He frowned at my sudden departure, but nodded.
I threw the churro down on my plate and hurried back to my table. It was empty now, with Sara, Antonio and Lauren all at the buffet, and there was a large carafe of hot coffee waiting. I poured myself some. While I took a deliciously rich sip, I told myself I’d never speak to anyone before I had my first cup. Mateo was just being nice, nice like a decent human being, and I got so weirded out by the idea of his wife and his relationship with Beatriz that I just said adios with a churro. I needed to get a grip. This wasn’t like me. Well, not when it came to guys, anyway.
Soon Antonio and Sara joined us and we started chatting away. I was suddenly eager to really prove myself, as if I just remembered why I was here. To meet new people and to help them with their English. Oh, and get a better understanding of the universe but I was pretty sure that Mateo was going to right about that one.
Lauren eventually came back, her cheeks blotchy red with anger from having apparently yelled at Jerry over the food. Turns out there was no specific menu, there was just a bowl of fruit. I would have felt bad for her but the way she was treating the rest of us—all the people who didn’t have anything to do with her lifestyle choice—I couldn’t.
When plates started being cleared and everyone was almost done, Jerry made an announcement that the schedule for the day was now at reception. Having wolfed down my meat and cheese and churro, much to the annoyance of my stomach, I bid farewell to my table and went straight to the schedule. I brought out my phone from my jean pocket and started writing my day down on a virtual notepad.
9:00 – 10:00 one-on-one with Jorge
10:00 – 11:00 one-on-one with Francisco
11:00 – 12:00 one-on-one with Jose Carlos (Froggy)
12:00 – 1:00 Lunch
Break (nap time?)
2:00 – 3:00 business session with Mateo (oh god)
3:00 – 4:00 business session with Antonio
4:00 – 5:00 business session with Nerea
Break
6:00 – 8:00 Dinner (two hours?)
8:00 – Evening festivities
And that was to be my first official day at Las Palabaras. Day one of thirty.
And that’s when it hit me: just what in the fuck did I sign up for?
Chapter Five
By the time lunch time rolled around, my head was spinning with a new kind of exhaustion. It felt tired, spent, rolling the squeaky, rusty wheels in my brain. My jaw was tired like I’d been giving a blow job for hours and my throat was hoarse and parched. Aside from the times that me and my brother would go to the park and get high, I don’t think I’d ever talked for three hours straight. Because that was the thing about the program so far—the Spaniards struggled with their words, they fought to be heard and understood, so you wanted to help them out. You wanted to supply words for them and you wanted to teach them and when you couldn’t, you had no choice but to just talk.
And so I talked like I’d never talked before. I told the kindly psychologist Jorge all about growing up in Vancouver and my tumultuous relationship with my sister, I told stoic, city worker Francisco (who insisted I call him Paco) all about my interest in the universe and what I was studying, and I told software designer Froggy about my tattoos and what most of them meant and how I felt like I never fit in. I talked about things I’d normally never ever talk about and all because they spoke another language. They both understood English and yet didn’t and in some weird, scary way, it felt like I could tell them anything.
By the time I stumbled into the dining hall for lunch, my face greasy with sweat and my lips desert dry, I started wondering if this program was going to be my new therapy. I’d certainly said more about myself in the last three hours than I ever did to the shrink I used to see.
I looked around for a table and saw nothing but similarly dazed faces. I also saw Claudia who was waving me over. I staggered to the table and plunked myself down.
“You look tired,” she said. “I am tired as well. It hurts to think.” She tapped the side of her head.
I raised my face off of the table and saw her pour wine from a bottle into a glass nearest me. I tried to focus and noticed that every table had two bottles of red wine. Red wine? At lunch? What kind of sorcery was this?
“Here have some,” Claudia said. “You drink wine, yes?”
I shook my head. “Not really. I mean I have had it, but I prefer beer.”
She laughed in the way that Mateo had at the same answer and quickly poured some for herself. “You will love wine in a few days, I promise. This is good. You will like it.”
“Do you always drink wine during lunch?” I asked, mustering enough strength to bring the glass to my lips.
“Not that way.”
I turned my head to see Mateo pulling out a chair. He looked to us in utter sincerity, brows raised. “May I?”
“Of course, yes,” Claudia said.
He looked at me and sat down. I raised the glass at him. “Not what way?” I asked, for some reason not surprised to see him here.
He quickly poured himself a glass of the garnet liquid then held it away from him. With the smooth twitch of his wrist, he moved the glass so that the wine swirled around and around.
“You take your time,” he said, eyes burning into me, as if I were the wine. “You give it time to breathe. You don’t rush it. Let it be what it is. Wine. Nothing else. Just wine. Let it interact with the world, with the air. Let it live. Just watch it, pay attention, appreciate.” He raised the glass to his face and stuck his nose in it. He breathed in sharply a few times before he pulled away. “Then you smell it. You take it in. Pay attention. Every wine is different, they are all trying to say different things, yes? This wine says it is calm. It is nice. It gets along with everyone.”
He got all that from the wine? I was kinda fascinated.
He then put the glass to his mouth and placed his full lips on either side of thin rim, wet and delicate. I swallowed hard, aware that I was watching him too intently and yet I couldn’t look away. He tilted the glass and the ruby streams slid toward his mouth. He opened his lips slightly and took it in. My god, I’d never seen something so mundane look so damn sexual. His cheeks moved in and out subtly as he let the wine sit in his mouth. He closed his eyes, lashes dark against his skin, and then slowly swallowed his Adam’s apple bobbing against his strong neck.
He kept his eyes closed even after he took the glass away. Then he opened them and grinned at me with a red-stained mouth. “This wine tastes like shit.”
If I had wine in my mouth, I would have spit it out. I laughed, loudly, like I was drunk but I was just drunk on him.
“Mateo,” Claudia scolded but she was giggling too. She took a sip. “It isn’t so bad. Vera, have some.”
“I don’t know,” I said warily, still smiling. I tried to do what Mateo did, albeit a speeded up version—swirl, smell, sip. It was very dry and a bit bitter, but then again that’s what most wine tasted like to me.
It also went straight to my head. I really should have waited but by the time the waiter put our lunch of rice and pork chops on the table (it wasn’t buffet-style this time), I’d had one glass and was grinning to myself. Shit, Spanish wine was strong.
“Are you buzzzzzed?” Mateo teased, leaning in close.
“No,” I said defensively and I picked up my knife and fork to cut into the pork chop. My eyes flitted across the table at Claudia and our new seatmate, Wayne. He was the man I’d first seen when I got on the bus, and though he wasn’t wearing a cowboy hat at the moment, he was an obvious Texan through and through. His bulbous nose was tinged with red and I wondered if he was feeling “buzzed” too or if he was just an alcoholic.