Come On Up

by jordi Nopca

  “The bastard didn’t want to admit to his mistakes and got the publishing house to fire me when I was almost finished with the whole translation. I still haven’t gotten paid.”

  Ferran reminded his girlfriend about everything he’d told her the night they met. She was shocked, her eyes red-rimmed with rage. If Biel Auzina had been there, she would have pounced on him, sunk her teeth into his jugular.

  “We have to find out if he called the newspaper to raise hell. He must have the editor in chief’s ear,” he said, massaging his beard with both hands.

  “I have his cell phone number. I interviewed him at his house a few months ago. … He said he’d liked the article a lot.”

  “Son of a bitch.”

  “And he even wrote me a message, suggesting we get together for coffee.”

  “Unbelievable.”

  Victòria showed him Auzina’s phone number, but instead of calling him, Ferran got up from the sofa where they were sitting and went to look for a pack of cigarettes.

  The next day, when they woke up in each other’s arms, she kissed him on the forehead and got up to make some coffee. They didn’t mention Biel Auzina during or after breakfast. At 2:00 P.M., as the water boiled for the spaghetti with tuna she was making for lunch, and Ferran struggled with the last few pages of the Tom Wolfe novel, Victòria decided that there was no point trying to finding anything out, especially because it wouldn’t bring her job back. If Auzina was guilty, sooner or later he would end up stinging himself with his own tail, like a black scorpion trapped in a ring of fire.

  ###

  A few months passed before Victòria found another journalism job. Practically no one was hiring, and those with jobs had to spend more and more hours at the office, because there was no money to pay outside contributors, either. Given the outlook, she joined the writing teams at two websites, one for adventure sports, the other dietetics and nutrition. When she pooled her earnings from the two jobs, she made between three and four hundred euros a month, which she complemented with private lessons in English, French, and German. She even considered taking on one of the translations Ferran couldn’t accept because of his workload.

  Shortly before her twenty-sixth birthday, she found out that the newspaper where she used to work was shutting down, and she ran to tell her boyfriend, who shouted, “That, we need to celebrate!”

  But they didn’t.

  Instead, he arranged a surprise party for Victòria’s birthday, inviting family and friends (even her old roommates, Graziella and Ciccina). Having lost the possibility of imagining grand plans, they all pretty much lived from day to day, and an occasion like that—where a couple of guests would drink too much cava, and some others would eat too many cold cuts—made them feel fleetingly happy and calm.

  The next day, with the house still a total wreck, Ferran and Victòria went downstairs to the bar for breakfast. They ordered croissants and espresso with milk. They’d been together long enough that Ferran could pick up the bar’s copy of the daily paper—the most popular one in the city—and page through it for a while. After the international section, he browsed a couple of editorials, and from there he moved on to national politics. When Victòria got tired of looking out the window, she sat down beside Ferran and read the news over his shoulder. After the television and film scuttlebutt, they glanced at the society pages, and then moved on to arts and culture. The opening double-page spread was devoted to the first confirmed acts for the summer musical festivals. The lack of information was compensated for by half a dozen images of concerts packed with people.

  “They said Björk was coming last year, too. And in the end, bupkes,” said Ferran, about to turn the page.

  But before he did, he made a quite harsh comment about one of the American groups that was scheduled to play in Barcelona that May. The translator sometimes had rough mornings, and this was one. On the next double-page spread, they found news of the discovery of some Greek ruins in a small town on the coast, the opening of an exhibition at a gallery, an editorial about the continuing relevance of Julius Caesar’s De Bello Gallico, and finally a column of notices. Victòria noticed his name right away: The senior professor of aesthetics, essayist, and poet Biel Auzina had died at the age of sixty-eight. She read the few lines of information while Ferran studied the details of the discovery of the Greek ruins. It didn’t say anything more in the obituary. On the next double-page spread were the movie listings. Even though money was tight, they decided to go to the movies that afternoon, to see the latest by Quentin Tarantino, another one of his stories of vengeance and payback, culminating in a climax marked by large doses of violence.

  DON’T LEAVE

  In the shop’s window a pretty woman lay atop a mattress.

  —Boris Vian, Mood Indigo

  It was January 5, the last day of the Spanish Christmas buying season. Tonight the Three Kings would make their way into homes and load them with gifts, and the day after tomorrow, the sales would begin. In the Bulevard Rosa shopping center on Passeig de Gràcia, most of the shops had been bustling all day long; even between two and four in the afternoon, when most people were eating lunch, the influx of customers was considerable. At 5:00 P.M., just like every day over the last three (give or take) weeks, two young women in red T-shirts showed up in the small court, carrying two metal canisters, and got set up at a fake-wood stand. Their glowing youthfulness and the red of their shirts were enough to attract the attention of some shoppers, who were now lined up in front of the stand. Over the course of the past few weeks, they had learned their lesson: This hour of the afternoon was the perfect moment for a free sample of thick hot chocolate. One of the two young women had the stand ready in less than two minutes. By then, there were already half a dozen people waiting for the promotion, which would end exactly four hours and fifty-seven minutes later. In two days, it would be time to show their results to the man who’d hired them: They’d given out almost four thousand little cups of hot chocolate during the Christmas season, definitely a success.

  In all that time, because the campaign was so well received, they’d scarcely had to hawk their product. On occasion, in fact, they’d had to ask for some patience from the line of thirsty men, women, grandparents, and kids. “It’ll take about five minutes for the canister to heat up,” they’d told those in line. Usually, after they gave that warning, there were two or three desertions. But not today; today there wasn’t a single one. The hot chocolate was a necessary reward for the efforts of buying the last holiday gifts.

  Míriam observed the marketing campaign from the counter of the tiny clothing shop where she worked. Today was supposed to be her final day, but last Saturday the owner had said she was extending her contract through January.

  “The sales are going to be amazing. Just you wait, kiddo. I’ll probably even have to hire another girl,” she’d assured her.

  Míriam had nodded. She’d never worked in a clothing store before, and she took the owner’s words like the Gospel in a less agnostic era. When she got home, she tried to forget the doctrine, which she actually found stupid—why did the shop owner insist on calling her “kiddo,” when she obviously wasn’t really fond of her?—and then continued her digital hunt. She still held out hope of becoming an associate professor of art history, but in the meantime she was looking for a job in a museum or gallery. She still counted on financial help from her father, a well-known historian, but for some months now she’d felt the need to support herself. Which was why, in early December, fed up with sending out her résumé for online job listings, she’d decided to try her luck in local retail. The same website that had drawn a blank in finding her anything even remotely related to her education had fairly easily led her to the shop in the Bulevard Rosa where she was eventually hired. In a supershort interview, the owner had checked that she had a working knowledge of English and French and, most of all, that she had the right look for the position: green eyes, an easy smile, a thin waist, and long legs, which would be the deligh
t of customers anytime she had to come out from behind the counter and walk through the store, searching for some pants, or stand on a small ladder to reach the brightly colored vanity kits up on the highest of the accessory shelves.

  Míriam had been living alone since late October, in a rundown apartment in Sant Antoni. She’d celebrated her new job with a bottle of cava that Ramon, her ex, had left behind when he moved out. After drinking down two glasses, she’d called her father to give him the good news. He had congratulated her politely, reminding her to persist in her “pursuit of gainful employment,” and promised he would come by to see her soon. It was unclear whether he meant at her apartment or at the store. In fact, he hadn’t visited her at either place, perhaps because seeing her on Saint Stephen’s Day was enough: They’d had dinner with her grandparents at an expensive restaurant in Sarrià. That evening after they spoke on the phone, her father had hung up and calmly continued working on an essay about the 1641 Battle of Martorell that he was hoping to publish in a couple years’ time. She’d put the remaining cava back in a corner of the fridge. It was still there, the bottle, half-empty and totally flat. Now when Míriam opened the fridge and saw it, she thought about Ramon. Every memory that came to her mind was a bad one. Their last few days of living together had been cold, tense, agonizing. During their final argument, the truth he’d been hiding from her for weeks came out: Some evenings, on his way home, he had been seeing an architect he’d begun dating. “Really, Ramon? Really, you fucking loser?” Then there was the morning he had packed his bags and vanished for good. It was raining cats and dogs, and the trail of wet footprints in the hall grew with every trip he made between the house and the car. Instead of cleaning the carpet, Míriam had decided to let the traces of her loser ex gradually fade on their own. She had waited until the weekend to erase what remained of Ramon from the apartment. That evening, already dressed up to go out with her girlfriends—willing, in theory, to do whatever she had to with anyone who was up for it—she’d carried out a garbage bag filled with all the objects she associated with Ramon and couldn’t stand to look at for another minute. She placed it beside the Dumpster, in case anyone wanted to grab a record by Kiss, Dire Straits, or Joe Cocker, or some action flick from the nineties, the halogen lamp from the office, or the apron he’d given her as a gift on the two-week anniversary of their moving in together. She had come home at four in the morning, alone, and after seeing that the garbage bag had been perfectly looted, she vomited up some of the alcohol she’d imbibed, right beside it.

  ###

  Twenty minutes after they’d begun handing out hot chocolate, one of the two young women emerged from the stand to get a third canister from the company van, which was parked in a garage near the Bulevard Rosa. Luckily, one of the security guards moseying around the mall offered to help her carry it. Míriam studied the marketing campaign in the small intervals when she wasn’t helping customers. It was only five-thirty, and the sales figures were already extraordinary, but she couldn’t have cared less. Her Robin Hood wouldn’t arrive for another half hour, but her hands were already sweaty and one eyelid was twitching. The first of those symptoms usually happened before she met up with a guy she liked. The second showed up only a few minutes before an important exam or when she visited her mom. She wasn’t too bothered about them, because she knew they’d vanish as soon as the guy arrived.

  She called him “Robin Hood” because he had an intelligent gaze, and because it seemed as if a hero could be hidden inside his petite frame. And also for his constancy. Ever since he’d appeared out of nowhere nine days ago, timidly shopping for a necklace for his younger sister, he’d come by the store every afternoon, except for New Year’s Day, when it was closed.

  “I stop by because it’s on my way. It’s a nice little distraction for me,” he’d told her more than once, with a small smile designed to inspire confidence.

  On his way where? She would have asked, except she sensed that her Robin Hood’s heroism had something to do with that route. It was the same sort of hunch that had told her, when she was studying art history, that Egon Schiele had died young and that Vladimir Mayakovsky had committed suicide. If everything went according to plan, she’d find out where Robin went, all in due time.

  Míriam allowed herself to be observed, protected as she was by the counter, warming her hands on the small cup of hot chocolate he had so gallantly brought her. What she most liked about him were his expressive almond-colored eyes and his delicate hands run through with veins that bulged out only slightly.

  The first day they met, he’d bought the necklace that she liked best.

  “How old is your sister?” she’d asked him, pulling out necklaces from tiny drawers that often got stuck (luckily, they ran smoothly just then).

  “Twenty-two. No, twenty-three.”

  “Twenty-three. And have you ever given her jewelry before?”

  Robin Hood’s eyes widened comically. Probably the only jewels he’d ever seen before were the ones that had ended up in the hands of the poor after an attack against some feudal lord corrupted by greed.

  “No … I don’t think so.”

  “I’m convinced that if you had, you would … “

  “I once bought her a pair of earrings. But years ago. They were two silver birds.”

  “So she likes animals.”

  “Especially birds.”

  Míriam showed him a necklace with three swallows, wings outspread, which would land on the wearer’s chest. He furrowed his brows. How old could she be, that clerk? Twenty-eight? Thirty, maybe?

  “I have this other one, too,” she continued, pulling out another pendant, this one of a chubby owl.

  “Supercute, right?”

  “Yeah, it is.”

  But Robin Hood still looked unconvinced. She would have to forget about the whole animal idea. After a couple of ornate suggestions, Míriam showed him a minimalistic chain with a small gold-colored plate at the center, serene and majestic.

  “That’s really special,” he said.

  Míriam agreed with two nods of her head. She bit her tongue to keep from saying the words that would give her away: It’s my favorite necklace.

  “Do you think she’ll like it?”

  “If she has good taste …” she said, smiling. “But if she doesn’t, she can exchange it, no problem. Technically, she has fifteen days, but within a month is fine, really.”

  Satisfied with her advice, Robin Hood paid with a credit card, which gave Míriam the chance to read her customer’s name: Antoni. She saved it in a nook of her brain as he typed in his PIN number. She saw that, too, but quickly forgot it.

  “Thank you very much,” he said when she returned his card with a copy of the receipt.

  “Thank you.”

  Robin Hood should have turned tail and disappeared forever. He made as if to leave, but actually only leaned his head toward the court where the two young women were handing out little cups of hot chocolate. There were more than twenty people waiting.

  “What a line,” he said with a highly controlled touch of disdain.

  “It’s like that every day. They’re giving out free hot chocolate.”

  “Interesting.”

  Robin Hood loathed chocolate; he got a headache whenever he drank it. He was about to make a sarcastic comment, but Míriam spoke before he had the chance.

  “If I wasn’t working, I suppose I’d be on line every day, too. Mmmm, hot cocoa! Yummy!”

  Míriam’s sweet tooth coexisted, albeit somewhat incongruously, with her academic devotion for the work of Lucian Freud. She was so fond of the English painter’s portraits of flaccid, cetacean flesh that she’d written her doctoral dissertation on them. At the same time, while she was living with her parents, she was willing to make every possible domestic sacrifice—wash the dishes, hang up the clothes, take out the garbage—for an extra serving of cake or cookies.

  “Would you like some?”

  Robin Hood looked at her with rapt ey
es, but they were also tinged with sadness.

  “Do you want me to get you a cup?”

  “There’s a long line.”

  “I’m in no hurry. All I had to do this afternoon was buy the necklace.”

  “Okay, sure. Thanks!”

  The young man waited half an hour to get Míriam’s cocoa. She watched him for a bit every time she finished helping a customer. He was small, yeah, but good-looking. Maybe his hair was a little too long, but she liked his two rows of tiny and perfectly white teeth. She’d noticed them when, pleased by finding a gift for his sister, he’d smiled. He must not be a smoker.

  Robin Hood brought her a cup of hot chocolate with a packet of sugar and a spoon. She thanked him—repeated it three times—and he told her it was nothing, and then he left. The next day, he showed up at the store at five-thirty, the same time Míriam’s boss usually stopped in briefly, vanishing after confirming the profits were where they should be and that everything was going along swimmingly.

  “I was just passing by and thought you might want a little cocoa.”

  Míriam pursed her lips. “I don’t know if it’s a good idea; my boss is about to show up. She always comes by around this time, but she never stays long.”

  “Do you want me to come back in a little while, then?” he asked. Since the line was longer than the previous day, he added, “I think I’ll be waiting for close to half an hour. She should definitely be gone by then.”

  “Probably.”

  “So? Do you want some hot chocolate?”

  “Yes.”

  “I knew it!” exclaimed Robin Hood, raising a thumb in approval.

  He left the shop like one of those fireworks that zip feverishly from one side to the other. His speed and lack of control almost made him crash into a mannequin beside the door. Míriam, who was also quite nervous, accidentally touched a button on the keyboard and then struggled to get back to the initial configuration of the sales program. Luckily, by the time the owner showed up, she’d solved the mess, and Robin Hood had a good bit of waiting still to do. He amused himself on line with a thin book with a cigar drawn on the cover. She couldn’t read the title or the author’s name.