Chandelier, page 12
Since the hotel provided an in-house au pair service, we felt free to cut loose. A few rounds were purchased. Sarah was in her glory, all erudite anecdotes and low-cut bosomy laughter. When we stumbled up to our suite, after manly handshakes and frozen smiles, and Sarah with her triple air kisses, I vented.
“Fucking pompous shit,” I said, tossing my shoes at the entrance baseboard.
Sarah flashed a murderous look in my direction, gesturing at Georgia’s room. I slipped the door shut.
“He was nice.”
Sarah’s tone of dismissal enraged me even more.
“You fucking liked him, didn’t you?” I stage-whispered.
“What are you talking about?”
“That windbag.”
“I thought we were having a nice time.”
“He certainly was. With your hand on his knee . . .”
I was cracking the seal on a bottle of Johnny Walker from the mini-bar.
“You’re just pissed,” Sarah said, “because of how filthy rich he is. All your fancy talk about red-figure vases and Louis the king’s so-and-so porcelain-glass blah-fucking-blah. But he buys that shit. He owns that shit.”
“Oh, is that what would impress you? Me strolling around with three mangy Irish bloodhounds.”
“He keeps them on his yacht.”
“Of course he fucking does.”
“Shhhh!”
I filled a tumbler with ice and poured from the bottle until the whiskey neared the brim. Sarah had changed out of her dress and emerged from the washroom in a silk bathrobe.
“Is there money in selling yachts?” she wondered aloud. “Should we visit it tomorrow?”
“I’m not going anywhere near his ridiculous yacht. Not a chance in hell.”
“Don’t be a child. He was very nice to invite us.”
“He was not being nice. He was trying to get into your skirt.”
“That’s nonsense. He asked us both.”
“It doesn’t matter. The super-rich are like Stalin. They think that normal principles don’t mean anything to them.”
“Since when did you give a shit about principles?”
“What does that mean?”
“Nothing.”
“No, what did you mean?”
She was standing, arms folded, between the open curtains and the Empire-style armchair I had just collapsed in. Despite the late hour, many revellers still capered across the promenade two storeys below. The bass beat of a rap tune thumped away somewhere down the beach. Sarah’s face had twisted into a cold reckoning.
“Oh, I don’t know, Hugo,” she said. “You’re quite capable of cutting some corners to make a few extra bucks.”
I glowered at her for two seconds, then growled, “Go fuck yourself.”
She returned my sulfurous stare, but I could see her eyes casting measured glances over the hotel’s bureau and coffee table.
I may have mentioned Sarah liked to throw things. Among the more notable objects Sarah has hoisted in my direction over our years together: a steel clipboard, a hand-painted decorative plate from Tunis, a pyritized ammonite fossil, pine cones, a blue vibrator, a Sachertorte (among a long list of food items) and a crystal trophy of considerable heft presented to me by the Canadian Association of Architects, which, if it had found its mark, would have meant manslaughter. Now she was scrutinizing the available objects of our suite for their portability. Between us was a floral arrangement—calla lilies in a glass vase. On the floor, to her right, was a wastepaper basket. On a side table, some antique leather books. The bureau sported a telephone, the hotel directory and a few tourist pamphlets. Over my right shoulder, on a metal stand, were two cut-glass goblets, a decanter, an empty ice bucket, a set of tongs and my recently opened bottle of Johnny Walker.
With a burst of fury, she sprinted for the liquor stand. I flung myself off the armrest of my chair and caught her by the ankle. This tipped her off-balance and she crashed into the entertainment console, dislodging the TV remote and a bowl of roasted almonds. We briefly paused, our attention directed toward Georgia’s door. Then, with both of us prone on the carpet, Sarah repeatedly kicked at my arms and shoulders. I protected my face with my free hand while maintaining a tight grip on her leg with the other. Nevertheless, she was managing to wriggle forward and get her fingers on the door to the mini-bar fridge. With some effort, I tugged at her calf and dragged her back toward the centre of the floor. But she lashed out, grunting, with more kicks. Her heel tagged my forehead like a bludgeon. In pain, I grabbed at my scalp.
A moment later something wet and gooey was poured into my ear. We’d ordered the Sturia caviar the day we arrived. Sarah was now sitting cross-legged over me, spooning globs of it out of the tin onto my head.
“You bitch,” I muttered.
I snatched at the tin and knocked it from her hand. In a fighting scramble, I got the fridge open and pulled a demi-bottle of Veuve Clicquot from the door-rack. The next minute witnessed Sarah and I half jogging, half wrestling around the room as I struggled to remove the foil and wire trap from the bottle, then popping the champers straight at her astonished eyes, her open palm deflecting the rocketing cork but unable to impede the spray of froth I shook at her outraged face. It was the tipping point of farce. We stood there, heaving from our exertions: Sarah, sodden with Veuve Clicquot, her mascara like punk graffiti, and me, my face and neck spackled with lightly salted black sturgeon eggs cultivated in the Gironde estuary. Our anger transformed into amusement as we collapsed in black laughter onto the bed, where our entwined, forgiving tongues soon attempted to forgive the two hundred euros of luxury sundries we’d just spewed over each other. And not a peep from Georgia all night.
* * *
Now, sitting in this airplane armchair, above the Atlantic on a Sunday morning, drunk or hungover, I don’t know which, primed for jetlag, I discover I miss my ex-wife.
Why? We were a bit too Burton and Taylor, it’s true. So how did my listing dinghy of self-respect find harbour in this sudden nostalgia? After all our arguments and petty insults, the infidelities, the betrayals, why, half-reclined, the pitch of morning turbulence churning my stomach, do I quite suddenly feel an ache for her presence? Because of who she was, as they say. No quarter was given or taken. Sarah never felt sorry for me. There was no room for pity in her heart. She accepted my fuck-ups and expected no reciprocation. Without a pinch or whine. She had her own neuroses to manage. “Pick yourself up and move on,” she’d say with her scalpel stare. It gave us a kind of resilience, that contempt for each other’s weaknesses, that repulsion from failure.
Oh, where is she, my formidable and merciless wife?
19
It is nearing 6:30 a.m. and as we descend through cloud cover, I catch the first sight of distant coastal lights. Then, quite suddenly, we’re just over the runway of the Barcelona-El Prat airport, buckled up to await the first nudge of our wheels touching down on the tarmac. I bid a cheery goodbye to the stewards while they wish their file of bedraggled passengers, some two hundred strong, the best of days. All in all, no harm done. As I step past the cleaning crew waiting with their vacuums, disinfectants and rubber gloves, I’m feeling positively lighthearted. This is often true of stepping off a plane, isn’t it? No matter how exhausted you are, there’s great relief of being able to stretch your legs and control the pace of your movements.
I have not been in this city for some years. We’re funnelled along the thoroughfares of the arrivals area. I’m reminded that Barcelona’s airport suffered for many years from lack of restructuring. Investment money needed for modernization stalled until the years leading to 1992. It was the Olympics, that great motivator of government funds, which finally inspired the Spanish muck-mucks to throw a wad of pesetas into expansion and construction costs. And a nice job, I think. Bofill designed this, if I remember correctly. Ricardo Bofill. The morning light shimmers along the polished steel and green glass of the elegant lines of his newly inaugurated Terminal 1. As we stream toward baggage claim, we can admire a central courtyard accented with red stone that frames the splendid expanse of the departure level’s glass facade. Or something like that. Sorry, I am doing it again, habitually composing a review of whatever new building I see, even though it’s doubtful I’ll ever write it. It used to make Sarah crazy. We’d be talking and my mind would start to wander over stylistic details of a building we were approaching.
“Hugo, are you listening to me? Georgia needs braces,” she’d say.
“Sorry. Something caught my eye. What about her?”
The somnambulant airport staff are zombie-ing about the baggage carousel. I am asked a few half-hearted questions by immigration, then am nodded into the care of the arrivals concourse. There’s no one to meet me. Though a colleague—my spy, my inside source—has invited me to lunch tomorrow, I have kept my itinerary empty for the onset of this sojourn. Suitcase now in hand, I’m already in a taxi and blasting downtown-ward on the near-deserted freeway. Hills, the industrial zone rising near the sea west of the old centre. Soon, we dip like a sleigh down the off-ramp and descend toward Barri Gòtic. It’s Sunday morning. The white stone of the doorways and shopfronts stand deserted. My seasoned taxi driver makes good time anticipating the traffic lights, charging at the reds—with no hint of braking—a split-second before they turn green. Before long, we slow on Via Laietana and there is the Barcelona Cathedral across the square. Not Gaudi’s monster further north, but the overlooked, original gothic gem.
“Bueno, bueno,” I tell my heavy-footed charioteer. “Cuánto?” I hand him the newly issued euros converted before leaving Ottawa. There is an additional tax to the charge, something I vaguely remember reading about somewhere, so I don’t question the total, a quibble he looks prepared for, judging from the tone of his voice. At another time, I may have offered resistance just for the sake of ruffling him a little, but I’m exhausted. He pops the trunk for my bags and I make my way through the square. A bell signals a half hour past eight from the cathedral’s tower.
I haven’t paid for an extra night, so must wait, despite protest, for eleven a.m. before I can check into my room. The concierge stores my suitcase in a nook behind the front desk. How do you say “code” in Spanish? I’m waggling my smart phone at the fellows behind the marble counter, saying “Wi-fi” and “Número?” One of them, sporting a friar’s tonsure, jots the code down on hotel stationery and hands it to me without ceremony. With some time to kill, it might be worth checking my messages, hear from Sarah’s fugitive travels, and see how the western hemisphere has adapted to my absence.
The lobby is decked out in Queen Anne chairs and sofas. A round table with cabriole legs is laid out with glasses of orange juice. Bread options. I stuff two rolls into my mouth and swill the pulpy fruit. The unadulterated sweetness jolts me. It’s almost painful. In Canada we are so used to fruit being traumatized by packaging and the refrigeration of long-distance transport. When it finally touches our lips, its taste has been distilled into a cardboard neutrality. I’m reminded again that fruit is organic, not a simulated flavour we add to products. This orange juice is so healthy and fresh, it’s almost aggressive. Probably squeezed ten minutes ago, picked from the tree as my plane buzzed Bilbao. I take another glass and settle into a chair, wingback and upholstered with stripes.
It takes me a few minutes to access my emails, fiddling with the code. There is nothing worthwhile in the inbox; nothing from Sarah and, typically, nothing from Georgia.
I log off from the internet and try my voicemail. There are four messages. I tap at the interface. I’m expecting a carefree message from Sarah, blithely enjoying herself and unaware of the worry she’s caused for her colleagues and her daughter. But it’s not her, only a man’s officious grumble:
Good afternoon, Mr. Walser. This is Detective Stokehouse calling from the Ottawa Police Department. I am contacting you in connection with the disappearance of Sarah Trimble. I understand she is your ex-wife. We just have a few questions we’d like to ask you.
The police? Is this necessary? Detective Stokehouse provides a file and phone number and urges me to call at any hour and leave a message with the most convenient time to contact me. I almost believe this is some joke on Sarah’s part. I would think that after thirteen years of marriage, I’d know her well enough, but she is too practical to arrange such an elaborate mind-fuck. Though she is capable of cruelty, particularly to me, after my wholesale mishandling of our future. There’s only one way to find out, as they say. I must follow through and make some calls.
It’s too early, or too late. Isn’t that always the case? My mind pitches with a nauseous buzz of jetlag, unwilling to face time-zone conversions without proper sleep. I am certainly incapable of speaking to a police officer about my ex-wife.
What did he call it?
Her “disappearance.”
A pregnant word, that. I nudge my way out the circulating glass doors of the hotel and into the cathedral square. It’s a sunny, cool morning. The outdoor cafés are already half-full, tourists signalling the waiters into irritation. Being Sunday, these tables will see many orders. Nothing else is open and nothing to do but kill time. I check my map and squeeze south and west through the narrow streets toward La Rambla, where I can drag myself into exhaustion down its tree-lined paseo before returning for possession of my room key. More than once I get turned around, led by the false assumption that these seemingly straight avenues of the Gothic Quarter are faithful to ninety-degree angles.
I lean against the stone of an apartment entrance and study my map, setting out again, turning back, the morning light beginning to heat my neck and forehead. Beyond the next corner, I am suddenly along it, a little more north than I’d planned but here anyway. In memory, La Rambla always seemed crowded, but still early yet, there is hardly a soul in sight as I work my way south to the sea. The flower sellers receive deliveries. Each newspaper kiosk has thrown open its gates, their windows marked with signs announcing Real Madrid—Barcelona: SOLD OUT. By the time I’ve reached the port I am smeared in the gauze of nausea, the laser beam of a headache vivisecting my cranium. The promenade buzzes with scooters. Seagulls guffaw in begging queues above the docks. Their screeches saw at my brain, drip acid frequencies into my sinus passages.
I vomit onto a graffitied piling, the feast from Executive First reconstituted messily below a squatter’s symbol. The seagulls descend to guzzle the sludge. My pan-seared cod fillet is enjoyed with pronounced gusto.
I feel better. Pausing at the roundabout below Columbus’s statue, I am confident that with a thirty-minute nap, I might even settle into a regular rhythm, bypassing jetlag’s curse. My stomach settled somewhat, a new pain emerges on the outside of my right foot. I am favouring it, negotiating the sidewalk with a slight limp. I should have packed walking shoes. Sneakers maybe. Returning north, there is time to sit and enjoy the sun, so I duck through some arches into the Plaça Reial and claim a chair at one of the many bar tables facing the plaza. I am desperate for caffeine, but also for something to get the edge in retreat. The waiter brings an espresso with brandy, the crema beautifully layered inside the glass cup.
I am finding my feet again.
At the next table, two women share a pastry and flip through guidebooks, travel packs tucked in their laps. The palm trees rasp against the breeze.
“A beautiful day,” the blonde closest to me says, glancing at the sky. They are both in their late thirties, I’d guess. T-shirts and jean shorts.
“Starting to enjoy it,” I tell them.
“Just arrived?”
“This morning. An overnight flight.”
They are Americans on two-week holiday. Nurses with the US Army stationed in Crete. The blonde says they are having “a whale of a time.” I tell them I’m here for a conference, which inspires less than enthusiastic reactions, so I give them the architect stuff.
The coffee and booze are buzzing away gently already.
“What do you call this?” I ask the waiter as he passes.
“Carajillo.”
“Delicious. Another, please. Ladies?”
They laugh.
“Three,” I say. We’re chatting pleasantly when my buzz turns into a spin.
“Just dizzy,” I assure their concerned looks. The light wobbles on the table’s edge. The neoclassical facades to my left go soft-focus.
“You should get some sleep,” the brunette says, citing my fatigue, the change of hemisphere and a concentrated mix of caffeine and alcohol.
“My luck to find some nurses,” I say. The sarcasm gives them a laugh. White teeth in wide mouths. But I can’t be a baby now, surely, so when the waiter passes a few minutes later, I order another straight brandy. “You’re right. I really should avoid caffeine,” I quip with a wink. The girls shake their blurry faces at me.
I have paid the bill. They are off to find a beach somewhere. They tell me the name, but for all I know it could just as well be a crater on the moon. I am standing, trying to push my chair back, but the uneven stones of the plaza force me to lift the rear legs, which actually tips it on its side, and the blonde steps over and helps me raise it off the ground. “Crater on the moon,” I slur, strategizing my exit beyond the stone fountain, half mirage under the awful sun. It was nice to meet me. It was nice to meet them. Enjoy your holiday; get some sleep. Do you know your way to your hotel? Don’t worry, I’ve been here before. Neoclassical. Beautiful day. Have a good time.
The shaded damp of narrow Carrer de Ferran welcomes me as I trundle east again. Scooters and smart cars squeeze through a mosey of coagulating pedestrians. It seems like five minutes have passed when I appear at the Colón’s front desk, though it’s past noon and I have backtracked several times in order to find the hotel and have purchased a ham and cheese sandwich somewhere in transit. They have sent my luggage up to my room, a third-floor suite facing the cathedral.
