We greeted each other with what had become our classic handshake, and he noticed that the afternoon before I had taken the time to go get a manicure and my nails were painted a soft pastel turquoise.
“Ooooh. So trendy!” he teased.
“Well, you’re gonna freak out because I plan to buy super chic stuff.”
“She-what?”
“Trendy, David, trendy.”
He hadn’t cut his hair, and of course he hadn’t combed it. He was wearing faded jeans with a slightly dated cut and a black T-shirt that I held between my fingers and stretched as far as I could. On the left side, aha…a hole.
“What a fucking disaster.” I laughed.
“Queen, since when does the wrapping matter when the gift is so great?”
We wandered down the street, not really knowing where to start. It was eleven in the morning, and stores were just starting to open, but Fuencarral Street was already teeming with people.
We walked without speaking, but I didn’t feel the obligation to fill every silence. There was something about him that had made me feel that way from the very first day: comfortable.
“Why do we get along so well?” I made a face when the thought popped into my head.
“Because I’m weird, like you.”
“Your weirdness and mine are like night and day.”
“That’s probably why.” He tossed me a cheeky wink.
I thought there were a lot of curious things in his eyes, but I didn’t know how to define any of them. Maybe because there are no words for the most beautiful things in life.
“I made a list of clothes that are essentials.” I handed him a napkin I had scribbled on and noticed that, for some reason, I was blushing.
“You like your lists, eh?”
“A lot. I wrote it while I was eating breakfast.”
David kept walking while he studied the napkin with a furrowed brow.
“Did you write this in Spanish or elvish?”
“Stop.” I snatched it out of his hands and started to read out loud. “‘Jeans. Black pants. A suit. A white button-up. A polo shirt.’”
“A polo shirt?”
A few passersby turned around after his cackles startled them. It was like watching a scene from The Joker live.
“What’s going on?”
“A polo shirt? In your dreams. You’re not going to dress me like some preppy Cayetano.”
“Every man has a polo shirt.”
“No. Every man should have socks that are mismatched or look like Swiss cheese and an ex who they would still fuck, but not a polo. Scratch the polo. And the suit.”
“The suit?”
“Where do you want me to wear it? Walking the dogs?”
“There’s always an occasion.”
“I don’t plan on getting married anytime soon, and no one is the right age to invite me to a funeral, so screw the polo and the suit. Go on.”
“You didn’t say anything about the white button-up, so I’m going to take that as a win.”
“Scratch the white button-up. Not in a million years. I don’t want to look like a waiter in Plaza Mayor.”
I rolled my eyes. “Okay. Hmm…some new shoes.”
“These are fine.” He pointed to the ones he was wearing, which were battered and slightly faded.
I looked at his shoes and then at his face. I grabbed his arm to drive my message home.
“No, David. They’re not fine, I promise.”
“What’s wrong with my jeans?”
“They’re out of fashion.”
“Did you come to that conclusion yourself, or did the girl who buys your clothes tell you?” he quipped like a smart-ass.
“Imagine how out of fashion they are if even I noticed.”
“Touché. Anything else?”
“I assume you have decent underwear.”
“Plain boxers. With no holes.” He raised a solemn hand.
“Well, then I think we should take a look at the T-shirt section too…just in case you don’t feel like walking around looking like a colander.”
He cleared his throat and looked at me a little more seriously than usual. Hmm, intense. We already had things that were usual.
“Listen, Margot…I…I can’t spend a lot of money.”
“Oh…right.” I suddenly felt a little thrown off. I had never had this problem before, so…I felt a little uncomfortable and superficial. Guilty about my privilege. “What’s your budget?”
“If I say fifty euros, I’m going to sound stupid.”
“No. You don’t sound stupid. I’m sure with…I don’t know…seventy? We could work miracles.”
“What about you?”
“What about me?”
He shot me a strange look. “What about you? Because it’s not fair if I don’t write a list of essentials.”
“I mean, go ahead then…”
“Gimme a couple minutes.”
We kept strolling, peering into window displays on one side of the street and then the other, but David seemed much more focused on observing the people he was passing by than on the clothes. Every now and again he would take his phone out of his pocket, make a note of something with a playful look on his face, and then put it back. He was making his list.
We had almost reached the Tribunal metro stop when we realized that maybe it would be easier to go straight to Zara. It had clothes for both of us, its stuff was usually affordable, and it managed to provide options with personality that were stylish and fashionable. We turned around, and he kept mockingly writing things on the list.
Until we got to Gran Vía. And he handed me his phone.
I stared at it. Right in front of me, dressed like a college kid with no concept of elegance, David had managed to localize the fashion trends of the summer just in a single stroll around Madrid.
“You might need to buy a fanny pack too,” he said, side-eyeing all the girlies who had them slung across their chests.
“Not in a million years. I don’t have enough swagger. And the ones about flaunting my belly button and running around in something super tight are vetoed too.”
“We’ll see.”
When we got into Zara, we ended up dying of laughter, getting prepped for some kind of bizarre and demented competition where no one would win but there would definitely be a loser. Probably our wallets.
I would choose the things he had to try on, and he would choose mine. Taking turns, to make it more fun. I wanted to go first, of course, so I dragged him to the men’s floor and demanded eagerly that he tell me all his sizes.
“No idea.” He shrugged. “You look. I wear a size forty-four shoe, that I do know.”
“What do you mean, look?”
“Well, I still haven’t learned how to twist my head around and look at my back, but hey, doesn’t Mr. Wonderful say nothing is impossible if you really put your mind to it?”
I grabbed his arm roughly, like he was a little boy, and spun him around, which must have seemed very funny to him because he burst into laughter. I peeked under the waist of his trousers and caught a glimpse of a tight butt in black boxers. I blushed a little and almost forgot what number I had read on the label, but I blinked a couple of times and then did the same with his shirt. His back was tan and wide, and there was an indentation down the middle. I noticed there was a whitish mark from a couple of scratches. Damn Idoia…or damn him, who knows?
I zoned out for a few seconds, then shook myself out of it, and planted myself in front of him.
“Ready.”
“You enjoyed that, eh?”
And he said it with an arched eyebrow and a sly smile.
I had never noticed his eyebrows… They were messy, but they gave him a look…a something. Something. I couldn’t put my finger on what it was.
He vetoed shorts that he said looked like a “politician who summers in Mallorca” (mental note, never introduce him to my uncle Luis) and sneakers that were “worse than wearing loafers made of gophers.” I have no idea why he cracked up when he said that. But still, I got him to try on some skinny jeans, some black ankle-cropped chinos, some T-shirts, a patterned shirt, and…a white button-up! He didn’t resist. He went into the changing room alone, weighed down by all the clothes.
“I’ll wait for you here.” I pointed to one of the racks of clothes.
“You’re not coming in with me?”
“Me?”
“Of course. How am I going to know if they look good on me?”
“Trust your intuition.” I gave him a few encouraging pats on the arm and moved away.
He stared after me like an abandoned puppy as I left, but I didn’t give in. Digging around in his pants to find out his size had already been too far. What was I thinking?
He was quick. When I saw him come out, he was looking at the tags on the things he hadn’t thrown onto the table outside the changing rooms. He looked disheveled, giving off “survivor of an accident in a wind tunnel” vibes.
“Let’s see…I’ll take these.” Focused, he let his eyelids droop and piled clothes into my arms.
Two basic T-shirts; a patterned shirt with short sleeves, not too patterned; the jeans; and the black pants.
“What about the white button-up?”
“Fuck that shit.”
“But I’m sure it looked great on you!”
“71.75 Euros,” he replied very seriously, his eyes wide.
While we wandered around the women’s floor and David eyed the clothes racks, I felt a minor panic attack. Nothing as bad as the day I sent my relationship and my discretion to hell, but similar to how I felt when I opened the clothes my mother had sent to boarding school for the days we didn’t have to wear a uniform, but on the opposite end of the spectrum. Everything seemed so…small? Tight, of course. And low-cut. Risqué. Young.
“Size?”
I pretended to be deaf. I don’t know why we, especially women, have so many hang-ups when it comes to saying our size out loud, whatever it may be. It’s just a number sewn into a piece of cloth.
But David didn’t have enough patience to give me time to realize I was going to have to tell him no matter what, so I felt myself being dragged behind a rack, where he studied the labels inside my clothes just like I had done to him.
“You’ve gotta be fucking with me,” I heard him murmur.
“What?”
“You match your bra to the color of your shirt?”
“Leave me alone! You’re having too much fun with this!”
“You say that like you didn’t do the same.”
He pushed past me and gave me a very smug wink.
“I didn’t have that much fun,” I justified myself.
“It doesn’t matter, silly. If it scratches an itch, it doesn’t matter to me. I know you’re really lonely.”
I didn’t think twice before I grabbed an empty hanger and smacked him across the back with it. I don’t think he was expecting my reaction, but…well, I don’t think he thought I could be…spontaneous either. I was usually more rigid, a tough nut to crack, immovable.
David started wandering through the clothing racks with a scientific interest and specific protocol: first he did a long loop around the floor only to turn and retrace his steps all the way back. Just when I was starting to think nothing would satisfy him, he scooped up a black bodysuit and a pair of matching…shorts. He tossed them into my arms and darted toward a flowery ruffled skirt that another girl was clutching.
“Sorry, excuse me? Fashion emergency,” he said, before snatching the hanger from her hands.
I had to hide behind the clothes he was tossing at me so she wouldn’t see me laugh.
“This dress will give you a good pair,” he said very certainly, looking at a very tight and colorful garment with a neckline cut down to the belly. “Can I say that without sounding sexist?”
“I’m not sure.”
“I’m not objectifying you. Judging by the bra you’re wearing, I get the impression you care how people see…you know, how they see your bust.”
“How do you know what kind of bra I’m wearing just from the back, you troll?”
“Because the tag was sticking out, and even I can read ‘Wonderbra.’”
“Eat shit.”
“Not my fave, thanks.”
Never, ever, had anyone acted so naturally with me, and…I still needed time to figure out if I liked it or not.
A leopard-print skirt and a silver-sequined miniskirt flew into my arms. I stared at them, flabbergasted.
“Do you remember where we saw those white pants…the crazy wide ones?”
“No,” I answered in my best tough-guy voice.
“Ah, yes. Here they are.”
Those pants and another tight, low-cut, ribbed white shirt joined the pile. Then a see-through top.
“Are you nuts?”
The snicker that escaped him sounded exactly like mwahaha.
He was getting cocky. Really cocky. I was scared I had created a monster, and I imagined him decked out in black, with a turtleneck and thick-framed glasses, sitting in the front row of New York Fashion Week, harshly critiquing the models for a major magazine. Well…at least that would be a successful future. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad.
“David, what does success mean to you?” I asked him.
“Winning the lottery without even buying a ticket?”
“No.”
“Then being free.”
“What do you mean being free?”
I could barely hold any more, but he still added a spaghetti-strap dress in a material I would guess was satin and a crop top to the teetering heap in my arms.
“You know. Time to do whatever I really want at any moment. I’m sure true luxury has nothing to do with money in a material way. Luxury, which is what money really buys, is time and freedom.”
His scruffy eyebrows arched as he talked, and as he said the last word, he licked his lips, like his mouth was dry, like he had just given a speech where he revealed more about himself than he meant to.
“That’s very wise.”
“That short red romper’ll be perfect for the ‘kissing a girl’ night in Greece,” he said, pointing.
I was starting to discover that David swung between an interesting duality; on one hand, he made me roar with laughter, even when I didn’t want to, and on the other…he made me think.
“This one with white Converse.” He plucked a hanger with a short patterned skirt from the rail. “And this one.” He grabbed another one with a white cropped shirt sure to show the midriff. “It’ll be lit.”
“Please tell me you’re not copying Idoia’s looks.”
“What? No! Idoia loves lace, see-through stuff, and latex.”
I made a face, which he answered with a purr.
“Chop, chop, into the changing room.”
“You know you can only take in six items at a time, right?” I asked with a mountain of clothes in my arms.
“Well, then hurry…we have a lot of trips to make.”
I didn’t let him come in. That was the deal. He would stay outside the dressing room, and I would come out with the reject pile and get more clothes. And there were a lot of rejects: the see-through top was the first, the red romper the second, and the silk dress alongside it. Though I was pleasantly surprised by it, the sequin miniskirt still had the same fate, but he soon showed up with some wide-legged pants, cropped at the ankle, to fill that role. I decided to take everything else. Even those last ones. And, for the first time in a long time, I had the urge to walk out wearing some of the clothes, to rip off the tags and look at myself in the mirror after throwing a few of them together into funky outfits. I felt…playful? I don’t know. Ready to take risks. Basically, I was definitely going to pack all of these for my trip. Nobody I knew would see me in them. It would be like the costume a superhero uses to disguise herself. It would be my new identity in the role of a spy. It would be what a teenager would hide in the bottom of her closet because Mama doesn’t approve and she liked it more than her uniform.
When we paid and got out of there, I felt more gratitude toward the boy who was complaining about the price of jeans than for many of those lifelong friendships who…hadn’t returned my calls since the wedding. The ones who knew exactly who I was, who invited me to their vacations on a yacht or who came to gossip at the events I attended. And I felt so indebted that…when we said goodbye at the metro so that he could drop all his new stuff off at home before he went to work, when I watched him trot down the stairs at the mouth of Gran Vía, getting lost among the people with the sound of a street saxophonist floating over them…I decided that we deserved to let our new friendship come to fruition. He had to get Idoia back if that was what he wanted, and in the meantime I would strive to tease as many smiles out of him as I could.
I passed a shoe store and bought three pairs of Converse, one white, one black, and another for him, which I sent to the bar with a messenger and a note: “I bought myself a matching pair. You deserve them.”
I reread his reply at least four times, feeling thrilled and like I was doing something crazy each time.
I hope we wear the soles out walking around Madrid together. Thank you so much, Margot. Maybe sad people can do much more than understand each other.