Karoo by Steve Tesich

Author:Steve Tesich [Steve Tesich]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Publisher: Random House
Published: 2007-01-04T05:00:00+00:00

PART THREE

Sotogrande

CHAPTER ONE

1

BILLY AND LEILA are playing tennis down below and not far away. I sit at my table, drinking yet another cup of espresso, stirring in the little cubes of sugar with my little espresso spoon. The outdoor restaurant of our resort hotel is deserted. I am the only customer. It is still early morning. A little after nine. The sky above me is cloudless and blue, but because I’m in Spain I do my best to think of it as being Iberian blue.

The coffee I’m drinking couldn’t be better or stronger. There are four choices: single espresso, single espresso but double in strength, double espresso, and a double-double espresso, that is, double in size and strength. I’ve had a couple of each already and am now drinking my third double-double of the day.

I light a Spanish cigarette. I brought along many cartons of my own cigarettes on the trip, but I smoked all of them a long time ago. I am now smoking a Spanish brand called Fortuna. I use locally made wooden matches to light them.

A handyman is hosing down the tiles of the terrace restaurant where I sit. The hotel is called Sotogrande, but Billy, in a moment of inspiration, has dubbed it Notsogrande. Which is what Leila has called the place ever since.

The handyman drags his hose past me, turning the nozzle away from my table. We nod to each other and then he moves on to spray the stairway leading down to the next level. Sotogrande is all levels. The dining room has three levels. The outdoor restaurant where I’m sitting overlooks the swimming pool. The swimming pool overlooks the tennis courts where Leila and Billy are playing tennis now.

They always play in the early morning or late afternoon. Leila is allergic to the sun. Even moderate exposure to direct sunlight can cause her to break out with the cold sores she dreads. So concerned was she about getting cold sores in a foreign country (the technical name for this affliction is herpes labialis) that before we left on our trip to Spain she persuaded her Venice dermatologist to overprescribe the quantity of Zovirex she would take along with her. Just in case. It is the only treatment for these fever blisters of hers. She has half a dozen little tubes of the ointment in her makeup bag in our room. Enough Zovirex for a whole ward of cold-sore patients.

She never played tennis before I introduced her to Billy, but thanks to him she has developed a passion for the game. This passion began almost as soon as they met in LA. When we left for Spain, they took their tennis racquets, stowing them in the overhead bins. Since I was a smoker and they were not, I sat behind them on the plane and observed, to my delight, how wonderfully they got along. Although Leila was still young, she seemed a lot younger in Billy’s presence.

We flew to Madrid out of Boston.

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