198 The Meadow of his life that left her slightly disappointed in him. And always near the end, scribbled like an afterthought, some memory of a moment they had shared together...I have been thinking of that time I saw you with your high school boyfriend, he wrote, all those BUTTONS (block letters, caps) undone on my sister’s shirt. And I was so sure you were the sweet, innocent type. Just like that, and then the sweet sign off: Your best bro (your only one) king of the inmates...Sandy. Letters that Marina always read through at least twice, all kept carefully through the years. Some days she wanted to save him so badly, but she didn’t write back that often, even when his letters struggled to camouflage the despondency and he kept mentioning his new apartment in Boston and he was sure she had good friends living there, right? But life always got in the way. “But you are thoughtful and kind, everyone says so, don’t they?” Another glass of amber has appeared as she weighs this. The old man’s voice is a mirage drifting from the smoke of the cantina, like the blue smoke of the Cuban cigarettes he was never without, the haze obscuring him like a mist of angels. She once listened to him play Coltrane’s version of My Favorite Things note for note with the cigarette dangling from two fingers until it was nothing but ash. She knew it was note for note because when she was first married, David made her listen to that album over and over and over again. Coltrane is a God, he’d say in his stoned murmur and lift the needle back to the start of the song. Even then, early on, she knew David was a mistake. But she liked to believe she was thoughtful and kind and knew how to care for people, to nurture them… “So what brought you to our modest little town of San Pedro? For that matter, what brought you to Nicaragua?” Marina knows the voice is teasing and testing her, and she laughs.
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