We met an American named James at a village bus stop and traveled into Managua with him. February, 1988, my diary says. The Sandinistas had just come to power. Every crumbling cinder block wall sported a spray-painted silhouette of Zapata. The Nicaraguan countryside full of jubilation, and as the Bruce Cockburn song goes, diesel and dust.
Damn Sandinistas shot my plane out of the sky, James said. He was lighting a cigarette while we waited for the driver. James flicked the match and the flame landed near the toe of his tooled cowboy boot. The delivery vintage John Wayne.
I got a little hacienda over the border there, he said. He tilted his head toward the dusty wall of jungle at the edge of the road.
I come to get my damn plane back.
Care for some mango, said Sadie.

Sadie McCarthy, my best friend since highschool. Sadie trusted everything, every person we met, the food, her Swiss Army knife. Everyone gave in to the blinding glare of her generosity. She seized on things; split them open. She was pleasantly disarming. Very beautiful, Sadie: blonde, sun-freckled skin, blue eyes, all cheekbone and angles; even inert, her face seemed full of drama. She had smarts.
On the escalator in La Guardia airport she started speaking Spanish. She hadn’t known she knew how.
I guess with the French, she said, shrugging.
A family from Guatemala dressed in traditional clothes. At the bottom of the escalator they bent their heads together with Sadie over a map and then they all burst into laughter. During the descent she’d conjured enough Spanish to tell a joke.
Being from Newfoundland made us different than the shiny faced, do-good American kids in Nicaragua building schools and hospitals. The youth brigades. We knew less about the situation. They had horrific facts, media connections, and pot-smoking parents with healthily diversified portfolios. They struck me as incredibly naive.
My parents wouldn’t have recognized a joint if it hit them over the head. What we had was scepticism; we were Catholic.
I had just fallen in love.
Sadie had a broken heart.
It was something we marveled at, the broken heart, respected wholly. We had both done a crash course in rapture. Those were the sort of things we were bringing to the table. The Americans, with their multi-pocketed knapsacks and their durable hiking boots had more serious, political concerns.

Sadie turned the mango peel inside out so the fruit stood up. She pressed the blade of her knife closed against her thigh. The bus started up, hacking clouds of sooty fumes. The man in front of me had oinking piglets in a burlap sack.
James said, My wing caught fire and I went down in the bushes. Next thing I know there’s a couple of kids waving machine guns. They weren’t no more than twelve years old.

Sadie had a broken heart. But she was determined to cheer up.
We’d gone for a beer at the Ship Inn, a freezing, snowy night in January. I was embarrassed about what I thought of as my condition; brain-addled; love had immobilized me.
I had left a long-limbed man on a futon sticky from love making. I’d left a joint and a fat book, The Will to Power, which I was trying to read in order to impress him. Neiztche was like the nitrate drops the doctor had recently used to freeze my Planter’s wart. Cauterizing – freezing and burning at once, elemental, demented. Why did Neiztche want to strip God out of the universe so unceremoniously? Why did he have to be such a bad-ass? Man’s smallness and accidental occurrence in the flux of becoming and passing away. I did a double-take on that sentence, but nothing could make it stick.  It seemed to me, snuggled in the fist of love as I was, curmudgeonly to carp about our insignificance.
Basically, I was unconvinced.
The phone rang and my guy flipped up the blanket to let me out. I’d tugged on mukluks and the wind snatched the screen door out of my mitt. I stepped into a snowy St. John’s night to meet Sadie. How long had I been seeing this guy? Two weeks and three days.
I want to go somewhere, she said.
I thought she meant the Spur. Sometimes, after the Ship, the Spur.  A bar that lets you celebrate your own glorious frailty. We were too young for the Spur. Sadie didn’t mean the Spur. There were a thousand snowstorms that winter. Snowstorms bluish, lilting, and deaf. She had RRSPs she could cash, a travel agent her brother knew. She’d lend me the bucks.
Maybe we’ll learn something, she said.
What I remember about 1988: in my diary it says Sadie and I swam in a lagoon ignoring the warning signs about crocodiles. I have no memory of that.

We are a massive rock in the middle of the North Atlantic mauled by interminable winter.   She was saying Central America.
She’d just finished a Political Science degree, had written a longish paper. Zapata, Romero, Ortega.
She was talking getting laid. Meeting a guy and getting laid. Some stranger she was talking.
It would be like a cold shower or food poisoning, getting laid, something to work the heartbreaker right out of her system. This idea sent a chill through me. She didn’t mean falling in love – a state in which sex is somewhat involuntary; so if not condoned by the Church, also not technically a culpable act in our books – she was talking straight forward fucking. Self- determination. Our thinking was grief could be forced like tulips bulbs; tricked by unnatural light. Winter in Newfoundland, any light is unnatural. Catholicism had gone weird down there, we’d heard. Cracked off from the Vatican, inebriated with Marxism. The priests were young and handsome and committed to the poor. It was something we wanted to check out.
Buried under the mysticism (the sexiest part of being Catholic) there’s a pragmatism as inexorable as the Newfoundland winter. We both secretly believed that a broken heart, though stunning in its marred beauty, should only be indulged fleetingly. In fact, any kind of heart (mine threatening to explode with satisfaction) deserved no more than passing attention. There was too much world coming at us. But a trip, two weeks and three days into the most significant relationship of my lifetime? Was this wise? All I could think of was my guy and the danger of losing him.
Unless you’re too caught up in that guy you’re seeing, Sadie said.

A motorized trolley in La Guardia airport with a super-model whirred into our path. A sheet of hair as gleaming and honeyed as a gym floor.
Christie Brinkley, Sadie said.
The airport was dirty, crestfallen and the model was a raffish spark, radiant and fey. I think she was wearing feathers. The Americans have a way of dressing up the dour realism they mistake for honesty with concentrated bursts of glamour. The rusting girders and temporarily dysfunctional computers were a manifestation of a national  malaise, a fetid, spoiling country.
That’s the sort of mood we were in, ready to make wanton, shallow pronouncements.
Our idea of America was confirmed by what we saw in the airport. Four Hasidic Jews pulling luggage on wheels, the smell of burnt coffee, a ravaged, ancient man with egg in his beard and a fedora with a Bugs Bunny decal on the crown. The placard that said, Support SDI or learn Russian. Disturbed, grand, mellowed, kinky America.
We were giving a broken heart the slip.
What actually happened versus what I remember. A road movie, this story. We were in Managua; we were traveling with a Contra. James looked like a beach bum, blonde hair going incandescent rather than grey, deeply tanned, six foot something, spare. His eyes were the thing; they were weirdly pale, the blue of propane torches or glacial runoff; an unworldly blue that coloured contact lenses were about to invent. If this were a science fiction story the reader would immediately intuit his alien nature. The characteristic which marks him as inhuman; eternal youth plagued those eyes. Youth is the ability to not look back. No remorse, no redemption. Good skin.
They kept me in a cell for quite a while, James said. He balled up the mango peel and lifting a knee to his chest, swung his arm around three times and tossed the peel into the trees.
Roomy though, he said. And the food was not bad. We found our seats on the violently shuddering bus. James dropped down beside me.
The accommodations were four star, he said. I’ll say that for them. It was just shy of the goddamn Hilton.

There’s the diary entry about the Vietnam vet we met in Guatemala who had silvery dime- sized shrapnel scars all over his back. I don’t remember the scars. I remember, though,  the guy’s yacht and the two German girls leaning over the rail, calling to us in lovely accents – He’s harmless, come aboard! (‘armless, they had said, in their breathy, harsh English).
Sailing the Rio Dulce until dark, and that night ending up on a farm hacked out of a solid wall of jungle. Stoned on homegrown, in a thatched hut, watching pornography on a television plugged into a generator, wondering unlucidly where the hell Sadie was. She was, as it turned out, a) skinny dipping with the war vet in the moonlight while the German girls kept watch, over the rail for a silvery scarf of pirana. b) stirring a cloud of white feathers into the beam of a flashlight the vet held so she could pluck the chicken whose neck he’d just wrung. c) holding the vet’s foot in her hand, touching with her index finger the bright pink nub where his big toe had been shot off.
My diary says, Outside the hut, three vultures are tearing the intestines out of a dead dog’s anus.
I remember the woman who said about the car bomb the Contras had planted for her father.
Little pieces of him all over the lawn, she said. She was feeding her baby in a highchair while she talked. Catching mashed banana off his chin with the side of the spoon.
A hike into the jungle to see cave paintings, I remember. Walking through icy water up to our waists in the dark, flashlights sending fast slithering reflections over the rippling surface. Knowing there could be bodies. Knowing it and not believing it for a second. How great though, to get back out in the open.
The future you can act upon, depend upon. But the present (and that’s what we were traveling in back then) is bitching, inconsolable, desperate, and full of smell. Why did we ride into Managua with James when we suspected he had violated human rights?
I remember very clearly the man in the Intercontinental saying to James: I was blindfolded and you marched me through the jungle with a gun to my back.
The present is smallness and accidental occurrence.
What I can remember would fit in a thimble.
I know your voice, the journalist said.
James said, I’m going to buy you gals a drink. He folded an American bill and waved it between two fingers at the bartender.
Three weeks in a blindfold, I know your voice.
Who is this joke, James asked.
Me and two other journalists, the man said.
They shot my damn plane out of the sky, James snarled.
Two reporters, where are they now? Were they released?
I don’t know what you’re talking about. James looked at his hands for a moment. He held them out before him as though they were a mild surprise to him. Then he took up his drink with a studied wince.
Listen pal, James said, I’m just having a little drinkie with these gals from Newfoundland.
The journalist walked back to his table on the other side of the bar.

The trouble was we were drunk by that point. Sadie and I were already very drunk. We’d been in Central America maybe a month. The bar at the Intercontinental was crowded with media types, businessmen. We cased the place pretty quick and joined the only single man sitting at a table. A good looking American comedian, it turned out. Plunked ourselves down; ordered him a scotch.
There had been a celebration in the streets when we arrived in Managua. We had stepped off the bus into a dense crowd moving down the street toward the main square. Dancing, music, hissing fire crackers smacking the pavement; bouncing near our ankles. A silk banner as big as a house flapped softly under crossed spotlights; Ortega himself would speak. On the way to the bar I walked into a Cathedral to get out of the path of the crowd. The Cathedral had been wrecked by an earthquake, stone walls slanted at odd angles, the roof gone. A firecracker burst above the open ceiling, the pale filaments floated like dandelion fluff. I  saw a cat pad across a marble altar in the brief illumination. It stood still, mute and sacrificial, then trotted soundlessly away.

Tell us all about yourself, Sadie said.
I’m a comedian, the man said. The bartender brought him his scotch and a paper napkin.
A comedian is about right, said Sadie.
I’ve been on Saturday Night Live quite a few times, he said. Maybe you recognize me?  He showed Sadie his profile.
Would you say you’re a regular, I asked. I hated him. I could guess how things would unfold. She would sleep with him and I felt an unexpected jealousy. Or fear. He was all wrong: complacent about his charm, hopelessly in the know.
I’ve made some appearances, he said.
But you’re not a regular?
Sadie asked, And you’re here doing what?
Getting material.
The revolution must be a real rib tickler, I said. But he was determined to ignore me. Twisting in his chair, he looked for a long moment into Sadie’s eyes. I watched a sly smile creep over his face.
Do you know what I want, he said. Sadie tossed her hair over her shoulder and settled in.
I’d be willing to find out, she said.
I want the U.S. out of Nicaragua, he said.
Amen, I said. Instant hate for this guy. I don’t remember his name. I remember saying: You’re not that funny, are you? For a comedian, I mean.

The journalist had been sitting with his back to us at the bar. I thought I could feel him listening, something about his posture, squared shoulders, a stillness. He came over to our table and spoke to James.
You put a gun to my back.
I’ve never seen this guy before, James said.
This is James Denby, the journalist said. He’s bad fucking news.
This guy knows your name, James, Sadie said.
The comedian said, You’re Denby?
Three weeks in a blindfold, the journalist said.

Sadie peeling a mango by the side of the road. She was wearing a white cheesecloth dress with a drawstring at the waist and a spill of pink embroidered flowers. What the fashion mags called the peasant look. But the peasants were in fatigues.
The mango was bright with a green rim around the orange flesh. It dripped tiny pock marks in the dust. The orange flesh was tiringly vivid. It wasn’t emblematic; it was itself.
An orange fist in the eye in the jungle.
The green of the jungle is a verb. It greens.
Irony is a luxury, and the Nicaraguans seemed unfamiliar with it. They were blissful that the war was over. When I came home I looked up James Denby in the library and found him in the index of a couple of history books about Central America. He was mentioned, a line here, a whole paragraph in one book. I wonder if he’s still alive.
This is about the only thing I can tell you about the guy who broke Sadie’s heart. He stood outside the supermarket (recently) slush up to his ankles, hands in his pockets, gazing up at the clouds. He had a bag hanging from his wrist with three bulbs of fennel. His gaiters weren’t quite zipped up and the tongues hung out. He has become very successful. The best ears, nose, throat guy we have, I’ve heard. His passion is cooking.
I want a slate counter, he says. His hands spreading in front of him as though he has a counter there on the sidewalk.
For my kitchen and I’ll certainly get one, he says.
I think, in retrospect, fucking the comedian was Sadie’s attempt at irony.
An American man in his forties stood off to the side while Sadie peeled the mango. He wore white pants and a Hiawiian shirt. Aqua with bursts of fuchsia, magenta, parrots and razor-like flowers. Cowboy boots. Sadie scraped her teeth against the peel.  I saw her glance at the man and we both looked at each other. I saw we had come to the same wary conclusion; we would welcome him. It would have been nice to file James away under e for evil and forget about him. Or sociopath. He was nothing that simple. He was vital, desperate to be a political agent, patriotic. He seemed to imagine himself good willed.
Sadie sliced a quarter of the fruit away from the pit and handed it to me.
Those kids were damn cute, he said. Little tykes, armed to the teeth. I got a boy of my own. I can appreciate.
Later, when dusk had fallen over the countryside, and the piglets had been lulled to sleep by the vibrations of the bus, James became introspective. He tapped the side of his nose and admitted his boy had a problem with coke.
Birth control, James said. That’s why my boy has troubles. What’s a boy like my son got to work for in this world? Used to be a man worked for his family. Now you got child-bearing women sitting on their fannies in office towers.
When the bus pulled up in front of the Intercontinental James said he’d like to buy us a drink.
I think we should get going, Sadie said.
Fact is, said James, it’s good to have a little company in Managua.

I was on the way out of the Intercontinental’s plush, quiet bathroom when I banged into the journalist who accused James of taking him prisoner. He gripped my arm.
Get away from Denby, he said.
The comedian came around the corner too.
Let’s get Denby somewhere safe, the comedian said.
The Nicaraguans have every right to assassinate him, said the journalist.
He deserves a fair trial. He’s safe with the girls until morning.
I think he killed those reporters, the man said.
He’s an American, the comedian said.
I said, You’re not that funny, for a comedian, are you?

Outside the streets were still full of celebration. The comedian found us a taxi and it took us a long time and a lot of honking to get to a clear side street. James checked into our hostel and took a moment to wish us a good evening. He shook my hand, and then held it.
You are the kind of woman I would have wished for my son, he said. He was gone in the morning.
Sadie hugged me and whispered, I’m going. I’ll see you tomorrow.
Don’t go with him, I said. I don’t believe he was on Saturday Night Live.

In the morning I tried to phone my guy back in St. John’s. He sounded restrained and glad. I told him how much I loved him. He said that was good, but he had a visitor. I tried to hear something in the background. I knew it was a woman. I said nothing.
Just a friend visiting, he said.
I’m going to marry you, I said. Just watch. I hung up.
I found Sadie in the cafe where we’d agreed to meet. She had a steaming coffee sitting on the table between her elbows, her hands covering her face. I sat down in the chair opposite but she didn’t move. When she took her hands away her nose had gone red at the tip and her eyes were watery.
You look different, I said. She very gently touched the outer corner of her eye with her knuckle, and then blinked several times. Then she became herself.
She said a woman in an man’s undershirt and briefs, stilettos and an open, flapping kimono had come tearing out of a bedroom down the hall at dawn into the livingroom holding in her outstretched arm an empty box of chocolates. The individual, fluted, brown papery wrappers pattering the tiles behind her. Sadie was sleeping naked on top of the sleeping comedian.
All my chocolates Darrell, the woman wailed. (It just came to me, the comedian’s name. Sadie did the woman with a New York accent). Last week some bimbo was into the caviar, this week it’s the chocolates.
Sadie tried to cover herself. Holding Darrell’s shirt over her breasts she extended her hand and said, I’m Sadie.
The woman tossed the empty box to the floor and folded her arms across her chest. She blew a strand of hair out of her eyes.
Get her out of here Darrell, for Christ’s sake.
The woman turned and clattered back down the dark hall, slamming a door. The door open and the woman screamed, Out! And slammed the door again.
Darrell sat up and found a joint in the ashtray. He lit it and inhaled deeply and finally spoke with one eye squinted. It came out a kind of wheeze.
Did you have to eat every last fucking chocolate?
I said, But how was it?
The chocolates were the best part, she said. Then she covered her face with her hands and stayed that way for several minutes. She gave herself a hard little shiver and looked back up at me.
The streets were covered with torn streamers and garbage from the celebration of the night before.
So you’re saying it was what, I asked.
It was awful.
You know what I’m realizing, I said. Some day all of this will seem insignificant.