She’d been writing a bit over the last few months, what would ultimately wind up condensed into a first chapter, or a prologue, if she kept it at all. That was where the anger lived, the hurt. The rants about Jim and the sanctity of their union. It was crazy, what young people believed was possible, what so many earnest twenty-three-year-olds took for granted about the rest of their lives. Franny’s parents had been married for a hundred years, and she doubted that either of them had ever strayed, but what did she know? What did anyone know about anyone else, including the person they were married to? There were secret parts of every union, locked doors hidden behind dusty heavy drapes. Franny thought she must have them, too, somewhere deep inside, drawers of forgotten indiscretions. She certainly hoped so. It wasn’t any fun to be on the other side, to be the wronged party. Franny liked the idea of doing a little bit of wrong. Maybe that’s what the book would be, a memoir in the future tense. A Catalogue of My Future Sins. A middle-aged woman’s post-divorce sexual reawakening. There would be a mirror on the cover.
Antoni was speaking to a student, a young girl, maybe twelve years old. She had the steely gaze of a professional but hit two slightly wobbly backhands in a row. He stood behind her, his back at the fence, and murmured words of correction. Her third shot sliced through the air like a Ginsu knife.
“Sí,” he said, and clapped twice. Franny clapped twice in response, and he looked over at her and winked.
The roads were faster on the back of a motorcycle, the turns sharper. Jim hadn’t been on the back of a bike since he was in college, and the physical logistics were more challenging. His arms were wrapped around the pediatrician’s thick waist, and his helmet kept knocking against Terry’s. It seemed unlikely they would end up anywhere but at the very bottom of a very steep cliff, but after only about twenty minutes of silent prayer, Jim felt the vibrations of the motor slow beneath him. He opened his eyes and saw the gate for the Nando Filani International Tennis Centre. Once they’d reached a complete stop, Jim tugged off his helmet.
“This is it,” he said. As requested, Terry had stopped outside the entrance, some twenty feet down the road.
Terry tipped the bike over to one side so that Jim could dismount. He swung his left leg over the back of the bike and felt something pop. Riding motorcycles—hell, even just getting off a motorcycle—seemed to be a younger man’s game, but Jim didn’t want to appear too stodgy. Ignoring the pulled feeling in his groin, Jim walked over to the stone wall and peered into the tennis center. He could see the parking lot, which was all he really needed. That way he could see if Franny and her Don Juan took off. Jim wasn’t sure why he’d felt the need to follow his wife, but he had. It wasn’t sweet or romantic. It was possessive, and a little bit desperate, and he knew it. That didn’t matter. What mattered was that he kept Franny in his sights as long as he could, even if it meant giving Terry a bear hug for the next few hours.
Terry was used to sitting on his bike on the side of the road, taking in the scenery, and didn’t object to waiting. He closed his eyes and turned his ruddy face toward the sun. The bike wasn’t large enough for Jim to sit on without feeling like things had taken a turn for the truly intimate, and anyway, he couldn’t stop pacing. He walked up and down the road beside the entrance. The shoulder wasn’t wide enough for a car, but the bike tucked in nicely, allowing the regular traffic to zoom by. Every now and then a car would slow and pull into the parking lot of the tennis center, and every now and then, a car would pull out. When that happened, Jim would duck behind the bike as quickly as possible, or bend over as if he were inspecting the back tire. Terry would peer into the car, and say “Nope” if Franny wasn’t in it. This happened three times, until Terry said “Yep.” Jim stayed crouched behind the bike, his back facing away from the entrance, until the car turned onto the road, and then he climbed on the back of the bike as quickly as possible, wrapping his arms around Terry with genuine affection.
“Let’s go,” he said, and Terry revved the engine. Jim had never been a car guy, or a speed guy, but he was starting to understand the appeal of life on the blacktop. If he hadn’t cashed in his chips on Madison Vance, he might have splurged on a midlife crisis on wheels. He could see it so easily—he and Franny zipping up I-95, or smaller, prettier roads, taking in the fall foliage al fresco, at a sixty-mile-per-hour clip. He’d get her a helmet in whatever color she wanted, though of course she would want black, or maybe gold. Franny Gold. That was her name when they met, Franny Gold, Franny Gold, Franny Gold. He’d always loved her name, even though Franny joked that it was “shtetl chic.” How could you do better than gold? Terry turned the bike around slowly, and then they were off, Antoni’s BMW directly ahead of them. When he turned, they turned. When he stopped, they stopped. Jim couldn’t see what was directly in front of them—that was just the back of Terry’s helmet—but he watched the arid countryside turn into the streets of downtown Palma. They were on the ring road by the marina, curving underneath the shadow of the cathedral. Jim wished he knew what they were talking about, how much thicker Antoni’s accent had gotten since he left the spotlight. He prayed briefly for some sort of brain injury but then retracted the prayer from the record. Franny had done nothing wrong. If she wanted to sleep with a handsome Mallorcan, he wouldn’t stop her.
Joan had four CDs in his car: Tomeu Penya’s Sirena, Enrique Iglesias’s Euphoria, Maroon 5’s Hands All Over, and One Direction’s Take Me Home, which he claimed belonged to his younger sister. They started with One Direction, at Sylvia’s request, and Joan tried not to nod in time with the beat. It was a perfect day—warm and breezy, and once they were driving, they didn’t even need the air-conditioning anymore. Both Joan and Sylvia rolled down their windows and let the actual air do the trick. Sylvia’s hair whipped around her face like a blond tornado, but she didn’t care. When she’d had her fill of pop confection, she ejected the CD and put in the Tomeu Penya, the one person she hadn’t heard of. In the photo on the CD cover, Penya (she assumed) looked like a creepy hitchhiker, in the same way that Neil Young looks like a creepy hitchhiker. A song began—Joan hit fast forward to the second track, and Sylvia clapped along.
“This sounds like a lullaby by a guy in a tiny jacket playing in the corner of a Mexican restaurant.”
Joan looked at her as if she’d called his mother a whore.
“What? Do you actually like this?”
Joan shook his head, which at first Sylvia took as him agreeing with her, but his face turned red, and that was clearly not the case. “This is Mallorcan music,” he said, pointing at the stereo. “This is our national, country music.”
“Right. And everyone knows that country music sucks, Taylor Swift notwithstanding. Makes perfect sense.” She turned the CD case over in her hand. “Wait, we have to listen to the ‘Taxi Rap.’” Sylvia hit the forward button a few times and waited for Tomeu to start rapping about taxis, which he did.
“Oh my God,” she said. “This is like seeing your grandfather naked.”
Joan slammed the stop button, silencing the car. “You are such an American. Some of us have actual pride in our history, you know! You sound so stupid!”