Barcelona Dreaming

by Rupert Thomson

  “You haven’t,” Mireia said, “have you.”

  I told her I had rung the doorbell, and that Vic’s wife had answered. Vic was in London, I said, and she hadn’t known when he was coming back. I promised to call on Vic again soon.

  Mireia seemed relieved to hear that he had gone away.

  “I hope he never comes back,” she said.

  I didn’t tell her that Vic’s trips to London were a regular occurrence, and that he would almost certainly be returning in the next few days. He might even have returned already.

  She told me she was looking for a new job. She no longer felt comfortable at the Dalí. She couldn’t forget what that woman with the rotten teeth had said. She felt she was being watched, even when she was alone in her office. She asked if I thought she was overreacting. Being paranoid. I shook my head. In the circumstances, I said, I would probably feel the same. She had been so unnerved by the whole episode, she told me, so undermined, that she had decided to take some holiday. Here, for the first time in our conversation, I thought I detected something less than honest, just the hint of a false note.

  “You’re going away?” I said.

  She nodded.

  “Who with?”

  She mentioned Flor, a friend of hers. Flor had an aunt who owned a house on Corsica. She was talking faster suddenly, and winding a strand of her long hair round her index finger. The sense that I was being lied to or misled persisted, and the thought that came to me in that moment was a thought I’d often had before. She’s met someone new. I could hear him in her voice, a presence that was shadowy but urgent.

  “I managed to get a flight for this weekend,” she hurried on, the words tumbling out. “I’ll be gone for several weeks. I just can’t wait.” She stopped and looked at me, as if an idea had just occurred to her. “You haven’t got a guide to Corsica, have you?”

  “Why would I have a guide to Corsica?”

  She shrugged. “I thought you might have been there.”

  “No.”

  I didn’t believe she was staying at her friend’s aunt’s house in Corsica. She probably wasn’t even going to Corsica at all. It was just a cover story, to make me feel better. My eyes turned to the window as an ambulance whooped and flashed its way up Santaló. I always felt so bereft when Mireia left the city that I would rather not have known about it. On top of that, I had another reason to be anxious. If she was really going out with someone new, she might use my supposed friendship with Vic as an excuse to see less of me.

  “What about you, Jordi?” she said. “Have you got any plans?”

  I saw the question for what it was—the feigning of an interest she didn’t feel, an attempt to restore the illusion of equality or balance.

  “I might go to São Paulo,” I said gloomily.

  “Really?”

  I had wanted her to feel a twinge of jealousy, but she just seemed impressed. I mentioned the party I had been to, and the woman in the red top who had talked about Brazil.

  “You’re not sleeping with her, are you?”

  I laughed. “No.”

  “Are you sure?” Mireia cocked her head, mischievous, amused. She was pleased with herself for having turned the tables on me. If her hunch was correct, I had a secret too. I was guilty, like her. And I was guilty—if only of lying. But it was a pointless and pathetic lie. Why was I claiming to have been inspired by a woman who had bored me half to death?

  I finished my drink. “I should be getting home.”

  “Already?” Mireia looked down at the table. How I longed to lower my face into that tangled mass of hair!

  “If I don’t see you before you go,” I said, “have a great time, won’t you.”

  * * *

  —

  ABOUT A WEEK LATER, my bell rang at eight o’clock at night, and when I opened the door Vic was standing there in a dark green polo shirt and a pair of gray slacks.

  “So this is where you do all that translating,” he said.

  Before I could say anything, he pushed past me, into the living room. I couldn’t remember the last time there had been two people in my apartment. It seemed too many.

  Vic was looking around and nodding, his hands in his pockets. “Small, but perfectly formed.”

  I offered him a beer, which he accepted, then he looked towards the kitchenette, where steam was rising from a pan of boiling water.

  “I was about to make spaghetti,” I said.

  “Turn it off. We’re going out.”

  Ten minutes later, we were in a taxi, heading for El Xalet. It was his favorite restaurant, he told me. He’d had some good news that day. Some very good news. He didn’t bother to elaborate. Vic had the irritating habit of withholding information, no matter how trivial that information might be. It was another of his techniques for arousing curiosity. You found yourself asking questions, despite yourself. As the lights of Plaça d’Espanya swirled past, I wondered how I was going to honor my promise to Mireia. Vic had already insisted that dinner was on him. Things couldn’t have been more awkward.

  “Shouldn’t you be celebrating with your wife?” I said.

  Vic laughed loudly, as if my question was the punchline to a joke. “You obviously don’t know Joanna. She hates going out.”

  I wished I could have changed places with her.

  I wished I’d never answered the door.

  Once we were seated on the terrace, Vic ordered a bottle of gran reserva cava. Perched high on Montjuïc, El Xalet looks north, and the whole city lay before us, a jumble of pink and gray blocks in the warm evening light. Below us, at the foot of the hill, was Federmann’s workshop. I thought of the snakeskins rustling on their hooks and shivered, but Vic was leaning back in his chair, relaxed, expansive. He gestured at the view with his champagne glass. “Look at us, Jordi. I mean, where did it all go wrong?”

  He laughed again, and this time I laughed with him. I asked him what we were celebrating, and though he still refused to go into any detail he gave me to understand that he had made a great deal of money.

  “Was it a business venture?” I asked.

  Smiling, he refilled our glasses.

  “What about the chest of drawers?” I went on. “Any new developments?”

  His smile shrank. “It’s all gone quiet.” He paused. “Did I tell you I ran into Bill Stone?”

  “Is he the guy with the rocking chair?”

  Vic nodded. “I asked him if he’d had any trouble with it. He looked at me like I was mental and said it was the best thing he’d ever bought. It changed his life, apparently.” Vic blew some air out of his mouth to signify contempt or disbelief, then lit a cigarette. “Maybe I imagined the whole thing. Maybe it was all the drugs I was doing. Lluis is a bad influence.” He touched the end of his cigarette against the ashtray. “You remember Lluis? The loft I took you to—that was his.”

  “What kind of drugs?”

  But Vic wouldn’t say. Instead, he raised his glass. “Here’s to us.”

  Later, when we had finished our starters and were on our second bottle, he asked what I’d been working on. I began to tell him about the novella, which I had finally delivered a few days earlier, but he was shaking his head before I was even halfway through.

  “Women don’t behave like that,” he said.

  “This one does.” I kept my voice light. “It takes all sorts to make a world.”

  The look Vic gave me was affectionate but condescending. “And there was me, thinking you knew about people.”

  I drank from my water glass.

  “Vic,” I said, “there’s something I have to tell you.”

  He looked up, his head turned a fraction to one side, but both his eyes on mine.

  “You have to stay away from Mireia,” I said.

  “Mireia? Who’s Mireia?” He reached for a bread roll.

&nb
sp; “My girlfriend. Mireia.”

  Vic was tearing pieces off the roll and tossing them in his mouth, then chewing hungrily.

  “You approached her in the Hotel Dalí, where she works,” I went on. “You invited her up to your room for a drink—”

  “My suite. It was a suite.”

  “You asked her if she wanted to be in a film.”

  “Any law against that?”

  “You used a false name. You called yourself Brett.”

  Vic threw the remains of the bread roll on the table. “Look, Jordi, I’m not like you, sitting in some crappy little apartment all day, tapping away on a laptop. I know a lot of people. I see a lot of people. I ‘approach’ people, as you put it, all the fucking time.”

  My cheeks had flushed. I looked down at my empty plate.

  “I take you out for dinner and this is the thanks I get. Christ.” Vic stared out across the terrace. The lower half of his face was twisted, as if he had bitten into something sour.

  Just then, I saw right through him, a moment of perceptiveness or clarity that lifted me out of the predicament in which I found myself. This was what people like Vic Drago did. They opened up new worlds, they treated you to things you weren’t accustomed to and hadn’t asked for, things they insisted on, and then, when you were clearly in their debt, they began to exact a kind of payment. And you had no choice but to go along with it. You had to take the rough because you’d already taken the smooth. But I was determined not to be deflected from the task I had been assigned. What was the worst that could happen? My friendship with Vic would end, and I would have to find a different café to go to in the mornings.

  “All I did was ask you to leave her alone,” I said. “It’s not exactly complicated. She doesn’t want to be in a film—especially a film like that.”

  “A film like what?”

  I didn’t answer. I didn’t feel I had to.

  Vic’s laugh had an edge of malice to it now. “Your girlfriend—if that’s what she is, which I seriously doubt—didn’t have to come up to my suite for a drink, did she? She could’ve said no.”

  “It’s not that. It’s—”

  “It’s what? What is it, Jordi?” He stressed my name, as if it was not a name at all, but an expletive.

  My mouth was dry, and I wished I could finish the cava in my glass. I didn’t want to touch it, though, because he’d already told me he was paying.

  “There I am, trying to do someone a favor, and suddenly it’s like, Stay away.” He leaned back and folded his napkin, and when he looked at me again his face was hard and cold. As on the evening of his drinks party, I sensed something cavalier in him, a refusal to recognize borders or limits, a willingness to ride roughshod over things he had no time for. “Let me tell you what I see,” he said. “I see a spoiled bitch who thinks a bit too highly of herself. She’s got looks and charm, but underneath she’s frightened. And then there’s you.” He poured himself some more cava and downed it in one, grimacing as if the wine was corked. “You know what you are, don’t you. You don’t need me to tell you that.” He put his glass on the table. “Well, I’m going to tell you anyway. You’re worse than frightened. You’re a mouse.”

  I had thought I would be impervious to anything that he might say—I had thought I was prepared—but I had tears in my eyes. Embarrassed and ashamed, I couldn’t meet his gaze.

  “A fucking mouse is what you are. Stay away from my girlfriend.” He let out another harsh mocking laugh. “Who’s going to make me? You?” He pushed his chair back and stood up, then dropped his napkin on the table. “You and whose army?”

  “And you?” I said quietly, not looking up. “What are you, then?”

  He opened his wallet and threw a twenty-euro note on the table. “That’s for your cab home.”

  I watched him walk away, his shoulders square, his footsteps abrupt, decisive. The waiters nodded and smiled as he swept past. If the world had been asked to choose between us, it was clear which one it would have sided with. I went on sitting there, staring at the view, and when I finally felt ready to leave, some ten minutes later, I left his money on the table.

  * * *

  —

  I DIDN’T GO TO SÃO PAULO—or anywhere else for that matter—but Mireia’s decision to take a long holiday followed by my humiliating night with Vic marked a turning point in my life. In early September, around the time of the Diada Nacional, I met my old university professor in a noisy, unpretentious place off Gran de Gracia. In his mid-fifties, with sad eyes and a neatly trimmed mustache and beard, Jaume vaguely resembled Umberto Eco, but he dressed in a style I thought of as English—corduroy trousers, tweed jackets with leather patches on the elbows, stout brogues. We saw each other two or three times a year, and always ended up drinking too much.

  “Still obsessed with the beautiful Mireia?” he said as he joined me at the bar.

  I smiled. “Naturally.”

  Jaume shook his head. “You’re onto a hiding to nothing there, I’m afraid.”

  “You’re hardly the first person to tell me that.”

  “I’m sure I’m not.”

  “The thing is,” I said, “of all the hidings to nothing I have known, she’s the best.”

  Jaume laughed.

  I asked after his wife, Montse.

  “You know Montse,” he said. “Never a dull moment.” He ran one hand across his thinning hair. “We’ve got Amy staying with us at the moment. She’s English. Maybe you know her?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “She’s facing a murder charge.”

  I stared at Jaume. “What?”

  “She killed a man in Sarrià—at least, that’s what she’s accused of.”

  I was still staring. I thought I’d heard about the case. Something to do with an old-age pensioner and an illegal immigrant.

  “Montse says the whole thing was an accident.” Jaume shook his head again, then drained his glass of wine. “By the way, she’s very happy with the job you did on that novella.”

  We switched to our favorite subject—the current state of fiction on the Iberian peninsula—and it was only towards midnight that Jaume suddenly remembered why he had suggested that we meet. A well-known British publisher was looking for an editor who could acquire new French and Spanish authors, he told me, and he had taken the liberty of mentioning my name. In that moment, the whole room shifted, as though it had been hoisted on a crane, and Jaume’s next words reached me only faintly, as if across a great distance.

  “Of course, it would mean moving to London,” he said. “I hope I did the right thing. It’s just that you seemed the perfect person for the job…”

  London, I thought.

  I saw Camden Town in the winter. Bare trees, a dull gray sky. White stucco-fronted houses with black railings. I saw a pub on the canal. Live bands most nights, a funny, foul-mouthed Irish woman behind the bar. The smell of beer and roll-ups. I remembered how free I’d felt, even though I’d had no money.

  “Jordi?” Jaume was giving me a searching look.

  “Sorry,” I said. “Who should I contact?”

  The following weekend I took a bus to my mother’s house near the Parc de l’Oreneta. After my father’s death in the late nineties, I started visiting my mother every week, but I hadn’t seen much of her during the summer, and felt I should make it up to her. I arrived with a bunch of orange roses and a painted wooden box I had found in a gift shop in Sarrià. My mother had made lunch—cold roast chicken, a green salad, and patatas bravas from Bar Tomás. Their garlic mayonnaise and chili sauce was the best in the city, and their patatas bravas had been a favorite of mine ever since I was a child.

  “We’re going to stink,” I said.

  I reminded my mother of the time I took a girl to Bar Tomás on a date. She was called Estel. I ordered the patatas bravas, as always, but Estel orde
red croquettes, and when I tried to kiss her she recoiled. I never saw her again.

  My mother smiled, then reached for her wine. “You know, I’ve been wanting to talk to you—about Mireia…”

  I rolled my eyes. “Again?”

  “I’ve been thinking that maybe, in the past, I was a little hard on her.”

  “That’s ironic,” I said, “because just recently I’ve had the feeling that you might have been right all along.” I broke off, surprised at myself. I had been thinking out loud—I wasn’t aware of having had any such feeling—but it seemed truer than anything I had said in ages. “It’s time I stopped living in the hope that something might happen,” I went on. “We don’t belong together. Perhaps we never did.”

  “If she’s what you want, Jordi, you should fight for her.”

  But my mother’s change of heart had come too late—or rather, she was addressing a version of myself that I’d already left behind.

  “I’ve been waiting for Mireia for years,” I said, “and I can’t wait any longer.” I hesitated, unsure if I should tell her. Then I plunged ahead. “I’ve applied for a job in England.”

  We spent the rest of the afternoon talking about London, and though my mother was sad that I would no longer be close by—I was her only child—she told me that this new challenge was exactly what I needed.

  “And I can always come and visit,” she added, her eyes bright suddenly, with tears.

  “Of course you can,” I said, taking her hand. “Whenever you like.”

  * * *

  —

  I WENT TO SEE MIREIA TWO days after she returned from Corsica. If she had been with a new man, she was careful not to mention it—or perhaps, in my jealousy, I had imagined the whole thing, and she had traveled with a girlfriend after all. Either way, it was doing me no good. While she was away, I had flown to London to meet the publishers Jaume had told me about, and they had taken me to lunch after the interview and offered me the job. I would be starting in October.