Once You Go Back. 8

Previously. Buckey got a glimpse of the cloud forest and wildlands he dreamed of seeing. His urbane friend wasn’t into hiking or spending time with the couple of country guys they met while on a driving trip through the remote parts of the island, so they returned to the city with no plan for going back into parts unknown.

Link to Other Chapters.

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Andreas, a practical man, had built the tiny apartment under the avocado tree for students like me. It was for income, but also to expose his family to the world. He treated me like one of the children– protecting and encouraging. He even gave me a nickname: Boca. It was kind of like Buckey but easier for them to pronounce. It means mouth. Which was a little ironic since I’m a pretty quiet guy. He was fatherly, but we became more like brothers. We were the same age. We both worked outside. Andreas was a builder. Unlike me, he was very Catholic. So I was touched when he told me that I could always bring a "friend" back to the apartment if we used the back gate.

For a few days, I stuck with my practical family routine. 

But downtown, Rubio worked on his glitzy dream of putting us together as a couple and as a business. 

“By Saturday, we’ll have an invitation,” Rubio promised. “We’ll head to Casa de Campo by noon.”  Rubio had decided that getting us in for a garden meeting with Oscar de la Renta was the ticket to the merging of fashion and garden—him and me.

Wednesday night, he took me to a glitzy casino with a massive disco full of Europeans. He’d found out Oscar’s New York garden designer was staying and playing there. His friends introduced us, but it was loud. She was short and dismissive. 

That night, I dreamt of bushwhacking through a cloud forest with my little crew of guys from back home. Cody was looking for something, probably drugs. The Mexican gardening brothers kept asking, “?Aqui? Here? Here? Is this the place?” But I sought something besides a place. Maybe a person? Or a thing? Something real but not physical? I woke up soaked and desperate to know what it was.