The Ruby Notebook (2 page)

One afternoon when I was eight years old, in the highlands of Guatemala, I spent hours playing with my best friend, Paloma, at our magical waterfall fort in the woods. As we headed home I remember feeling at the pinnacle of
happiness, flying through the door with her, rosy-cheeked and breathless and laughing. Layla gave us both big hugs and said, “Oh, love, I have good news! We’re going to Morocco next week!”

And with those words, Paloma and my magical waterfall fort were snatched away. It was a heavy, falling, crushing feeling. A giant tree smashing to the ground.

The worst part of leaving Guatemala was saying goodbye to Paloma’s father, who I’d come to think of as my own, even calling him Papá. He doted on me, telling Paloma and me how much we looked alike. And we did. My skin was just a shade lighter than hers. Our eyes were wide and brown, our hair black and straight and long, and our cheekbones high. We fantasized that we really were sisters.…

Saying goodbye to Paloma’s father made my lack of a father grow into a huge, empty void. That’s when I first started bugging Layla about my own father, when I learned that I was the product of a one-night stand on a Greek beach. She didn’t even know his name, only the initials J.C. And that’s when she told me that my chances of meeting my father were zero.

Over the years I searched for his face in every crowd. I had no idea what he looked like, but I assumed I’d magically recognize him. Little by little, with each face that wasn’t his, I realized Layla was right. I’d never know him. I’d have to accept it.

And I have. Except for a tiny piece of me, a piece located
not in my mind but in my stubborn heart, the piece that skips a beat whenever I meet a J.C., the piece willing to risk being torn apart once again.

Across the café table from me, Layla tilts back her head, letting her blond hair cascade down the back of her chair, closing her eyes like a cat, relishing the warmth. She knows how to be happy. Her happiness isn’t clouded by the sense of impending doom that mine is. No, she dives into the moment, forgets the past, doesn’t worry about the future. Which is what she appears to be doing now, bathing in sunlight, full of lemon
glâce
.

“
Beauty constantly wells up,
” she murmurs, “
a noise of springwater in my ear and in my inner being.
” It’s Rumi, her favorite thirteenth-century mystic. She quotes him so often I feel as if he’s part of our family—adored by her, tolerated by me.

And then, as though she’s conjured it up, a sound bursts forth like springwater, like a fountain suddenly turned on. Music, a rushing, churning, chaos of music, spurting out from under a tree next to us. It’s like a carousel song that flew away and crashed into a gypsy caravan and burst into flames of polka. There’s a whirlwind of accordion, trumpet, and bongos, each one shooting out notes like squiggly fireworks. The melody swirls around slowly at first, gathering momentum, and then explodes.

The musicians’ clothes, all in shades of red, are patchworks of satin, corduroy, velvet, and silk, sewn with an odd assortment of items—feathers and beads and little plastic dolls
and tiny cars and bottle caps and paper clips and shells. These people do not match the milky-smooth surroundings. Not by a long shot.

They seem to be around my age, maybe a little older. One girl is spinning, her long scarlet skirt swirling, her hips and arms undulating, her dark hair flying. Gazing at her, a lanky guy in a crimson top hat plays the trumpet, with a tuba at his feet. A redheaded girl dressed in a leotard and tights and a short skirt, the deep reds of cherries, sways cross-legged on the ground, beating bongos. Sunlight catches the brass buttons and sequins randomly sewn on her clothes.

Beside the band, a mime in a puffy white shirt, loose white pants, and a black skullcap is leaning against a tree. He holds so motionless it’s as though he’s part of the tree. His face is painted white, with black diamonds around his eyes and a black teardrop on his cheek. I can’t tell if he’s part of their group. Probably not, since he’s not playing any instrument and he’s not in red.

And then there’s a guy playing accordion. You’d think it would be hard to look hot playing an instrument associated with dancing monkeys, but he pulls it off. The muscles of his arms ripple as he squeezes and releases the accordion. His hair is a mass of loose black curls that fall over his eyes, grazing his thick lashes.

“
Vâchement cool!
” Layla says. Literally, “Cow-ly cool.”

I nod. “
Super cool!
” We’ve been using French slang for a week now, so it comes quickly to our lips.

Layla’s eyes widen. “
Hyper super cool!
”

Already, a crowd is gathering and kids are clapping and coins are flying into the open tuba case lined with a pooled-up raspberry red scarf. After a few songs, the group takes a break, passing one another a carafe of water. The redheaded girl dances around the crowd holding out a top hat. In her other hand, she holds cherries. One-handed, she pops one after another into her mouth, spitting the pits over her shoulder with abandon.

She whizzes by our table, doing a backflip just a meter from us, and holds out the hat. I drop in a few coins. Then, with a smile, she’s skipping on to the next table. Once she’s finished her round, she announces, in a musical voice much bigger than her elfin body, “We! Are!
Illusion!
”

It takes me a moment to realize that Illusion must be the name of the group. They do seem too bright and eccentric and red to be real, like something my mind has conjured up. One thing I’m sure of: I want to be friends with these people. As much as I complain to Layla about our gypsy lifestyle, I always find kindred spirits in people who exist on the fringes.

From Café Cerise, I head toward Cybercafé Nirvana, since it’s been a few hours since I last e-mailed Wendell. On the way, I swing by the bookstore to buy my first notebook in France. Since I was eight, in each country we’ve lived in, I’ve written in a different-colored notebook. I started with a purple notebook in Guatemala, filling only half of it with big, awkward letters, a jumble of English and Spanish. More recently, I’ve filled four or five notebooks per country, mostly
in English with a smattering of words in the local languages. Ecuador was indigo, Thailand was white, Brazil red, India yellow, Laos green, Chile blue, and Morocco orange.

My notebooks—enough to make a small suitcase bulge—are the only sentimental things I bring from one country to another. They’re brimming with interviews, musings, observations, questions, and the occasional rant. When you’re constantly moving to a new place, adapting to new ways of life, it takes extra work to make sense of it all. Thus my rainbow of notebooks.

As I stand in front of the shelves, one notebook leaps out at me, practically does a flip, and lands in my hand. It’s ruby red with bits of golden sparkles that make my heart race. If it had a sound track, it would be the wild, soul-sparking music of Illusion.

T
he sun’s setting as I walk to Cybercafé Nirvana. The sign on the door advertises air-conditioning, which is why the door and windows stay shut, but that just makes it stuffier. Inside, it feels like a dimly lit oven filled with whirring, humming machines and grunge rock. There’s a stale cigarette smell from years of smoking before it was outlawed indoors. A few flickering fluorescent lights give the room a dull gray pallor.

As the door swings shut, jangling a bell, I silently curse Layla for rejecting technology like cell phones or laptops, for making it such an ordeal to communicate with Wendell.

“
Essalam alikoum,
” Ahmed says with a wave. His eyes flicker away from the game on his computer screen.
Apparently he’s internationally notorious in the online-gaming realm of KnightQuest.

“
Essalam alikoum,
” I echo. We always switch between French and Arabic, which keeps me on my toes. I learned both languages in Morocco, but it’s been seven years since I lived there, back when I had my orange notebook.

Ahmed’s friendliness makes up for what Cybercafé Nirvana lacks in atmosphere. He’s Moroccan, and he started giving me discounts once he heard my rusty Arabic. This place is right down the street from our apartment in the North African neighborhood, and sometimes, if I close my eyes and smell the tagine in the air—that pungent blend of lamb and almond and cinnamon—I feel as if I’m back in Marrakech.

Well, except for “Smells Like Teen Spirit” playing on repeat on Ahmed’s computer. Nirvana is his favorite band. He’s always asking me to translate the lyrics, and doesn’t believe me when I assure him they make just as little sense in English.

Ahmed swishes his head around, as though it’s a mess of stringy blond locks rather than his close-clipped, gelled helmet of silver-streaked black hair. “Oh, my. Two entire hours have passed since you e-mailed Wendell.” He glances up quickly with a teasing grin. He’s a neat man, decked out even on sweltering days in white, long-sleeve shirts, which complement his dark skin nicely, but make him look oddly formal. He wears a fancy gold watch that he never looks at since the time is always in the corner of his eye on the
computer screen. He’s the age my father would probably be—midthirties to early forties. Whenever I meet someone like Ahmed, I imagine for a sliver of a moment that I could be his daughter.

Ahmed smiles. “And what is the love of your life doing now?”

“I think he’s at a pool party.” I like that I know where Wendell is at all times, even though he’s across the entire Atlantic. I’ve never been to his home in Colorado, but from what he’s described, I can imagine the sunshine and mountains. We met last summer in different mountains, on a different continent altogether—the Andes in South America. He’d been adopted from Ecuador as a baby, and sixteen years later, had returned to search for his birth parents.

Ahmed gives a wistful shake of the head. “Oh, how I partied back when I was younger,” he says, deftly maneuvering his custom KnightQuest mouse. “Even played in a grunge band. We toured around a little.”

“Really?” I have a hard time picturing Ahmed wearing anything other than his pressed cotton pants and button-down shirt.

“Now I just listen to music,” he says. “The only remnant of my old life.” He blinks and shakes his head, as if waking himself up. “So, when will
l’homme de ta vie
be here?”

“A week.” I can’t help smiling when Ahmed offhandedly refers to Wendell as the love of my life. One thing about living in a different country every year is that you have to jump in and make friends as fast as you can. And you can’t be too
discriminating about age or gender—you just search out whoever has that spark, a certain je ne sais quoi. After only a week, Ahmed and I already joke around like old friends. He’s talented at showering me with attention while still kicking butt in KnightQuest.

“Well, go and write,” he says, flicking his hand at me cheerfully. “And tell
l’homme de ta vie
that Ahmed says hello.”

I settle into the chair at my favorite computer in the corner. It’s just beneath the travel poster of colorful houses crowded onto cliffs on the Italian coast.

Wendell’s sent me five photos from his phone. In all of them, I’m standing on a big boulder, on the top of a mountain in the Andes. The wind is tossing my hair around, and each photo captures it in a different position, like it’s a moving sculpture. It looks as if the air could pick me up and carry me away. That’s how Wendell has always made me feel—on the verge of flying. The pictures move in closer and closer, and in the last one, my eyes fill the photo. And you can tell that my eyes are looking at something amazing—the vast patchwork of fields and trees and red-tiled roofs spread like a blanket below me.

His e-mail says:

They’re the lyrics to a Velvet Underground song he played me in Ecuador. I remember flipping through these photos and listening to the song and feeling his arm around my shoulder. And once the song ended, I thought,
He knows me. He sees who I am. He can always remind me
. A rare and precious thing.