Three weeks with my brother - Nicholas Sparks [37]
This would become our routine over the next few weeks. While a tour like ours has advantages, the schedule is carefully predetermined, and in many places there’s little time to linger or explore on your own.
It was the night of the Super Bowl. The Tampa Bay Buccaneers were playing the Oakland Raiders, and a number of people in the tour wanted to watch it, including Micah. Because he lived in Sacramento, the Raiders were his favorite team and he’d even been to a few of the games that year. We weren’t even sure the game would be broadcast in Peru, and there was a veritable whoop on the bus when TCS confirmed that it would be. The game would be on via satellite in the bar, and would stay tuned there throughout the game; apparently, this required quite a bit of finagling by the crew of TCS; few people in Peru care about the Super Bowl, and a soccer game—which was important to Peruvians—wouldn’t be shown.
Wanting a good seat, Micah and I were among the first to arrive and we began ordering traditional pregame goodies. Others gradually joined us. Half the crowd favored Tampa Bay, the other half favored Oakland, and by the time it was ready for the game to begin, the hotel bar looked like a bar in any city in the United States. There wasn’t a local anywhere near the place.
There was no pregame show; instead, roughly five minutes before the start of the game, the television flickered once or twice, and we found ourselves watching the teams lining up for the kickoff.
“See, everything we’re doing is new,” Micah said. “Be honest, who do you know who’s ever watched the Super Bowl in Lima?”
“No one,” I admitted.
“Having fun yet?”
“Having a blast,” I answered.
“You thinking about work?”
“Nope. Just thinking about the game.”
He waved a french fry at me. “Good. There’s hope for you yet.”
“Turn it up!” someone yelled from behind us. “We can’t hear in the back!”
The bartender used the remote, and the volume began to rise. With it, the familiar sounds started to register. We heard the roar of the crowd, the names of the players as they were announced in the stadium, then the coin toss. Only then did the announcers begin their commentary.
Everyone leaned forward.
“What the hell are they saying?” someone shouted.
“I don’t know,” another answered. “I think they’re announcing it in . . . Spanish.”
Of course, it made perfect sense once you thought about it.
“Spanish?”
“It’s the official language of Peru,” Micah offered. “And Spain.”
No one thought it was funny.
“I thought it was coming in on satellite,” someone grumbled. “From the States. Maybe it’s in English on another channel.”
The bartender surfed around; this was it. Spanish or nothing.
I leaned toward Micah. “Now you really have a story to tell,” I said. “Not only did you see your favorite team play in the Super Bowl in Lima, Peru, but you can tell them you heard it in Spanish.”
“Now you’re getting in the spirit. That’s exactly what I was going to say.”
We settled in to watch the game. The Raiders weren’t playing well and quickly fell behind. Micah’s cheers gradually grew more infrequent, and by halftime, he was shaking his head.
“You gotta have faith,” I urged.
“I think I’m losing it.”
“I’ve heard that,” I said pointedly, recalling my previous conversations I’d had with his wife, Christine. “So, are you still avoiding church?”
He smiled, but didn’t look at me. Faith and religion was a subject we often discussed, even through our early years. Since Micah had married, however, the subject had been coming up more regularly. Christine wasn’t Catholic, and instead of going to Mass, they attended a nondenominational Christian service. Unlike the Mass I preferred, which is highly traditional, with only slight variation from week to week, Micah preferred a service with less structure and more time for personal reflection. Or, more accurately, those were his original reasons when he explained the change to me. But lately, even those differences hadn’t seemed