by jordi Nopca
The young man went to the trouble of waiting by the door until Míriam gave him permission to come in.
“Thank you so much.”
“It was nothing. It’s on my way. And that way, I distract myself a little.”
Míriam put the little cup of hot chocolate down on the counter—it was too hot—and when she looked up, Robin Hood was waving good-bye. Next to him was a woman waiting to be served. “Can you come over here for a moment?” she asked, half-shouting. “I don’t know if these pants look good on me.”
The woman’s impression was correct: The denim squeezed her thighs, and her ass looked like an apple about to fall from the tree.
“I’ll be there in a sec.”
Robin Hood was already crossing the mall plaza, fleeing with quick strides toward some unknown place.
The next day, a Sunday, he showed up at the store at six on the dot. It was a good time. They were able to talk for five minutes without any customers interrupting them. They made formal introductions (Toni, Míriam), they told each other their ages (thirty, twenty-six) and what they’d studied (humanities, art history). Míriam thanked him for his visits again, and he repeated the same formula as he had the day before, the same one he would use every time she mentioned his bringing her a little cup of hot chocolate.
“When I say I studied art history, people always ask me who my favorite artist is. You’re the first person who didn’t.”
“I still could.”
“And I would test you with my answer. I’d say, ‘Emil Nolde and Martin Kippenberger.’ With any luck, you’d place Nolde as an early-twentieth-century German Expressionist.”
“If I didn’t know who Kippenberger is … would you be offended?”
Robin Hood smiled, showing his tiny eyeteeth. He was like a fox, one of the animals Míriam found most intriguing. Predatory but elegant. Mysterious and, at the same time, charming. She said that Kippenberger was a test, not so much because Robin should know who he was, but because it meant being willing to listen to her lecturing him for a good five minutes about the Neue Wilde, the European Transavantgardes of the eighties, and the artist’s amusing provocations, like when he made a sculpture of a streetlamp for drunks: Instead of a straight pole, it was an enormous letter S, designed to adapt to the doubled-over bodies of those who’d drunk too much.
“That’s not too bad a test. I’d even say it’s tempting,” he said. “Are you open tomorrow?”
“We’re only closed on the first. And the sixth. But the sixth is next week.”
Without asking her if she wanted a hot chocolate, Robin Hood left the clothing store and, taking advantage of the shorter-than-usual line, got her a little cup.
The next day, he showed up at six on the dot again, but with the hot cocoa already in his hands.
“I’ve been bringing it to you for so many days that now I want to try it, too,” he told her, about to take a sip.
“Be careful, it’s really hot!”
Robin Hood brought the cup up to his nose and held it there a couple of seconds. He again looked like a fox sniffing out danger, hesitating between attacking the henhouse and turning around and heading back into the forest.
“Maybe you’re right.”
He put down the little cup, spoon, and packet of sugar on the counter.
“Are you going to be working here for long?” he asked.
“I have a contract through January fifth.”
“There’s still time,” he murmured. And quickly correcting the enigmatic phrase, he said, louder, “Would you like to have a beer one of these days? I’d say a coffee, but you must be working all evening.”
“The store closes at nine, but I don’t get off until nine-thirty, because I have to count the money in the till with the owner.”
Míriam was about to ask Robin Hood, jokingly, if the beer was an excuse to rob the store. Would he give the booty to the poor? Would he set aside a small part to treat her to dinner?
“We could get something to eat nearby. There’s a Japanese restaurant that looks good. Do you like sushi?”
Her reply was doubly affirmative: verbally and in body language, her head nodding several times, imitating the bowing of the Karate Kid’s instructor. Wax on, wax off, Daniel-san.
###
Today, Robin Hood was later than usual. Míriam apathetically helped some customers, and when the owner showed up, she didn’t have to make an effort to invent a conversational gambit: The woman was criticizing her sixteen-year-old daughter’s lack of initiative, and repeated—with disconcerting certainty—that “the girl” wouldn’t ever do anything with her life. The owner didn’t stay long, as there were too many customers.
“I’m off,” she said, leaving Míriam alone again, obsessing over her friend’s absence.
They’d dined together the night before last. Of all the different varieties of sushi they’d ordered, their favorite was the uramaki with red tuna, avocado, and a spicy sauce that made them slightly more thirsty. They ordered a bottle of white wine, and polished it off before the desserts arrived.
“Now what?” he asked after the last glass. “We’ve run out of fuel.”
Míriam didn’t want more wine; she’d drunk enough, and her cheeks and forehead felt a little too heavy. She had green tea ice cream, and Robin Hood had a Japanese beer. They’d spent a good long while discussing Blue Is the Warmest Color—one of the cinematic sensations of that fall—avoiding the sex scenes, and then Robin had pulled out the book with the cigar on the cover and recommended it to Míriam.
“It’s an exceptional novel,” he assured her.
He would have liked to add a long string of adjectives but found himself briefly speechless.
“Jakob von Gunten,” she read out loud.
“I know you’re going to love it. Do you want to borrow it?”
“Maybe sometime soon. Right now, I’m working so much, I hardly have any free time.”
Robin Hood, who still lived with his parents, was combining a master’s in Creative and Cultural Industries Management with tutoring high schoolers. He made enough for his personal expenses with ten hours a week of teaching—most of his students were lost causes—and was still able to save up for a car. Instead of admitting that, he focused the dinner conversation on some of the more sordid anecdotes of his tutoring experiences. One day, a student had received him in boxer shorts. “You’re very early today, teach,” he’d said before sending Robin into his bedroom. He gathered up his pajamas from the floor and put them on. Halfway through the lesson, Robin had seen an arm emerging from the wrinkled bedsheets, and then a pair of teenage breasts. He pretended to be very concentrated on the lesson so the girl could get dressed inconspicuously. Out of the corner of his eye, he sensed her putting on her panties, and then her bra. His student chuckled and smirked as he filled in the blanks on an English exercise about nautical vocabulary. When the girl had her shirt on, Robin Hood turned and asked her, as blasély as he could muster, if she’d bring him a glass of water.
He left the story hanging at that point to switch to another time, telling Míriam about one student’s mother. He’d noticed some traces of cocaine on the mother’s nose, as she’d opened the door for him more eagerly than usual. In the dining room, the family dog was avidly licking the small mirror where the woman had done the line. The animal got a good smack. “Goddamn mutt!” she’d shouted. “He always does that! He loves to eat my makeup. …” Robin had had to wait for his student to arrive home from soccer practice, and he sat on the family sofa as the mother watched a television talk show where someone was confessing her husband wore dentures, right before a commercial for the “finest” denture adhesive cream.
Míriam interrupted his story. “Do you remember what the brand was?”
“No. Why?”
“My grandfather uses one that doesn’t last very long. Usually, he has to get up in the middle of every meal to stick his teeth back into place. Every single meal, poor guy.”
Robin Hood wa
sn’t amused in the slightest by her comment, but rather than cast a shadow over their dinner with a monologue about denture creams—which he was perfectly capable of doing—he finished the cocaine anecdote, although without much enthusiasm. Sitting there on the sofa, he and the mother had heard a key in the lock of the front door. It wasn’t her son; it was her husband. He came into the living room dragging a suitcase with wheels and was very surprised to find a strange man there. He almost kicked Robin out on his ass.
“The man looked into my eyes for a couple of seconds, as if that would tell him unequivocally whether I was innocent or guilty.”
“And then what happened?”
“Nothing. The woman told him that I was the math tutor, and he shook my hand. His was all sweaty.”
When the bill came, Míriam didn’t let him pay. They split it, and when they left the restaurant, Robin Hood—with a charming smile—suggested they go have a daiquiri.
“I know a place where they make really good ones. And it’s only five minutes from here.”
Since it wasn’t chilly at all, they strolled leisurely toward the cocktail bar, which was classically decorated and had waiters who wore white jackets and called everyone “sir” and “madam.” It wasn’t a place Míriam would have ever gone with her girlfriends, much less with Ramon, who only went to bars to watch FC Barcelona matches. She might have even figured that the dimly lit cocktail bar, with more than one couple meeting up in secret, was a bordello. Ramon was one of those guys who still wanted a church wedding. He would get really worked up whenever she’d suggested city hall, even just as a possibility. Still, two years back, he’d given her a vibrator for her birthday. She didn’t appreciate the gesture, and had refused to incorporate it into their sexual games until months later, one night when they’d both had too much wine. After that, the vibrator had become a tool that was occasionally useful, and fun: It was no guarantee of a full-fledged five-alarm carnal experience, but just pulling it out of the drawer of the bedside table always provoked some hilarious banter.
It was at the bar that Míriam confirmed her feelings for Robin Hood as she listened to his calm conversation and observed his tranquil body language. It was undeniable that they got along well, and it seemed she had him wrapped around her finger, even though she was in no hurry to cash in on that. With Ramon, it had taken an entire year of seeing each other twice weekly at the English academy before they’d gone out to see The Departed, with Leonardo DiCaprio, Matt Damon, and Jack Nicholson. It took another semester before their first kiss. In between, there were dozens of phones calls and text messages, almost two hundred e-mails, five visits to her parents’ house and eight to his parents’ house, a dozen movies at the theater, and even a short trip to Sitges, where Míriam’s maternal grandparents had a summer home.
After they’d each drunk a couple of daiquiris, their anecdotes gradually got weighed down with superfluous details, making their conversational rhythm falter. They could spend ten minutes recalling an afternoon when the line for hot chocolate was so long that inevitably their eyes met, or they stammered on about one of their favorite films from childhood, The NeverEnding Story. She liked Falkor, the white dragon with the kindly gaze. He recounted one of the more dramatic scenes, when heroic Atreyu’s horse drowns in the Swamps of Sadness while epic synthesizers play in the background.
“There was that song at the end. … It was spectacular!” exclaimed Míriam. “But I can’t remember if it was sung by a man or a woman.”
“Maybe it was a man with a woman’s voice?”
To banish all doubts, Robin Hood pulled his phone from his pocket and typed the magic words neverending story song into Google. He chose a video clip where a man in a leather jacket with bleach-blond hair—in a lush mullet that had just been subjected to a momentous hairdressing session—was singing the first phrases of the song, until a black woman with an Afro, enormous earrings, and thick lips joined in shortly before the refrain. The lyrics, which melded fantasy and personal betterment, found a counterpoint in the setting, sewers blackened by the smoke shooting out of the pipes.
Later, shortly before saying good-bye, they spoke a little bit about their families. That was when Robin Hood confessed that he “still” lived with his parents, and the word still stuck into the bar table just like the first arrow picking off a distracted watchman on a medieval tower before the bloody battle broke out. Míriam knew how to nip the attack in the bud. She could also tell him a secret: Her father was a famous historian. She closed her eyes, prepared to hear the comment she’d heard from dozens of her classmates, friends, and guys who were hoping to get somewhere with her (even Ramon couldn’t help but say it): “You look just like your father, except for the mustache.”
Robin Hood, employing that foxlike sixth sense that ran through his veins, upended her expectations by shifting to a more pleasant topic. “No way! I got through two humanities courses thanks to one of your father’s study guides,” and, raising his half-empty glass, he crowned his praise with a cherry on top: “We have to toast to him right this instant.”
“Toni,” she said, her cup also raised, “I’m the one who should be thanking you. For dinner and for bringing me here.”
They toasted somewhat comically, and fifteen minutes later they were headed home. Each to their own homes, that is, even though they could have ended up at Míriam’s apartment and kept talking—just talking—until the sky lightened and early-morning gray tinted the sofa, the parquet floor, and the cheap metal of the empty birdcage, where some previous tenant had kept an annoying parrot.
###
Today, the young women closed down the stand half an hour earlier than usual. It was only eight-thirty and they were already closing up shop. Lined up next to the stall were half a dozen empty hot chocolate canisters, which would have to be carried back to the van in several trips. One of the security guards stopped to chat with them. From the clothing shop, Míriam sensed that he was trying to get their phone numbers, pulling out all the stops, since it was the last day of the marketing campaign. He failed and continued his rounds, head bowed, like a bear trying to find a secret honey trail that he’ll follow, forever if necessary.
Robin Hood hadn’t shown up. Míriam still had thirty minutes of selling things and giving advice to clueless customers. At the last minute, a man about fifty years old bought three very expensive dresses, two in a small size and the third in the largest size they carried. He had a worried expression on his face. They barely exchanged a word, as she was absorbed in memories of New Year’s Eve. She’d had dinner at some friends’ apartment in the Born. At twelve-thirty, when she’d already imbibed six glasses of wine and three of cava, her cell phone lit up. It was Ramon. She sprang out of her chair and locked herself in the kitchen to talk to him. Their conversation got off to a good start, but from the moment Ramon realized that Míriam was out partying, he started laying into her with excessive, savage recriminations. After venting, he apologized and even asked her if she wanted to get together that night.
“I don’t know if I feel like it,” she said.
“Please.”
He had to beg a little to convince her. They agreed to meet up in front of Sidecar at one-thirty, but Míriam didn’t show. She didn’t want Ramon to keep bugging her, so she turned off her phone before going into a club in the Raval. The next day, when she turned it back on before her shower, she had fifteen missed calls from him, and some WhatsApp messages that ranged from the affectionate—bordering on obscene—to the poisonous. The night before, she’d made out with a tall, indifferent Swede in front of the club. They shared a hand-rolled cigarette while he spoke of the charms of rural Uppsala, where he had grown up. Then they exchanged a brief display of lingual connection, and right afterward Míriam told him she had to go to the powder room for a minute. Once she was inside the club, she managed to slip out one of the emergency exits, which opened onto a long, poorly lit hallway where a few couples were going at it. She brushed past their bodies to reach the do
or to the street.
Míriam’s reverie was interrupted by a woman standing at the counter. “Hey. Good evening,” said the young woman, whose eyes were entirely lined in intimidating black. “Can you ring me up?”
It was five minutes to nine. There were two more customers behind the young woman, and four potential buyers looking around the shop. The Three Kings would have to have bought all their provisions before tomorrow morning. Their cavalcade had already come through the city earlier in the evening, tossing candies and accepting wish lists, and perhaps that was what had spurred on these shoppers who felt the need for a pair of shoes, a belt, or a shirt just minutes before it was time to shutter the store. From that moment on, the fabulous post-Magi sales would begin.
Míriam finished work late and was feeling cranky, with the owner’s demanding eyes on her. When it was time to close out the register and count the money, the day’s returns were so good that the owner gave Míriam a fifty-euro bonus. Despite this, she left the Bulevard Rosa preoccupied because she hadn’t heard from Robin Hood. She didn’t check her phone because there was no point: They’d never exchanged numbers. If she had glanced at it, she would have seen a few missed calls and WhatsApp messages from Ramon.
Instead of rushing home, she gave her friend one last chance, lighting up a cigarette and smoking it at the mall entrance. She had to exchange a few words with one of the security guards to get a light. How could she have lost her lighter? The man told her that it was his last day, his expression that of a boy frightened by the impending start of school. Míriam wasn’t in the mood to encourage him, and she replied, lying, that she had only five more days of work. Then—she continued to bluff—she’d have to go back to her small town, with her parents, to work in their family business.