That’s what she said before leaving”, the man tells me
“Leaving for where?”, I want to know
“She didn’t say. One day she just told me her world had changed, that she discovered facts she could not understand. She said she needed to understand, and the next day she was gone”, the man tells me, shaking his balding head every now and then.
“So Veronica lived in this city…”, I say, talking to myself
“Not for long. I met her one year ago, it was fall, and when summer came she left”
“Because she needed to find her answers somewhere else…”, I say hesitantly
The man nods
“But what was she doing here?”, I ask
“She was an engineer. She told me so”, he says
I am speechless, and the man continues.
“She was here to monitor the levels of pollution in the water”
“And I am an environmental engineer…”, I whisper
“Ah really?”, the man exclaims, brightening up abruptly, “I said you and your sister you’re the same, didn’t I?”
The fact makes him happy for some reason, and he laughs before his laugher breaks into a second fit of cough
“What’s you name by the way?”, the man asks when he recovers
“Iris. What’s yours?”
“Jonathan”
“Do you come here often?”, I ask
“I go everywhere”, he laughs
Then he turns serious
“Would you trust me if I told you that I was an engineer too?”, he asks anxiously, as if his identity depended on my answer
“Yes”, I reply.
Why wouldn’t I? The world is so shifty
“You’re good, I can tell. I haven’t been very good to myself, you know, so here I am”, he shrugs
“Do you think Veronica is my sister?”, I ask, diverting the conversation
“I bet you”, he says
“I’ve lost my real family when I was young, too young to recall what happened”, I say, and find myself stunned to be telling all this to someone I just met.
And yet I trust Jonathan, instinctively.
“Well, I wish you the best of luck in finding what you’ve lost”, he tells me with a sad smile
“Thank you, I need it”
“I must get going now, but if you come here in the morning perhaps we’ll meet again”, Jonathan says, before carrying his crumpled frail body away, slowly, as if it were an enormous burden
“I’ll come again”, I promise
Jonathan turns for a short moment and raises his hand in farewell as he limps away.