“Just the two of you or…?”
“Right,” I said. “Exactly. Just the two of us.”
“You know, I don’t know what you’ve got going on, but we’re about to do apparoh at this Spanish place,” he said.
“Oh yeah?” I said. I didn’t know what that meant, apparoh. Do you know? I’ll tell you. It’s my new favorite thing. From now on I’m gonna do it every day. It’s a drink or a small food you eat with people before dinner, and if you’re having a good time with it, it either turns into dinner or more apparoh. The whole reason these people here eat dinner so late is because they need to have enough time after work to have apparoh first, which is, in my opinion, and the opinion of anyone worth listening to, better than dinner.
“Yeah,” Levin said. “You want to come with, Mr. Magnet?”
“Clyde,” I said.
“Clyde?” Sandrine said, making it two syllables, so it almost sounded like a nice name. I didn’t even realize she was listening to us. How long had she been listening? “Like Bunny and Clyde?” she said.
“Just like that,” I said.
Bunny and Clyde!
“You will come for apparoh with us, Clyde?” Sandrine said.
“I will come with you for apparoh, Sandrine,” I said, pretending like I knew what that meant.
“He talks like Adam,” Sandrine said to Camille. “Ah-yeah-pa-row.” And they laughed at me, but it was friendly.
And we took this long walk to get apparoh at this Spanish place that Levin tried to explain why Camille and Sandrine called it something in French that translates to “The Two Assholes,” like it was a pun or something, but I didn’t understand, and I don’t think Levin did either, but what a night, son. What a night. Lots of laughs. And Sandrine! I don’t know what happened. I did something right, or I’m just really lucky because she’s this amazing brainiac. It’s not just that she speaks three languages, but she’s a retired professor of Spanish literature here, and you know what she does in retirement? She translates Spanish literature into French. Talking to her is a trip. Reminds me of how it used to be talking to your mom. I say that not lightly. She cracks me up and I crack her up, too, just sitting around and pointing at things and people and making up stories about them and making fun of them, and she doesn’t seem to think it’s bad that I don’t know a tenth of the things that she knows—she just thinks it’s funny and tells me those things til I understand, but not like some teacher. We get along really well. That apparoh with Camille and Levin was six days ago, and Sandrine and I have done apparoh together every day since, sometimes just the two of us, and it turns into more apparoh or dinner every time.
So day after tomorrow, she’s flying to the south of Spain for a month. She’s got retired French brothers there, and another daughter. It’s where her dad’s originally from. Her dad was a hero of the Spanish Revolution—no. The Spanish Civil War. That means he was a communist, which sounds bad, but was not bad at all. He was fighting against fascists. I don’t know, son. I’m out of my depth here. Communist good guys? I don’t know anything. And I know they taught it to me, too. In school. It just didn’t stick. It all stuck to Sandrine. She’s out of my league.
But she invited me to come along to Spain with her, I think. It’s hard to tell. She keeps trash-talking it in that way that makes it sound like either “You wouldn’t understand” or “Maybe you, of all people, will understand.” Do you know what I mean? Like, she’s going there for a month, and she goes there at least three times a year, she says, and she says she loves it there, but then she keeps saying how there’s all this high unemployment and a lot of people think it’s “an armpit of Europe,” this part of Spain where she’s going, which is called __________, so I can’t tell if she’s inviting me to go to ________ because she wants me to go with her and she’s saying it’s an armpit because she worries I won’t like it, or if she’s inviting me because of how much time we’ve been spending together but she’s just being polite and she doesn’t really want me to go with her at all and so she’s saying it’s an armpit so that I won’t go.
So we’ll see, I guess, because I’m going. If I’m unwanted in the armpit, she’ll have to tell me straight. Anyway, I’ll let you know when I know. For now, I changed my flights around to fly home from Madrid on March 9. Sorry this letter went on so long. I’ve got more to say, too, but lucky for you I guess I have to end it. We’re going back to the Two Assholes place tonight for apparoh. If by any chance you’re done working before I come home and you want to meet me out here and travel around, or even just meet me out here and stay in place, or just say hi then travel around by yourself and see the world, Sandrine’s cellphone number is +XX X XX XX XX XX, which, like she told me when I asked her for it, is a lot easier to remember than it seems at first because it spells the words XXXXXX XXXXX (clever, right?), and you can call me up at that number and let me know. I’ll buy you a ticket to wherever you want, and if you do want me around when you get here, I’ll extend my stay again. You’ve gotta come here, though, Belt. To Paris. I wish I’d known earlier. I should have. People said. It’s not like it’s a secret. I don’t know why I never believed them. I hope you believe me.
Love,
Clyde the Dad.
The letter in the envelope from Spain was accompanied by a business-class Iberia airline ticket for Belt A. Magnet, for a flight that would depart from Chicago ORD at 4:25 p.m. and arrive at Madrid MAD at 7:30 a.m. on WH/EN/EVER.
“Belt!” the letter read.
Forget Paris. Not really. But Viva _______, Spain! You know why people say it’s an armpit here? There’s two reasons. One reason is that if you say a place is an armpit enough, you keep the place from being overrun and getting expensive, so please don’t let anyone you might talk to know that it isn’t an armpit. The other reason is that this country, which I guess the rest of Western and Central Europe and Britain too thinks the whole country is an armpit, it is truly economically fucked, which keeps it so cheap and helps the armpit legend strengthen. You know how fucked? You know how cheap? This is how fucked and cheap. That dummy ticket I’m sending with this letter? Look at it. See how it says WH/EN/EVER for the departure date? I asked the guy behind the counter to mock it up for me and he said it was impossible and against company policy and not even legal, but then all I had to do to get him to do it was offer him five euros. Five! Anyway, reason we were there, Sandrine and I, at the ________ airport, was so I could extend my stay again. Which I have done. My tourist visa’s good here through the beginning of June, so I’ll stay here till then at least. After that, we’ll see what happens. Maybe we’ll be married. I’m a little bit drunk. Do you know about tapas? It’s like aperó, but it can happen at pretty much any time of day. What you do is, you order a beer for a euro, or a euro-50 some places, and then, with your beer, they bring you this little plate of food. Two of them’s a meal. Some places, you get a choice of food, other places they have only one tapa, and then there’s other places still that have more than one tapa but which ones they have depends on the day. Usually there’s pork. Lomo. Could be some ham. Could be a couple ribs. Could be some ham and a tiny egg on top of a cold bowl of pulverized tomatoes and bread that’s called Sal Morejo. They got potato salads, too. And a big piece of toast with tomatoes rubbed into it—that’s another classic called pan con tamate. Not a loser in the bunch. I live mostly on tapas, here. I wake up very early in the morning and walk on the paseo, which is this boardwalk that goes for miles and miles, get a coffee and toast at one of the seaside café-restaurant-bar deals, maybe read ESTRANGEMENT EFFECT (I’m reading it a second time, slow, and it’s even better the second time, and better than I thought it would be the first time, and I will send you it when I’m done, unless you tell me you’re coming here) or if Sandrine wants to meet me and give me a little Spanish lesson we do that, and then I usually go fishing, pay this guy Jorge to take me out on his boat, and if I catch something, we cook it up that night, me and Sandrine and her brother Sal, at Sal’s house, where we’re staying, which is right there just half a block from the paseo, and sometimes Sandrine’s daughter Juliette and her boyfriend Gabriel who live in an apartment across the street from Sal, and if I don’t catch anything then sometimes Sal cooks something else and sometimes we just eat tapas all night, but I got ahead of myself. I was saying about my days.