by Daniel Riley
Will woke up to the buzzer. He’d nodded off after he’d poured a fresh drink. He couldn’t have drifted long—ten or fifteen minutes. His head was scrambled when he pressed the intercom and met Whitney at the front door. He couldn’t tell for sure but she seemed loose herself. She smiled at him dolefully and moved past him into the kitchen, where she steadied herself on the counter.
“Are you okay?” he said.
“I had some drinks at the hotel,” she said. “I don’t know why.”
“Really…” he said.
“Really,” she said. “Is that okay?”
“Sure, whatever you want.”
“That’s what this is, right?” she said. “A big old vacation…”
“I guess that’s right.”
“I had one, and then I had three.”
“What if I told you that I had one and then I had three, too?” he said.
“You’ve been drinking here by yourself?”
“So were you.”
“I was in a hotel bar. I was waiting out a storm. Not just…”
“What is this? What are you doing? I was hoping we could start today fresh.”
“I just didn’t know that you…never mind, this is dumb, forget it.”
“So, what then?” he said, and he could tell that she knew what he meant.
“I don’t know,” she said. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what’s going on. I don’t know what that was last night, or what any of this is. I’m just ready to go home.”
“I’m ready to go home, too. I’m very ready. I feel like I’ve had too much time to think about stuff while we’ve been here. I feel my brain dying. I can’t even answer emails without getting anxious. I need to figure this out. I need to find something else for real.”
“At least you know for sure.”
“If a consequence of being stuck here is finding something a little more—”
“Sounds like a positive thing.”
“It’ll make things better for me and it’ll make things better for you.”
“How can I join in? What reckless decision can I make?” she said.
The slackening of tension came as such a relief to Will that he mistook the détente for resolution, as a new and welcome invitation to walk through the un-walk-through-able door.
“Well, to start,” he said, “you can finally say yes to me. We can start telling people that we’re engaged. I don’t know why we’d put it off any longer. I mean, I know the reasons. And parts of all those reasons are maybe still there. But what is putting this off another month in the scope of all time? Why put it off when what we’re doing is committing to, you know, forever?”
She looked at him sadly, like she wished he’d said anything but this.
“But the logic works the other way, too…” she said, moving to the kitchen to pour a glass of water. “What is another few months if there’s sixty years on the horizon?”
“You’re saying you’re still not ready to tell people,” he said.
“I’m saying I’m still fucking pissed about last night. And now is not exactly the primest moment to be asking me this, don’t you think? Nothing seems to be going the way it normally does. With last month, and this trip, and, I dunno, I just feel like things are gonna be so much clearer when we get home. Can we just hold off talking about it till we get back? Last night made me mad. And you know I’m not like you. It’s not: Sleep it off and everything’s good to go.”
“I know that,” he said. “And it’s too bad for you.”
“So at this point, why would I pretend I’m any other way? I don’t exactly love this about me, but it’s not so easy for me to just sweep everything away. Just: a little space for a little longer, okay? We’ll be home soon. Then we’ll know…”
“You at least realize this fucking hurts, right?”
“I’m sorry. It shouldn’t hurt. It really shouldn’t. It should be right where we were a month ago, and a week ago, and a day ago. Same as before that bullshit from last night.”
“It still…Even if I understand what you’re saying.”
“I’m really sorry? I don’t know what you want me to say. You know where I’ve been with this. I just, my head’s a mess right now. Last night, that wasn’t great. Not just what happened, but where I went, what it made me do. It’s scary to see where my head goes sometimes, what effect certain people can have on me.”
“Then I probably shouldn’t mention that they want to get lunch. I guess they think everything’s A-OK. Or at least didn’t pick up on anything serious.”
“I grabbed her and pulled an earring off her head. What the fuck is wrong with her that she wants to get lunch with us the next day?”
“It was from Jack, but it was filled with your favorite we’s and us’s. Maybe it happens all the time to Jenna Saisquoi. I don’t know. I realize it’s not how it works for you, but I woke up this morning and just thought: That was dumb, let’s discount the last part of the night.” Will hadn’t liked how things had ended with Jack. Jenna he’d never see again, but Jack was their age, they had each other’s phone numbers, they texted now. Wouldn’t it be weird if that was the last they ever saw of him? What if they were just getting started? “Anyway, it’s just lunch. What’s another lunch in the scheme of all the future time of No-Jenna-and-No-Jack?”
“I hope you’re kidding. Did you already say we were going to meet them, or something?”
“I didn’t say anything. I didn’t respond. I know better. I’m just thinking out loud.”
Whitney felt her clammy running clothes on her body in a self-conscious way. The way she could live for stretches without noticing her heartbeat, until she suddenly couldn’t not sense it. She felt the straps around her shoulders and neck. She felt the salt and dampness at her hairline. She tore off her shirt, she kicked off her shoes. Her socks, her shorts. She was standing there in a sports bra, naked from the chest down.
“If you want to fuck her just get it over with,” she said.
She stood there almost naked with betrayal in her face. She stood there like a child who’d just been scolded for playing in a mud pit.
He frowned and shook his head. “Why do you want to have this fight? Why do you say things like that? It’s like you think your only move right now is hopping back into the same old tired bullshit.”
“I’m just saying you still have a freebie.”
“All I did was ask about lunch! We can skip it. We can read and walk down to the beach. We can keep drinking all day, it’s as good as anything else to fucking do.”
She started in the direction of the bathroom, taking an extra-wide line past the giant windows that looked out onto the street. She stopped, then stood before the windowpane and waved at a woman clipping towels to a line on the roof across the way. The woman glanced at Whitney’s naked body, then returned to her business.
“Come fuck me against the window,” she said.
“What?”
She stood on her tiptoes and reached around and body-gloved her ass cheek.
“There are people out there,” he said. “There’s an old grandma on the roof.”
She fell back down onto flat feet and sighed and completed her journey to the bathroom.
“Do you really want to marry me?” she said, as she started the water.
He followed her and placed his hands on her narrow waist, on her tight hips.
“We know the real question is: Do you really want to marry me?” he said.
She slipped through his hands and stepped into the shower and neither of them answered, or both of them answered, or it was a little of each.
“What are you going to tell them?” she said, eyes closed beneath the stream.
“What?” he said. “You’re talking directly into the water.”
“I said, What are you going to tell them?” She opened one eye and it peered at him through the fogging glass.
“I’ll tell them we appreciate it but we already have plans.”
“Fine,” sh
e said.
“Or I’ll tell them we’ll see them at two.”
“I can’t tell you how little I care either way.”
“In that case, I’ll flip a coin.”
“Just make a decision. There’s no wrong answer. Don’t be an idiot.”
“Heads is go, tails is stay,” he said, searching the bathroom counter for a euro.
“You can lie to me, I can’t see through the glass anyway, I’ll never know.”
“Our fate is now in the hands of Icelandic volcanoes and Catalan spirits and the hard currency of the Eurozone.”
The water rushed, he disappeared from the room.
“Found one,” he said, returning within earshot.
“I’ll never know either way,” she said.
“I’m flipping the coin now,” he said. “What do you think it’s gonna say?”
They met Jack and Jenna on a stretch of Passeig de Gràcia bookended by Gaudís. Gaudí everywhere. Gaudí strung from buildings and balconies and trees like prayer flags.
The restaurant had no presence on the sidewalk. It was narrow inside and had a horseshoe bar. They served only jamón ibérico, but served it twenty different ways.
Jack and Jenna were already seated at the bar, always first somehow. They waved Will and Whitney over casually, without getting up for greetings this time. Jack was wearing khaki shorts that showed off his muscular legs. He wore a pair of high-top Jordans and a bull-red Toni Kukoč jersey. Jenna had on a tight black shirt tucked into jean shorts, and her hair was tied back in a ponytail. He looked baggy and she looked vacuum-sealed.
It was hot after the rains, and Will and Whitney were sweating now in their clothes. Whitney wore one of her heavy cotton peasant dresses that made her look like an extra in a Botticelli. She kept her credit card and passport in one of its loose pockets. Will wore jeans and one of the seemingly forty-five button-up J.Crew shirts he’d packed for their five-day trip. Correcting for the night before, they’d overdressed for the afternoon, and were all wrong again for the restaurant and the company.
Will sat next to Jack, Whitney and Jenna on either side of them at the bar. Will asked Jenna what she recommended and she raised both hands and an eyebrow at Jack because it was his choice, his place, it turned out.
“I used to come here after games if I didn’t want to go straight home,” he said. “It’s a little out of the way but I like it.”
“What’s your go-to, then?” Whitney said to Jack. She was eyeing Jenna’s defiantly clipped-on earrings and the skintight fabric of her top. As Jenna turned to the side, Whitney saw that it wasn’t a shirt at all, but a leotard. Snug to her chest and scooped in the back all the way down to the waistband of her shorts. Whitney’s eyes searched Jenna’s body for its flaws. For an unevenness of tan, for the fanny packs of fat Whitney had been sure she’d been concealing in her dresses the last two nights. But nothing. Jenna caught Whitney in the eyes, and Whitney knew she knew what she was looking for. They signaled their intentions to each other down the bar in ways that were obvious to them and invisible to Will and Jack.
“Get the sandwich,” Jack said. “The simple one. The classico. It’s ham and this tomato mush and crusty bread. I obviously don’t know anything about food, but this is real good.”
They ordered four. Five euros apiece. They each ordered two-euro beers in succession, too, and then, after Whitney ordered hers, Jenna changed her order to a sparkling water with lemon. Whitney laughed. Everything meant something.
They ate quickly. They savored the crunch and the salty tie-dye swirl of the cured ham. There was a slickness to the meat that the four wore in a glisten on their lips. They dabbed up crumbs with their fingers and carried them to the tips of their tongues. It was over before Jack had even finished describing the long night he and his teammates had spent there, the night they’d found it. How they had disappeared for an evening into a crack in the city where the people who spoke the language and understood its movements actually lived. It was, he said, as though he’d stepped into this place and ended up in a secret version of Barcelona where he could finally see everything that had been hiding in plain sight. That was maybe more like how things looked to everyone else, everyone who wasn’t an American here just to ball.
“That’s really cool,” Jenna said, impatiently tapping out a beat on the bar. “So we should probably head down there now unless you guys need an espresso or a dessert or something?”
She looked at Whitney and Whitney laughed again, and shook her head.
Will ordered an espresso and asked what she meant—where were they heading?
“I thought he mentioned in the text?” Jenna said. “We’re going to this festival thing down at the Fòrum.” She described the lineup of musicians. It sounded deadly to Whitney but featured acts she remembered Will mentioning Sunday night, stuff he’d been trying to describe to her after she’d accused him of not knowing any new music.
“How’d they all get here for the concert?” Will asked.
“They were supposed to play Sunday, but couldn’t get in. The tour’s moving on next weekend, but they decided to try to resurrect something. Half the lineup was in Lyon, and so they were able to drive here. Then they’re off to Italy next, I guess. But Volcano Fest today.”