22 The piece of the Atlantic Ocean that kisses Cape Finisterre
22
The piece of the Atlantic Ocean that kisses Cape Finisterre
I feel something pulling me out of sleep. Like someone shaking me carefully, almost like someone rocking me. I resist being pulled out of my current state. It’s one of those tranquil dreams where you’re gently swaying on something floating way up high. And there’s no way to fall. I cling harder to my drowsiness. But there it is again. The rattling. What the fuck? Is Tristan moving the bed? How? Why? My eyes want to open, but I forbid them. Fuck no. I’m too comfortable.
Wait, wait…
I crack open my eyelids and find, right in front of me, glass and a car. A car coming straight at us, head-on.
“Aaah!” I scream at the top of my lungs.
Something is shaking the space I’m in. It takes me a little longer than it should to figure out the space is a car and the shake Tristan jerking the wheel in fear.
“What are you doing? Why are you screaming?”
“Ay…”
This is new. Waking up in motion. Where the fuck am I? Where are we going? How is it possible that I woke up here?
“Tris…”
“Argh…”
He hates when I call him Tris. I don’t do it very often.
“I don’t know where I am, for fuck’s sake. Be nice,” I croak, my voice raspy from sleep. “That was terrifying.”
I point at the tow truck in front of us, which has a few cars strapped to it backward.
“What did you think? That it was coming straight at us?” He cracks up.
“Yes.” I rub my eyes, and when I let my hand fall, I see my knuckle is completely black. “Shit. Do I have eyeliner everywhere?”
Tristan takes his eyes off the road for a second to check.
“You’re Voldemort.”
“What does Voldemort have to do with this?”
“What do I know?” He pisses himself laughing.
This is life. This is being human. We’re such creatures of habit that even though I don’t know where the hell I’m going or how it’s possible to wake up here at four in the afternoon, the thing I’m most worried about is my makeup running.
“Where are we going?”
“Ay, Miranda, for God’s sake.” He huffs.
I grab my bag from the footwell and rummage until I find my phone: March 15. I investigate a little further: two years ago. I look out the window, and everything is so green…
Of course, we’re on the way to Vigo. We left Madrid at ten a.m. in a rental car. I had to work until five in the morning to make the day off possible. Tristan complained passive-aggressively about having to drive so many hours “with nothing but your snores as company.”
Let’s see…a twinge of pain in my neck is bothering me, but I know it’s very important to make an effort. This trip wasn’t easy. It was beautiful because I had only passed through Vigo before, and it’s one of the most beautiful cities I’ve ever seen. So regal. So clean. So riddled with seagulls…but I can get over the seagulls. In fact, all of Galicia is beautiful. Seeing it through Tristan’s eyes was incredible. But…
Oh, the buts. There are big ones.
This is the trip where I met his parents. His mom thought it was borderline offensive that he had been with a girl for almost three years (if you count the first on-and-off year), he had moved into her apartment, and they still hadn’t even met her. I agreed. And his parents were lovely, as they have always been with me. The problem wasn’t his parents. It was his sister. Uxia became my archnemesis on that trip. And Tristan always took it on the chin…never her, of course not, because she’s the “sister of all sisters.” He was annoyed that I, as his girlfriend, as a girlfriend who lived a six-hour drive away, hadn’t somehow found a way to build a thriving relationship in the few moments we’d had together. I explained to him so many times that relationships are a two-way street and there was nothing I could do if she didn’t want me to, but he always said the same thing:
“Miri, it takes two to tango, especially when it comes to arguing. End of story.”
Well, then tell her that, because she’s got a grudge against me wasn’t a good response. It was a possible response, yes, but it would cause a fight that would last hours. A fight with Tristan had nothing to do with spitting reproaches or yelling at each other. Not at all. Having a fight with Tristan meant listening to him sigh and snort and getting used to the static of his silence.
“How much longer?”
“We’re near Melón.”
I keep looking at him with a smile. He smiles too.
“The village is called Melón. What do you want me to do?”
A giggle slips out before I respond.
“But how long until we get there?”
“About forty-five minutes.”
“When we get to Vigo, can you pass by El Molino?”
He shoots me a surprised look out of the corner of his eye.
“What did you say?” he asks.
“Can we stop by El Molino.”
“The bakery El Molino?”
“Yes.”
“Well…I wasn’t planning on going through the center, to be honest. My parents live kind of on the outskirts.”
“Yeah, I know. But…can’t we make a detour?”
“Well…I guess so. I don’t know if we’ll be able to stop on that street.”
“If you can’t, just drop me there, and go around the block a few times.”
“But…how the hell do you know about a bakery in Vigo?”
“I’m a journalist.” I smile at him. “I have my sources.”
“Well, your sources are excellent. It’s my mother’s favorite bakery.” He chuckles to himself.
My source is him, of course. His mother and his sister like the chocolate-covered tuiles and the chocolates from that bakery. His father likes the tea cake, which in my opinion is delicious but very dense.
An hour and fifteen minutes later, we get to the neighborhood where he grew up, Teis, a ten-minute drive from the center of Vigo. It’s a blue-collar town, like Carabanchel, where I grew up. The buildings have always reminded me of the ones on my parents’ street: seventies-style buildings made of brick and concrete, no frills. Practical balconies, the kind where you can hang your clothes to dry and look down onto the street. A neighborhood without luxuries that, according to what his parents told me, has changed a lot in the last decades. Years ago, it didn’t have a very good reputation, which is often the case where we working-class people live. I say we, because it’s not like I haven’t heard things about Carabanchel, and I’ve seen people turn their noses up. I always say the same thing: I’ve only been mugged once, and it was in fancy-ass Salamanca. But from what my future in-laws have told me, it’s possible that their neighborhood hides certain “treasures” that are better not to dig up.
Teis has a beautiful park I love, the A Riouxa Park, which is so intensely green it’s impossible to recreate it. There’s no Pantone for that color; it only exists here. It’s something Tristan always liked to hear me say, that his Vigo has colors you can’t find anywhere else. He’s proud of his homeland. He says Galicians are travelers but they always end up coming home, and that’s always bothered me. Vigo is beautiful, but it’s not mine. Not mine at all. I only fit in here as a tourist.
Tristan has been quiet for a while. On top of not wanting to tell me that he’s nervous about introducing me to his family, he’s not very happy I kept him waiting in the car for twenty minutes while I got out to buy the desserts. He always moves slowly, but he doesn’t like to be kept waiting. After I bought the pastries for everyone, I snuck into the Casa del Libro, which is on the next street over, to buy Uxia a book. She loves poetry, and I want to start off on the right foot. I’ve asked myself many times if I did something wrong, if I wasn’t sweet or thoughtful enough or… I don’t know. I need to know it’s not about me.
“Stop making that face, come on. I’m just trying to impress them,” I say in the doorway.
“I just don’t understand all this superhuman effort. It’s like you think my family has two heads and one of them eats Madrilenos or something.”
“You’re upset I’m trying to get off on the right foot…”
“Well, don’t make such a big deal, and I won’t make this face.” He raises his eyebrows. “They’re nicer than me, don’t worry.”
“Well, that makes me feel better because, look, you can be awful when you want to be.”
“And that’s why I fell in love with you.”
His mother opens the door and bounds out to kiss…me. To kiss me. At the time, I expected her to make a beeline for her son, not to me, but this time, I come prepared, and I respond with the same effusiveness. His father pokes his head out of the hallway and studies me up and down. Tristan never confirmed it, but I suspect I’m the first girl he ever brought home.
“How was the trip? You must be exhausted. Who drove?” his mother asks.
“Well, we were going to take turns, but Miranda fell into an irreversible coma, and I suffered through six hundred kilometers.”
“It can’t have been that bad,” his mother chides him, giving him a hug and two kisses.
“She didn’t wake up even when I stopped to get gas.”
“I worked really late last night so I could take the day off,” I say, making excuses. “I’m sorry…now he’s all grumpy.”
“I’m not grumpy,” he grumbles as he shoves the bags from the bakery at his mother. “Here.”
“Wow! From El Molino! That’s so thoughtful, darling.”
“It’s all Miranda’s doing. She did some research.”
“Ay! Thank you, mina xoia! ”
I flash Tristan a victorious smile as his parents pat me gratefully. In the bag. I’ve got it in the bag.
“What about Uxia? Is she here? I’m dying to meet her,” I say.
“She’s in the living room. Come in, come in…”
The rude cow…doesn’t even come out to say hi.
Uxia is, far and away, one of the most beautiful women I’ve ever seen in my life. She’s the female equivalent of her brother, but all Tristan’s sharp, masculine features are softened on her face. She’s brunette, has much greener eyes and a killer body. But Uxia’s beauty is inversely proportional to how nice she is. I find her sprawled out on the couch, and she struggles to get up when we appear in the living room, not because of anything physical, just because she doesn’t feel like it.
“Hi, Uxia!” I go over to her with a big grin. “How’s it going? I’m Miranda. So nice to meet you. Your brother has told me so much about you.”
“Miranda? I could’ve sworn your name was Amanda.”
I side-eye Tristan. In this version, she’s almost ruder than the first time.
“Close.” I laugh. “Tristan told me you like poetry, so…I brought you a book.”
“It’s not my birthday.” She takes the bag I hold out to her reluctantly, which is actually a euphemism meaning with “a face like she’s smelling shit.”
Actually, it’s fair to say that’s her usual face; she always gives me the feeling that someone is holding a piece of shit under her nose and she’s permanently smelling it.
“Well, it’s just a little welcome present?” I say.
“Yes. To the family.”
And it’s dripping with irony. She drops the book onto the coffee table in front of the couch and throws herself into Tristan’s arms in an overly effusive way. It almost seems like she’s hamming it up just to show how much I gross her out.
“Mr. Lawyer!”
“Mr. Legal Eagle.” He smiles.
They both laugh. Their adoration for each other is tangible. The same thing happened the first time I lived this: I’m dying of jealousy. I want to have someone who’s flesh of my flesh, blood of my blood, to adore. And someone to talk shit about this girl with me.
“I left the sweater you forgot at my house on your bed,” she says to him.
“I’m not sleeping here this time.”
“Why not?”
“My childhood bed, a twin, might be a little bit of a stretch for two of us.”
Tristan looks at me sidelong with that beautiful smile.
“You’re not sleeping here?” his sister repeats.
Come on, dudette, what’s so hard to get? That I’m not a chihuahua and I’m not going to sleep curled up at his feet?
“No,” her brother replies. “We booked a room in that hotel…the one in the port. I can’t remember the name.”
“The fancy one?”
“The fancy one.” He laughs.
“Well, I saw some of your friends at the bar on my way here, and they’re convinced you’re going to grab a drink with them tonight.”
“That’s the plan.” He laughs and tugs on her hair, which she has in a low pony.
“And you’re going to try to get in there wasted?”
“He’s not going to the hotel wasted or anywhere, because I don’t think your brother gets blind-drunk at his age like he did when he was eighteen,” their mother says.
Tristan shoots me an embarrassed look.
“Chill out, Mama.”
“I’m not going to chill out. I know what animals your friends are.”
I do too. I do too…
“I’ll drive. He can drink all the beers he wants,” I say to ease the tension.
“Umm…how kind,” Uxia mutters.
“Are you coming with us?” I ask her. “To meet them for a drink?”
I smile like a saint, but she glares at me…she stares at me…she stares at me…and she doesn’t answer. I search for Tristan with my gaze…and I don’t find him. He reappears carrying a tray loaded down with cups of coffee.
“I was just asking your sister if she was going to come have a drink with us tonight.”
“She probably has plans,” he says. “What about that boyfriend of yours with the long hair?”
“He doesn’t have long hair. It’s just that you, my boy, with that haircut you’ve had since communion… I’m sure if you tried the part on the other side, it would chap your ass.”
“I don’t have a part on either side, you nerd.”
But he laughs. They laugh together. And I’m just standing there, looking at them with a shit-eating grin on my face.
“Miranda, sweetheart, you really hit the bull’s-eye with everything you brought,” his mother thanks me. “How do you like your coffee, lovely?”
“Black like the night and with sweetener,” Tristan says, coming back over to me and looping his arm around my waist. “Like her soul: dark but slightly cloying.”
“You can say that again…”
I look at Uxia, waiting for her to laugh, but she doesn’t. The book I bought is sitting there, tossed aside, on the coffee table.
“Your sister hates me.”
Tristan is slumped against the car window. It’s not like he’s a lightweight, but he’s had a lot of beer. I had two stubbies at the beginning of the night and then a lot of sparkling water. Apparently, drinking sparkling water is frowned upon in this circle, and I got a little heckled. His sister, who finally decided to grace us with her presence, didn’t miss the opportunity to make a joke that didn’t exactly sound like a joke.
“She doesn’t hate you,” he slurs.
His eyes are drooping. He’s tired.
“She despises me. She looks at me with disgust. I don’t know what I did. I tried to be nice, to bring up topics she’d like, to take an interest in her stuff…but nothing.” I’m honestly frustrated.
“Maybe…”
“Maybe what?”
“It doesn’t matter. Let it go. You’re gonna let your imagination run wild.”
“No, no.” I shoot him a look. “Tell me. I want her to like me.”
“Maybe that’s the problem.” He sighs. “You’re trying too hard.”
“Too hard? Define too hard.”
“Just…too much. I don’t know. You know what I mean.”
“Too much like when someone is sprung on you and they won’t take the hint and it’s super annoying?”
“Something like that.” He presses his left hand to his forehead.
“Does your head hurt?”
“A little.”
“Do you want an aspirin? I have some in my bag. It’s the kind you can take without water.”
“You’re doing it again.”
“Doing what again?”
“Trying too hard. I’m your boyfriend. You don’t need to be like that. I already love you.”
I shoot him a questioning look. The GPS is telling me to turn left on the next road, where I’ll find the hotel parking lot.
“Are you gonna start being mean now too?”
Tristan gives a muffled laugh.
“No, of course not.” He reaches out to stroke my neck. “I’m just saying you’re so nervous. Like…next level.”
“Overhyped?”
“You said it, not me. But maybe that is the right word.”
I suck my teeth.
“You think this is all so fucking funny…” I lose my cool.
“A little. You always seem so…I don’t know, so over-the-top.”
“I seem over-the-top?” I’m scandalized.
“Well, you know. Like you’re prepared for everything. I think what happens is you have to be such a hard-ass at work and ready to adapt to any situation.”
“Well, yes, I do,” I grumble.
“Don’t get mad.”
“Your sister was really rude, Tristan.”
“She wasn’t rude. She’s just…herself. And I’m her only brother.”
“And that’s why she had to treat your partner like a piece of shit you dragged into the house on your shoe?”
Tristan sighs. He sighs and…
“You’re going too far, Miranda.”
“Tell me what I have to do to get your sister to like me.”
He laughs, but it sounds kind of bitter like someone thinking “again?”
“You really wanna know?”
“Yes, please, because I’m hoping for some nice…years.”
“Here comes the fortune teller again.”
“Come on. How can I make her like me? Or at least tolerate me with a good sense of humor?”
“Nothing.”
I look at him, surprised, and he turns back to me with a tired smile.
“I’m her little brother, and she’ll never think anything is good enough for me. None of the girls I’ve dated before, from college, from home, Vigo, Madrid, my car back when I had a car, my vacations… She always treats me like I’m not striving hard enough and I’m missing out on opportunities. I could fall in love with her best friend, and she’d be just as bummed as she is about anyone, including you. Plus now she has someone to blame for not getting to see me as much.”
I stop the car on the access ramp to the parking lot and look at him as I roll the window down to take the ticket.
“Great.” I raise my eyebrows to underline my sarcasm.
“Yeah, yeah, I know, Miri, but this is the deal and…I hate to break it to you that you’re just gonna have to put up with it. You live far away from each other, and you’re going to see each other from Easter to Palm Sunday… It’s not that hard to put on a good face and suck it up.”
“That’s pretty egotistical of you. You’ll be fine, just grin and bear it and never bother you with it again, right? Don’t burden you with it.”
“Miranda, that’s not what I’m saying. I’m saying there’s no solution except resigning yourself to it.”
“Well, I’m not really one for resigning myself,” I mutter.
“So what can we do?”
“You could say something to her. Ask her to be nice to me, for example…or at least to answer when I speak to her.”
“I could do that, yes, but then she’ll just be even madder at you because she’ll think you asked me to yell at her. I’m saying it for your own good, Miri, babe.”
“There has to be something that…”
“Miranda, for God’s sake…” He recoils. “I’m not my sister’s keeper. She’s thirty-six, and she’s a grown-up. This isn’t a classroom, and I’m not the teacher.”
“Fine then, we’ll settle it in the ring. Or in a duel. Whoever survives gets to keep you.”
“God…considering how little I like drama, I don’t know how I ended up with the queen of tragedy.”
I have the urge to slam his head against the dashboard, but I resist it and park.
“Now you’re mad?” he asks, gobsmacked.
This thing with some men…what’s their damage? Do they come from the past, from another planet, or from the earth’s core? No. I’m not stereotyping. The male species is stupid sometimes. End of story.
We drag our suitcases over to reception, which is deserted at this hour. A smiley girl is waiting for us behind the desk. We check in in silence, and while she types away on her computer and activates our electronic key cards, I start thinking how this is like that Bill Murray movie where he’s always living the same day, Groundhog Day , but instead of always waking up in the same temporal point, I’m jumping from situation to situation, and I can change the way things happen but not the outcome. It’s frustrating. That giant whore Uxia stole the night from us again. And here I was wanting to celebrate my triumph by nuzzling into his sweaty chest after an intense fuck session…
Our room is on the third floor, and it’s beautiful. A little dark and impersonal, like almost all hotels at night, but pretty. It has views of the port, which will definitely make everything look better when I wake up. I don’t know what tomorrow holds, but I’d be sad if I drag this feeling of defeat around the whole weekend, even subconsciously. It’s still Friday night. We can come back from this. I can fix all this. I can strip his sister of the power to fuck over what’s left of our trip, because I’m playing with an advantage; if this were a war, I have a certain strategic superiority. What can I do?
Wait…
I grab my phone and look up a few things.
Yes.
That’s it.
“Tristan…”
He comes out of the bathroom, his pants unzipped, looking scruffy.
“Are you over it yet?” He looks at me for a second but then heads straight over to our luggage. “Do you have any idea where I put my contact lens case?”
“Can you listen to me for a second, look me in the eyes, and shut up?”
“There’s no way you’re demanding sex? Because I would really flip out, after the way you…”
“Shut up and get dressed again,” I demand.
“Why?”
“Because we’re leaving.”
“Where?”
“Somewhere.”
“I’m exhausted, Miri…” he groans, sliding off the bed and slumping against the side of it.
“Please, Tristan… I’ll drive.”
“Drive? Miranda, it’s almost two in the morning.”
“Do we have plans to get up early tomorrow?”
“No, but I got up early today, and…you slept in the car, but I had the hassle of six hours behind the wheel.”
“I said I’ll drive,” I repeat. “You can sleep. And it’s not going to kill us. Don’t make that face.”
“But where do you want to go?”
“Can you just listen to me for once in your life?” I try to make puppy-dog eyes at him to see if he’ll soften. “It’s important… I don’t normally do stuff like this.”
“No. You’re usually a little more normal.”
“Well, time for me to stop being boring… Button your pants, and grab your jacket.”
Before we leave, I make myself a coffee from the capsule machine on the table opposite the bed, because I want to fix this, but I don’t want to kill myself on the way…
Tristan falls asleep twenty minutes in, and he doesn’t even wake up when I open my window so the crisp night air perks me up. I’m not tired. I wouldn’t have risked it if I were, but it feels good. He sleeps like a log and gifts me some very funny snores as a soundtrack. In profile, asleep like this, he’s halfway between ugly and very funny. I mean, he can’t be ugly, because I’m sure even his spleen is beautiful, but in that pretty comical position, his head tipping back, his mouth ajar, and totally out of it…he’s not exactly handsome.
A bump in the road jolts him awake, but we’re only a few minutes away…at least to the closest point to our destination where we are allowed to leave the car. The first thing he does is look at the time and then at me. It’s four in the morning.
“Wait, where are we?”
I don’t say anything until the car is parked. Then I turn on the lights and roll down the windows. Then the sound of the waves crashing against the rocks down below us floats in. He must have already recognized the place, because he scans the darkness in silence, no questions asked.
“Couples always say super romantic stuff like in the movies. Things like they’ll love each other even after they die or they’d cross the whole world just to be together,” I say, looking out into the night as well. I’m generating power from this burst of romance. “I don’t know how to say these things. I could try to write them, but I’d probably get terrible secondhand embarrassment saying them to you.”
“Not secondhand, firsthand,” he points out.
“Yeah. Exactly.”
I fall silent, and the sounds of the night waft inside, mingling with us and the unbroken darkness. Soon our eyes will adjust, and the stars will glow even brighter.
“Go ahead…” he nudges.
“I’m saying I don’t know how to say these things, but…if I have a car and an opportunity, I’m capable of taking you to the end of the world. Maybe our love is that kind of love…a slightly apocalyptic love.”
We turn back to each other again. His eyes are drowsy, but they look as beautiful as ever. We smile at the same time and reach for each other’s hands at the same time.
“I’m not going to tell you I’ll love you even after we die.”
“Thanks,” he says with a teasing smile.
“But I’m going to tell you that I love you at the end of the world. And I think that’s worth something.”
The kiss that comes after is clumsy, because kisses in the front seat of cars always are, navigating the steering wheel, gear shift, and emergency brake. But it’s a happy kiss. A kiss of two people in love who get angry, who snore, who are going to fight dozens of times, and who one day, maybe, will throw in the towel, but they are two people who love each other like they’ve never loved anyone else before. And discovering how deep love can go, even though they’re over thirty, is amazing. It’s unstoppable. Because I guess we’re all capable of loving more.
Sunrise is still at least three hours away, so we decide to snuggle up in the back of the car. It doesn’t take long for clothes to ride up a bit, and I end up on top of him, unable to take my eyes off his face, his expression of pleasure as he penetrates me. The same girl who once frantically asked him to slap me during a sex marathon, I find myself stroking his hair as I ride up and down on his lap. His hands clinging to my hips are like an anchor to real life in the midst of the strange thing my existence has become. And when the moment to stop comes, I don’t want to, and I ask him not to. Not to pull out, to keep going, to fill me up. I tell him I want to feel him empty out inside me. I want to have him so deep inside me that I can never erase his footprint. And when he does, when he comes inside me for the first time, I feel like I would do anything to change how our story ends.
At 7:48, the sun breaks over the end of the earth, the piece of the Atlantic Ocean that kisses Cape Finisterre.