“Ay, mamí!” Mariela shrieked when I told her about my date with the handsome stranger. He had called that afternoon to invite me out for dinner. “He’s not another gypsy, is he?” she asked, her hands on her hips. The family had forbidden me from going out with any more gypsies, and I had no desire to break their rule.
“No!” I told her he was tall and handsome and looked like Hugh Jackman.
“Quién?” Mariela asked.
“Hugh Jackman,” I repeated. “Wolverine.”
“Ay!” she shrieked, then shouted for the others to come quick, Nellie had a date with Wolverine.
Everyone came running. Andy and Mandy left their homework on the bed and rushed into the living room. Andrea came out of her room in a pink robe, and Consuela left the pot of beans bubbling on the stove.
“Quién?” Consuela asked. Mariela explained to her mother that I was going out to dinner “con Jack Hughman!”
“No,” I said. “Hugh Jackman.”
“Hugh Hackman?” Close enough. Everyone was asking me questions at once, and I tried to give the right answer to the right asker.
“Where is he from?”
“What does he do?”
“How old is he?”
“How did you meet?”
“Is he good-looking?”
“Does he have a cute brother?”
“Where is he taking you?”
“What are you going to wear?”
I told them all that I knew, that he was from the north of Spain, a chef, thirty-one years old, and that I didn’t really know anything else…except that I liked him.
“Awww…” they all said in unison.
Mariela told the girls to grab a hairdressing mag each and find a look for me for the night. I wasn’t used to doing my hair. I had three looks: hair out, in a ponytail, and up in a clip. But Mariela was not going to let me out of the house without a do. She stopped at a picture of Posh Spice with a sharp, asymmetrical bob.
“No!” I said. She shrugged and kept flipping.
Consuela held up a picture of a girl with glossy curls piled on top of her head, and everyone oohed and aahed. Meanwhile, little ten-year-old Mandy was running around the house gathering up every bottle of nail polish she could find. She presented them all to me to pick a color for my pedicure. I chose a deep red, and she insisted, with a pout and puppy-dog eyes, that I cover it with a coat of sparkles. How could I say no?
Mariela looked at her watch. “Ay, mamí!” she said again. There were only three hours left before my date. She slapped my arm with one of the magazines and told me off for not getting started earlier, then instructed Andy to get a pot of water on the boil for my facial and pushed me into the bathroom to wash my hair.
The women shook their heads and clucked their tongues. I should have been waxing and steaming and tweezing and plumping the night before, not at five p.m. on the big day. But there was nothing they could do. They were going to have to give me the express treatment and hope for the best. And although my regular hair-care routine consisted of rinse and repeat, I knew that I was going to have to give in and allow myself to be made over. I just hoped that I would recognize myself at the end of it.
• • •
“There he is!” Mandy shrieked, running into the living room. The women all raced to the window to see him, and I followed.
“Don’t be so obvious!” I begged, afraid that he would look up and see all my roommates staring at him.
There he was, standing in the lamplight, looking as handsome as ever. He was wearing a brown corduroy sports jacket over a black shirt and a pair of jeans. He was effortlessly elegant, and I was sure he was completely unaware of the fact. Mariela shook up the can of Nelly and gave me one last blast of hairspray to keep my carefully sculpted ringlets in place. Then they all wished me luck and told me to get out there and not keep such a good-looking man waiting or some other girl would walk past and snatch him up.
As soon as I was in the stairwell, I pulled the pins out of my hair and tried to break up those lacquered curls into a more natural wave. I wiped off some of the lip gloss they’d gooped onto my mouth and used the back of my hands to rub off any extra blush. Feeling more like myself again, I walked down the last flight and pushed open the door to where the handsome stranger was waiting for me.
Iñaki had made a reservation in a little restaurant just up the street from his own. It had only a dozen tables and a bar displaying the thickest, fattest tortilla I had ever seen. Once we were seated, the waiter brought us two glasses of champagne. We clinked glasses and Iñaki made a toast: “Para nosotros.” To us.
We sat there, facing each other, and I tried to hide my embarrassment behind my champagne.
What was I going to say?
Awkward pauses in conversation can normally be filled by witty remarks about the happenings of the day. But faced with this charming man I was so eager to impress, I realized that I literally couldn’t string two words together.
My Spanish had improved since I’d arrived in Madrid. I’d had to learn to get by. But I’d been picking it up in a very random fashion. I had vocabulary to open a bank account, buy a metro pass, and understand a flamenco teacher shouting directions across a crowded dance studio. But for first date small talk I had nothing.
I took another gulp of champagne. Iñaki didn’t speak any English, but he wasn’t fazed by my silence. He moved a little forward in his chair, tilting his head toward mine, and asked me very slow questions about my life in Australia. I stumbled over my words at first, but with a little more champagne, and his gentle encouragement, I became more and more animated. As I spoke, I realized that it was the first time I’d really talked to someone since I’d left home. Communication had been about survival, but now I was actually able to talk to someone about who I was, where I’d come from, and the journey I was on. And Iñaki related to a lot of what I said about being away from home. He had gone on a journey of his own, leaving his home in the Basque Country and moving down to Madrid to run the family restaurant. He was fascinated by the idea of Australia, a land so far away and so different to his own. He filled up my glass as I talked about the things I missed from home and the things I loved about Spain. He gave me space to tell my story, and to confess for the first time that things hadn’t been as easy as I’d thought they would be.
The more I got to know him, the more I saw a boy from the mountains. His warm brown eyes were calm, yet always alert, taking in everything that happened around us. I could imagine him at peace in the forest. Beneath all his urban sophistication, he seemed like the kind of guy who would know how to rub sticks together to make a fire, and be able to tell by the wind which way was north and which was south. I was right. When I asked him what he missed most about his home he told me it was his mountain. There was a mountain in his village called Uzterre that he climbed every time he went home. I’d never climbed a mountain before. I wondered if girls with Basque boyfriends have to climb mountains. I wondered how high it was…
My train of thought was derailed by the arrival of the tortilla. And oh my goodness, what a tortilla! It’s hard to be elegant when you’re eating Spanish food. A big, fat Spanish omelet is messy business, especially a good one. A good Spanish omelet should be three inches high and barely cooked in the middle. It should be just potato and egg held together by the collective Spanish fantasy, against all laws of gravity, and it should melt in your mouth in a kind of “Oh my God, where’s my napkin?” moment of sinful food bliss. And this one did. I said good-bye to my lipstick and let Iñaki pour me another glass of red wine.
After dinner we wandered out of the restaurant, tipsy on champagne and wine. It was warm enough for us to sling our jackets over our arms and enjoy the night air. Iñaki walked me through the little yellow-lit streets back to my apartment.
As we turned onto my street, I could see three of the primos standing under my window, calling up to see if I was out or just sleeping. “Are they waiting for you?” Iñaki asked.
“Er…I don’t think so,” I said. The primos saw us coming up the street and headed off in the opposite direction. I noticed Iñaki watching them as they walked away.
We paused at the doorway to say good night. He brushed back my hair and ran his fingers over my forehead, and I relaxed those frown lines that were forming way too soon from having to deal with things I was never meant to deal with—gypsies, donkeys, hot rollers… Standing there with Iñaki, I felt as if all the weight that I’d been carrying on my shoulders fell away. And I decided to try something. I reached up on tiptoes and I kissed him. It was like my first ever kiss. I wrapped my arms around his neck and I kissed him under the streetlight, and before I knew it he was kissing me back.
Life doesn’t have to be so hard, I told myself. Life can be like this, wrapped up in the arms of a handsome chef on the street in Madrid. And he whispered in my ear, “Buenas noches. Good night.”
When I opened my eyes, I saw four faces pressed against the glass on the window on the second floor. And as Iñaki pressed his lips to my cheek, I could see Mariela clutching her chest and saying, “Ay, mamí!”