four #2
Of course Jaume had clocked what was affecting Ramon nearly from the outset.
They’d been partners long enough for him to recognize Ramon’s type, and to know when something like that was “interfering” with his judgment.
He found it hilarious, of course, and wouldn’t stop with the sly comments.
His screaming out in front of the poor lad—in his terrible broken English, to boot—had been the last straw.
So Ramon was glad when he finally got onto Eben with a wink in his direction and rode off back to the station.
Carme and the boy were both looking at him.
“What?”
“I asked you if you wanted to sit inside or outside? You were miles away.”
“Oh, outside, no? On the terrace. It’s a nice day, not too hot yet.”
The restaurant faced the stables’ riding yard, which was one of its biggest attractions.
If you were lucky, there’d be horses working out or a riding class going on in front of you while you ate, which is what made the restaurant popular.
One of Barcelona’s best-kept secrets, in the very heart of the city, La Foixarda made you feel you’d landed in a tiny forgotten corner of countryside barely a mile from Placa Catalunya.
They sat down at a table that was separated from the riding yard by just a raggedy hedge and a wire fence.
David immediately turned his attention out to the yard, where the class was just winding down.
The stable’s six ponies stood there patiently as the children learned to unbridle and unsaddle them, then to brush them down and give them a feed.
“Where are you from, David?” Ramon asked.
“England.”
“Yes, I know. What part I mean?”
“North. Small town.”
Even to get those monosyllabic replies, Ramon felt like he was pulling teeth. To describe David as surly was an understatement. But he persisted:
“So did you grow up with horses, like on a farm?”
“Yeah.”
“Or a stables?”
“Farm. Stud farm.”
“What was it, a family business, maybe?”
“No.”
A pretty boy he might be, but he earned zero points in the sociability stakes.
Thankfully, just then the waitress came to deliver their menus and take their drinks order.
Ramon sighed and asked for a sparkling mineral water.
He wouldn’t insist. The guy clearly had no interest in being reciprocal, whatever “chemical energy” Ramon had read into their interactions.
Besides, while in uniform, he was still officially working and couldn’t be coming on to every cute but surly stablehand he chanced across.
He turned his attention to Carme, asking her how things were going at the stables.
They had known each other since they were teenagers, having gone to the same high school and met at the school’s riding club.
At fourteen, they had officially started “going out together”, and kept that status for a couple of years, though it had quickly evolved into a tight platonic friendship.
At no point had Ramon needed to confess he was gay to Carme, but she’d seemed to “get it” without him saying anything.
While they had been an official “thing”, they had kissed a few times and tried experimentally putting their arms around each other, but they had both quickly realized that the other wasn’t that keen to go further.
Being a couple at that age had acted more as a smoke screen to parents and other friends than anything else.
When Ramon at fifteen had fooled around for the first time with another boy after his woodwork class, Carme was the friend he eventually told, and she would confide her crushes on other girls to him but without ever quite going to the extreme of declaring herself gay.
For most of their high school years they both kind of floated along on the delusion that they were bisexual and “open” as a couple, without doing much together that was actually heterosexual.
After high school, Ramon had gone on to university, pursuing studies to join the police, while Carme’s love for horses took her straight into a stable job after school.
But they’d stayed close friends, perhaps united by their equine passion, whereas other childhood friends might have drifted apart more quickly as they followed their separate lives.
Carme now lived with her partner, àgata, and had recently passed her government exams to become the stables’ official director, since it was council-owned, though she’d been practically running it for years.
The waitress came to take their orders. Ramon and David both decided on the steak and chips—a bit unimaginative, maybe, but it was good here—and Carme asked for the fish of the day, which was oven-baked cod, or bacallà a la llauna.
As David looked up briefly to give his order to the waitress, Ramon found himself studying him again.
David’s eyes met his, and again, there was that brief flare of something, and then he looked away.
The boy was hiding something. Ramon’s police instincts immediately sat forward.
For the rest of the lunch, Carme and he talked about different matters—the stables, àgata’s new job which was stressing her out, his partner Jaume’s son’s christening, a new brother to Clara—while David stared at his plate, chewing away.
To be fair, the guy barely spoke any Catalan or Spanish, so it was hard for him to join in the conversation—Carme and he naturally slipped into Catalan when they were talking together—but the few times they switched into English to include him, his answers remained monosyllabic.
By the time they got to the end of the meal, strained silences were starting to appear.
Finally, David stood up, waving off the offer of dessert.
“Thanks for the grub,” he mumbled at Ramon, barely meeting his eyes. “I should get back. Work to get done.”
“Nice to meet you, David,” said Ramon, giving him his hopefully most seductive but at the same time innocent smile. “Thanks for your work on Estel. I really appreciate it. I’ll stop by tomorrow, and see how he is.”
David just nodded, and Ramon watched him walk away, definitely trying to keep his eyes off that pert ass encased in the faded red trackies that David perhaps didn’t know he was wagging so arousingly as he sauntered back toward the stables.
“Still hungry for something?” Carme asked roguishly, following the direction of his gaze.
“How did you find him?” he asked with a frown, ignoring the innuendo.
“He caught Boira one day after she’d got loose, out there in the parking lot. You’ve seen how he is with horses. He’s a natural, knows a ton… not just about training but he’s got vet skills too. You saw that. He grew up around horses back in England… clearly.”
“So he just appeared. Did you check his references?”
“I trust my instincts, Ramon. Look at him. You know I’m right. He’s just traveling through, needed a job for a while. It’s no big mystery. I’m lucky to have him for as long as he wants to stay.”
“You should have done a background check at least. I’m not going to ask if you’re paying him under the table because I don’t want to know. But you’re now the official director of these stables, Carme. The buck stops with you. And you have some expensive horses here.”
Carme looked annoyed that Ramon was reading her the riot act, even if she knew he was right.
“Yeah, but you know what it’s like in this sector.
People come, people move on. Getting good stablehands is hard when you can’t pay them more than minimum wage.
David’s a good worker, keeps to himself, doesn’t go out getting drunk or any shit like that.
Maybe he’s got some skeletons in his closet, but…
don’t we all? God, I hardly go about telling people who my parents are. ”
Ramon smiled in spite of himself, drumming his fingers on the table as the waitress put down coffee. When she’d gone he said:
“You don’t tell because you don’t want the notoriety. You think David’s hiding something like that?”
Carme shrugged.
“I doubt it, but I’m going to respect his privacy. You’ve seen… he’s very shy. If and when he wants to talk about himself, then I’ll listen, but until then…”
“What’s his full name?”
“Oh come on, don’t go all Interpol on me.”
“I’m not going to!” Ramon looked exasperated. “But come on, Carme, you should do minimum due diligence of anyone you have working in the stables!”
“His name’s Cooke, with an ‘e’. David Cooke. Do your worst.”
After that, they drank their coffee in silence, before Carme excused herself to get back to the stables. It wasn’t the end to the lunch Ramon had hoped for.