Proof I was Here

by Becky Blake

  “I do? Oh yeah! That’s right!” Manu and I had promised to buy him lunch if the Everybody Laughs scam was a success.

  I pointed toward a busy tourist café on the edge of the square. Yaya and I walked over and wove through the outside tables looking for a spot to sit. The table we chose was covered in baskets filled with half-eaten sandwiches. I gathered the baskets up, then took them inside to the garbage. Yaya watched me return.

  “Someone’s been feeding you, non?” he said.

  I blushed as I sat down. “Yes, I guess that’s true.”

  “It’s good,” said Yaya. “You have to eat.”

  I smiled. He must have read Manu’s note.

  Yaya’s sack of knock-off purses didn’t quite fit under the table. The waiter eyed it as he took our order: coffees only; Yaya said he wasn’t hungry after all, and I couldn’t persuade him to change his mind.

  “So, have you heard something from Manu?” he asked.

  “No.” I laid my hand over Manu’s watch, then turned its motionless face to the inside of my wrist. “I hope he’s okay.”

  “Probably, he’s fine,” Yaya said. “At least he’s with his family.”

  There was a long pause. Yaya and I had never sat on a restaurant terrace before, and our conversation felt a bit stilted, like we were interviewing each other for jobs we didn’t really want. A young couple sitting nearby got up to leave and we watched them go. A pair of pigeons landed almost immediately on their table and began fighting each other for the crumbs.

  The waiter returned with our coffees, then shooed at the pigeons with his tray as he walked off.

  “So what’s going to happen to Malik?” I asked.

  Yaya sighed. “I think he will be in the CIE for a long time. It will be hard for him. Every day he is in there, he is not here, and he is also not home. Being in the CIE is like being nowhere.”

  “But eventually they’ll send him back?”

  “Probably, yes.” Yaya looked almost wistful. I knew his greatest fear was being deported, but still – he must miss his home a lot.

  “Do you think you’ll ever get to go home for a visit?”

  “Maybe someday.”

  For Yaya to go back to Senegal and not get stuck there, he’d need to have paid off his debt, become a resident and gotten a passport. He’d need to have accomplished all that without being “stopped” like Malik.

  Yaya took a sip of his coffee. The espresso cup and saucer looked like doll dishes in his hands. “First I need to make a lot of money,” he said. “My family, they are expecting a return on their investment.”

  I nodded. He had a lot of people counting on him. I could see it in the slope of his shoulders.

  Yaya turned his head to watch a glamorous woman walk by, her hands full of shopping bags. “When I go back,” he said, “I’m going to bring a lot of presents, tu sais? Football shirts, iPads, running shoes.”

  “You’re going to be popular.”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you talk to them? To your family?”

  “Sometimes. I will talk to them more when I am a success.” Yaya set down his empty cup, then looked at his gold watch – it was a knock-off, of course. “I’m sorry. I have to go.” He unfolded his long body from the chair. “Thank you for the coffee.” He took my hand and shook it formally. A family at the next table was watching us.

  Yaya retrieved his sack of purses and swung it up over his shoulder. For a second, he looked like a tall skinny Santa Claus, and I pictured him returning home with his bag full of gifts, everyone so happy to see him. I really hoped that would happen for him, but he would need a lot of luck to pull it off.

  I watched him move off up Passeig de Gràcia until he disappeared into the crowd. Then I sat at the table for a long time with the sun on my face, feeling almost as still as Atlas, like there was a pin holding time in place. At first it was just an insignificant moment – enjoying the last of my coffee on the edge of Plaça Catalunya – but then it grew into something larger: a sudden certainty that Manu had been right. I was a lucky person. I could go home and come back whenever I wanted. I didn’t have any debt to pay off, and I had no one to worry about except myself.

  I walked to a locutorio and wrote Peter an email: I need to come and get my things. Please let me know when you’ll be home. I wasn’t sure where the next weeks or months would take me, but whatever I decided to do, I would need my wallet and passport.

  I clicked Send, and immediately an auto-response appeared in my inbox. The message said Peter was on vacation in Paris for the rest of the week – that he would reply to any emails when he got back. He’d probably taken someone else on our honeymoon. I let out a loud breath, feeling as if his email had punctured me somewhere. I checked the date of his return. It was the day after my court date, so now it was official: I wouldn’t be able to make it back in time, even if I wanted to.

  I hadn’t realized I’d even been considering returning for my court date – it was only five days away – but now that I knew I couldn’t, I felt anxious. I went into one of the phone booths and shut the door, so I could be by myself to think. If Peter had left the kitchen window open, I might be able to climb in from the stairwell. But no – that was crazy; there was no way to break into his apartment. I’d have to wait until he came back from his trip. Even from a distance, Peter had stolen something else from me: the opportunity to defend myself. I thought of the lying security guard, and how he was probably terrorizing other people. I should have gone back to stand up to him.

  My borrowed sundress was damp with sweat, and my legs were sticking to the chair. I pushed open the door of the phone booth with my toe to get some air. In front of the locutorio, four Mossos had congregated, and every few seconds they looked through the window. The owner of the shop seemed stressed. I stood up as the Mossos entered. The last one locked the door behind him.

  The locutorio was full of Latin Americans and other newcomers to Spain: people who had the need to call faraway relatives or wire money back home. Three of the Mossos started to make the rounds between the computers, asking for papers or identification. In the back of the shop, a woman with honey-coloured skin was starting to cry. She was holding a baby, and the Mossos in their black-and-yellow jackets hovered over her like wasps.

  The fourth policeman was standing in front of the door. He motioned for me to come forward.

  “Muéstrame tu pasaporte,” he said.

  “Lo siento. No lo tengo.”

  The policeman furrowed his brow as if my Spanish was terrible. “Passport,” he said, in English. “Show me.”

  I opened out my hands.

  He made a beckoning motion with his fingers. “ID.”

  “I don’t have any with me.”

  “You need to have ID. Always.”

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”

  He rolled his eyes. “Guiri,” he muttered. “When are you leaving?”

  If he thought I was a tourist, I wasn’t going to set him straight. “I’m going home in a couple of days.”

  “Wait here.” He went to talk to another policeman in the back of the shop. I tried to look as relaxed as possible, naive and entitled, checking out the notices and flyers on the bulletin board by the door. As usual, there was a bunch of advertising for locksmiths.

  “I’m going home in a couple of days.” Suddenly, I knew there was a chance for that to be true if I wanted – a way I might be able to get into Peter’s apartment.

  The policeman returned. “You can go.” He unlocked the door and stepped aside so I could exit. I glanced at the back of the shop where the other Mossos were dividing the remaining people into two groups. The ones against the back wall all looked terrified. If Yaya had been with me, he would have been against the wall, and there wouldn’t have been anything I could do to help.

  I walked for a few blocks feeling like the
policeman had been right to call me a guiri. All these weeks, I’d had access to ID that allowed me to go wherever I wanted in the world. It was time to get it back.

  As I walked in the direction of the Gothic Quarter, I pulled a marker from my bag. When I spotted a street lamp covered in little coloured stickers, I stopped and copied two of the locksmiths’ numbers onto my hand.

  22

  Outside of Peter’s apartment building, I took a breath and rang his buzzer. His email had said he was away, but I needed to be certain. When nobody answered, I stood a little way off, pacing back and forth and watching the front door, waiting for someone to leave or come home. I checked the plastic bag I was carrying, making sure that Xavi’s keys were hidden under the vegetables I’d bought. My money was in my bra now, and my courier bag was stashed in a garbage bin around the corner. Hopefully, it would still be there when I returned.

  After a half hour or so, one of the building’s tenants approached: a matronly woman walking a chihuahua in a pink collar. This was good luck. I remembered Senyora Bellet – she lived across the hall from Peter, and he’d introduced us on the day I arrived.

  “Excuse me,” I said, intercepting her as she got close. “Senyora Bellet? I don’t know if you remember me. I live across the hall with Peter. In 4-1?”

  Senyora Bellet stopped, clicking the lock on her extendable leash and reigning in her little dog. The chihuahua looked back at me with a put-out expression. Senyora Bellet was silent for so long that I started to worry she knew I’d moved out. Or maybe someone else had moved in.

  “Sí, què va passar?” she finally asked.

  “I’m really sorry to bother you, but I don’t know what to do. I just got robbed at the market and –” I lifted my plastic shopping bag of vegetables. “I was buying these, and I set my purse down for a second.”

  Senyora Bellet looked disapproving. “No,” she said. “Never do this.”

  “I know! It was so stupid! I’m so mad at myself.” Hurt, incredulous, lost – that’s how the woman with the blue purse had seemed. “And now I’m locked out of the apartment, and Peter is in Paris, and I don’t have my phone or my wallet or my keys.”

  The chihuahua was pulling on its leash, and the three of us began to walk toward the front door. I showed Senyora Bellet the locksmith numbers written on my hand. “Do you think I could use your phone to call a cerrajero?”

  She unlocked the front door. “Come upstairs and you can call.”

  “Thanks! That’s so nice of you.” I followed her into the building, and for a second, everything shifted backward. The first time I’d been in the lobby, Peter had been pulling my suitcase. I’d been so excited to see the apartment he’d found for us: the high ceilings, the guest room, the Juliet balconies he’d described. That seemed like another person’s life now.

  As we passed the mailboxes, I noticed that Peter’s had a newly printed slip of paper in the name slot; he’d removed the slip that showed both of our names, and replaced it with one that showed only his. That could be a problem if the locksmith saw it.

  Senyora Bellet and her chihuahua were getting into the elevator. I squeezed in beside them. The elevator whirred to life like the insides of a clock. For no apparent reason, her dog began to bark at me.

  “She doesn’t like es-strangers,” Senyora Bellet said. The elevator jolted to a stop.

  On the landing, I glanced at Peter’s front door as I waited for Senyora Bellet to open hers. Inside, her apartment smelled like stale cigarette smoke. The walls were covered in gold paisley-patterned wallpaper. From further down the dim hallway a weak voice called out.

  “My father,” Senyora Bellet said. The dog scampered down the hall toward the voice, dragging its leash.

  I waited in the front hall as Senyora Bellet went to get her cordless phone. When she returned, I dialed one of the numbers on my hand. A man answered, and I tried to explain that I’d been robbed and lost my keys. It was harder for me to have a conversation in Spanish over the phone than in person, and I was making a mess of things. Senyora Bellet took the phone from me and explained the situation in Catalan. She ended with a short question – maybe about the price – then spoke in a loud burst of words, her voice rising sharply. After a minute she covered the phone. “Forty euros. You have?”

  I nodded. I had twenty euros, and Peter had kept some money in the kitchen drawer for when we ordered food. If there wasn’t any there, I’d have to improvise.

  Senyora Bellet hung up the phone. “He comes in thirty minutes,” she said.

  “Thank you so much.”

  “You want that I put the vegetables at the fridge?”

  “Oh, no. That’s fine.” I didn’t want her peeking in the bag and maybe seeing Xavi’s keys.

  Her father was calling her from down the hall.

  Senyora Bellet pointed to a velvet couch in the living room. “Sit.”

  “No, no. I’ll just go wait downstairs.” I needed to get rid of the slip of paper from the mailbox.

  Senyora Bellet motioned more forcefully to the couch. “Please.”

  I didn’t want her to get suspicious. “Okay, thanks. Just for a few minutes.”

  She took the bag of vegetables from me despite my protest, and left to go talk to her father. I perched on the edge of the couch. On one wall there was a poster from a Batman movie, on another wall a picture of Jesus. A huge china cabinet with etched glass doors was filled with teapots, plates and sherry glasses. I bit at the inside of my cheek and watched a little gold clock on the end table tick forward. Thirty minutes was way too much time to sit in a stranger’s apartment – way too much time for her to think about my story and begin to doubt it.

  When Senyora Bellet returned she offered me a plate of cookies.

  “Oh, no thank you,” I said. “I’m not very hungry.”

  She set the cookies on the table, then sat down across from me on a hard-looking chair.

  I didn’t know much about either Batman or Jesus. I couldn’t think of anything to say.

  “You want you call your husband?” she asked.

  Of course she assumed Peter and I were married. I pretended to think for a moment. “No, he’s working. I don’t want to bother him.”

  She seemed to find this strange.

  “The truth is –” I leaned forward, speaking slowly so she could understand. “He thinks I can’t take care of myself – that I need him to do everything. Today, I just want to show him that I can do things on my own. Do you know what I mean?”

  She gave a small nod. She wasn’t wearing a wedding ring, which meant she’d probably never been married, or else she was a widow. I didn’t think she’d be divorced. There were pictures of children on the end table, but they were very old pictures. Maybe one of them was her, forty or fifty years ago. The intercom buzzed.

  Senyora Bellet hefted herself off the chair, then walked over and shouted into the speaker. A moment later we heard the elevator humming, then coming to a stop. I hadn’t had time to go downstairs to the mailbox. If the locksmith asked me about why my name wasn’t on it, I’d tell him that I’d only been in Barcelona a few weeks and we hadn’t had a chance to make the change.

  The locksmith was a heavy-set man with a tool box and a large ring of keys on his belt. I showed him the door, and explained to him that my purse had been stolen, and that Peter was away – that I could show him some ID once I got inside the apartment.

  “Don’t worry,” he said. “No tienes pinta de ser ladrón.” He winked. He didn’t think I looked like a thief.

  “So you’re going to be able to get in?” I asked.

  “Claro. First, we will try the easy way.” He rapped hard on the door with his knuckles.

  I held my breath as we waited – it was possible that Peter had a guest, someone who hadn’t wanted to answer when I’d buzzed up from the street – but there was no sound from the apa
rtment and the door stayed closed.

  “And now the hard way.” The locksmith opened his tool box.

  As he worked on the top lock, jiggling two skinny metal tools that looked like dental instruments, he told me some ways I could protect myself from pickpockets in future. His tips were pretty good: to be suspicious if anyone approached or bumped into me, to be extra careful on the metro at rush hour, to lock the door behind me at bank ATMs when I was taking out money at night. He also cautioned me about burglars. Apparently, there were some thieves who leapt from one building’s roof to another and could jump down onto balconies.

  “If you want, I can put some extra locks on your balcony doors,” the locksmith said. He was drumming up business.

  “Maybe. I’ll have to talk to my husband first.”

  Senyora Bellet was hovering behind us, listening.

  “Senyora, you don’t need to wait,” I said. “I’m sure you have a lot of things to do. I’ll knock if we need you.” I mimed knocking on her door.

  She nodded and went back into her apartment, but I suspected she was still watching through the peephole.

  The locksmith got the top lock open and began working on the bottom one.

  “Hey, why are there so many locksmiths in Barcelona?” I asked. “Those little coloured stickers are everywhere.”

  “Stickers? Oh, las pegatinas. Yes. You have to be careful.” The locksmith stopped to wipe the sweat off his face. “Some of those cerrajeros are not real. They’re burglars too.”

  “Really?” I looked at him more closely.

  “Yes, it’s true. If you and your friends need help like this, you should always call me. The others, sometimes they make a copy of the key, or they are just there to look inside your apartment and see what you have.” He stuffed his handkerchief back in his pocket. He seemed too lethargic to be a thief, but I couldn’t be sure. Maybe it was an act.

  He pressed down on one tool, while carefully threading the other in and out of the lock. Finally there was a clicking sound. He opened the door, and I could see down the hall.