Proof I was Here

by Becky Blake

  “Bueno,” he said. “Do you have another set of keys inside, or do you need me to change the lock for a new one?”

  I thought about Peter coming home and trying unsuccessfully to open his front door. “How much to change the lock?”

  “Uff. Maybe 150?”

  I didn’t have that much. “No, it’s fine. I have a spare set of keys inside. Let me go get you some money.”

  I stepped into the apartment and went straight to the kitchen. There was a fishy smell seeping in through the drains. I rifled through the drawers and found a bunch of change in one, and my wallet, sitting on top of my sketchbook, in another. I checked over my shoulder to make sure the locksmith hadn’t followed me, then pulled out the twenty euros from my bra, another ten from my wallet and scraped together eight euros in change from the drawer. I put my wallet back, then returned to the front door.

  “I only have thirty-eight,” I said.

  Senyora Bellet was in the hallway again. She pulled a change purse from her pocket and opened it, handing me a two-euro coin.

  “Thank you,” I said. “Thank you both so much.” I wanted to be by myself now, but the locksmith asked if he could have a glass of water, and Senyora Bellet went to her fridge to get my vegetables. They both seemed to be moving in slow motion. I wondered if the locksmith was casing the apartment. Finally, he said goodbye.

  I closed the front door and stood for a long moment looking down Peter’s hallway. Even though he was away, there were still things here that could hurt me. A picture of us that I’d hung by the coat rack was gone. All that was left were the little holes where the nails had been – a constellation gone dark.

  I went into the kitchen and opened the fridge door to let the cool air dry the sweat on my face. Inside was a lemon, a takeout container of wilted salad and a half-empty bottle of vodka. Peter had cleared out the food I’d bought at the market. Probably it had all gone to waste.

  I took a swig of the vodka, then grabbed my wallet from the drawer again and flipped it open. My credit card and bank card were still in there. I set the wallet beside my bag of vegetables and went down the hall to find my passport.

  The door of the spare bedroom was closed. I knocked softly and waited for a moment, then turned the handle. Inside, the wooden blinds were shut. Thin stripes of sunshine crawled weakly across the floor. Half the room was filled with boxes, and I could smell the cedar from the packing crates. I checked the desk drawer where I thought I’d left my passport, but it wasn’t there. I walked over to the boxes. Each one was labelled in my own optimistic handwriting, our Barcelona address copied over and over in deeply felt block letters. I’d been so proud when the rough men from the shipping company had come to pick up the boxes in Toronto. “Barcelona?” one of them had asked, impressed, running his thick fingers across a label.

  I traced one of the labels’ ragged borders now, trying to stick it back in place. Barcelona. The word had seemed like magic, like a golden ticket to a happy life. I considered getting a knife, cutting open the boxes, and releasing my things that were trapped inside, but all of them were intermingled with Peter’s, and when I thought about sorting through them, I realized there was nothing I really needed, nothing that couldn’t be replaced.

  I opened the wooden blinds and unlatched the balcony door, then stepped outside. The view was just as I remembered – the Gothic cathedral in the foreground, and then the wide avenue that led to the mountains in the distance. It was a lovely view, but I’d found several better ones since. The best had been from the top of one of those mountains. I stepped back inside and closed the door behind me.

  Out in the living room Peter had set up some new shelves – the kind of modern angular furniture he liked. I walked over to a potted plant in the corner. It didn’t seem like the type of plant Peter would choose – in fact, I didn’t think he would buy a plant at all and now there were two of them: one in the corner and one on the balcony. I touched the leaves; they were healthy. I looked for a card, but there wasn’t one. I sniffed the couch cushions for perfume, then went into the bathroom to look for an extra towel or a woman’s shampoo. Nothing. If there was another woman, then she hadn’t left her mark on his apartment yet. For a second, I felt sorry for her. No matter how serious things got between them, she would probably never leave a trace. The living room would be painted gallery white, the way Peter preferred, and the art on the walls would always be chosen by him. I took hold of the leaves of the healthy plant in the corner and squeezed them one by one.

  In the bedroom, a new painting was hanging above the bed. It was Miró-inspired, thick black lines suggesting the shape of surrealist people and animals against a dark blue sky. The painting was skilful, and it had an expensive frame. Stealing it would leave an absence above Peter’s bed that he would see for a long time. I climbed up and lifted the painting off the wall, then stood looking down at it. Taking it wasn’t going to stopper the little puncture hole that Peter’s email had made; if anything, it would just draw my attention to it – make it harder for the wound to close.

  I rehung the painting and stepped down off the bed. I just needed to find my passport and then I could go. It wasn’t in the bedside table’s drawer, or on any of the shelves in the living room. I went back into the kitchen and checked the top of the fridge. Peter was organized – he would have wanted to keep my things together. I opened the drawer where I’d found my wallet and pulled out my sketchbook. My passport was inside the front cover and so was a lilac-coloured envelope addressed to me.

  I recognized her handwriting immediately. She’d written our address in the same childish printing I remembered from the notes she’d left on the kitchen counter, her letters veering down and to the right like she was running out of steam. When I’d sent her my postcard, I’d hesitated before including our return address, but I’d wanted to show off the name of our street: Carrer de Paradís. It had looked so much like paradise.

  The letter was still sealed and I didn’t open it. Whatever words it contained, I didn’t want to be in Peter’s apartment when I read them. I put the envelope into the plastic bag with my wallet and sketchbook. The set of keys I’d thrown at Peter were also in the drawer, and I decided to take them with me. I wouldn’t be coming back, but Senyora Bellet might watch me leave, and it was better if I could lock the door behind me.

  When I let myself out of the apartment, I made a show of using the keys before moving down the stairs. In the lobby, I stood for a moment in front of the mailboxes, staring at Peter’s name on the little slip of paper. Peter with no Niki – that was probably for the best. I dropped Peter’s keys in the mailbox and pushed out through the front door.

  Outside, the intensity of the heat had been blunted a little. A group of teenage girls was walking home from school in their uniforms, laughing together, their braces glinting in the sun. Further along, a man was lounging against a solemn medieval building, a newborn baby sleeping in his arms. From an open window, I could hear someone practising her English, repeating the instructor’s words: “How much does it cost for a ticket? What time is the train?”

  I returned to where I’d hidden my courier bag in the garbage bin, and thankfully it was still there. Everything felt like a sign today, and this one seemed to confirm that some things might be waiting where I left them, if I ever chose to go back.

  23

  When I got to Xavi’s, I undressed on his terrace: changing out of Laia’s sundress and into my own clothes that were still a little warm from their day in the sun. Inside the apartment, the light was on, but when I went in, Xavi wasn’t there. I set my bag of vegetables on the kitchen counter, then slid the heavy paper I’d bought behind the bookshelf so it wouldn’t get bent.

  Sitting on the bed, I dumped the contents of my courier bag onto the floor. I lifted my mother’s letter to my nose, but it didn’t smell like her. I still wasn’t ready to open it. Someday I might be, or maybe I would wait until I
could see her face to face and respond to whatever she’d written in real time. I didn’t know what I was more afraid of: what the letter might say or what it might not say. I tucked it into my sketchbook, then opened my wallet. As I flipped through the cards inside, I remembered the security guard tossing all my ID and found photos onto the table, thinking he knew what they added up to, but doing the math all wrong. In the back of my passport was the thin blue Promise to Appear notice with my court date on it. There was no longer anything preventing me from keeping that promise.

  I heard Xavi turning his key in the door.

  “You’re home,” he said when he walked in. “I was hoping you would be.”

  I went over and kissed him.

  “Are you hungry?” he asked, peeking into the bag I’d set on his counter.

  “Yes.”

  “I was going to make pasta,” he said. “But since you bought all these vegetables, do you want to learn how to make a fideuà?”

  “What’s a fideuà?”

  “It’s sort of like a paella but a Catalan version. With noodles. It’s much better.” He started to wash the vegetables in the sink.

  I peered over his shoulder. “That sounds yummy.”

  “If I show you, you have to promise not to tell anyone my secret.”

  “Okay.” I laughed.

  “I’m serious,” Xavi said, spinning around to face me. “Every man in this city thinks he makes the best fideuà. But I actually do make the best fideuà. So it’s important I can trust you.”

  “You can trust me.”

  “Good.” He handed me a wedge of tomato and I popped it into my mouth.

  While we were cooking, I told Xavi about seeing Yaya, and about the squat being boarded up, and that I’d walked all the way downtown and back. I didn’t tell him about breaking into Peter’s.

  “Did you steal anything today?” Xavi asked.

  “Nope.” I remembered how Peter’s painting had felt in my hands. “I think I might be done with stealing.”

  “Huh. Do you remember the first thing you ever stole?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe a box of macaroni and cheese?”

  “Maybe that means you’re going to be a chef.”

  “A chef? Why?”

  “I have a theory.” Xavi leaned against the counter. “That the first thing a person steals is a clue to what they’re going to be.”

  “What’s the first thing you stole?” I asked.

  “A magazine. With a picture I liked inside. It was a gorgeous shot of the mountains, plus the girl in the picture was really hot.” Xavi reached for my waist and pulled me toward him.

  “Okay. But I don’t think I’m going to be a chef. I’m pretty much the worst cook in the world.” Our mouths were too close not to kiss, but after a moment, I turned my face to the side; I needed a second to think.

  “Maybe for me it’s the last thing I stole.”

  “What was that?” Xavi asked.

  “Remember when I was leaving that first morning?”

  I pointed to his cans of spray paint in the corner.

  After we ate, we sat on the bed picking out photographs for an exhibit Xavi was hanging the next day at the university. Most of his photos were portraits of farmers who lived in rural places working the land – a disappearing way of life.

  “I’d like to take a picture of you,” Xavi said.

  “I don’t think so.” Pictures pretended at forever. They were little snatches of time, locked unnaturally in place. In Peter’s apartment, our photos were sealed away in boxes, thin slivers of the past separated now from all feeling and sense.

  “Come on. It’ll be fun.” Xavi picked up his camera from the bedside table. It was fancy and expensive, like the ones thieves loved to steal from tourists.

  “What kind of picture?”

  “Just a regular picture. A portrait.” He took the cap off the lens.

  “I don’t like getting my photo taken.”

  “That’s okay.” Xavi lifted my chin and turned my face toward him. “Nobody does.” He snapped a picture.

  “You should call that one Uncomfortable,” I said. “Why do you want a photo anyway? Is it for a souvenir?” Maybe he thought our way of life was also disappearing. If so, it would be easier to tell him I was leaving.

  “What do you mean?” He shot several more pictures.

  Xavi and I were being lovely to each other, but that wasn’t the same as being in love with each other; it couldn’t last. “You know, something to remember me by?”

  He lowered the camera. “Why? Are you going somewhere?”

  “Maybe. I might have to go back to Canada for a while.”

  Xavi held my gaze. “Just for a while?”

  “Hopefully.”

  “When would you go?”

  “Soon.”

  He lifted the camera again and I couldn’t see his expression. “Then I’m going to need a really good picture,” he said. “So I can remember you until you come back. Move over a little toward the light.”

  He took a bunch more pictures, then sat beside me on the bed, reviewing the images.

  “This one is good,” he said. “Look. Look how beautiful you are.”

  I took the heavy camera from him. The picture was black and white, and I almost didn’t recognize myself. I looked somehow both old and young, both tough and vulnerable. It was an image that seemed to move back and forth between two extremes. For a second I thought I saw a third thing in the middle: a wavering centre point trying to come to rest. “You think this is beautiful?”

  “Yes.” Xavi leaned over and kissed me, his warm hands on either side of my face. It felt like he was holding me in place, and I wondered if maybe I was wrong about our future, if the outline of loveliness between us might fill in over time, become something solid and lasting.

  “Hey,” I said. “Say something nice.”

  He moved my hair behind my ear. “Something nice,” he whispered. Then he kissed down my neck, and I was glad I had taken so many drinks from the old fountain on La Rambla. If anyone was guaranteed to return to Barcelona, it was me.

  As soon as the sun came up I crept out of bed and slid the heavy paper out from behind the bookshelf. Xavi’s snoring made me smile as I drew and then cut out shapes: a grocery cart, a house with a jagged arrow passing through and a pair of heart-shaped lips pursed into a kiss. Food, shelter and love: three things a person needed to have in place before they could care about anything else.

  My plan was to paint the stencils in unexpected places, locations that would make passersby snap into the present and feel something: connection, confusion, annoyance – it didn’t matter what. I wanted to stencil the grocery cart onto dumpsters, the house onto abandoned buildings and the lips as a repeating image around El Raval, especially on the street where Fanta worked. Hopefully, I’d run into her while I was there.

  When Xavi woke up, I showed him the stencils.

  “Those are cool. Maybe we can paint them tonight? When I get back from hanging the exhibit?”

  “I think I’m going to paint some today,” I said.

  “Okay.” Xavi gave me a warm sleepy hug, then headed to the shower.

  I went in to join him, even though I knew it would probably make him late.

  The first place I went back to was the squat. I wanted to paint my house stencil on the boarded-up door. The regular squatter’s symbol – the circle with the jagged arrow passing through – was a sort of secret password, something only comprehensible to those in the know. My alternative symbol was meant to be more inclusive, its message more obvious to anyone who might need a place to stay: there are homes inside this building if you can get in. It was also a message for the builders and police who had evicted my friends: people need places to live and this building is sitting empty because of you.

&n
bsp; A few people slowed to watch as I pulled the stencil away. The image left behind was a photonegative of the paint-stained cardboard in my hand: the outline of a house with an arrow inside. It was an image that might be there for a moment, or possibly for years. There was no way to know how long it would last, but in a way, that’s what made it so powerful.

  The next place I went was the Boqueria. I walked down the market’s main aisle, smiling at the vendors who called out to me as I passed. The others were busy with the frenetic exchange of money and food – there were so many hands reaching back and forth across the stalls. Outside the rear exit, I crouched down by one of the dumpsters and stencilled a string of grocery carts along one side. Above them I painted the Catalan words for you have to eat. Has de menjar. The graffiti seemed to have changed the dumpster’s purpose, to have given it a voice. I imagined the grocery carts rippling out in photographs around the world. As Atlas always reminded me: more than a hundred thousand tourists passed by here every day.

  I took my final stencil to El Raval. The closer I got to the construction site, the shakier I felt. I passed by a group of men standing in front of the butcher shop, then ducked into a narrow alleyway that was tight like a throat. From both sides, men and women stepped forward. Some of them were selling things, others had nothing but need humming through their veins or hammering in their empty stomachs. I’d walked down this alley many times with Manu but now it felt more dangerous, maybe because I had something to lose again.

  At the end of the alley I came out at the hotel construction site. I remembered the sharp ring cutting into my face, and the footprint-shaped bruises across my ribs. Lying on these cobblestones, I’d made a promise to myself that I hadn’t yet kept: that if I managed to get up and get away, then I would be willing to go back as far as it took to make a clean start.

  I let out a long breath, then walked around the site’s perimeter looking for Fanta, but I didn’t see her. I hoped maybe she’d managed to sell the stolen drugs and get out of the business, but more likely she was off somewhere with a client. I knew she took her customers to a dark doorway down the block. I slowed as I neared it. There were two men standing close. I saw a small package changing hands, then they moved off.