Page 62 of Twice
Even when it might cost you everything.
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So now. To what made me famous.
I was sent to Mexico byLifemagazine to do a story about a distance runner who was deaf due to a birth defect. The young man, named Jaimie, was supremely gifted; at age eighteen he had already set a world record in the 1500 meters. He was hoping to compete in the Atlanta Olympics later that year. His family lived in a small village. His father had died, and Jaimie worked as a dishwasher in his mother’s restaurant. Her name was Marisol, only thirty-five herself, but older-looking from the endless hours she spent in the restaurant kitchen. The small profits she made went to pay for her son’s training.
We used a sign language translator for our interviews. Jaimie was a sweet kid with a sharp sense of humor. At one point he lent me a pair of his running shoes, and we did a few laps together around a track, with me desperately trying to keep up. When we finished, he signed to his translator, “Ask him when I can take the chains off my legs.”
I stayed for a few days. The morning I was scheduled to leave, Jaimie, Marisol, the photographer, and I were heading to the restaurant when we stopped at a bank to make a deposit. It was a small branch, with one teller and a couple of desks. The door was open to the heat.
Jaimie signed to his mother that he would fill out the deposit slip while the photographer took Marisol across the way to get some shots. A minute later, three men in sweat suits entered the bank. I watched two of them move quickly to the teller. The third lingered by the door. I turned my attention back to Marisol and the photographer.
Suddenly, I heard a gunshot. I spun and saw the man by the door holding a pistol in the air. He started screaming in Spanish and everyone inside—Marisol, the photographer, the workers, the other customers, and me—all dropped to the ground.
All except Jaimie.
His back was turned so he couldn’t see what was going on, and obviously, being deaf, he couldn’t hear the commotion. The gunman shouted at him and drew closer, waving his pistol. But Jaimie had his head lowered, writing. He never saw the guy until he snatched away the deposit envelope. Jaimie instinctively lunged for it, and the gunman shot him twice in the thigh.
Marisol screamed. Jaimie crumpled to the floor. The three robbers raced out the door. Suddenly the place was silent, save for the agonizing cries of a young athlete holding hisbleeding leg and likely wondering if his future had just been erased.
I panicked. I’d never seen anyone shot before. I slammed my eyes shut and shouted “Twice!” But the image in my head was of us entering the bank. Instantly, we were there again, Jaimie heading to fill out the deposit slip, Marisol and the photographer moving to the window.
I froze. I hadn’t gone back far enough. Before I could even yell anything, the three men walked in, and two of them again headed to the teller. My head swiveled from them to Marisol to the guy at the door.
BANG! The gunman fired and yelled at Jaimie, and the only thing I could think to do was run for him. If I could get him to the ground, maybe the gunman would leave him alone. I sprinted Jaimie’s way and saw him glance up just as I dove for his legs, tackling him like a linebacker. I heard the gun fire and the teller screaming and I felt Jaimie beneath me and a hot sting in my shoulder. The three robbers raced out the door and I fell off Jaimie and glanced down to a mess of blood around my collarbone.
“Alfie!” the photographer yelled. “Oh my God, you’re shot!”
I shut my eyes and whispered “Twice-twice-twice!” but nothing happened—I’d redone the moment already—and as I clamped my jaw against this newfound pain, I realized that whatever followed, this was one mistake I was going to have to live with.
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The bullet, thank God, went straight through. I spent a week in a Mexico City hospital before they let me go home. Gianna was waiting at the airport. She burst into tears when she saw my arm in a sling.
“Oh, no, no, no, Alfie—”
“It’s OK,” I said as she threw her arms around me. “Could be worse.”
“You got shot. How could it be worse?”
There were a million answers to that. But I said nothing. Gianna tended to me during the weeks that followed in a gentle, loving way that showed itself in all the small things—my coffee waiting in the morning, an extra pillow for my shoulder, a bottle of ibuprofen on my nightstand, a second washcloth prepared after cleaning my wound with the first one.
I must admit, I wasn’t the best patient. Not because of the injury, but becauseLifewanted the whole story, and quickly, and typing one-handed was pretty difficult. Meanwhile, other people were interviewing Jaimie, who credited me with saving his life. When he made the Olympic team in Atlanta, he announced as a tribute he would race in the shoes that he’d lent me.
He won his event by more than two seconds, again setting a new world record. I was there to witness it. At his press conference, he asked me up onstage.
“Without Mr. Alfie Logan,” he signed, “I would neverhave this.” He held up his gold medal and put his arm around my neck. Cameras whirred and flashes popped.
As you might imagine, the story took off. Suddenly I was getting calls from TV shows to do interviews with Jaimie and Marisol. We appeared on several programs, and the crowds were enthusiastic. It didn’t hurt that Jaimie had a great smile, while his mother, who did the signing for him, was humble and funny. I let them tell the tale of the bank robbery. They made me sound braver than I was.
One day, after the three of us did a morning talk show in New York, I returned home to find two voicemails on my answering machine, both from movie executives in California interested in buying theLifemagazine story for a film. I listened to their messages with Gianna.
“What do you think?” I asked.
“I think you told the story already.”
“But not as a movie.”
