The following day she phoned Paul collect and he was there. She told him what had happened with his friend in Barcelona but didn't mention her financial situation. Paul thought for a few seconds and then had an idea: she could try calling another friend, or at least an acquaintance of his, a woman who lived in Mallorca but also had a house near Girona. Gloria was her name; she had started studying music at the age of forty-something, and now she was playing with the Palma Symphony Orchestra, or something like that. You probably won't get her either, said Paul, or that is what Anne remembers anyway. Next she phoned Susan in Great Falls and asked her to send money to Barcelona. Susan promised she would do it that day. Her voice sounded strange, as if she had been asleep or was drunk. The second possibility worried Anne, because it might mean that Susan would forget to send the money.
That night she called Gloria twice from a telephone booth in the Ramblas. She reached her the second time and explained her situation in detail. They talked for fifteen minutes, and then Gloria said Anne could go and live in her house in Vilademuls, a village near Banyoles, where the famous lake is; no need to worry about money, she could pay later when she got a job. Anne asked how she would be able to get into the house, and Gloria said she would be sharing; the house with two other Americans, one of whom was bound to be there when she arrived. There was no warmth in Gloria's voice, Anne remembers, but no pretense either. She had a slight New England accent, although Anne knew straight away she wasn't from New England; it was an objective voice, like Lindas (though less nasal), the voice of a woman who walks alone (which sounds like something out of a Western, though very few women in Westerns walk alone; in any case that was the image that occurred to Anne).
So she spent two more days in Barcelona until Susan's money arrived, paid the bill at the hotel, and went to Vilademuls, a village with no more than fifty inhabitants in winter and two hundred and something in summer. As Gloria had assured her, one of the Americans was there at the house, waiting for her. He was called Dan and he taught English in Barcelona, but every weekend he went up to Vilademuls to work on his detective novels. The only time Anne left the village that winter was to see a doctor in Barcelona. Dan and sometimes Christine, the other American, would arrive on Friday night. Very occasionally they brought friends, Americans too for the most part, but as a rule they came to the house to be alone: Dan worked on his drafts and Christine wove at her loom. Anne spent the weekdays writing letters, reading (in Glorias room she found a large collection of books in English), cleaning or doing the minor repairs that the ancient house often required. When spring came Christine found her a job teaching in a language school in Girona, and for a start Anne shared an apartment with an English and an American woman; but then, since she had a steady income, she decided to rent a place of her own, although she still spent the weekends at Vilademuls.
Around that time Bill came to visit her. It was the first time he had been out of the States and he spent a month traveling around Europe. He didn't like it. Nor did he like the atmosphere at Vilademuls, Anne remembers, although Dan and Christine were straightforward people, and in fact Dan was quite similar to Bilclass="underline" he had worked in construction for a while and had had similar experiences; he also liked to think of himself, without good reason, as a tough guy. But Bill didn't like Dan and Dan probably didn't like Bill either, although he took care not to let it show. According to Anne, seeing Bill again was beautiful and sad, though the words hardly begin to convey something deeper and indefinable. It was around then that I saw her for the first time. I was in a bar called La Arcada, on the Rambla de Girona. I saw Bill walk in and she came in after him. Bill was tall, his skin was tanned, and his hair was completely white. Anne was tall and slim, with high cheekbones and very straight brown hair. They sat at the bar and I could hardly take my eyes off them. I hadn't seen such a beautiful man and woman for a long time. They were so sure of themselves. So distant and disconcerting. I thought all the other people in the bar should have knelt down before them.
Shortly afterward I saw Bill again. He was walking down a street in Girona and this time, not surprisingly, he didn't seem quite so beautiful. In fact he seemed tired and flustered. A few days later, as I was coming down the hill from my house in La Pedrera, I saw Anne. She was coming the other way and for a few seconds we looked at each other. At that stage, Anne remembers, she had left the language school and was giving private English lessons and making a fair bit of money. Bill had left and she was living in the old part of Girona, opposite a bar called Freaks and a movie theater called the Opera.
From then on our paths began to cross quite often, as I remember. And although we didn't talk, we recognized each other. I guess at some point we started to say hello, as people do in smaller cities.
One morning I was in the Rambla chatting with Pep Colomer, an old painter who lives in Girona, when Anne stopped and talked to me for the first time. I can't remember what we said, maybe our names and where we came from. At the end of the conversation I invited her to dinner at my house that night. It was Christmastime, or nearly, and I made a pizza and bought a bottle of wine. We talked until very late. That was when Anne told me she'd been to Mexico several times. Overall, her adventures were very similar to mine. Anne thought this was because the lives or the youths of any two individuals would always be fundamentally alike, in spite of the obvious or even glaring difFerences. I preferred to think that somehow she and I had both explored the same map, fought the same doomed campaigns, received a common sentimental education. At five in th_e morning, or perhaps later, we went to bed and made love-Anne immediately became an important part of my life. After the first two weeks I realized that sex was a pretext; what really drew us together was friends hip. I got into the habit of going to her place at about eight at night, when she had finished her last lesson, and we wouLd talk until one or two in the morning. At some point, she would make sandwiches and we'd open a bottle of wine. We'd listen to some music or go down to Freaks to continue drinking and talking. A fair few of Girona's junkies used to gather outside that bar, and the local toughs were often to be seen cruising around, but Anne would reminisce about the toughs of San Francisco, who were seriously tough, and I would reminisce about the toughs of Mexico City, and we'd laugh and laugh, although now, to be honest, I can't remember what was so funny, perhaps just the fact that we were alive. At two in the morning we'd say good-bye and I would go back to my house in La Pedrera, up on the hill.
Once I went with her to the doctor, ac the Dexeus Clinic in Barcelona. By then I was going out wich another girl and she was going out with an architect from Girona, but I wasn't surprised (in fact I was flattered) when, as we entered the waiting room, she whispered, They'll probably think you're my husband. Once we went to Vlademuls together. Anne wanted me to meet Gloria, but Gloria didn't turn up that weekend. At Vilademuls, however, I discovered something that up until then I had only suspected: Anne could be different; she could be another person. It was a terrible weekend. Anne drank nonstop. Dan would occasionally emerge from his room and promptly disappear again (he was writing) and I had to endure the presence of one of Christine's or Dan's ex-students, a brainless Catalan girl from Barcelona or Girona, the sort who's more American than the Americans.