Do you understand the words that are coming out of my mouth?
– Rush Hour
Willie Dare, Perpetual Alien sat on the examination table looking at his right hand with disbelief and fearing that this time his cultural curiosity might cost more than he was willing to lose.
As Willie continued staring at his swollen ring finger, he finally understood that singular side effect all the prescription drug commercials warned about. You see, Willie had the dreaded hotdog fingers. Or more accurately, he had one finger that had swelled up to the size of a beefy, bulging hotdog. Was it contagious? Willie wondered, still peering at his right hand guardedly.
Unfortunately for Willie, he couldn’t ask the two nurses who’d come into the room because they weren’t paying any attention to him or his wounded paw. The two women, huddled around his wife, were trying to figure out what was wrong with Willie’s hand. Isn’t it obvious? he thought. My finger’s enormous! Then forcing himself to stay calm, Willie tried to recall how a beautiful spring day that began with a cloudless blue sky above Madrid had ended in a Spanish hospital.
To Willie, the rays of bright sunlight streaming through the hotel curtains had seemed to portend the perfect start to his first trip to Spain. And when he pulled back the shades to look out at the small café across the plaza, he knew it was an ideal place to grab coffee. As Willie and his wife, the clever Carrara, international travel aficionado, sat at a table just outside the tunnel to the Plaza Mayor and sipped their café con leche and hot chocolate, they enjoyed sugar-dusted churros and a view of shops opening around the square.
Following the long hours of travel the previous day, Willie appreciated the caffeine jolt and sugar rush. While his mind was still groggy from mistimed sleep, his body felt the surge of renewed energy. And when the clever Carrara suggested a walk to the Prado, Willie hoped the fresh air and long stroll would give his brain a chance to catch up.
Inside the museum, Willie was astonished at the immense halls overflowing with Spanish masters as every room seemed to burst with Velázquezes, Goyas, Murillos, El Grecos, Riberas and Zurburáns. And their many works were interspersed with canvases by Caravaggio, Manet, Rubens, Raphael, Rembrandt and Titian. But with so much art, after several hours Willie felt dazed and overwhelmed. And with his grumbling stomach insisting on a meal seven time zones away, Willie soon suggested a break in the museum café.
Despite his craving for breakfast, Willie found only traditional Spanish snacks ordering a cup of salted almonds and briny, green olives to go with the two glasses of crisp Albariño wine. As he carried them to the table, Willie noticed his wife peering out the second story window at the broad, tree-lined avenue below. And when his eyes followed, Willie saw a throng of people marching down the street carrying brightly painted signs, each one featuring a red circle with a diagonal slash across it, the universal symbol for ‘no’.
But what the marchers were protesting, Willie couldn’t make out. Until the clever Carrara explained they were demonstrating against the U.S.-led coalition that had invaded Iraq just three days earlier. Because while the Spanish government had declined to send troops, they couldn’t keep out of the international fracas and pledged medical supplies and staff to the effort in the Middle East. But as Willie saw, not everyone in Madrid seemed convinced that Iraq was hording weapons of mass destruction. Even the city’s English newspapers decried the move as an American president trying to finish what his daddy started.
Looking at the masses gathered outside the museum window, Willie felt an edgy undercurrent simmering in the city. And though he and Carrara returned to the halls to try and concentrate on more art, they quickly abandoned the masterpieces and dashed through the crowds to duck into a neighborhood bar and hide out in a dark corner where they hoped to pass what remained of the waning daylight unnoticed.
Now ravenous, Willie ordered a hearty Spanish tortilla and plate of thinly sliced serrano ham to go with the bottle of red wine. It wasn’t the traditional ham and eggs, Willie allowed, but it was delicious. And once he devoured everything except the last vestiges of a basket of bread, Willie sat back to enjoy the wine that tasted of black currants and cherries and revel in the sensation of his now quiet and sated tummy.
As a lack of sleep from the time difference started to settle over him, Willie heard the clever Carrara describe how couples in Spain wore their wedding bands on their right hand instead of the left. But when his wife suggested they move their wedding rings to the other hand to convince the hordes outside that they weren’t Americans, Willie wasn’t so convinced.
“Can’t we just tell them we’re from Canada like everyone else?” he asked.
“That would be dishonest,” Carrara insisted. “And a cop out.”
But hard as he tried, Willie couldn’t imagine someone believing he and his wife were Spaniards based on their wedding rings. After all, they were speaking in English. Yet as the weight of jetlag mixed with a feeling of contentedness, Willie was forced to conclude he was in no shape to argue. Besides, he already knew that whenever the clever Carrara got an idea in her head – no matter how nonsensical – Willie had little hope of dissuading her. So he soon slipped off the plain band he’d worn on his left hand for eight years and put it on his right.
Almost immediately Willie felt an intense throbbing on the finger newly constricted by gold. And seconds later when he tried to remove the offending jewelry, Willie found it wouldn’t budge. Excusing himself, he dashed downstairs to the men’s room and lathered his finger in hot, soapy water. By the time Willie returned to the table, his finger was swollen, red and raw from scrubbing. And it still sported the wedding band which not even a dribble of leftover olive oil could loosen.
Carrara was willing to wait until the petulant finger returned to normal, but Willie, sensing a tingling in his finger from lack of circulation wasn’t so sure. “I think I need to go to the hospital,” he said. And soon Carrara went to ask the bartender to call a cab to take them there.
But her request – articulated in Spanish – nearly added another casualty when the elderly man, who was likely also the proprietor, clutched his chest and stared at her in horror. And in that split second when their eyes locked, the clever Carrara knew exactly what raced through the old man’s mind.
Willie was right. No one cared about their rings.
Reading the fear in the bartender’s dark brown eyes, Carrara rushed to reassure the old man that he hadn’t inadvertently poisoned the guests he already knew were Americans. Heaping praise on his food, she prayed the aged bartender wouldn’t succumb to cardiac arrest. And when she saw his posture ease slightly and his right hand reach slowly for the phone, the clever Carrara couldn’t help noticing the small gold band around his trembling finger.
With the hospital a short cab ride away, Willie soon stood in front of the admission window and held up his enormous finger for the woman behind the plexiglass. As she typed something onto her computer, Willie saw the immense waiting room filled with sick people and worried that his distended digit might not survive a prolonged delay. But once the woman finished typing, she pointed Willie to the door at the far end of the corridor, away from the waiting room. And when they passed through, Willie and Carrara were met by a tall, blonde nurse who escorted them to the examination room.
The woman took one look at Willie’s right hand and asked what he’d hit.
“What?” Willie replied not understanding the nurse’s question in Spanish and responding with his own in English.
“What did you hit?” she repeated in Spanish.
Willie looked to Carrara knowing his wife spoke Spanish. But when he saw the blank look on her face, he realized she had no idea how to explain what had happened. It simply hadn’t dawned on the clever Carrara the need to describe their predicament in Spanish. But slowly she stammered, “He didn’t hit anything. He changed hands,” before quickly adding, “because we’re Americans,” as though that explained everything.
Now she shares! Willie wanted to scream as he fervently hoped no one on the hospital staff was slated for deployment in the Middle East.
When Carrara’s explanation did little to help, Willie watched her hold up her right hand and remove her wedding band then place it on her left. And when a second nurse came into the room, Carrara repeated the show as Willie prayed for the pantomime to work.
It didn’t. And as long as whatever had happened to Willie’s hand remained a mystery, so too did any chance of his getting help.
But Willie Dare, Perpetual Alien had been blessed with an innate capacity to endear himself to almost anyone. Unless he was seated behind the wheel of an automobile, Willie was kind and friendly, open and honest. And after remaining silent during his wife’s skit, Willie suddenly found deep inside his memory the one word he remembered from two years of high school Spanish. And the instant he spoke it, three pairs of eyes turned toward him on the examination table.
“Estúpido,” Willie repeated, pointing toward his chest with his good left hand.
It was all the nurses needed to know. After recovering from a hearty bout of laughter, the blonde called in the doctor and shoved a device in his hand which was used to cut off Willie’s wedding ring. Then he sent the Americans on their way.
When the Dares returned to the admissions window, Carrara stopped, pulling out a credit card and bracing for the worst.
“You don’t owe anything,” the woman said.
“Está segura?” Carrara asked in shock. “Are you sure?”
But after Willie had given the medical staff a story to tell at conferences and cocktail parties for years to come, the service was on the house.
Before dawn the next morning Willie Dare, Perpetual Alien awoke inside the Madrid hotel room startled by a new idea. And it was a question that kept him up at night for months to come.
What if the clever Carrara, international travel aficionado, wasn’t so smart after all?