Isabel shifted and I put the book away and leaned my head against the mass of her hair and fell asleep. We were both awakened when the train stopped, still a few hours from Granada. We stepped off the train and smoked in the dark, although you could smoke on the train; the night air was cool, laced with jasmine, if they have that in Spain. Isabel described a dream I couldn’t understand. The train made a noise that indicated it was preparing to leave and we went back to our seats, fell asleep again, then were both gently roused by a conductor, who said we were approaching Granada, last stop. It was a slightly lighter dark now that dawn was an hour away and when the train pulled into the station and eventually halted we disembarked and wandered out of the station in a state of not unpleasant fatigue.
We found a cab and drove to a hotel Isabel knew in the Albaicín, a neighborhood of impossibly narrow, winding streets on a hill facing the Alhambra. The hotel was surprisingly nice given the rates; Moorish medieval architecture, intricate woodwork, and a courtyard with a green mosaic. We were led to a simple room with exposed beams, a room for that reason reminiscent of my apartment, and we slept through the morning. When I woke I was for a moment unsure of my surroundings, then remembered the spontaneous trip, the train, and again wished Teresa could see me interleaved with Isabel, her jet hair splayed against the heavily starched sheets. We showered, dressed, and walked into the preternaturally bright day, wandering the threadlike streets until we found a sidewalk café, although there wasn’t much sidewalk, where we ordered orange juice, croissants, coffee. From the café you could see the Alhambra on a vast and hilly terrace across the river. Isabel was wearing her hair down and looked beautiful to me and I told her so. I paid and we descended into the city and visited the cathedral and a small modern art museum where I pretended to take copious notes.
When we were ready to eat again it was late afternoon and we returned to the Albaicín to find a restaurant Isabel knew. Within a few minutes of our arrival we were presented with giant plates of fried fish and squid that either Isabel had ordered without my knowing or that were the restaurant’s only dish. They also brought us a bottle of nearly frozen white wine and I drank several glasses quickly and felt immediately and pleasantly drunk. I said something to Isabel about the experience of braided temporalities in ancient cities and she nodded in a way that showed she wasn’t listening.
“What are you thinking about?” I asked her, refilling both of our glasses, the bottle almost empty.
She hesitated. “We never talk about our relationship, about the rules,” she said. I always thought the rule was that we wouldn’t. This was the first time I’d heard her refer to our “relationship” at all. I knew what was coming: she wanted to assure herself I wasn’t seeing anybody else, that at least for as long as I was in Spain, I was hers exclusively. Maybe she also wanted to know how long I planned to stay, if I was seriously considering remaining in Spain after my fellowship.
“I am in a relationship,” was the English equivalent of what she said. I felt the wind had been knocked out of me. I smiled to imply that of course we both had other relationships.
“He must have an open mind,” I said, holding the smile, “to allow you to travel with other men.” I was surprised to feel devastated.
“He has been working in Barcelona this year. He was here at Christmas and a couple of other times. He’ll be back in Madrid starting in June.” The way she said “June” hinted she would like to know where I planned to be then. I remembered I hadn’t seen Isabel much around the holidays.
I pushed my plate away a little and lit a cigarette. “So what happens to us in June?” Now the seafood looked alien, arachnoid, repulsive.
She smiled in a way that said, “I really like you, we’ve had a lot of fun, but in June our time is up.” Then she said, “I don’t know.”
“What’s his name?” I asked, suggesting with my tone that whatever his name was, I thought he was a harmless little boy.
“Oscar,” she said, and her voice declared he was a man among men. “We decided to break up when he had to move to Barcelona for work. Or to at least be open to other people. But now we both feel that we should be together when he returns.” In English I thought “Oscar” sounded silly; in Spanish: very serious.
I had let the smile slip away. “Does he know about me?” I felt like crying. I tried to long for Teresa, but could not.
“We’ve both been seeing other people. We don’t ask each other about it,” she said. I wondered how many other people she had been with recently. “Just like you and I don’t ask each other,” she added. It was clear she hoped I had other relationships.
“Claro,” I said, recomposing my smile to indicate I’d slept with half the women in Madrid. “You love him?” It was a stupid, clichéd question.
“Yes,” she said, her tone confirming it was a stupid, clichéd question.
“Well,” I said, “there is still some time before June.” I imagined breaking the bottle over her head then raking my throat with the jagged glass.
“Yes,” she said, and leaned over and kissed me. “There is a lot of time before you go back.”
“I didn’t say I was going back,” I said, flatly.
“But your mom,” she said.
I was grateful for a reason to be upset. “I don’t want to talk about my mother with you.” Then, after a pause: “I have to piss.” I went to the bathroom and splashed water on my face and looked in the mirror and let out a single ridiculous sob. Then I laughed at myself, applied some more water, dried off my face, and returned to the table, sad but stabilized. “Sorry,” I said. “It can be hard to think about my mom.”
“Of course,” she said, “I’m sorry.” I kissed her to assert my spirits were ultimately unaffected by our talk and resumed my increasingly fragmented and incoherent speech about time in ancient cities. She seemed interested now, although I suspected it was charity.
We left the restaurant and walked back down through the Albaicín into the center of the city. Isabel put her arm around me in gesture that expressed less affection than relief at having clarified things between us. As we walked and dusk began to fall and Isabel wrapped herself in a shawl, I thought back to the scene at the lake when Miguel hit me; that was probably around the time she’d broken up with Oscar. And who knew if Rufina’s suspicion of me was the issue of her disdain for Oscar or her affection for him. We sat on a bench in a little plaza and watched the goatsuckers spar. My mind was revising many months’ worth of assumptions; I felt something like a physical change as my recent past liquefied and reformed. What was left of the light burnished what it touched; Isabel was half shadow and half bronze, boundless and bounded. We got high.
When it was unmistakably night we walked down toward and then along the Darro; there was some sort of small festival and part of the river was illumined by torches. Little kids dressed in white, glowing softly, darted through the streets. It had been a while since either of us had spoken, and whereas for months I had imagined Isabel’s silences as devoted to me entirely, I was now unsure if I was even in her thoughts.
“When I am near a river,” I heard myself say, “I think of my time in Mexico.”
“When were you in Mexico?” she asked.
“I spent some time with my girlfriend in a town called Xalapa before I came to Spain.” I paused to suggest she might still be my girlfriend. “We went on a trip one weekend. We found a place to swim. There was a violent current, but we decided to swim anyway. There was another man. He wanted his girlfriend to swim. But she was afraid of the current. In the end she entered the river.” I paused again, lighting a cigarette. Why was my Spanish so halting? “She did not know how to swim. She had bad luck and the current carried her. We followed her. We found her body in the river. I gave her”— here I touched my mouth and then gestured toward Isabel’s—“to make her breathe. But it was too late. We took her body to a place with phones. We called the police. An old woman gave us limes.”