CHAPTER TWO #2
As the mounted cops closed off any chance of escape, Alex retreated into the relative safety of a café’s shuttered doorway.
Seconds ticked by until the scene reached its inevitable combustion.
The protestors charged first, not with violence, but taunting the steel-faced officers with the same slogans Alex had heard in the del Sol.
They stopped just as abruptly, and for a moment, he felt himself relax, some na?ve corner of his brain hoping this would be the sum of strife on Calle Mayor that morning.
Without warning, the crowd charged. The police responded in kind. Horses blocked off his retreat. A flaming bottle sailed over Basque Jesus’s head before exploding at the feet of the cops. It was the perfect starting gun, as if Satan himself had lifted the gates of hell.
As more people swelled into the intersection, Alex resisted the tidal crowd, trying to put some distance between him and the horses, only to catch an elbow to the face.
From the corner of his eye, he saw several protesters, including Basque Jesus, go down, felled by the unsanctimonious blow of a baton.
His creative mind had just enough time to wonder what the deceased dictator’s cronies in the church would have thought before something clocked him hard across the cheek, toppling him into the street.
Curling his body into a foetal ball, Alex tried to protect his head, as one stray kick and footstep landed after another, each no more malicious than the last, but stinging with the bruise of a fight that wasn’t his.
“Come on!”
A pair of firm hands gripped his underarms and hoisted him to his feet.
The taste of blood filled his mouth, the shouts of the crowd filled his ears, and an acrid mingling of blood, horses, summer sweat and rage pricked his nostrils, any trace of the peaceful demonstration that had filled the square now caught alight on the leftover embers of some Fascist bootlickers eager to crack some leftie heads.
With an arm draped across his Samaritan’s shoulders, Alex at last recognised him.
“We have to stop meeting like…” He abandoned the attempt to be funny.
Jago shot him a sly smirk. “Just keep moving.”
They didn’t stop until they were well away from the crowd, narrowly dodging another dozen police who’d been waiting in the Plaza Mayor. Alex took a moment to catch his breath in one of the side streets, startling a cat from its investigation of breakfast’s leftovers.
“Let me see you.” Jago examined his face with cold passivity. “I think you’re okay. Can you walk? I can’t carry you.”
He backed away as Alex coughed. When no blood came up, he took it as a good sign. “I’m fine, thanks. Lucky you were there.”
“I don’t envy your luck today, my friend. That could have been much worse for you.” Jago shook his head as more cops paused at the end of the alley. They looked straight at the boys for a moment, then kept running toward the sound of the angry crowd as it grew louder.
“Yes, yes, I know. Like I said, thank you. Where… I need to…” He eased himself off the wall and staggered forward a couple of steps until Jago caught him again.
“Woah, where are you going?”
“Work.” Alex held up the miraculously unscathed satchel. “I’m okay, really. It’s just on the other side of the plaza. I just need—”
“You need rest. A few inches to the right and that cop would have stomped your head in.” Jago squeezed his shoulder, belying his stern expression. “I think that deserves a sick day.”
“Don’t be stupid. I’ll just…” A wave of nausea collapsed him against the wall once more. “I’ll just tell Victoria I’m sick.”
“Tell her the truth. She’ll understand. Hell, I’ll call her. You take it slow.”
“You have a phone?”
“In my apartment.”
Alex looked up at Jago with a mischievous grin. “Now who needs to take things slow?”
Jago raised an eyebrow. “Another joke?”
“You tell me.”
“Come on.” Jago took Alex on his shoulders again. “Your sense of humour sucks when you’re sick.”
* * *
Sleep eluded Alex for the better part of an hour before he at last settled for dozing.
He sank his head into the admittedly comfy pillows of Jago’s single bed.
On the fourth floor, the apartment caught a nice breeze from over the Retiro, and it was only now, caught in the sun’s early afternoon barrage that he’d felt stifled by the heat.
The hands on the clock next to the bed hadn’t moved since his arrival, giving Alex the distinct sense his host and nurse wasn’t overly concerned with simple concepts like work and time.
Not that he knew anything about his host.
Hell, coming back to Jago’s apartment had probably been a terrible idea.
But his knapsack remained slung over the handle of the small wardrobe, right where he’d left it.
Likewise, his keys and wallet, slim as it was, still sat in his left pocket.
Only his belt was… no, there it was with his bag, right where Jago had left it before excusing himself to run the errands interrupted by Alex’s rescue.
These details returned to him while he was trying to sit up, as if the very act of lying down had surrendered them.
He’d read once dreams were mere memories or fears of the future, masquerading as the present.
But he hadn’t dozed off, at least not completely.
On the way to the flat, he’d pointed out Yolande’s bakery, where he and Vicente had enjoyed cheap but filling churros for breakfast every morning until the Plaza Mayor’s growing popularity with tourists had priced them out.
Jago’s only response had been a tender but silent smile.
Yet, he couldn’t remember Jago putting him to bed.
He was about to call him, but instead looked around the room one last time.
Odd. Most rooming houses or even apartments featured at least some sort of iconography.
A crucifix, or an image of the Virgin… hell, anything, just for show.
He’d hooked up with men whose depravities had played out—with him—under the watchful gaze of Christ himself. But in Jago’s room? Nothing.
He cried out as a loud bang came from the open window, followed by the syncopated flap of stunned wings as a pigeon staggered a moment on the roof outside, then tumbled over it.
Alex got up to inspect the aftermath. The poor thing’s broken body was now no more than a grey lump on the red tiled roof of the neighbouring low-rise, something to be washed away by the next rain shower, whenever that would come.
At least it wasn’t close enough to stink up the apartment in the heat.
“Alex?”
He started again, seeing Jago in the doorway holding a bottle of red wine and two glasses when he turned. “Jesus!”
“No Jesus here,” Jago answered with a satisfied smile.
“I noticed.”
Jago gently placed the wine down on the bedside table and shut the door behind him. “I’m sorry I startled you. You’re feeling better?”
“Better than someone, that’s for sure.” He nodded to the ill-fated bird.
Jago grimaced as he inspected the carnage. “Not the first time. I don’t really know why. I suppose I should paint something on the window. Or perhaps they are simply tired of life, so… boom! Into the window. Lemmings in bird form.”
“Lemmings?” Alex toyed with the idea of dispelling his perception of the animal’s suicidal ways but decided against it. “Does this happen often?”
“Just this summer. Perhaps the heat makes them crazy? I really don’t know. Come, sit.” Jago poured a glass of wine. “Have you tried Bobal? Valencia’s liquid treasure.”
“No, I don’t think I have. Is that where you’re from?”
Jago handed Alex the glass and poured another. “Just one for you. Nurse’s orders.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Hah!” Jago set the bottle down with a thump. “Would that turn you on? A masochist, like Luci in the movie? Perhaps I should piss on you?”
“You’re kidding?”
“Of course I’m kidding. Salud.”
They lifted their glasses high and drank together. The wine didn’t disappoint, though what Alex wasn’t sure what he’d been expecting. Bobal? Rioja? Merlot? Wine was wine to him, and it usually came watered down with a lot of ice and fruit.
“That’s delicious,” he said, mostly out of politeness.
“Damn. I thought I was unloading the cheap stuff on you.”
Alex furrowed his brow.
“Still joking.”
“Ah.”
For all Jago’s jokes, his dark brown eyes radiated an unspoken kindness Alex couldn’t ignore. “Thank you,” he said. “I mean, you really didn’t have to do this.”
“I was not going to just leave you there on the street. You’re not some bird that flew into a window.”
“No, but…” Alex wondered how many others had been hurt during the protest. How bad had it gotten?
He’d read horror stories of protestors being denied treatment at hospitals or dumped in ditches by the police, and there was no telling if these were true or holdovers from the Franco years. “I’m okay, I think?”
Jago crossed to the window sill and, setting his wine down, lit a cigarette, blowing smoke gingerly into the fresh air.
“I think so. I’m not trained, if that’s what you’re asking.
But you were lucid enough as we were walking here.
Nothing broken, as far as I can tell. Do you feel okay? No nausea? No pain?”
Alex nodded. In fact, he felt better than okay. Perhaps it was the wine.
“I don’t trust hospitals,” Jago continued. “My mother in all her life only went inside one. She never came out again.”
“I’m sorry to hear that. Can I ask, when did she pass?”
“I did not say she died.” Jago blew another long stream of smoke and stubbed out his cigarette, seemingly bored with it. “But without the mind… Anyway, there are benefits to being alone, just as there are benefits to making new friends.”
They lifted their glasses again, though it seemed to Alex a macabre sort of toast.
“Andalusia,” Jago continued.
“I’m sorry, what?”
“You asked, in your own roundabout way, where I was from? Andalusia. And now, I’m here.”
“Nobody in Madrid is from Madrid. Not these days.”