I tell him I’d read something about the rescue and ask him to tell me how he managed it.
“I got eight hundred men and placed them at every one of the eight hundred public phones in Medellín. Then we followed everyone who made a call at six p.m., the appointed time for the kidnappers to call and discuss how the twelve-million-dollar ransom would be paid. Through tracking, we ruled out the innocent people one by one until we found the guerrilleros. We located the leader of the band and kidnapped his entire family. We rescued Martha Nieves, and the ‘rebels,’ ‘insurgents,’ or ‘subversives’ found out they can’t mess with us.”
Astonished, I ask how one manages to find eight hundred trustworthy people.
“It’s a simple matter of logistics. It wasn’t easy, but it was the only way. In the next few days, if you let me take you to see my other civic and social projects, you’ll see just where all those people came from. But tonight I just want to talk about you: What happened with Aníbal? You two seemed so happy together.”
I tell him that the rocks of coke that he gave to Aníbal as a gift led me to decide that a woman like me could not live with an addict. And I add that, on principle, I don’t talk about a man that I’ve loved with another. He notes that that is an unusual trait, then asks if it’s true that I was married to an Argentine director who was twenty years older than me. I admit that, unfortunately, I’m still married to him.
“Even though we’ve split our property, he absolutely refuses to sign the divorce papers, so I can’t get married again and he cannot marry the new woman in his life.”
He looks at me in silence, as though memorizing my words. Then he transforms, and in a tone that leaves no room for the slightest argument, he tells me what I have to do.
“Tomorrow, your lawyer is going to call David Stivel and tell him he has until Wednesday to sign the divorce papers, or there will be consequences. You and I will talk after the notaries close, and you can tell me what happens.”
With my eyes shining in the amber light of the candles, I ask if Zorro would be able to kill the ogre keeping the princess locked in the tower. Taking my hand in his, he replies very seriously, “Only if the ogre is brave. Because I don’t waste lead on cowards. But you’re worth dying for . . . aren’t you, my love?”
With those words, and the question in his eyes and the touch of his skin, I finally know that he and I are leaving our friendship behind, because we are destined to become lovers.
WHEN HE CALLS on Wednesday night, my news is not good.
“So he didn’t sign, then. . . . He’s a stubborn che, isn’t he? He sure wants to complicate our lives. This is a serious problem! But before we figure out what to do about it, I need to ask you something: Once you’re finally a free woman, will you have dinner with me again, at my friend Pelusa Ocampo’s restaurant?”
I reply that it’s fairly improbable that in the year 2000 I’ll still be free, and he persists, “No, no, no! I’m talking about Friday, day after tomorrow, before some other ogre beats me to it.”
With a resigned sigh, I note that this is the kind of problem that cannot be solved in forty-eight hours.
“Day after tomorrow you will be a free woman, and you’ll be here with me. Good night, love.”
ON FRIDAY, when I come home for lunch after spending hours in the studio editing the program we’d filmed at the dump, my housekeeper informs me that my lawyer, Hernán Jaramillo, has called three times because he needs to speak with me urgently. When I call him, he exclaims, “Stivel called this morning, desperate to tell me he had to sign the divorce papers before noon, or he was dead! The poor guy came to the notary pale as wax and shaking like a leaf; he looked like he was about to have a heart attack. He almost couldn’t sign his name! Then, without a word, he ran away like a bat out of hell. I can’t believe you’ve been married for three years to such a chicken! But anyway . . . you’re a free woman now. Congratulations, and let me know about the next one. Just make sure he’s rich and good-looking this time.”
At two thirty in the afternoon, my housekeeper announces that six men are here bearing flowers; the arrangement won’t fit in the elevator and they’re asking for permission to carry it up the stairs, which seems suspicious to her. I tell her it’s possible the man who sent them isn’t just suspicious but “a criminal.” I ask her to put our minds at ease and run down to reception to find out who they’re from. She comes back and hands me the card:
For my freed Panther Queen,
from El Zorro. P.
WHEN THE MEN LEAVE, I’m confronted by a thousand cattleya trianae, Colombia’s national flower, and orchids in every shade of purple, lavender, lilac, and pink, with white phalaenopsis here and there like foam in a vivid violet sea. My housekeeper’s only comment, with arms crossed and brow furrowed: “I didn’t like those characters one bit . . . and your friends would say that this is the most ostentatious thing they’ve seen in their lives!”
In fact, I know that if I showed them something so splendid, they would die of envy. I tell her that this arrangement could only have been done by the famous silleteros of Medellín, the artists of the Flower Festival.
At three in the afternoon, the phone rings; without bothering to ask who’s calling, I ask where he’d pulled a revolver on David. At the other end of the line, I sense surprise and then happiness. He bursts out laughing and tells me he has no idea what I’m talking about. Then he asks what time I want him to pick me up at the hotel to go to dinner. Glancing at the clock, I remind him that the Medellín airport closes at 6:00 p.m. and the last flight on Friday must have about twenty people on the wait list.
“Oh hell . . . I hadn’t realized. . . . And here I was hoping to celebrate your freedom! What a shame! Well, we’ll have dinner another day, maybe in the year 2000.”
And he hangs up. Five minutes later, the phone rings again. This time I pray to God it isn’t one of my friends when, without waiting for him to identify himself, I say that his thousand orchids are overflowing out the windows, and they’re the most beautiful thing I have seen in my life. I ask him how long it took to pick them.
“They’re just like you, my love. And I’ve had people gathering them since . . . the day I saw you with Band-Aids on your face and knees, remember? Anyway, I just wanted to tell you that Pegasus has been waiting for you since last night. You can fly him today, tomorrow, day after tomorrow, in a week or a month, because he’s not going to move from there until you’re on him. I’m only going to hope . . . and wait for you.”
Now, this is really a carriage for a modern Cinderella: a brand-new Learjet, white and shining, with three handsome and smiling pilots instead of six white shire horses. It’s 5:15 p.m., and we have just enough time to get to Medellín before the airport closes. I could have made him wait a week or a month, but I also love him, and I can’t wait a single day. While I slide through the clouds, I wonder if Pablo will make me suffer the way a couple of other men I’d loved ages before had, cruel men who were perhaps richer than him. Then I remember the words of Françoise Sagan: “I’d rather cry in a Mercedes than on a bus,” and I tell myself happily:
“Well, I’d rather cry in a Learjet than in a Mercedes!”
There are no unicorn-drawn carriages or moonlit dinners beneath the Eiffel Tower, no emeralds or rubies, no fireworks displays. Only him close to me, confessing that the first time he felt me holding on to his whole body in the Río Claro, he knew he hadn’t saved my life just so I could belong to another man, but so that I would be his. Now he is begging me, pleading, imploring, repeating over and over:
“Ask me for anything, everything you want! Just tell me what you desire most,” as if he were God, and I’m telling him that he’s only a man, and not even he could stop time to freeze or draw out for a second longer that flood of golden moments that the gods’ splendid generosity has