1: waiting to be served...   "It all started, well... you know, I'm not sure quite where it may have started really."  I scratch my head, thinking about it, and it doesn't help, not really.  "I remember moving around with my parents a lot as a kid."   My Mom later explained some of it to me, maybe a year and a half before it all started, 'it all' being the rough patch of time that I'll soon be relating... one of those patches that happens and you just think... "How the hell did that happen?"... and then you just have to laugh about it, especially if you've had a bit of vodka while thinking about it...  "Anyway, my Mom, she said we moved a lot because Dad was always under some sort of investigation...  "No dear, not by the police... Oh heavens no... but there are other sorts of investigators out there, and they can be just as pernicious..." "

 I have a suspicion that I'll marry such a woman.  I think.

 "Anyway... as a result of investigations into pernicion, or is it pernition?, nevermind- I don't suppose it really matters... as a result of these alleged investigations, we moved around a lot, when I was a kid.  I'm not sure that it had any influence on this latest patch of dark times I went through or not, but it may have."

 I list it for those who like to have a good background on their storytellers, for guilt analyzations, or investigations, or pernition debit and/or credit tabulations, or whatever they might like these things for, and whatever they might see fit to do with them.  You know what I mean...

 I do it for the sake of completeness.

 "Anyway, we moved around a lot.  A gypsy, 'latchkey' kid though, he experiences other problems... Insidious ones, which may or may not come to bear on said rough patch of life...  He, or She, doesn't develop a real sense of 'community'... Now you may think that the idea of 'community' is over rated, or trendy, and I would tend to agree in general but, I've gotta say, not having known my neighbors much better than any other stranger around the world, I think I lacked a certain dogged sense of 'connection to the land' and 'community' that must come from living around friends and relatives who own their land... Our relatives lived, well I'm not sure where they lived.  They didn't talk to Dad or Mom all that much, but they lived far away... and the neighbors... well, they mostly sucked.

 I think this last bit might have some bearing on what I did, although then again it might all be a crock of shit.  Maybe I'm just a little off in the head... maybe I should apply for a government grant to subsidize a frontal lobotomy procedure... but no, I could never write up a grant proposal like that... so... so I guess that just leaves destiny... and a whole lot of bad luck... and maybe some sort of free mason conspiracy... to blame for everywhere I went wrong.  Then again, I might be going too far.  Maybe it was just bad luck. "

 However it happened, it happened.  Tautology.  That's what I call it.  The psychology of taut nerves...
 
 

I could just picture her, nodding politely as I tried to tell her the story.  Most likely, she'd get up and politely try to brush me off by telling me that she had to get somewhere. Plans with her girlfriends or schoolwork to do, or some excuse.  They had a million of them, girls like that...

 Just the same, I went over the introduction, the foreword, in my mind... staring over my beer at her long wavy hair, wondering what she was doing over there at the next table with her little sketch book opened before her.

 I had to get it all straight in my head before I went over to her and tried to tell her the story.

 It was a good story... I thought it was good... good enough anyway, and if I could just get it right, how could she help but find it enthralling?... I just had to get it right...
 
 

"It all started innocently enough.  I'd just graduated from high school.  My parents were pressuring me to go to college.  It didn't seem like such a bad idea, I suppose, but somehow I'd gotten the idea into my head to get out and see the world...  I didn't understand the idea of patriotism, of America being number one, no matter how often people had told me about how it was true.  There was even a Russian student in my high school, and she told me it was true.  I can't remember her name anymore, but I remember her saying that America was the freest country in the world, which I couldn't quite buy, since everything was so expensive... especially since I just worked at Burger King, part time, after school.

 I wanted to join the army.  I wanted to learn how to shoot guns and parachute and kill behind enemy lines...like an action hero from the movies.

 "A man has to follow his dreams..." I tried to explain to my Mother.

 "You're going to ruin your life.  I know.  If you don't have a degree these days, there's nothing you can do with yourself but wirk in a car wash or a Denny's... Bob, darling, you've got to trust me.  You'll regret not going to college..." my Mom tried to explain to me.

 I still think she was full of shit... but she meant well... and she might have been right.  Who knows?

 "There's only one way to find out..." I figured.

 "Whadda you want to join the army for? my Dad asked me later, some night or other, over his third vodka and tonic.

 "I wanna see the world." I answered, hoping that, since we were having a man to man talk like that, he'd offer me one too.

 He was a very conservative man in his way, but he wasn't quite drunk enough yet to offer me a drink.

 "The world huh?  Is that all?...  It ain't all that special... pay toilets and bad water and strange accents and weak currency, except in England, where the currency isn't all that weak." he informed me, with a wise smirk.

 I stared at him a moment, as he took a sip off his drink, and then another.  I remember it as if it had been yesterday.

 "Yeah, maybe.  But, I wanta see it for myself." I'd answered, or at least I said something like that.  Whatever I said, Dad just chuckled.

 "You just wanna see for yourself, huh... well that can be arranged."

 "Whatta you mean Roy?" Mom had asked.&nsbp; There was such a look of ghastly horror on her face that I started to wonder if they might not have worked out a plan B, where they sell me into adolescent slavery in the event that I decline the offer of going to college... I decided to gamble that they didn't have that kind of connections though, and I tried to stick to my guns.

 "Does that mean you won't object to my joining up?"

 "No, it sure as fuck doesn't mean that..." my Dad answered, serious for a moment, until he took another sip and his face went a bit slack, his lips twitching into a sort of Walgreen's cashier's plastic smile.

 "It means we could finance a trip to Europe for you... for the summer...  If you'll go to college in the fall."

 I had to think about that one... and quick too... Dad only kept those sorts of offers/promises if you agreed to them while he was still drunk.  I had maybe two hours to think about it.

 "Ok..." I answered after 39 seconds of careful consideration.

 I could always join up after the summer, I figured, if I still figured it was a good idea.

 "Great... Vera, make the calls, would ya babe?..." called out my Dad, holding up his drink in cheers, without ever quite bothering to give any of his booze to the rest of us.

 I stood by watching helplessly, no drink to toast with, wondering how long the trip would last, how much money my parents would be giving me, and where to stash the hundred forty three dollars I had in my bank account so I wouldn't get robbed at the airport.   "
 

"So you aren't in the army?" she would ask... peering into my eyes over the rim of the lukewarm latte she's been nursing for half an hour.  It would be the obvious thing to say, since my shaggy hair couldn't leave any doubts.
 

Of course... there was always the possibility that she'd say it in Spanish.  We were in a tapas bar, like any pther, here in Barcelona's Barrio Gotic.

 I hoped she'd at least speak some broken English... my broken high school Spanish was enough to get by, but it wouldn't wow anyone.

 All the more reason I had to get the story straight before approaching her, in case I had to try to fake my way through it in Spanish.

 "Todo empezo cuando yo estaba en la secundaria..."

 It could be tough.
 

"Anyway..." I'd go on... "I'd been down on America and its self-righteousness, and ready to join the army to get free... But then my Dad offered to buy me a ticket to Europe, to give me a chance to see the world and realize i wouldn't be missing much.

 So what was a kid supposed to do?

 I packed an extra pair of pants and a couple of pairs of socks, and a couple extra shirts... you know, all the usual backpacker's shit.  The flight wasn't for another week... but I just left all that stuff packed up, putting on the backpack every couple of hours to practice walking around with it through the house, around the block..."

 "You were excited?" she'd probably ask... but I was ready for that.

 "Excited?... hell yes, but I was mostly scared...  Scared witlessly out of my mind."

 How could she help but be charmed by my ease in admitting my weakness?... "It takes a strong man to admit he's weak..." she'd think.  Probably.
 

'Shit Bob, enough of that bullshit... you're distracting yourself... let's hear the story already...' I reminded myself, under my breath.  Carefully.

 I didn't want her thinking I was one of those nuts who has animated conversations with himself.
 

Ok ok... "so yeah, the big day came, and Mom and Dad were both busy... so Dad coughed up the cash for me to take a taxi.  $65 bucks it cost me, American...  The driver was some old gruff white guy who didn't say a word, just sort of growled and humbugged a lot...

 "Going to London..." I said, through the plastic sanitary barrier to protect him from his passengers and their germs or salads or whatever...

 "Yeah.  Bully fer you." was his answer.

 He had a point too, I guess.  What the fuck was the big deal?... I was getting out of town though... getting way out of town, get a new outlook on life...

 "Well, if yer gonna get outta town for a while, might as well do it right, that's what I always say..." I told the antiseptic barrier.

 "Yuhhh, khuhhh coughhhh..." was all he had to say to that.

 I watched as he fumbled with a pack of Marlboro reds and swerved back and forth through traffic as he pulled the thing out and lit it.  As we climbed up the on-ramp onto the freeway, he blew out a huge puff of smoke and looked truly satisfied with his life.

 I took it as a sign... what the fuck it meant I had no idea... but that was how I took it.  It just seemed like it had to mean something, if only i cold figure out what...   "
 
 

That was a good bit... I had to admit it.  She'd be hanging on, waiting to see what meaning I had gleaned from that little nigget, her lips wrapped around the latte-smeared rim of her glass like it was some sort of Freudian oral fixation substitute... Of course, I still have no idea what the hell to make of it... but it'd be a good conversation starter... we could talk about taxis and grouches and meaning... and then maybe fall in love... or at least fuck like rabid muskrats...

 But I really want to tell the story... so I tell her to shut up already, "No, I don't want to talk about how much I love you right now..." I'd have to tell her after we'd caught our breath "I'm trying to tell you a story..."

 "So anyway, I got to the airport and waited for the flight and it was really long and somehow I wound up in the smoking section next to a German who insisted on giving me a cigarette, which I smoked, and coughed up a lung in the process, but I kind of liked it, do I had another... and, of course, they were serving drinks on the flight.

 It was alright.  I landed at Heathrow, sat down at one of those little fast food places, got myself a boiled burger or whtever it was they called those wretched things, and opened up the travel guide book that my Mom had gotten for me for the first time.

 I really should've planned things out a little bit better.  I'll admit it.  I really should've...

 I spent a couple of days checkng out London, since I was there.  I saw the bridge, and a couple of pubs, and everything was expensive as hell.  America was beginning to seem free alright...

 So I left.  I'd been reading that big ugly tourist book in pubs across the city... and I'd come up with the idea of going to Amsterdam.   "
 

I it'd be best to rush through the early details for her... I didn't find them interesting, just sort of routine... they were exciting enough at the time, but I was still young, and what came after was so much more interesting... the early part was no comparison.  She might fall asleep there, in her bed in her little student apartment, with me beside her telling the story... but it was a risk I'd feel I had to take.  It was background really, nothing more... but I can tell from the way her hair falls across her shoulders and down her sort of thin-strap-shirted back that she would want it all... all of me.  I want to be completely hers.

 In the morning I'd be able to continue.  Amsteerdam... and how I came to Barcelona... after another round in the sack, over a breakfast of bocadillos de huevo or something.

 I would probably never be in love like I would be with her again.  Time couldn't help but be on our side...
 
 
 
 
 
 

2   the ice thus broken
 

Ok, I admit it, that whole bit was a lie.  I never wanted to join the army, although I must admit that I wouldn't mind a little formal instruction in the art of killing people...

 I just wanted to impress her, sitting there, tossing the curls of her hair back over her shoulder as she looks out the window at the Arabs walking to that little shop up the street that has the extra dud standing around watching the customers, and generally making shopping tough on the poor... I wonder though, now, if it's really the best way to impress her.  The more I stare at the back of her head, the less I think so.  I can't wuite put my finger on it... but something tells me that, maybe, I could just tell her the truth...

 "I'm sorry about that initial lie... I was just a little awed by your ravishing beauty..."  I'd say, and it would be true.  I can see something of the silhouette or profile or whatever of her face as it reflects in the window... she's sitting right by it, and so am I, which makes the angle a little strange for reflection gazing, but I can be a patient man.  I've been practicing, here in Barcelona, completely unable to find any sort of work... just sitting in the Parque de la Ciutadela, or whatever these damned Catalunyans call a city, and playing cards all day... especially on Sundays when all the little shops we do our shopping at are closed...

 Can I tell her about that?...  Maybe I should go back to my original story...

 "Sorry, did I say it was all a lie?... Well I was lying when I said that... well, not so much lying, as, well, I don't know, bullshitting... all in good fun... chisteando...  Or is it chistando?..."

 I pause, to stare up at the window, gazing at the image of her profile's silhouette...  It's a tough angle to decide whether or not she's the sort to be intrigued by the mysterious sort...  All women are intrigued by the mysterious sort though, really...  Am I right?

 "Excuse me, I'm a private investigator, but I figure I'll need a more local license here in Barcelona... I don't suppose you know where I can get in touch with someone who'd know the whole process?..."

 "Disculpe, pero yo soy un investigador privado (o es particular?) alla en los Estados Unidos, sabes, como Humphrey Bogart, Casablanca...  Pues, de todos modos, ando buscando informacion sobre como puedo conseguir la licencia aqui en Barcelona..."

 How could she resist?...

 It's all a lie of course.  But sometimes a lie's the only way to bag a chick...
 
 
 

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