Gaudi Afternoon

by Barbara Wilson

“That’s what I can’t figure. Ben said he’s wealthy. She said April gets checks from a bank too.”

  “Rich people are mysterious,” said Ana. “Some of the people I deal with are swimming in money, but they’re always trying to cheat me. They’re truly convinced they’re poor.”

  “Well, I suspect Hamilton,” I said. “Because he doesn’t have a sense of humor.”

  I helped Ana get ready to move the birth mother house out of the apartment to its destination in a suburb outside Barcelona. It would be a sad relief to see it go tomorrow. “I think I’ll feel more like myself then,” Ana said somewhat dejectedly.

  “Anybody can have babies,” I said to cheer her up. “Only some of us can create art. Besides, babies grow up, that’s the problem. You never hear anyone say, ‘Oh I really want to have a teenage dope fiend who plays loud music and brings disgusting adolescents home and thinks I’m stupid.’ But that’s what most people get.”

  “But first you get the nice part,” said Ana, starting to laugh. “And anyway, my child wouldn’t be a rebel.”

  “That’s what my mother said,” I remembered. “She still can’t believe what happened to her baby girl.”

  I hadn’t seen Carmen since our night out. I gave her a call and asked her if she’d like to hear some jazz later on. According to Ben, Hamilton played with a Catalan trio three nights a week at a certain jazz club in the Barri Gòtic. I thought we might check it out.

  There was no point in getting there early, and early in Spain means any time before midnight. So Carmen and I had a long romantic dinner and then made a few stops at various bars along the winding streets of the Barri Gòtic before we turned up at the high-tech club that had replaced the smoky cellar I remembered. It was cool and avant-garde, with uncomfortable chairs and blotchy abstract paintings on the walls, and a hip young waiter with skinny shoulders and a shock of bleached hair like Andy Warhol’s. Carmen and I were slightly out of place among the young women and men in their black turtlenecks and oversize jackets. Carmen had gotten herself up in a low-cut dress that showed a daring amount of bosom and I accompanied her as Katherine Hepburn in belted gabardine slacks and a raw silk shirt. We found seats and ordered champagne. Carmen smoked and looked around suspiciously.

  “Is this a funeral? Why are all these people in black?”

  “They’re Catalans,” I said.

  “Claro.”

  “They’re modernos.”

  “Mmm,” she said, obviously aware that her cleavage was being eyed. She adjusted her spaghetti straps. “The only time I will wear black is when you die, querida.”

  “Carmen, I’m touched.”

  The jazz that had been playing on the sound system tapered off and three men came forward to the performer’s area. An alto sax, a clarinet and a piano. On sax was Hamilton, who stared at me for a second before smiling. I waved cheerfully.

  Nobody ever said he wasn’t a handsome guy. I wouldn’t want a receding hairline and a pot belly, but I wouldn’t mind having his straight nose and well-modeled lips. He was wearing jeans and an open-necked white shirt, rolled up at the sleeves, and a gold chain around his neck.

  They played. And I was surprised at how good Hamilton was, how he could really sing with that sax. It wasn’t fair—to have a trust fund and talent too.

  Hamilton came over during the break. He told us we both looked lovely and Carmen beamed at him, even though he was speaking English.

  “I heard you didn’t have much luck with Ben at the airport,” he said to me.

  “That’s right. We began to have our doubts that Frankie had even taken Delilah there.”

  “That occurred to April right after you left,” said Hamilton. “There’s no way Frankie could have gotten Delilah out of the country.”

  “Why not?”

  “Delilah is listed on Ben’s passport, not on Frankie’s. Delilah doesn’t have a passport of her own. She’d never have made it through passport control. Ben hadn’t thought of that either. That must mean Frankie has Delilah somewhere in Barcelona.”

  “Why didn’t you come to the airport to tell us?”

  “We thought that if Frankie were somewhere in the building it would be good if we waited her out.” Hamilton sipped the beer the waiter had brought him. I’d noticed that he and the bleached blond had touched hands briefly. “And, if you want the truth, I didn’t want to leave April alone.”

  More likely she didn’t want to leave you alone, I thought. “Why not?”

  “I think it’s possible that April might have had something to do with Delilah’s kidnapping.”

  “But she’s Delilah’s co-parent now. Why would April want to help Frankie?”

  Hamilton shook his head. “That I don’t know yet. But Ben and April and Delilah have been living with me for two weeks now and I’ve had a chance to notice some things. April almost never talks directly to Delilah anymore and she doesn’t seem that happy to be with either of them. I don’t think she likes kids that much, and Delilah can feel it.”

  “It’s probably just a stressful time,” I said. “Neither Ben or April is working, Delilah’s not in school, of course there’s some tension.”

  “I know all that,” said Hamilton patiently. “But that doesn’t mean I can’t still wonder if April might have had some reason for wanting Delilah out of the way.”

  “April’s not that kind of person,” I said categorically. “She’s warm, loving, very friendly….”

  Hamilton watched my face. “I’m curious as to why neither of you heard Frankie in the apartment.”

  “There was nothing to hear until the door closed.”

  “How long were you there?”

  He obviously thought he was interrogating me.

  “Look, if you think I had anything to do with this, you’re mistaken. Frankie hired me in London to help her locate someone who she said was her husband Ben. She later told me that Ben was her ex-husband. She never told me that Ben was a woman, that Frankie herself was a transsexual or that the two of them had a long-standing custody dispute over Delilah.”

  “But Frankie had hired you, right? And presumably, if she had offered you more money to help her get Delilah back, you would have accepted. You say you met Frankie earlier that afternoon at Sagrada Família. It would have been the easiest thing in the world for you to watch the building, see me and Ben come out, keep April occupied, and make sure the door was unlocked.”

  I was deeply offended. “I’m a Spanish translator,” I said. “Not a hired kidnapper.”

  “Relax,” said Hamilton. “I don’t really suspect you. You had the opportunity, but not the motive. Unless you consider money a motive, which I don’t.”

  Oh, rich men. They live in a world of their own.

  He went on, “It’s April I suspect. I don’t know when or why she got in touch with Frankie, but I’d like to find out.”

  “I’m curious,” I said. “Why is it that Ben refers to Frankie as he and you call her her?”

  “I call people what they want to be called,” said Hamilton. “And if Ben weren’t so stubborn she would too.”

  “What do you think of Frankie?”

  Hamilton sighed. “You have to like her. That doesn’t mean you have to trust her.”

  The bleached blond waiter was back, asking Hamilton if he wanted anything else. With a smile that transformed his face Hamilton said, “Only you, chico.” Then he shook my hand and said, “I’ll keep in touch,” and went back up to the stage.

  Carmen had wandered off and was talking to the bartender. As it turned out he was also from Andalucía and they were exchanging derogatory remarks about the Catalans. I brought her back to the table and showed her the book that April had loaned me on Reflexology, Stories the Feet Can Tell.

  “Carmen,” I whispered, “Wouldn’t you like a foot massage? Standing all day in high heels your feet must get awfully tired.” I pointed out some of the diagrams. “Look, from this chart you can see where the stomach is, and the thyroid, the lungs, the hear
t, everything. And by touching the soles of the feet you can heal things that are wrong with you.” I translated, “See, you just press this point and you deal with Shoulder Trouble and Salivation Problems. Over here you’ve got Toxemia, Stress, Edema, Kidney Troubles, and just below your right big toe, Weight Problems, Anxiety and Thinning Hair.”

  “Thinning hair?” she grabbed the book. “That’s a good one for me to know. Where?”

  “Come back with me to Ana’s and I’ll show you,” I said, pulling the book away. “It’s better to demonstrate in person.”

  She allowed me to lead her out of the club onto the street and we began to walk back through the quarter to the Ramblas with our arms linked amorously in the way that is allowed to women together in Spain. Then she turned to me. “Cassandra,” she said. “I would love to go home with you. But not tonight. My mother is waiting up for me.”

  I pressed her into a dark doorway. I hadn’t really expected anything else. Carmen kissed me passionately and moaned. She kneed me gently in the crotch. What a tease. “Carmen, Carmen, querida…”

  “No, Cassandra.” She was firm but gentle. “No es posible.”

  We walked on. A small thief darted out of the shadows and tried to make off with Carmen’s bag, but she gave him a good belt with the back of her hand and screeched some vengeful Andalucían curse about knives and tender parts of the male anatomy.

  The port end of the Ramblas is where the tarot readers congregate, each with their own small table, sheltered candle and sign promising a future told through palms and cards.

  Swarthy young gypsy women called out to us as we walked by, “Come here and let me tell your fortune.” Carmen ignored them, but I was suddenly curious.

  I sat down at one of the little tables and a woman with glittering eyes and a turban grabbed my hand and stared at it.

  “Success but no money, travel, a lot of travel, adventure. Watch out for a woman with black hair.”

  “Who is it?” I said. “Can you see her more clearly?”

  Carmen was shaking her head.

  “Is she fat? Is her hair curly?”

  “She is outside, she is naked.”

  “Who is this, Cassandra?” Carmen demanded.

  “She is very very fat.” The gypsy peered closer. “I see birds. Parrots.”

  “Oh god,” I said.

  “She is in a jungle. Yes. Naked in a jungle. With parrots. Watch out.”

  I saw Carmen into her taxi, then began to make my way back to the jazz club. It was late, there wasn’t any point in talking to Hamilton again, and in fact I didn’t want to talk to him. I wanted to see where he went after the show.

  I had short hair and my bomber jacket. I had been mistaken for a man too many times to count in the past few days. There was no reason I should feel afraid. But as I left the Ramblas for the dark twisting streets of the lower Barri Gòtic, I had a feeling that someone was following me.

  Was it just the echo of my feet? Several times I turned around and saw no one; other times there was a couple, or a crowd. I walked more quickly, tried to stay on the better lighted streets.

  No, I wasn’t imagining it. I was being stalked. A man in black, his face invisible under a hat pulled down low, and a bulging sack hanging ominously from his shoulder, was pursuing me. I heard his threatening breath, the soft pad of his leather shoes on the cobblestones. “Wait,” he said in garbled Castilian.

  I ran like the devil, and turned into the street where the jazz club was located just in time to see Hamilton mount a moto behind our bleached blond waiter and speed off without looking in my direction.

  I hadn’t really thought it was Hamilton following me, had I? A crowd of laughing modernos gushed out of the club and I attached myself to them until I came to a street where I could hail a cab.

  I’d lost my pursuer. But I’d also lost my chance to see where Hamilton was going.

  The phone rang, far too early the next morning. I stumbled from the guest room through a corridor filled with junk and antiques, cursing Ana’s mania for collecting, and grabbed the receiver.

  “Cassandra,” wailed a familiar contralto voice. “They’ve stolen my child.”

  13

  THE HOTEL WHERE FRANKIE HAD been holed up was in the Barri Xines, not far from the Palau Güell, the town house that Gaudí had built for his favorite patron at a time when the area had been up and coming instead of down and out. Squashed between seedy buildings with store fronts displaying objects both useful and risqué, the palace retained its mystery. Gaudí’s architectural marvel opened up inside with rooms that made you feel as if you were in a huge medieval castle. High ceilings fretted with painted wood, long halls that fooled the eye with their grand perspectives, lovely arched windows that gave, most surprisingly, onto dreary streets and tenements instead of wooded estates or fog-shrouded lakes.

  I remembered a story Ana had told me once in her detached, slightly ironic way: One day she’d gone to a reception in the Palau Güell. The reception had been to honor some well-known architect, and they had all been standing around with drinks in their hands chatting in the formal and restrained way of such receptions when someone had happened to notice that across the street was a brightly lit room in which you could see a band of pickpockets spreading watches, gold chains, rings and wallets out on the lumpy bed. Slowly the architects had drifted over to the window until the whole group was there, silently and with great fascination watching the thieves sort through their spoils.

  Frankie’s hotel, the no-star Hotel Palacio, wasn’t the worst I’d ever been in—that honor went to a dive in Calcutta and the less said about that the better—but it probably wasn’t where Ben would have liked to imagine Delilah staying. A dirty wooden staircase led up to a small lobby on the second floor, where a pair of pinched sisters glared at me before pointing the way down the dimly lit hall to Frankie’s room.

  Frankie was waiting for me, dressed in tights and a sporty royal blue sweater but still somehow managing to suggest a Tennessee Williams heroine in an advanced state of dishabille. She was chain-smoking and her nails were broken and bitten. She began to cry when she saw me.

  “You’re the only one who can help me,” she sobbed, throwing herself on the sagging bed over which hung a portrait of the Virgin in blue.

  “Before we get into the matter of helping we need to sort a few things out, Frankie.”

  “I’m innocent,” she said. “Put it down to a mother’s love. I was desperate at having Delilah taken away from me, taken just like that, without a word of explanation or farewell. I thought, well if they want to behave like that, so can I. I didn’t kidnap her violently, I simply stole in to see her, lifted her gently in my arms and walked off with her.”

  “Without anyone’s assistance.”

  “Cassandra, would Ben or April help me? After they’d slipped away to Barcelona like thieves?”

  “What about Hamilton?”

  “Hamilton would have no reason to help me.”

  I was puzzled. Surely if any of the three had facilitated the kidnap, now would be the time to betray them. Could it be someone else here in Barcelona? Someone I didn’t know? It might have been lack of sleep, but I was starting to get a headache.

  “Let’s start at the beginning,” I said. “You got into La Pedrera sometime when April was there alone, before I came over. You had scoped the place out earlier, and assuming you didn’t have an accomplice who let you in, you bribed the portero to make you a key to their apartment. You went in, but before you could get Delilah, Hamilton and then Ben came home and you panicked. You rushed up to the roof where Ben cornered you, then came back downstairs and managed to grab Delilah and take her out to the street and find a taxi. All without help. You came to this hotel where you thought no one would find you, which is in a terrible neighborhood in case you hadn’t noticed… so then what happened?”

  “That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you for the past fifteen minutes, Cassandra. You’ve been wasting valuable time with your
accusations.”

  “I’ve just been trying to establish a chain of events,” I said. “I have no reason in the world to help you, especially not after you’ve lied to me the way you have.” I made as if to leave.

  “Don’t go,” Frankie wailed and grabbed my arm. “I know I’ve lied to you. But I had no choice. You’d never have believed the truth.”

  “That’s true,” I said, sitting down next to her. “I wouldn’t have, and maybe I still don’t. Whatever the truth is.”

  “The important thing is that Delilah is missing. She’s been missing for two hours already.”

  “When did you notice she was gone?”

  “This morning. You know in these types of places they don’t have a bathroom in the room but down the hall. About seven this morning Delilah got up and told me she was going to the bathroom. I was half asleep and hardly heard her and must have dropped off again. When I woke up it was eight-thirty and she wasn’t in her bed. I thought she might have gotten lost in the hotel or be downstairs in the lobby, so I went rushing around trying to find her. She wasn’t anywhere. That’s when I called you.”

  I looked at my watch. It was nine-thirty. “Do you think she could have gone out in the street?” If she had there was no telling what could have happened to her.

  But Frankie refused to believe that, perhaps because it was too horrible a thought, the idea of Delilah being picked up by thieves who might either try to ransom her or sell her. “I’m sure it was Ben,” she said.

  “But Ben had no idea where you’d taken Delilah,” I said. “She thought you’d gone off to the airport and back to San Francisco. We spent half the night there and at the train station.”

  “If only I had gone back to San Francisco,” Frankie groaned.

  “So how could Ben have known you were still here in Barcelona?”

  “I told her.”

  “You told her!”

  “Of course,” Frankie said. “I’m not like her and April. I wouldn’t want them to worry.”

  “Well, if you told them then why are you surprised they found you? Or came and got Delilah?”