“To be honest, I’m good right here,” the actor replied. “With you. That was just a bit sudden, wasn’t it? I honestly thought you hated me. Since seeing Muntaner appear in the theater, I’d been thinking, that was it… game over. Until the kiss on Tuesday…. Then I was confused…. And now you kiss me again? What’s going on here?”
Kim got slowly to his feet, facing him.
“OK, maybe I… we… shouldn’t have done that. We got off to a bad start at the beginning… And I admit, I had my doubts… But… Firstly, on the professional side, you know your work is brilliant… you do, don’t you?”
“Well….” Now it was Dídac’s turn to be hesitant. “The idea of working with you was like living my perfect life, fulfilling that childhood dream… of changing the world for the better for years to come. But I was too ready to… doubt myself… And when I met you… that bad start, as you say, yeah… that kind of poisoned the waters.”
“OK, Dídac—have I pronounced that right?—I admit, that first meeting, along with the late start… I had my doubts… but when I saw you working that second morning, and then the next day, when we worked together… How can you doubt your work, that you make the perfect Anton?”
“I don’t doubt it. That part is me, totally, one hundred percent. What I was worried about was you doubting me. OK….” He huffed out and paced a few paces away, and then back again. “Can we just forget about the play for now, and focus on this moment? That’s what’s important to me, right now. What’s happening for you… for us, here, right now?”
“Sure, we can talk about that. Are you hungry? Maybe we could eat something?”
“Director, is this a date?”
“Didn’t you want to forget about the play? So stop calling me ‘director’, or I’ll push you off. Take me somewhere decent to eat.”
“Have you tried our Catalan cuisine yet? And I don’t mean a paella on the Rambla.”
“That spinach with raisins… is it sautéed, or…? It’s absolutely delicious!”
“Mmm, right answer. And that’s a good start. OK, let’s go. I know a place.”
They turned toward the way down, and immediately both felt quite shy. After just kissing and hugging so passionately, Kim felt at a loss to know whether it would be too forward to take Dídac’s hand, or throw an arm over his shoulder. In the end he decided to do neither, and they walked down the hill side by side, hands occasionally brushing just to feel that erotic charge between them. Toward the bottom of the street, Dídac got out his phone and called them a ride. Then pocketing hisphone, took out his sunglasses and put them back on, though it was now nearly full dark.
“I know it’s a little pretentious,” he apologized, “but otherwise I get too much unwanted attention.”
Kim said nothing. After all, he knew nothing of Dídac’s reality. Who was he to judge? They stood in silence then, at the bottom of the hill, both seemingly tongue-tied, until a sleek white car came swooping up to the curb. Feeling suddenly ridiculously old-fashioned, Kim reached to open the door for Dídac, who smiled graciously at him as if he were a female courtesan being handed up into a golden coach by her beau, before ducking inside. Kim followed. Barely had he even closed the door, than Dídac was giving the driver an address in a rapid staccato.
15
The restaurant was imposing in the Modernista style, resembling a fantasy castle, built on a high spur of the mountain they called Tibidabo. It had several turrets, including one boasting a broad terrace. As they wound up the steep road that climbed the mountain, where clanging, old-style trams still rattled and slid around the metal curves of their rails, Dídac made another phone call. No sooner were they inside the fake castle’s heavy oak doors, than a waiter appeared, whisking Dídac and Kim up a wide marble staircase with wrought-iron railings shaped like elegant flamingos, to where a single table had been prepared on the terrace under the moon. Its heavy white linen, polished silverware, and sparkling glassware gleamed in the moonlight, augmented only by a couple of warm, strategically focused spotlights.
As they sat down, Dídac finally removed his sunglasses.
“This is on me and don’t worry about the cost.”
“It’s stunning,” Kim breathed.
The terrace’s parapet was crenellated in a medieval style, while from a trellis above them hung Spanish jasmine, permeating the air with itsseductive perfume. Barcelona lay spread out below. They were even higher up than they had been at the Mount Carmel Bunker. However, it was now full night. The reddish-orange glow of the city’s streetlights resembled a massive grid of criss-crossing lines running down to the sea, with other, white and gold lights twinkling in between. The full moon hung over the scene, painting a silver trail onto the dark Mediterranean.
A waiter came to place a first offering before them, while another filled two tumblers with sparkling water. As they were admiring and about to taste theamuse-bouche—shavings of acorn-fed Iberian ham on a small square of toast daubed with a raw-tomato and garlic coulis—the maître d’, an effusive, elegant man in his sixties, brought their menus.
“Benvingut, Dídac, és un absolut plaer tenir-te entre nosaltres de nou.”
“Hello, Josep,” Dídac replied, speaking in English, “it’s been too long, I know. I’ve really missed this place. This is my friend, the director Kim Delatour. We’re working on the new production for Teatre Romea.”
“Ah,The Swan? It is an honor to meet you, Mr. Delatour. Not many, but a few old thespians like myself still rememberBoomerang. It was a powerful show.”
“Thank you, Josep, it’s a pleasure to meet you. And I must say, it’s wonderful to be in a city that treasures its theater so much.”
“We do, we do. But here we also love our food. Here, we will offer you the best cuisine that Catalonia has to offer, our traditional dishes presented in what we hope is a fresh, innovative style. Now if I can make a few suggestions…”
Josep rattled on in such a sincere, welcoming patter that Kim was left feeling he had just made a new best friend. As they discussed the dishes and what they would have, Dídac and the maître d’ slipped back into Catalan, but Kim did not feel left out. Having weathered acouple of weeks of hearing his very own play—the words he himself had put onto paper—being enunciated in this little-known tongue, the experience, rather than feeling alienating, had rather increased his appreciation of the foreign sounds. He couldn’t decide whether the language sounded more like Italian or French, with the occasional guttural utterance erupting perhaps from some Arabic or German source. However, after a few minutes, Josep took his leave and Dídac settled comfortably back into his seat.
“Now if after tonight you don’t appreciate Catalan cuisine, there’ll be no saving you.”
“I’m sure it’ll be delicious,” Kim said.
