SUN STORIES:..."When She Was Good"...

 

By EDUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ

McALLEN, Texas | Last night, the end of a long, lousy Tuesday, was the first time I thought about my departure. That surprised me. Can it have something to do with Elena, or with Maria Cristina, with Nancy, something to do with all three? Sure.

Without them, I'd likely be down the road on my novel and my free-lance writing. But they are what we know as the flavorings of Life - key, key, key ingredients to reconciling with the best reasons for breathing, for getting up in the morning and for believing time has meaning.

I know the day will come when I leave. I always knew that. No surprise there.

Still, losing Elena may have been part of the eventual end, but to lose her this way simply wasn't in the plot. I suppose I feel sorry for her husband, Johnny. No man deserves what she did, although maybe there's a good reason, one she may throw at me before it's all said and done. There was some upkeep to take care of in my old hotel room before I sat down with my bottle of wine.

Re-arranging my few shirts in the closet took all of maybe 30 seconds, and the clearing of books from the room's only shelf another minute or minute and a half. The bathroom sink needed a bit more elbow grease and I did change the sheets on the bed, really only because the reliable hotel staff had delivered my clean ones.

Windy rain loomed, according to the weather people on TV. That might help. Rain has a way of covering my bad moods. Some say the opposite, but, for me, rain, especially during the hot summer months, cleanses the sort of things that you have no answers for, like romance gone bad.

I shall miss sweet-as-honey Elena. She was too beautiful for me, yet there she was, there she came and there I went. Love tends to make a man do things he wouldn't otherwise do - like think. I think I genuinely loved her. My feelings still say that, still talk to me.

I can say it with complete conviction, me knowing that I was damned lucky to have met her.

Damned lucky...

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