Chapter IV

The warm Spanish air whisked past the car as it sped along the outskirts of Barcelona.

“SO TELL ME MORE,” Pena said, breaking the silence of the drive thus far.

Marco laughed as he squinted. The sun was coming in his side of the car and it was so bright he almost needed to use his right hand as a blinder.

“I know that you think I’m crazy . . . I know,” Marco said. He leaned his head back and cleared his throat. “Everybody who comes to town with a goose that lays golden eggs is crazy, too.”

Pena turned his head, “Now see, it’s right up to the time that you say silly things like that. Just when I start to think you’re stable.”

“I know that the big, bad, Antonio Pena has seen it all in his, what . . .”

Marco ran his eyes up and down, measuring Pena for his age. “Let’s say thirty- five years—”

“Something like that,” Pena interjected.

“Yeah, well . . . there are things you haven’t seen. Things I haven’t seen.

And if the information that I am getting is correct: There are things none

of us have ever seen. And they are on the horizon.”

“You religious fanatics like to talk in riddles and rhymes, huh? It’s never just ’here’s the story,′ in layman’s terms. I think you guys just do that to sound sophisticated.”

“I am not a fanatic,” Marco said as he rose his left hand in protest.

Then he saw the skeptical glare of Pena. He lowered his shoulders a bit and turned toward the blinding sun, reflecting off the Mediterranean Sea. “Well, a bit over zealous at times.”

“So, at the end of the instructions you gave me,” Pena said as he held up a small piece of yellow paper that had all sorts of things scribbled on it, as well as a crudely drawn map.

Marco placed his hands together, carefully interlocking each finger as if he was a child again, about to pray. “I am not crazy. In about five minutes we are going to get to a place that will help you understand just how ‘real’ these theories of mine are. Until then, I just want you to smell the salt from the ocean. Smell the grass and the trees. Breathe in all of this, because at the end of the day that is all that we’ve got. We could get into a car accident at any moment. We might suddenly be sent into some strange allergic shock. We might be—”

“Marco, your weirding out on me again.”

“Yes, well . . . you know what I mean. Take every piece of your reality you can get. Because, when it’s gone . . .” Marco separated his hands, and with his palms touching together. He made a very deliberate wiping motion, and then opened his hands, fingers extended outward.

“It’s gone?” Pena said, answering the quasi rhetorical question that Marco was working towards.

“Don’t steal my thunder, Antonio,” Marco said with a grin.

“Duly noted, father.”

And they drove on in silence, again. The warm air poured in through the slightly rolled down windows. And Pena caught himself thinking that this was the most surreal case he had ever investigated, and he wouldn’t have traded one moment of it for anything else.