‘Do you have another patient?’
Martina exhaled, relieved.
‘Yes, that’s it. Exactly. I’m sorry, I’m on a tight schedule.’
‘I understand.’
They said goodbye with a revolting, limp handshake. After all this time together, Eduardo thought, this is how it ends.
You’ve been drinking too much lately. He heard Elena’s voice as he pointed, to indicate to the waiter how high to fill it with Glencadam.
‘That’s enough.’
‘That’s more than enough,’ the waiter replied with a malicious smile.
Eduardo took the first sip, enjoying the warmth of the sun on his face as it rose over the tops of the buildings. As he set the glass down on the patio table, he listened to the sounds of children running, watched hawkers selling balloons and candy, saw mimes gesticulating silently before a group of tourists gathered in the centre of the plaza. It was a beautiful June day. His gaze caught on the two empty chairs at his table. He could imagine Tania grumpily poking at a dish of patatas bravas with a plastic fork, blowing bubbles in her Coke. She was probably thinking a million things, her mind filled with pre-teen ideas he couldn’t relate to. In the other chair, he saw Elena leaning back, eyes closed beneath her sunglasses. She loved the feel of the sun on her skin; it relaxed her, made her happy. Maybe they’d make love when they got home, after having a vermouth. Summer always made her horny — the colours, the excitement, the heat.
That was what happiness was. Small moments in which great things were determined. Drinking a beer, sitting in a plaza.
The phone in his pocket rang. Olga. She’d left a voicemail message.
‘Aren’t you going to forgive me?’
He erased it and was about to put his phone away, but then had a thought. He deleted her number. Permanently. Forgetting was the best kind of forgiveness, the only kind that could be granted.
He needed to go for a walk. Eduardo stood, and for a moment thought that his knee was going to buckle under the weight of his body, and he nearly fell. The waiter who’d served him watched from the doorway with a smile. Drunks always make you smile until they became real headaches. But Eduardo wasn’t drunk. Just hurt. And he wanted to forget. He walked across the plaza ignoring the stabbing pain in his knee. A drop of sweat slid down his back all the way to his coccyx. He was starting to feel self-conscious. It was time to find a pharmacy and fill the prescriptions in his pocket.
A street painter was exhibiting his work, the paintings all lined up in a row. They weren’t bad, but nor were they good, Eduardo thought, giving them a passing glance.
‘Want a portrait, friend?’
He didn’t want a portrait. But he pressed the last dirty wrinkled bill he had into the man’s hand. He was lucky, that painter.
‘Be careful at crossroads; it’s easy to get lost.’
The painter pushed back his beret and scratched his forehead with the tip of a brush.
‘Is that supposed to mean something?’
Eduardo shrugged.
‘It means that life takes strange paths and …’
He couldn’t find the words to finish the sentence. They were there, ready to be spoken, and yet suddenly they evaporated and his mind was filled with a strange vibration that drowned out everything but the sharp intense pain shooting down his back. It lasted just a fraction of a second, but it was like opening a door and having everything rush in at once: the painter’s incredulous expression, his mediocre paintings, the sounds of the city, people’s footsteps, the noise of the traffic, pigeons flapping around.
And then just as quickly, the door closed and he stopped feeling anything at all, except for an intense cold.
On the other side of the horizon, Sara was watching the setting sun. Waves rushed in — making her bare feet sink into the sand — and then pulled back out. A few metres away, her mother was strolling along the shore, a man’s arm around her waist. Sara liked the man — he didn’t ask stupid questions, he was nice to her mother, and he smelled good.
‘What do you think?’ she asked her toy cat.
The cat took her hand with its stiff little arm. Its toy eyes reflected the small island, a giant rock where seagulls nested in the crags.
‘I think the same as you,’ the cat replied without moving its moustache.
‘He’s not Eduardo.’
‘Exactly,’ the cat collaborated.
Sara found a twig in the detritus carried in by the sea. Using it like a pen she wrote on the shore, in big letters, as though someone might read the message from the sky: E-D-U-A-R-D-O.
‘Do you think he can see it?’
The cat did not shrug. It was just a toy and had no joints.
‘Who knows?’
Suddenly an impetuous wave, bigger than the rest, stuck out its foamy tongue and lapped up the letters, erasing them.
Sara became sad.
‘It’s just a name,’ the cat said, comforting her.
Sara dropped her toy on the sand and took three steps back and wrote it again, in bigger, deeper letters.
‘You don’t understand. You’re just a cat that talks.’
And the cat smiled without moving its moustache. Sara was right; it couldn’t understand human beings.
Contents
About the Author
Dedication
Title Page
Copyright Page
Epigraph
PREFACE
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
EPILOGUE
The Heart Tastes Bitter Page 52