Chapter 14
With the sun’s going, the twilight became immediately darker. Kim looked at Dídac, whose face was now dimly lit. Barcelona’s twinkling lights spread out below them were beginning to shine brighter and in the lowering dark it felt easier to confess secrets.
“I’m sorry about… Tuesday,” Kim began, “I don’t know what came—“
“Don’t!” Dídac’s voice was hard and sharp. “Disown it if you like, but don’t speak of it as if it were a mistake. We both knew what we were doing.”
“Yes, I know, but what I mean is I hadn’t planned—“
“Do you plan everything in your life?”
“Yes, of course, I—“
“I couldn’t live like that. So this was unplanned, and therefore you didn’t—don’t—want it.”
“No, I don’t mean like that. Look, I don’t want to hurt you…”
“Don’t go overboard. It was just a kiss. I’m not such a delicate plant.”
Dídac’s laughter in the darkness was meant to impart bravado, but Kim felt only a wounded hurt.
“Yes, but I don’t want you to hate me… for stopping… I mean it was for the best, for the production…”
“Hate you? You’re my boss. If I did hate you… and there might be justifiable reason, it wouldn’t be in my interests to tell you, obviously. As you say, we have to think of the show.”
“OK, can we stop there? I know I haven’t been the warmest since we’ve met. I’m not always like this, but I can tell you that it’s The Swan that’s been uppermost on my mind. I wanted—“
“Always the show.”
“Yes!” Kim snapped. Dídac had finally managed to get him annoyed. “That’s my priority. It always has been, always will be! That’s why I’m here in Spain!”
“Catalonia.”
“Aren’t we here in Spain? Isn’t Catalonia in Spain?”
Now Dídac flared up:
“Where are you sitting, Kim? What do you see?”
“You mean the defenses…?”
“I mean these defenses. We lost the war, what you call the Spanish Civil War. But for us it was also a defense of Catalonia, and hopefully it’s right to exist, separate from Spain, although we lost that even before we lost the war.
Both sides wanted to stop Catalonia existing in the end.
We then had a forty-year dictatorship, before ending up in this ‘constitutional monarchy’, with Catalonia still subject to Spain.
But we’ve been independent before and may be so again. ”
“OK, forgive me, I’m ignorant of a lot of Spanish—and Catalan—history. I didn’t mean to offend you. I’ve been thinking even more about what you said in the press conference. It was very moving but it also placed a certain… responsibility on me… I mean I don’t want to hurt you.”
“So Tuesday’s kiss was part of your decision finally not to replace me with Isard Muntaner? Or was it perhaps just a sweet way of saying goodbye? I’m confused.”
“Isard Muntaner? What’s he got to do with all this?”
“You saw him right after the press conference.”
“Yes, about something else, another matter.”
“About what?”
“To tell you the truth, I can’t really remember. He has some sort of organization, or alliance. He’s looking for sponsors and ambassadors. I was distracted, to be honest, thinking… about… someone else.”
“Who?”
“One of my actors… who had just confessed this terribly moving account about deciding to become an actor. The same actor I later ended up stupidly kissing, in a totally unprofessional way.”
“Golly, you sure know how to beat yourself up over a kiss. It was just a kiss. But am I in or out of your production?”
“In, of course! Your work is brilliant, Dídac. You know I think so. I thought you saw that this week…”
“With the kiss?”
“No! Not with the kiss, with your work, the way we worked together… both before and after. It’s been beautiful, so deep. The kiss… I… would do it again…”
“If it weren’t for the production.”
“Damn the production!” Kim growled.
He turned to Dídac, wanting to explain himself better, but the actor was gazing out at the scene before them.
Without either of them noticing, the moon, which had been rising in the evening sky, now floated silver over the sea.
Dídac’s cheek bones were thrown into profile by the silver light.
Kim raised a tentative hand to his face.
His fingers caressed the silken bristle of the actor’s seven-day growth, tracing his strong profile, exploring the contour of his firm chin and soft lips.
Dídac did not react, neither pulling away nor leaning in. Finally he turned and looked at Kim.
“We shouldn’t…” Dídac began.
But his words trailed off as their faces came together.
This time when they kissed, it was slow and deliberate.
Leaning in to each other, their lips met sensuously, exploring the soft contact for which they’d both been yearning.
Soon, Kim’s tongue pushed forward in exploration, to be met by Dídac’s.
Their tongues engaged in a sensual slow dance, before venturing deeper into each other’s mouths, claiming that moist warm space.
It was a probing exploration of two primeval forces, long dormant and now awakened, ravenous for the sustenance—passion—that each offered, striving to experience this new sensation. Dídac broke off, murmuring hoarsely:
“You still have to plan tomorrow’s rehearsal…”
“I’ll wing it.”
And Kim’s arms came around Dídac, embracing him so lightly, almost as if he were afraid the other might vanish in the air, before pressing his body more insistently against the younger actor’s, hugging him so fiercely they seemed to forget where they were.
Dídac put out an arm to steady them, as they were in danger of toppling from their perch into the depths below.
“Careful,” he breathed, “or neither of us will make it to rehearsal in the morning.”
But Kim wasn’t listening. He passed his arm around Dídac’s torso, supporting the young man while pulling him closer in toward him, wanting him to rest his head on Kim’s shoulder.
The younger man let himself be manipulated stiffly, as if not quite willing to trust Kim’s motives.
Above them the full moon shone down on the Mediterranean, throwing out a trail directly from their hearts straight to the horizon.
Around them couples and groups were finishing their supplies, packing up, and meandering down from the escarpment into the city of Barcelona.
Soon they were left almost alone atop the gun emplacement.
Dídac disentangled himself from Kim’s grasp and scrambled to his feet.
The movement brought Kim back to his senses and he cursed himself for losing control yet again.
“Sorry, maybe I shouldn’t have done that… again. I don’t know what…” But he caught Dídac’s slightly reluctant mood. “Is there anywhere you have to, or want to be?”
“To be honest, I’m good right here,” the actor replied.
“With you. That was just a bit sudden, wasn’t it?
I honestly thought you hated me. Since seeing Muntaner appear in the theater, I’d been thinking, that was it…
game over. Until the kiss on Tuesday…. Then I was confused…
. And now you kiss me again? What’s going on here? ”
Kim got slowly to his feet, facing him.
“OK, maybe I… we… shouldn’t have done that. We got off to a bad start at the beginning… And I admit, I had my doubts… But… Firstly, on the professional side, you know your work is brilliant… you do, don’t you?”
“Well….” Now it was Dídac’s turn to be hesitant.
“The idea of working with you was like living my perfect life, fulfilling that childhood dream… of changing the world for the better for years to come. But I was too ready to… doubt myself… And when I met you… that bad start, as you say, yeah… that kind of poisoned the waters.”
“OK, Dídac—have I pronounced that right?—I admit, that first meeting, along with the late start… I had my doubts… but when I saw you working that second morning, and then the next day, when we worked together… How can you doubt your work, that you make the perfect Anton?”
“I don’t doubt it. That part is me, totally, one hundred percent.
What I was worried about was you doubting me.
OK….” He huffed out and paced a few paces away, and then back again.
“Can we just forget about the play for now, and focus on this moment? That’s what’s important to me, right now.
What’s happening for you… for us, here, right now? ”
“Sure, we can talk about that. Are you hungry? Maybe we could eat something?”
“Director, is this a date?”
“Didn’t you want to forget about the play? So stop calling me ‘director’, or I’ll push you off. Take me somewhere decent to eat.”
“Have you tried our Catalan cuisine yet? And I don’t mean a paella on the Rambla.”
“That spinach with raisins… is it sautéed, or…? It’s absolutely delicious!”
“Mmm, right answer. And that’s a good start. OK, let’s go. I know a place.”
They turned toward the way down, and immediately both felt quite shy.
After just kissing and hugging so passionately, Kim felt at a loss to know whether it would be too forward to take Dídac’s hand, or throw an arm over his shoulder.
In the end he decided to do neither, and they walked down the hill side by side, hands occasionally brushing just to feel that erotic charge between them.
Toward the bottom of the street, Dídac got out his phone and called them a ride.
Then pocketing his phone, took out his sunglasses and put them back on, though it was now nearly full dark.
“I know it’s a little pretentious,” he apologized, “but otherwise I get too much unwanted attention.”
Kim said nothing. After all, he knew nothing of Dídac’s reality.
Who was he to judge? They stood in silence then, at the bottom of the hill, both seemingly tongue-tied, until a sleek white car came swooping up to the curb.
Feeling suddenly ridiculously old-fashioned, Kim reached to open the door for Dídac, who smiled graciously at him as if he were a female courtesan being handed up into a golden coach by her beau, before ducking inside.
Kim followed. Barely had he even closed the door, than Dídac was giving the driver an address in a rapid staccato.