IV. José (or, That Damn Cat)

José was a good man. He spoke just enough English to make real communication only tantalizingly out-of-reach. Having lived in Chile long enough to pick up the language myself, I had been taken on as much to communicate with him as to play office assistant to Becky. José and I used to chat. We enjoyed each others’ company—as much as possible with an age-gap of 30 years and a cultural divide of what felt like thousands—and to this day I regret not going to his daughter’s wedding reception to which he, personally, had invited me. I found out after I had left the business that he had contracted a flesh-eating virus from a stray cat that his wife had taken in that had licked a sore on his heel as he lay, napping, on the couch. Within three days he had nearly lost his leg and accumulated tens of thousands of dollars in hospital bills. He never told his wife that it was her damn cat, he just had one of his children insure that it “ran away.” He was a good man. That’s all I heard, really, but I like to think that he’s doing well in spite of everything.