Chapter 18:  Torrent.  Desperta.


Together, in separate beds right beside one another.  Heard X snore and saw the promise of light through our patio doors.  Heard the quiet knock knock.  “Yes, Eduardo Ruiz Colon, it is I who is answering you.  I am not a pussy.”  X heard to say and ask ‘who was not the pussy?’  “It is I, X, I am not the pussy.”  Me, and my morning glory standing tall from the other side of that room.  Wonderful.  2 …two-and-a-half hours sleep.

She was hung, and the language that I used before 8-in-the-AM, Spanish Time.

To washroom, to water upon face and the running of hands through previous night’s hair.  To our smoky outfits and little of talk inside of tiny elevator.  To the sun and warm beneath my Nikes as we made our way to the casalet.  The already sounds of petardos.  Pop.  To desperta, to this awakening I relate.

The young band of night before be there, tweaking and shuffling out front; big and hairy Chusko and his ever-friend Andamio walked towards me with a bottle of Veterano passing between them.  I inched forward but rather did not want hooch at that wee-in-the-AM; I wished to quietly revel in that awakening said different in Spanish.  But I did chug small amount of vile liquid for this is what boys do for libation and rite of passage into nothing more than bravado.  But still.  It was early and barely not the night of past and stuff felt alright - I was almost immune to alcohol and its many effect.  I was not the pussy, simply Onray amongst the regular crowd of firecrackers, amongst the few pyros - experienced guys, men with licences, possibly not, lugging satchels with cross-shoulder straps.  They and others carrying short lengths of nylon rope, embers burning at one end.  Some of the crowd employed their cigarette lighters, but most passed around the lightly smouldering bits of ropes.  Then ignited.  Children fired Cobras at will.  Pop.  Pop.  And by then I did not flinch - accustomed.  And from said satchels came the large masclets, the fabulously explosive masclets.  I was warned and I knew and thus enjoyed their flash the size of a fist, a blast that can set off a car alarm.  Wonderful.

The band struck up and led the short way towards the casa de fallera major, the traditional first stop for the desperta.  A twenty-foot traca was rolled out and lit as the band played her out of the house, all prim and proper at very-early-in-the-AM.  The smoke cleared and coffee and various of pastry were laid out in the garage of the host; we slurped and noshed and Duardo this into my ear - that tracas also serve to serenade a bride on her wedding day.  Fantastic, I said to his bit of matrimonial trivia.  Gracias, I gave with the added Valenciano lisp to lit end of a piece of nylon rope, once the more following that bunch of high school students and their instruments wending a way throughout a neighbourhood I had yet to explore.  Mothers walked and children strolled beside, picking the petardos out of her outstretched hand, maternal head turned other way and worried with other more important matters; young child grabbing, lighting, then dropping firecracker and moving on to next grab and light.  Pop. 

“So cute.”  We slow walked behind, their Pop Pops going right up my pant legs.  I agreed with X: very cute.  A straight smile from her, a shrug returned by me.  “They’re just kids, Hen.”  This I knew.  Pop.  Pop.  The older men - the pyros - periodic with the masclets.  Kaboom, or something similar in that Spanish of a language.  I kept my mouth open, or forgot to, and I cannot fully remember outside of the accusation of X being a bitch in the early of that particular morning.

A not so good said by me.  But, “Onray, cum here, man.”  Duardo and an older man and his cigar, a tan satchel with the flap open.  Stuff said in Spanish, and the placing of a masclet in my bare hand.  The French would have said mon dieu.  I grinned and attempted muchos gracias with a lisp only very recently learned from the friend standing beside me at that point in time.  I was told by Duardo to be very careful with the What I held in my grasp as I stood in front of the bakery currently being serenaded.  I nodded the international, stared up from the smouldering end of a nylon rope.  Pop, I asked.  “Go ahead, my friend,” said that Duardo person.

And the bitch was observing me put fire to end of masclet fuse and toss away from crowd; watching then waiting for big listen.  Simultaneous flash.  Scream.  Jump to those unaware.  Great.  And that bitch was walking with Frances that morn early enough for name-calling, a bark by one to another thanks to pure lack of sleep.

I bit into a donated croissant, lit petardos and threw them at the larger of the children, laughed. 

The bags that Duardo carried beneath his eyes.  I winked.

Waiting for traffic to pass, and the two masclets in my hand.  Explosions I considered.

The bottle of Veterano in Chusko’s hand, in Andamio’s.  To my lips.  I winced and returned harsh liquor, felt almost local …except for the language and the streets I didn’t know.  Admired and tried to remember to imprint shade of adobe brick, terra cotta shingle.  Silly.  And my X kibitzing with the girls - Sophia of the husband Jacinto, and Frances of the Eduardo persuasion; the firewater swimming with the secret in my belly.

“Onray, throw it.”  And I smirked at Duardo, ignited the short wick and tossed that masclet with all of my mighty might, watched it land and skid short distance away.  Big Boom.  Fun with car alarms.  That certain neighbourhood did not sleep but rather waved from its balcony and doorstep.

And the horns the tuba the reeds of the band played, serenaded the next local bakery along the way of noise and mothers allowing firecrackers to their young children.  Friends and cousins and lovers.  Hands that lit and threw or passed and drank so very early for people of the long night.  Boyfriends and girlfriends living apart but caressing a special crevice where their name soon to be added; that slow loud through the streets of Torrent that was marriage and the hopefuls: country music in my head, the blues of my thoughts - a North American soundtrack to a Spanish tableau.  A cheesy that is spelled different the world ‘round, cultivated with and without preservatives but eaten and savoured by all of the senses. 

In my eye - the back and forth of her hips just below the tattoo of Chinese calligraphy that most girlfriend probably has on own female sacroiliac.

The smell of petardos and the olfactory daze that was the antiperspirant that X and I shared quite by accident: the same brand of baby powder Secret that was within each other’s medicine cabinet the day we met.  Working its specific pH balancing act that particular desperta.

My Nikes walking; the modern Beatle boots upon her feet within the sandal weather of a Spain in March - moving in the same direction up the Spanish streets that were plane tickets purchased in early January; we had saved and decided, and little changed in the interim.  Her birthday was, as always, in mid-February - and nothing much as I presented her with orchids of white and jade that had opened up in a few days on the second shelf behind the bar of the nameless restaurant that she works at.

My mind that Monday morning with the sleep in eyes and cumulative power of gunpowder and fire waiting in my hands.  “What you think about, man?”  I told Duardo that with that question he could have very well been my ex-girlfriend, except for the exchanging of certain body parts that I proceeded to list and make further joke of; I said her name was Susan, that she used to ask me that very question a lot when I had a pause about my face.  Did I have a pause about my face, I asked him.  “Always,” and then he laughed at me in two languages.  “That why you left her …because she asking you all the time what you thinking about?  Oh, Onray, you leave me now, too?  You must not, you cannot.  ¡No!”  It was a little more complicated than that, I said, promising him that I would never ever leave him or his side. 

The bottle of Veterano passing between our livers, Chusko and Andamio.  Brooklyn Jacinto walking up and grabbing me by the nape as he attempted his rudimentary English: “On-er-ay.  ¡You wake this day!”  He smiled, I grinned. 

“Si, desperta, amigo,” I added to our same checker of bandanna around neck, the various tuft of family hair poking out of top of T-shirt beneath blouson.

And the girls, the similarly styled females, in the front of we men moving over that cobblestone or pavement: Jacinto’s Sophia, she the aplomb of Spanish book balanced on shiny black hair; a ring on her third finger of left hand tossing petardos at X and Frances.

I nudged Jacinto in the ribs, pointed to my eyes: used the index and middle finger, and it was a something I had noticed others do.  I leaned my chin in the direction of the girls, Sophia’s fabulous ass.  I asked him about that wife of his, spoke of love and finalizing it in print in apartment in piece of precious metal purchased and placed upon certain finger; I said all of this in my head, said out loud the words that I knew in Spanish: Yo quiero and then inserted X’s name.  I used nouns and the odd verb in the wrong tense - the past the present the future and not keeping everything straight, and yet trying it in a different language, different land.  Fun.  But Duardo a few steps ahead, and I do believe that I partially confessed something to Brooklyn Jacinto then and there.  He understood very near nada, and I probably wanted it that way - despite my frantic gesticulations and facial slurs.  I’d left out breakup and the many words that encompass it; I had said that I still wanted her in Spanish, unloaded to the nice person sitting next to me on long flight of plane, the borrowed barber, a hairdresser touching hair and hearing sordid details for the very first - a Playboy, a Cosmo in their unfamiliar waiting area. 

And my father an unwavering openness when dealing with strangers, the odds extreme of ever seeing them again.  Perhaps he and Jesus have rapped about this one a time or two in the days since grass growing over the dirt heaved from shovel handed to me by man in collar.

And my friends from the near-burbs, the ones that I see once a year, maybe two three times: after a few pints I am told by them the words cocaine, boredom, and the various of way to spell infidelity whilst forced to sleep in one’s SUV for the third time in one week.

All this to the bartender that I am.  The listener sought or bumped into. 

The hesitation on Jacinto’s face coupled with the shrug of my shoulders before his brother Duardo returned, passed us the bottle of morning rotgut; a quick exchange in that language of Spanish that they shared from birth.  I placed one sneaker after another and moved between the sexes, one last masclet in my palm; Duardo asked me something and I lit the big bugger up and whipped it at a C-class Mercedes parked off to the side.  A not so quiet cover-up by a bartender with nothing more to say at the time …felt he’d said enough and gotten away with it and so thus onward up the street.  Fire good, the noise it make better; I was inured and thankful, beginning the tip of toe and move up to flitting, a personality happy to be a little lighter in the Nikes.

Desperta, its end, found us sitting with local folk at Ciudad, freshening up with café con leche or café cortado’s lesser cut of milk.  I sampled espresso.  That bite of a near Kahlúa wonderful for a non-coffee drinker near midday.  And I more of the espresso for I was crashing, for I was no longer light in the Nikes.  Because the paella competition was in the afternoon and it was far too wise to take a nap: Fallas …then one dies, which seemed some sort of a certainty.

A nearby store sold us the liquor to restock the bajo; we paid with euros, fairly cheap, and walked back to that local bar You witness me envisage ever once the while.

But I had called her a bitch, early in the morning.  That desperta that I return to now with flowers and spontaneity; Duardo scrunched into a chair, picking at his tortilla of ham and maybe mushroom.  I was doing maintenance on a buzz, but I had, after all, called her a bitch.  I grabbed the daily offerings that had been placed in vase on individual table and positioned their opened petals directly in front of X.  She straight-smiled me.  And that be the rest of my morn, the continuation of story that was me sitting by myself on a bench by the frozen Rideau Canal of our Ottawa, late February after X having leaned over in a dream, ended us then and there - less than one month before the two of us travelling to Spain together, cranky yet determined.

I could not eat, that Spanish morning: the caffeine in its purest form, the brandy with the bull on the label, the cigarettes that were bajo in nicotine but nonetheless hard on stomach.  I would dine on paella, that national of dish to be cooked in large pan over open fire.

Back to casalet, to receiving of ingredients: carved bits of raw rabbit and chicken - foot and claw amongst - plus rice, tomato paste, legumes, paprika in place of original saffron the price of gold from conquered Caribbean colonies.  To the back alley with our glass perrons filled full with draft beer from Ciudad.  To a walk towards the big and small fallas and their many ninots; to a just down the way from that twenty-foot papier-mâché man dressed all traditional with bandanna and sandals - scantily clad sarcasm at his feet, wise owl eyes painted upon old men caricatures.

To the picking of spot on pavement street: to the pouring of sand, to its levelling by hand, to the much argued building and lighting of fire within indentation.  To the placement of triangular grill over top.  To the finally bringing of that giant pan with two handles and the slow thawing of tensions between the couple that never held hands: the power of the afternoon sun in a foreign country, the power of alcohol when used properly.  To a conversation between a bartender and a former bartender not at their entire best.

“Have you noticed the way that everyone makes the sign for drinking from across the room?  Closed fist, thumb towards mouth, pinkie pointing up to the sky: it’s the same shape as the perron when you tilt it to take a drink; same difference as when we imitate a rock glass to our lips.  Cool, n’est pas?”  A pause and my hope, despite her total lack of expression.

She was shielding her eyes from that afternoon sun I made use of; she was sipping squirts from the object of my trivial indication.  “Thaaaat’s great, Hen.  You’ve travelled half the world to figure out a drinking game.”

“How is this a game?  I’m talking about the wonderful cultural significance.”  I asked for said perron from her, received and demonstrated for the imaginary kids at home: my pinkie embraced the sun, the Spanish sol that beat on down.  “See?”

“Yeah, I do and I did, Hen.”

“But …I called you a bitch, though.”  I swigged and leaned in real close, a breath to breath that be cancelled out once both imbibed of similar concoction.  “X, it was early.  You were tired, I was tired - kids whipping petardos at me, us.”  At that instance, I thought that I should not have been apologizing, for she’d deserved the name-calling, for I was right.

95.  96 Q-tips give me the gift of repudiating certain thoughts of that time.  A small apartment within the Centretown I love and know seals the deal that I should have closed in front of a healthy dose of olive oil being added to the warmed pan before the meat of a dead animal was tossed and browned above the carefully built fire: a healthy mixing of factions up and down the street, suggestions given and mocking provided to a bragging right a yearlong.  Legume and tomato paste of economical substitute, added; paprika’s imitation of that saffron spice, sprinkled.  To the further smoke in my eyes be water added to the near lip of pan.  Duardo stepped forward and added the thick starch of arroz in a cross to the top of mix that was, truthfully, Frances’ now simmering baby from the beginning.  We would wait, and drink from our perrons to sweat out the afternoon sun that was the previous night leaving our pores.

A Fortuna, and this from my mouth: “What’s the secret, my Francesca?”  Some prefer rabbit, others stand by the chicken as a main ingredient.

“Not overbrowning the meat,” she whispered and stole drag from cigarette that wasn’t even mine.  “I sneak some beer in with the water…so shhh, Henry.”  How very Canadian of her; and the way she perfectly pronounced my name.

45 minutes of simmering is the general consensus.  Attention and stir; the odd swig of and puff on the arrangement of various other Earthly ingredients cultivated and brewed, rolled for lightness of head and the warm fuzzy that quite often leads one to open questions in foreign lands; familiar friends who may or may not be made to feel uncomfortable. This was my lot as Francesca opened her mouth and asked me if everything was Ok. 

“How do you say secret in Spanish?” I wondered.  Secreto, she said from behind a hand covering eyes looking up towards sun from a crouch over a pan.  Easy enough, I thought; the word ends in ‘o’ and is thus masculine for some Latin reason.  “Thanks, Frances,” and she smiled and the afternoon moved on.  Men staged duels with chicken claws, girls took pictures.  Periodically, someone would trot back to Ciudad to refill a perron straight from the beer tap.  Wonderfully accommodating that tiny bar was to a Canadian saying only uno mas, por favor and handing over an empty vessel, a crumbled bit of euros he was told would be quite enough - tip included and not to worry so much, Onray.  Gracias, and a lisp of the tongue coupled with the lips.

To the slow lifting of a giant pan off of a daytime fire.  To the division and double-blind taste test that was an afternoon feast in the cobblestone alley behind the casalet, near Ciudad, next door to that particular bajo I have recalled You to in the occasional - a walk that I chewed and experienced.  But the paella served to the collective bellies.  The joint placed into my fingertips, toked, and passed to the left.  The dish that I devoured and went in search of more of.  A pattern that I ingested and tasted thrice.  Fantastic.  A satiation that tended towards an opening of the mouth for the purpose of yawning during a broken speak I spoke to Chusko, a wink I exchanged with tall Andamio, the English that Duardo and I passed between the two of us that shiny Monday in March during Las Fallas - a Spanish festival with my leaving out of the bulls, and instead witness to the ritual use of remnants where fire had met pan, the underside:

Big Chusko screamed a very loud Spanish into my ear and shielded my eyes from the sun with a placement of its black chalk smudged just lower my lashes; down this line he painted the many of us.

Tall Andamio resembled my cheeks into a very long day dragged from a coal mine; down the line he swiped the all.  Some fighting it, me unaware of a tradition involving this application of soot to the face of others.  The girls snapped pictures and I scooped the charred remains of metal and fire used to turn raw ingredients into edible fare; I smeared with my fingers, we play fought in Ciudad, and I have the somewhere pictures to prove the fact that there was a truly real smile aimed at me by X: ‘twas my finger pressing down on button of disposable camera aimed her way.  We were thus all in black face.  Afternoon.  Torrent.

My friend my guardian angel - my Duardo and the scattering of men produced by his wide-eye bellow of ¡Masclet! being the equivalent of yelling Grenade! in a small bar.  Out the back door, into alley, the subsequent Kaboom that was the laugh that was the clearing of tiny house that was a bar that was a neigbourhood restaurant.  The many of us standing around with the underside from a various pan giving colour and darkness to our face - rón con limons in our fists.  A heart beating beneath the blouson presented to me by Eduardo y Francesca. 

Fun with rather large firecrackers in confined spaces; Duardo the run of a scared, little girl.

The long of a short walk over to the bajo next door.  A few cubes of hielo, a splash of that lemon-flavoured Schweppes.  My aside to Frances the former bartender; the advice from X the current manager in the industry. 

My grand gift to cultural exchange - a true Blow Job: 1 part Bailey’s, 1 part peppermint schnapps; whipped cream applied to top.

I believe we borrowed some Caroline’s Irish Cream, some decidedly non-peppermint Marie Brizzard from Ciudad; we fashioned and we made Chusko sit on a table in the garage of that bajo I conjure memory on occasion.  All proper, and the giver to place the shot glass between his or her crotch and wait all supple as recipient leans forward and grabs said shot with mouth and, leaning back, gulps naughty mixture with tilt of one’s neck.  Simple.  Fantastic.  My gift to Spain: the proper Blow Job.  And I have the pictures to recall the lean down of us all … somewhere, in an envelope presented to the posthumous me.

You were wonderful, Frances said of the routine.

I know, I added.

And the manner of embellishment toeing the truth.

You two should tour with this act, she said without knowing.

I believe so, I agreed.

And I have this tendency to make really cool things up without ever telling a lie with respect to the confines within the garage of that bajo that was a gathering of Spanish friends descendent from the same falla of parents.  With the Fortunas running wild, low in nicotine.

“Earth to Henry.”  She snapped her fingers from that above and I smiled the bestest I knew know how.  “Are you coming, Hen?”  And I almost did not pull myself up from that stretch of hand-laid stone.  The fading sky felt so good.

I do remember wanting a song and a reason to waltz slow and close with her. 

To the washroom of Ciudad, to sink and mirror and soot upon cheek that only ran and coated face the more scrub of touch and water.

But rose-coloured steps towards the casalet.

And the black marker applied to paper towels covering joined tables; Chusko had scribbled my name upon spot of his choosing.  And I sat.  Somewhere near X, close to Duardo speaking the occasional English to me.  A perhaps translation to the drink in my hand, to the Spanish olives I fed my mouth from communal dish waiting for the fallera major to place her wonderful derrière into her designated seat at head of table.  To the foil peeled back from our meals.  To yet another bocadillo meeting my lips.

To secreto.  A word in Spanish very close to the Canadian girl sitting across the table from me.  This is the part where other people are allowed to speak, where I say what they said during that exact instance in Spanish country, particular place of Torrent amid the festival known as Las Fallas.  I quietly burped.  And the young teens amongst were restless, banged fists on tables and wanted to dance.

There was a microphone turned on and a person at the head of table did speak in Spanish.  There had been a series of votes with respect to a number of events held within the falla, the club.  Frances was half-asleep at our table when the wonders of electronics ushered forth the only word I could grab a hold of, paella, followed by something about Francesca Cruz Marcos.  She shrieked and then stood; she had won.  The smile, the tiny take-home trophy that be the envy of all in this falla.  The renewed gusto for drinking in those waning hours of an early in the evening.  God’s blessing to her doe eyes - the acceptance and our wish towards back alley to celebrate the occasion of a mixture within large pan placed over traditional fire.  A fairly simple dish easy to mess up on the way towards making our bellies full. 

Quite casual our way out the back door; I followed and accepted a toke Jacinto placed in my hand, put to my lips that very day in March.  Wonderful.  Fantastical to the point of my leaning against the wall of that garage, my mind within relaxation techniques.  A tiring day, and the reasoning for what I done did when I gave up and mostly waited and listened in English to a few of those friends within the European continent at that point.

Chusko smiled when asked of a française, that Spanish slang for fellatio being the only word I understood - and Andamio grinning with answer, knowing little of my research into the correlation between Led Zeppelin and humps in the back seat of a car.

“Frances, what is your Stairway to Heaven story?”  A push and a lean out from that wall to lend me slight credibility.  She was most Canadian, part way Spanish.  She had driven the picturesque parkways of government Ottawa as a teenager; been young and probably searched for a safe place to grope in style away from the prying parental eye, experienced the various moves between those yellow painted stalls done to riverside parking.

A vague “Yes” she gave to me for that reminded sound of the more cooler of radio stations and maybe inserted cassettes owned or borrowed from friend, perhaps the low quality CD of the early 90’s we’d wish to forget: the collective Stairway stories that be a snicker and a quiet recognition to a certain bracket of time in one’s life, last song waltzes enjoyed at high school dances.  Memories buried, resurrected by me in a suburb of Valencia - to the sounds of a Swedish Abba beginning their magical float towards the group that included me speaking English because I could and for some reason had to.

Francesca toked and then mentioned something about the need to move on and remember at the same time; I agreed, and she turned and translated for the Spanish folks.  The names I may have mentioned; a nod and a return to drinking: Led Zeppelin lost in the mix, the Dancing Queen song wafting down the back alley of a Spanish memory, somewhat digging into the brain.  We continued to smoke and turn into a beautiful 12” by 12” album cover, pose for a picture in the head.

And the Stairway stories not so forthcoming.

But I forced the issue.  But I wanted to interact, and so my fingers lightly interlaced with a Spanish-Canadian girl not overly fond of the voice in Your current ear.

I was an invited, but may as well have been American.  I was ordering a cheeseburger in Spain and expecting a sympathetic response.

I was tired.  I was high.  I was dealing with something people occasionally call Stuff.

And I begin to overly rely on the First person when towards You, stop Now and apologize but ‘tis still disconcerting to a Me counting Q-tips in a too-small apartment in the Centretown I love and pay too much to live in.  Wonderful.  And the grip of my left hand into France’s tiny right.  “Todos estan locos” - everyone is crazy, thrown out to prove that I could actually slur with the best of them European sort at my feet.  Cheers and stares and I should say that while I reference within the past, I still think to You from the sweet confines of Centretown.  Safe.  “What’s your favourite song, señors y señoras?”

That hot sun and its deleterious effects.  That stuff I much have mentioned at various points in these proceedings.  A need for a second person: You.  And that end part where we all wind on down that road.  To be a rock … and not to roll.  To never again utter cliché within the sway of alcohol and nostalgia.  To once again be the exchange of bodily fluids and speak in short sentences without guilt, refrain from over-referencing long dead songs.

I actually received no solid answer to my mixing of Spanish and English into a verbal blender.  I was striving for a North American answer, behaving the very manner of a common tourist.

My X and her index finger into the side of my ribs: “Are you relaxed enough?  Gotten enough out of everyone?  Huh?”

“I was talking to people.  I was just saying … exercising my vocals, um, spewing the leftovers, baby.”  It be somewhere later into that evening; a side of petardos to fill a stomach of paella and bocadillo.  Wonderful.  And I’ll let her speak for herself.

As she moved to talk to Sophia of the fine Spanish ass.  But I leave out the straight smile that preceded her rising from a sex kitten crouch to mingle amongst those others in the bajo, pause the exchanged words and make way with what I saw: Sophia’s eyes tended to have sympathy for me; Brooklyn Jacinto afforded me a shrug and a slight lifting of the chin which I found quite willing to tuck into the change pocket of my blue jeans. 

In the bits of language of the French people, I figured out that the two girls were having a go at the question of music in the universe, the one special song that they spoke of en français that would greet their return to the dirty grind back at the old casalet of synchronized step and heat breaks out to the front courtyard.

Thus the Fortuna I placed in my mouth … propelling me down the few steps of back alley, to the rear door of casalet and eventual edge of dance floor.

And the various attempts to lure me on, and the occasional acceptance of.  To Duardo repeating his cry of ¡Emergency Emergency! in light of my style, and a laugh and real smile thrown his way.  To the door and the front courtyard for a breath of fresh.

To the acting classes of High School paying off in a foreign land of friendly peoples in the Time of my Great Sorrow; to the Jesus Years I was made aware of by an unknowing friend.  To this excuse and a maybe reason to stick it on a chapter of life broken down into crumbled foreign money at the end of a long night of festival.

To play along and actually enjoy; in that absence, I had feigned a headache and rolled over into the late night, early morning.  In that past that I think to You in its bits of pieces of memory mine, I made an actual effort to work the room for two or three seconds.  Then, a cigarette.  I was upon a clear reward system of the mind: a solid salsa got me ron con limón, participation in a line dance got me two.

And the ways we may indeed pass the time.  But I was fine; I had my girl in clear view.  Denim.  Auburn.  She be of the dancing floor, of the seamless crowd coming and going out of recognition; Frances with the smile and Duardo behind the two Coke bottle lenses; the chest of Jacinto and, of course, his wife and her ass - poised, immaculate.  A man I barely knew pulling the whole train - this boy who had fed me sneaky swigs of scotch, squirts of brandy straight from a bottle with a bull on its fingered label: cheeky Chusko, and his Andamio driving the caboose into the wall beside me.  Smack.  Yes, and I loved to watch the beat with a cigarette in my nonsmoking hand.

Things be different on vacation, removed from hearth and home and the habits one can manage to avoid in the comfort of stability and a mind at watch, of care.

At some point I re-entered the fray and took on the likeness of a bent leg.

Then reward: “Uno ron con limón, por favor, señor.”  A line of Spanish spoken smooth and quick, and not to be interrupted by the cold stare of an old man encountering my terrible pronunciation.  A couple of euros and I was obliged, gone.

I moved outside and straightened my back - hands on the hips, the whole shebang.  My lungs hurt but this is not a complaint, only very slight fact of relating to the situation in hindsight.  Yes, I went a desultory circle.  Yes, I smiled to the to-and-fro and meant it with the eyes: elders slight of sway to the carry of music out window and door; the lineage of the afternoon bringing an almost tear to the me in front of children doing what it is that children do - remind us of something or other.  A few continued with the lighting of petardos.  A few attempted conversation with me: I smiled and they repeated and I smiled ever the more as they bummed ciggies from the me freely admitting in the Now that I was on vacation.

Mechero was learned to mean lighter, as does the common hand signal.  And I was merely hanging with the kids while they proceeded to not light the neighbourhood on fire: I geared up their cigarettes, did not for one minute hand them that borrowed mechero of mine or any other somewhat permanent source of fire beyond the matches they already possessed.  Absolutely wonderful the way that they banded together, accepted foot in hand to hoist me up for full view within that open window of casalet, to take a picture, to spy: they got paid - through my facial expressions and a couple of cigarettes for each of the gang.  “Jesus loves you, little amigos.”  My roar, my laugh before the blood overpowered the head that was supported by the body stepping on the cusp of puberty’s hands, shoulders.  Yes, I fell quite gently.  And yes, I was thinking of those small Spanish children the entire soft drop that was holidaying in a foreign language.  So, maybe, very much actual fun outside the casalet this night that I open to You in thought and kind.

Go ahead without me, I had said from the ground that was the Spanish soil covered over with stone.  “Play, children, play.”  They laughed at the anomaly, my newness to that burb that was Torrent.

My guess: it was 2-in-the-A.M.  Standing erect once the more, now later in the Say I do to You.  I had taken up residence in front of the dancers, some Spanish song playing, almost traditional.  People seemed to know all of its words and most sang along, not tired of it at all; I guessed that love defied repetition.

And the nerve of some of them to up and groan whenever I mentioned Stairway to Heaven.

It was an upbeat song, that Spanish-flavoured one I talk of; people had joined hands and proceeded to move forward in steps, taken a number of steps back.  So forth.  Innate.  Fun.  But late into the year 1980, someone died and then Led Zeppelin felt it necessary to disband.  Sorry, but that’s really what I was thinking; they were somewhat lame by that period … but still - breaking up is hard to do.  The drummer had overconsumed them Screwdrivers and choked on the vomit of all good rock stars; and his son up and became a rock percussionist in his own right, maybe never ever orders vodka in a bar.

It was probably 3-in-the-A.M.  A Monday growing a Tuesday morning.  I had followed the group, joined hands with them at the end of their careening line out the back door of casalet and down the alley to the bajo: “Vámonos, Onray.”  Si, muchochos. 

And the still many things in that night that I’ve thought nothing of to You - so here: “Have you taken a touch of my shiny trophy?  I won it.”  Francesca can be extremely sweet despite the fact that she doesn’t overly care for me; I had seen the tiny pan of a statue and congratulated her previous.  And then she was lifted up, gone.  A smile from her and a thank you from me she could not know the true, full extent of.  A simple display of my crow’s feet.

My guess: it was 4-in-the-A.M.  Listening to the music and watching them dance, they that were hands hips face.  The X.  The Chusko tearing my arm out of its socket for a private dance that was the two of us and those Swedish people called Abba belting out another solid gold hit: the smile I presented his hand, his face.  The fact that for a brief, the group Abba was two couples forming a foursome - and then not.  Sorry.  Love speaks and it sings but it rarely rests comfortable in the confines of memory mine, the part that smokes when it drinks and decides to wander off at the end of a long night.  I thanked Chusko kindly, wiped my brow with my pañuelo.  I knew the way home by then and couldn’t see the why to bother stopping the party for the others: I would wander back to the casa to the symphony of petardos, occasional masclet.  Past the palms lining the avenidas and calles.  Up to the point of realizing no key to get into the front door, joining the sand rampart abutting the green green field beside the park; I checked for dog shit, for sheep shit, and had me a good old sit down.  The street lights too bright - a foreigner hanging around the front stoop at whatever-in-the-AM not a great idea to my mind of time.  Far better to wait out on the edge of a field, in the dark, in the secret, away from that casalet - me myself merely tired and doing what I always do, go for a walk that is gone for quite awhile.

It was somewhere around 5-in-the-A.M.  I had counted my way up to thirty-seven Pop Pop go the petardos when I witnessed Duardo walking the sidewalk towards the apartment entrance.  Yes, I ran at him.  And no, I never really ever mean to hurt anyone - but I’ve come to believe this wish as a gift to match the curse of my utter inability to control atmosphere.  I have never been able to harness the wind or perfect a rain dance - I fail with every headlong attempt to invent a new way to calm the stinking humidity that wreaks havoc with the summers of my Ottawa.

“You son of bitch.  ¡Fuck you, man!”  If I had suspected this reaction from him, at very least I would have attempted the sky for an excuse, a something way more than my smile emerging from that darkened dirt prefacing green green grass.  “We had whole falla looking for you, man.  Where you go?  What you doing?  I responsible for you, Onray.  ¡You stay in my house - I responsible for you!”

And that is thee way in that particular Spain.

But I explained my intentions and apologized the most sincere without having ever worked with the stars and the charming of their tingle towards good: my guardian was very mad, and yes, I was taken aback.  And alone with Duardo into a tiny elevator and released towards that apartment of freshly-buffed terrazzo floors, the colour of cobalt upon its artisan walls.  Pride.

I was found safe, and not a much was said with his opening and closing of a door, returning of himself to the casalet - the night was still young for the Spanish.  Great.  Super; I envisioned all the Spaniards with similar thoughts of me - that other half of the Canadian couple.  I, myself, brought up the bile that was to be thrown my way, in a Spanish look or words in English from a girl that all believed to be my girl.  And my guess: it was likely 5:30-in-the-A.M. when I started swearing and stuffing things into my knapsack, searching through drawers for a plane ticket bought by two in the bliss of a January.  Anon, baby, I crooned to the nonexistent audience; very soon, to be back in Ottawa in that in-between month of March.  The wealth of clean and dirty underwear riding on my back as I made my way down a hallway built for one, the click and open of a door - a girl I call X for simple reasons, with the keys to the house out, before me.

I once had a Someone break into my bedroom and empty the entire contents of my makeshift closet onto no longer sleeping Me; my glorious roommate hid in the basement, cuddled behind the furnace until said former girlfriend by name of Susan had finished or vented or buried me completely.  Fun.

Love hurts, whether to throw or receive.

When X had finished hitting me and or the knapsack.  When she had finished swearing and informing of the various ways that I had caused humiliation, strife and loss of rhythm.  As she stood still and breathed rather hard I informed her of the penalty fee that one can pay in order to bump up a return date on a plane ticket, something of the order of a couple hundred bucks maybe.  She simply screamed and I merely ran out the door, past the tiny elevator and down the three flights of stairs.  There may or may not have been a few more invocations of my name, but I shall block that, for it really does not matter a whole lot: it was time for me to go for a walk that was gone for quite the while.

And even as I sit comfortable in this Centretown of the Now and study the crinkled mental map of the suburb of Valencia known as Torrent about all that I can confirm is that I really wanted to find my way to the airport I kind of knew where was.  But the taxis they be different and not on an every corner; I walked for a way, knapsack on back, having been in the country of Spain for less than six glorious days.  Headed forward, no specific direction.  6-in-the-A.M.

I was once drunk and wandering the streets of New York City, the dirty Bowery area of Manhattan to be more proper; on this way down a back alley laden with graffiti, headed towards the infamous CBGB’s, I looked up and realized that I probably shouldn’t be where I was all by my lonesomeness at such an hour in the big bad city.  But, here I am - alive, and there I was in Torrent; occasionally, a passing car and the thought of hitchhiking, how to relay all of the necessary information in another language.  To the growing smell of a bakery, came the vagueness of knowing where I was: an around a corner, and a church with its floodlights trained on a wooden girl - a saint, really.  I approached the aroma of flowers that were her body; a subtle smile that be the brush stroking paint across the shape of her face.  I looked up and smiled back but I was not a religious man, only aware that she represented a chaste female seen some thirty-six hours previous.  For awhile I stood and attempted to talk, put off the move towards the where that I was going: the things that one does say to an avatar that they don’t believe in.  “Good night, señorita.”  I was tired and my feet began to move down another side street that was another somewhere I did not know; there was the semi-industrial section of no romance, and a closed gas station where I sat on a curb and watched the traffic lights run a few cycles.  There was the gradual thought to eventually do something before the sun came up and the city began to grow over me, and so, yes, I walked my knapsack further away and towards that excelsior achieved by means of jet engine and a few hundred necessary dollars or euros - travel alone.

Within the snake of my first and only desperta had been a small indoor market visited and paraded through: hanging meats and a freshness matched by the merchants’ speed of language.  And as it once the more stood before me in the wee hours that was a Tuesday morning flowing from that long Monday, memory believed it somewhere vicinity the casalet: a step step and the bajos of second-stories did indeed begin to appear through every snippet of vision stolen between crack in fence or break in building.  I heard ambience and its unmistakable something put into words; I stopped, turned to my left and saw a 20-foot man wearing a bandanna, scantily women at his feet: the slow, random stagger that in my mind had been escape turned out to have been nothing beyond a peripatetic pout.  I wobbled towards that papier-mâché falla with the knowledge that The Planet of the Apes should have won the Best Picture Academy Award in 1968 for, amongst other things, ending the movie with an overwrought Charlton Heston realizing that his world had come full circle and moved forward without pinch or push from him.  Sorry, but sleep deprivation speaks in a tongue not easily translatable.

The attention to detail drew me, dangled me over the security barriers surrounding the falla; respect kept me from stepping over them and copping a feel from the life-size girls, reaching up to shake the hand of a man who did not really exist beyond the realm of relaxing into an artistic endeavour, grinning and knowing him from that somewhere that was the brain within metaphor.  “Good night, señor.”  It was this stern, young man that straight-smiled me the few steps up that pavement of the earlier paella make, up a small concrete lip that joined the view of a small jungle gym, a few trees beside an opening that was a courtyard that was the front of the casalet littered with cigarettes butts partially of my nonsmoker variety.

A step and I was a skid, was a man cinching the straps of my knapsack tight and moving on down the way towards the sounds of music at very-early-in-the-A.M.  A step and I was skid.  A single, solitary petardo thrown at my feet, but still a skid was I despite the lack of flinch that was me moving one step after another and staring straight ahead.

My guess: it was after 6:30-in-the-A.M. when I paraded past the first window.  I could lie and say that I didn’t sneak a peek, or that I have never spilled God’s seed in vain - but this is me, comfortable in a Centretown apartment with nothing to hide behind except for a bear-trap futon.

My best guess: the sheer incredulity made Duardo drop his drink and run for the door; perhaps that continuing bit about responsibility played a part.  He left the music I had listened to and tried to time step to - this ongoing party that I glanced and drank with peripheral vision made me mad and sad enough not to stop.

“Hey - man …where you goin’?”  His tone was level and nice and I wasn’t really concerned.  As he took stride beside I quietly informed him that I was headed for the airport.  “Cum on, man.  Onray.  Man.”  This Spaniard this guy was my guardian angel and I had made him utter the F-word to me in English - but I wasn’t really concerned.  I kept my step until the end of the way, normally followed by a turn to the right and back towards that casa of his and bride - but no, and a sheltered bus stop with a bench stumbled towards to on my left.

“Sometimes I just walk away.  It’s not meant as any big deal, but … but give me a sec to unload this puppy off my freakin’ back.”  The almost morning and the knapsack that was then at our feet, at a bus stop somewhere in coastal Spain.  “I’m sorry,” and that needed to be said quietly, calmly.  “I’m sorry, but I have things to tell you beyond my thoughts on petardos and sitting on the edge of a field or walking around wearing a knapsack in public.  Fuck - X and I ... we just are no longer together.”  I had utilized the English F-word, I had broken a secreto.  “Not since February have our lips graced together.”  Bad poetry at the end of a long night.  “You mentioned responsibility earlier, when … you were mad, and I am sorry for that, but don’t talk responsibility to me - I know responsibility, I have been nothing but it these last days.  I’ve played along and danced, I’ve faked headaches and I’ve pretended to have a girlfriend: all I wanted was to go home - your home - and rest and not have to fake or seem the unfriendly to you friendly people.  Now, everyone is pissed at me - and my girlfriend …No! my ex-girlfriend is slugging me in the head and extending her disappointment with me.  What a great, fucking night.”  I was almost yelling, but merely beginning to let tears run down my cheeks.  Fantastic.

“Frances was worried sick about you, Onray.  She tell me that it different in Canada, and people walk off the sometime after bars, but she still worry about you.”  His tone was level and nice and I wasn’t terribly concerned.

“You realize that your wife is not overly crazy about me, do you not, Duardo?  I don’t mean anything bad about her, but she has never been that comfortable around me - I have seen it in those doe eyes of hers.”  I sighed and took breath from my soliloquy, rested the back of hand on forehead as I leaned dramatically against glass side of bus stop.

“I’m going to bring Francesca over for you, Ok, Onray?  This only be one minute.”  I nodded and sat back down on the bench.  I did not care, really: yelling or screaming or staring at me and shaking their heads - I had whispered a secreto that none of them could touch.

Pop went a petardo, a tired laugh seconds afterward.  When I lifted my head Duardo and Frances were crossing the street hand in hand, much as one complete person in step with old-fashion.  But my eyes were vulnerable.  “You Ok?”  I took her hand, nodded into one doe eye, then the other.  “Where’s your blouson, your umm … pañuelo?” she motioned towards me - and I had up and gone and made everyone uncomfortable.

“I packed them, yes, and I thank you for them … for everything.  You really didn’t know about me and X?”  She shrugged, and I still don’t know what to offer You about girls and their sharing of information - it mattered and it didn’t.

“Onray, there is a festival up in Nice for the Semana Santa - I go to it once and it very good.  You should try it there, man.  Go on a train.”  He pointed into the sky, presumably north and way up over the Pyrenees, into southern France.  The future that was me no longer on Spain soil.

“Do you really want to leave tonight, Henry?  Maybe tomorrow, eh?”  She tilted her head and a pang of guilt sliced into my tired liver, an organ quite capable of actual cellular regeneration given half a chance.  Sorry.

“Don’t worry him, Frances.  We give him a ride tonight and that be his way.”  I was somewhat out of the conversation in their wonderfully domestic manner.  I turned to him and pictured the anger given to me earlier, saw the grief I had caused his bride and others, a net result enveloping me at that 7-or-so-in-that-A.M.  Wonderful.  And absolutely fantastic to observe big and bad Brooklyn Jacinto lumbering across the street towards our little circle of his family.  The brief exchange of Spanish, the handing of a pair of car keys from him to her - Francesca the sister-in-law - and the need for his eye upon the me that was hard to pronounce with his tongue: Henry.

A few more words whispered and tossed around in one of the languages of the romantics.

He stepped slow to me, attempting a valiant crossing of the Atlantic with his words: “Bad, On-ray.  No good friend,” and a waving of an ancient index finger that periodically wakes me from an unsound sleep upon a very modern bear-trap futon in a bachelor apartment on Cooper Street, Ottawa of now.  I could lie and say that I didn’t really care or that I wasn’t terribly concerned about my place in the universe at the time, but Jacinto was the tribe and my guilt was simply unable to float softly up into the early Spanish sky: the comment of a lone finger, a tsk tsk of the lips for me and my walk away.  Great, I thought, hunched shoulders, stuffed knapsack, ex-girlfriend stewing back at casa.

To a car, to me in the back seat.  To the slight sob from Frances and the dabbing of the mascara from the corner of her eye.  To the assurance by me that I would be quite Ok - at the airport, finding my way home alone.  But I had up and confused the festivities; I had thought about myself, and the secret that was more of a regret.  I had gone and let myself explode it all over certain people.  And I had merely been misplaced for a wee bit.

“You can just drive for home, Eduardo.  Don’t worry about the airport right now; just don’t worry about anything this right now.”  I was so very sorry, and I muttered just such a similar phrase and fell back into the seat.

To the silence within a car making its short way through the morning streets; to the parking garage and tiny elevator and door with two locks that must be opened in certain order.  To my X lying on the living room couch, rubbing her certain eyebrow with certain hand, gradually rising and realizing the me within the returning group.  To my urgent want for a cigarette high or bajo in nicotine.  To my basic needs: the single bed that I crawled into without the slightest pretence of others’ beliefs in Our love.  To the opening of a door and a stifled sniffle before her pulling of covers and fall into separate bed beside me.  To not a single fucking word from her as my world spun. 

To not one say as I hauled myself out of bed and staggered down a dark hallway towards a couch with my Spanish name on it.