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Graciela reminded Jax of Lisa Delacruz, the one ethnic girl who had graced his high school. She was a stunner, but everyone in that petty little town except Jax had ignored her.
    Remembering Lisa caused him to remember David James Smith, the name the hospital had chosen for him at birth, an identity he left behind long ago. Who wanted to be called David James Smith, anyway? He might as well tell people he was a tax attorney.
    He said, “A pleasure, Graciela. That’s a beautiful name.”
    “
Gracias
.”
    “You have family in Miami?”
    “
Si
. My uncle and two cousins. You also?”
    Fair Graciela, mine is the sad clichéd story of callous birth parents and foster homes, of adolescence in a dry county in Oklahoma with a foster family whose provinciality would shock a Quaker.
    “No.”
    “And where is your family?”
    My family members are the beautiful doves like you, sprinkled across the world like a living treasure hunt. As for my birth family, I don’t know and don’t care and they can go to hell. And if you meant my final foster family, the last time I saw them was the day I left Oklahoma to join the Army. Five years ago they both died of lung cancer, and that was that.
    “Montana,” he said.
    “I don’t know it. I’ve been to Miami and New York and Chicago.” She pronounced Miami in the Spanish way, and New York and Chicago in the English. “What do you think of my country?”
    “Stunning,” he said. “I miss it already.”
    “Did you go for business or pleasure?”
    “A little vacation, Graciela. Everyone needs some fresh air and sunshine now and again.”
    “So you do not live in Miami. There is plenty of sunshine there. Where do you live?”
    Graciela was sexy as hell, but she had an innocence that… corralled… his physical attraction, and opened a valve of reflection he couldn’t shut off.
    Where do I live?
Many places, love. Many. I don’t want to think about the places I lived before Oklahoma, because they are not good memories.
    I could have stayed in Oklahoma. I excelled at football and chasing women and shooting whiskey, which were the things that counted in my town. But all I could see was a suffocating horizon where my future should have been, a black hole of empty beer cans and strip malls and too-familiar faces. No, Graciela, this would not be me. Could not be me.
    So I joined the military, and I learned how to survive and how to kill. I volunteered to go abroad and saw a glimpse of the world—a taste, just enough to know I’d found my true loves, freedom and adventure. An entire world to explore! Any name I wanted, any hobby I wanted, any home I wanted.
    After my tour, both jaded and fresh at twenty-two, I stepped off the bus in Dallas. I had five hundred dollars saved, and within a month I’d drawn four thousand from my credit cards. What was ruined credit to someone who never cared to see his homeland again? I sold everything I had and took a plane to London.
    But I digress. Where do I live? Everywhere. Nowhere. I’ve lived in Paris, Tokyo, Rome, Auckland, Dar-Es-Salaam, Mumbai, Rangoon, Beijing and Tangiers. I’ve lived on a yacht in the Indian Ocean and in a hut in Kenya and under a bridge in Prague and in a hammock in Bahia and on a kibbutz in Israel and—
    “Jax?”
    He blinked. “Sorry love. I got distracted by the view.”
    “Ay,
si
. I love when we are above Miami and the islands are like little green cookies.”
    “It’s a good city.”
    “You never told me where you live,” she said.
    “Florence, at the moment.”
    She gasped. “Italy?”
    “That’s the one.”
    She grabbed his arm. “That is my dream city for as long as I can remember! When I was young we had a book on our, I think you say coffee table? The pictures of Florence… it looked like a magical tale.”
    “Fairy tale. Still looks that way. You should go soon. No one’s dream city should go unvisited.”
    She looked wistful, and smiled at him again. “You’re a nice man. “
    Nice? If you