‘Hey, man.’ Tony tugs his jacket tighter against the chill, gives me his nod. ‘How you doing today?’
‘Buena. Y usted?’
He leans in, with a confidential smile. ‘You forget, my friend, I also do not speak Spanish!’
Oh, that’s right. It wasn’t gonna happen. You know how you think one day you’ll just wake up and have another language under your belt? Like in the Tower of Babel or something? So now and then you have to test it out to see if the other person responds and you’ll end up saying something back, and then he’ll go on in Spanish, and you’re following and conversing, and before you know it– you don’t even realize it until hours later, maybe days later– but there you are, speaking Spanish like a Goddamn Latino! But of course, Tony knows as well as I do that the chances of that happening simultaneously to two people who never spoke Spanish in their whole lives is pretty remote, not to say even nonexistent. No. It wasn’t gonna happen. Not yet. Or at least, not with Tony. Which is kind of sad, because he’s the smartest man I know, and plus I probably like him about the best.
Ok, hold the phone!
I almost did it AGAIN. I mean, whoa, I’m not gonna
tell you about how I met Mr. Geyer and how he did
some crazy stuff with a bunch of cats. I mean, I’m not
gonna breathe a word in English or in Espanol!
Nope.
Nope, not me.
And, nothing about the Angel.
Once again, my friend, you’ll have to wait. Soon. Soon. Just keep telling
yourself: you’ll know it all soon…
as soon as you order your copy of The Book of Zane. It can’t come soon enough!
