Chapter 2

Three years passed. During that time, the only significant change was that I sold our house and moved out of the U.S. I had to do that to preserve my sanity.

I knew that I was going to kill myself if I didn’t get away from everything that reminded me of Becks. At least the money let me do THAT.

The aim was to put as much distance as I could between my old life and my new circumstances. Sort of like a factory reset. I wanted to wipe my mind of any reminders of my love.

I did a little research, under the heading of, “Where can I go that’s the opposite of the Beltway” and ended up at Port Isaac on the Cornwall coast. It could have just as easily been some other remote place. But I semi-understood the native tongue there.

Port Isaac is a neat fishing village with plenty of rustic atmosphere, where I could sit, contemplate the ocean, and try to heal. When I arrived, I was initially just as depressed as I had been back home. But the wonderfully uncomplicated people, their pub life, and the friends that I made there all helped me come out of my funk.

Still, Port Isaac is on the Atlantic side of the Cornwall peninsula. So, the weather is like it is in Ireland, meaning there’s a lot of rain. I really liked the social ambiance of the place. But after three years, the grey days were making my depression worse.

I knew that it would be the ultimate in hypocrisy to continue to play Hamlet when fortune had smiled on me in such a blatantly generous fashion. I had all the time in the world now, and an infinite amount of cash. So, I thought I might repot myself to the sun-drenched Mediterranean.

I think you can understand why I wanted to go there. First of all it was always sunny and hot. But more relevantly, my wife was lying full-fathom-five somewhere east of Majorca. That was the place that was calling to me.

I bought a Hylas-44 to do it. Mine had the royal blue hull instead of the traditional white because I like the solid look that color imparts. The upper decks and trim were all in white, or mahogany and the aluminum mast was gleaming in the sun.

The Hylas is a single masted, sloop-rigged cruiser. The fit and features are all super-high-end and it’s a tour de force of wood and brass luxury below deck. There’s a lounge-galley layout with exceptional living space and an actual stateroom.

It’s a handful for a solo sailor. But I wasn’t worried about being able to work it. The Hylas was only six feet longer than my old Packet and I was an expert in that class. The sails were controlled by rolling furlers, which did the heavy lifting, and I had the self-steerer. But it takes skill and a good eye to trim the boat right.

It cost over a million after I’d added all the navigation equipment, the generator, air conditioning and power furling features. But if it was just me, I would need all of those for safety’s sake. I picked the boat up on a hot sunny day at the Yacht Marine offices in Barcelona harbor at Marina Port Vell.

I finalized the paperwork on the quayside, with my new girlfriend. We’d met while I was in England. She was sleek and gorgeous, with huge green eyes and a haughty personality that reeked of grandeur. She had been standoffish at first. But I’d treated her with patience, and she was totally devoted to me now.

We went on board, and she stalked around our new home inspecting things with an air of disdain. Then she made a lightning move and reappeared with a mouse in her mouth, which was appropriate since Bastet is a cat.

Well actually ... she’s technically NOT a cat. She’s from a much more ancient breed of feline called a Mau. Maus are descendants of African wildcats. Those are the creatures that appear in ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics. She’s slightly bigger than a housecat and she has an odd spotted coat that belies her origins, which are closer to the cheetah.

I love dogs. They’re always your buddy. But dogs on boats have a hygiene problem. Cats don’t have the same issue and as a bonus cats also eliminate any unwelcome stowaways. I named her Bastet after the Egyptian goddess of war. That’s an appropriate name since she’s a savage little creature who seems to view our relationship as a hunting partnership, not owner and pet.

Bastet and I talk a lot. She’s Egyptian, so she has an exotic accent. But when I get weepy, she’s not afraid to speak the truth. She’d stare at me with those ancient eyes and hiss, “I cannot hunt with sssuch a weak companion. You musssst do better my brother.” It was probably just me talking to myself. But Bastet made a lot of sense.

I cleared Barcelona harbor on a sunny day in July, running south-southeast on the sat-nav integrated self-steerer. I was aiming for the Balearics because that was the region where Becks plane went down. I was hoping to learn something more about that there.

Even more pathetic I suppose ... I just wanted to just be near where she’d died. The thought of her last moments of terror as her plane plummeted haunted me. Plus, I needed a short initial destination to work out the kinks in my brand-new boat. Sailboats are like women. You have to get to know their quirks if you want a good marriage.

My target was Palma on the island of Majorca. It’s the largest of the Balearic Islands, about 120 miles out of Barcelona Harbor as the crow flies. I was laid way-over on a port tack and running under a strong westerly with full mainsail and jib, making almost nine knots. That’s the kind of a rush that you don’t get with any other mode of transportation except maybe a motorcycle.

The northern side of the island has impressive mountains, and it began to appear out of the haze on the southeastern horizon by late afternoon. I rounded the island’s western tip just before sunset and dropped anchor in the Marina Palma, 14 hours after I’d shoved off. The Hylas and I were in love.

It was a beautiful night with soft magical breezes and the sound of the little City of Palma in the background. Nine o’clock is part of the dinner hour in places like Spain and I could see herds of tourists milling around the town. the memories of the only person I’d ever cared about flooded in and for the millionth time I began to grieve.

Bastet was lying on the coaming of the companionway hatch, staring at me the way cats do. She’s a fierce little beast and there is no quarter in her savage soul. She hissed disdainfully, “You musssst stop thinking about the past, Brother. That is weaknesss. Ssssstrong hunters only think about their next kill.”

She was right of course. Everybody wants to see themselves as powerful and effective. It’s a matter of personal pride and I had been a hot mess for a long time. I couldn’t continue to act like that and retain even a shred of dignity and self-respect. So, I decided right-then-and-there to make a stand.

The fact is that you can’t change the past. You can only do the best that you can in the present. I’d suffered a series of powerful blows over an incredibly short period of time ... From the seduction of my wife, through her subsequent death, and then the ridiculous change in my personal situation. It had trashed my internal gyroscope ... I had no mental balance.

Now, I was determined to right the ship and enjoy my newfound status as a fabulously wealthy man. That would start the next morning. I sat on the deck with a Cuban cigar, a habit that I had picked up once I got used to having a limitless supply of cash and Googled five-star hotels.

I awoke to a bright and hot July day. I had made a reservation for a deluxe suite at the Palacio Can Marquez, which was about a ten-minute walk from where I was docked. That hotel was supposed to be the best in Majorca.

I’d had SIXT deliver a BMW 8 series convertible to the hotel. But I wanted to walk there from the boat. So I strolled through the honey-colored streets of Palma’s old town enjoying the atmosphere. I was towing a roller-bag with a big spotted cat prowling next to me. Bastet insists on walking right beside me. She thinks we’re looking for prey, which in some respects I guess we were.

People were trying not to stare. Bastet hissed, “What issss the matter with thessse people. Perhapsss I should kill one jussst to keep them from looking at ussss.” She didn’t actually say that out loud, but I could tell that was what she was thinking. Bastet really has no idea that she only weighs twenty-five pounds.

The desk clerk didn’t bat an eye when Bastet strolled in with me. He might have said something if I was renting a room for less than $800 a night. But the staff at the Palacio is used to the quirks of its rich customers.

The interior of the suite was dark wood, creamy stucco and impeccable tile with a view that overlooked the busy Carrer dels Apuntadors below. Bastet inspected the place with her usual air of condescension and found it mildly pleasing. She then prowled out on the balcony and lay there with her tail twitching, looking for all the world like a jaguar in a tree.

I said to her, “No dropping down on any unsuspecting passers-by.” I was joking. It was thirty feet to the street. But Bastet fixed me with her typical green-eyed stare and said, “It dependssss on how tasssty they look.” I think that she really believed that.

I laughed, then I closed the door and went downstairs to brunch in the courtyard of the hotel. The smashed avocado and toast on eggs was just as tasty as one might imagine, and the cold San Miguel was refreshing.

I was idly pondering my life and future when I began to experience an odd sensation. It was an ominous buzz like the eerie rising of the wind in front of a fast-moving thunderstorm. I looked around for the cause and it hit me like a tornado hits a Topeka trailer park.

My wife Rebecca had just stepped out onto the terrace!!

Of course she was dead. So, you can imagine the parade of emotions that marched through my brain. First there was mild awareness - I knew this woman. Then there was utter disbelief as I realized WHY I knew her. That was followed by a dumbfounded sense of sheer unreality.

Okay then ... tell me how would YOU react? I had finally acknowledged that the love of my life was gone forever, and I’d dedicated myself to building my life without her. Then, just as I’d made up my mind to do that - God pulls the football away. I was getting mighty weary of all the ups and downs.

You might think I was coherent at any point in the next few minutes. If so, you would be entirely wrong. In actuality, I was convinced that I’d lost my mind. Think about it. Would you be cooley evaluating the situation, or would you be in mortal brain-lock because your eyes were telling you things that your cerebral cortex knew just wasn’t true.

I went through four of the five stages of grief in about thirty seconds. First there was denial, “You’re an idiot. It isn’t her.” That led to anger, “Damn it!! This is a cruel trick!!” Then there was bargaining, “I’ll lead a better life if it IS her.” Which was closely followed by depression, “This just makes me SO sad!!” Acceptance was never on the table.

Oddly, the first thought that occurred to me was the improbability of the circumstance. I mean, to quote a guy in a bar in Casablanca, which isn’t too far from where I was sitting, “Of all the gin joints in the world...” But there were larger questions like, why was Rebecca still alive and why didn’t she know me? So, as you might imagine, I was experiencing a firestorm of emotions.

Once I’d gotten my brain rebooted and I was feeling a bit more rational, I realized that there wasn’t a hint of recognition in Rebecca’s eyes, even when she’d glanced in my direction. You would have to expect some reaction from a woman who’d just seen her long-lost husband and there was nothing. She wasn’t pretending. She didn’t know who I was.

That led to the next obvious question, which was, “Who’s the guy she’s with?” He was considerably older, and he had a gravitas that led me to believe he was somebody important. So, maybe my waiter knew him. I made a subtle gesture and he glided unobtrusively over to the table. Five-star waiters know how to be circumspect.

I nodded in the direction of my wife and said, “I think that I know that couple. But I can’t remember their name. Do you know who they are?”

The waiter laughed and said, “But of course, Senor. That is Doctor and Mrs. March-Brettmann. She is the famous Mysteriosa Dama del Mar, and he is the Director of the Hospital Psiquiatrico in Palma. They dine here frequently.”

Oh my God!! Becks is married!!???

I removed a hundred Euro bill from my money clip and laid it on the table. The waiter glanced furtively at it and was suddenly a fount of information. He said, “Everybody in Palma knows their story. The Doctor saved her life and then he married her. It is very romantic, is it not.”

Dang!!! I said, trying to keep my voice indifferent, “Tell me about this romance.”

The waiter said, “The beautiful lady was rescued by fishermen. They found her floating in a life raft in the open sea. We have no idea how she came to be in that place. She was there with three other people. But she was the only one still alive. They took her to the hospital on Menorca.”

I knew that Menorca was the island just northeast of Majorca, which would be directly on the flight path from Andrews in DC to Sardinia. That’s where her plane must have gone down. I said, with a little catch in my voice, “How badly was she hurt?”

The waiter said, “She was injured, Senor. But the main problem was that she had survived for some time in the hot sun without food or water and she was out of her mind. So, they transferred her to the Hospital Psiquiatrico, here.”

I said horrified, “Out of her mind? Was she insane?” I suppose floating in a life raft after a plane crash would do that to you.

The waiter laughed and said, “No Senor, she is a very intelligent and gracious lady. I’ve had the pleasure of waiting on her several times myself. It’s just that she has no memory of who she is and how she got to where we found her.”

So, Becks was suffering from “amnesia.” I thought that was just a myth or a plot device. More relevantly, how could somebody with amnesia NOT be identifiable in this modern age? Somebody somewhere must have had her on file.”

Then it hit me. Becks’ level of clearance required that anything that identified her be kept National Security Confidential. They wouldn’t release that information to anybody. Especially if she’d inexplicably disappeared. So, there was no way that the people on Majorca would get access to Becks’ identity.

I moved the hundred-Euro bill in the waiter’s direction, and he made it disappear like magic. I said, “Thank you for the information.” He nodded discreetly and went back to overseeing the other diners as they ate.

As for me ... I had spent three years mourning the loss of my wife and suddenly there she was, sitting not more than twenty feet in front of me. That might drive some people over the edge. But I’m a nerd. And as odd as we might appear to normal people, nerds will always substitute logic for emotion in a stressful situation. If you need a reminder, think, the “live long and prosper” guy.

I reviewed the facts ... I acknowledged that “The Mysterious Lady From the Sea” was indeed my wife and that she couldn’t remember anything from her life prior to the crash. That was a given. I also understood why Becks had fallen in love with her doctor. She’s a warmhearted person who would naturally gravitate toward somebody who’d helped her.

Of course, she was already married to me. But neither she nor her doctor knew that. And frankly I also had some questions about the ethics of a doctor marrying his patient no matter how spectacularly attractive she might be. But those were irrelevant to the matter-at-hand, which was deciding what I could do to restore things to the way they had been prior to my running into her.

The confounding variable was me. I was still a nerd. I dressed like one and acted like one. But I was not nearly the same person that Becks had known. I was infinitely wealthier, perhaps the richest person on that island. So I could make anything happen, including surreptitiously bumping off her current spouse if I chose to. But the one thing I was NOT going to do was attempt to seduce her away from him.

If she was truly amnesic, then any attempt to get between her and her husband would put me in the same category as Osborne and I simply didn’t see myself as that sort of fellow. I’d experienced the pain and I wouldn’t do that to anybody. Hence, any attempts to woo the current incarnation of Becks away from her OTHER husband were off the table.

There were a lot of moving parts in Becks’ fall and I had always thought that she was more victim than victimizer. That was true no matter whether I’d chosen to stay with her or not. But that was beside the point now. The woman I was already beginning to think of as Rebecca 2.0 was a totally different human being and I had to approach my problem that way - even though she was technically still my Becks.

I heard a peal of lighthearted laughter from her table, Becks loved to laugh. She hadn’t changed in the slightest from the beautiful woman who I’d known and loved. Of course there was one obvious exception, which was that she was living on the island of Majorca and married to another man.

I had a lot of things to think about and I needed much more information before I decided on next steps. I signed the bill, rose, and walked off the terrace. I had to pass by them on my way out. She glanced up at me and I winked.

For a second a shadow of confusion passed across her face, like a cloud crossing the prairie on a sunny day. Then she smiled happily and said, “Good morning.” Becks always reacted that way to passing strangers. I had myself in a firm grip as I just kept walking.

When I opened the door to the room, I found Bastet on the sunny balcony enjoying her second mid-morning nap – CATS!! I think the statistic is that the average twelve-year-old cat has been asleep for seven of those years.

The suite had a wood paneled office with an ornate desk. I walked briskly over to my laptop and googled “plane crash survivor.” That was the first thing I needed to understand.

It was all on the internet. Menorca is even smaller than Majorca. So, the story of her rescue was just covered locally. However, it was a sensation back then. It was where the nickname “The Mysterious Lady From the Sea” came from.

They must have ditched the plane. As the waiter had said, she was found floating in a life raft. She was suffering from dehydration and exposure, and she had had serious head trauma. The coma she’d slipped into on the raft might have saved her life because it lowered her metabolism to a point where she was still alive when the men in the fishing boat stumbled on her.

The long-term consequence of all that was retrograde amnesia. That came from the battering she must have taken. It’s a rare but not unheard-of condition and it is usually associated with traumatic brain injury, just the sort of thing that you would suffer in an airplane crash.

It’s like wiping the computer’s storage without affecting its ability to process data. People who suffer from that kind of amnesia lose their prior life, but they don’t lose their basic abilities. So, although Becks was conversing with her husband in Spanish, I was betting that she still spoke English and still had her outrageous IQ.

People who suffer from retrograde amnesia lose the most recent memories first. That can be permanent, or they can return over time. Hence Becks could probably never recall being married, or maybe even graduating from college. But she would retain a few of her childhood recollections. It had already been three years so her memories of me were no doubt lost forever.

I wondered how it must feel to remember growing up in the U.S. but having your entire reality rooted in Spanish Majorca. It couldn’t have been pleasant. I suppose that was what her new husband had helped her cope with.

I also looked him up. Brettmann was a German. That wasn’t odd, since it seems like half that chilly nation is living on Majorca. He was a physician and the Director of the Psychiatric institute on the island. He was considerably older than both of us, sixty-three to Becks and my thirty-eight, and he had a reputation as a highly respected doctor.

I really didn’t blame him for falling in love with my wife. She was a gorgeous creature but that was the least of what she brought to the table. Her joi-d’vivre, her light hearted spirit and her intelligence and inner strength were exceptional qualities in anybody.

The two of them had been married for just over two years. I wasn’t going to even think about their life together. I had benefitted from Becks’ sweet love, her lively companionship, and her outstanding erotic talents for over ten years. Now Brettmann was the recipient of her bounty. I just couldn’t go there and keep all my marbles.

I had a decision to make. I could see that Becks was alive. So, the easiest and perhaps the most unselfish thing to do would be to set sail for someplace else. She would lead the happy life of a Majorcan aristocrat, without knowing that I existed, and I could get on with my life knowing that she was alive and safe. So, why did that seem like such a non-starter?

I told myself, “What’s the problem? You were almost certainly going to divorce her anyhow.” The problem was that I was still very much in love with her. I know, that’s a contradiction. But that’s the difficulty with emotion, it defies the laws of physics – since two separate feelings CAN exist in the same space at the same time.

The one thing that I DID know was that this was the critical nexus of my life. I had to make a wise choice or live out the rest of my days eaten up by regret.

Bastet, who has the cat-like ability to read minds, ambled over and jumped lightly into my lap. I stroked her while she looked at me with those huge green eyes and said, “She issss yoursss, brother. You musssst never let anybody else take your kill.”

Cats are absolutists. They cut right through the bullshit and directly to the heart of the matter. Forget the niceties of right, or wrong. Becks was still my wife, and I couldn’t just sail meekly off into the sunset leaving her in the arms of another guy ... at least if I wanted to keep my man card.

I had no intention of trying to take her away from Brettmann - if that was what she chose. But just as it had been on that fateful night, I wanted an affirmative answer to the question, “Do you choose me?”

Unfortunately, for the sake of my conscience, I had to do that without violating any of my self-imposed rules of righteous conduct. It might be that I didn’t exist in Becks 2.0’s world. If that was the case, then the right and proper thing to do was to leave her in her new life.

However, all of the descriptions of retrograde amnesia said that victims would recover their memories if they were exposed to the right stimuli. With the exception of one tragic day, Rebecca and I had a perfect love and marriage. So, I was thinking that it wouldn’t hurt if I dangled myself in front of her, just to see what I might fish out.

Fortunately, her husband was a March-Ordinas on his mother’s side. March-Ordinas was best friends with Francisco Franco and one of the leading Fascist leaders in Spain. He was also the fellow who founded the dynasty that still controls much of Spanish banking and the Juan March museum is a Majorcan landmark.

March might have set it up to buy a little respectability, especially after the fall of Hitler and his dictator pals. But it DOES contain one of the finest collections of 20th century Spanish art in the world. Be that as it may however, my interest in that museum lay in the fact that Beck’s husband was on its Board.

There are many branches of that family and I doubted that the good doctor was a direct heir of the March-Ordinas money given his German last name. But the fact that part of his family name was chiseled above the door meant Brettmann had to participate in fund-raising activities.

The Museum sponsors a number of creative ventures. One of those is dance. And on the coming Saturday the place planned to hold a fund-raiser involving a touring company of the National Ballet of Cuba. There were various donor categories and my donation ensured that the good doctor and his wife, The Mysterious Lady From the Sea, would be my personal hosts for the night.

It was still a day before the event and frankly, I didn’t want to take the chance of running into Becks. So, I got in the Beemer and drove 45 minutes across the island to the north side. The concierge had told me about a place there, called Alcudia. It’s just a few miles east of Pollensa, the main city on the north eastern coast.

Alcudia is an entire, preserved Roman city, just like the more famous Pompeii in Italy. The forum, houses, and theater are sitting there by the side of the road, just as the Romans left them. The walls of most buildings are hip high, like they are in Pompeii but walking through the place is like a trip back in time.

I wandered around for a while just getting in touch with the ghosts. Then I sat down on a 2,000-year-old stone bench and confronted the real purpose for my trip. I wanted to get as far outside myself as possible in order to evaluate what I was planning, and the most distant place I could think of was Ancient Rome.

Honestly, I wasn’t sure whether I would have divorced Becks after the Osborne incident. I truly believed that she’d made a one-time mistake. She was a smart woman and that she’d probably never do it again. But the damage to my psyche – and yes – my ego – was most likely beyond repair.

I loved her, and I still wanted her. Yet in my mind, the events of that fateful Christmas party were like a cancer that would slowly eat away at our marriage. Hence, divorce seemed like the only logical step, and I think we both knew that.

Of course when I found out that she’d died, all of the emotional baggage that was associated with her actions on that fateful night was buried under a tsunami of grief and loss. The terrible news completely washed away any stain of infidelity and replaced it with a sense of regret – I’d loved her in life, and I felt like I should be more charitable and understanding of her now that she was dead.

Then like the ghost of Christmas past, she resurfaces again, married to somebody else, and due to her amnesia a totally different person. Oddly enough, it didn’t seem strange that I’d run into her on this island. I had specifically come to the Balearics to visit the place where her plane went down. And no doubt ... Majorca would be the place where they would take somebody if they’d found a survivor.

Now, I was literally dealing with a new version of my wife. Honestly ... I realized that it would cause a massive disruption for both of us if I followed through with any attempt to wake her up. It was a risk because a lot of things had changed. So, with all of the moral twists and turns what was the correct thing to do? I simply didn’t know.

Perhaps the best outcome would be that Becks wouldn’t recover any of her memories of me. I could begin a new life with the assurance that was what destiny dictated. But what would I do if she DID remember me? How do you connect with a person who is everything to you, and yet a total stranger.

My primary concern was whether I was doing the right thing? I knew Bastet’s answer. She would tell me that you have to be true to yourself and to your nature. Because the honor lies in being who you are. If that was the case, then I had to, at least, make an honest attempt to get my wife back.

I hired a limousine to take me to the gala. I could have driven the M8. It would be a stunning car to arrive in. But I wanted to be flexible given all the possible outcomes of our meeting.

The museum itself is on a traditional Palma street - meaning narrow and ornate. I stepped out of the limo and past the lovely wrought iron Spanish gates at the entrance and into a cool bustling world of wealth and power.

I was wearing a $7,000 Armani silk tux that the hotel had tailored for me overnight, and I looked the part. Even so, I was nervous. I might have been richer than everybody in that room combined. Nevertheless, I was only three years removed from being an Army nerd, with a mid-Michigan pedigree, and I was intimidated by the glitz and glamour around me.

A gorgeous young Spanish woman in a form fitting LBD was minding the tastefully discreet registration desk. I walked up to her, and she greeted me with a 4,000-megawatt smile. She could see that I was an American and probably a donor so she said, “How may I assist you, Senor?”

I presented my credentials; she did a little tapping on the registration laptop and her eyes widened. She said flustered, “But of course, Senor!! Let me show you to the hosts.” Okay, maybe I’d overdone the donation a bit, but this was the most important event of my life.

I followed the girl through several rooms containing what obviously was high-end art. I’m a software guy. So I know bupkis about artists. But I could tell by the pretentious conversation that I was in the midst of Miros, and Picassos and Dali’s – oh my!!