The woman slotted the new SIM card into her cellphone, then bent the old one in two and dropped it on the table. The last message was, ‘Are you coming home? We need you.’
She sat back in her chair in Tarragona’s Plaça del Fòrum, closing her eyes and letting the morning sun warm her pale skin. The boy returned from the bathroom, brushing her bare arm with the back of his hand and sitting down opposite her. Seeing the bent SIM card on the table next to her coffee cup, he seemed to understand.
‘You are not going back? You are sure?’
She opened her eyes, smiled and shook her head.
‘You are not worried about them?’
She put on her sunglasses and said, ‘You talk in your sleep. Did you know that?’
The boy laughed. ‘No. Nobody never told me.’
‘Well, you do. But it’s in Catalan so I don’t know what you’re saying. I’m getting better, though, don’t you think? Poc a poc?’
‘Sí, sí. Every day I hear you speaking much better. Much better.’
For a few seconds she watched three children chasing each other around the ruins of the Roman Forum, then turned back to look at the boy, who was calling for the check. The waitress arrived—pregnant, much younger than the woman, about the boy’s age. The waitress and the boy chatted exuberantly with each other as they had earlier, she resting a hand on her belly, he smiling and gesturing with a cigarette in his hand. After paying, he stood up and kissed her goodbye on both cheeks.
The boy took the woman’s hand as they left the plaza, her bare arms prickling as they wandered through Tarragona’s cool, shaded streets, absorbed in one another, passing by the city’s imposing Gothic cathedral before disappearing again into its warren of medieval alleys. Already she was forgetting New York: its jagged skyline, vast malls and endless highways; the roaring and squealing of subway trains; the furious daily struggle through the hostile swarm; the stench of garbage and fumes and BO and urine all mingled together. Forgetting was good. She wanted to forget not only places, but words too. For each Catalan word she added to her vocabulary, she wanted to forget an English one: deadline, stakeholder, optimize, accruals, depreciation, synergy, bandwidth, optics…
They returned to the boy’s one-bedroom apartment and made love until noon, low, guttural cries escaping the woman’s throat as her eyes rolled back in her head. She hadn’t made love like this since those sovereign days before roles came to define her, since before she was a wife, a mother, an executive. Afterwards she drowsed peacefully next to him as he smoked, her mind idling on the statues in the portal of the cathedral, then on the pregnant waitress from the cafe. When they got up again, they took a shower together before preparing lunch––hake with steamed vegetables. She liked the boy’s apartment; it was modest, quaint, lived-in; no marble countertops or walnut dining tables, no indoor hot tubs or three-season sunrooms; simply a place to eat, sleep and make love.
*
At half-past three they drove down the coast to L’Hospitalet de L’Infant in the boy’s work van, a red Berlingo flaked with rust. Half an hour later they parked near Platja del Torn, applied sunblock, and made their way down to the beach, the woman lowering her head as a leathery old couple walked past them in the opposite direction, naked. The west end of the beach was occupied by families––nude adults sticking umbrellas in the sand, small fleshy blurs running in and out of the sea. They trudged east instead through the soft sand and passed several couples lying spread-eagled on towels, the woman trying to appear unfazed by their naked, oiled bodies. Eventually they found a quiet spot and lay their towels down.
‘The couples here are all at least forty,’ she said. ‘Most are in their fifties or sixties. Interesting.’
‘Young people don’t like to come. I don’t know why. Maybe they are embarrassed. It’s mainly people who are older.’
‘Like me?’
‘No, no, no,’ he laughed, wrapping his arms around her. ‘I didn’t mean it like that.’
‘I’m kidding, thanks for bringing me. I know you’re only doing it because I asked.’
The boy smiled at her, brushing hair out of her worn, sun-strained eyes. ‘Well, if you are curious…’
‘But it’s true,’ she continued. ‘It’s mainly older couples. Maybe they just don’t give a damn anymore. Maybe they realize none of it actually matters.’
The boy took off his shorts and T-shirt, then started to put up the umbrella. The woman sat down on her towel and took off her top, leaving her bikini bottoms on and hugging her arms self-consciously.
‘Hey, let’s take a bath,’ the boy said as he sauntered naked towards the water’s edge.
Native shame made the woman hesitate and fidget needlessly with the elastic of her bikini bottoms. She stood up, trying to look casual in front of the tanned sunbathers a short distance away, conscious of her paleness, stretch marks and sagging breasts. With nervous haste, she pulled off her bottoms and hurried across the pebbly strand, wading into the warm, translucent Mediterranean sea up to her knees. She hadn’t any clothes on and she hadn’t any jewelry on either.
The boy was splashing about and beckoning her to swim out to him when he saw her pause with a familiar reminiscent expression. Standing there with the sun shining on her naked flesh, she looked down and saw the faces of her children hazy beneath the rippling water, then saw them disappear altogether as a wave lapped against her legs. She looked up and smiled at the glittering sea stretching out before her under the azure sky, then dove into the water and swam out to the boy.
Colin Dunne lives in Cork, Ireland. Colin has previously been published in Shooter Literary Magazine in the UK, Tír na nÓg in Ireland, and The Bookends Review in the USA. He is currently working on a collection of short stories. You can find Colin on Twitter as @coldunne.
Photo by Jordi Martorell on Unsplash.
