Last Words (2 page)

Rachel left about twenty minutes ago to do her Spanish class and will be back later. She said I was lucky to get to Madrid when I did, and no kidding. Yesterday all of France seemed to go on strike as though it’s a national event. I was stuck in Nice for a few hours trying to figure out what the hell to do. They were happy enough for me to pay for a full fare ticket from Paris to Barcelona, but did they deliver? No. I got to Nice and listened to a French announcement, and for the first time in my life there was no one around who spoke English. There was a very nice French guy in a beret (I honestly didn’t expect to see anyone in a beret except British uni posers), and he managed to communicate a lot with just “Uh …” and gestures. He waved me out of my seat, which was quite easy when the entire carriage full of people got up and left. I thought I had to change trains and was desperately checking my ticket. Long story short, because my hand is cramping up: France is on strike, I filled out my sudoku book and bought another, found a Columbian guy who had hired a mini van and offered to take a bunch of people to Barcelona if we paid our share of the rental and petrol. Fair enough. I went along and sat with my sixteen kilo backpack on my lap for a couple of hours, pinned up against the window next to a fat and sweaty guy who complained endlessly about the heat. Yeah, it’s the Riviera in summer, of course it’s going to be hot. At least I had the decency to shower in the morning. I offered him some Tic Tacs.

“I’m okay, thanks,” he said.

The transport problems were a little better in Barcelona. It took a while to figure out how to buy a ticket for the train as I had to find out what sort of ticket I needed, where to go and all that. This morning I took the train out to Madrid as per normal and as soon as I was half an hour away from Barcelona I got a text message from Rachel asking if I was on one of the delayed or cancelled trains. It turned out that Barcelona was getting in on the strike action as well and the authorities are having a hell of a time dealing with all of the tourists.

Paris was nice but there was no Internet at the hostel. I had to go to a café and try to order something from the scrawl on the blackboard. The nineteen year old kid had never heard of a cappuccino. Or, more likely, he’s never heard me say it in a terrible French accent. So I sat there with some weak brown liquid thing as I endured the slowest Internet connection known to man. Some of the sites took so long to load they ended up timing out before loading even a single frame. I tried my phone and could call and text normally but I couldn’t get online, as if there was no signal. Rachel said I could check my emails on her computer but it’s password protected, so I’ll have to wait until she comes home. In the meantime I have Clint’s ancient tablet to carry around. He’s not getting it back until I’ve beaten his Freecell score.

Overall, yeah, leaving the laptop at home has been good for my sanity. It’s forced me to see the world from my own two feet, instead of from the bed of a hostel like I’ve seen plenty of others do. The tablet has been good for browsing and booking hostels, not for logging into a dozen sites where I can see Alana getting all cosy with Assface. At least when I log in at an Internet Café I’m surrounded by people in the daytime. It’s much easier to keep a clear head and realise that I’m having a kickass July. Maybe I can get a photo with my arms around some of the prostitutes, make Alana jealous.

No, that’s a fast way of getting robbed. And an easy way of looking pathetic.

So, Rachel plans on staying in Madrid for another six weeks. She says she wants to lose weight and has a target of twenty kilos. She figures the heat will help with that. I’ve been here for a couple of hours and I’m sure I’ve lost weight as well, so I believe her. But, honestly? I haven’t seen her in four months and she looks the same now as she did back then. She said the final straw came a couple of days before Madrid when she was in a restaurant and her bra broke. I didn’t even know that could happen. She said it was so embarrassing because she was almost falling out of her top and her dress was designed in a way that made taking her bra off, even in the bathroom, a little difficult. Yeah, that has me stumped.

I have enough euro with me for a couple of bottles of wine tonight. There will be stories. Oh my god, will there be stories. I’m still curious as to how Rachel even ended up in Spain. It wasn’t even a hint of an idea when I last saw her.

I suppose I have four hours to work on the condensed version of why Alana dumped me.

Or I could see if anyone’s in the kitchen.

Part 2.

The Italian Girl has a name: Cristina, from Milan. I grabbed a couple of phrases off my tablet and made her laugh, probably at my incompetent accent, but still a laugh is a laugh. I got her with, ‘Che palle’ - ‘what a pain in the ass.’ Then, ‘Non vedo l’ora’ - ‘I can’t wait.’ I figure I can use those two for the rest of my life. Thankfully I got her and not the Dutch guy since all of my Dutch flew out of my head a couple of weeks ago. Cristina offered me some wine as a thank you.

She’s studying chemistry and wants to complete her degree in the States. She’s worried about her level of English. She’ll be fine. An hour of talking to her and I made more grammar mistakes than she did. The funny thing about her is that she’s spent the entire day in her blue pyjama bottoms with a dark long sleeved t-shirts. It’s as hot as balls in here. I guess it’s just a comfort thing. Or maybe she just sweats through her nice clothes and wants to keep them as presentable as possible.

We talked a little about Madrid. Apparently there is a huge gay area in town which I’m supposed to explore. She said it’s a lot of fun and a hot spot for picking up straight girls. They go to the clubs here so they don’t have to worry about guys hitting on them, since the guys are focussing on each other. The girls lower their defences and start to appreciate a straight guy talking to her. Too bad I don’t have my own room. Over here I might be considered exotic. I guess some crazy señorita out there has a thing for Arctic-white monoglots. Cristina then said the perfect place to meet everyone is standing in line for the bathroom. The lines take forever and you have about five minutes of talk time before moving along. Even the male bathrooms take a while because dudes are getting blow jobs. What the fuck happened to the ‘avoid eye contact at all times’ policy?

During our conversation the French girl came in to grab a drink. She doesn’t speak much English and barely any Spanish, but she was very stoned and giggly so that helped to understand her. Cristina warned me that the French girl really is sixteen, so leave her to the two French guys who yesterday managed to burn their macaroni and cheese. Cristina said she and the Russian girl helped the kids out and cooked their dinner.

It’s weird thinking down to the French kids. I guess it’s like at work. I waltzed in with my heart slamming in my chest like it was the first day of school again, hoping that I would make a friend or two and not fuck anything up, only to find myself working with forty and fifty year olds who have smoked half their lives away and are rumoured to be ex-cons. How the fuck do you break the ice like that? So … anyone watch the Simpsons last night? No? Well then, I better go to the bathroom and read up on football as much as I can.

Cristina helped me make a killer pasta dish, though she balked at me using dried spaghetti when apparently making fresh pasta is easy. She said the most important thing was to add the cooked pasta to the sauce the moment you take it out of the boiling water. Strain it first, of course, but plonk it into the sauce immediately after. The pasta will still be trying to absorb moisture and if you wait too long it will clump together. That certainly explains some of my past mistakes in life. Really important: add a splash of balsamic vinegar at the end to the sauce, stir, taste. If it’s too sweet add more vinegar, if it’s too sour add more sugar. I wish I had an Italian grandmother who could teach me these things. Mine were either into crochet or Eastenders.

Rachel will be back soon. Until then I’m waiting for the washing machine to finish its cycle. Then I need figure out where to hang my clothes. There is a line between one side of the building and the other which looks out onto a courtyard four floors below. I’ve never left my clothes to dry four floors up before. How did they even fix the line in the first place? Anyway, the German guy (Michael, easy enough to remember) must have drawn the short straw with the apartment because his bedroom window is the only one that can access the clothes line, so he has to accept a dozen people coming in and out of his room all day to get their clothes. Most of the time he lies back on his bed with the laptop nearby and with the door wide open. I feel a little sorry for the guy. There would be very little privacy when he wants it.

I’m pretty sure with every window in the building looking into the bathroom there’s not going to be much privacy in there either. I’ll ask Rachel how she deals with it or if she even cares.

Part 3.

She cares. She says you get used to it. Just as long as there are no cameras to record the moment then a startled half naked housemate is the worst of your problems.

It’s late now, though not late enough for some people. Half of the apartment are going out later but I’m wrecked. After sitting on my ass for almost two full days of travelling you’d think I would be fully rested, but no. Rachel and I went to this Japanese restaurant and we drank a little sake.

Ha! ‘A little.’

As we were walking to the next place it occurred to me … we just ordered fresh seafood even though we’re surrounded by two hundred miles of desert. Thankfully I stuck to the Chicken Katsu thing. When in a new country and in doubt, always go with chicken.

It must suck being a backpacking vegan. Although, there was that guy in Amsterdam. We chowed down in some greasy burger place. He said he was vegetarian while travelling, vegan at home, and yet there he was tucking into a meaty burger.

“I have this once a year in memory of my brother.”

I guess everyone needs rules to be flexible now and then or else you’ll just go insane.

Afterwards Rachel brought me to a churros hotspot. I never had them before. It was like eating a sugarless doughnut which you dip in liquid chocolate. It was quite nice. It’s a twenty-four hour place and is supposed to be packed in the early hours of the morning as people wait for the first train of the day after a night of clubbing.

Rachel and I chatted a lot, reminisced, it was all good. I gave her the brief story of Alana and I, how I had tried to surprise her with flowers at the front of the gym, waiting for her to come out and she never did, and I waited until the gym was locked up for the night. Rachel asked how I found out. Believe it or not, it came from her dad. He was hesitating the whole afternoon, which was probably made harder because Alana was always in a bubbly mood. If she had been a bitch it would have been easy to knock her down a peg or two, but no. Her dad leaned over and whispered, “The next time you hear her talk about what she’s looking forward to in the future, have a listen and compare it to yours.”

Yeah, that confused me for a while. Then it happened. “I can’t wait to have a house, renovate the kitchen and push it out into the garden, turn the loft into something useful, have breakfast in bed every Sunday, and wake up to someone who loves me.”

Honey, you already wake up to someone who loves you, so why is it still on your list of dreams for the future?

Oh.

Annoyingly, this occurred during a lunch time restaurant date when Lauren and Matt announced that they were pregnant. On the walk back to the Tube Alana asked if I was okay. I went home single. The next day she started dating Assface.

There are statues in this place called Sol and one is a bear eating a strawberry tree (I didn’t think strawberries grew on trees …). Then we went to Plaza Mayor to see a big statue of a guy on a horse. That was the plan, but when we got there the whole area had been converted to house a free classical concert.

Rachel piqued up and said, “They’re playing the Planets.” It sounded like the Star Wars theme. “That’s what it’s based on.” Huh.

So we waited and listened. And waited. It was a long piece. The sound wasn’t great either because it was live, echoing off the surrounding buildings and hitting us all at the wrong time. Afterwards they played the Valkerie song from Apocalypse Now.

We got back to Rachel’s place at eleven thirty and I checked my emails. Still nothing exciting happening in the world. After a few days of limited access, it’s disappointing to see that no one has missed me yet. Rachel is checking her emails now. There’s giggling coming from the room next door. As far as I can tell the French girl is all alone in there.

Despite being dead on my feet I don’t feel like going to bed just yet. Maybe because it’s 34 degrees and there’s no air-con.

13 July

Weird, weird day. First of all, the funny things:

Between Gran Vía and Sol are lots of walkways weaving around giant department stores. By the looks of things it’s just one single company that operates all the stores across several buildings. One building sells clothes, the other building sells electronics. I’m still having to translate euros to pounds. Under the pathways are the metro lines with large air vents that blast air up as the train goes by. Rachel was wearing a full length casual dress and got blasted, à la Marilyn Monroe, and her dress really did shoot up over her face.

“At least I was wearing clean underwear,” she said, laughing it off.

That wasn’t the only time it happened. Two American girls were caught out while I was walking along a little while later. The locals seem to have figured out not to walk on the vents but there was always cheering and clapping when they saw someone fall for it. I bet it only happens to foreigners.

There were lots of guys selling stuff on the side of the road, like wallets, handbags, watches, and man can they move fast when they see the police coming around the corner.

Rachel and I went out for breakfast to a small sandwich shop. Along with our order we got a bottle of red wine. That was a surprise. Red wine for breakfast.