I reread the reworked opening night scene. Irving tells me to write it so it includes conflict, causation, conversation, and change, and won’t be a section people skip over.
Queues of people — men, women, and children — disintegrated into clusters of celebrants joining their athletic relatives for the opening night ceremonies. This evening was one of the crazier things Miranda had ever done, being with a man she’d just met in a crowd of thousands. People behaved in an orderly manner, filling Barcelona’s Placa Espanya with laughter and chatter. The close press of the crowd made Miranda take deep gulps of breath. Eleven thousand competitors! Who knew how many brought wives and brothers and children and friends to cheer them on in the grandstands. Mobs could get unruly.
Miranda swallowed. She was committed now. Jaime was with her. She stepped onto the crowded event-provided bus. She moved with baby steps toward the back. Her forward progress stopped while she was in the middle, and warm bodies and the smells of garlic and perfumes swirled around her.
Bus after bus pulled up beside the fountain. Athletes, dressed in golds and greens, in reds and mauves, blacks, yellows, all the colors of the rainbow and their countries, stepped on board. Hundreds more had begun walking to the Olympic stadium at Montjuic Park. An African team chanted words she didn’t understand as they jogged past the busses and on up the hill, past the Olympic village and disappeared around the bend to the Estadi Olimpic. Miranda settled down and let herself feel filled with the joy on their faces, the haunting baritone beat they continued even as the hill became steeper.
Her bus groaned as it pulled out with people standing on the stairs of the open door, waving as though the walkers were neighbors. Traffic moved so slowly that people walked past them as the busses ached forward with their treasured weight.
“Move to the back, mate,” an Australian said, sidling past her. She smiled at him. She smiled at anyone who spoke English, surprised at how much hearing her own language made her feel connected, safer.
Miranda realized that the real safety she felt came from Jaime, who stood behind her now. She could feel the heat of his body close to hers and the press of his arm lying protectively across her shoulder. She was actually in Spain with someone of the opposite gender standing remarkably close to her, by choice.
Just beyond the Presidential Palace she smelled a glorious scent through the open windows. She inhaled the sweetness. “What is that smell?” Miranda asked. Jaime lifted his dark eyebrows, shook his head.
She’d have to find the word for scent or smell or blossom in her English-to-Spanish dictionary and come back here with him, to see if he could name the source then. It was futile, anyway, trying to hear above the din of laughter and chatter of a dozen different languages.
The air warmed and beads of sweat formed at the back of her neck, in the crook of her elbow, and on the backside of her knees beneath her short skirt. Why couldn’t she perspire in normal places like under her arms or under her nose? She didn’t do anything “normally,” not even falling in love.
Was that what she was doing? Falling in love? Miranda was much too sensible for that.
She felt giddy and girlish and relished the crush on the bus that forced Jaime to move closer to her, his arm raised over her, gripping the handhold while the other rested a little more protectively on her shoulder. Just enough pressure to reassure her of his presence, not too much to threaten invasion; none at all to suggest possession.
Her sister, Belle, ahead of her, almost to the back of the bus, talked to an ice hockey player, judging from the patch on his uniform, but Miranda couldn’t see where he was from. Ice hockey. In July. In Spain. Now that was a hopeful competitor. Belle towered over the four players from Mexico she spoke with now and she shouted to a couple of Canadians, acting as though she’d known them her whole life. Maybe she had. They were golfers too. But Belle could do that, meet a stranger, and in minutes anyone observing would think they’d known each other for years. Belle was an extrovert’s extrovert and Miranda a slowly blooming introvert. Blooming, because Jaime nurtured the soil she stood on, offered himself as a stake beside her to buffet against winds.
She shook her head. She’d been watching too many movies on Lifetime. Love didn’t happen like this, not real love, not true love. Long-lasting love took time and tenderness. Just as with a flower, it was the lengthening days that brought the bloom. Those hothouse flowers that were forced just never lasted.
“Ah … you like fountain?” Jaime said. He nodded with his head toward the water spewing in arcs into a pool in front of the palace as the bus eased past.
“Yes,” Miranda said. “Oh, yes. It’s beautiful.”
“The water will change the colors later,” he said. “With the lights.” Miranda had heard about the fountains of Barcelona, and the one by the palace was supposed to be especially grand. “Pero … we will be in stadium. We will miss tonight,” he told her.
Did that mean he intended to have her see it another night? She was too shy to ask, but everything he said took on twice the meaning.
At the stadium, Jaime guided her toward the athletes and family entrance, where Belle caught up with them and her American golfing partner. Guards dressed in khaki checked Miranda’s backpack and told her with gestures and Jaime’s interpretation that she had either to drink her water in the plastic bottle and leave the cap there or just leave the whole bottle instead.
Belle led them up cement stairs. Many stairs. All the way to the top row of seats. “So you can have a great view of everything,” she said.
“You will watch for me?” Jaime said.
“Yes,” Miranda told him, holding his gaze.
He smiled at her then, as though he wanted to say something more. He made no effort to kiss her cheek or even touch her hand and yet the space between them, the small, aching space, sizzled with a thousand connections. Miranda remembered a physics theorem that said when two elementary particles merely brush against each other, they are each forever changed no matter how far apart in time or space they separate afterwards. She and Jaime were that theorem, now and forever.
Jaime brushed her hand.
Belle said, “You’ll be fine here, Miranda. Meet us at the archway where we came in afterwards, all right? We might just walk back; it’s such a beautiful evening, and the busses stop running after eleven anyway. That’s all right with you?”
Miranda nodded though she looked at Jaime, wondering if the “we” might include him too. She didn’t ask. She couldn’t be as bold as that.
“I go now,” he said. “You watch.”
Miranda nodded but wished he’d said, “You wait.”
He knew of her hotel because he’d helped her file the report of the theft, but would he remember? She didn’t know what time or the venue of his competitions, so she couldn’t just show up, especially without an invitation. So this might be it for the two of them, their last contact, forever. She started to say something but he’d already begun skipping down the long cement staircase to the area where thousands of contestants gathered for the Athlete’s Parade.
She willed him to turn around and smile at her once more. He didn’t.
She should run after him, just thank him again, see if there was something in his eyes to tell her that he welcomed her interest. Her legs felt heavy. What would he think if she pursued him? What would Belle say? Why did it matter so much what other people thought?
Jaime kept skipping down the steep stadium steps. Miranda merely watched him slip away. It was better this way.
It was a better scene. Asking me to work it over, give it more emotion, made it come alive. Irving might just have something here. I saved it and attached it to an email to Irving letting him know that more revisions would be coming just as he’d asked.
“What are you working on now?” Kari asks, leaning over my shoulder when she arrives home from work.
I jump a foot. “Wow, you didn’t make a sound,” I say. My eyes scan for Ho-Bee but he sleeps peacefully in his new kennel. “Scenes from the book,” I say, laying my arm across the page.
“Still? I’d have thought you’d be working on a new book by now.”
“Irving wants a new scene for the opening night ceremony.” I create on the computer, but revisions must be done on hard copy. White paper. The printed word. So I can see whether or not to break up large blocks of narrative or add in the sense of taste or smell or touch to some action before the reader disappears into that proverbial pull of mowing their lawns or polishing their nails.
I resist when Kari tries to lift my hand off the page. “You don’t want me to read it?” Kari says. “You want thousands to buy and read this book, and Oprah too, but not me? I’m … aghast.” She steps in front of me, the back of her hand to her forehead in mock distress.
She reaches down for the pitcher of iced tea, pours a glass, then sits on the opposing lounger. Cars honk and engine noises rise from the streets below, but the geranium cocoon surrounding us buffers the sounds.
“So what happens in that scene? It’s where they’re at the ceremony, right?” Kari has read the original manuscript since I’ve been in Chicago so now all my pals are up to speed … except for the revisions.
“How romance sets in. Timing, interest, and opportunity have to match up for romance to happen and for marriage and all that. You know. True love happens when you least expect it.” We hear a siren squeal through the streets. “Timing and opportunity seem to be what I miss. I love your story of meeting Clint at a nail salon.”
“Yeah, I thought he must be pretty courageous to have a pedicure, even if it was a gift from his sister. And he wore cowboy boots! I thought to myself, ‘This is mental health meeting the Marlboro Man.’ When he asked me to dinner, could I do anything else but accept? The rest is history. We were married by Easter.”
“Had there been others?”
“Oh, I don’t know. The ones I wanted to marry didn’t want to marry me, and the ones who did, well, they didn’t light that little fire I figured a girl should have.”
“They were kindling,” I say.
“Kindling. I guess all the material was there for roaring fires but they just didn’t catch. Until Clint. Besides, I had friends who married often enough to make up for my lack of commitment. More often than not, they ended up in divorce court.”
“Like me,” I say. “Though I was pretty young at twenty,” I defended. “But old enough I should have known what I wanted.”
“I think that’s an ongoing quest,” Kari says to comfort me.
“I did love Stuart, or thought I did. Now I just don’t trust my instincts.” I knew she’d be a good listener, but I wasn’t ready to tell her about my own kindling and what it lacked to make my time in Spain with Jaime a blazing fire strong enough to burn a lifetime.
“I think Darlien enjoys herself as a single woman,” I say to change the focus from me.
“She has way more experience being married to compare it with than most of us.”
“Being single isn’t so bad,” I say. “It’s certainly a better alternative than marrying the wrong man for the wrong reasons.”
Clint bounds through the door then and Kari stands to greet him. They mumble together. I hear a laugh and, “Oh, right, like that would ever happen.” Clint kisses her and they head for the kitchen. I feel a pang of something, I’m not sure what. Maybe I’ve left more than memories behind in Barcelona.
I’ve taken over cooking dinner both as preparation for my chef’s class and to be helpful to Kari and Clint. Even in another locale, I’ve formed a routine of sorts. I walk Ho-Bee, buy up fresh produce at the neighborhood market, read O magazine, and surf for more research, watching Oprah’s show every day at 4:00 p.m. I feel like a stalker and hope repeated efforts to encounter her won’t trigger Homeland Security. I hadn’t thought I could so easily shift my routines from Milwaukee to Chicago, adding people and a pup to it as well. Maybe I’m more adaptable than I’d thought. But I’d never be able to adapt to other people’s schedules for a lifetime as I’d had these past weeks. That’s what one does in a marriage.
After a meal of crab linguini with a wine cream sauce, we finish our coffees that night on the balcony deck. The evenings are starting to cool, a sign of fall setting in. Leaves will be changing soon and the breezes from Lake Michigan will bring new scents. I miss my own lake changes. I have to be back home by Thanksgiving, Christmas at the latest.
For dessert that evening, I bring out three crème brûlée from the frozen food section at Safeway while Ho-Bee does his spinning dance. I hand him a dog cracker, holding it above my shoulder to see if he can really jump that high. He can. He plops down and, using his long tail as ballast, begins to lick himself in a contortion that only another dog could find attractive.
“This is good,” Clint volunteers. “You don’t need to take a cooking class.”
“Yes I do. This dessert comes in a package, the little ceramic cups included. I need the class. Besides, it’s part of my Oprah connecting.”
“Where are they holding it?”
“At a tapas bar,” I say.
“A topless bar? You’re going to a topless bar for a cooking class?” Clint nearly chokes on his crème brûlée.
I laugh. “Not topless. Tapas, as in those little Spanish restaurants where they serve bunches of little tasty dishes. They’re all over Barcelona. The cuisine finally made it to the Midwest. But the image of a topless bar for a cooking class does have possibilities.”
“Perish the thought,” Kari says.
I set my dessert plate down so Ho-Bee can lick it clean. “I’m not so sure that’s a good idea,” Kari says. “Dogs carry germs, you know. And we all know where that little tongue has been.”
“I’ll wash it well,” I say, getting up and going inside, setting the plate on their mauve counter. “There’s another crème brûlée left,” I shout. “Do either of you want it?”
“Why not?” Kari says. “I may as well be fat as the way I am.”
The phone rings and I recognize my own number on the caller ID. “It’s Bette,” I say when Kari comes into the room. “Letting me know about my John, I suspect.”
When I’ve checked in with Bette and then hung up, Kari is already licking the spoon from the last piece of dessert. “You won’t have to fake it to look like a good cook with Oprah’s chef,” she says.
“So why’d you name your character Jaime?” Clint asks. “I’m curious about how a writer’s mind works.” Kari lowers the dining room lights and we ease into the living room, watching the city flicker its way into night. I’m stuffing little mice with catnip. Misty’s sent the fabric mice that when filled I’ll send to bloggers who have indicated an interest in my Long Bad Sentence book, hoping they won’t mistake the catnip for contraband, which is a part of The Long Bad Sentence too.
“Sometimes a name just sticks.”
“Is it based on anyone you met?” Kari asks.
I clear my throat. “I guess I can tell you. Mom and Darlien and Betty know.” I pick at my cuticle. “There was a guy I met there named Jaime. He’s sort of the character in the book.”
Kari raises one eyebrow and I know she’ll want to talk later.
“Aren’t you worried he’ll recognize himself?” Clint asks.
“If Irving doesn’t approve the manuscript, there won’t be any book for him to recognize himself in. And besides, it’ll be published in English. The only foreign language rights that have been sold with my previous books went to Finland and another to Germany. Spanish-speaking countries have apparently shown no interest in my ‘passion-less’ books — at least, that’s what Randolph tells me.”
“What does that say about the Germans and the Finns?” Clint ponders.
“Jaime won’t ever read it.” I liked using Jaime’s name so I could attribute thoughts and feelings to him, emotions that in real life I’d wondered if he felt, but hadn’t had the courage to ask. Miranda, my protagonist, could speculate, but the reader, seeing through Jaime’s point of view, would know how he truly felt, what his motives really were, while Miranda could only guess. Fiction was so much simpler than real life.
“An interesting profession,” Clint says. He rises, checks the door locks, dead bolts, and key locks while Kari secures the window blocks even though we’re on the eleventh floor. Clint stands beside her, his arm over her shoulder. Neon lights outside sparkle across their faces. An ache grows inside me, missing a tender touch in my life.
“I’m quite a character, hon,” Kari says turning from the lights. She’s picked up Drac, the little rubber mascot of the Spanish games Darlien gave her from Barcelona. It looks like a blue and green baby dinosaur with stiff little ridges down its back.
“You ought to create a character based on Kari,” Clint says and kisses her nose.
“What makes you think I haven’t?” I say.
“Which one?” Kari says. She’s smiling.
“You’ll have to read everything I’ve written to find out.”
“I have read everything you’ve written.” I can see her making a mental list of all the books and characters. “It better not be that social worker in The Long Bad Sentence.”
I smile. “Nope. But take another look at the prison guard. You might be amazed what you see reflected inside her.”
“Didn’t I read somewhere that all writers’ characters are autobiographical in nature? Maybe I should try to figure out what each of those characters in your stories is saying about you.” She twirls her Drac mascot and wiggles her eyebrows.
“That’s one of the reasons writers write,” I say. “To find out who we are. Editors help us sort out what part of the story is the character’s journey and what part of it is the author’s. Perhaps that’s why I’m struggling so with the revisions of this book. I don’t know which part is Miranda’s journey and which part is really mine.”