by Mary Carter
“Xavier Gens,” Jake said.
“What?”
“No offense to Woody. Gens is French. He directed Hitman and is also one of the directors involved with the much anticipated Paris I’ll Kill You.”
Grace smiled. If Jake hadn’t loved animals so much he probably would have gone on to become a famous director. “Shouldn’t you pick a Spanish one?” Grace said.
“Can’t think of one.”
“Rodrigo Cortés. Buried.”
“Excellent!”
“Hitman, kill, buried,” Grace mused. “Maybe we aren’t really the vacationing type.”
Jake laughed. “Don’t worry. Ours will be the stuff dreams are made out of.” He squeezed her. “I promise,” he said softly.
Hopefully not the stuff her dreams were made of lately. Somebody was always dying. Not her mother, never once. But other people, ones she hadn’t seen in a long time. A friend from school. A guy from her first after-school job. Even Robbie—the first foster kid her family took in—the one who had shoved her face in a pile of worms and tried to make her kiss them. In her dreams she didn’t see any of them die—thank God—but she’d hear about their deaths from someone else. In every dream she said the same thing. But I just saw them! As if that alone was enough to keep death away.
But never Carrie Ann. It was curious; Grace expected her subconscious to want to kill her off most of all.
Jake stopped, took Grace’s hands. “I have a wild idea.”
“What?”
“For the rest of today, and most of tomorrow.” He stopped for dramatic effect.
“We should do as much filming and sightseeing as possible,” Grace said.
“No. Really?”
“Absolutely. Let’s get cracking. Miró, Picasso, Gaudí, or the beach?” She didn’t want to do any of them. She wanted to go back to the apartment, crawl into bed, and pull the covers over her head. Spending every minute after work with her mother, and obsessing over Marsh Everett and his nasty review, had really taken a toll on her the past few weeks. But this was not the time to relax. Not if they were going to end this trip early.
“Oh.”
“What. What were you going to say?”
“Nothing,” Jake said.
“No. Tell me.”
“I just did. For the rest of today, and most of tomorrow, I was going to say we should just do nothing.”
Grace sighed, leaned into his shoulder, and almost started crying again. “I wish,” she said.
“Your mom is going to be there when we get back. We’ll be home before you know it.”
You don’t know that. But he certainly knew her. And he was probably right. She was just exhausted and worried. Besides, her father was right. Life was too short to turn down free trips. “I love you,” Grace said. She didn’t know what she would do without him, and she never intended to find out. Without his support, she would buckle.
“That’s a wrap,” he said. He tucked his video camera into its case and gave it a little pat. Grace laughed.
“What?”
“Are you going to kiss it good night?” Grace teased.
“No. I’m going to kiss it good afternoon.”
Grace swatted him, and Jake pulled her in and kissed her instead. It was comforting at first, and then passionate. She used all her pent-up angst to kiss him back, and he responded by pulling her in tighter. She loved the feel of his back underneath her palms, the pressure of his lips on hers. She loved his smell. She loved his body pressed against hers. She desired him. She was so lucky; she must never forget how blessed she was. To have Jake. And wonderful parents. That was what life was all about. Love. Not letting a single moment slip by unnoticed. Grace and Jake had been dating three years, and she still wanted him all the time. When they finally parted, he grabbed her hand and picked up the pace. “Come on. Let’s pick up some wine and chocolate and go back to bed.” He sounded like a kid on Christmas. She felt like one. And later, that would be the real moment she wished they had captured on film.
CHAPTER 3
Jake opened the door to their flat and stepped in. Grace took a step forward and felt something underneath her right foot. She lifted her foot and saw a small black object resting on the yellow mat. Grace bent down and picked it up. It was a matchbook. The front showcased a pair of tango dancers. The woman was wearing a red dress. Her mother would love it. Grace flipped open the matchbook. In thick black ink, and tiny perfect letters, someone had written on the inside flap:
MEET ME IN BARCELONA
Some kind of spark zipped through Grace as she read the words. A mysterious invitation. Her very own message in a bottle. Grace stepped inside, and held the matchbook up to Jake. He had already kicked off his shoes and was on the sofa flipping through television stations. Grace wasn’t fluent in Spanish, but she tried to guess what the content was by listening to the inflections. Happiness made a sound; so did anger, and so did fear. Most of the stations he had landed upon sounded very upbeat. Grace was beginning to like the Spanish. “Look what I found,” Grace said. Jake glanced over and squinted. She dangled the matchbook. He held up his hand, and Grace tossed it to him. He caught it effortlessly and placed it in the palm of his hand.
“Cool,” he said. “Where did that come from?”
“It was on the mat in front of our door.”
“Huh.” Jake flipped the matchbook open. “ ‘Meet me in Barcelona.’ ”
“Handwritten. What do you make of that?”
“Great advertising gimmick.”
“But it doesn’t say the name of the bar.”
“Exactly. Piques our interest so we go looking for it.”
“Do you want to go looking for it right now?”
“Are you kidding me?” Jake jumped off the sofa and advanced on Grace. He pressed her up against the door. Put his hand on her breast, kissed her neck. “Everything I’ve been looking for is right here. Always has been.” Grace filled with warmth. She swatted him on the butt and then slipped the matchbook into her pocket. Something about it intrigued her.
Jake made a beeline for the bedroom, and Grace trailed behind, shaking her head and laughing. She stood in the doorway as he flopped down on the bed and made the come-here gesture with his index finger. “Meet me in Barcelona,” he said. His hand fell to his jeans. He unbuttoned his top snap and pulled down his zipper. Just the sound of it made Grace tingle. He was such a goof. But she loved it, and he knew it. It had been forever since they could let loose like this. They should go on holiday more often. Jake slid down his jeans so she could see his underwear bulging at the top. He had a great penis. She had never thought she’d find herself thinking such a thing, but it was true. It was definitely one for the “Gratitude List.”
“See what you’ve done to me?” Jake said, peeling his underwear down. The great penis saluted her.
“Looks like I’m going to have to do something about that,” Grace said. She played with the top button of her shirt and deliberately slowed down her walk to the bed. Jake’s eyes were glued to her body as she unbuttoned the rest of her top. She brushed her hand over her belly and started to slide it over her thigh. She felt the matchbook lying in her pocket.
Little Match Girl. The thought inexplicably leapt into her mind. Grace stopped in her tracks. The barefoot, bedraggled orphan. Begging for a single match. Her little body found frozen to death in the alley. Thanks, Hans Christian Andersen, for scarring me for life. Immediately, the image of the dead orphan was replaced by one of Carrie Ann. The first time Grace had ever laid eyes on her. Nine years old. Standing in the doorway of Grace’s home. Blond curls in tangles. Dirt down the side of her face from dried tears. Lips pursed in defiance and chin tilted to the sky. Clutching a little flowered suitcase. Her knuckles were snow-white. Grace couldn’t help but stare. The social worker’s big, bright smile was jarring next to the little girl’s scowl.
“I’d like you to meet Carrie Ann,” the social worker had said. Grace remembered how the woman’s voice had wobble
d, as if she herself might cry. “Carrie Ann, I’d like you to meet the Sawyers.” Something inside Grace had broken open. Something she hadn’t even known was there. Just like with the dirty, starving kitten she’d found last winter and nursed back to health one eyedropper of milk at a time, a single glance at Carrie Ann’s big blue eyes and Grace Ann Sawyer’s heart had unfolded like an antique fan. She wanted to take every bit of sadness away from this strange girl, her same age, but so different it was as if an alien had just landed on her front stoop. A sense of destiny seized Grace in that moment, something she had never felt before. It was as if God himself had leaned down from the heavens and whispered in her ear: Take care of her. And right then and there, she had promised she would.
It was a promise she would break.
It haunted her to this day. Which was why something as simple as a matchbook could hurtle her back to the past. It was usually that moment that haunted her. The beginning. Not the end. She tried very hard not to think about the end.
“Stop,” Grace said out loud. Carrie Ann was the last person Grace needed to think about right now. Jake took his hands out of his pants and sat up.
“What’s wrong?”
“Sorry. Sorry. I was just shooing someone else out of my head.”
Jake sighed, flopped back down on the bed. “Repeat after me. Marsh Everett is a—” Grace jumped on the bed and straddled Jake. She bent over him and let her hair fall around his face as if she were capturing him in her net.
“Turd,” she said, before placing her lips on his and crushing him with a kiss.
CHAPTER 4
Spain must have been working its magic, for the next afternoon, Grace’s biggest problems were thus: The sun was a little too hot, and she had to scoot her chair a foot to the left to catch a bit of the shade; a fly landed on the rim of her wine glass, and she had to shoo it away (a Spanish fly, she thought; weren’t all flies in Spain Spanish flies?); and a street performer tottering on stilts and draped in shredded black ribbons was staring at her as if she were about to put on a performance.
In contrast to the mass of black ribbons, his face was painted bright white. He looked like a shaggy mime. Or a giant eagle dipped in black and put through a shredder. As she watched, he held up his hands and made fists. Long, thin knives shot out of his knuckles. Grace jumped and let out a little scream. Her head darted left and right. Did anyone else catch that? No. People at neighboring tables were otherwise engaged. He had really startled her. She laughed at herself. Might as well have a neon sign above her head: TOURIST. Oh well, that was funny. Was he supposed to be Freddy Krueger, Edward Scissorhands, or Wolverine? It was like he had some kind of antihero identity disorder. La Rambla teemed with street performers, all vying for attention and tips.
Situated a little to the right of the eagle-knife-man was a tin man on a bicycle. His bike was attached to two child-size bicycles on top of which were tiny skeletons, one in pants and a shirt with a baseball cap, the other in a dress with a ribbon tied to her skull. All three were painted to look as if they were made out of tin, and racing like demons. Where did he get those tiny skeletons? Grace hoped they were fake, purchased in a novelty shop catering to those who just couldn’t live without tiny bones. The man’s bike must have been rigged so that he was actually pedaling all three. Jake would study it until he knew exactly how the guy was doing it. He loved figuring out the mechanics of things, whereas Grace was always fascinated with the psychological underpinnings. Most likely the result of having a shrink for a dad. Or an endless stream of foster children as “siblings.” If the tin man were to talk to them, Jake would ask him how he rides, and Grace would ask him why he rides.
After the tin man there was a headless body sitting in a folding chair next to a small dining table covered in a red-and-white-checkered tablecloth. The missing head was sticking up through the middle of the table, with a bottle of Jack Daniel’s tantalizingly out of reach. Was he a little person? Or was he kneeling on the street underneath that table? That had to hurt. She hoped he at least had kneepads. Was the bottle of Jack Daniel’s glued down? Barcelona attracted a lot of college kids out for mischief and mayhem. If some college kids snatched the bottle of booze, it would be pretty hard for the little person stuck under the table to chase after them. We all have our crosses to bear, Grace thought.
Farther down the street was an Indian chief with his bow drawn. He was letting tourists hold the bow if they paid to pose in pictures. Then, there was a man painted white, sitting on a toilet with his pants pulled down to his ankles, reading a magazine. Grace wondered if he left his bathroom door open at home. Imagine, carrying your toilet to work every morning. These people would make fascinating dinner guests. It was never-ending. Medusa, in a flowing red dress, with fake red snakes piled in her hair. A blue alien with gigantic hands. A robot made entirely out of recycled plastic bottles. Grace felt as if she had stepped into a book of twisted fairy tales. Except instead of being the ones in motion, all the characters were standing still, hoping to draw the crowds closer to them and their tip jars. It would be hard to stand so still all day. At least the street was lined with trees, blessing them all with a little shade. They certainly needed it today. All this stimulus, and yet the demented eagle-mime-Scissorhands was watching her.
Freaky. She didn’t like being under a microscope. Didn’t he realize he was staring?
Maybe he’d pegged her as a rich American and was trying to intimidate her into giving him money. The money part she didn’t mind. But if he actually thought she was going to get up from her comfy chair and fat glass of wine, well, he had another think coming. Maybe he dressed like this just so he could stalk tourists. Maybe he was a Spanish serial killer. If things got too weird, she could run back to the room. If she ran screaming toward the building, maybe Jake would hear her. But not if his book was any good. When lost in a good book, Jake became deaf to the world. She couldn’t remember what book he had picked up at the airport, just that it was a thriller. Jake ate them up. It would be ironic if she were slashed to death in the courtyard by a giant eagle-on-stilts while Jake obliviously read a less thrilling thriller six floors above.
The street performer was holding up his iPhone. She couldn’t be sure, but it almost seemed as if he were aiming it at her. Was he taking her picture? Grace knew she was pretty in the “girl next door” kind of way, but this was Spain. The streets were paved with stunning women. Was there something wrong with her? How bad was it if she stood out amongst these characters?
Calm down, Grace. It’s just a sales pitch. He wants you to pay him to have your picture taken with him. You’re a young woman alone, and he’s out to make a few euro. Just ignore him. Enjoy your holiday.
An English bulldog tottered by, tongue hanging down to the ground, squat body straining forward, ribs moving in and out like an accordion. Poor thing—this heat was something else. Grace had a sudden ache for Stella. Please, Dan. Remember to take her out on the skateboard at least once. Stella chewed electrical cords if she didn’t get her skateboard fix. If she were here Stella would be splayed frog-legged under the table, tongue out, waiting to catch bits of falling tapas. Now that was the good life. Right here, right now was the good life.
Except for the heat. And the jet lag. And the street performer’s odd interest in her. Definitely enough to make one feel slightly off-kilter. Drinking in the sun probably didn’t help either, but she was on vacation, and it was practically required. She took another sip, and marveled at the taste. Spaniards really knew their grapes. Even the wine on the plane, delivered in little plastic cups, had been top-notch. She should know; she had three of them, and the flight attendant didn’t even blink an eye. Welcome to Barcelona.
Grace stretched her legs and looked around. She loved how the outdoor cafés were smack in the middle of the street. Nobody made a fuss. Nobody said “Hey!” or “¡Hola! Why are you sitting in the middle of the street? Move to the side!” No, people adjusted to life. In this case, life buzzed around her. Tourists, and
street artists, and locals occupied both sides of the mall. Take that, cars. There are some places you just don’t get to go. Maybe she’d write a song about that.
But not today. No thoughts about songs, or orphans, or reviews today.
Then again.
Maybe if she read the review here, in Barcelona, while sipping wine in the middle of the street, it would lose its hold over her. Grace removed the article from her purse, smoothed it out on the linen tablecloth, and read it for the umpteenth time:
GRACE SAWYER DISAPPOINTS
How was that for an opening line? No matter how many times she read it, she still felt a hot flash of shame, as if she’d just stripped naked and run through town, as if singing were somehow a dirty and criminal act. The review didn’t get much better.
Last night at the Blue Moon Bar and Grill, Grace Sawyer didn’t pop any guitar strings on her pricey Taylor Hummingbird. She sang in tune. And she always has a smile on that girl-next-door face. But it wasn’t long before I started to drift off, and look forward to whoever was next—even if it was just the busboy. She never opened up and let any of us in. Shallow doesn’t quite cut it. A dog bowl has more depth. If she wants to play at venues bigger than birthday parties, she’d better step it up. Sing from the heart. Sing her pain. Because if she doesn’t do it soon, she’ll be soon forgotten.
Grace folded the review, and then she folded it again, as if the creases could squeeze out his words, and when it was as tiny as she could get it, she shoved it back in her purse. Nope. It stung just as much in Spain. She’d toss it later. Or set fire to it.
A dog bowl! The busboy. Who does he think he is? Soon forgotten. Too bad she couldn’t forget it herself. She was never, ever going to read it again. Ever. She would definitely burn it. She would take it to the town square and burn it.
