“Of course I can! It’s Ki… eran. Kieran. Irish.”
“Kieran, the Irish engineer. Sounds like one of those memory games. So are you sure what you want?”
Dídac smiled sweetly at her. “Why, the meat of course, sweetie.”
They both laughed, and Laia signaled the waiter.
After leaving the restaurant where Dídac had taken Kim for lunch—a slick paella restaurant perched high on Montjuïc Mountain looking out over the Port of Barcelona—they had wandered slowly down the hill toward the city. Their every urge was to touch each other, but Dídac had a healthy fear of paparazzi turning up in the most unexpected locations. He could have called a car, but he relished seeing how far they could get like this, strolling anonymously along, just their knuckles or wrists grazing against each other surreptitiously as they walked. Dídac experienced an almost electric frisson from even the slightest brushingof the hairs on the back of his hand, knowing it was Kim, still feeling in his body the reality of Kim holding him last night, and of having sex earlier, in the theater.
“Take me to your special place.”
“My special place?”
“Somewhere that’s important to you, here in Barcelona.”
Dídac thought. Where was somewhere that would feel special to be with Kim right now? Out along the breakwater? The truth was, the sun was coming down so strongly that they would both fry within five minutes out there. It needed to be somewhere indoors out of the heat.
“Let me think… OK. We should grab a car. We could walk there, but in this heat, we’d both dehydrate before we got there.”
“Sure, but let me pay,” Kim said, as Dídac started to get his phone out. “Let’s see…” He opened his own phone, trying to find a ride share or taxi app that functioned in Barcelona.
“Don’t worry,” Dídac laughed. “You can get dinner or something. I use mine so often that I get good discounts.”
The car picked them up on a bend in the road still high on the mountain, close to the MNAC art museum. Soon, they were cruising along Passeig de Colom, the wide avenue fronting onto Barcelona port. Dídac slid down the window so that salt air wafted into the car, much to the driver’s annoyance, who had his air conditioning turned high.
“Sorry, can you turn it off for a moment?” Dídac asked the driver. “I hate that false cold—and it’s so bad for the environment. With a bit of a breeze you don’t need it. Plus, you can smell every detail of the city.”
Kim agreed. Along with the salt, the slightly fetid smell of algae and sea moss on the wharf pilings, and the dry odor of hot tarmac entered the car. They could hear gulls and traffic too. The car dropped themat the gates of Ciutadella Park, on Passeig de Picasso, alongside a large glass and iron cube.
“That’sHomage to Picasso, by one our best modern artists, Tàpies,” Dídac informed him.
They walked over to it. Inside, a number of girders perforated the space at obtuse angles, helping to suspend expanses of draped white cloth and a selection of nineteenth-century furniture inside. Water streamed down the cube’s interior walls, creating a translucent curtain, as if separating the objects in space.
“It’s… odd,” Kim commented.
“Yeah, I agree. I like it though. And it does remind me of Picasso’s cubist work. He lived for a while in Barcelona when he was young, before he went to Paris.”
“Is that what you want to show me?”
“No, let’s go inside.”
They entered the park. Before them was a huge building that towered above them. It consisted of interlocking barrel domes made of parallel wooden slats.
“This is it. You asked to see my special place. Mum used to bring me here as a kid.”
It was an enormous shade house, similar to the winter gardens in northern climes that used glass to keep in and concentrate the heat. But the goal here was the opposite: keeping the sun’s heat out, creating a cooler atmosphere so that you could grow plants from colder latitudes. And it truly felt as if they had walked into an air-conditioned space. Plants hung down on chains, attached to the iron girders far above. Wide avenues that meandered through the space were overhung by leafy greenery, while smaller grottoes harbored water features surrounded by ferns, in which frogs could be heard croaking.
“What an amazing place,” Kim commented. “I know you have a brother, but you haven’t told me about your parents.”
“They split when I was nine,” Dídac said, “so it was just my mum and my brother Pau. Pau used to look after me quite a lot, I guess. I didn’t see much of my dad as a kid, though I’ve become friends with him and his wife as an adult. I go over to dinner at their place once a month or so. And they come to all of my openings. Mum…” He paused, looking up at the plants surrounding them. “Mum struggled… battled to bring us up, without much financial or emotional help from Dad and his new woman. She sacrificed everything to get us our careers. Pau became an architect, and I—”
“Gave up on the idea of teaching or being a chef to become an actor. Your mum must have been furious… And it’s all my fault,” Kim said gravely. “I hope she doesn’t take a piece out of me… if we ever meet.”
“No, she always supported me in my dreams, and so far… it’s working out. She was the one who paid for our tickets toBoomerangwith her bus-driving job.”
“A bus driver? My God, she sounds like an incredible woman. I’d love to meet her. And I promise I will refund the cost of the tickets to that show plus more—”
“No need. It was ten years ago now. We never had much, but she cut corners to give us treats and special stuff. And if she thought that seeing some theater, or visiting a museum might help us with our dreams, she would make sure it happened. She refused to let us compromise, and made us aim for the sky.”
