He was about our age and gave us a real sob story, the details of which I don’t remember. He was friendly, overly so as to make him even more suspicious. But I had just cooked dinner, which was rare as eating out was so cheap for us. I remember I had cooked pork chops. So we invited him to stay for dinner. He was definitely a character full of outlandish tales of adventure, all too good to be true and too much for one guy. And he talked about a girlfriend named Nieves who worked at the Holiday Inn Caracas.
I have no memory what he told us his name was but for the purposes of this story, let’s call him José.
José said he needed a place to stay for the night and so, Brent, my co-worker, and I conferred and felt we couldn’t turn him out. I had Brent entertain the guy while I went up stairs and locked up the very few valuables we had. I think we only had two things of any value, one of the very first laptops, a Zenith that had no hard drive and took the original floppy disk and a fax machine, I think, but maybe I’m getting anachronistic. No, it wouldn’t have been a fax machine in 1986. Anyway, we didn’t have much for people who lived in a manse with six or more bathrooms--I’ve lost count. If he wanted to steal something, he’d have been hard-pressed to find anything worth much.
I made up a bed in one of our huge spare rooms for him. I’m quite sure I slept with one eye open that night. At least, I never heard anything and when we woke up the next morning, he was still there. We had breakfast and he went on his way.
We’d seen the last of him.
Our landlady, Carmen, had a son, Victor, who was probably in his early 30s. When he couldn’t take his mother any more, which, knowing her, would be often, he would live in an apartment which was a part of our house but with a completely separate entrance. We rarely saw him.
Late one evening, Brent and I came home from having visited a family in the far suburbs of Caracas to find a desperate Victor waiting for us. He had been in the garage working on his car and a man, our José, was walking around the house and came upon Victor. Looking back, José was looking for a way to get in the house but Victor didn’t seem to notice this at the time because José took him by surprise and told him he was looking for Marty and Brent. So, Victor assumed he was our friend.
José, being the friendly guy he was, convinced Victor that he was “one of us” and then casually drew attention to Victor’s motor cycle, his pride and joy. He asked Victor if he could take his motorcycle around the block for a spin. Victor said, “Sure!”
When we got home and Victor wanted to know where we could find our friend, José. We had only one lead, Nieves at the Holiday Inn. Sure enough, she was real. And she said she didn’t know where José was but that she hoped he was dead.
As far as I know, Victor never saw his motorcycle again. When we told Victor the story and how we came to know José and that he wasn’t really our friend, Victor said, “You guys can’t trust people like that in this city. You have to be careful.”
Sí, Victor. We know that.
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