Written By Brad Harness
Francine was happy to see me, and Henri, well, he was friendly enough. He spoke first.
“Bobby, glad to see you. I thought…maybe…your boss, he would not let you get off of the ship today…”
Bobby smiled and said, “No chance of that. I worked the last three in-harbour days. This one here…it’s my turn to have it off.”
Francine chuckled and smiled, blowing me a kiss through red lips before hooking her arm through mine. I put it down to her European ways and went along with it, although I did wonder what Henri was thinking. Which was apparently nothing about Francine or me.
In fact, Henri was out front walking along the jetty towards the duty-free shops. He was in the lead, taking long strides, and did not look back to see if his girlfriend or his tour guide for the day -me - was keeping up.
Francine shook her head from side to side slowly, and with a wave of her well-manicured hand, said, “Don’t mind Henri. I don’t! He is like this all the time. You would never think that he was dating a beautiful lady like myself, the way he treats me. I am nothing more than an afterthought for him…”
I looked sideways at her, frowning, not sure what to make of what she had just said. I opted to change the subject.
“Our first stop this morning will be the old town walls. But we must walk through the beautiful old town cobble stone streets to get there.”
“Sound perfect!” she replied, pulling me in closer. I looked ahead at Henri and could see he still had his eyes fixed on something up ahead. Occasionally he took a puff on his cigarette, sending a small cloud of smoke back my way. I wasn’t a smoker, but noticed they smelled like Turkish ones. How French
of him. Then he stopped suddenly without notice.
“Hey, Monsieur Bobby, I would like to see dis place here…” he said, pointing to a cigar making shop in an advertising brochure for tourists.
I nodded, saying “Oh, sure. We can do that. I know the place. It is very famous here in San Juan. It is on the way to the old town walls, so we can stop there first.
All around were tourists everywhere, thousands of them, from our ship as well as from the other three large cruise ships in harbour today. We all had about twelve hours until we had to be back on board.
Next Week: Part 5
