‘She fancies you,’ Mona stage-whispers, as they traverse a corner to another spot the guide wishes them to see.
‘Shut up,’ says Ash, who finds herself without a leg to stand on minutes later when the guide finishes this part of her tour and invites her charges to explore by themselves for a moment so she can make a beeline for her.
‘Ash, right?’ the guide says, pointing at her. ‘The one with all the emails?’
The guide is about Ash’s age, maybe a bit younger, with great English and a brunette bob tucked behind her ears. Shehas tanned skin and brown eyes, and looks neat and very guide-like in her jeans and button-down khaki shirt.
‘Guilty,’ says Ash. ‘Information overload is a bad habit I’m trying to break.’ She can feel Mona looking at her. She ignores it. Mona is a law unto herself; with any sign of encouragement who knows what she might end up saying. ‘I like to be prepared,’ Ash adds, apologetically.
‘There’s prepared and then there’s prepared enough to lead the tour yourself,’ laughs the guide. ‘But, you know, it’s nice you want to know so much. Are you a history nerd, or is it the architecture that’s your thing …?’
‘Both?’ says Ash. ‘And neither. I just wanted to make the most of the day. Who knows when I’ll ever be back, you know? If ever.’
‘Oh,’ says the guide. ‘Don’t say that. You never know, you might find something worth keeping you around …’
There’s a way the guidecouldsay this, and then there’s the way she actually says it. She could say it upbeat, happy, a sort of who-knows-where-life-can-take-you! slant. But the twinkle in her eye, the unrelenting way she looks at Ash, it makes it – dare Ash think it? Is she being crazy? –flirtatious.
‘Oh!’ Ash says. ‘Well, yeah.’ She gives a nervous giggle. She can practically feel Mona having to physically restrain herself from interrupting, most likely to do more of that eyebrow wiggling or similarhubba hubba-esque nonsense.
‘Aurora,’ the guide says, sticking out a hand. ‘In case you’ve forgotten.’
‘Ash,’ says Ash, reaching out to take it. Then she realises that Aurora has already used her name, already knows it.‘Oh, right, d’uh,’ Ash says, shaking her head. ‘You already know that.’
The women stand, holding on to one another, neither letting go.
‘You’re around in Lisbon for a while, yes?’ asks Aurora. Ash nods and says she is. ‘Well then, send me an email. You have my details. We could meet for a drink. I’m in Bairro Alto but like to explore …’
Ash has never had this happen before. She has been hit on by a man before, but never by another woman. Not in all her thirty-eight years! She’ssleptwith women, sure, but in sex clubs where it was all pre-written performance. Navigating being asked out, just like that, is … well. It’s all very awkward. She doesn’t know the etiquette for saying she’s not a lesbian – or gay? Queer? She isn’t even sure of the language she should be using. Of course she’s flattered anyone would suggest a date, and Aurora is very pretty – if Ash did like girls, she’s sure she’d like somebody as cute as Aurora. But, alas, she does not, and as she considers all this, too much time has passed to explain it to Aurora, and they’re still holding bloody hands, and so instead Ash flushes once again, tongue-tied, flustered, and Aurora says, ‘Well, the tour must continue …’ and then she’s gone, and Ash stands there, and feels Mona’s gaze fixed upon her, and she knows that the second she looks at Mona much will be said.
But then, to her surprise, when she does finally look at Mona, Mona just says, ‘You should email her. You only live once.’
‘I’m not a lesbian,’ says Ash, like it’s obvious.
But Mona laughs, eyes creasing at the edges like bunched-up newspaper, and says, ‘Oh, doll. Everybody is a little bit gay. Given the chance.’
Over the rest of the day, royal palaces are seen,azulejosadmired, Mudéjar techniques half understood. The Pena Palace is viewed, the Palace of Monserrate applauded, and then, by the time they get to the Palace of Ribafria, Mona claps her hands together and says, ‘All right then, darling, that’s enough of that, don’t you think? I’ve been a good sport. But now it’s time for something to eat and a carafe of something chilled.’
Ash actually agrees. Her head is swimming with information, and she finds herself reciting the facts she’s learning as they go around, as if there might be a test on it all later, a test that if she fails will see her kicked out of Portugal, or laughed at by a jury of masked faces, or a very mean photo will appear on all – everyone’s! – social media calling her stupid. As they find somewhere for a very late lunch Ash thinks,fuck, what would CJ think?She hit the nail on the head last night, when she said Ash seems to be so filled with shame. It’s incredible to Ash that CJ isn’t, or at least not as much as she’ll admit to. Maybe there’s more to her, under the surface. Surely everyone has things they’re self-conscious about. But CJ really doesn’t seem that way at all, to be fair – what you see is what you get. Ash wants to know so much more about her, even though it probably seems creepy to admit as much. But the CJ she got to see at home, relaxed, open, chatty … it was lovely. In a way, Ash felt as though they’d been friends for along time. She felt seen, really. Understood. And that’s not nothing.
‘Hey,’ says Ash, once she and Mona are settled, two orders of the house special on the way, a bottle of vinho verde in an ice bucket between them. ‘Can I ask you about kids? Well,’ she self-corrects. ‘About not having them?’
‘Sure you can,’ says Mona, and Ash mentally notes how utterly resplendent she looks with her back to the picturesque town, the buildings and trees and cobblestones behind her, her perfect bob and signature red lip a classic nod to her innate sense of style. Mouth like a sewer, though. And a sense of humour to match. Ash loves that about her. Mona might be a terrible tourist, but she’s sensational company. ‘What do you want to know?’
‘Just … how it feels, I suppose,’ Ash says. ‘I sense you wanted them? When you were married?’
‘I did,’ admits Mona. ‘Yeah. Just never happened for us. But then, you know, I have to take some responsibility … we tried every month for two years before we saw anyone about it, and all these tests were recommended, for me and for my husband, and you know, we said we really wanted a family but we never did get around to taking those tests. I’ve got nothing to lose by telling you, doll, that it felt easier to lament the loss of our future family than it did to actually do anything about it. The excuse was convenient, somehow. And then time passed and … that’s it. We were the childless couple, and eventually past the age you’d expect to become parents, anyway.’
Ash nods, considers this.
‘I really want it,’ she says. ‘But somebody at the co-living space said to me that if that was really true, I’d probably have done something about it by now.’
‘Did they, now?’ Mona says, eyebrow arched. ‘That seems rude.’
‘It was in context,’ Ash adds, which isn’t strictly true of course, but she doesn’t want to get into that now. It isn’t the point.
Mona takes a deep breath. ‘What exactly did this person mean, you could have done something about it? Tricked a man into getting you pregnant?’
‘I think she meant more along the lines of doing it alone. A consensual donor.’
