Chapter 22
“So, tell all… Why are you sitting there smiling so widely it’s pushing out your ears?”
Laia and Dídac were in that month’s restaurant mecca—eating a meal together being one of their favorite things to do.
This one, Sahara, a Moroccan eatery, had commandeered a Modernista conservatory—apparently it used to be part of Count Güell’s youngest son’s playboy pad back in the early twentieth-century.
Its exquisite, stained-glass barrel-vault ceiling, depicting the four seasons as muses above, defined the space, while several sensual, larger-than-life marble sculptures of female nudes were arranged throughout, along with artificial hedges, separating the restaurant into smaller groves of tables.
Laia had managed to confirm the booking just that afternoon as it was tough to get a table. It had become free fortuitously just when Dídac had something to celebrate. Even so, at the back of his mind, his conscience nagged him that he had agreed to be discreet.
“Am I? Yeah… OK, I’ve… um… got something to tell you.”
However discreet he tried to be, his smile gave it all away.
“So, who is he?” Laia asked, scooping a dollop of the eggplant dip they were sharing for a starter onto a fresh piece of homemade flatbread she had just dipped in olive oil. Dídac was silent, not quite sure what or how much to say.
“Come on, Didi, we have no secrets.” She popped the bread into her mouth, chewed slowly and then swallowed. “That Zaalouk is heaven! Do we?”
“No… just someone I met… You don’t know him.”
“So… what’s he like?”
The smile broadened across Dídac’s face.
“Quite… how to describe him? He’s quite… very assertive. Well built… dark and… hairy…” He was aware of trying to throw a spanner into the workings of Laia’s mind.
“Right… not your normal type.”
“No, I suppose not.”
Dídac felt guilty for deceiving Laia like this, but he could hardly spill the beans when Kim had told him specifically not to.
“What does he do? Where did you meet him?”
“He’s a… I met him… on an app.”
“I thought you deleted all your apps after that last fuck-up.”
“Yeah… not all… I downloaded one again.” Despite being a brilliant actor, Dídac was really crap at lying. “He’s an engineer.”
“What branch?”
“I dunno. What do you mean?” Did engineers even have branches?
“Does he build highways, vacuum cleaners, or microchips?”
“Honestly, no idea. We didn’t talk that much about his job.”
“Too busy fucking?”
“Something like that.”
“Well, I hope this isn’t going to go pear-shaped like the other ones….”
“Laia! You’re supposed to be supporting me!”
“I am, Didi. I just want you to make the right decision this time. Don’t just go for someone because you like shagging him.”
“Thanks a lot. This feels like a real confidence session. What do you want for mains?”
“I think I’ll go for the raw meat… What do they call it, Steak Tartar?”
“Ha ha, very funny! And that’s not even Moroccan. How about the lamb tagine?”
“OK, so what’s his name?”
Dídac studied his menu.
“Didi, are you saying you can’t even remember his name?”
“Of course I can! It’s Ki… eran. Kieran. Irish.”
“Kieran, the Irish engineer. Sounds like one of those memory games. So are you sure what you want?”
Dídac smiled sweetly at her. “Why, the meat of course, sweetie.”
They both laughed, and Laia signaled the waiter.
After leaving the restaurant where Dídac had taken Kim for lunch—a slick paella restaurant perched high on Montju?c Mountain looking out over the Port of Barcelona—they had wandered slowly down the hill toward the city.
Their every urge was to touch each other, but Dídac had a healthy fear of paparazzi turning up in the most unexpected locations.
He could have called a car, but he relished seeing how far they could get like this, strolling anonymously along, just their knuckles or wrists grazing against each other surreptitiously as they walked.
Dídac experienced an almost electric frisson from even the slightest brushing of the hairs on the back of his hand, knowing it was Kim, still feeling in his body the reality of Kim holding him last night, and of having sex earlier, in the theater.
“Take me to your special place.”
“My special place?”
“Somewhere that’s important to you, here in Barcelona.”
Dídac thought. Where was somewhere that would feel special to be with Kim right now? Out along the breakwater? The truth was, the sun was coming down so strongly that they would both fry within five minutes out there. It needed to be somewhere indoors out of the heat.
“Let me think… OK. We should grab a car. We could walk there, but in this heat, we’d both dehydrate before we got there.”
“Sure, but let me pay,” Kim said, as Dídac started to get his phone out. “Let’s see…” He opened his own phone, trying to find a ride share or taxi app that functioned in Barcelona.
“Don’t worry,” Dídac laughed. “You can get dinner or something. I use mine so often that I get good discounts.”
The car picked them up on a bend in the road still high on the mountain, close to the MNAC art museum.
Soon, they were cruising along Passeig de Colom, the wide avenue fronting onto Barcelona port.
Dídac slid down the window so that salt air wafted into the car, much to the driver’s annoyance, who had his air conditioning turned high.
“Sorry, can you turn it off for a moment?” Dídac asked the driver. “I hate that false cold—and it’s so bad for the environment. With a bit of a breeze you don’t need it. Plus, you can smell every detail of the city.”
Kim agreed. Along with the salt, the slightly fetid smell of algae and sea moss on the wharf pilings, and the dry odor of hot tarmac entered the car.
They could hear gulls and traffic too. The car dropped them at the gates of Ciutadella Park, on Passeig de Picasso, alongside a large glass and iron cube.
“That’s Homage to Picasso, by one our best modern artists, Tàpies,” Dídac informed him.
They walked over to it. Inside, a number of girders perforated the space at obtuse angles, helping to suspend expanses of draped white cloth and a selection of nineteenth-century furniture inside.
Water streamed down the cube’s interior walls, creating a translucent curtain, as if separating the objects in space.
“It’s… odd,” Kim commented.
“Yeah, I agree. I like it though. And it does remind me of Picasso’s cubist work. He lived for a while in Barcelona when he was young, before he went to Paris.”
“Is that what you want to show me?”
“No, let’s go inside.”
They entered the park. Before them was a huge building that towered above them. It consisted of interlocking barrel domes made of parallel wooden slats.
“This is it. You asked to see my special place. Mum used to bring me here as a kid.”
It was an enormous shade house, similar to the winter gardens in northern climes that used glass to keep in and concentrate the heat.
But the goal here was the opposite: keeping the sun’s heat out, creating a cooler atmosphere so that you could grow plants from colder latitudes.
And it truly felt as if they had walked into an air-conditioned space.
Plants hung down on chains, attached to the iron girders far above.
Wide avenues that meandered through the space were overhung by leafy greenery, while smaller grottoes harbored water features surrounded by ferns, in which frogs could be heard croaking.
“What an amazing place,” Kim commented. “I know you have a brother, but you haven’t told me about your parents.”
“They split when I was nine,” Dídac said, “so it was just my mum and my brother Pau. Pau used to look after me quite a lot, I guess. I didn’t see much of my dad as a kid, though I’ve become friends with him and his wife as an adult.
I go over to dinner at their place once a month or so.
And they come to all of my openings. Mum…
” He paused, looking up at the plants surrounding them.
“Mum struggled… battled to bring us up, without much financial or emotional help from Dad and his new woman. She sacrificed everything to get us our careers. Pau became an architect, and I—”
“Gave up on the idea of teaching or being a chef to become an actor. Your mum must have been furious… And it’s all my fault,” Kim said gravely. “I hope she doesn’t take a piece out of me… if we ever meet.”
“No, she always supported me in my dreams, and so far… it’s working out. She was the one who paid for our tickets to Boomerang with her bus-driving job.”
“A bus driver? My God, she sounds like an incredible woman. I’d love to meet her. And I promise I will refund the cost of the tickets to that show plus more—”
“No need. It was ten years ago now. We never had much, but she cut corners to give us treats and special stuff. And if she thought that seeing some theater, or visiting a museum might help us with our dreams, she would make sure it happened. She refused to let us compromise, and made us aim for the sky.”
“And if she hadn’t forked out for those tickets, you wouldn’t have become an actor, and we would never have met. So, I owe her big time.”
Dídac laughed.
“OK, you’ll meet her. She’ll be coming to the opening. You can take her out to dinner afterward. But I warn you, since my last couple of movies, she’s developed a taste for only the best cava!”
“Well, she deserves no less! It would be my honor to invite you both, and your brother if he’s around.
“Don’t worry about him, he’s doing OK, earning good money as an architect. He’ll be at the opening too, with his girlfriend.”
Kim stopped walking. Dídac turned and faced him.
“So, is this where you present me to your whole family? My nerves are going to go through the roof that night, but not because of the play…”
“Don’t worry, you’ll be fine. They don’t bite. My cat’s the one who bites. Dragon. When you meet her, you’ll need to be on your best behavior.”
“Can she be brought or bribed? Fresh tuna, maybe?”
Dídac smiled.