Eventually the situation became so bad that those who remained in the village had nothing to eat and no one to eat it with. And those few remaining survivors of the mysterious disappearing plague packed up their possessions and fled.
At first the conversation I overheard was not particularly illuminating. It went something like this:
High Tops: Delilah, I’ve got a chicken sandwich and a cheese sandwich. Which would you like?
Delilah: I’m not hungry.
High Tops: Oh of course you are. It’s way past noon.
April: Children need to develop spontaneous eating habits. If they’re forced they—
Delilah: I want to go play!
High Tops: Oh all right. But then you have to come back and eat something.
[Pause, while Delilah runs off and joins Spanish children kicking a very small ball around.]
April: Don’t you find it hard to be a mother?
High Tops: Oh April, let’s not talk about that again. I love you so much, baby, I can’t stand the thought of not being with you.
April [sighing]: I love you too, sweetheart. But there are so many complications.
High Tops: Oh don’t worry about him.
April: It’s not that I’m worried, but—
High Tops: Honey, I’ve done everything I can and I’ll keep doing everything I can to be near you.
High Tops had forgotten all about Delilah and her lunch and was completely focused on April. Her squarish, rather plain face was illuminated by romantic yearning, and she stroked April’s shoulders and back as April polished off two sandwiches and an apple. In her cream caftan April looked like a Bedouin queen; I could see why High Tops was enamored. Yes, that I understood. But I didn’t understand any of the rest of it. Did these two and Delilah have any connection to Ben and Frankie? Was Ben the “him” not to be worried about?
In a desultory way I read the same paragraph of La Grande over and over:
My mother loved Eduardo with a passion like music, a full symphony that comes, after years of silence, to one in solitary confinement. Eduardo had been predicted long ago, while Cristobel was still married to Raoul, on a sultry day down by the river, when an old gypsy had taken her hand and said, “You will find great love, but never fulfillment.” Cristobel snatched her hand away. “It can’t be great love then.” The gypsy had gazed with enormous sympathy at Cristobel before entering the river and submerging herself in the transparent silver-green eddies. “How little you know about love,” she had said, before the river covered her and bore her along.
The afternoon was heating up and I was tired. I had missed my own lunch by now and hadn’t dared even stop for a mineral water at the bar for fear of losing them. I was becoming extremely cranky and planning how I would take it out on Frankie when I met her later. Then things began to get more interesting.
April and High Tops had stopped talking some time ago and were merely keeping half an eye on Delilah as they lolled in the sun. I’d gotten up for just a minute to walk and stretch myself and had immediately lost my seat to yet another tourist with a flight bag reading EUROPEAN SOCIETY FOR ORGAN TRANSPLANTATION. Now I was restlessly wandering out of hearing distance with Gloria de los Angeles’s bestseller under my arm. Suddenly I noticed that High Tops was barefoot and had her right foot in April’s lap. I wished it could have been me. Or perhaps not, because obviously the public practice of Reflexology was not usual in Spain, and April and High Tops soon began to excite a disquieted interest among the other visitors to the plaza. Well, it did look pretty erotic. April had her serpent eyes fastened on High Tops’ stubby white foot as if it were a morsel she was about to strike and swallow whole. High Tops had flung her shoulders back in a pose of great abandonment and was groaning in a manner not particularly suited to public places.
The situation was ripe for chastisement, and if the police had happened by, High Tops and April might have been forced to re-shoe and desist, but instead, a youngish man walked up casually to them and starting talking in English.
Medium height, regular-looking, wearing jeans. It was Ben. It must be Ben. If I were describing him I would have thought to mention that he was quite good-looking, in spite of a receding hairline and a tendency to plumpness around the middle. He didn’t look particularly dangerous, nor did April and High Tops seem at all alarmed to see him. They greeted him warmly and then both exclaimed in great surprise. Something had happened that they wanted to hear about. Was it Frankie’s arrival in Barcelona?
I pretended that a certain mosaic pattern near them was intensely fascinating to me, but I was afraid to get too close. As a result I heard only fragments of their conversation.
Ben: … Going to Barcelona wasn’t part of the agreement. She’s angry.
April: … No right to be angry… It’s not as if…
High Tops: … absolutely impossible to discuss…
Ben: They’re her feelings.
They must be talking about Frankie. Her feelings. She’s angry. Then Ben knew Frankie was in Barcelona. Frankie had gone to see him at La Pedrera after I took off after April and High Tops. My job was over. But why did I feel so uneasy?
I wondered what the papers were that Frankie wanted Ben to sign, and whether he had come to Barcelona to avoid Frankie rather than just for a visit. I wondered how April and High Tops knew Ben and whether they also knew Frankie. I wondered why April and High Tops had mentioned being worried about Ben but were now treating him in a perfectly friendly, even confidential way.
But it had become too hot for speculation. I didn’t have an interest in getting much more involved. All I wanted was my money and to say good-bye to Frankie.
I spent the rest of the afternoon working on La Grande y su hija back at Ana’s. Ana was absorbed in her seashell house and with her usual single-minded intensity was affixing a mosaic of real shells all around its opening. I wondered what it would be like to have Ana make a house for me.
“Wouldn’t you like a room like a nun’s?” she asked.
“Are you kidding? A hard single bed with a crucifix above it?”
“But your life is so complicated, Cassandra, you live in so many places. Think if you had a little white room with a painting of the sea, a room you could always return to.”
“You’re talking to an Irish Catholic girl who grew up in a little white room and couldn’t wait to get out of it.”
Ana shook her head. “But that room is still your center. You need that room.”
“And where might this room be, might I ask?”
“Why, right here in my apartment,” she said. “Next to the nursery.”
I waited until after six to meet Frankie at Carmen’s salon. For a minute I thought of donning my turban again, but in the end decided to brave it. So what if Carmen had a knife? I had taken karate for six weeks. And in Kyoto, too.
But Frankie wasn’t there when I arrived and I had to face Carmen’s wrath alone.
“Ay, ay, ay!” she screamed. “Where is it? Where’s your hair? Yesterday you had too much. Now you have none.”
“It will grow back,” I promised.
“Where did you go? Who did this butchering job? I will kill her.”
I admitted that I’d done it myself and she screamed again, as if I’d confessed to performing an appendectomy on my own body.
“But why? You were beautiful with my haircut. Now you’re ugly. Ugly. Ugly!” She grabbed my arm and shoved me in front of one of the mirrors.
I thought I looked rather handsome.
“Your beautiful curls,” she moaned. “I can’t bear it.”
But at that moment Frankie entered and Carmen was diverted.
“This is Frankie,” I introduced them. “Carmen.”
Carmen gave a sharp intake of breath, and I thought she was probably jealous, no doubt imagining that Frankie and I had a relationship beyond that of client and investigator.
Frankie bussed me on the cheek. “I’ve had such a successful day,” she enthused.
; “Yes?”
“I found some absolutely fabulous clothes. Terribly European.”
She sat down in the chair and I wondered what she thought Carmen could do for her. Those corkscrew auburn curls looked perfectly wonderful to me.
“Take it off, darling,” she said in English to Carmen with a wave.
And Carmen did.
I gasped.
“You mean you didn’t know it was a wig, Cassandra?” Frankie said to me in the mirror. “That’s wonderful.”
The woman in the mirror looked completely different. She had chin-length limp hair that had been forced to change color once too often and was now an unprepossessing shade of burnt toast. The wig had made Frankie’s features pretty; without it her chin was too sharp, her nose too big, her eyes too small.
But as an actress she must be used to changing her appearance all the time, and to think nothing of it.
“Don’t cut off too much, darling,” Frankie told Carmen. “I like it as full as you can make it.”
I translated, minus the darling, as Carmen picked up an over-processed lock and let it drop significantly before brusquely pointing to the wash basins.
“When you said you had a successful day, I thought it was because you’d met with Ben finally,” I said while she was being shampooed.
“Ben?”
“I saw you go into La Pedrera just after… two women and a little girl came out. I followed them to the Parc Güell and heard all about you.”
Frankie blanched slightly. But it could have been Carmen energetically scrubbing at the roots of her hair.
“And then I saw Ben come up to the two women and—”
“Ben came up to the two women?” Frankie repeated.
“Well, obviously Ben is staying with them and their little girl.”
Frankie yelped in pain. “Not—so—hard. Por favor.”
“Well, isn’t he?” I demanded.
“Yes.” Frankie sighed.
I followed them back to the styling chair. Carmen looked grim, I supposed because we were talking in English and Frankie was treating her like a hairdresser. She hated that.
“And you met with Ben today, didn’t you?”
Frankie pondered this while looking at her sallow complexion in the mirror. “Yes, briefly.”
“Well, you’ve gotten what you came for, haven’t you?”
“Not exactly.” Her eyes followed Carmen’s scissors closely. “You see, I couldn’t get him to sign the papers. I’ll have to do a little more persuading.”
“But my part in all this is finished.”
“I might need a little help persuading—”
“Absolutely not.”
“All I want you to do is sit near us at a restaurant tomorrow. When the time is right I’ll introduce you.”
“Well…”
“And then I’ll give you your check for two thousand plus today’s and tomorrow’s expenses and you can be on your way.”
“I’ll think about it,” I said moodily. But we both knew I’d help her out yet again.
Carmen was blow-drying Frankie’s hair. She hadn’t done a bad job with the cutting—Carmen would never do a bad job— but neither had she thrown herself into it. Frankie seemed too distracted to notice.
“So you followed the two women, hmmm?” she asked. “Where did you say they went?”
“To the Parc Güell. It looks like they probably eat their lunch there regularly. And that’s where Ben joined them.”
“I’ve heard of that park,” said Frankie. “I hope I can sightsee a little while I’m here.”
Carmen stood back and handed Frankie a mirror so she could check the back of her head. It was a nice style job, if you liked pageboys. I knew Carmen didn’t.
“Thank you dear,” Frankie said indifferently as she got out her red purse.
“You pay the cashier,” I whispered, as Carmen’s eyes smoldered at this final insult. She flicked the towel off Frankie’s shoulders as if it were a bullfighter’s cape.
I accompanied Frankie to the door.
“Cassandra,” Carmen called sternly after me. “Can we talk a minute?”
“I’m late to meet Ana,” I said, hoping to avoid another lecture, this time on American manners. “Can you call me tonight?”
She raised her eyebrows. “I suppose it’s not that important.”
I’ve never lost my nerve when it really counted, but I’m a complete coward when it comes to facing an angry woman. As usual, I escaped.
6
IT HAD ALL STARTED, ANA said that evening after dinner, when a newly pregnant client came to her and requested a house for herself, so that she could lie in it and think maternal thoughts. Ana at first thought of it as something of a challenge, because she had never been pregnant. A thorough researcher, Ana went to the library and bookstores and obtained big tomes on pregnancy and childbirth, complete with full-color photographs.
She was fascinated by the thought of a house that grew, month by month, and at the beginning investigated pliable construction materials into which could be pumped air or water. There was even a point at which she envisioned the house as a giant amniotic sac in which the woman could float like a fish in an aquarium. However, like all architects, even of miniature houses, Ana had to reckon with the conservatism and impatience of her client.
She wasn’t going to be pregnant forever, the woman reminded Ana.
So Ana had come up with a bright papier-mâché shell in the shape of a woman with a big belly and huge, wide-spread legs. The entrance was between the legs and the interior was fitted out with a foam mattress covered in rose velvet. There was a little skylight in the belly button, and a tape recorder in the head that played gentle pop music.
“But all that reading about pregnancy and childbirth had done something to me,” said Ana. “I’m thirty-five and I’ve been constructing children’s houses for ten years. Am I never going to have a child of my own?”
“I thought you said you got what you needed from making children happy with their houses?”
“I used to,” said Ana, absently stroking her flat belly. “But all those books awakened deep-seated feelings. Strange maternal feelings. On the streets I sought out pregnant women and stared at them, I haunted maternity clothes shops, I even arranged with a doctor friend of mine to be present at a birth in the hospital.”
“I think you should just go ahead and have a child,” I said.
“I couldn’t raise a child alone.”
“Of course you can. My mother raised us alone. Not that we turned out very well, but still.”
“I don’t want to raise a child alone.”
“I don’t like the way you’re looking at me, Ana.”
“You’d be perfect, Cassandra. Intelligent, cultured, humorous and active.”
“You skipped warm, accepting and reliable. Probably because you know me.”
“The point is, I don’t know anybody else I could possibly consider.”
“Well, at least that takes it out of the realm of the personal. I don’t have to worry that it’s only me who will do.”
Ana had one of her sudden fits of temper. They always came upon her like an allergic reaction. Her pale face turned blazing red, her dark eyes grew enormous and hard. “Yes, laugh at me, that’s right. I’m trying to tell you something important, but just go ahead, laugh at me!”
“Ana, Ana, calm down. I just meant—”
“Yes, I know exactly what you meant. You don’t want to have anything to do with me!” she wailed. “And you’re my one hope.”
“Ana,” I said. “You’re not even attracted to me.”
As suddenly as it had begun her temper tantrum abated. She got up and cleared off the table. “My god,” she said. “You know, that’s true.”
She looked me over critically. “Especially with that haircut.”
I slept in the next morning and was awakened by an energetic-sounding Frankie, who told me that Ben had agreed to meet her at a restaurant in the Plaç
a Reial at one o’clock. If I could come then too and order myself lunch, Frankie would signal me when the time was right to join them. All she wanted was my presence at the table, she emphasized. Ben was always better behaved when there were other people around.
I supposed Frankie had chosen the Plaça Reial because it was such an obvious tourist spot. What the tourists rarely realized was that the formal plaza with its arcades and palms, its fountain of the Three Graces in the center, was a hang-out for drug dealers and pickpockets. There used to be a Thieves Market in the corner of the plaza but the police had put a stop to it by parking their own van there. Still, the square was still not a place to go by yourself at night.
During the day it was filled with tourists, who congregated especially at the outdoor bars and restaurants facing the sun. I didn’t see either Ben or Frankie so I sat down at an empty table and took out my notebook and my copy of La Grande y su hija.
I was pleased that I was making progress on Cristobel’s adventures even in the midst of my own. At this rate I would be done with the translation before my deadline and out of London, with my three thousand dollars from Frankie, before the end of May. I had in mind to visit friends in Eastern Europe and see how they were surviving the political changes of recent years. It was time to brush up on my Romanian, which I hadn’t had much use for since a rather uncomfortable incident in Bucharest with a black marketeer and a member of the secret police.
Thus occupied with dreamy thoughts I almost didn’t notice Ben cross the plaza and take a table right next to me. Bugger. Would this be too close? Frankie could hardly remark, Oh look, there’s my friend Cassandra, about a woman seated right next to them. But there was nothing to be done about it. I buried my face behind the jungle green nakedness of the novel and hoped for the best.
Ben looked as out of place as I felt. He was wearing jeans again and a striped Oxford shirt, but somehow he looked less American than he had yesterday at the Parc Güell. Perhaps it was just the proximity to real Americans. Perhaps it was the gold hoop in his ear or the blue ostrich leather boots. If Frankie had chosen this place because she thought we’d blend in, she was mistaken.
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