Nobody Ever Dies

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 thing 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 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 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 life of a Majorcan aristocrat, without knowing that I existed, and I could get on with my life knowing that she was happy. 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 was dead, 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 overdid 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!!

The hosts themselves were waiting in the area where the food was being served. As I walked in I saw my wife the way Osborne must have seen her - sensuously leggy and nubile. She was in a red dress, not unlike the one that she'd worn the last time I'd seen her... three long years ago.

The dress showcased Becks' striking coloration, raven black hair, sparkling blue eyes, and alabaster skin with matching red lipstick and nails. She had a perfectly proportioned body... hips, waist, and chest. It was enlightening. Honestly? How could you resist something like that?

But this time she seemed relaxed, graceful, at ease and very truly sophisticated. This was not the nerd girl I'd known and loved. March-Brettmann was in a tux. He looked disdainfully imperious and washed-out at the same time. He was considerably shorter than me, but most people are, with a full head of snow-white hair and an immaculate Van Dyke beard. He and Becks didn't match up in the slightest.

I could see that they were fond of each other and comfortable in their relationship. But it actually looked more like father and daughter, than husband and wife. I was aware of the fact that Becks turned into a totally different person when the lights went out... and I had the amusing thought that she'd probably kill the good doctor, sooner or later.