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Previous Engineering Romance: A Love Story
by Flagator_		 Next

Chapter Sixteen, Part Two

A little girl, apparently motherless, foraged in the trash bins behind the restaurant. For a moment, Susan thought it was Carmen Bigot. But when she emerged from the can and her grimy face momentarily turned Susan's way, Susan saw that the girl was younger, with more pinched features. Her thoughts turned to the note she had left for Rogelio with Carmelita.

She was sorry that she had to hurt Rogelio again. She had been hurting him all along, she knew, by holding back. He knew too that something was wrong, that she never truly gave herself to him; that even though she lived in the home he had built and slept in his bed, even though she freely gave him her body, there was a deep core he could not touch, a part of her that could never be his. Still, though, he persisted, hoping against hope to crack her shell, to gain at least a peek at the treasure inside that was her soul.

But if I let him in, he would find nothing there, she told herself. There was something inside, still, something which wailed and clawed at the walls to get out. But she pushed it down, for its own good. Outside is pain, she told herself. You stay in there and be quiet.

Which was worse, she wondered, Rich deceiving me, or me deceiving Rogelio?

Is there really any difference?


Rogelio burst into the immigration office and accosted the bureaucrat behind the desk. "Has Susan Valderrama been here?"

Looking slightly horrified at his appearance, the woman turned to a file cabinet. "I'll have to check the records..."

"No, I mean today. Recently. Just within the past few hours. Were you here? Did you see her? Woman, about this tall, light skin, short black hair in a blunt cut?"

"No, nobody like that."

"Are you sure?"

"There's no Valderrama in our files," she said.

"Wait... look under Susan Hill."

"Oh." She turned again and pulled out a file. "Yes, here it is."

Of course, he thought. Rich would have been the one to apply, and he wouldn't have used his real last name. "Yes, yes, that's her. What is it, what happened?"

"I'm afraid I can't tell you. Government records are confidential."

"Dammit, I'm her husband!"

"Oh, then I suppose it's all right, Mr. Hill. Both your emigration permits were approved. They were delivered to her at the power plant this morning."


A cook appeared at the back door of the restaurant and shooed the homeless girl away. She scampered behind the nearby police station, but stopped there and peeked around the corner, waiting for the cook to go back inside.

"Oye! Nina!" Susan called, waving the girl over. "Venga aca!"

The girl shyly came over, but did not say anything. Close up, she looked even more painfully thin.

Susan dug into her purse and came up with a five-peso coin. "Tenga esto." She pressed the coin into the girl's hand. The waif stared at the coin, then at Susan, with a baffled look, as if expecting her to realize her mistake and snatch it back. Before that could happen, the girl turned and ran off.

Susan followed the girl with her eyes, then turned in the other direction. Seagulls were protesting as the freighter churned their fishing waters on the way to the dock. She stood, brushed the grit off her seat, and picked up her suitcase. She felt a tug on her skirt.

She turned, and the little girl was back. Proudly she held up a fistful of flowers, obviously freshly yanked from a landscaping patch. "Ah, que linda," she said, taking the offered bouquet. "Gracias." The girl scampered off again.

Susan tucked the flowers into her purse with the letter, picked up the suitcase again and headed for the dock building, where dock workers were already emerging to pick up cargos of cigars and bananas and rum waiting for export. Inside, she approached the dockworker sitting at the desk, opened and unfolded the letter, and showed it to him. He nodded and pushed a clipboard to her, and she signed it.


"SUSANA!" Rogelio called out her name as his feet pounded down the dirt road toward the docks. "SUSANA! WAIT!"

As he rounded the last corner, he thought he could see her, boarding the freighter. He called her name again, but she didn't turn around. The figure disappeared into the ship.

Rogelio dashed out onto the dock, but a dockworker blocked his way. "Watch where you're going," the burly man grunted.

"You don't understand, my wife's on that boat!" he cried.

"Yeah, that's what I tell myself every time, but I'm still single too," he said.

"No, no, you don't understand, I have to talk to her!"

Rogelio tried to duck past the dockworker, but he imposed himself again. "Hold it, you can't go out there. It's dangerous. They're casting off."

"No!" he screamed. "SUSANA!"

"What's going on here?" asked a policeman attracted by the ruckus.

"I'm trying to tell this one he doesn't belong here," the dockworker answered.

"Come on, fellow, the boat's leaving, and so are you."

"NO!" Rogelio swung his fist and knocked the surprised dockworker to the deck. He sprang over the prone man, but the policeman caught him in a tackle and wrenched his arm behind his back. The ship sounded its horn as it pulled away from the dock. "SUSANA! Come back!"

Rogelio stopped struggling and lowered his head to the deck. "Te amo, Susana," he sobbed. "Te amo."


Susan thought she heard someone calling her name, but the boat's horn drowned it out. She picked up her suitcase and went back up to the deck, where the breeze stirred by the boat's motion ruffled her hair.

She hated having to hurt Rogelio, but she had to. Tropico held nothing but pain for her any more, and even Rogelio's unquestioning love could not fill the hollow she had within. The last straw came when she got her period, and realized she wasn't really pregnant, that her bout of "morning sickness" that day had been nothing more than a combination of mild heatstroke and bad taquitos. Even her marriage to Rogelio was founded on a falsehood. It was as if the final string holding her heart snapped then, letting it fall into the dark pit inside her. Rogelio would eventually see that this way was for the best. As she had said in her goodbye note to him, he deserved a wife who could love him back.

The engines made the steel deck of the ship throb under her feet like a hearbeat. She stood at the rail and watched the buildings of the city slip away; presently, as the ship steamed up the coast of the island, her former home of Montevideo came into view. On the beach, she spied the pub where she had, for the first time, met the man to whom she gave her heart.

She imagined she could hear music wafting across the waves: "Quien se comio mi pollo? No tengo ninguno idea..."

No matter how many times she heard those words, they would always make her cry.

Wiping quiet tears, she kneeled down and opened her suitcase, pulling out the battered straw hat. She caressed its crown, remembering how effortlessly it had sailed across the pub to land on the coat peg, so long ago. Life seemed just as effortless then; love seemed effortless.

She closed the suitcase, and pulling the flowers out of her purse, wove their stems through the band. She drew back her arm and flung it out over the rail, where it whirled and tipped, landing on the surface of the waves. It bobbed there for a while, until the motion of the ship finally swept it to the stern and out of view.

"Rest in peace, muchacho," she said.

To Be Concluded
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