The Secret Letters of the Monk Who Sold His Ferrari (13 page)

After my run, I did the push-ups I’d promised in the journal and a few sit-ups on the incline board. Then I headed back to my room to get ready.

After an indulgently long shower, I got dressed and headed to the lobby. The head concierge was not on duty yet, but the
assistant concierge directed me to a café on the corner that was supposed to have the best coffee around.

While I ate my breakfast, I went through my messages. There was a conciliatory note from Nawang assuring me that she was keeping me in the loop and saying how much she was looking forward to my return. There were a host of other forwarded and cc-ed notes, making me wonder if Nawang had belatedly realized that she had dropped me from the correspondence thread. I responded to most, if only to let everyone know I was still kicking. And then I returned to Tessa’s note.

I read it and reread it, but no amount of reviewing it was going to help. I just didn’t know how to respond. Instead, I pulled out the journal Julian had given me. Maybe writing out my thoughts would help clarify things. The truth was that Tessa had been on my mind—a lot. But it was also true that the idea of encouraging her—the thought of starting a new relationship—terrified me and filled me with guilt. I was still married, after all. But how long would that last? Certainly in the months after Annisha had asked me to leave, I thought of the separation as only a temporary arrangement. I knew that Annisha was trying to force me to reconsider my priorities, but I had assumed the separation would force
her
to accept that what we had together was better than life apart. Now I wasn’t so sure that Annisha would ever see that. Her frustration and anger had softened, but it seemed to be replaced with sadness and resignation—not regret. Did that mean she had moved on? Was it over?

And if it was, what could be so wrong about seeing Tessa? Maybe it was the workplace romance thing. No one ever
recommends
that. Or was it just the fear of something new, of
change or the unknown? What had Julian said in that note he wrote about the grinning-skull talisman—embrace your fears? Maybe that was what I should do here—face the nerve-racking agony of asking someone out. After all, it had worked for me before. I closed the journal and put my pen back in my pocket, suddenly lost in an onslaught of memory.

I
FIRST NOTICED
A
NNISHA
in my elective ancient history course. I had taken it because it was the only half-credit course I could find that fit into my engineering schedule. It was not an uninteresting class, but what kept me coming to the lectures was the girl who sat near the front of the room, on the right side. I tried to sit as close to her as possible while still far enough away that I could get a good look at her profile if she turned her head. She had almond-shaped eyes and long, glossy-black hair. And even when she wasn’t smiling, her face had a cheerful expression. She didn’t say much in class, but when she did, she was always worth listening to. I spent the whole year wondering how I might strike up a conversation with her, with no success. By the time the final exam rolled around, I realized I had blown my chance. Since she was in arts and I was in engineering, the odds that we would have another class together again, or even cross paths, were negligible. I spent my summer in an orgy of recrimination and self-loathing.

Third year unfolded with no Annisha sightings. I had a couple of unsuccessful relationships and another lonely summer. Then, in my senior year, the gods smiled on me.

During the first week back at school, my roommates and I headed to the campus bar on Friday night. It was something
of a ritual—checking out the new waitresses. To our disappointment, we ended up at a table with a male server. There were a few familiar faces among the wait staff, a few new girls, but it wasn’t until I headed for the bathroom that I noticed the woman serving in the back corner. It was Annisha. When I got back to my table, I leaned over to Evan and asked him to look at the girl serving near the bar. He raised himself from his seat and peered across the room just as Annisha turned in our direction.

“Hmm,” he said, “what … do … I … think?” He settled back into his chair. “What I think is … she’s
waaay
out of your league.”

It wasn’t the response I was looking for. I was hoping he might say something so glowing that I would be propelled past my fear, or something that made it clear that I would have to move before he did. But he slumped in front of his beer and smirked at me. “Honestly, Jonathan. Forget it,” he said unhelpfully.

I spent the evening nursing my beer and summoning my courage. As my roommates stood to leave, I told them that I had to go to the bathroom and they should head home without me. Evan looked over at me and raised an eyebrow.

“Yeah, good luck with that,” he said as he hauled on his jacket. His tone suggested luck had little to do with it—I needed nothing less than divine intervention.

I could see Annisha sitting at a table near the bar. Her section was empty. She appeared to be counting her tips. I walked over and hovered near the table, but she didn’t seem to notice I was there.

“Hi,” I said eventually.

“Oh, hi.” She smiled when she looked up, and kept smiling
when she saw it was me. Either she was very nice or it was a good sign. Maybe both.

“Sorry to bug you,” I said. “Umm. I think you were in my ancient history class in second year?”

Annisha tilted her head to one side and paused, as if in thought. After a moment she said, “The engineer, right?” She said it slowly, as if she was still searching her memory as she spoke.

“Right, right,” I said. “It was my elective.”

I realized that I had started to shift my weight from foot to foot. I forced myself to stand still. Then I blurted it out.

“I was just wondering if you wanted to go out for coffee sometime?”

She was still smiling, but she didn’t respond right away. She was clearly weighing the idea.

“This is kind of a busy week,” she said. “I’m catching up with a lot of friends I haven’t seen since last year.”

I started nodding my head, composing my response, trying to think of something to say that would make it sound as if I really didn’t care that she didn’t want to see me.

“But next week I should have time.” She was ripping a small piece of paper from the receipts piled in front of her. She wrote a phone number on it and handed it to me.

“My name is Annisha, by the way,” she said. “I’m sorry. I’ve forgotten yours.”

L
LUIS SHOWED UP
in front of the hotel right at eight a.m. He wasn’t in his taxi.

“I thought we could start by walking,” he said. “I love to drive, but walking is the best way to see the city.”

Lluis had convinced me the previous night that I should spend what little time I had in Barcelona looking at the architecture. He claimed it was one of Barcelona’s major contributions to the world of art.

“We have nine buildings that are UNESCO heritage sites. And there is Gaudí and all that wonderful Catalan modernism architecture you saw yesterday afternoon. But architecture isn’t some artifact of the past in Barcelona. We care deeply about our buildings still today.”

Lluis explained that the city was home to more than five thousand working architects. “I challenge you to find more architects per capita anywhere else in the world,” he said. I didn’t take him up on that. He told me about buildings by Jean Nouvel, Zaha Hadid, Frank Gehry, Richard Rogers. Gehry’s was the only name I recognized, but I didn’t like to admit that.

With just a short break for an early lunch, we spent the morning and afternoon walking and walking. Occasionally we hopped on a bus, but most of the time we strolled along, our necks craned up, our heads moving back and forth to take in the buildings around us.

We saw Gaudí’s La Pedrera apartments. With their wavy walls, look of water-worn stone, and seaweedy iron balconies, it made me think of the lost city of Atlantis. Surely a city at the bottom of the ocean would look like this. We wandered through Parc Güell with the mushroom-topped gatehouse, the mosaic lizard sculpture, the circular tile-adorned esplanade. And we ended our day back where we had been last evening, in front of Sagrada Família, Gaudí’s unfinished testament to his vision and his faith, according to Lluis.

“I love this place,” said Lluis thoughtfully, gazing up at the
four soaring spires. “Did I tell you that my great-grandfather worked on it?”

“Really?” I said. “Was he a stone mason?”

“No,” said Lluis. “Just a laborer, I believe. I suspect he spent a lot of time pushing wheelbarrows and hauling bricks. But you know, like Julian’s note says, there is no insignificant work. I like to think of him sweating and dirty, looking up at the end of a long day, seeing this magnificent church rising above him and knowing that without his muscle and his time, something like this would simply not happen.”

I
T WAS LATE AFTERNOON
when Lluis walked me back to the hotel. He had some errands to run, and we both wanted to make it an early evening. My flight left at eight the next morning, and Lluis insisted on picking me up at five to get me there.

Once in my suite, I ordered dinner from room service. I wrote a couple of notes in my journal, and then pulled out my phone and composed a short message to Adam. The longing I had felt for him in Mexico lingered. I wondered how I could have gone so many days without phoning or visiting him when I was home. I started the note with a plaintive “I miss you so much, buddy.” But then I thought of Adam’s sad eyes when I had kissed him good-bye before flying to Istanbul. I erased the sentence. I wanted to be there for him, even if only with a note, rather than underlining my absence. Instead I wrote about the Temple of the Magician and about the Mayan ruins I had seen. I wrote about the sounds of the birds in the trees and the pumas that roam the forests of the Yucatán—and how I was mighty glad I didn’t meet any. And then I told him I had
just spent the day in Barcelona.
Remember last summer when we made castles on the beach and we dribbled wet sand to make the tops tall and pointy? That’s what the church I saw yesterday looked like. It was covered with spiky towers. It was designed by a guy named Antoni Gaudí, and I bet that when he was a boy, he made sand castles just like you.

I paused for a second, thinking about my next sentence. Then I wrote,
When I get back, I will take you to the beach for a weekend.
I knew the dangers of making promises, but I was determined to keep this one. It would break my heart, as well as Adam’s, if I didn’t.

T
HE EARLY MORNING LIGHT
was still breaking across the horizon when Lluis let me out of the taxi at the terminal the next day. He was bright and cheerful as usual, but he obviously noticed that I was still engulfed in my early morning fog. As he pulled my suitcase from the trunk, he looked at me with concern. “Are you sure you have everything, Jonathan?” he said. I patted my pocket to check for my wallet and passport, and then I had a momentary rush of panic. The talismans. Was the pouch around my neck? I couldn’t feel it. I opened my jacket and patted my shirt front, and sure enough, there it was—a lumpy little bag lying next to my skin. How could I have missed it? I was surprised that while it was heavier than it ever had been, the leather string did not seem to be cutting into my neck anymore. I took the pouch out from under my shirt and shoved it in my pocket. I would have to stick it in one of the plastic tubs at security.

O
NCE
I
HAD CHECKED IN
and reached the departures lounge, I found a quiet corner and dialed Annisha. It would be late—midnight, I guessed—but I was longing to talk with her, to hear some news of Adam.

When Annisha answered the phone, I apologized about the hour, but she sounded relieved to hear from me. “I’m so glad you called,” she said. “There was a little incident at school today that I wanted to talk about with you. Apparently—”

Annisha stopped. I could hear a tiny voice in the background.

“Mommy,” Adam was saying, “I can’t sleep.”

“Oh dear,” I could hear Annisha reply. “Come here and sit with Mommy. Do you want to talk to Daddy about what’s keeping you up?”

When Adam got on the phone, I asked him how he was.

“Fine,” he said in a quiet voice.

“What’s new?” I tried again.

“Nothing,” he said. Then I heard Annisha in the background.

“You wanted to tell Daddy what happened at school today, remember?”

With a little coaxing on my part, and a little prompting on Annisha’s, Adam told me that one of the second-grade students had tripped him, pushed him down and taken his granola bar at lunch.

“What did you do?” I asked. Adam said he’d told his teacher, Ms. Vanderwees, who was on yard duty. Ms. Vanderwees sent the older boy to the office.

“Did that ever happen to you?” asked Adam. “When you were little, were other kids ever bullies?”

I told Adam all about Phil Stefak, who stole all my baseball
cards and teased me about my glasses. I told him how Phil used to follow me home from school and shout strings of insults. I explained that I had been afraid to tell anyone, but finally when Phil actually grabbed my glasses from my face and stepped on them, I told my teacher. I never really found out what happened. But after that, Phil only glared at me. He never touched me again. We talked for a long time before Annisha took the phone back from Adam. I looked at my watch.

“Sorry,” I said to Annisha. “You must both be exhausted.”

“That’s okay,” said Annisha. “He really needed to talk to you. But I should try to get him back to sleep now.”

“Sure,” I said. “Just one more thing—do you know what the school is doing about this kid?”

Annisha told Adam to head back to his room, and she would join him there in a minute. Then she told me that Ms. Vanderwees had phoned her after lunch. This wasn’t the first time the boy had bullied other students. The principal called his parents and asked them to come in for a talk. Ms. Vanderwees also said she would go out for yard duty as much as she could in the coming week so she could keep an eye on things. And she had talked to the whole class about being helpful bystanders when they saw another child being hurt in the school yard.