Anna thanked the woman and crossed over the road. She tapped on the car window, and Jaime jumped.
‘I didn’t pay you this morning,’ she said, when he opened the door.
‘No,’ he said, unfussed. ‘I was going to find you tomorrow.’
Anna realized she didn’t even have the money to hand; that’s how flimsy an excuse it was.
‘I left my wallet at home,’ she said. ‘Do you want to come back with me?’
Jaime looked at her and she added, for the avoidance of doubt, ‘We could have a drink?’
‘Sure,’ he nodded, and it was definitely with a smile, not a smirk. He put a bookmark in his book – The Power of Now – and placed it in the door’s side pocket. She opened her mouth to tease him about it but then thought better of it. He locked up and they headed off towards the bar, walking close together. His top carried the scent of fabric conditioner.
As in the car, Jaime seemed content not to speak, and Anna resisted filling the silence, instead savouring the headiness of the moment. Of all the drugs concocted by man, none came close to this: knowing that someone you fancied was a sure thing. God, how she’d missed this! There had been an element of it with Tommy, but her attraction to him had been rooted in gratitude at his excitement over her. This felt more elemental and potent.
‘Your mum’s really beautiful,’ she said, finally, as they crossed the deserted square, grazing hips.
‘God, not you too,’ he said, amiably.
‘She must have had you young.’
‘Yeah.’
‘What I’m really asking, Jaime, is – how old are you?’
Jaime glanced at her and laughed.
‘Old enough,’ he said.
Anna grabbed his arm.
‘Fuck, that means you’re like, eighteen or something.’
Her voice sounded loud and theatrical in the empty square. She knew that this alien man at her side, with his tracksuit top and footballer’s hair, was not a teenager – rather, somewhere in his twenties. What he had told her in the car that morning, about working for Simón during the construction boom, made that clear. Still, she felt the need to test him: to make sure the age gap between them wasn’t a big deal. To try and ensure that later, when she was up close to him, he wouldn’t gaze at her and say, after a beat, um, I don’t want to be rude but – how old are you?
Jaime passed the test. Or rather, he just laughed and shook his head, and they continued walking.
Anna hadn’t mentioned that she owned a bar, and thought Jaime might be impressed. But, as he helped her pull up the shutters, his only comment was, ‘This place used to be a bakery, when I was a kid.’
Once inside, she swiftly attempted to create some ambience, which, in the absence of side lamps, involved switching off the main overhead light and leaving on the one in the kitchen. The room would not be mistaken for a bordello, but it would have to do. She put on a CD, Harvest. Everyone liked Neil Young, didn’t they?
Jaime sat on a stool and produced a pouch of tobacco.
‘This OK?’ he said.
Anna nodded, and filled two glasses with tequila.
‘Do you have a beer?’ he said.
‘Oh, come on,’ she said, ‘have a shot with me.’
‘A shot?’ he said, looking at the amount she had poured, but he accepted it, and, from their neighbouring stools, they clinked glasses and knocked them back.
‘Whoa,’ he said, flicking his wrist in the air, and the boyish gesture gave Anna a flash of him with his gang on the beach steps, telling them about this evening, about her, to a chorus of sniggers and high fives.
‘So what’s with the other place this morning?’ he said, fingers working on a joint, back to his air of benign nonchalance. ‘That was nice. How come you’re down here?’
‘I was living there with this guy, but then he decided he didn’t love me any more and left,’ she said. ‘He didn’t even tell me. Just drove off early one morning and left a note on the table. I didn’t want to stay there after that.’
She was surprised at her frankness, but it was liberating, knowing her relationship with Jaime would go no further than this evening.
Jaime frowned as he licked the Rizla.
‘On behalf of men, I apologize,’ he said.
She laughed at his quaintness.
‘I bet you’re not a bastard,’ she said, inanely.
Jaime lit the joint and then passed it over to her.
‘There are girls who would disagree with that,’ he said. ‘But I am trying to be good.’
‘Is that so?’
He raised an eyebrow in reply.
This suggestion of past bad behaviour was, Anna felt, as good a cue as any. She took a puff on the joint, although she didn’t like dope, and attempted to exhale with style. Then, as she handed it back, she kept his gaze and leaned forward to put her hand on his thigh.
Unflustered, Jaime put the joint on the counter and got to his feet, and she slid off her stool to meet him. He pressed her up against the bar and kissed her. His mouth tasted of weed, oddly sweet; hers must too, she supposed. She slid her hand under his hair to feel the nape of his neck – almost indecently tender, after Tommy’s – and with the other pulled up his top to feel his warm, lean back. His fingers stroked her breast, under her T-shirt, and she wrapped one leg around his, clamping onto him as tightly as she could.
This clearly wasn’t going to take long, and Jaime broke off to glance around the room, presumably looking for a soft surface. Knowing there wasn’t one, Anna tugged him down onto the floor. She lay back, feeling the cold, gritty tiles through her clothes – how long had it been since she had swept? – but Jaime took her forearms and pulled her up, deftly swapping places so she was on top. Whether this was a gentlemanly act or not, Anna didn’t know, or care. Straddling him, she sat still for a moment, looking down at his young, unreadable, semi-handsome face. On cue, the CD started on the opening bars of ‘Old Man’, and she laughed at the timing.
Then she started to undo his belt buckle and he shifted to take a condom out of his back pocket. He must do this all the time, she thought, and for a moment felt stung, although she had no right to.
She was wearing a skirt, and so was spared an ungainly struggle out of jeans. As he put on the condom, she looked away – there were bag hooks under the lip of the bar counter, she’d never noticed them before – and then closed her eyes to focus on the physical sensation, and to feel less self-conscious as he looked up at her. Moving faster she reached out for support and grabbed the leg of the nearest stool, and then felt it topple and opened her eyes to save it just before it fell.
She came indecently quickly, just before him. ‘Old Man’ hadn’t even finished.
‘Sorry,’ she said and they both laughed at her Englishness.
She climbed off him, adjusted her clothes and got to her feet. Jaime went to dispose of the condom. Anna felt flushed and unglued and suddenly quite sober.
‘Well. Thank you,’ she said, when he came back.
‘Hey, you kicking me out?’ he said, frowning.
‘Oh, no. I just thought . . . no, of course. Stay. Let’s have a drink.’ She reached for the bottle.
‘Actually, do you have a Coke or something?’
As she went behind the bar to fetch it, he said something she didn’t catch.
‘What was that?’
‘Where are you from?’
‘London. Well, not originally, but that’s where I was living before.’
‘You like it here in Marea?’
She had a brief flash of Simón, on her doorstep, asking the same question.
‘Have you always lived here?’ she asked, sidestepping, as they sat back on their stools, with their knees pressed against each other.
Jaime nodded. ‘A lot of the guys, they want to go abroad to find work. They think you can’t have a good life here. Carlos – he was down at the beach, too, you met him – he’s going to Canada next month.’
‘You don’t w
ant to go?’
‘To Canada? No. I don’t like ice hockey.’
‘And too many bears.’
‘Man, I hate bears,’ he said, shaking his head.
‘No bears in Marea,’ she said. ‘Or ice hockey, come to mention it.’
He smiled. ‘It’s not the greatest place, but it’s my home, you know? I’d miss my family.’
‘Must be cosy, all living together,’ she said.
‘Cosy?’ he said, not understanding the word, and his repetition of it made her realize how patronizing it sounded.
‘I mean, how is it, living with your parents?’ she said.
He shrugged. ‘It’s OK. For now. I hope it’s not going to be forever.’
‘So, you used to work for Simón?’ she said, moving on.
Jaime nodded, and told her he and many of his friends had dropped out of high school to work in ladrillo, the construction industry, during the boom years. Developers like Simón had hung around school gates, recruiting, with promises of fortunes to be made.
‘And it was true,’ said Jaime. ‘I was on three thousand euros a month. We used to pay for beer with five-hundred-euro notes. They had to ban them in the town because we took all their change. We were the cool guys, you know? For, like, five years. There were so many cranes around, wherever you looked, we called them the national bird of Spain. I bought this beautiful old Fiat. Man, that was a nice car. Then we were working on the Plaza de Sol, out there.’ He waved his hand vaguely north.
‘I know it!’ said Anna. It was the place she went with Tommy.
‘And then the boss – Ruiz – he turned up one day and said work was stopping and that was the end of it,’ he said. ‘Two years ago. Nothing since. We hoped Madrid might win the Olympics, and then there would have been work, but . . .’ He shrugged. ‘When they announced Beijing had got it, Carlos kicked a wall so hard he was in a leg brace.’
‘If there’s no building work, can’t you do something else?’ said Anna. ‘I mean, if Simón’s now into greenhouses, can’t you work there?’
‘You’re joking, right?’ In his voice, for the first time, was a hint of derision. Anna thought back to those hunched dark shapes she had glimpsed labouring behind the filthy plastic.
‘But you’re all so young,’ she said, taking a slug of her tequila.
‘What use is being young if you don’t have possibilities?’ he said. The phrase sounded stiff coming from him, as if he’d heard it somewhere else. ‘Being young isn’t an advantage here. My dad had a kid and his own house when he was my age. It’s fucked up.’
‘So, you’re a nini, right?’ she said, pleased to have remembered the word. She had caught a news story about the plight of the unemployed generation, condemned to live at home into their thirties, spending their best days in their childhood bedrooms, fruitlessly applying for minimum wage jobs.
His face fell.
‘I guess,’ he said. ‘I haven’t given up, you know. I’m starting a business. Selling scrap.’
‘I’m sorry,’ she said quickly, chastened. ‘I’m not judging. I mean, fucking hell, we’re no better! Look at us. The Brits. Isn’t there a word for us, stupid Brits over here . . . what is it?’
‘You mean guiri?’
‘That’s it,’ she said. ‘You must hate us.’
‘No. Why?’ he said. And just when she was worried she had punctured the mood, he added, ‘Although you do all wear awful shoes.’
They both looked down at her bare feet.
‘Not you, of course,’ he said.
‘No, I have no shoes at all.’
‘You have nice feet,’ he said. ‘You’re pretty. I think you look like the girl in Shutter Island. You seen it?’
Anna shook her head. ‘All of me looks like her, or just my feet?’
‘Just your feet,’ he said, and leaned over to lift her left foot onto his lap.
‘Anyway, you never said what you think of Marea,’ he continued.
‘Well, the weather’s good . . .’
He gave a jokey sigh, squeezing her instep.
‘Yes, and?’
‘And . . . you’re all so nice to each other here!’ Anna said, sentimentally. ‘There’s community spirit. Like, I was in the Internet cafe earlier and Paco came in and they just let him use it. You don’t get that in London. We’d just step over him in the street.’
Jaime looked up at her. ‘Paco?’ He laughed. ‘You know who he is, right?’
Anna nodded. She didn’t need to hear the story about the town celebrity discovering the shipwreck again. For a moment, she considered telling Jaime about the body, but she was enjoying not thinking about all of that. She wanted to keep things light. She felt a surge of warmth towards this self-possessed young man, who asked questions and liked his parents. She took her foot off his lap and slid off her stool to stand in front of him, wedging herself between his knees, and they started to kiss again.
8
Anna snapped fully awake, as if she’d spent the whole night primed for this moment. She registered that she was in her chair in the apartment – there was the red eye of the security light. She tilted her head from side to side, and then stood up, but there was no trauma. In fact, she felt unnaturally fresh, as if she had gone to bed at 8pm after two pints of water. Maybe she was still drunk.
The doorbell rang, and she realized it was this sound that had woken her. She crossed to the window and looked down. Coarse sandy hair, receding at the temples. Tommy. Why was he here? She watched as he bent down to tie his shoelace and saw his top ride up, exposing a section of bare lower back, dotted with moles. It occurred to her that she’d never actually seen Tommy with his shirt off: she’d seen far more of Jaime in a couple of hours than she had of Tommy in six months.
Images of the night before rose up but she pushed them to one side. Not now.
‘One minute!’ she called down, and pulled on some clothes.
Tommy gave a dislocated smile when she opened the door.
‘You called,’ he said, averting his eyes and jiggling the car keys in his hand.
Had she? She leapfrogged over the night before to her panicked phone call to Tommy, aborted after one ring.
‘Oh, I was . . . I shouldn’t have. I’m sorry. I was in a state. I’d just found out about that guy, up at the finca, he’s digging a whopping great hole in the land. A borehole. And I just got flustered. I’m sorry.’
Beyond him, she saw that the sun was high and the sky a solid, unequivocal blue. A couple was sitting on the edge of the fountain, working their way through ice creams. The drought-defying bougainvillea bush on the building opposite was a froth of lurid purple flowers.
‘A borehole?’ said Tommy.
‘To beat the drought. Apparently there’s a reservoir under the ground. He owns the greenhouses next door. I guess he’s going to pipe the water to them.’ She tried to summon her outrage of the day before but the battery was flat; she’d need to rev it up again. ‘It just seemed horrific, you know, to dig on my land without permission. And it looks like I can’t get him out without hideous legal proceedings.’
Tommy’s face screwed up with concern; there was no hint of satisfaction at his misgivings being proved right.
‘Anyway, how are you?’ she said, feeling guilty at eliciting such sympathy.
‘Oh good, good,’ he said. ‘Someone’s interested in the villa. Seems genuine. He’s flying over to have a look. Got family in the area and wants to retire out here.’
‘Great!’ said Anna, with the animation of a primary school teacher. ‘Well done!’
After a pause, Tommy said, ‘Do you want me to talk to him? This guy at your place? See if I can help?’
‘Oh, no, you don’t have to do that,’ she said.
‘It’s no trouble,’ he said. ‘I’d be happy to.’ He smiled sadly at her, and she remembered that this was how Tommy operated: to be bright and helpful, to rise above his feelings.
She nipped up the narrow staircase to the apartment to get
her phone. When she returned, Tommy was staring hard into the space over his shoulder.
‘Listen,’ said Anna, benevolently. ‘I’m sorry about before. But I do think it’s for the best. Don’t you?’
Inputting Simón’s number, he gave a dry laugh.
‘I’ll never think that not seeing you is for the best,’ he said and, still not meeting her eyes, turned back to the Rover.
Back upstairs, Anna had a shower and tried to wash away the awkwardness of Tommy’s gallantry. Then, finally, she allowed herself to gingerly recall the night before. The second time they had sex, after taking off all his clothes, Jaime had undressed her, too. She’d felt exposed, standing naked in the dirty bar, conscious of the strip light in the kitchen, but had made herself bring her arms down from her chest. If she was the kind of brazen person who picked up a man like she had, she couldn’t suddenly become coy. There was an immature V of chest hair on his torso. The muscles from his labouring days had softened in the months of inactivity since, but she could still feel some buried strength when his arms tensed around her.
Scrubbing her hair, Anna winced at the details, but realized her embarrassment was more for form’s sake. In her experience, the price of casual sex was lingering mortification, and the absence of it now was as surprising as her lack of hangover. She could only put this down to Jaime’s good manners. The night had been about sex and, as the loose condom in his pocket attested, he seemed practised in brief encounters. (As he left, she’d teased him that he clearly did this sort of thing a lot. ‘A bit,’ he’d corrected her.) Yet, in contrast to the one-night stands she’d had before, in which the pretence of interest in her life and opinions was abruptly dropped at the first grope, and after which she’d walk home through deserted East London market streets feeling as valuable as the stained cardboard boxes in the gutter, Jaime had affected an interest in her above and beyond the call of duty.
She walked outside into the square, to dry her hair in the sun. A cat was lying outside a shuttered shop, impossibly large as it stretched out, filling the length of the step. There was the gift shop woman standing in her doorway. The birds and pensioners resting at the fountain. It was Saturday, but here that was the same as any other day. Anna stopped at the promenade railings. The sea was blue-grey today, its surface coarsened by the breeze. A liner inched along the horizon. A pair of gulls perched on the railings along from her, having an irritable conversation.
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