Dídac gestured at theamuse-bouchesitting before them, still untouched.
“So this is a take on perhaps our most famous contribution to Iberian culture,pa amb tomaquet. It’s basically bread or toast, rubbed with garlic, daubed with the flesh of slow-ripened tomatoes, salt, pepper, and olive oil to taste, and voilà! On top of it you can add cheese, ham, sardines or even omelet. A peasant’s fare that’s virtually become our national dish.”
At that moment a waiter arrived and filled their wine glasses with a chilled white. They raised them.
“To Catalonia,” Kim said diplomatically.
“OK, I’ll stop the hard sell,” Dídac chuckled. Then he paused, becoming serious. “Here’s to… Here’s to us creating something… together… that will change the world for the better for years to come.”
Kim clinked glasses with him and nodded, though he was unsure whether Dídac was talking about the theater, or something else.
“So tell me about your family,” he asked. “Did you grow up with all this?”
Dídac laughed.
“No way! I grew up in Sants, which was a fairly working-class Barcelona neighborhood back then. Our apartment was maybe fifty square meters? I shared a small room with my older brother, bunk beds—you know the set-up.”
“Really?” Kim laughed. “Me too, though there were three of us, my brothers and I, all cramped into a single room on a Footscray housing estate in West Melbourne. But I was the oldest, so I got the best pick. Only my sister had her own room.”
“It was just my brother and me, plus my parents, in a two-bedroom apartment. Perhaps that’s why I loved the theater—it was escape.”
“Yeah, I get you,” Kim nodded. “The only way to get out of there… was to become someone else.”
Then two waiters arrived and began placing dishes on the table. There was a cold dish of flame-roasted aubergine and capsicum with strips of salted anchovy laid over the top; another of small green peppers seared on the hotplate and seasoned with chunky salt crystals.
“Be careful,” Dídac warned. “Every seventh one or so can be very spicy.”
They also brought an array of seafood: razor clams; mussels steamed in white wine and garlic; deep-fried baby octopuses, and tiny sprat-like fish, also battered and fried.
As they ate, Kim watched Dídac, in awe of his poise and confidence. Had he himself been so self-assured at twenty-five? To be honest, he couldn’t remember. Since he left drama school he had been focused solely on the theater, becoming first a successful actor, then writing and directing his own plays. On the social side, that meant showing up at opening nights, being witty and chatty with the important directors and casting agents who might be there—you never knew when youmight be a good fit for an upcoming production, so being seen out meant you’d hopefully be uppermost in their mind when it came to casting. It was a ghastly game and Kim hated playing it, but theater was a cut-throat industry; there were far too many underpaid actors chasing after far too few parts.
In his memory, the European tour ofBoomerang, when he would have been Dídac’s age, had been a complete whirlwind of first nights in foreign cities, meeting gushing strangers, and receiving glowing accolades from people to whom he was told he should be nice. There had also been parties. They were a largish troupe of twelve actors and dancers, tending to mix and interact like a family, since in each new city they themselves were often the only people they knew. Yes, he supposed, looking at him from the outside, he would have looked equally composed and confident, whether he felt it or not. And he often hadn’t.
What he remembered most was the anxiety, about whether he would be able to come up with the goods for that night’s performance. The nerves—night after night, playing in some of Europe’s most prestigious theaters, a different one every few days, knowing that the show depended on him, and being unsure whether he could dredge what he needed out of himself for another night running—eventually got to him. Getting back to Australia was a relief. Looking at Dídac, he could sense a similar energy, like a tightly tuned string on a fine instrument which, when played masterfully, would produce the most beautiful sounds, but, if plucked too harshly, might break with a twang. Taking a sip of his wine, he resolved to treat Dídac with care. The younger man was far more vulnerable then he appeared to be.
“What are your thoughts?” Dídac asked then, breaking into his reverie.
“Here in this gorgeous environment, eating such delicious food, in such… attractive company… I’m thinking that it doesn’t get much better than this,” he said, not wanting to confess such vulnerable thoughts yet.
“Just attractive?” Dídac looked hurt in a playful way, pouting comically. “I was hoping after our kiss—two kisses—I rated better than that.
“Yes, infinitely better,” Kim admitted. “Maybe I was being too polite. What I wanted to say was sexy….” He paused. Did he dare? “To be honest, totally fuckable.”
“Uh huh.” Even in the dim lighting, Kim thought he saw Dídac blush. “That sounds… better.”
“Are you fishing for compliments? You want me to tell you how the first time ever I saw your ass, I thought it was the most fuckable thing I’d ever seen, like a peach. I want a bite of that. No, not just a bite: I want to eat it all.”
Dídac giggled. “OK…,” he said slowly. “That’s maybe a little too much for a first date, though you’re making me totally horny.” Then it was as if his words dried up and he was at a loss as to what to say next.
Maybe Kim had made Dídac feel both self-conscious and embarrassed, but he’d also struck home. Dídac found the proposition hot. His foundering was at his own unexpected prudishness. In bringing Kim to this exclusive restaurant, Dídac had shown himself to be a sophisticated man of the world, the self-assured actor. Now, in a couple of short, dirty phrases, Kim had managed to reduce him to a blushing schoolboy. But he could also see that Dídac liked where they were going. For once people weren’t demanding that he be more sophisticated and grown-up than he was. Kim was letting him know that he was in charge and would take the lead, meaning Dídac could relax and relish his role—that of a blushing peach.
“So, now we’ve got dessert sorted out,” Kim went on, “what’s for mains?”
16
As the car pulled up at Kim’s hotel, Dídac pulled apart from their embrace. He felt uncomfortable to be returning to what he thought of as “the scene of the crime”, nervous to be heading up into that space where he had seen the worst of Kim Delatour: tired and jet-lagged, raging like a wounded bull, and dressed in a woman’s pink bathrobe—that nevertheless showed off his athletic body and substantial bulge to optimum advantage. But he had to suppress a giggle at the memory; he didn’t doubt it was a night Kim was keen to forget.
As they got out he looked up at the beautiful pink and white stone building. The façade was a masterpiece insgraffito, a technique where the plaster or cement is applied in colored layers and then scratched back to create a multicolored design. Here, entwined trunks stretched up the building like columns to sprout into stylized fig trees and grapevines surrounding the windows. Pilasters divided the façade into vertical panels, on top of which owls perched, while swallows flew in intricate designs under each window, their longArt Nouveautails enmeshing.
