Chapter Forty-Eight
As they stroll past the tiny bars and cafés strung out along the riverbank, William watches the reflection of coloured lights ripple prettily in the water and thinks about throwing himself in. At the very least it might clear his head.
Of course Sandy went and married Luisa. Why wouldn’t he, once William was out of the picture?
Even if he had to move to Madrid to find her.
William doesn’t care to examine this too closely, but he just bets her excited parents bought a dispensation from the Pope especially for that rich, blond, Presbyterian bastard.
Second time fortunato, Luisa! Yet patently that didn’t last either.
Which might suggest that Scotch and fino don’t mix quite as readily as any of them had hoped.
“There is a café,” she recalls, as they walk. “I pass it today in the hotel microbus. I am not certain, but I am thinking we have been there once, a long time ag—”
“Actually,” interrupts William, warily, “we’re better off with a cosy little bodega I know.”
*
The Café Amarillo is as busy as ever.
The old, white-haired woman with the gold tooth and the stubby pencil behind her ear, who seems to manage the place and never sleeps, is there alongside her young and surly under-manager.
William recognises them from his previous visits, but even if they might just have recognised him by this time, when in his last incarnation – big if, considering the flow of drinks and drinkers into the Yellow Café – he is obviously a first-timer to them now.
William tries not to make it too obvious to Luisa, but he finds himself looking determinedly around for two people whom he prays to high heaven won’t be here.
Then he begins to wonder, inasmuch as his frenzied brain can, whether this sweet young pair would find him just as much of a stranger.
In this new reality, he and Luisa never did come back to Seville, did they?
Or at least not to celebrate their pearl wedding anniversary.
But whatever is going to set future events for the young honeymooners on this new and very different trajectory, one that William himself has clearly influenced and whose unforeseen consequences he is now sadly enduring, hasn’t as yet happened to them in their own 1995 timeframe.
So he and Luisa – the old Luisa – must have returned here this week and met them.
And he must have, in his dubious wisdom, jiggled things around.
Or there would be no new bloody reality right now to be dealing with.
Like sitting here with a totally re-invented Luisa. The highly successful, single, childless one who left him in 1997. Because that last midnight of torrid Semana Santa love had proved, as intended, inconsequential.
He supposes it all depends on when new stuff kicks in and old memories finally die.
Or, of course, what sort of a laugh the gods feel like having today.
Because surely someone up there is playing with him, on this most extraordinary of weeks, in this bewitchingly other-worldly city.
And logic, the rules we mortals play by – the rules that govern time itself – have most certainly been defenestrated.
Well, William Sutherland is sorry, but he doesn’t quite get the joke.
This alternative humour in his alternate reality.
Or why he alone should be the butt of this celestial fun-fest, the helpless patsy being picked-on in the front row of life.
Not when he’s fighting for his sanity, whilst trying to remain Mr Rich ’n’ Cool of Eurotrash.
“Who do you look around for?” she asks, as they reach a table.
“No one! No one at all. Just – looking. Nice place. Very – yellow. Amarillo.” How did he know that? He’s floundering. Stay on message, William. “So – not surprised Sandy moved here to Spain. He always loved the place.”
“Sí. He expand his father’s business,” Luisa explains, taking out a phone that he notices, with a faint sense of pique, is even smarter than his own. “I learn a lot from him, before we part. About the marketing. But you are also the successful man now, yes? I know you want this very much.”
He shrugs modestly, without elaborating on the source of his riches, as Luisa beckons the young waiter with an imperious wave. “Johnny Walker, por favor. I think you like the Scotch, yes? Y fino.”
Once she has ordered, and even before the surly waiter has quit the table, she is checking her emails. He notices that her screen is a sea of the bold and unread and recalls how disinterested her predecessor was in all things electronic. Except texts, apparently.
Now she digs into her capacious bag, which he surprises himself by recognising as a genuine Hermès Birkin and of the softest leather.
From it she pulls out a small pad and a silver pencil and diligently begins to scribble indecipherable notes.
She proceeds to light a cigarette and make a phone call, talking in the fastest Spanish, ignoring William completely.
Eventually she shrugs him a cursory apology, which he waves off.
Of course he understands. People of the world.
William looks warily across at the uncleared table next to him, knowing exactly who he doesn’t want to turn up out of nowhere and claim it.
He notices a well-scooped ice cream dish and, beside it, resting against a tumbler, a small ball of candlewax.
Very carefully William leans over to pick it up.
He looks around for its owner, who has clearly left, most probably with his folks, to catch the next procession.
Where he or she will discover, to their chagrin, that they must start all over again.
The lumpy ball feels warm in his hand, as he rolls it around, the knobbles of wax gently massaging his palm.
William is so sad for the little boy, if indeed it is a little boy, who has been too full of his evening helados and excitement to “say goodbye” to his chair, as he and Luisa used to say, to make certain the kids left nothing of value behind.
Sensing a gap in the phone chat, he points to her mobile. “They’re working late.”
“I am working late. They are in Buenos Aires.”
She continues to talk into her phone, her voice a tad louder and sterner than before.
He finds that he can’t stop staring at her.
Even though she appears quite drawn and her familiar dark-brown eyes look tired, the “set” of her face seeming in some indefinable way different to that of her predecessor, he is taken once again by how beautiful she is.
A profound beauty, he thinks, now that he has the time to examine it, of which this face is simply the outward expression.
He hears familiar laughter behind him, moving closer.
Will and Lu are on the side street beside the café, scouring the terrace for a vacant table. Shit! Before he can turn away, William catches the young woman gazing at him, but her gaze is blank. She looks away yet something suddenly causes her to turn back.
“Let’s walk!” he tells Luisa, leaping up.
“We only just sit down!”
“We can sit down when we’re seventy,” he retorts, which right now doesn’t actually feel that far off. He grabs Luisa’s arm and lifts her right out of her chair. She’s lighter than the last one, he estimates, and wonders if she’s eating okay.
“I begin to remember you now,” she says, but there is little affection in her tone.
It is only when they are well away from the Café Amarillo and its distractions that William notices he has absent-mindedly slipped the small ball of wax into the side pocket of his blouson.