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Marc made his way to the end of the bar, striding confidently as he always did. Then he carelessly dropped his phone and keys on top of the counter, and waited for Roberto, the waiter, who was already making his leisurely way to attend to him.
“What’s up with your customers today, are they asleep?” said Marc, as a greeting.
“Calm down. When you get here tomorrow, I’ll roll out the red carpet for you.”
Marc smiled. It was the most basic action in his repertoire, but one that he always used whenever he could not immediately find some ingenious response. This often happened to him with Roberto, who was approaching forty, who neither acted like a dazzled teenage girl, nor felt any special predisposition for muscular men. Very much on the contrary: he was of the long-held opinion that body-builders, for all their egocentricity, were some of the most difficult people to serve in a bar.
“Coffee as usual?” asked Roberto.
“Yes, very strong.”
As the waiter was placing the cup underneath the machine, Marc went towards the café door, without saying a word. The strident sound of his mobile announcing a call spoke with even greater clarity than he usually did.
“Miguel, c’mon mate, listen. You have to call me right now? Can’t you wait just a few minutes?” He could be heard throughout the entire café as he opened the main door.
On the other end of the line, the other speaker neither wanted nor needed to create a scene; and wanted even less to joke around:
“Leave out the crap. Are you coming to the gym today?” Miguel asked gravely.
“Course, wouldn’t miss it for the world,” he answered, looking carelessly back towards the café’s interior, and stopped on one of the women very close to the door. She was attentively reading the newspaper, oblivious to all, sitting with her legs crossed and wearing a curious pair of glasses that gave her an extremely intellectual appearance.
“Yes, yes, but I wanted to know if you were coming to the gym, because I have to talk to you as soon as possible,” could be heard from the other end of the line.
Marc’s attention remained on the woman, without missing a single detail of her movements. First, she smoothed down her hair, then repositioned the glasses on her small nose and, finally, uncrossed her legs and re-crossed them again in such a careless way that it ended up being extremely sensual.
“And you mean to tell me that it’s something urgent enough for you to be calling me now?” asked Marc, with an unusual slowness.
“Yes, it’s important,” replied Miguel, brusquely, without providing any further explanations. “But I’ll tell you properly at the gym.”
Marc stopped listening for a moment. The woman had looked up until her eyes met with his, holding his gaze for a few intense seconds.
“Are you listening?” demanded Miguel.
“Yeah. Like I told you, I’ll be there, like always. I’ll be there around eleven, and you can tell me then,” Marc concluded.
When the woman had lowered her gaze, the young man studied her attentively: around thirty years old, dark hair, slight build, and enigmatic, very enigmatic.
“Okay Marc. I’ll see you then.”
“Okay.”
As soon as he hung up, Marc looked at his phone and for a moment, reflecting on the conversation that he had just had, and made a gesture of bewilderment. Miguel, his friend since childhood, gym companion, and accomplice on more than one night out on the town, was not the type to become nervous often. And even less so since he had joined the police force. Inevitably, there must have been a powerful reason for him to have called him when only a few minutes later they would be meeting up at the gym. Anyway, he would find out soon, he thought. And he forgot all about it.
He went back into the café, with a cheeky countenance as he passed the enigmatic woman, who was by the front door, and made himself comfortable once more at the end of the bar, where Roberto was waiting for him.
“Who’s the girl by the door?” he asked, trying to give off a certain air of disinterest.
“I don’t know. I think it’s the first time she’s come in here, but she’s been sitting there all morning,” explained the waiter, as if that fact made him uncomfortable.
Marc looked again towards the door. The enigmatic woman, oblivious to the conversation, had closed the newspaper and was now making her way towards the two men. Roberto, on his part, did not seem disposed to consider her a topic for conversation:
“You working today?” he asked, looking at his customer.
“Yeah... and I wouldn’t mind if a girl like that were to have a drink with me,” Marc said, pointing towards the woman, who at that moment passed by his side.
She did not look at the men, nor change her course. She simply limited herself to passing by and going into the toilets.
“She’s a bit old for you, isn’t she?” noted the waiter, eventually, whilst he entertained himself with reading one of the many newspapers that were on top of the bar.
“Doesn’t hurt to change your habits every now and then. I’m starting to get sick of drunk little girlies.”
Roberto, without looking up from the newspaper, made a gesture to say that he always had a hard time understanding him, whilst Marc put his hand in his pocket to take out his wallet.
“This is for the coffee.”
The waiter took the ten-euro note that Marc was offering him and went towards the till:
“Listen son, enjoy yourself while you’re young,” he imparted from there. “Just look at the owner of Covelo Recycling,” he said, pointing towards the newspaper, “twenty-eight years old, a whole life ahead of him, and he ends up falling into the grinder and, less than two minutes later, he’s nothing more than minced meat.”
Marc grabbed the newspaper, oblivious to the change that Roberto was holding out for him, and read it for a few seconds without paying attention to anything. Then he exclaimed:
“Shit, I know him!”
“Well, you knew him...” corrected the waiter.
“Yeah, it’s Sebas. We were friends a while ago. Stupid guy; a real bighead.”
Roberto couldn’t hold back a laugh.
“Yes, I can see. And yet you were friends...” he said ironically.
“Yeah, we were. But then he got married with a good little girl. Her father supported him with setting up the business and then he just cast everyone else to one side. You never really know a person, or just how much they can change.”
“Did you stop being friends?”
“Completely. I can’t stand that type of person. Before, he’d spend the whole day glued to a joint, and now he spends it between the legs of his little wife. So I guess he did have something to gain by changing. But anyway, serves him right,” he added, with a certain air of superiority.
The waiter did not respond this time. He went to the other end of the bar where the woman, who had, by now, left the toilet and returned to her table without anybody noticing, called for his attention so she could pay. She asked for a small bottle of mineral water, to take with her, and she paid for it along with the breakfast that she had had during those long two hours. Then she gave a furtive look to Marc, and left with the same intellectual air with which she had been reading the newspaper.
“Tell you the truth, she really wasn’t bad at all,” said the waiter, on his way back.
“Like I already told you. Ideal for a long night of sex.”
“Son, you have an overactive imagination.”
“You were the one who told me earlier to enjoy myself while I’m young. So that’s exactly what I’m gonna do. And if the idiot Sebas had done the same, you know, ‘one night and then total amnesia the next day’ sort of thing, then he’d definitely be alive now.”
Roberto was unable to continue the conversation. A text message took all of Marc’s attention. As soon as he had read it, he said goodbye.
“Well I’m off. I dunno what this is all about,” he said, pointing to his phone as he left. “He has so many crazy weird feelings about stuff that anyone would think he was a policeman.”
The waiter didn’t know what he was talking about. But in all honesty, he didn’t care either.