This Fish Needs A Bicycle

foreign tongues

There are dozens of photographs of us from that summer -- looking like giddy lovers in a rowboat in Sevilla, fighting over a drippy candle on a night tour of Salamanca, prancing like fools in a fountain at the palace in Córdoba.

We argued playfully in that spicy foreign tongue – flirtation’s flimsy guise.
"¡Que no!"
"¡Que si, mujer!"
"Cuídate, guapeton. ¡Te doy!"

He left gifts for me in my shoulder bag, wrapped in sheets of Madrid’s daily newspaper – a local artist's CD, pressed poppies, a lizard. The lizard turned out to be a stowaway from Altamira, but I gave Sean credit. And he gave me a piggy back ride when my sandals hurt. Who climbs a mountain in heels, mujer?

In a packed bull arena one scalding night in late June, Ricky Martin stopped mid-song and called out to us from the stage. In a sea of pulsing bodies, tall, conspicuously-American Sean wouldn’t dance.

“Why aren’t you dancing? Everyone else is Dancing.”
“Me falta el ritmo.” I lack rhythm.
“I feel sorry for your compañera. But we’ll give you another chance. I’m going to try this again, and perhaps she can help you find your rhythm?”

The crowd cheered and the song (and Ricky’s gyrating hips) began again. I moved up closer, and from behind, placed one hand on his left hip, the other on his chest. “Así, cuñado.”

Cuñado. Translated literally, it means brother-in-law, but it functions as a term of endearment -- a fond, yet sterile one. But to no one’s surprise that night, the electricity between my hand and his chest contradicted my language as well as our chummy kinship.

The following afternoon, we moved quietly through our weekly art seminar in the Prado, the two of us eventually ducking out of another long lecture on Velázquez to one of the cooler, less crowded exhibits on the floor below. We stood shoulder to shoulder in front of Goya’s Black Paintings making small talk.

“You’re invited to cena on Saturday.” My host mother was in love with Sean and he was a regular dinner guest.

He turned, touched my elbow and I remember electric shocks ran down my fingers.

“Mandona,” he said (mandona, the bossy one) “Me encantas.”
You enchant me.
“Igual.”
Ditto. I answered without looking at him.

He shouldered my bag as he always did, and we left through the museum’s rear entrance, disappearing into the botanical gardens. We stayed for the better part of the afternoon.

There are no pictures of what happened next.

Posted by This Fish at August 3, 2004 11:30 AM