Proof I was Here

by Becky Blake

  In Plaça de la Revolució, the biggest piece of graffiti was a giant Catalan flag. Passing it, I wondered how long it had been there, and how long it would last. Some graffiti seemed to become an accepted part of the landscape, but most was considered an eyesore, an unwelcome annoyance that had to be scrubbed away. Suddenly I had a bad feeling – that maybe the squat had been raided during the night. I hurried toward a pay phone in front of the metro and was relieved when Pau answered. “Hola.” He sounded half-asleep.

  “I’m sorry it’s so early,” I said. “Can you come down and let me in?”

  Five minutes later, he opened the door, sizing me up. “Good night?” he asked.

  I blushed. “I just had to let off some steam.”

  “Steam. I see.” He shoved the squat’s mobile phone into his pocket, then pushed the door wide so I could pass. He must have been keeping the phone beside him in case I called.

  “Thanks for watching out for me.”

  He grumbled something about needing more sleep, then started up the stairs. When I didn’t follow, he looked back. “Not coming?”

  I shook my head. “I’m just going to stay down here for a while.”

  I watched him go, then wandered around the ground floor, shaking the can of red spray paint I’d taken from Xavi’s. In front of a blank wall, I stopped and removed the cap. The first line I painted was thick and drippy. I moved my hand further away from the wall, then painted a bunch more lines, experimenting with different angles and speeds. Unlike drawing, or painting with a brush, there was no physical connection between the surface and me. The can felt untethered in my hand, free and light.

  I tried out different tags: Jane in bubble letters, Jane like lightning. One time I wrote Niki, then stood back, watching the thin letters drip down the wall before covering them up with a big red square.

  The Jane tag that looked the best was an uninterrupted line. I practised it until I could paint it with confidence, until my arm was tired, and the can was sputtering, then empty. It felt good to fill a space where nothing had been. Addictive too. I was already imagining trying to paint a graffiti portrait. But maybe I should start with something simpler, a stencilled image like the ones I’d seen in the street. To try making a stencil, I would need to find a sharp knife and some heavy paper, another can of paint and maybe some gloves. I examined the pattern of tiny speckles clustered around my right thumb and first two fingers – the fingers that had been closest to the nozzle. The speckles would be a dead giveaway if I ever risked painting in public and got caught. The odour too – a sweet chemical smell that lingered on my skin.

  Behind the wall, the pipes clanked; one of the squatters was awake upstairs and trying to use the water. In a way, squatters were like graffiti. We didn’t know when we would be removed, but on a day like this, when I was feeling touch-drunk from sleeping with Xavi and inspired to paint, the possibility of eviction seemed less like a threat and more like a reminder: to treat each day we spent here as a kind of lucky break, as something we’d stolen and gotten away with.

  I spent the rest of the morning and part of the afternoon cleaning up the squat the way I’d promised. When I was done, I went to the tattoo shop and sat in the corner sketching some ideas for stencils while I waited for Pau to finish with a client. It was Day One of my counting up – my cancelled wedding was finally behind me – and I’d thought of a way to mark the occasion.

  Pau pointed his cigarette at one of the drawings. “That would look cool.”

  “These aren’t for tattoos.”

  He rolled his eyes. “You know you want one.”

  “You’re right. I do.”

  “Ha! I knew it.”

  “Yeah, but you’re going to think it’s stupid.”

  “Nothing is stupid, carinyo. What do you want? Tell me.”

  I drew a circle the size of a dime in the centre of my left palm.

  “That’s it?”

  “Yes.” An O for open, that’s what I would tell people, but it was also a ring, one that was impossible to grasp, one that would disappear when I closed my hand.

  “If that’s what you want, that’s what you get,” Pau said. “But I have to tell you: that area hurts a lot. Also, tattoos on the inside of the hand don’t last forever. Over time, it will fade unless you keep going over it again and again.”

  “Are you serious?” I asked.

  “I’m afraid I am.”

  I couldn’t believe I’d somehow chosen the only kind of tattoo that could disappear. In a way, it was perfect. “Fine, let’s do it.”

  “Are you sure?”

  I nodded. Pau had kind eyes for a guy whose profession was causing pain. I closed his sketchbook and laid my hand on the table between us.

  Pau wiped my palm with antiseptic, then ripped open a packet of needles and fit them into the stylus. “Ready?”

  “I think so.”

  When he turned on the tool and cut into my palm it hurt so much it was hard to keep my hand open.

  Pau stopped. “Are you all right?”

  “Yeah, great. Holy fuck.”

  He smiled and went back to work.

  After a few minutes, the pain reached its summit. There was a vista at the top, a landscape of thought that was clear and sharp with detail. Even if I found a way to get along with Annika, and even if the squat never got raided, I still couldn’t stay there much longer. I didn’t want to be a freegan forever, didn’t want to live within the grid of dumpster diving rules and squatters’ law. The squatters had chosen a lifestyle with a built-in reset button, and although, on a good day, that could make each moment feel sort of heightened, my life had been reset enough times already. I didn’t want to be kicked out of anywhere ever again; I needed to live in a place where I had my own key.

  When he was finished, Pau cleared away the excess ink and little drops of blood with a tissue, then sat staring into my palm as if he could read the future. The circle he’d drawn was either a hole you could fall into or a ledge you could hold onto. It was everything and its reverse if you looked at it for long enough.

  “You’re still thinking of leaving,” he said. It was a statement and a question.

  “Maybe. But not any time soon. I still have to paint a mural for you guys.”

  Pau placed a little gauze pad over the tattoo and gently taped it in place. “Well, wherever you end up, you’re going to need me to touch up your tattoo from time to time.”

  “Obviously.”

  “And to buy you weed.”

  I laughed.

  He reached over and pulled a thin joint from a jar of pens and markers.

  We went out back and stood in the sunshine together, smoking. Under the little bandage, my hand was hot and stinging. I didn’t know if I would get the tattoo touched up or not when it began to fade. Maybe by then everything would be different.

  I decided I needed a backup plan – a way to earn some money of my own so I’d be able to leave the squat whenever I wanted and not have to worry about Annika or the police evicting me. To get started, I borrowed some money from Pau and used it to buy a large sketchbook, so I could try to sell portraits down at the beach.

  The next afternoon, I went from towel to towel offering to draw people for ten euros. After many hours, I was sunburned, and I only had thirty euros to show for my work. Each of the portraits I’d done had taken way too long, and one woman had refused to pay because she said I made her hair look greasy.

  That night, I paid back Pau and bought some sunscreen. I had six euros left over and I stored them in the pocket of my trench coat, which was hanging from a nail in the mural room. If I kept working at the beach and learned to draw faster, then I should be able to save up a good amount of money within a couple of weeks. I also wanted to start contributing a little cash to the squat. That way I’d no longer be a charity case.

  My days
became really busy: helping Annika in the morning, and then spending all afternoon at the beach. In the evenings, instead of hanging out, I went to the locutorio to search job sites for design work and to draft a resumé on the computer. I was especially looking for jobs that might sponsor me for a work visa so I could legally stay in Barcelona beyond three months. Pau said I could use his cell phone as my contact number whenever I was ready to start applying.

  No matter what I was doing, one thought kept returning: I wanted to paint more graffiti. Everywhere I went I studied the street art, imagining the different types of stencils I could make. In the pile of Free Store clothes, I found a courier bag and began filling it up with cans of paint. I allowed myself to buy one colour per day.

  On several occasions, I was tempted to pass by Xavi’s, but I kept reminding myself it was a bad idea. Even so, I couldn’t stop flashing back to the hours we’d spent in his bed, single moments returning to me in sensory snapshots: his warm breath against my neck, his square fingertips at my hip bones, one of his photographs falling and grazing my shoulder like a kiss.

  At the locutorio on Saturday night, I was working on my resumé, trying to choose a font for the header. I had been staring at my name floating at the top of the page for a long time when I suddenly knew what I wanted to paint for the mural. I logged off the computer and paid, then telephoned the squat and let it ring three times. I was crossing Plaça de la Revolució when someone touched my shoulder.

  “Jane,” Xavi said, “I was calling you.”

  “Oh hey! Sorry, I didn’t hear you.” Either that, or the name hadn’t registered. The resumé I’d been working on had my real name at the top.

  Xavi kissed me on both cheeks. “It’s good to see you.”

  “It’s good to see you too.” Neither of us took a step back, and the narrow space between us began to fill with heat.

  “Come over and join us.” He pointed to a terrace where his friends were sitting.

  I hesitated. In a minute, someone would be waiting downstairs at the squat to let me in.

  “Come on. I’ll buy you a drink.” Xavi touched my arm, and his fingers were slow to move away.

  Whoever was waiting for me at the squat wouldn’t wait too long – five minutes tops. I could call again in a while. “Okay, maybe just one.” We walked together across the square.

  When we reached the terrace, Xavi pulled out a chair for me, saying something to his friends in Catalan. I heard the word Jane.

  The three guys nodded in greeting, then went back to their conversation. Two of them had beards; the third guy was cleaner cut and seemed out of place with his dress shirt and shiny shoes.

  Xavi ordered me a beer from the waiter, then asked me how my week had been.

  I smiled. It was such a normal question – the type of question he’d ask a person who had a job and an apartment, a gym membership maybe. “It was good.”

  “Did you steal anything interesting?”

  I glanced at his friends, but they weren’t paying attention. “Actually no. But I did buy myself something.” I opened the top of my bag so he could see inside.

  “Déu meu.” Xavi ran his fingers along the tops of the coloured lids. Then he moved his hand to my thigh under the table. It was the same gesture he’d made when we’d been lying together in his bed, a movement that felt like he was claiming me, at least for the moment.

  “I want to paint something,” I said.

  “I can see that.” He squeezed my leg. Then he said something to his friends, again in Catalan, and they all stopped talking and looked at me. One of the bearded guys had wooden disks the size of golf balls stretching his earlobes; the other was a rapid blinker, his eyelashes tapping out feathery Morse code messages.

  “What’s going on?” I asked Xavi.

  “I just told them you want to paint with us sometime. With the crew.”

  The crew. I noticed then that there were heavy-looking bags on the backs of their chairs, gloves on the table. They were all wearing dark clothes. Painting with Xavi’s crew might be risky – depending on what they painted and where – but it would be worth it if I got to learn some tricks.

  The blinking guy asked a question, and Xavi answered him in a soothing tone. A long discussion followed. Either they didn’t speak English, or they didn’t want me to understand. The waiter brought my beer and began to clear the table of bottles, empty chip bags and plates puddled with olive oil. One plate had a few cubes of white cheese remaining on it. I was tempted to grab them, but I didn’t want Xavi to know I was hungry.

  Finally, he turned back to me. “Can I tell them what you do?”

  “What I do?”

  “You know … stealing things.”

  “Oh. Sure, I guess so. I’m not like a professional or anything.”

  “I know. But they’re worried about you going to the police. I think they’ll feel better if I tell them.” He said a few words to his friends. I watched their reactions, a slight shift in their postures. Having them know I was a thief embarrassed me, made me want to explain, although I wasn’t sure what I would say. Maybe that stealing things was something I didn’t really do anymore. I wondered if that was true.

  A new round of conversation started up. “Look,” I said after a few minutes, “I don’t want to cause any problems. If they don’t want me to go, it’s no big deal.”

  “It’s not a problem,” Xavi said. “They’re just asking about an initiation. But I told them we already did one up on Tibidabo last week. That you did very well.”

  His friends were staring at me, and I tried to look relaxed.

  “So, I think it’s settled.” Xavi raised his glass of beer, and one by one the others joined. They were serious men, but there was something very alive about them too. A small surge of electricity passed through me as I added my glass to the circle.

  “Visca Catalunya,” the clean-cut guy said, and then we drank.

  Xavi smiled at me. I noticed he had dimples underneath the scruff on his cheeks. I really wanted to make some art with him and then go back to his place. “Are we going to paint now?” I asked.

  “No. We already went out tonight.” Xavi slipped his hand under my hair to the back of my neck. “But don’t worry. We’ll go out again soon. And next time you can come. We’ll paint something big, I promise.”

  “Okay. I have a lot of ideas.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah. I’m not sure if your friends will like them though.”

  “Well, let’s see how it goes.”

  “When?”

  “Soon,” he said. “How about Monday?”

  “Okay.” I stood up. “So I’ll meet you at your place on Monday. When it gets dark?”

  “Sure. But wait, where are you going now?” He grabbed my hand, and I winced. My tattoo was covered with gauze, but underneath it was still scabby and tender.

  “I’m just going to practise. There’s something I want to paint tonight.”

  Xavi pushed out his bottom lip. I knew what he was thinking. It was tempting, but I’d made up my mind.

  “I’ll see you Monday.” I gave a semi-salute to the men in black, then turned back to Xavi. “Hey, how do you say ‘I’ll see you Monday’ in Catalan?”

  “Ens veiem el dilluns.”

  I tried to repeat the words in the direction of his friends, but I was pretty sure I’d failed.

  Xavi laughed. “Don’t worry. They all speak English.”

  “Good to know.” That meant they’d been excluding me from their conversation on purpose.

  The clean-cut guy raised his glass in my direction. “Until Monday.”

  “Yes.” I shouldered my bag and walked across the square, imagining the guys watching me, probably teasing Xavi and saying macho things. I didn’t care. In two days’ time, I was going to paint something big – something outside, in a plac
e that could be seen.

  When I got back to the squat after phoning again, John was waiting downstairs to let me in.

  “I’m not your personal doorman,” he said.

  I apologized for calling twice, then told him I was going to stay on the ground floor to work on the mural. When he was gone, I smoked half of a tiny joint I’d left on the windowsill, then stood for a few moments in front of the wall, visualizing how the finished mural would look. Typing my real name on my resumé had given me the idea – I wanted to paint the people who knew me as Jane before I went back to being Niki.

  I moved aside my acrylic paints and replaced them with the cans of spray paint from my bag. I didn’t know if I had the skill to pull off what I was thinking, but the walls were already pretty messed up; it wouldn’t hurt to try. Mentally, I divided the first door frame into quadrants, then made a sketch with chalk, stopping now and then to erase and adjust a line with my fingertip.

  It was hard to see clearly with just the light coming in from the street lamps, so I went over to the hook by the front door and grabbed the camping headlamp that we used for getting up and down the stairs in the dark. Wearing it, I felt like I was on Xavi’s motorcycle again: attached to a light that moved with me, cutting a brighter path in the direction of my gaze.

  When I was satisfied with my sketch, I tied the saffron scarf across my nose and mouth, then shook a can of blue paint. The first line I made was a curve, light and soft like a caress. After that, I didn’t think. I just worked for a long time, switching colours, and using the tail end of the scarf to wipe away any drips. When the portrait was finished, I stepped back. It wasn’t perfect – the outlines were a bit wobbly and the perspective was off – but overall it was lifelike enough: Manu in his ratty blue T-shirt. Behind him, an older man who could be his father.