inflated to the size of a football. That evening, Dad answered an advertisement of an experienced gardener in The Howard Sentinel.
"Yardwork," it read. "Anyhow. Anywhere. I do."
His name was Andreo Verduga, and he was the most beautiful creature I'd ever seen (see "Panther," Glorious Predators of the Natural World, Good-win, 1987). He was tan, with black hair, gypsy eyes and, from what I could deduce from my upstairs bedroom window, a torso smooth as a river rock. He was from Peru. He wore heavy cologne and spoke in the language of an old-fashioned telegram.
HOW YOU DO STOP NICE DAY STOP WHERE IS HOSE STOP
Every Monday and Thursday at four o'clock, I'd procrastinate working on my French compositions or Algebra III and spy on him working, though most of the time he didn't work so much as hang out, chill, loiter, loaf, enjoy a laid-back cigarette in a scarce patch of sun. (He always threw the stub in a clandestine place, tossing it behind a bromeliad or into a dense section of bamboo without even making sure it was extinguished.) Andreo really only started working two to three hours after his arrival, when Dad came home from the university. With an array of showy gestures (heavy panting, wiping his brow), he'd then push the lawnmower ineffectively along the forest floor, or prop up the wooden stepladder on the side of the house in a futile attempt to hack back the canopy. My favorite observation was when Andreo muttered to himself in Spanish after Dad confronted him, demanding to know exactly why the knotted liana was still creating a Greenhouse Effect on the back porch, or why a brand new crop of strangler figs now lined the back of our property.
One afternoon I made sure I was in the kitchen when Andreo slipped inside to steal one of my orange push pops from the freezer. He looked at me shyly and then smiled, revealing crooked teeth.
YOU DON'T MIND STOP I EAT STOP BAD BACK STOP In the Howard Country Day library during lunch, I consulted Spanish textbooks and dictionaries and taught myself what I could.
Me llamo Azul.
My name is Blue.
El jardinero, Mellors, es una persona muy curiosa.
The gamekeeper, Mellors, is a curious kind of person.
iQuiere usted se ducirme? ;Es eso que usted quiere decirme?
Would you like me to seduce you? Is that what you're trying to tell me?
Nelly,soy Heathcliffl
Nelly, I am Heathcliff!
I waited in vain for Pablo Neruda's Twenty Love Songs and a Song of Despair (1924) to be returned to the library. (The Girlfriend Who Wore Nothing But Tight Tank Tops had checked it out and lost it at the Boyfriend Who Should Shave Those Gross Hairs on His Chin's.) I was forced to steal a copy from the Spanish room and fitfully memorized XVII, wondering how I'd ever find the courage to do The Romeo, publicly proclaim those words of love, shout them so loudly that the sound had wings and carried itself up to balconies. I doubted I could even handle The Cyrano, writing the words on a card, signing someone else's name and covertly dropping it through the cracked window of his truck while he lounged in the backyard reading jHolal under the rubber trees.
As it turned out, I did neither The Romeo nor The Cyrano. I did The Hercules.
At approximately 8:15 P.M. on a brisk Wednesday night in November, I was upstairs in my room studying for a French test. Dad was at a faculty dinner in honor of a new dean. The doorbell rang. I was terrified and immediately imagined all kinds of wicked Bible salesmen and bloodthirsty misfits (see O'Connor, The Complete Stories, 1971). I darted into Dad's room and peered through the window in the corner. To my astonishment, in the night-plum darkness, I saw Andreo's red truck, though he'd driven clear off the driveway into a dense cluster of violin ferns.
I didn't know what was more gruesome, imagining The Misfit on my front porch or knowing it was he. My first inclination was to lock my bedroom door and hide under the comforter, but he was ringing the doorbell over and over again—he must have noticed the bedroom lights. I tiptoed down the stairs, stood for at least three minutes in front of the door, biting my fingernails, rehearsing my icebreaker (Buenas Noches! \Qué sorpresal). Finally, hands clammy, mouth like half-dry Elmer's glue, I opened the door.
It was Heathcliff.
And yet it wasn't. He was standing away from me by the steps, like a