by Jackson Lear
The two guys started getting misty eyed. Unfortunately I was starting to like my fantasy world a little too much and knew it was time to bail. They wished me luck, I did the same, and I sauntered back to Callao. Somehow I managed to perk myself up and break my own heart all at the same time.
Louise has been trying to book a flight back home, which isn’t easy since the Internet is still sluggish. Her Spanish is reasonable but the travel agent didn’t care if she couldn’t keep up, so after forty minutes she swore like the Pope wasn’t listening and came into the kitchen almost in tears. She’s about to head out to the airport to try her luck there. Today was her final day of class. Monday is her graduation. She’s trying to fly out either tonight (they will mail her certificate) or she will fly out tomorrow (and still they will mail it), but either way she wants to go home. She has assured us it isn’t because the entire household was naked yesterday, she just never booked a return ticket from Madrid. She was hoping to travel to Valencia with a couple of friends but they bailed on her. She doesn’t want to go alone so she would rather go home sooner than later. Either way she has to be gone by Monday because someone else is supposed to arrive and take her bed, so there will be a new housemate! Katy is hoping it’s a girl.
I also have a problem with getting out of here and I may need to ask Rachel for some help. I want to go to the south of Spain and I’ve been getting some suggestions from Katy, Cristina, and the others. I’ve been told to go to Seville but only to an air conditioned hostel, because a cool day in the summer is like a sauna whereas a hot day is the equivalent of napalm. They also tell me the entire city really does close down during the siesta time and Sunday’s will be 100% closed. There’s also Granada and Gibraltar to see. Apparently Gibraltar is the only English colony where they drive on the right hand side of the road. I don’t know if that’s enough of a novelty to warrant going there, but who knows? The only problem will be finding a place to stay. Without the Internet cooperating that might be an issue. Seriously, how did people backpack before the Internet? Anyway, if I run into problems I wonder how much longer I can stay on Rachel’s floor until it really pisses her off? She’s warned me that if I snore at all I will spend the rest of my time on the sofa.
I am now the proud owner of a colourful Hawaiian shirt. Everyone is brimming with jealousy because they keep asking how I was even able to find this thing in Spain. The answer to that is fairly simple: walk round until you’re lost, see a comic book store with Witchblade on the front and prostitutes lurking around nearby, go inside, buy the coolest shirt you can find.
I never thought I’d see the Spanish version of ‘the end is nigh’, but I did see some graffiti on the side of walls saying exactly that. It was fresh, too. There were a pair of gypsy women standing nearby selling trinkets for the superstitious. I’m pretty sure they were thieves as all the locals rolled their eyes whenever a tourist was lured in.
Part 4.
Hahahahahaha! Two of the French kids are totally sunburned! One of the guys and the girl went up to the roof for more ‘sunbathing’, probably while stoned to hell. They fell asleep under the umbrella. For two hours. By the time they woke up there was no shade covering them. The guy is walking around with his hands out in front and walking on tiptoes. I’ve never seen someone in so much agony. He has wrapped a towel around his waist but the fabric is so itchy that it’s practically burning him. Cristina is helping him out with lotion on his shoulders and the hard to reach places. The French girl is just as bad. I would have volunteered my services, but no, that might land me in jail, so Katy is helping out and not having much fun there.
Brb.
Back. Cristina and I just went to the store to get some more lotion for the burn victims. Cristina was blasting them the whole time, wondering if all kids are really this stupid. She asked me about the dumbest thing I ever did and it’s a tough decision. There was the time I was drunk and went to sleep in my parent’s bed because mine was too far away, threw up and didn’t clean up, but instead was able to get back to my bed and didn’t realise that my parents were coming home early and I hadn’t cleaned up. Then again, locking myself out of the house three times in a week could be considered pretty dumb. I asked Cristina what she did that was so stupid and she told me she smoked heroin once. Yeah.
The French kids are the colour of beetroot. Even the skin under their fingernails is burned. The girl is in the tub in the main bathroom crying with Katy doing her best to make sure the kid doesn’t pass out and drown. The girl has soaked a towel and has draped it across herself for privacy, but she’s lying in a tub of cold water while her skin is on fire. I don’t know where the boy is but he’s probably smoking up just to deal with the pain.
Louise is back from the airport. Lots of flights are cancelled and she wasn’t able to get on one. She’s booked a ticket and the earliest she can leave is Tuesday. Cristina says Louise can stay in her room for the extra night if necessary. She has a double bed in her room. Either that or Louise can sleep on the couch, unless I’m there snoring through the night.
16 July
It seems as though there is more to Rachel staying here than I first suspected. Two months ago she expressed no interest at all in learning Spanish. Last night we were up until 3am talking. It began in the kitchen at ten when Derek was there. Various people came and went. We heard some stories, told some ourselves, and at last everyone went to bed. Rachel and I just weren’t all that tired. Long story short:
Rachel became a compulsive eater thanks to the stress at work. She couldn’t find any other job and reached the point where no work was better than the misery of working for arseholes doing so much unpaid overtime that her life had become a blackhole the size of a Chelsea player’s ego. One day she realised her third anniversary at the company came and went. Enough was enough, so she quit. She used to work as an assistant sales manager at an advertising company. She’ll certainly have options when she goes back to England.
This then gets a little complicated.
To save money Rachel moved in with her mum.
Rachel’s mum was living with a boyfriend. They had been together for six years.
A week after Rachel quit her job, her mum proposed to her boyfriend.
He said no.
Apparently she did actually drop down on one knee and asked her boyfriend to marry her.
He moved out, leaving an unemployed Rachel to try and pick up her mum’s life. Woe is me, I’m too old to ever date again, I’ll die alone. That kind of thing.
Living with her mum became unbearable. Rachel hit the doughnuts and chocolate again like nobody’s business. She realised she was stuck in another blackhole situation and had to leave as quickly as possible. It didn’t matter where she went, it just had to be somewhere that wasn’t in London. She started in Barcelona and found a Spanish school in Madrid that would accept her.
I felt quite bad about all that. Her mum is nice and so was the guy she was seeing. I felt guilty asking if I could stay any longer. She did say it was nice having a friend here and if I wanted I could stay a few more days.
I saw the French kids this morning. The guy and the girl spent the night in the same room in agony, lying as still as possible, because the other guy didn’t want to listen to them complaining all night. One of them threw up last night and neither look particularly well. Cristina won’t be here for most of the day so if they need to find a doctor they better ask someone else.
It’s Saturday so there’s no class at all. There’s some kind of street party this evening, the kind where people wear those glo sticks and dance to music. I’ve seen street festivals before so I’m not expecting anything great, although Ediz was here last year and said it kicked ass. We’ll see.
17 July
Something serious is going on in the world. Krakow, Helsinki and Budapest have been quarantined and all flights over the Atlantic have been cancelled. It was just like when the Icelandic volcano blew its top and nothing flew for a week. This flu thing has gone global.
Even the governments around the world are advising people to stay indoors.
Sofia arrived into Madrid a few days before I did. She’s here for a year, studying in the city-sized university just past Arguelles. She’s on the phone twice a day with her parents trying to get updates. They’re not saying much, only that certain areas of St. Petersberg can use the shops at certain times.
Despite that, we’re going out today! There’s more of that fiesta tonight (which is AWESOME - seriously, I can’t believe how well the Spanish throw a party), plus I’m paranoid about Sundays now when everything closes. It’s not supposed to affect central Madrid. Still, I have food and supplies to buy. Rachel has decided that she needs a new bikini (an odd topic of conversation between male and female friends, no?). Apparently the one she bought back in London was sold to her by a flat-chested bimbo who had never rumbled in the waves. As such, Rachel’s top kept falling off when she was in Barcelona (that happens a lot to her, does it? I must pay more attention to what she’s wearing). So, Rachel bought a new top in Barcelona and now hates it. So off to shopping we go!
Part 2.
Part 1 was written just half an hour ago. Apparently there won’t be much exploring today. Rachel didn’t get much sleep last night so she wants to take it easy today. That’s fine. She asked me to go down to the shops and pick up a couple of bottles of wine and some water. She didn’t eat much yesterday because of the heat, only fruit and liquid-based food. She feels the same today. There’s this herbal tea thing called matay or something. It’s from South America and has a weird metal straw. It’s supposed to put Rachel to sleep. She’s brewing some up now and offered me some. I’ll try it when I come back from the shops, which won’t take more than ten minutes.
Part 3.
The heat is a killer. 35 degrees during the day and it hasn’t dropped below 30 at night since I arrived. I tried the matay and felt drowsy, as did Rachel, but we didn’t fall asleep. So we had some more. And more. We had four brews of it and became more and more drowsy, and still the heat kept us awake. Rachel is next to me right now, sitting on her bed writing in her diary. We swapped diaries and read what the other had been writing, just for the hell of it. At one point she mumbled, “Huh.”
I looked up. She shot a quick look my way and went back to my diary without saying anything.
Naturally I read the things she was saying about me. The day before I arrived she wrote she trimmed herself, just in case. Yesterday she woke up early in the morning and had to use the bathroom. She grabbed the first thing she could reach which turned out to be my t-shirt on the back of the chair. She threw it on and has since apologised if she stretched it out at all. I really didn’t notice, but she was laughing the whole day because I was wearing something that had her boobs in it.
When she was done she put my diary down and said that I must have hit it off with Cristina. Well, yeah, she’s cool.
And that was the last we spoke of it. I flipped back a few pages to see what I had written … and I wrote about my Scottish accent while pretending that Cristina was my girlfriend.
Part 4.
We’re lounging around with a little night time roof-top experience. There’s a breeze coming over now that is bliss. We’re sitting back in hammocks with a gentle sway talking about shitty ex-boyfriends and shitty ex-girlfriends.
Rachel sat up about half an hour ago and blurted out, “Hang on, you have nothing bad to say about Alana? Nothing at all?”
“I’m trying to be a gentleman, here.”
“She has to have something about her that pissed you off while you were together.”
“Of course.”
“… Well?”
“I found it kinda troubling that she hadn’t been single since she was thirteen.”
“There you go. That’s a warning sign,” said Rachel. “And if you’re still thinking about getting back together with her then that’s one of yours.”
Trust me, I don’t want to get back together with her, but I have been daydreaming about seeing her again. We’ll be at Kim’s wedding, somewhere down the line. I’ll be going stag and I’ll bump into Alana. For the first time in her life she’s single. We’ll have that smile knowing that five or so years have gone by and there’s no longer any resentment. We’ll start chatting and, naturally, we’re sitting at the same table during the dinner. We’ll flirt, we’ll dance, then I’ll take her home, screw her brains out, and won’t call her again.
The downside to that is if she doesn’t try to contact me either.
Ediz’s highly offensive joke of the day: “What’s the difference between a terrorist training camp and a school? Who gets the credit for blowing it up.”
18 July
No TV, no radio, no Internet. There has been a complete media blackout. The only thing convincing me that a coup hasn’t taken place already is that life seems to still be pretty normal here. No tanks, no rebels, just a typical summer in Spain. There was a Spanish guy on the steps in front of the building saying “If I die, I die,” then he went to watch a movie. The metro isn’t working, the buses aren’t working, the trains aren’t working. People are still driving around but mostly everyone is holed up at home. Some are on the roof getting a tan, but the majority are keeping to themselves and drinking themselves stupid.
We’ve been playing cards all day. There’s this game called Pato which is supposed to mean ‘duck’. There’s also one called Carioca. The phrase ‘wiped the floor’ isn’t nearly enough to describe how I obliterated Rachel, Cristina, Ediz, Katy, and Derek. I’ve never played Pato or Carioca before in my life but by the third game I had to scale back my abilities just to give these people a chance, and even then I crushed their souls like a bug.
“Can anyone play poker?” asked Derek.
“A little,” I said.
“Do not play poker with Mark,” said Rachel, with a definite point of a finger in my direction.
“So, you’re good?”
Well, no. On a purely amateur level, then yes, I am pretty fucking great. You can thank my grandparents for sneakily teaching me whenever they had to watch over me. I’ve played online a couple of times and have probably earned £500 over the last five years, but that’s the height of it. That was actually one of the things that made Alana nervous. I’d be playing online while watching TV. I’m risking £5, honey, not my pension.
We ended up playing a couple of rounds with imaginary money (whee, what fun) as I tried to coach them into improving their skills. First rule: don’t look at your cards until it’s your turn. Second rule: remember what cards you have. There’s only two of them, it’s not that hard. Third rule: never look at how much money you have while you’re trying to make a decision.
Sounds easy, right? Nope! After four rounds everyone was still checking their cards the moment they were dealt, they couldn’t remember what they had, and they all checked the list of imaginary money. I won £8 million.
The French kids are doing better, though their skin is peeling. Cristina is telling them to drink lots of water. Katy is meeting up with some classmates later on and they might swing on over here. One of them is from London. Holly Crombe. I went to school with a Holly Crombe. I wonder if it’s the same girl. I asked if Katy’s Holly is blonde, but people can dye their hair. I asked if she was thin or not, and then I remembered that people can gain or lose weight. I’ll just have to wait and see.
One of the toilets started overflowing today. It was clogged with a grey tank top, of all things. Why? And how? No one knew who it belonged to. Derek said that toilet wasn’t working properly when he got here so maybe it’s been there for weeks. The landlady insists that we should be able to fix it but the plunger is in the locked room. Who the fuck locks a plunger away?
Part 2.
Derek found me in the kitchen. “So, uh … you kinda missed the cue back there when we were playing poker. There were three guys, three girls, a little bit of wine, and Texas Hold ‘Em was not the type of poker we should have been playing. And with a littl
e wine maybe we could have got something going, you know, help you out a little.”
Really? Help me out? A little?
“With Rachel.”
Oooooo, swing and a miss there, buddy. “Rachel’s not the one I have my eye on.”
“Then who?”
“Catherine.”
That certainly confused him. “Who’s Catherine?”
“A girl I met in Barcelona. I’m trying to see if we can hook up in Málaga. But, if Rachel’s the one you’re after then good luck, because you’re not the first to mention it to me.”
That certainly made him backpedal. After a bit of confusion he walked away, which is good because Catherine’s backstory would’ve had something to do with her being Canadian and me looking into a working holiday visa to see her.
19 July
Dear all paranoid Internet conspiracy bullshit websites: explain to me what the fuck is going on in this world. Yesterday I went to bed and everything was fine. Sort of. This morning I woke up and the whole world has gone and clusterfucked itself. The conspiracy bullshit websites promised me this would NEVER happen: Zombies.
Fucking zombies. They said a zombie apocalypse won’t ever be possible. Why?
1) Because zombies move slowly and are easy targets for people with guns.
2) Lots of people have lots of guns and generally have no problem killing anyone even when they’re alive.
