What follows is a portion of a rather half-assed journal of my summer trip through Europe.
Barcelona. Thursday. 2:12 p.m.
I see her through the window. She’s walking across the street from the metro station where she used to meet me when I would come to Barcelona to see her.
No, that’s not right. She’s not really walking across the street. It’s more like she’s hovering over it, as if the physics of the cars and the motorcycles and the buses and what they might do to her body are of no more concern than was brushing her teeth this morning.
I remember this capacity she has, for making it seem like she’s in charge of the world, instead of the other way around. I remember, too, that this is part of what drew me in.
She crosses the threshold of the glass door that’s holding out Barcelona’s sticky heat. She looks at once disheveled and put together, like she always did. I’m glad I’ve beaten her here; it’s given me a chance to collect myself, to find a pair of chairs in the Starbucks we used to come to when we’d had enough of Spain. Beating her here was no small miracle, coming as I was by train from my friend’s apartment in Vilassar de Mar, a train that had stopped on the tracks between St. Adria be Besos and El Clot Arago, filling me with panic.
If I don’t get to see her, I won’t know, I’d thought.
What I needed to know is what I feel when she sits down, blows her blond hair out of her mouth, smiles in that way I’ve seen ten thousand times, and says, “So…”
She starts by saying she’s sorry. I wave it off, even though I shouldn’t. She says that life is treating her well – there are still jobs, in France and Germany and South Africa. I tell her I’m glad, not positive that’s true. She says there are so many things to ask, to talk about. I nod and look at her eyes and shrug and say, well yeah, it has been two years.
What a life, she says, with a shake of her head.
I’d heard she was engaged, but she isn’t wearing a ring.
When I ask, she looks down at the shopping bags at her feet.
On the 23rd, she says.
It is my turn to smile.
I smile because, instead of feeling what I was afraid I might feel – regret, remorse, envy – my heart only feels warm. Sure, it ended badly. And sure, she’s going to marry some guy I’d once thought was my friend. And sure, there was a time when I would have done anything for this person sitting across from me.
But no longer. The warmth is happiness. For them; that it had worked out. For me; that it hadn’t.
What I needed to know was something I’d long thought to be true, but couldn’t be sure of until I saw her again. I needed to know that there was nothing left.
We talk a little while longer, about the plans for her wedding and about my family and about the time we drove to Dallas where she met a crazy great uncle of mine who asked her if she’d ever had a bone density test. Then it’s time for her to go. She’s meeting a friend who’s flying in from Germany, she says.
I walk with her as far as Carrer de Bruc. I point at the gym where we had a membership together when we lived in the Born district. We share a last, rueful smile. The Barcelona sun beats down on our necks. I remember how I felt, but I don’t feel how I remember.
We hug and she says that I’ll always have friends in Barcelona. And then I turn around and walk away.
To read the previous Euro Bits entry, click here.
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