Cafuné

It took me close to a decade to visit my dad, and the old man couldn’t wait a two-hour flight to die. He gave it his best shot though, since he actually passed away while I was mid-air. It’s hard to not be resentful. It takes me ten years to figure out what to say to him and now there’s nobody to say it to. An old friend of my dad’s, who I’ve never met, told me that the funeral would be in two weeks. Apparently I’m better at waiting than he was because I’m not on the first plane back. Instead, I’m stuck in Begur. I’m in this pizza place that mostly does salads and serves beer that’s warmer than the air. My regrets in order of priority go:

1. Wearing a light blue shirt in a country that’s thirty eight degrees centigrade

2. Ordering this goddamn beer

3. Not talking to dad for so long

It’s while sitting there, sipping evaporating beer, thinking about what’s wrong with that list, I see her. I was once told that Lilly Pulitzer made the sundress popular in the sixties, which is just about the greatest thing to have ever happened, because this girl is wearing one. She carries herself like she’s sure of everything. The temperature goes up in the room a few notches and I’m shocked that anyone can still concentrate on their food. My beer suddenly seems a lot less interesting.

She walks to the bar and rests her elbows on the edge, facing the rest of us here. I don’t speak Spanish and I’ve never wanted to until now. I’m out of my seat and all but running to the bar within about five seconds. I’m standing next to her, she’s looking at me, I’m clenching my hands and the humidity is suffocating.

“Uh hey… comma esta… bueno?” I say.

She looks at me. I tell myself I’m imagining the bar going silent.

“Um… Do you… comprende inglais? I mean, habla English?”

She’s still looking at me and if sympathy had a face it would not be hers. She starts laughing. It’s a breathless, snorting kind of laugh and my heart erupts.

People are staring now. I am aware of how I’m the only person here who looks even vaguely like a foreigner. Some bystanders are chuckling to themselves; some are scowling at the tourist trash before them. The laugh is still going on. It’s just as wonderful as it was a few seconds ago but she isn’t taking any prisoners and I want to get the hell out of there. I mumble some kind of apology that sounds something like a cross between ‘sorry’ and ‘gracias’ and go back to my seat. I spend the next twenty minutes with three more of those hot beers and then I’m out of there.

I love the pavements here. Cobbled stones smoothed over by centuries of footfalls. The lampposts flare with an orange light like humble imitations of the sun. I think about how, to be this shamelessly pretentious, I have to be either drunk or smitten and I don’t know which I am more. I walk. It takes some time, but I end up thinking about something other than the laughing girl. I end up wondering if my dad walked where I am right now. I can almost see him. I see the long stride he walked with. I see the broad shoulders. I see the ashen hair. I see a face like my own but much older and far less sullen. I sit down on the side of the road. And I cry.

The funeral is in a week. It’s still as hot here. The pavement’s just as smooth. I can see why people come here on holiday but I know I will never be coming back to this place once I go. I have wasted seven days drinking the same sweltering drinks. My dad has been dead all that time. It hurts the same as it did the first day. I go out looking for somewhere to eat while avoiding that first restaurant. I find a café and navigate a linguistic obstacle course to get a sandwich. ‘Sandwich’, I always thought, transcended language barriers but apparently not. I idly wander some more, letting time race onwards instead of dragging its feet. I lap a park twice with my stroll before succumbing to boredom and hunger. I lie on a park bench dedicated to someone well-loved. The Spanish on the plaque is still indecipherable. The flowers left behind are not. I lie there for a long while, until the sun is replaced with the moving shade of a nearby tree.

The sky looks so vibrantly turquoise its almost artificial and I feel irrational anger bubbling up. Something to do with my home being prone to grey blanket skies and half-hearted drizzle. I’m so distracted I don’t even see the green in front of me. She looks down on me with a toothy grin. I scrunch my face up to hide my look of shock and awe but realise that the shade I’m in makes a squint ridiculous.

“Hola,” She says and I forget how to breathe.

“Hola,” I manage back.

She smiles even wider.

“So, you can speak a little bit of actual Spanish,” she says. Her accent peppers her English gloriously.

“Well, you’ve seen all of my extensive vocabulary now.”

“And extensive it is,” she chuckled. “But not enough to pass for a local.”

“That obvious?”

“I’m afraid so. Now move over, you’re in my spot.”

I swing my legs off but she looks dissatisfied. I scooch over to the other side and she jumps onto the bench.

“Your spot?” I ask. They say you get more comfortable with people as you spend more time with them. My heart is still going like the clappers.

“Mmhmm,” she responds, gazing across the park. It’s devoid of children. The inhabitants include a few dog walkers, some weird metal statues that look like ampersands and us two. She and I.

“Hey,” I say after a while. “Who are we sitting on?” I point my thumb at the plaque. She leans back to get a good look.

“It says, ‘To Hector Acosta who loved this park almost as much as he did his family’.”

“Huh. Good park or crappy family?”

She didn’t respond. She just turned back to the park without glancing at me.

“Good park ,I hope,” I said.

“Me too.” She responded in the same way someone would respond to a cashier wishing you a good day. We sat there in more silence. Her, looking pensive, and me, deep in the throes of self-loathing. Then I didn’t hate myself anymore because she said:

“Do you want to walk?”

My response was way too eager but she seemed to find it endearing. So we ended up walking. Walking out of that park, walking out onto the streets, walking out into a town that looked radically more vibrant. We talked all the while. Her name was Maria. She was younger than me; I was eight when she was born. She hated cats and was allergic to dogs. She worked in a bookshop every weekend because she loved the smell of the adhesive they use for book bindings. She couldn’t stand old movies where you have to wait for something to happen; she didn’t have the patience for it. She was clumsy. She tripped on the stones she’d grown up knowing. She asked about me. About my life. Where I lived, where I went to school, what my friends were like.

I tell her about the Midlands. About how I tried smoking once but looked like I was giving the cigarette CPR so I quit. She says she looks sexy smoking and I believe her. I tell her about how I hated all the crowds of tourists who came seeking Shakespeare, and then apologise, because complaining to her about tourism was like complaining about rain to a drowning man. I tell her about my best friend, and how we met by dancing to Tom Petty together. She hums ‘American Girl’ and I join in. We do the entire song as we walk. I ask her who her favourite Beatle is and she says Yoko Ono completely deadpan. This talking of music gets me thinking and now I can’t stop playing Peter Gabriel songs in my head. We talk about what we’d do if we could time travel. She tells me the bands she’d hear play, I ask her what’s wrong with killing Hitler. She says she wouldn’t ever want to kill someone. I love her because if she went back in time, she wouldn’t stop world war two but hell, maybe she’d get a chance to see Dylan play.

I wonder where we are going and freak for a minute because I wonder if it’s that dreaded place we first met. Then I think that’s way to clichéd, to go back to there for our first date. And then we’re at the restaurant. She orders a beer and so do I even though I remember how bad it was. She doesn’t mention me crashing and burning over by the bar last time and I don’t mention how great her hair looks. We keep talking. First crushes, first loves, first heartbreaks. Favourite foods, animals, places. She starts talking about sports. She asks me about my favourite football team. I have no idea what she’s talking about so I name a city hoping she hasn’t heard of it and therefore can’t quiz me. But she has an in depth knowledge of English sports teams and asks me all about it and I crash and burn for the second time. She’s merciful this time around and only laughs at me for a few seconds. Somewhere in our conversations the night comes and goes. The restaurant closes and we’re pushed out of the door by a very small and angry man who has listened to us for hours now and has had enough.

She walks me to the hotel. We pass people on their way to work and each one who goes by reminds us of our time together and when they do, we smile or laugh or just look at each other. She stands with me by my room door. She says:

“See you around.”

And I say:

“Adios.”

She tilts her head, looks into my eyes, and leans in slightly. She spins on the balls of her feet and walks away down the hall and out the door.

I let myself in and fall onto the bed. I go to sleep thinking about her leaning in and ten seconds later I get a call. No one has my number here but my dad’s old friend. The shrill tone the phone makes takes me away me from the time I just had and back to why I’m actually here. The man, who tells me to call him Uncle, want’s me to come down to the church to talk to some of my dad’s friends and make some decisions. I hang up without telling him if I’m doing any of the things he just said I should do. I stay on the bed but I don’t sleep because I’m crying so much. I think about what he would be saying to me now. I have no idea what he’d actually say because the man I knew ten years ago and the man I didn’t know all the time in between aren’t the same anymore. They have no similarities other than the same face and the fact they both aren’t here anymore. I think he’d talk about Maria and say something offensive and I would say that’s someone’s daughter and he’d swat the comment away with a wave of his gigantic hand.

I put some fresh clothes on after a shower that sprays me feebly and go. I left early but I get lost so many times that when I actually get there I’m late. Barely anyone is there so my tardiness is inescapable when I enter. Uncle, which I will never call him to his face, greets me and introduces me to Hector who will be doing the service. Hector is forty five, just fifteen years older than me, but years in the sun have tanned him like leather and he probably looks worse than the people he’s burying. Hector say things like ‘I’m sorry about your father’ and ‘he was a fine man’, which means he actually never met my father. I thank him all the same and I ask what I need to do about the service.

“Well,” Hector says, his voice smoother than his skin is. “It would be nice if you could say a something about your father. But the rest has been taken care of.”

I realise that I never wondered who was organising his burial and then realise why I didn’t think about it. I already know who. Of course I already know.

“Where is she?” I say like it’s the easiest thing in the whole world to ask.

He must sense the weight of that question because he doesn’t say anything. His eyes scrunch up, which isn’t much of a change in they way his face looks. He jerks his chin, motioning over my shoulder. I turn and I see her and when I say I see red I don’t mean her painted nails. I walk over to her. My legs are shaking and my chest feels empty and heavy at the same time. She looks me up and down and her eyes show no sympathy.

“Hola,” she finally says to me.

“Yeah, hi,” I say back.

“Lawrence’s boy, si?”

I nod.

“You already know who I am?” she asks.

I scoff. “You know I know who you are. I’ve known who you are since I was six. I’ve spent twenty four years knowing who the hell you are so don’t ask me that,”

If she’s heard me her face doesn’t show it.

“We we’re close. Your father and I. We were a family,”

I wince and close my eyes.

“I did not steal him, I am no thief.” She continues. “We were in love,”

I open my eyes again. “I don’t think either one of you have a clue what love is.”

She raises an eyebrow.

“No? And you do, boy?” she doesn’t need to spit the last word for me to get it. It’s true I don’t know anything about their life together but I don’t care.

Her lip curves down in a scowl.

“After the funeral,” she says slowly. “I do not wish to see you again.”

“After the funeral,” I say slower. “I never wish to come back here.”

I turn around like Maria did last night, or this morning I suppose, and walk to the door. Hector stops me and asks me if he should call me up to speak at the funeral. I tell him I don’t have anything to say and keep walking. I find my way back to the pizza place. But she’s not there. The park doesn’t do me any favours either. I think about ad some more. I don’t cry. I just get angry.

It’s late when I get back to the hotel. I see her resting her back against my door, legs spread out, blocking the hall. She opens one eye when I’m a few feet from her and looks up at me. She holds out her hands and I reach out to hold them. I’m skinnier than her and still she feels weightless as I pull her up and when I stop pulling she keeps moving and kisses me softly. Then she kisses me hard.

We wake up late. The sky is dark but there’s a faint glow of dawn somewhere out there. This is the second night we have burnt away. She spends a lot of time holding me without me asking her too, because I think she knew I needed it. Then the fiction breaks a little because she asks me when I’m leaving. She asks me why I’m here. And she should have asked a long time ago. I feel indignant that our bubble has burst so soon. I feel lucky it lasted this long. I say, “My dad just died.”

“My dad passed away last week,” she tells me.

This admission silences us both.

I think about the last couple of nights. I think about how the air here tastes so much sweeter than back home.

I close my eyes and I can still feel her there. Beside me on the bed. I think of her and I feel warmth in every way a person can. When I open them again she’s looking right at me. She reaches out tentatively. Her hand runs through my hair and I think about our time together. It means something. So I know she knows what I mean when I say:

“I don’t care.”