It annoyed me that David didn’t innately understand my argument of wanting alone time after such a long period of not seeing each other. He finally grunted an OK, muttering that he’d tell him to find another place to stay. He was obviously worried about Sergi’s reaction. And I celebrated winning this small battle for now.
On that cold and rainy April night at JFK airport, I crossed myself. I made the four-pointed arm gestures of the crucifix slowly as I waited in line to check in. In the name of the Father. . the Son. . the Holy Spirit. . Amen. Like I had seen old wrinkled-up women do in the face of the unknown.
It was 10 a.m. Barcelona time, 4 a.m. mine, when my plane arrived. David was waiting for me at the airport. A lover of public transportation, he insisted we take the metro back to his apartment in the centre of the city.
He was all skin and bones, wearing red unisex espadrilles as he rolled my fifty-pound suitcase over the furrows and protrusions of Barcelona’s cobblestone streets. He was wearing a cream linen shirt, open to the third button from the top, exposing that pile of chest hair I so adored burrowing my face into. His skinny legs were sheathed in some army green-coloured cargo pants with one leg rolled up.
Despite the tremendous weight he dragged behind him, he zigzagged like a Twyla Tharp dancer from one side of the pavement to the other, escaping la Rambla de Catalunya’s undulating pedestrian traffic. Used to the daily inconveniences of living in one of the world’s most enchanted cities, he parted the crowd of morning tourists with a gentle brush of his extended right hand. They obeyed like a herd of cows, letting us pass at his command.
“Almost there,” he reassured me, looking back to see if I was still with him. Then he made a sudden right on to a street with an impressive Gothic church rounding its corner. Never taking my eyes off his regal back, I followed him from behind. It was impossible to walk at his side on Barcelona’s truncated sidewalks with my huge suitcase in the way. I appreciated the moment alone, so I could prepare myself for reuniting with him at his apartment. “OK,” I sang back. I stared like an awed little girl at the ancient stone buildings that led to David’s building, their flowers cascading over verandas and dark-shuttered doors with the promise of spreading open to mysterious lives above.
There was a morning chill in the air. My nipples rose to their points under my white shirtdress. I looked up and noticed an old man was looking down into my open neckline. I smiled, and he gave me a salacious grimace in return.
Carrer de Carme, 24. That’s where my David lived. It was a busy side street off la Rambla in the Arab-dominated ghetto of el Raval. The neighbourhood was a mix of strange Old- World seedy and pop bohemian artsy. It was undergoing its predictable gentrification. David had taken the inheritance his father left him and bought him self the coveted top floor of an architecturally impressive, but structurally dilapidated building. “This is it.” He grinned, breathing hard through his teeth.
The building was called La India, and it had gargoyles and faces of ominous indigenous women skimming its rooftop. We walked into the cool of the building’s open marbled lobby, past two sets of pillared columns and into a small metallic elevator-made-for-two hidden behind an antique glass door.
We were finally alone, nose to nose in the tiny elevator that smelled of days of accumulated sweat. I just stood there staring at him, expressionless from nerves. David shoved his hands up my dress. He slipped his hand into my underwear and cupped my wet sex. He grazed my clitoris with his fingers. I thought he was going to take me right there. His hardness was pressing up against me. We kissed furiously as the mechanical gears roared and until the elevator car jumped, signifying that we had landed. David removed his fingers from my insides and licked them clean. “We ’re here.”
We tumbled out of the elevator into a dark, windowless hallway with a floor of large black-and-white squares of ceramic. There were only two doors on each floor, and David’s apartment was behind the big wooden one on our left with an old metallic lion’s head knocker in its centre. Once he turned the thick golden key he took out of his pocket, I heard a click, and he pushed it open.
In an instant, all of Barcelona’s splendid light poured on to us through the uncurtained windows with such grandeur it was like we had been doused with a bucket of golden honey. He rolled my suit case to the side and welcomed me. “You ’re home.”
In that light, I swear he freaking shimmered. His black waves of hair painted with rays of white light. He’d be beautiful, even old.
Light was important for David and his writing life, to psychically be away from the city’s dark and noisy streets below. I squinted, feeling a headache coming on. I desired my sunglasses.
“Wow ” was all I could say. Some sort of low-grade aphasia had hit me with the jetlag setting in. And there was so much to absorb about David’s world without me.
He took my hand and walked me through the long hallway of his railroad apartment. The floors were a swirling mosaic of salmons, browns and greens. Their florid hues had faded and veiny cracks of time now intermixed with their patterns instead. We passed sparsely furnished parlour rooms with white-curtained French doors. There were one-person guest beds and wooden bookshelves along with antique desks with mismatched chairs scattered throughout.
In one of those rooms, a medium-sized suitcase and a pair of men’s fancy dress shoes sat beside the bed. The shoes were a shiny dark-brown leather, Italian, too elegant to be David’s. Feeling my stomach drop, I intuited they had to have been Sergi’s. I chose to re main silent. I didn’t want to ruin our first moments. I decided to pretend I didn’t notice them.
He showed me to our bedroom and told me to settle in. It was a large white room, with a balcony facing an interior courtyard where neighbouring families hung out their underwear to dry. I stepped on to it and looked down. I noticed there was a black-haired Barbie doll, her stiff arms raised over her head, lying naked on the cement. A small child tiring of her must have tossed her out the window, wondering if she could fly.
I looked around his bedroom. His style was minimalist, mostly from lack of need. A queen-size bed, covered in white sheets and a down comforter contrasted a dark wood chest of drawers, and two matching night tables. He had a bottle of water propped up on his nightstand and book casually left open. Nothing was out of place, everything had a purpose. He must have thought my place was a tornado disaster area.
“You should eat something,” he said, in a tone that seemed sud denly formal.
His words startled me. I realized I was standing there dissecting it all in silence.
“I’d rather eat you,” I said playfully, turning to face him. I stepped over to him, grabbed his crotch, and kissed his neck, taking in his Mediterranean blend of olive soap and tobacco smell.
“Don’t,” he said, unhooking my hands and placing them at my sides. His eyes darted back and forth in thought. All the sexual energy from before had been drained from the room.
“Don’t what?” I said.
“Later, Anna.” He said it in the way a woman might if she had a headache.
“Fine,” I said, audibly pissed.
“We have all the time in the world to make love.”
He always said that. “Hacer el amor” instead of follar, fuck, which I liked to say now. Like in the Almodovar movies. He liked to correct me on this, disapproving of my crude Spanish. “We don’t fuck Anna, we make love,” he’d say with a smile.
I always rolled my eyes at this. The thought of making love all the time killed the mood.
“Let’s put some food into you, OK? I pre-prepared our lunch.”
Though he was going through the good host’s manual step by step, he was still acting a little weird. I started to suspect he had second thoughts about me coming.