The Woman in Valencia

by Annie Perreault

  Eventually, she’d found a tram stop. She’d followed the crowd of young girls, ponytails swaying, tanned skin glowing, beach bags slung over their shoulders. She’d boarded behind them without buying a ticket, gotten off at the same station. Then she’d kept walking, a ways away from the sea, in front of the cafés and shops, casting a sideways glance at the long expanse of sand. This is what she’d come here to see: the long shot. She didn’t care about the waves, the water, the bodies stretched out on towels, the sand. All she wanted was a horizon, a tableau of vanishing points, a mental postcard of the beach in Valencia. In the distance, parasols. Around the edges, tacky souvenir stands. The beach a nondescript rectangle of sand.

  *

  The hours tick by with no news from Claire. Manuel doesn’t understand why she’s running away from him like this. He’d have liked to spend as much time as possible with her before she left, to have her in his sights, in his arms. He wants her. He can’t stop pacing. He wishes the door would swing open, now, right this minute, and she’d walk through it wearing that dress that hugs all her curves; he would nip at her shoulders, nuzzle her neck, get reacquainted with the sweet wetness between her legs. He’s starting to feel possessive about a woman he’ll never see again.

  Claire gets back around 6 p.m. She’s shocked that he’s waited for her this whole time.

  “I’m sweaty and I’m exhausted,” she protests, as he wraps an arm around her waist to pull her close.

  “I was worried about you,” he murmurs into her hair.

  Jerking free of his embrace, she says, “Don’t worry about me, ever. Alright, I need to cool off. I’m going back downstairs for a quick dip.”

  Manuel would like to keep her from leaving, but he doesn’t know how. Her aloofness throws him off. He’d have liked to go with her, but he’s too absorbed in his own sulking.

  “Don’t be long,” he says. “I want to take you to watch the sunset at that place in the marsh where they rent the rowboats.”

  He steps out onto the balcony to watch her as she wades into the sea. Her shoulders are hunched as the waves break around her waist. Her back is magnificent, and even at this distance the urge to wrap his arms around her is visceral.

  Claire returns, smiling and refreshed, her hair dripping. She pulls off her bikini top, and her pert, pink nipples, hard and puckered, spring up to greet Manuel. Now that she’s naked, she’s another woman entirely walking around the apartment, liberated, vibrant.

  “Not to rush you, but we’ll need to leave soon if we want to get there in time to rent a rowboat.”

  She looks at him, unsure.

  “Do you think I could run there?”

  She’d like to get a run in before dark. She’s doing her best to follow her training program to the letter and not skip any of her five weekly runs. She throws on a pair of shorts and a tank top, slathers sunscreen on her face, arms and legs already burnt from her day of walking. She straps on her watch, and they walk together to the bus stop. Manuel doesn’t want to drive because he thinks it’ll be hard to find parking. The sunset, like all sunsets everywhere in the world, attracts its fair share of tourists.

  She kisses him quickly—¡ Hasta pronto !—and starts running. After a few steps, she turns to wave at him, and his face lights up with a huge smile. He finds her beautiful—and fast.

  She runs in a straight line, past marshlands and dense thickets swarming with insects and shadows; she can hear rustling in the grass, birds chirping in the underbrush. Nature has a soothing effect on her. She realizes she’s starting to get sick of this Manuel guy who’s clinging to her constantly like a desperate man. The odd car drives by; between each one, she has the road to herself. She lets the scenery wash over her: the smell of the flowers, the sounds of the insects, the suffocating heat of the fading day.

  At one point, the bus overtakes her. She raises a hand to Manuel, even though she can’t make him out; she knows he’s inside, among the faces looking out the window. She pumps her arms harder, partly to speed up, partly to show off. He’ll wait for her next to the dock. She likes the thought of being alone on this quiet road.

  The distance from the big city, the traffic, the crowds of people finally give her a sense of space, some momentum. The untamed landscape is a perfect reflection of her state of mind, of her heart, beating quicker in the late-afternoon humidity, temples pounding, scalp tingling, mind wandering, focused on the physical effort.

  She pushes her earbuds back in, turns up the volume.

  And I’m falling, and I’m falling, and I’m falling

  I am free, I am free, I am free

  And I’m falling, and I’m falling

  I am free and I’m falling

  By the time she meets up with Manuel on the dock, it’s too late. The sky is turning an ever-deepening shade of red. Men are busy stowing away the rowboats. They’ve missed the last departure. Manuel is disappointed; he sulks while Claire sits on the edge of the dock, chest heaving, heart pounding, legs dangling, face streaming with sweat, gazing at the distant point on the horizon where the sun will soon disappear from sight.

  *

  They take the bus back to the apartment, saying little. Manuel is still annoyed they missed out on the rowboat ride, and Claire tells him again that she really doesn’t care, that the sunset was just as spectacular from the dock. The tension eases slightly as they sit down to eat the chicken and rice. They tuck in on the balcony, in the glow of the candles Manuel has lit. Claire compliments him on the meal, on his choice of wine. For dessert, she settles herself in his lap. He lifts her skirt and slips off her panties.

  Down below, the beach is cloaked in darkness. Off to the left, a giant screen is showing an animated movie. Families have come out in droves, setting up chairs and beach mats on the sand. Speakers emit a cacophony of explosions and ear-splitting car chases, followed by chirpy tunes. The background noise drowns out their moaning as Claire, straddling Manuel’s hips, rubs herself up against him, slides him slowly inside her with a tilt of her hips, hands gripping the metal chair for support.

  They make their way to the bed. For their last night together, they have no intention of sleeping. They’ll spend it exploring each others’ bodies, again and again, allowing themselves a few moments’ rest, curled up together in a numb half-sleep.

  *

  Claire gets dressed, steps out onto the balcony. She gazes at the sky, almost as black as oil, the waves and the spume, the wet sand. After a while, Manuel joins her. An expanse of pale thigh slips between two balusters as Manuel buries his nose in her neck, inhales. Claire shivers. She looks down. Six floors. Ceramic tiles, illuminated by the fluorescent light in the lobby, like bright, shiny candies at her feet. She clings to the railing. Her upper body leans over it, tipped forward by Manuel, who wraps his arms around her. He’s rubbing himself between her legs, back and forth, like a knife on a whetting stone. Claire bends forward slightly at the hips, and her head starts to swim. She can’t feel her legs anymore, the attraction of the void is making her dizzy, and all the while Manuel keeps thrusting.

  KILOMETRE 40

  … I’m running, running, running, everything is starting to sound muffled, and my mouth is so dry, I’m dying for a drink, my thoughts are becoming tangled, like they’re stuck to fly paper, everything feels gelatinous, like I’m running through cotton, dazzling white, I keep moving forward, a blind gust of air, a moulted skin on the pavement, I’m shedding the thing that’s weighing me down, leaving behind everything that’s holding me back, running, running, running, I take a deep breath, surge forward, kneecaps on fire, with each step I drag myself forward, a warm space opens up before me…

  LEAVING VALENCIA

  The sea at dawn is calm. Like metal, smooth and gleaming, Claire thinks, casting one last look at the horizon in El Perelló. Manuel, his expression serious, loads Claire’s suitcase into his car. They drive in silence, then have a fare
well coffee together on the patio at the train station restaurant.

  At the last minute, he adjusts his glasses, presses his cheek against Claire’s and takes a photo of the two of them. Claire gives him a quick peck on the lips. Then she pushes through the turnstile and walks toward the platform without looking back. She boards the train. Her phone vibrates. It’s Manuel. He will have found the tote bag on the floor of the backseat of his Mercedes.

  Claire stands on tiptoe to stow her rolling suitcase in the overhead rack, slips into the window seat, leans her head back on the headrest. She glances at the dozens of tracks lined up in rows on the other side of the glass, intersecting on the ground, forming vanishing lines overhung by taut cables orchestrating the departures, arrivals, transfers of thousands of passengers each day. She sighs. “It’s a beat-up old purse with nothing important in it,” she texts Manuel. “Keep it to remember me by.”

  *

  Claire Halde leaves Valencia without knowing if she’ll ever be back. It’s an unyielding city, one she has a hard time getting her bearings in, with a layout that belies its seaside location. Twice now she’s been to Valencia in August, and twice the city’s been operating in slow motion, vaguely empty, lethargic. She hadn’t come to splash around in the sea or to loll about in the sun. Her memory will be one of blistering, suffocating heat, and two torrid nights with a man she had no intention of falling for, spent exorcizing—through her spasms, her moans, her sighs, and all the sweat and bodily fluids that had seeped from her pores, orifices, mouth, vagina, anus, saliva, mucous, tears—that business of the woman in Valencia. In the shadow of the city where she let a woman die, she had finally felt alive again.

  More than any other place in the world, she had managed to lose herself in this city. Even as the train pulls out of the station, she has no concept of north or south, no idea in what direction Barcelona or Madrid, Asia or America lies.

  KILOMETRE 41

  … one kilometre to go, I’m almost there, one kilometre to go, the crowd is cheering, I can’t make out the faces, my head is pounding, I’m disoriented, but I’m still going, I’m somewhere else, over there up ahead, I’m going to make it, I feel an incredible force rising up inside me, I’m not giving up now, I’m so close, my whole body has kicked into overdrive, powering beyond fatigue now, I speed up, I’m giving myself the shake…

  LEAVING

  At Atocha station, in Madrid, Claire watches the stream of travellers make their way toward the C1 line to the airport. She’s incapable of entering the current; she’s rooted in place, upright in the passageway, leg glued to the suitcase resting at her feet. She’s in the way, forcing people to go around her, annoyed. Claire is struck with a realization: She doesn’t want to go home. She rummages around in her bag and pulls out her plane ticket, stares it as though expecting some revelation to flow from it. After a moment, she tosses it on the tracks, on impulse, a visceral motion that comes out of nowhere and lands her in front of the departures board, next to the indoor garden brimming with lush plants growing and blooming under the glass-and-steel dome. There’s a train leaving for Seville in thirty-two minutes. She’ll go back to Andalusia. After that, who knows, maybe somewhere else, in search of her youth.

  *

  The train picks up speed, hurtling away from Madrid at two hundred and fifty kilometres an hour, skirting a pine forest for the first stretch. Before long, it cuts across a field of sunflowers at the foot of a mountain range whose name Claire doesn’t know. Two hundred and sixty kilometres an hour. The scenery flashing by holds absolutely nothing of interest. Forehead pressed against the glass, Claire Halde notes with indifference the barrenness of the landscape, nothing more.

  42.2 KILOMETRES

  … I can see it, I can finally see it, the finish line, I push even harder, I don’t hear the cheers, I’m floating, forward, everything is white, the buildings like bones, steel as white as aspirin, that thing I’m longing for with my entire body, the end of the marathon, I feel like I’m passing everyone ahead of me as I round the Príncipe Felipe Science Museum, a giant whale skeleton emerging from the water, still a few metres to go, the water in the ponds is a bright blue, like an inverted sky, my veins course with pure adrenaline, a potentially lethal dose for a weaker heart, a geyser bubbling up, an ocean of ice dissolving, I can no longer hold back this sudden flood, no, I am this sudden flood, my thighs are screaming in agony like my muscles might tear with every step, I speed up some more, nothing is going to stop me…

  Run! Go on, faster, my love!

  … come, Mama, take my arm, pull me into your slipstream so we can go even faster…

  … still a few more seconds to go, pump the arms, lift the knees, go, go, go, faster…

  Run! Go on, faster, my love! Faster!

  … take my hand, we’ll cross the finish line hand in hand, Mama, like that time in the Caribbean, with the turtles, I can see you next to me, suspended in your ray of light, I squeeze so hard I can feel your bones in my moist palm, I can hear the tide breaking at our backs, I close my eyes, another wave lifts us, we cover the last few metres without touching the ground, with oceanic ease, we float together upright…

  Raise your arms, Laure, be proud of yourself, raise your arms above your head, you’re a marathoner!

  … a remarkable stillness, for a second my body is no longer in pain, I’m nothing but joy and exhaustion. I am a marathoner.

  I look at the screen on my wrist: three hours fifty-nine minutes and thirty-seven seconds.

  The euphoria and fatigue send me reeling. The dam in my head finally bursts. Without warning, my muscles are wracked with spasms, my chest heaves, struggling to contain my racing heart. A warm breeze blows over my skin, caressing the sweat on the surface, teasing the damp hairs at the back of my neck. Someone hands me a bottle of water. A medal is placed around my neck. I run my tongue over my dry, salty lips, my face finally relaxes, my hips throb, and I smile like I’ve never smiled before. I limp toward the Assut de l’Or Bridge, which stands out starkly against the blue of the sky. Some people think it looks like a harp, like the Samuel Beckett Bridge in Dublin, others a ham holder. I see a ship, a sailboat ready to cast off. As I draw closer to its white steel mainsail, with its almost translucent shrouds, my pride swells to fabulous proportions. Shivering, I wrap myself in a foil blanket, which I clutch tightly against my body, like an embrace that I vanish into altogether.

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