what it's all about
well-heeled and incessant traveler
Sara Melina has been on a quest since she was a mere girl, searching for answers and facts, and in that constant pursuit ends up falling in love with two men at separate yet intertwined times. When she runs across meridians to the multitudes and solace of India, unaware one of the another, they go looking for her. With Adrián on her heels and Turner waiting at the Mumbai airport, in a moment that almost slips away, Sara unearths what she’s been looking for: not in what either of them have to offer,
but in what she discovers herself to be.
excerpts
“My accent?” She props one knee on a chair. He has close-cropped hair and a well-defined five o’clock shadow that keeps her from looking at his angular face and blue eyes, eyes almost too big for a man. “It’s not from anywhere in particular. I have picked up intonations from the languages I try to learn. Why?”
“Because I couldn’t decipher it.”
“I am not, nor pretend to be, enigmatic.”
“Enigmatic?”
“From the Greek to speak in riddles, therefore hard to understand.”
His eyes follow her through the glass walls until she’s back across the table, though he’d rather turn from her all: the contour of her neck, the curve of her chin, her voice. Feels like a child on a slide, anticipating, before his feet touch the ground, the climb back.
Fiery thoughts pulse through her head. She slips her feet into the sandals, sensing a need to flee the confines she has fenced around herself, elbows barely on the edge of the table, her heart in her mouth. “Could we go somewhere else for dessert?”
“Another restaurant? And perhaps get lost like we did in Shanghai?”
“I want something sweet under some colossal column in ancient Cairo. Something only you can give me”.
Fans rotate in a swirl. The people, dishes being picked up and placed on tables, waiters calling out to one another in different languages, all get shut out one at a time before he faces her. “What are you saying?”
BUT BY THEN she’s gone, scurrying out the door, the long scarf waving in the night.
The cottage, encircled by a lush grove of palm trees and ferns, overlooked the sea and a dock with fishermen milling about. Sara walked ahead, sandals in hand, garment bag pulled with the other. “Would you walk away from me?”
“If that’s what you want me to do.”
She should have known not to ask questions like that, not of him, and breathed the smell of the earth and ocean, flowers and decay, of past and present. Why did that need pull and bind tight when at other times it hung loose? The habitual breathing took its cue from the tide and it was either long and painful or short and taut, always one when she needed it to be the other. She felt limber, happy to stretch her soul, yet her mind was constricted.
Adrián kissed her forehead and cheeks, inching her into the shade of the porch. “Happy?”
“Yes,” she turned in circles into the little house, “I won’t have to wear shoes until we leave.”
“Yes. REALLY,” Sara inches her body to the booth edge and rests her elbows on the table. “Let’s start with the head, face, the obvious, talking purely superficial here. There’s the chest, upper torso, including extremities. Were you good in biology?”
“I am good in biology.”
“After that,” Sara smiles, “comes the mid-section, no need to delve.”
“Whatever.”
“Fourth are the knees, maybe even the thighs.”
“Oh, pa-leeease!” Em laughs out loud. “That’s worse than the shoes!”
