by Becky Blake
“Every man for himself, non? C’est la vie,” he said. “Nobody wants to go in the cage.” He looked toward the entrance of the zoo. The night before, one of the guys in his crew had been arrested and was now in jail. Without papers he’d be deported for sure.
I took a wallet from our knapsack and tossed it to Yaya to cheer him up. The change pocket was filled with British pounds we’d been saving. Yaya knew a guy who would buy them. He tipped the money into his hand, then flipped through the cards in the wallet. I’d already removed the woman’s driver’s licence for my collection. Yaya stopped at another piece of photo ID, an employee access pass for her office.
“Suzanne Tom-kin-son,” he read. He held the picture level with my face and pretended to be doing a comparison. I swatted away his hand.
“Guiris,” he said, smiling.
“Hey.” Guiri was one of the first new Spanish words I’d learned in Barcelona. It was a derogatory word for tourist.
“Guiris like guiris,” Yaya said. He took a stubby pencil from his shirt pocket, and held it in the air like a piece of chalk. “I have an idea.”
A crease of worry appeared between Manu’s eyebrows as we listened to Yaya’s plan; he was suggesting we sell the stolen wallets back to their owners after we removed the money.
“It will be better than just stealing,” he said. “You will have more cash, and the people will get their cards back.” He held up Suzanne Tomkinson’s ID. “Everybody laughs.”
“It’s too risky,” Manu said. He glanced over to see what I thought.
I shrugged. Something about the idea appealed to me. In the metro, we were always long gone before our marks realized what they’d lost. Yaya’s plan meant I would have the chance to finally see someone’s reaction.
“Come on, man!” Yaya squeezed Manu’s shoulder. “It will be a gentleman’s crime, instead of a coward’s. And if it works, you can buy me lunch someday.”
I saw Manu’s lips set tight, and I knew he’d accepted the challenge.
Yaya released his grip. “You’ll see,” he said. “There will be more money for you, plus you’ll sleep better at night.”
Manu shot me an annoyed look; he thought I’d told Yaya about his nightmares. He pushed himself to standing, suddenly ready to go.
We said goodbye to Yaya and his crew, then started along the path toward the park exit.
“I didn’t tell Yaya,” I said. “Seriously. I wouldn’t.”
Manu nodded, but remained quiet. We’d never talked about his bad dreams before, and it was obvious he didn’t want to talk about them now.
His nightmares seemed to fall on him like heavy stones. Each night I felt his hands clenching and releasing in startled pulses as if he was bracing for their impact. When the clenching sped up, I had to wake him, and the fear in his eyes always made me think of horses trapped in a burning barn. Sometimes the afterimage kept me awake, and I wondered whether sleeping so close to him was a good idea. Our proximity helped us to keep warm, but maybe it also trapped the dreams between us, forced them to pass back and forth with no chance of escape. My own nightmares were different than Manu’s, simple but cruel dreams that were mostly about Peter. In one, a new woman’s name had been poorly dubbed over my own. In another, I got injured and he didn’t come to help.
“Do you want to go check out that grocery store?” Manu asked.
“Sure.” A Dutch squatter named Annika had told us about a supermarket on Via Laietana that was under renovation. She’d said they were planning to throw out everything that was close to its expiry date.
When we reached the store, we found a small crowd of people filling their purses and bags. We pushed in toward the boxes on the sidewalk and began to stuff our knapsack with dented cans, small wedges of cheese, bags of broken breadsticks. I was trying to squeeze in a last carton of yogurt when I froze. Peter was standing with his back to me in front of a store across the street. He was typing a message on his phone, looking up periodically as if waiting for someone to come out.
“What’s happening?” Manu asked.
I didn’t answer. A blond woman in a trench coat exited the store holding up a bottle of wine like a trophy. She called to Peter in a language that sounded Polish or Russian. When Peter turned, his profile was wrong: the nose too long, the chin too weak. It wasn’t Peter after all, just another tall, middle-aged man with the same dark wavy hair, and the same busy distracted manner: an almost-Peter who’d been waiting for an almost-me.
“It’s nothing,” I said. I shoved the yogurt into the top of our knapsack and pulled the drawstring tight. Manu was studying the couple across the street, trying to figure out what had bothered me about them. I knew he wouldn’t ask, but maybe he could guess. It had been nine or ten days since we started sleeping so close to each other’s dreams. There was no way to know what secrets I’d shared in my sleep.
We dropped off our bulging knapsack at the courtyard, hiding it inside the wall, behind the metal grate where it was cool. It was almost rush hour so we needed to go back to the metro, but after that, we were planning to have a feast.
By the time I emerged from the underground an hour later, the sky looked as if a piece of charcoal had been dragged very lightly across its surface. I missed the drawing and sketching I’d been doing at the apartment in the Gothic Quarter. Even more, I missed the painting I’d been doing in Toronto. The wives of Peter’s friends had never liked me much – I was younger than most of them, and I didn’t know anything about real estate or organic food, or even how to hold their babies right – but once I’d started giving them portraits as gifts, one by one they’d warmed to me, pulling me by the hand to show me the special location they’d found to hang my work. The fourth portrait I’d done had turned out so well that Peter had tried to stop me from giving it away. “It’s really, really good, Niki,” he’d said, his words filling me with pride.
There was no point in remembering that now – no point in having “a good eye for colour” when its only use was to notice the shade of a strangely darkening sky.
Back at the courtyard I walked along one of the paths toward Manu. He’d already pulled our knapsack from its hiding place and chosen a patch of grass where we could sit. Dusk was the time of day when the courtyard was busiest, filling up with street people and addicts. It coincided with the time of day when people outside of the courtyard – people with jobs and families – were just getting home, greeting their loved ones and washing their hands before dinner.
Manu began to lay out some food, picnic-style, on our blanket. As I watched him, I thought about the almost-Peter and the almost-me – how the real-Peter and the real-me had almost gotten married. When Peter had proposed I’d jumped up, spilling a glass of red wine across the restaurant tablecloth. One of the waiters had shouted “Opa!” and the other diners had laughed. Then I’d thrown my arms around Peter’s neck and hung there for a moment, time halted by joy. I’d really thought he was mine.
“Almost ready,” Manu said. He pushed himself to standing and headed off to fill our water bottles at a tap near the corner.
The old toothless man approached as soon as he saw I was alone. He liked to proposition me when he was drunk.
“Lucky,” he said, pointing at Manu’s back.
I didn’t respond. I figured he was going to say something crude about my relationship with Manu. Something untrue.
The old man leaned down. “He’s lucky to be alive.”
The tone of his voice gave me a chill. Everyone in the courtyard had a story, but I’d noticed that the worst tales were often shared when the main character was not around.
Manu was chatting to someone over near the tap. “What happened?” I asked.
“He was buried. For two days.”
“What do you mean ‘buried’?”
The old man vibrated his hands in front of my face. “Terremoto.”
&nb
sp; The unfamiliar word sounded like earth and motion – he meant an earthquake.
“In Ecuador?” I asked.
The old man nodded. “A building came down on top of him. Killed his father, just like that.” He made a sudden smacking noise with his hands and I jumped.
From across the courtyard, Manu looked over.
“Lucky,” the old man said. “Lucky to be alive.”
Manu was heading back toward us now. I thought about his scar, and how he hated the feeling of the metro rumbling underneath his feet. I had a sudden urge to take care of him, but I knew he wouldn’t like that, and besides, I didn’t know how.
“Everything okay?” he asked.
“Yes.”
He flicked his fingers in my direction, splashing water droplets in my face.
“Hey!” I grabbed his legs and he tumbled down beside me. He reached across my lap and pulled a bag of cookies from our pack. He had a crazy sweet tooth.
Manu took out four cookies, then offered the bag to the old man.
“Poison.” The old man spat on the ground. I gave him some bread and cheese instead, and he wandered off, muttering a phrase that didn’t quite make sense – something about unstitched things matching up with broken things.
When I glanced over at Manu, he looked different somehow, older maybe, and I didn’t know if it was because of the twilight or because of what the toothless man had told me.
Fatherless and two days buried. I’d been underground when Manu and I met, and I’d never had a father to begin with. I shook off the comparison – those things meant nothing. I scuffed my sneakers against each other, trying to mark them up a little. They were so white they were almost glowing.
“Hey.” Manu stuck one of his feet between mine like he was breaking up a fight. “Why do you want them to be dirty?”
“I dunno.” I kicked his foot away.
He kicked me back. “Well, stop,” he said. “They’ll be dirty soon enough.”
We smiled at each other. Beneath us, I could smell the soil, above us the orange blossoms. Older. He definitely seemed older, more like a man.
We ate until we were full, trying to focus our appetites on the food that wouldn’t keep.
“Do you have the room key?” I asked, when we were finished.
Manu pulled an invisible key from his pocket, then placed it in my palm. It was just a dumb joke, but we did it every night.
“Ready?” he asked. He stood, then turned and pulled me to my feet.
After a second, he let go of my hands, readjusting the space between us to arm’s length. Maybe one day that space would disappear – we’d bump into each other by accident, then just stay close. It was the first time I’d ever really considered it.
We walked toward the hotel through the hectic evening noise of El Raval. A beer seller was working on the corner, and we bought six beers from him for five euros: four for us, and two for the security guard. The guard at the construction site was Bolivian, and Manu said the only reason he’d gotten to keep his job was because it paid almost nothing. What little money he did make, he seemed to spend on prostitutes. His favourite was a girl who everyone called Fanta because of her orange hair. Sometimes she came to visit us after they were finished, and later that night, we heard her climbing the stairs in her high heels, whistling for us on every floor until we whistled back.
“What’s wrong with the rooms downstairs?” Fanta asked when she found us. Manu liked to stay in a different room every night, and this time he’d picked a room high up. He smiled and passed her a can of beer.
She opened the tab with a long fingernail, warm foam spraying outward. “Shit!” She bent over into a curved shape and brushed a hand down her body to wipe away any drops that had landed on her tank top or jean skirt. After a moment, she stood upright and took a long sip, then set her beer on the edge of a crate. The can looked like it was going to fall, and I watched it, waiting.
“Hey, Jane,” Fanta said.
“Yes?” A split-second delay. I was still getting used to the name. Manu didn’t use it much.
“Did I ever show you the picture of my son?”
“I think so.” She’d shown it to me three or four times. “But I’d love to see it again.”
She dug for the photo in her purse. “He’s a very good boy. He hardly ever cries.”
I held out my hand and she laid the picture in my palm, keeping hold of a corner. Her fingernails were decorated with heart-shaped decals. “He looks very sweet,” I said. “When do you think you’ll see him again?” Her son lived with her mother back in Nigeria.
Fanta sighed. “Not until all of the money is paid off.”
Manu had told me she owed money to the mob, the same way Yaya did. With interest, it was probably an amount that would be impossible to repay.
She put the picture away. “Hey, Manu, do you have a smoke?”
Manu took a half-cigarette from behind his ear and handed it to her.
Fanta smiled. Her lips were shiny. “You’re a good boy too.” She winked at him, and he looked away, embarrassed. I wondered if Manu and Fanta had ever had sex.
Fanta walked to the edge of the room and peered down at the street. “It’s busy tonight.”
She was right. There must have been thirty girls working when we’d walked by, and at least that many men. I didn’t think the rich tourists would put up with having so many prostitutes outside the front entrance of the new hotel, not if they were paying five hundred euros a night for a king-sized bed and a view of the Mediterranean.
“What’s going to happen when the hotel opens?” I asked.
Fanta frowned. “The cops will probably make us go. That’s what they do with the Gypsies – they take them away in trucks. Put them outside the city, somewhere nobody sees.”
“That doesn’t seem right.”
Fanta shrugged. “We’ll come back. Maybe one street over.” She took a final drag from her cigarette, then ground it out with the toe of her shiny yellow shoe. The shoe had a black smudge on one side like it had been pressed up hard against something greased. She retrieved her beer from the edge of the crate and finished it in two long swigs. “I have to go.”
Manu was watching her. “Take care of yourself.”
Fanta laughed and shook her head as if he was crazy. “Who else is going to take care of me?” She started down the stairs.
I looked over at Manu. I might not know how to take care of him, but at least there were two of us. The phrase the old man had muttered came back to me – the one about unstitched and broken things finding their way to each other. Maybe it did make sense.
Manu handed me the can of beer we’d been sharing, and I tipped the last warm sip into my mouth.
7
The next morning, there were loads of extra people on the metro. At first, it seemed like we were going to have an easy day – lots of marks to choose from – but then I realized that the people were all local, or almost local: Catalan families streaming in from around the region for a protest. They all had red-and-yellow striped flags with a blue triangle on one end. Their picket signs tangled at the exits, and their voices joined in a chant I could feel buzzing through me: “InDUH- inDUH-inDUHpendència!”
I caught Manu’s eye, then pushed through the crowd toward him. “What’s going on?” I asked.
He shrugged. “A manifestación at Plaça Catalunya. They have them all the time.”
“Do you want to get off the train? Maybe try out Yaya’s plan?” We’d practised several times at the beach that morning and I thought we were ready.
“I don’t know.” Manu still wasn’t convinced it was a good idea.
A toddler with a flag painted on his face was staring at us, sitting astride his mother’s hip. She lifted his hand and waved it in our direction. Manu smiled and waved back.
“Okay. Let’s
try it,” he said. “My nephews have their birthday soon. It’d be good to send my sister some extra money.”
We decided to get off the train at the bottom of the green line, down near the port where the tourists would be shopping at the mall, oblivious to the giant rally. I needed to do some shopping myself before we put our plan in action. I wanted to look as much as possible like a tourist – one who’d just arrived in the city – and I couldn’t do that in a ripped and dirty outfit.
Manu said he also needed to buy something and would meet me on a bench by the exit in a half hour or so. He took the knapsack from me and handed me the bread bag with my money in it before he walked off.
I tucked the money in the pocket of my trench coat. At the H&M, a barrel-chested guard sat perched on a tiny stool. As I passed, I knew he was sizing me up, imagining a history for me, the same way I did for the people whose IDs I kept. Whatever he was thinking, I didn’t care. I wasn’t going to shoplift today. With money in my pocket, there was no need to take the risk.
I browsed through the racks of clothes, eventually picking out a pair of navy capri pants and a blue-and-white striped shirt. At the cash, my total came to €22,65, and as I counted out the money, I remembered my first days in Barcelona – how I’d paid for everything with euro bills because I hadn’t learned the denominations of the heavy change that filled my pockets. Now, I was an expert on the colour and size of every bill and coin.
The cashier handed me a plastic bag with my new clothes folded inside. As I exited the store, I had to pass the guard again, and my stomach tensed even though I hadn’t done anything wrong. He gave me a long look. Security guards who worked in Loss Prevention were like dogs – they could smell fear – but the anxiety he was sensing was weeks old. The other guard had grabbed me so hard it’d felt like his fingers were made of steel. They had dug into my shoulders with an inescapable grip and stopped me in my tracks.