Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
An hour later, standing in the embrace of the shower's four warm jets, gazing across
the sloping meadow towards the sea, I had only one thought in my head:
I want this house.
☼ ☼ ☼
Nothing bad happened this time.
No one teetered on the brink of death. We weren't serenaded at four in the morning by
herds of goats (there were lots of cows but they were admirably reticent). No giant iguanas
stalked us.
In short, we had fun.
By mid-week I found myself wondering, lazily at first, how much a house like this
would cost. The next afternoon I loitered nonchalantly in front of the real estate office in
Isabel, surreptitiously scanning the bulletin board. Two or three listings caught my eye, but
I didn't say a word. Michael would think I'd finally flipped (an eventuality he no doubt
prepared for on an hourly basis).
Over dinner that night he caught me completely off guard.
“Do you think we could swing it?”
I thought I knew what he meant but there was no way I was going to tip my hand
without knowing for sure.
“Swing what?” I asked innocently, batting my eyes.
He gave me a knowing smile.
“Don't be coy. You know what I mean. A house down here.”
My answer gurgled up before I even had time to think about it.
“Absolutely not!”
He looked as if I'd sucker-punched him.
“Excuse me?”
“We can't afford it.”
He sat back in his chair, clearly perplexed.
“We could rent the house out when we're not here, like everyone else. Sure, it might
not pay for itself at first, but in a few years it might come close.”
This didn't sound like the maddeningly level-headed Michael I'd known for ten years.
In fact, it sounded suspiciously like one of my own wildly optimistic statements (“global
warming will be so good for our tans!”), the kind that Michael typically absorbed in stoical
silence and then slowly, methodically deconstructed until I couldn't wait to renounce it my-
self (“…but I'm sure it'll hurt like hell when our skin burns to a crisp and falls off”).
Clearly the island had worked its magic on him.
“I'm not so sure,” I said, perversely relishing this rare opportunity to play the naysayer
instead of my usual dreary Pollyanna role.
But he wasn't paying the slightest bit of attention.
Search WWH ::
Custom Search