“You doing OK?” he asked as I stepped out into the dry, yellow sun. A comic
vroom vroom
of a motor scooter from the side street below answered his question before I could.
“Sure. Just feeling a little woozy. Probably hunger.”
It was somewhere in the early after noon, and David was pouring us glasses of full-bodied Rioja. I could still feel his tension and I was grateful for the upcoming intoxication.
He dragged out a metal lawn chair for me to sit down in and slowly, as if with arthritis, eased himself into his seat. The sky was monochromatically blue and the sun’s rays were penetrating my scalp. David had his sunglasses on so I couldn’t see his eyes, but I could tell his wheels were turning; he was pushing out his mouth in thought.
It was the quiet before the storm.
“So we’re not alone, huh?” I ventured first. His silence was irritating me.
He sighed a sigh that weighed half his entire body weight. “Yes, Anna. I wanted to tell you beforehand, but I didn’t want you to rearrange your plans or decide not to come or something crazy.”
“Sergi’s here, I know,” I said.
David reached for his glass and took a swig. I reached for one of his Lucky Strikes, focusing on the bomb target symbol on its packaging. Neither of us had touched the food.
“Listen, I want you to meet him. He’s part of my past. Yes, he’s been a pain in the ass all his life, but he’s family and I can’t shut my door on him. He’s harmless. God, why do you hate him so much?” His voice was whinier than usual. He looked at me, his upper lip in a curl, his mouth slightly ajar. I had never seen him look so annoyed, so nervous.
Then he put his head down, resting his elbows on his splayed knees, staring at the ground. He looked defeated. I caught a whiff of the Manchego.
I have to confess that his weakness gave me a whole new sense of strength. Sergi was obviously a touchy topic, and David was beginning to seem half the man I fell for in New York.
“Listen David,” I said calmly, using my best phone operator voice. I was good at concealing the pain when I had to. “I thought we had agreed that he was going to stay somewhere else while I was getting settled in here at least. You told me this.”
He sat up in his seat, “His plans fell through with some other apartment, OK? And he has to be here for a few Diada de Sant Jordi book events. Lord knows I have enough extra space in this place. What’s the big deal? What do you have against someone you’ve never even met?”
“I have absolutely
nothing
against him,” I said.
“Really, I don’t
,” I said even slower, sounding like I was gurgling underwater. “I guess I just feel kind of uncomfortable, perhaps threatened is a better word . . . with all the women and all your sexual liaisons together.” I took a long drag of my cigarette. “I’m not into being shared, you know. I just don’t need that sort of juvenile shit in my life.”
“He’s not going to try anything, Anna. That was the past. We’re adults now. Trust me. He knows that you’re special, and that I’m in love with you. We’re done with all that.”
David was visibly trying to pull himself together. I wanted our be ginning to go as smoothly as possible. I flashed him my big joker smile instead. I knew it looked natural, but it wasn’t. He laughed with a gullible relief.
“You’re so nutty, Anna. You’re a real paranoid case.” He caressed my cheek, then licked it, and with the other hand he took a piece of ham and placed it into my mouth. It was salty and warm from sitting in the sun. I think it was the best ham I’ve ever tasted.
“I’m taking you to a fancy party tonight.”
“Really?” A shiver of excitement raced down my spine.
“It’s
Libros
magazine’s kick-off party for Diada de Sant Jordi at the Ritz. Everyone will be there, including our friend Sergi. He’s giving a brief speech, which will probably be inappropriate and sarcastic. People love to hate him here.”
“Including you?” I asked.
He thought for a moment. “Yes, sometimes, including me. Don’t take this badly, but you re mind me of each other. You both can be charmingly arrogant on the exterior, but viciously insecure inside. Watch, you guys are going to become wicked pals.” He laughed, tears filling in his eyes.
I wanted to believe him. I wanted to believe we could all be friends.
Barcelona’s springtime literary love fest, Diada de Sant Jordi, is Cataluña’s take on St Valentine’s Day. The holiday takes place on 23 April, the anniversary of Cervantes’ and Shakespeare’s deaths. It spotlights love’s finer accompaniments: books, roses and playing hooky from work. I loved this take on the holiday; it was a welcome switch from America’s garish pink Hallmark cards, helium balloons, or the obligatory heart-shaped boxes of chocolates perfunctorily sent to one’s cubicle.
Way back in the dark Middle Ages, the legendary and valiant Saint George (Sant Jordi) was said to have rescued his Catalan city and his pouty princess from a fire-breathing dragon that plagued the people. He stabbed the beast in the heart with his long sword and killed it. Now in tribute to all that reptilian bloodshed, and the miraculous rosebush that blossomed from it, it is the custom that men give red roses to their ladies. In return, the ladies give books to their men.
Local booksellers and flower vendors cram the length of la Rambla and other streets, and everyone in Barcelona finds a good excuse not to do a stitch of work. Instead, people stroll the streets with their lovers, browse for books, crowd the plazas and eye the fashionable authors of the day.
It is also a big day for cultural critics and the literati to see who got invited that year to sign their books around town. The high-society Svengalis behind the Sant Jordi events had chosen Sergi as one of the honorary invitees, while David with a new book out, had been slighted in his own hometown.
David acted like it didn’t bother him. He pointed out that he and Sergi had been invited previous years during the height of
Crack
’s popularity. I knew some part of him felt hurt. Could he be so above this kind of sibling rivalry? Was he already content with his literary credibility? I didn’t know whether I’d ever be.
Deep down I already knew I was a better literary critic than I was a writer. I had graduated with an MFA in creative writing from a top school only to see all my friends get offered immediate high-profile book deals with their theses. I reworked my thesis over and over until I killed it. When I finally published it with some trendy indie publisher based in Brooklyn, it was so overwrought, so self-conscious, that one critic labelled it “cold and overly stylized”. Somehow, this kind of criticism had never touched Sergi’s dense work. His new book on Hadrian, an impenetrable thicket of pompous jargon and historical assumptions, was oddly more popular than David’s last heartbreaking novel about alienation.
After David had caught me up on all the literary gossip on the terrace, we scurried into the bedroom. Talking about the book fair was our post-fight, verbal foreplay right before we finally sprang into bed and spread each other’s folds open – the tension had been so ripe. We then passed out in a sundrenched, red wine stupor, our sweaty bodies laid out naked above the sheets after a much-needed fuck.
The balcony doors were open to their full glory and I awoke to the soothing feeling of sunlight warming my bush. The sensation made me want him again, but I didn’t want to wake him.
I needed water. I grabbed David’s Chinese robe and straightened myself up before exiting the bedroom, thinking, perhaps
hoping
, I’d run into Sergi on my way to the kitchen. This time the room with the shoes’ door was practically closed. I assumed Sergi had been here while we were napping. I tapped softly on the door and called out hello. There was no answer, so I pushed the door open.
The shoes were gone. The suitcase was now an explosion of white dress shirts, sleek belts and identical pairs of dark denim jeans. Sergi was obviously in a rush to get in and get out fast. There were copies of his books strewn on the floor. I picked one up and stared at the black-and-white author photo. It was a more recent photo than the one I’d seen in David’s study, and he was still just as stunning, having grown more distinguished with age. He had grown facial hair, and I immediately thought it was a vain attempt to look smart, less pretty boy.
White sheets of paper with elegant and scripted writing were scattered hastily over the unmade bed. They looked like drafts of his short speech for
Libros
magazine’s Sant Jordi event that night. Maybe he wasn’t as spontaneous as David had suggested.
While I showered before the party, I imagined what my first words to Sergi could be. I chose my outfit carefully. I didn’t want to look like another literary social climber in a flowery minidress and pristine pumps. I decided to go for a black-fitted pants suit instead. I let my braless breasts hang free in their teardrop position, rounding out the edges of my jacket. Black pointed flats provided maximum comfort while walking Barcelona’s dark streets with the boys later that night.
I lined my eyes with black eyeliner and smoked them up with grey shadow. I skipped the lipstick. I wanted to be all eyes that night.
Surrounded by the unnaturally attractive Spanish publishing world, I was glad that I had fixed myself up. In the packed ballroom, the Ritz’s chandeliers cast a romantic light on the wiry women in dramatically draped scarves and the men impeccably dressed in dark jackets.
We were boxed into a room of wall-to-wall mirrors where violins played and enormous golden vases with long-stemmed roses for Diada de Sant Jordi lined the walls. A mighty mix of booze, nerves and jetlag kicked in as David and I made our first rounds. I felt like Rita Hayworth’s character trapped in the Hall of Mirrors in
The Lady from Shanghai,
where everything looks warped through the lens of paranoia.
I tried to spot Sergi or anybody I knew in the mirrors’ reflection, but a low-lying cloud of cigarette smoke hung over our heads like a rain cloud, fogging up my view. Suddenly, David was dragged off by a pack of faceless arms in one direction. I was pulled in the opposite direction, in the liver-spotted, red-nailed clench of Catalan literary agent Silvia Riera.
I’d gotten to know Silvia well over the years through my reporting on the Spanish literary circuit. She was a
been-here-done-that
kind of woman in her late fifties, who I suspected was still up to lots of
that.
She came from a good Catalan family and got into the literary business because she liked highbrow books, cocktail parties and sleeping with struggling writers. She was asking me why the hell had I left my high-profile editorial position to come to Barcelona when I finally spotted Sergi. He stood five heads away from us, laughing big and showing fangs. He turned his head towards me as I eyed him up and down. I told Silvia I’d just gotten sick of New York.
It was impossible not to notice him. He was taller and blonder than most in the room. He turned his entire body to face me, even as he was still chatting up an austere, balding man, probably another veteran of Spanish letters making nice to the new lion. Silvia moved on to a woman she knew standing next to us, and Sergi kept on looking. Noticing he had lost Sergi’s attention, the gentleman of letters spotted me, gave me the once-over, and continued his monologue anyway.
Despite his refined looks, Sergi’s smile was vulgar. He raked his eyes over me as if I were standing there naked. I blushed like a nun and soaked myself at the same time. It reminded me of why I knew I’d hate him. Did he know who I was?
How
did he know who I was? He mouthed a hello. I nodded in camaraderie and gave him a frigid politician’s smile. Then he turned away to continue his conversation with the gentleman.
Silvia had seen our unspoken exchange. She turned back to me. “Oh darling, watch out for him. Don’t tell me you two have already . . .?” She paused.
“Nooo,” I said loudly. I made a hissing sound to punctuate my negation, for both of our ears. “I’m here with David Canetti, not Sergi Canetti.”
“Uuff,” she said. “A
little
better, but still, the Canettis are quite the dogs around town you know.” She looked at me sympathetically, reading it all so clearly on my face. She continued. “But David has always struck me as the Abel to his Cain in that strange brotherhood. It seems they never get too far from each other, like Frack and Frick,” she said in English, pumping extra gasoline into her
rrr
s.
“Yes, they’re tight,” I added with an upturn in my voice. I tried to steer the conversation away from the sewage she was ready to spill.
I scanned the room, desperately looking for David. I spotted him. He was talking with Sergi and a group of Spanish literati. He was doing a lot of double-cheeked air-kissing and man-to-man back-rub bing. I thought about how much more people touched in Europe.
Despite my distraction, Silvia pressed on. “Don’t worry. They’ll treat you well. You’re with
Publisher’s Forum,
and they’re dying for some recognition in New York.” She placed her hand on my shoulder in pity. Though I hated the gesture, I appreciated her brutal honesty, as always. In exchange, she tolerated my bad reviews of her navel-gazing authors.
I excused myself. I looked for David, who had managed to slip into the crowd again. I was hoping we could do a little public fondling. That’s when I saw Sergi cutting through the crowd, quickly moving in my direction.
The bar was packed. I managed to hide myself in a group of huddled men, waiting for my chance to order a drink. Sergi slid between the men and grabbed the top of my arm. I wasn’t going anywhere; his grip was too tight. He towered over me, and I was forced to look up at him.
“Anna, I’m Sergi, David’s brother.” He leaned in to kiss me twice, speaking to me in English, not in Spanish like everyone else did. His English was perfect, far better than David’s. His voice was deep, a smoker’s raspy.
“I know,” I said coldly in Spanish, not wanting to look like a foreigner. As we brushed faces, I could smell the Figuer cologne on him. “When’s your little talk?” I asked.