It’s the time and the season I guess.  I used to do leathergoods.  So, I needed to change my wallet and went into my stash and found a cute one.  Over  20 years ago, I had done a line with two guys I was friendly with in Spain.  I had worked with them in my travels.

And yesterday, my mind just couldn’t stay focused on anything for long and I looked at the wallet, smacked my head and said d’uh let me look A up on the Internet.  We had had an affair for some years, before my first marriage and maybe during.  I can’t attest to during but I certainly saw him either just before or just after I was married.  And my policy is to remain friends with everyone and we had for a bit.  Problem A spoke no English except for  ‘allo and “maybe”.  My spoken Spanish is hilarious or silly depending on your view and my written Spanish requires intensive care.  I used to read it really well.  I have the most beautiful  love letters, promising me the sun, the moon and the stars.

Well, he came right up on the Internet and my reading skills have deteriorated a bit through lack of use but I recognized posthumous and memorial.  Ouch, ouch, ouch.  He died this past July.

It’s funny how you know someone and don’t know someone.  He wanted to leave his wife and marry me.    He was a very successful businessman.  I thought about it.  He was a lovely man.  Sort of looked like Michael York.  He had a friend and partner who was married two or three times and the last wife had a terrible time in the village they lived in.  I turned him down, told him he couldn’t afford me.  Village life would  not have worked for me and I would have been shunned.  Madrid is not my favorite European city.  I would have needed Paris on a regular basis and home!

He would call occasionally.  Words are better in person.  I have the most beautiful, beautiful letters.

One day I was listening on the radio to George Thorogood “One Whiskey, One Scotch and One Beer”.  I knew for sure I could never do it.  I felt too American.  There was a part of me he would never be able to understand.

I married someone else (first husband).  No more love letters but he helped me start a business selling his leathergoods. I failed.  No recriminations.  It was a bad period in my life.

And now to find out he too is gone.  Not that much older than me.  The Internet says he was a much bigger deal than I thought or knew.  Goes back to Joebe – what do we really know about each other, even when we are close