Rebecca and Brian and Tony found the wide stone apartment building just where they’d left it on Carrer de València. Twelve twenty-three a.m.
No Kira.
No shock, either. Rebecca had expected Kira would want to prove her independence by running late. She’d be back soon enough. Or maybe she’d text, Promise 1.
Rebecca didn’t love the idea of a nineteen-year-old girl out alone in a foreign city. But Barcelona was safe—safer than Boston—and Kira had insisted she wanted a few hours to herself. She was cool-headed for her age, trustworthy. She had survived her first year at Tufts without much damage, one cheating boyfriend and one stolen jacket notwithstanding. She was the one her friends texted when they found themselves stumbling out of the party with the quarterback and his two best friends: find me plz they say its cool idk…
Rebecca couldn’t imagine being the mother of a quote-unquote difficult teenager. The easy ones were difficult enough.
Still, she was faintly disappointed Kira wasn’t waiting. She’d imagined maybe they’d go for a drink, leave Bri and Tony at the apartment. She should have said so before dinner. But she’d worried Kira might give her a half-pitying Mom, you’re way too old for these places look.
The foolish pride of the fortysomething woman.
She walked hand in hand with Brian up the sweeping marble staircase to their second-floor apartment. “A Grand Apartment,” the listing had promised: a living room with twelve-foot ceilings, a crystal chandelier, a Juliet balcony, and yes, a grand piano. Four hundred sixty euros a night. But they said they wouldn’t worry about money on this trip. Rebecca said, anyway. Let’s do it right. I’m budgeting a thousand dollars for every year we’ve been married, she had told Brian.
Twenty K? His nostrils twitched the way they had in the lean years. Bet you’ll have no problem spending it.
She hadn’t.
The big problem with the apartment: no air-conditioning. After fifteen years in Birmingham and Houston and Washington, three cities where ice-cold air was practically an entitlement, Rebecca wondered how she would sleep. No wonder the Spanish stayed up so late.
Still, she liked Barcelona better than Paris, which felt like a theme park. All those Americans and Brazilians and Chinese shuffling around Notre Dame, hoovering up skirts at the Galeries Lafayette, We’re not so different, we all love to shop. Someone needed to create a Disney World–style app to beat the lines, optimize the experience. She should tell Brian.
Barcelona had tons of tourists too. Still, it felt a little more real. And the Gaudí architecture was fascinating. Buildings that seemed to be melting. Maybe they were. Maybe she was. She mopped the sweat from her forehead, flopped on the couch, kicked off her low black heels, stretched out her legs. Still good. Legs were the last to go. Ask any coroner. Based on her calves she might be as young as twenty-five, but her neck proves she’s forty-three. Forensics!
She was buzzed, she realized. If not flat drunk. Besides the pitcher of sangria the three of them had shared, she and Brian had split a bottle of wine. She hadn’t had this much to drink in a long time.
Maybe since that last dinner with Todd Taylor.
All at once she could see his face. His hazel eyes and creased tan skin. She shoved the memory down. In the garbage. Where it belonged. Especially at this moment.
“Wine?” Brian said. They’d bought two bottles at a convenience store. With fluorescent lights. Even in Barcelona not everything was cool.
“The white is cold, right?”
“Coldish.”
“Rhymes with goldfish. Sold.”
“Can I have a beer?” Tony said.
Rebecca: “No.” Brian: “Yes.”
Brian liked to be the cool one, make her play the villain.
“It’s Barcelona.”
She had a feeling she would hear that answer a lot on this trip. It’s Barcelona. It’s Madrid. It’s our anniversary.
“You think he doesn’t drink at home, Becks? Remember that morning, we picked him up—”
She remembered. Tony had texted, I’m in Silver Spring please get me please. When they arrived they found that someone had written I LUV DICK! AND BEES! in orange on his forehead. “AND BEES!” seemed especially cruel.
Tony Let me wipe that off.
Wipe what off?
“He needs to learn to hold his booze,” Brian said now.
“Okay, one beer. You pour it in a glass though and drink it like you’re civilized.”
“It’s actually slower to drink it from the bottle.”
“Quit while you’re ahead, my number one son.”
“Anyone see an opener?” Brian yelled from the kitchen.
She looked at the wine bottle. “It’s a screw top.”
“My favorite kind of top.” Brian reappeared with three wineglasses.
“Dad!” Tony said.
Any sexual banter between them creeped Tony out. Rebecca supposed the reaction was normal. Kira had never seemed as bothered. Instead she looked at them with her cool blue eyes—Brian’s eyes. A look that shut the jokes down in a hurry, as Kira no doubt intended.
Brian poured the wine, handed Tony the third glass. Tony raised his eyebrows, Beer from a wineglass?, but wisely kept his mouth shut. Brian sat beside her. “Cheers.”
“I love you, husband.” She did, too. Even if she’d forgotten for a while. A long while.
His eyes flashed. She wondered if he too was thinking about the years they’d spent wandering the marital desert. He kissed her lightly. “Here’s to twenty years. And three months.”
“And twenty more with these rug rats out of the house so we can do what we like.” She put her glass to his harder than she had intended. The clink echoed off the high ceilings and wine slopped out.
“Glad I didn’t splurge on the twelve-euro bottle.” He nodded at the piano. “You should play.”
“I’ll be terrible.”
Not true. She’d be excellent. She’d played growing up, lessons four times a week for eleven years. She was skilled enough to impress people who didn’t know better, but also skilled enough to know how big a canyon lay between her and greatness. She played the piano. The true artists felt it, melded themselves to it.
In college she’d quit. Cold. She’d told herself playing was as effete and pretentious as every other part of her life at the time. Though she knew it wasn’t, knew she’d earned her skill and she ought to protect it. Knew the real reason she quit was that she couldn’t accept she wasn’t good enough to get into Julliard. Brian was the one who’d sent her back to playing, and for that she would be forever grateful.
She slid across the polished wood floor in her stocking feet and sat at the piano.
“Remember this?” She hadn’t played the Schubert in years but the notes came back effortlessly.
The sangria made her sloppy, and this piano hadn’t been tuned in a while. No matter, she played with flair, half-drunk melodrama, raised her hands high, pounded the keys. Made sure the neighbors would hear and the cats on the street.
Then the Schubert was done and she slid into the Beethoven, lush and romantic. Now and again she turned her head toward Brian. He leaned against the wall and sipped his wine and watched with his unreadable smile, the one she’d loved until she hadn’t and now did again.
When she finished he came to her, stood behind her. Put his hands on her shoulders and leaned over and kissed her.
“Bed,” he murmured in her ear.
“Tony,” she whispered back.
Across the room Tony stood from the couch like he’d heard his name.
“Mom. You know it’s like one twenty.”
She loved Tony more than anything, her only son, et cetera… but he seemed to have no idea that she and Brian were having a moment. He desperately needed a girlfriend, or just a girl friend.
“Yes, so?”
“Where’s Kira?”