David
Dominique had lived in Spain for twenty of her twenty-two years, but some people still considered her a foreigner. More like a citizen of the world, smarter than most and prettier than anyone. When Ivan introduced me to her, I was stunned. As stunned as he must have been the night he first laid eyes on her in a metro station and she smiled at him. They fell in love at first sight, just like in the love stories that don’t happen to guys like me. They were both good and healthy, and in each other, they had found someone who they could share beautiful things with. That was my mistake. I always ended up falling in love with people who brought out the worst in me, who made me feel insecure, like a big kid, who made things not just difficult but impossible. I fell in love with the antiheroine because I couldn’t be bothered with Superwoman. I always liked the villains, even in the comics I read as a teenager.
I was delirious. My head had been trapped in a delirious state ever since Idoia left me. I would think these things over and over, sometimes feeling sorry for myself and judging myself because no girl had ever made me feel even close to what I had felt for her. And in that moment, seeing my best friend’s beautiful girlfriend rocking her baby, I was more sure than ever that I had made a lot of mistakes in my life.
“When did I start fucking it all up?” I asked out loud.
“Whoa, the lump on the sofa is talking. Look, my love, the walking dead.” She propped her daughter, Ada, up so she could see me, and she gave a gummy smile, her face still red from the tears that had woken her from her nap.
“Seriously, Domi, when did my life go to shit?” I ran my fingers through my hair, overwhelmed.
She sat down next to me, balanced her baby on her knees, and smiled.
“Oh, God, no,” I moaned. “Don’t smile at me like that with your beautiful face before you rake me over the coals.”
“What are you talking about?” She laughed at me like I was crazy.
“Your boyfriend does the same thing. You’re both so sweet. You smile first to stupefy people, and then you give the death blow. Go on then, shoot.”
“David…you’ve been glued to that sofa for a week.”
“That’s not true. I went to work.”
“In the same shirt.”
“But I showered.”
“I’m not so sure about that.”
I leaned back and groaned.
“I know you liked Idoia a lot,” she acknowledged gently.
“I loved her.”
“You really liked Idoia a lot, okay.”
I sucked my teeth; I was never going to convince her that this thing with Idoia was true love.
“I know you believe you loved her, but love, my boy, is something else,” she assured me.
“It’s not feeling alive, having heart palpitations, feeling like you have your hands full?”
She put her hand on my forearm, halting my speech.
“Love isn’t waiting for her to respond to a message or measuring your own self-worth based on how much attention she gives you one day, knowing the wind will blow in another direction and she’ll change her mind the next.”
“That’s the thrill of it—”
“No. That’s a misunderstanding of love. If it’s torture, it’s not love. Love is fun. Super fun, actually.” A smile broke across her beautiful, clear, trustworthy face. “You feel so comfortable and so yourself with the other person that you could be doing almost anything. You feel capable. And you laugh with your mouth full, fighting, cooking, and even in bed. David, really…love is much lighter than anything you’ve felt. It makes you fly; it doesn’t pin you to the sofa hugging…what even is this?” She pointed at a piece of clothing I was clenching, which I snuggled whenever I was on the sofa.
“One of her shirts.”
Domi picked it up gingerly between two fingers, as if it was a test tube full of a lethal virus, and held it up in the air.
“One: this couldn’t be any tackier. Two: it smells like death. Three: you’re being ridiculous.”
She put Ada in my lap and carried the shirt over to the trash, where she tossed it without a second thought. As soon as she came back over, I went to retrieve it. A little wash and it would be mine forever.
“Your mother is a cruel vixen,” I murmured to the little girl.
“I’m not a vixen. Do me a favor.”
“Whatever you want. I live on your couch,” I murmured. “Because I’m a mediocre dude with no aspirations and blah, blah, blah.”
“David, we’re not making ends meet and you do the grocery shopping, you help around the house, and you take care of Ada. It’s a win-win—”
“Yeah, right, fine.”
She snapped her fingers at me gravely while her daughter gummed my beard.
“Take a shower. A nice long one. Sit and listen to ‘All by Myself’ while you cry and complain because the love of your life abandoned you, but then stop wallowing. It’s Friday and I know you have work, but you’re a bartender in a shitty club, you’re young, you’re cute, and you’re free. If you don’t sleep at home tonight, we won’t call the police.”
“I need to find my own place,” I muttered, feeling miserable.
“Go take a shower and get laid for fun, fucking hell!”
She took the baby and pointed at the tiny bathroom we all shared.
I dragged my feet and heard her mutter that I could thank her later. I felt the urge to spout some drivel at her. I was angry, and I felt like I had the right to feel like a piece of shit, a kind of cocoon of grief and anxiety. Who cared if I looked like shit at work? From Monday to Thursday I juggled jobs as a florist and a dog walker, so I didn’t think either the flowers in the storeroom or a pack of dogs would care about my scruffiness. But Domi was right. It was Friday, and I had to go back to the bar, and smelling like dick with greasy hair might be a problem there.
I had no choice. I needed the money.
The club was jumping. It’s one of the things I’ve never understood about Madrid. It was a beautiful night. What drove people into a skeezy club where they just got elbowed all night? And where it’s hot, because 120 souls in a club, dancing, drunk, and—ninety percent of the time—horny, create lot of heat. I guess the answer to the question is that there are always people in Madrid. Everywhere. On the terraces; in the alleys snaking through neighborhoods like Malasaña, Lavapiés, or La Latina; in the “old man” bars where the walls are covered in photos of dishes already faded by the decades, where you can still smell a whiff of tobacco; on the rooftops of hotels with clubs and fake speakeasies. That’s what happens in the capital; there is life everywhere even when you want to be alone.
But Dominique’s speech got under my skin. I couldn’t get it out of my head, the kind of love she had been talking about. It was floating around me constantly, like a puff of smoke that wouldn’t take form.
At first, I fell into a mistake more cliché than putting a beret on a French character: looking for someone to help me get over the pain.
I know, I know. Super dirty, but we all do it. We’re human, and we all grew up hearing that the best way to get over someone is to get under someone else, so getting laid for fun by a girl who was probably in the same situation as me was my first plan. I scanned the horizon looking for someone (preferably with short blond hair, a cold look, and pouty lips) with whom I could try to make a date for closing time, but…I didn’t find anyone. No. Actually it was exactly the opposite. I saw tons of people, but none of them were Idoia.
I watched couples making out passionately in the corners, and I found myself wondering if they loved each other in a fun way. Fucking idiot, of course most of them had just met that night. Why would they be thinking about love?
It seemed stupid to me. I was obsessed with the stupidity. Having fun with love? Fine, maybe in the honeymoon stage. But, like everything else, the one who has the upper hand would always be having more fun, and let’s be honest, love has always been a power struggle.
“What are you thinking about?” Ivan asked me as he restocked the fridge and I filled some highball glasses with ice.
About Idoia. How I’m dying to send her a message. How I’d love to see her appear in the doorway. How nobody is like her. How I want to kiss her again and listen to our songs while I trace hearts on her back, and now, I want to drink myself to death.
“How much I hate this job.” I grinned at him like a lunatic.
Despite the deafening volume of the music, the girls I was serving heard me and burst out laughing. I pasted on a friendly face and turned to them, raising my voice above the song of the moment.
“Nothing personal, girls. Did you know the bartenders have to clean the toilets too?”
“Noooo!” all three screamed in horror.
“Don’t listen to him.” Ivan laughed. “We’ve only had to do that a few times. There’s a cleaning crew.”
I made a face, implying that my colleague was lying, and pulled a bottle off the shelf behind me.
“It’s not such a bad place to work, is it? You probably meet a lot of people,” one of them said. She was a brunette with full lips, enormous eyes.
I don’t want to meet a lot of people. I want to climb into bed with Idoia and wake her up with my tongue.
“Okay, fine. It’s not so bad.”
“Where are you from?” she wanted to know. “You don’t have a Madrid accent.”
“Nobody in Madrid is from Madrid.” I plastered a half-smile on my face and put the bottle back in its place.
“That doesn’t answer the question,” she said teasingly.
I pushed their drinks over and opened the sodas with a bottle opener and a flick of my wrist.
“Tanqueray gin and tonic, vodka with orange juice, and Barceló with Coke Zero. That’ll be thirty-six, ladies.”
The one whose round it was waved her card and tapped it against the card reader to pay.
“Goodbye, Mr. Bartender who’s trying to be mysterious,” the brunette called out.
“I’m sure that won’t be your last drink. So I’ll probably see you again.”
I smiled, but as soon as they disappeared into the crowd, my smile vanished. This was my least favorite thing about being a bartender: having to pretend I had no personal problems.
“You were flirting.” Ivan elbowed me.
“What’re you still doing here?” I laughed.
“Enjoy it, David. You’re single.” He winked.
“I guess so.” And I flashed him the fakest smile in my repertoire.
“You feeling better?”
“Yes,” I lied.
He slapped me on the back and headed over to a group of guys who were waving at us, desperate for another drink or a round of shots.
Enjoy it… you’re single.
Two rounds of Jäger shots demanded by screams. One “Do you have chocolate tequila?” from the mouths of two little girls who didn’t look like they were legal. Three winks. One “What time do you get off?” Two “What a rip-off” and one phone number scrawled on a napkin.
Immature. Head in the clouds. An out-of-touch romantic. No vision of the future.
Fuck it. Maybe Idoia didn’t turn around when I stood there waiting like a jerk for her to look at me again, but could I let her go believing I was all of those things? How could I let that happen? My fucking chest was full of feelings and things I wanted to share with her. I wanted to marry her, have kids with her, adopt a dog, a sheep, fifteen cats. Whatever! No. I was sure I could still do something about our relationship.
I didn’t want to get laid for fun. I already had the person who could take away my pain. And I knew whom I was going to focus my attention on. I was very clear about who deserved my efforts.
I wasn’t going to be down in the dumps. Of course not. The breakup wasn’t going to discourage me. Quite the opposite. It would have a purpose. It would make me better. Turn me into a man.
If you’re thinking that I realized I was the person who could get me out of my own pain, whom I should focus my attention on, and who deserved the effort…you obviously think I’m smarter than I am. No. Really, even though I suddenly felt like my life jacket was inflating and I was floating back up to the surface, I was actually filling my pockets with stones, like Virginia Woolf. Because suddenly all my brain chemistry had decided that…I was going to get my ex back.
And I guess that decision is what led me to her…and I’m not talking about Idoia anymore.