Deauville

Having played myself up to 150,000 Euro by midnight, the tuxedo jacket had flattened and formed to my sitting figure. So many cigarettes, all the times I've quit forsaken for this, but it's what Bob would do. Just remember what the book said, every card flip, every bated breath from the ever expanding audience, it was all like the book said.

This was the narrative. On the train to Deauville, anxious legs and hand cupped around my mouth, grimacing, my mind wandered in and out of childish fantasies. Normandy fell away from the train track sutures in rolling green hills and dairy cows and farmhouses with the occasional field of unbroken yellow. Normandy is a postcard parody of itself. 

The French  Film New Wave/Noir tour continued.  Deauville and Hon Fleur. The climactic scene of the brilliant Bob Le Flambeur in the Deauville Casino and the final moment, the iconic scene, of Truffat's 400 Blows imprinted on the Hon Fleur beach. I've been told my writing on movies is, "painful," so I'll refrain. Simply: Bob Le Flambeur is a film about a gambler in need of a hot streak. 400 Blows is the story of a boy who wants to see the beach. 

The train arrived in Deauville and a grey morning hung in cantilevered clouds moped about. Deauville is right next to Trouville and it's unclear why it isn't just one town. Even in a European sense where every village--even 5 KM apart--has a crest and a flag, these two towns were divided by nothing save a harbor the size of a football field and a pig tail river meandering into the French countryside. Trouville climbed the hill and Deauville settled in the sea plain. 

Moments away from the train station, not ready for the reveal, there was a large Ferris wheel, raised on candy striped supports, stone still. Behind it, a two story building with CASINO arched over the door spelled out in block letters, dimmed neon tubes fitted on the inside: Deauville casino, my spiritual and ancestral home.

Chemin de Fer, an old French from of baccarat, was the game. There is a banker and punters and a dealer, and you leverage betting interests accordingly. I'd started reading, "How to Win at Baccarat," on a lark. It was Bob's game, so it'd be mine. It wasn't meant to go like this, so well, like the dealer was holding the book in his lap and making sure my success was a tutorial. Follow the book, do what the book says. Keep your hair slicked back, don't cater to the crowd, be there alone--as in all things--and keep a cigarette perched between your lips. Shot in black and white, pure, unfettered elegance.

Some pictures for posterity's sake, the camera's incisors pinching the image from reality, and something fired in my memory: this isn't the casino from Bob Le Flambeur. Did they tear it down? Does crappy ass Trouville have a casino? Back around the small harbor along the main road against the coast, an old man with a dog said something to me. Shrug and smile, a well rehearsed gesture having been the foreigner for a while now. You could see him collect the jumble of English words in his mouth before they tumbled out. 

"Very cold day."

"Oui, very cold."

He smiled and pulled on his dogs leash, a squat mutt.

"Do you know where the Deauville Casino is?"

"Casino?"

"Oui, oui."

His reply was largely in French, but he pointed toward the casino on the harbor and swiveled on his aged hips and pointed toward some unknown place hidden in the streets of Deauville behind us. 

"Merci, merci." Which always makes me think, "Oh, mercy mercy me." Things just aren't the way they used to be.

Tristan, he'd have to be dragged kicking and screaming. Just bring your guitar, every thing else is settled, repeated again and again. He still might not come. But he'd have no choice. Bangkok, him and that other reachin' bastard, we'd meet in Bangkok and do things and never be able to make eye contact again. Where would my sister want to go? She'd love Paris. Only assholes don't like Paris. What a lie. What a myth. Great town. Then the couples would be coordinated in waves. Doodles to Scandanavia. Robily, some place we could just turn the fuck out. Wittblooms, UltraFest in Split, easy. The P's? Lisa would know. In Mrs. P we trust. My Mongol Warrior Brother, well, whatever she wanted, I like it that way. The Collins fam gets the world, without them, there may be no trip at all. Mose and Katy, Mexico. We'd have to flee the country by the time we were done. When did I get to know some many couples? And where would that shifty white son of a bitch want to go? Poland? Not sure why, but it seems right. Pancho would never want for anything again. The Retired Major General Rev. Pancho "Boots" Train would finally get the oil portrait in full military regalia he's always wanted. And the good dog food, the really good stuff.

It was all so ridiculous, an appropriate smile cracked my face. Always the same since childhood; a singular fantasy like a cooper coil wrapped around a nail then tied to a current. Once the field is generated, dense visions with flavor and smell fly in from the corners of my dim imagination until a weighty clump of daydream persists in my brain. There's no book about Chemin De Fer, but I did read a Wikipedia entry. Well, there is a book, like I found it existed. No tux, nor could I pony up to rent one at the last minute in a seaside French resort town. But electromagnetic pull is not cut so short in this cross-wired brain.

There it was, the Deauville Casino, my spiritual and ancestral home. Did you know the climactic scene from Bob Le Flambeur took place in there? It looked exactly like in the film. Stripped of some of its bygone sophistication, tarted up with terrible signage and flyers for dinner shows and Jermaine Jackson concerts, but there it was. It was as though I'd pass Jean Gabin in the crosswalk. I made my way around the joint and even found the street where what's his name, the other character, the young guy, gets  gunned down. Do they have some sort of...like, monument in there for the movie? Surely they have to. They HAVE to.

A jockey laid in stone whipped his steed outside of one entrance. Cursive "LB," entangled in its needlessly accentuated curls, was cobbled in front of another entrance. Cottages lined the streets. Cottages from the fairy tales of the rich. Deep sloped roofs ordered in well shingled rectangles overgrown with wild orange and green lichens. Slats of dark wood laid across white plaster, three at right angles, three vertically, lines vivisecting and dividing until you pull back and see the endless peasant geometry of triangles and squares. Some of the cottages had been converted into high end stores, Hermes, Voltaire and (Something), Armani, all prostrate in the sight of the true money temple, Deauville Casino. Deauville is a gorgeous town. It's too early to walk in to the casino, though. Hon Fleur was first.

The cards started to fall with ugly faces. Jacks and Queens grimaced and winced as they took my money. All this fake money nothing had been done to earn. I thought back to the film. Bob had a bad draw or two, he furrowed his brow, took his cigarette in his lips, picked up his chips, and moved around the table. It's was on the reel to reel projector in my minds eye. Poised, like I was in the color remake, I got up. The dealer flashed relief, the rest of the table, riding my heat signature like lesser predators, froze. I moved to an empty seat next to an Eastern European luxury model girlfriend tethered to an old Italian man. Her painted eyes and rose petal lips hovered above the loose circles of bald head and gut and sausage fingers of her benefactor like abstract art. She smiled. He didn't. I sat back down--the other gamblers attention rapt--exhaled smoke from my nose, blue vapors crawling through the trellis of my slick black hair, and I threw two twenty thousand euro chips on the table.

Hon Fleur is unremarkable. Eventually every town in Europe pulls apart in a few shared characteristics. Find the cathedral, find the WWI Monument, the WWII monument, find the harbor and/or central square, look at the carousel, and get the fuck out. Hon Fleur raised itself to these qualifications with minimal acumen. Legendary harbor? Puh-lease. Cassis has a Jules Verne themed carousel, are you even trying? I made my way through town and down a long promenade toward the beach. The final scene of 400 Blows played back again and again in my memory. Did the boy run down that street? Did he escape from the little school over there? Were people crowded on the beach watching the film crew? It'd be less magical. I want to believe it was Truffat, boy, camera, and tripod on the beach all alone...

....

....Holy shit this beach is tragic. Littered in driftwood, vacant, garbage strewn, two earth movers pulled black mud from some low just off the shore. The water was grey. Seagulls didn't even scavenge the strand. Industrial platforms made themselves visible in the haze smeared distance, ragged scarecrows looming through smoke. The beach of Truffat's imagination is gone. Sulking back toward the center of Hon Fleur, there was a white boat with two masts and three sails gleaming against the grim ocean view. I'm not a man who looks for symbols in his life, but the boat was dubbed the J.R.R. Tolkien, author of the Hobbit, my protective emblem of getting out the door. Is this happening? Have I finally opened myself for once? I'm the nail, this adventure is the copper coil. And for the first time, I've tapped into the current of life all around us.

I kept winning. Every card fell like it was bound to the pages of "How to Win at Baccarat." Each turn simply the illustrations found on pages 106-122. Audible gasps punched from the crowd's guts as my stack grew with each improbable hand. We'd gone through two dealers. As I knew he would, a man, handsome, fit, born in a charcoal suit, came to my side. The  musky cologne of his charm and confidence arrived behind me before he did.

"Mr. Monreal is it?" His pronunciation was perfect. His English even better.

"Charmed." I shook his hand and set my cigarette in an ashtray.

"We here at the Deauville Casino would like to congratulate you on a sterling performance, right folks." He looked to the audience, reiterated something in French, and the crowd cheered. "To celebrate your exceptional performance, I've been asked to invite you to the high-rollers  penthouse and serve you a complimentary bottle of our finest champagne. Would you be so kind to accept our generosity?"

A sentence to fall in love with, constructed with a salesman's wit. Always ask questions they can't say no to. "It would be my privilege," I smiled and picked up my cigarette, "but just one more hand." 

Back in Deauville I went to the beach. It was living atonement. White sand was unafraid to stand out against the ashen sky. Rainbow colored beach umbrellas were cinched shut and set out as though on a perfect grid only visible from the air. A young woman on break from one of the high end stores laid on the sand with a coffee and cigarette. A couple with a camera on a tripod was trying to stage a we're-jumping-in-the-air photo. I wonder how many fights have erupted from ill conceived cute couple photos on vacation? If the line was set at the number of grains of sand on the Deauville beach, I'd take the over. Heavy. Where the tide washed over the shore cords of fragile finger shells crunched under foot. I snapped a couple of photos and then a boy ran past. All alone, not on a jog, sprays of ocean water cast off his his stride. It was the end of 400 Blows, just for me. 

The beach had changing cabanas named after golden age movie stars. One was the Jean Gabin cabana. The immortal Jean Gabin, star of such legendary films as Pepe Le Moko and Bob Le Flambeur.

As the hand began to play out, I knew what I was going to do. The dealers hand was just as I hoped, almost unbeatable. I looked through my chips, made a loose mental inventory: vacations for my friends and family, college, a down payment on a house, additional funds for the current trip, the rest was too much. I plucked a huge portion of chips from my stack and laid them down on the player. For the first time all night I did the exact opposite of what the book said. The crowd sucked wind. "No," was muttered in at least three different languages. I knew what I needed, and the rest was superfluous, unbecoming of the man I believe I am.

But some things are not up to you. Sometimes in all this entropy there is a shuffle in a shoe of cards predetermined hours before to defy the odds down to shavings of percentiles. As the dealer finished the hand, one million bottles catching one million bolts of lighting all at once, I won.

The casino manager could hardly put a good face on for the picture. I insisted I be photographed, unsmiling, with my cigarette. Call me Bob, Bob the Gambler.

Upon entering the casino, the door man pointed at my shoulder bag and barked orders in French. There was no doubt it would have to be checked, but his head to toe look of contempt was a touch ribald. My wind blown hair and sand grimed brow paired with baggy blue jeans and battle tested walking shoes wasn't what I had in mind either, but were all making sacrifices. The inside of the casino was cold. Not frigid, but an oppressive atmosphere with all traces of sunlight and joy vacated in the name of games of chance.

I checked my bag. My passport was scanned by the ID checker. His job description must require the intense facial expressions indicative of results he doesn't like to see. The casino floor was where confidence began to waiver. Carpeted and painted in deep scarlet red, it was ugly. Gamblers sat hunched over tables all seemingly integrated with some computer technology. Old men and old women sat at penny slots straight faced and lever pulling, coin sinking into oblivion. 

The coins in my pocket fumbled between my fingers. I walked the floor a couple of times. I casually approached a slot machine and tried to enter a one Euro coin. It immediately dropped out. The lukewarm will be spit from God's mouth. The words of a devout woman met in Lyon echoed in my brain. The machine clearly called for a dollar investment. The coin plopped in and was again rejected, ringing in the tray. An old Asian woman held a bucket fat with coins. Peering over her shoulder, she swung around, smoldering. I backed off, she had tokens. Where do we get tokens? 

Slinking out of the slot room, the real gambling parlor beckoned at the end of the hall. The middle of the day, there was no crowd, but a few friends around one blackjack tables. A bored croupier stared, hypnotized, into his roulette wheel. The gamblers were dressed in tacky button down shirts and bad European denim. The casino has no Chemin De Fer table. The casino is non-smoking. I found a token changer, and poured five Euro into a slot machine I didn't know how to play too embarrassed to play nothing. I didn't win a single pull. 

On the way out, there was a different bag check person than the one from twenty minutes ago, a welcome relief. Through the door, I walked a few feet and started cracking up. Tickled, smiling and chuckling all the way to the train station, the clouds finally broke. The best laugh is in the imploded remains of your daydreams, no matter how self indulgent and naive. Without those laughs, you're not lucky or rich in anything.

Chinese Buffet Alone In Bayeux: The Happiest Days of All

In the morning, it pissed down rain. It was a continuation of the night before, and by dawn the pool of rain-urine collected in the corners of my tent and psyche alike. I'm a novice camper, but my tent went up as easy as an erection. Both acts have so much to do with quantifiable manliness, the euphemism is hardly a coincidental sight gag. In my confidence, my vainglory, I remember holding a thick rectangle of tent fabric and thought, "What is this useless piece of shit? The floor? It doesn't even fit in the bottom of the tent..." It was summarily discarded. I did at least attach the rain fly, if poorly.

When I woke, my bag and sleeping pad soaked through, cold bullets of rain ambling down the seams of my tent, fattening along the internal trellis of fabric and mesh until they were laden with weight enough to drop their purchase, I just kind of said, "fuck it," and went back to sleep. I had strange dreams, dreams about my father watching me brush my teeth. My neighbors snoring rain out of the clouds and a group of English Boy Scouts--or whatever they were--mucking about and being, well, boys were the unexpected master strokes elevating it all to high art.

"Did you sleep well, mate? You got 2/3rds of the Irish snoring team right here."

"So, I fell. Into this girl. Right into her..." you didn't even have to see his hands to know they were cupped in the international sign for boobs.

"And then you probably started ogling her. Uhuhuhuhuhuh."

"No...it was...MY. HAND. But she didn't care, she was like," up a few octaves, "Oh, I'm sorry."

"Was she fit?"

When the rain finally soaked through my third and fourth layers, I knew I had to unchain myself from the raindrop pixilated tarp humming with grey light. I remembered the campground had a TV room, with glorious WiFi, so I gathered my iPad and left the sinking ship.

A quick note about European campgrounds. They have pools! And electricity! And hot showers! And bowling greens! And TV rooms! And a market on site! And WiFi! But no place to build a fire. I'm still not sure what to think.

In the safe, dry echo of the TV room I did a little work. I did some writing, blogged a bit, messed around on the Internet, and my world took shape. Around lunch, the Boy Scouts (Air Cadets?) came rumbling in from a morning bike ride soaked to the bone. Jolted to life, the room quaked in the presence of the young storm conquerors. Mothers calling in boys from the rain clucking at them to remove their wet things had lost. Their troop leader was organizing lunch for the group even though there were multiple signs posted in the room reading, "NO EATING! NO SMOKING!"

"But, sir, the sign says no eating."

"Brian, you've never read a sign in your life. Why are you starting now?"

The list of menu items: "Okay, we've got some stewed potatoes but they have to last for everybody. We've got some pie with...some kind of meat in it. ('Yessssss' one of the boys interjected) There's some bread and some apples and some...cheese, idinit."

Oh, it was cheese. I could tell from where I sat, and it occurred to me how hungry I was. I was weird English meat pie hungry. I wasn't quite ready to go look at my tent, more inclined to spray paint some Katrina code on there and walk down road, but I had the hunger on me something mighty fierce.

After the boys ate they went outside and played no-rule-having-made-up kid games. On their effort, after another hour or so, the sun came out. It was time. I at last went to survey the wreckage. 

My sleeping pad, my sleep sheet, my tent bag, my sleeping bag sack, and my food bag were waterlogged. A whole round of groceries lost. My sleeping bag itself was damp. Most everything else was relatively dry. I hauled my stuff onto the lawn and rebuilt. My things, not in the tent, not in their right place, so stark laid out on the lawn, it was all a painful referendum on my campsite. My existence. Maybe he can't pitch a tent? If the other campers didn't judge me, they should have.

I secured the floor under the tent (Ohhhhhhhh....that's how that works). I tied down and staked the rain fly. I laid my pad out in the sun. I draped everything else over my improved shelter and sopped up the remaining mess with my towel. It took some time, it would have been a fine montage, but I raised my area back to respectability. My sleeping pad and sleeping bag dried out quickly, the little storage bags I just tied to the tent, but the sleep sheet needed a good old fashioned dry on the line. I hung it across two wires on the clothes line and...just...I just waited. It wasn't as though I thought someone would steal it, I thought it would be rude of me to leave it up there.

For the next hour or so, sunlight measured the length of the lawn and the space over the hedges and the size of my face until clouds took hold of its wandering ambition. Immediately I snatched my half-dry sheet off the line and placed it inside my warm, dry square inch of space. As I reflected on my domain, this rugged slice of can-do-ism at its best, the moment of repose finally opened the window for my hunger to lay me out. 

Like industrial chainsaws echoing from a forest gorge, my stomach struck up a  goddamn row. I felt hollow and frayed and did the recent meal rundown to compensate my belly. We had...a beer for dinner last night? And...we definitely had toast and a coffee at breakfast in Lyon yesterday. I'm not sure who was less impressed, me or my gut, but we both agreed this cannot continue. Then, in the state of being where Baudelaire's angel indeed wakes, I remembered something special, a secret: on the way in, I'd passed a Chinese buffet. I don't remember how far it was, but I could recall the red and yellow neon sign like it was my lover's face.

I put on both of my jackets and tied on a scarf and was still shivering even though it wasn't very cold, which couldn't have been a good sign, and I set out. I was prepared for this to be a bit of a goose chase, but it was okay. I knew it existed. I'd just be really, really hungry when I got there. Then, as I walked through the camp's exit, there it was. It was so close I could hear it whisper, "All you have to do is reach out and take it." I wanted for nothing, but I'm still greedy and wished for more. Thirteen electric guitars, arranged in octaves, screaming a version of "The Star Spangled Banner," in time with every step I took. I was gonna show these Frenchies how fat fucks do it in the USA.

His fake-authentic silk top, the man who seated me, told me a story. Decorated with caricatures of the Orient, a hackneyed vision of golden thread and cloud motifs--not a hint of sincerity--I knew I was home. He brought me a champagne flute filled with a tart citrus drink and then had the audacity to bring me a basket of rice wafer chips. I almost grabbed him by the collar and made him watch me knock them to the ground. Unable to maintain, too far gone to play along with the ritual drink order where we humor each other and he smugly brings me a glass of water, I did it. I just got up from the table and grabbed a plate.

The center of the restaurant was a red pagoda crafted with an angled roof carved to look like it had scalloped shingles. Where roof beams met support beams gold dragon heads jutted out with their curled lips and long, curled whiskers. Along the hexagonal base, the lighting focused with unbending fixation, there were the steam trays.

I was a little disappointed. They were about sixteen dishes short from really being a Chinese buffet. And where each tray is usually brimming, heaped with whatever twice fried and sauce covered offering they have in The States, the bottom of most of these trays were covered, but little else. Europe, what are we going to do with you? 

I grabbed my first plate and made the round: caramel pork, fried rice, steamed  dumplings, fried duck, fuck salad, fuck hardboiled eggs, fuck fruit, never sushi, something that looked like egg rolls, and some crab Rangoon. After what most  would consider the perfect lap, I sat down and resented thousands of years of human evolution. I should never have to breathe when I need so desperately to pack my gaping maw.

Everything on the plate was perfect and predictable. Crispy bits and overly sweet cornstarch based sauces and duck skin which made me want to tilt my head all the way back and dangle it into my mouth-trough. The real revelation were the dumplings, really delicious. Also the egg rolls, which contained no vegetables whatsoever, but were some sort of pork mixture wrapped in an egg roll cover and deep fried. When you finally touch they sky, they probably have a tray of those waiting.

Plate two: noodles, beef and onions, fried shrimp with peppers, fired chicken, more pork only egg rolls, more dumplings, and some crab Rangoon. They hadn't even had time to clear my first plate by the time I was face deep in plate two.

Plate three is when you expand your conciseness. Plate three is where your resolve is tested. Naturally shorter of breath and "feeling full," but quitting there is the mark of a deficient spirit. I loaded up with my favorites and some crab Rangoon, saw the horror in my server's face, and finally felt good, really good, about what I was doing.

The world slows down. You look up from the cheap dish-ware lousy with goodness and survey the humanity around you.

One table was an English family on holiday. The English, the only other really dedicated fat people in the world. The son was trying to insert chopsticks through the tight bun on top of his sister's head. 

There was a single father there with his two daughters who wanted a nice warm meal for his girls. All buffets have a discount for kids under ten. One little girl kept putting sugar on top of every plate she took from the buffet. Or maybe Mom was just out of town.

An old couple who came and went before I'd even hit my stretch plate.

A blonde French girl with her boyfriend, full, tantalizing proportions crafted in defiance of gravity. Stripped down to cotton panties, sitting on her pink legs, an expectant glint in here eye welcoming what incongruent response you have to offer, the icon, the fertility goddess forever etched into your cave wall. The prettiest girl in Bayeux. She rides the train to her shitty job in Caen everyday, and everyday swears this is the time she goes all the way to St. Lazare in Paris and never comes back. The bubble shimmered around her in the grease filtered restaurant light begging to burst.

The lone laborer whose long day after long day were spelled out in flecks of paint on his jeans and plaster covered boots, drywall dusting his grey hair. He was a three plate man, I could tell. This was the looking glass, one of many other selves on either side. He kept looking at me over his bell shaped glass of port. I was certain, hope against hope, he was going to wipe his mouth, pay his bill, cross over to me, and offer in his French accented English, "You want to...erm...how you say...get into some terrible shit?" No rape. No murder. Let's go. I'm still just a child with an over-active imagination.

Philosophically I had a fourth plate. Not some pathetic fruit and gross buffet dessert plate,  a chicken wing and egg roll plate, but my stomach couldn't do it. I'll get that fourth plate back for her. Someday. I paid the nice lady, and paraded--fingers fanned through the long streamers of magic hour light--singing Tom Petty's "American Girl," all the way back to camp.

J____ F____ F____ III

Nah, I don't have any kids. I've been married a few times, and one wife had a couple of abortions, but nah,  no kids.

A deep auburn hue, a salt washed seaside shack painted over with the same color again and again, he wore glasses. Or, if you searched your memory, he'd have glasses. Thin wire frames, squarish, disappearing into a basin of sun eroded wrinkles, his iron blue eyes at the center. They always smiled. Hair, tight waves, not quite salt and pepper, but a once perfect picture crowded with static. His manner of speaking lived where North Jersey alleyways meet Florida beaches, sentences round in the middle and wincing at the end.

I was seeing this one girl for three, four years, and I asked her to marry me, but she said no. I'm not the doctor, lawyer, but her family wanted a guy that was ready to go. And so we broke up. And after we broke up, I decided I wasn't going to live for anybody else, you know. Live to any one else's (he held his hand into the air, the high water mark of everyone else's expectations)

Then, a while later, I go on this cruise ship, and I meet this girl. We're drinking, partying, and we talk about how romantic it would be to get married on a cruise ship. So, this is day five, and she says yes. So we go talk to the captain, and he says he can't do it because he doesn't know if we're married to anyone else in the States or there's blood work that has to be done. So, anyway, we get off the ship and she says, "So, what, you don't wanna marry me anymore?"

So we go to the Justice of the Peace. Well, we go see my parents who live in the Tampa area and she has grandparents who live like two minutes away. So we get married, and--we're great friends to this day, she's a great gal--but we were off and on for three years and that's why she had the abortions. But we're still great friends.

Then I was married to this girl for 11 years. She had a tubular pregnancy and they...

"A what kind of pregnancy?"

A tubular pregnancy, it was in the tube instead of the, (he motioned toward his nonexistent womb) so they had to take it out. Her other tube was bad, and so she couldn't have kids. So I broke up with her. I was, you know, being a fucking asshole. I took it to an extreme and I really regret that. I was feeling a lot of pressure, my father was dying of cancer, and my name is J___ F___ F____ III, so I was feeling a lot of pressure to pass on the name, and I broke up with her. Everyone, all my friends were like, "You're crazy! If you think we're not gonna be friends with Tanya anymore, you're crazy." Life long friends! Everyone loved her, she was a great person, and I...I just really regret that one.

Then I met this other girl, we were just seeing each other every other weekend, you know, partying, and she couldn't get pregnant. Then, three months later (he squatted into a shrug), she gets pregnant. So I decide, look,  lets get married, lets have a legal child, a legitimate child, and  I moved up there. She was living in Panama City, and so I move up there, and she's a total alcoholic. Every night, drunk, smoking, and she won't give it up for the baby. After a few months, I'm like, I can't do this. I tell her I'm gonna stay living in the area and help raise the kid and everything, and then she loses the baby. So, that was it.

And that's it. I don't feel anymore pressure to pass on the name, so I'm okay with not having a kid.

"We'll, that's the funny, or interesting thing about being a guy; we're fertile until the day they put us in the ground. As long as (I pointed at my crotch) this guy still works, anyway."

Nah, I'm okay with it. I'm 58, my girlfriend is 55, it's just, I'm not supposed to have a kid. But this girl I'm with now, she's a wonderful person. Drinks a little socially, doesn't smoke, doesn't have any bad habits, works. She contributes. She's a wonderful person.

"I hope you tell her that."

I do. I tell her I love her. She was worried I was taking this trip looking for someone else, but that's not it. At home I was starting to feel a little depressed. I don't know why, I have a wonderful life, but we were, (he stretches space between his hands) we were starting to get distant. But this trip has been really good for my disposition. I tell her I love her. And I miss her. I really miss her. This trip has been good for us. And she's, you know, she's a really good person. Things are gonna be different from now on.

A Night in Lyon with Thee Oh Sees

I let myself get frustrated on the way to the hostel. I'd come in unprepared, not the first or last time this will happen. I got off at the wrong metro stop unaware there was a magnificent hill between the stop and my destination. It was closer on the map, but only as the crow flies, and what I would give to sprout tattered black wings.

I huffed and sweated and labored under my overstuffed bag and castigated myself, mostly internally, but some escaped my mouth.

"You're a fucking piece of garbage, Monte."

"This is your punishment for..."

I forget what. I worked my way down a long, serpentine road, the sort where you stay angled over balls of your feet. I eventually found the river. I could navigate from the river. Faced with a decision, right or left,  I saw a bus stop certain to be equipped with another vague map. I trudged on and as I arrived at the stop, I realized it wasn't a stop at all, but an advertisement kiosk situated just so. As my heart fell, I looked up and saw it. I had stumbled onto the street where my hostel is located. Quai Arloing. Total, unexpected elation.

The hostel was nice. I chatted with a Chinese girl in my room for a while. She recommended a restaurant called La Cuisine. Why am I here? I'm here to see Thee Oh Sees play tonight. Everything else in Lyon would just be a pleasant surprise. 

I showered, shaved, put on clean clothes, and donned  my "going out" shoes, an ego driven supplement to my clunky walking shoes. This was the first night in my travels I was leaving the hostel with nothing but cash in my pocket. Flying blind. I had thoroughly Googled my destinations and committed their spots on the map to my internal camera roll, so I hit the streets.

Lyon is beautiful, if a little cold and grey. It seems one of those towns best cloaked in a cool slate mantle. A couple of brown rivers shuttle the history of industry out to shore.  Rich green trees interrupted by the occasional purple aberration dot the banks. Contrasting houses--shoulder to shoulder--cast in pastel hues partition the water from the woods. Lyon is staid, but her personality would probably surprise you after a couple of bottles of wine.

One thing I didn't know was Lyon is one of the gastronomic capitals of not just France, but the world. Paul Bocuse, legend of French cuisine and Lyon's native son, has raised the food community along with his expansive profile. Quiet brasseries line the streets with discreet menus boasting eye popping, sumptuous cuisine.

I worked my way to La Cuisine, an unassuming red building on a grimy street with an external door, a red curtain, and another door leading inside. I was received by the staff with Bonjour and Bonsoir. I haven't learned how to say, "I'm eating alone," yet in French, so I just motioned to myself and said, "solo," in my phony French accent. I'm not sure if 'solo' is a word in French.

I was seated, brought a menu, which the waitress, in her limited English, explained was only in French. I assured her it was okay. She brought me a small cup of marinated black and green olives. I flipped through the menu. I recognized "calamars" and "canard confit" and they had an "entree + plat" offer for €18.50. 

I ordered and my server poured me a glass of cheap red wine. Between sips the calamari came out of the kitchen. Whole pieces of calamari lightly pan seared with a balsamic reduction, the tendrils cooked down to crunchy withers, and a simple salad on the side. It wasn't the first bite, not entirely. It was as the second bite hit my lips and the first bite committed to my belly told his story. My mind reeled. The rains had returned.

My first plate was cleared. I had a window to meditate on the flavors still coating the back side of my teeth and esophagus. Time lapsed, wine drained from the glass, and the appropriate anticipation surrounded the arrival of my duck confit. Arrogant and enticing, the quarter of drip from the bone meat sat under a banner of beautifully crisped skin. Dusted with red peppercorns and chives, laid on a bed of sautéed squash and mushrooms, fjords of brown and red runoff curling toward the edge of the plate, I was reminded art seldom exists in the galleries and museums where it's sent to decay. No pictures, please.

My pupils dilated. Was my heart a flutter, or was my blood stream just grateful for the work? Good work, honest work. I tried to contain my animal tendencies. Stop, breathe, savor. Their piped in music, a mix of American soul and jazz--Nina Simone, Al Green, The Emotions--eventually cycled through to "You Can Call Me Al," by Paul Simon.

I'm not a man who looks for symbols in his life, but this is one of the three songs designated for this trip. The triumvirate of tracks mirroring highs and lows alike.

"He doesn't speak the language.

 He holds no currency.

He is a foreign man.

He is surrounded by the sound"

...

"He looks around, around

He sees angels in the architecture 

Spinning in infinity

He says Amen! and Hallelujah!"

And for a moment I was full. My heart, my stomach, the overwhelming feeling behind my eyes, for a moment I remembered how fortunate I am to be here, right in this moment. The empty seat across from me, the entire restaurant, filled with the menagerie of those things I carry with me. People I know and memories and imagination, my protecting aura, was made tangible, shimmering above the votive candles placed on each table.

"How are you, glass of wine?" I said aloud. 

I finished my dinner and could never pay the sum owed, but I did pay my bill. I tipped, too. It was about a 40 minute walk to the concert if my internal Google map was correct, which was rather ideal. I needed to stave off the itis, and I wanted to take in a darkening Lyon. 

Streets intersected with other streets in improbable ways, avenues fracturing into veins of asphalt and cobblestone. Trams clicked by brought to life by mechanical arms strung on wires. French girls with their dark overcoats and dark hair and cobalt eyes were walking to places where their presence was eagerly awaited. An occasional bus stop map would reassure my direction. I passed a metro stop, a critical guide post on my journey. A car full of boys with their crooked caps and down stuffed jackets rolled past bumping "Superfreak."

Then, suddenly, I was lost. 

Night had settled in like piles of falling ash, and the world looked different. On the map it was a straight shot down a narrowing peninsula surrounded on either side by two rivers. "If you've gotten to the river, you've gone too far," was the mantra, but what about the huge train station in the way? What about the small inlet harbor? What about the enormous shopping mall, glittering in a way no respectable garage rock venue could be near by?

I re-routed and turned around and doubled back and time crept forward like the rising feeling in my stomach. Finally I crossed some iron tracks laid into the cobblestone. The tram. If I could find the tram, I could navigate from there. I checked the vague tram stop map and followed the line until it came to a stop. It was after the last tram stop, right?

Dim streets beckoned like strangers in overcoats with upturned collars. I looked for any light and color. I passed a prostitute who was a stunning beauty by any standard. I chewed on her circumstances. The chain of events leading up to her sliding into the black stockings turned over and over in my mind. We don't know anyone's story.

Narrower, darker, it's as though the streets knew they were soon to vanish into the black river. I passed more women of the night, they cooed at me in French I didn't understand. A car came to a stop, a woman crawled in, rebuffed by his headlights, I didn't look at their faces. A breaker of colored lights crested and receded in the distance. Dance music rolled out in far off tremors of bass. Dance music, seems weird, but this is Europe. I turned in to the source and it was a pop-up carnival with all semblance of day washed out. The place where seedy waking dreams turn into convulsing nightmares. 

Eerie lights cast their lot with burnt out bulbs and flickering neon. Carnival workers emptied various games of their crooked earnings. A bumper car galley filled with rough young boys collided while they threw a mini souvenir basketball at each others heads. I walked the length and quickly turned out. A police car streaked by with a smear of blue light.

I have no idea where I am. Those feelings, the feelings I hate, began to percolate through my wilting confidence. This concert was the only reason you came to Lyon. You couldn't bring a map you...

I turned down the volume.

I made my way back to the tram, checked the map at the stop, looked at the point pinned in my mind's eye, and went a little further up the line. I turned down one last street, and there are lots of last streets, but I was soon to relegate this misadventure to "good travel story someday." I was walking behind a family with two small children--tow headed girls misplaced in the callow dark of city night--and crossed the street. I craned my neck around a corner, certain it'd be the one, and nothing but shuttered store fronts and lampposts. The end of the line.

But, as these stories go, as they must unfold, I turned on my heels, and there it was. A dimly lit two-story building with a few young go hards standing out front. It was my destination, Marche Gare. 

I crossed the street. There was no victory, too many variables still out there. Are they sold out? Is it too late? I don't think they'd sell out this venue in the states. Is this the right place?

A security guard greeted me at the door and said something in French. I pointed at the poster hung in the window, like welcoming hobo code, at knee level. "Thee Oh Sees?" The poster was of Greek Woman, supine, with a greyhound's neck and face.

"Do you have a ticket?"

"No."

He motioned to a table where a young man with a mop of curly hair sat next to a small lock box and a stack of Vice magazines. This must be the place.

"Bonsoir," he said.

"Bonjour," I replied.

He said something else, conversational or informational, I have no idea. I held up a finger and meted out a mangled, "Un ticket, si'l vous plait."

He chuckled, "One ticket, please."

"Has the first band played?" I asked.

"There is only one band and they are playing right now."

I was a little crestfallen, but we'd come too far. I laid down my €16 and charged up the stairs. In the stairwell all I could hear was the snap of the snare over and over again. I turned into the concert hall, a small black room packed full with a small stage up front, and it was Thee Oh Sees. I've never been so moved by a soundcheck before. I pushed my way into the thick, and as I cut out my post, the front man looked up and said, "Thank you, sound guy. Are we ready?"

The crowd cheered, and he said, "We're Thee Oh Sees from San Francisco," in French.

The first two tracks the crowd was noncommittal. Even when track two was, "Toe Cutter/Thumb Buster," a cavernous, fuzzy saunter from the new album the crowd remained still. I was already squirming and hopping and shaking out my hair like the black and white images of my psychedelic forebears. A little surprised I thought to myself, "I don't know who taught you pussies how to rock and roll, but it wasn't the US of A."

Then, song three. "Block Of Ice." A two minute burner on the album, they opened up the valve and dropped a seven minute payload of grinding rapture. Immediately heads were bobbing and bodies were crashing and one young kid there with his mom was spinning the tendrils out from under his stocking cap. 

I have to believe--in some typically French way--the crowd wanted to make sure this band was worth their emotional energy. Once earned, it was full bore. 

The pit expanded. More people left their feet. The room got sweaty.

The Oh Sees ignited. The front man's mop of hair he pushed either direction dripped from underneath. The six string bass player--with his high water jeans and tucked in shirt and skinny leather suspenders and blue ink tattoos and bald head and perfect drop of sweat hanging, never falling, catching the light, on the tip of his nose--began to pace back and forth with his lines. They both wear their guitars strapped under their necks like Herman's Hermits. The drummer, front and center hammered the anvil. The keyboard player conjured glowing lines inches from her keys. The venue was a glass elevator and the stratosphere was far below us.

It's all so simple: a riff, a chorus, maybe a bridge, maybe not, tom, tom, snare, cymbal crash, definable lyrics, but they are more like chants. Songs can be as tight as a coil, or expand to the width and density of Jupiter's eye, all the colors intact. The structure vanishes and ripples into horizonless seas of inward falling echoes. Melodic lines and slashes of feedback rattle through the turbulence. Churning, frothing, desperate to fly apart into sonic shrapnel, persistent rhythm keeps the infernal machine intact. Everything rises, tension consumes oxygen, and in a booming flourish the maelstrom disappears back into the discreet magic box of verse-chorus-verse

The front man, John Dwyer, is one of those almost extinct rock and rollers cut from my purest idealism. His clear Gibson SG with no vibrato tail piece and custom headstock is his only tool. He tunes down or up between tracks. Busted string, which there were two, he just restrings on stage--one while the band stayed in the pocket and then seamlessly picked up at the chorus. Back up guitars are not how this band operates. 

He kept saying, "Merci beaucop," in an increasingly growly and strange array of voices. His tongue hangs out of his face. He fingers out texture and staid embellishments with a tedious, almost frantic diligence. The way the keyboard player watches him and anticipates his cues is something far more important than love.

As all concerts do, they eventually delivered us from the seance. The crowd went ape shit. They cheered and whooped and whistled--loud, sharp whistles--with no loss of momentum until the house lights went down and the band came back on stage. They played a two song encore, and when Thee Oh Sees finished they waived and smiled and seemed genuinely moved by the outpouring.

The crowd kept going. Insatiable, people kept yelling and clapping their hands above their heads. The venue had to turn on all the lights and filter in music before the crowd even showed a fleck of dispersal. 

In the chilly, wet Lyon night air, a girl on her way to the tram mimicked the bass lines and short bursts of "WOO," Thee Oh Sees have somehow made their own. Sweat cooled on my neck. I cinched my scarf tight and pulled my hood over my head. 

Now to find my way back.

Name of the Gods

"And why ye take thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin. And yet I say unto you, that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. Wherefore, if God so clothe the grass of the field, which today is, and to morrow cast into the oven, shall he not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith?" Matthew 6: 28-30

"My client is not in a hurry." - Gaudi

There are as many ways to delineate the experience of visiting La Sagrada Familia as there are spires on the famed Barcelona basilica. As my mind was making itself up in advance, I was ready to dissect the incongruent nature of this edifice with the teachings of Christ, and it's hard to overlook. 

The church booms from the humble, bone colored horizon in a way only an egg shaped monolith my Catalonian friend Xavi calls, "the suppository," manages. Given its own metro stop, when you emerge from the underground, La Sagrada pounces on you with it's skyward helixes of stone and glass as well as the scaffolding, netting, and cranes propping up this troubled, heart rending beauty. 

Blockades of tourists surround the structure. Cameras of every variety shutter and click like swarms of crickets. Vendors edge the perimeter like sinners turned away from the effulgence of God's light. Tour guides holding antennas with numbered paddles on top shepherd the herds around the square. There is an entrance for groups. There is an entrance for individuals. Above all else, the price board listing tickets ranging from €13.50 for only the basilica to €18.00 for the basilica and Tower of Passion. It's a little more for the audio guide.

Immediately I jotted down, "...growing up in a deeply religious household, this brings my total monies spent going into churches to €13.50." There is a gift shop taking over an entire wing, and no matter the realizations waiting to reveal themselves, it's disgusting. 

All the money poured into this building. The untold sums--as La Sagrada is built entirely on private donations--spent to have a family name on a dinner plate sized piece of stained glass. The same money, if devoted to the acts of Christ--feeding the hungry, healing the sick, clothing the poor--how many would be brought unto to The Lord? Would the Catholic Church be suffering the same crisis of confidence? Construction began in 1882 and is scheduled to be finished in 2026. How many incalculable hundreds of millions could have gone to doing instead of showing? 

It makes for very predictable criticism. The simplistic "money changers in the temple" phenomenon you could truncheon over the head of any major religion, regardless of deity. Even the church I grew up in, members were required to give 10% of their earnings in order to be worthy of the most sacred honors. With this glaring 10%, there were as many stories about families who paid their tithes even when the money was gone, and God would provide. 

It's the act of devotion. It's the capacity to make our gods and miracles real. This is where the much quieter power of tithing or penance or a tower looming 172.5 meters over Barcelona is held. The faithful give their God a name. The devoted give gods a name because--if they exist--without a creation to cry toward the heavens, how do they know they're godly at all? If the believers aren't down here, well, salvation goes both ways.

La Sagrada Familia is a piece of art. Art in the sense where an attempt to describe it is only a nearsighted effort to contain it, to try and make it like us. The color and movement. The light and the shapes. The solemnity contained within, a feeling which might be the only true adjective to describe the basilica. The outside is impressive, but at the behest of my friends--and a lady in the sandwich shop--I waited in line and went inside. As I entered the building, like an absence of gravity, my neck involuntarily craned upward, I levitated out of my shoes, and--in as close as I might get to a Hail Mary--"Holy shit," fell out of my slack jaw. Emphasis on the, "holy," of course.

Built around the concepts of nature, the columns open at the top like the branches of trees. A canopy, so many stone limbs intertwined, fans out across the ceiling. Stained glass windows saturated with color, primary and secondary colors blended in gentle gradient, pour the vivid pigments of flora and fauna into the building. Christ, on the cross, hangs under a broad shade lined with delicate bulbs above the altar. Above him, a narrowing ventricle reaches toward heaven. Sunlight fills the porthole between building and firmament. If you look closely, you can see a crane stretching across the skylight.

As I settled into one of the pews, I was trying to manufacture a moment where I said a prayer and felt something, or felt nothing, but this is not my God to name. Every stern column down to each precious, carved edge, radiated with the faith of so many. Visitors, laborers, architects, devoted--this God already has a name. It's a beautiful and powerful name, enough to at least be heard by this heathen. A two way mirror of earnest dedication to the belief, the burning spirit as tangible as a creator sitting on high, and the majesty of His creation. A creation who, with their vision and force of will, have named their God with opulence along side whispered prayers. Being right, being wrong, real, not real, these matters will carry  on, but as a testament to man's capacity to aspire beyond his mortal limitations, it is the greatest God of them all.

Sacromonte

Saad's hair, compact black ringlets pulled back to a full bouquet, bounced up the hill as the six or so of us followed. Saad, with his burnished Moroccan complexion and gaunt frame, made the ascent in flip-flops without even a heavy breath. So lean, it's not hard to believe less than a month ago his guts twisted inside him and he had to have twenty four stitches--nine internal--to save him. Where was the room for a digestive tract?

The  rest of us, in our walking shoes with bags full of things, wheezed and poured sweat and tried to hide our over exertion from everyone else. One German guy made the climb with ease, but he was chaining cigarettes the whole way like a smokestack from the coal engine pushing him up the hill. 

After collecting ourselves for a moment, Saad led us onward to a winding path. "So these caves have been here for all time. There are many Senegalese people and some hippies living here. But it's safe."

We turned a bend concealed by a mound and there, on this dirt walking trail nestled in the hills above Granada, was a handful of Senegalese men lounging as men do. Saad went up to one of the men and a hand slap curled into a fist and pulled into a hug. They chatted a bit in Spanish.

"Okay, he said we can go into his house."

We all shared a glance. It was a cave. We shuffled nervously past Saad as he held open the curtain acting as the front door. In the area best described as the front yard, but in no conventional sense of the term, there were a couple of sprouting marijuana plants. The American kid wearing toe gloves pointed and laughed. 

The cave was white on the inside, its age impossible to gauge. There were no hard edges, all smoothed pebbles, worn white from years, centuries, millennia, of human hands perching and rubbing and passing by. Five Senegalese men sat on makeshift furniture watching TV. A cooking fire smoked in a small fireplace and they shifted and made room and squeezed in so we could sit. Our uneasy mouths were sutured shut.

They were beautiful, their hair, eyes, flesh, all cut from deep onyx. Some had thick, short dreads. Others wore their hair close to the scalp. One man in a brightly colored and patterned outfit sat rolling a spliff. 

Senegalese wrestling played on TV. Men in short leather breeches decorated with studs would grapple until one got the leverage and threw his opponent to the ground. Red and black wires ran from the TV across the ceiling through little bolted turnbuckles and out the window to some unknown destination. 

After we settled in, small talk erupted from our hosts, but they only really spoke Spanish and French. Saad ran down the list pointing to each of us. "Germany, Germany, Canada, Germany, United States, Canada, United States." All in Spanish though. A regular model UN.

One of the Canadians spoke to one of the men in French. A Canadian woman spoke a wisp of Spanish. I sat next to a guy with dreads like ginger roots sprouting from his head. He kept asking me questions in Spanish and flashing me his wide bridge of gums and small pearls of teeth. I don't speak Spanish and filtered through his West African enunciation, it was even harder to grasp.

He'd ask me a question two or three times and then the Canadian woman would call out from the across the small room, "He wants to know your name." I told him. We slapped hands and curled them into a fist. He poked at my bag and chattered off a few lines and opened his wide smile. I realized I was clinging to my shoulder bag like a life raft. I took it off and set it on the ground. He posed another question over and over again. I thought I responded correctly with, "catorse dias." I'd been in Spain for fourteen days. He wrinkled his brow and punched out his bottom lip. "He wants to know where you're from," the Canadian woman called across the room. The USA. Estados Unidos. "Senegal," he motioned to himself and said the word, each syllable meted out with the pride, the middle one cresting to the top of his speaking register. He smiled and I smiled and we slapped hands again and curled them into a single fist.

Saad who had been chatting with the guy he knew spoke up. "He said we can try some of his food."

The man in the brightly colored and patterned outfit darted out of the cave and returned with three wide platters raised at the edge. The owner of the cave, Saad's friend, ducked into the fire place and scooped heaping, steaming piles of rice and chicken onto the platters. Savory aromas pollinated with rich West African spice enveloped the small interior. Two plates went outside and one was placed on the floor in the middle of the circle. The man in the bright colors returned again, this time with some stewed cauliflower he set on top of the pile. The owner, the cook, our host, squatted down by the tray and drew in all of our eyes. Like an instructor, moving his glance from vacant face to vacant face, he put his right hand into the pile, took a handful of rice, squeezed until it was a compact mound, and popped it into his mouth. No mess, no fuss, no stray grains tumbling to the floor down the edge of his mouth.

We all looked at each other. I'm in no position to project anyone else's feelings, but I recognize a sorry, overly First-Worlded face cycling through thoughts like, "Is it safe?" and "Am I taking food out of their mouths ?" and "Is this one of those scams Rick Steves talks about?"

"Eat! Eat!" Saad chided.

Toe gloves looked around. He looked to Saad, "So is this like a..." he made a scooping motion with his hand. Saad nodded. He took a tiny portion and forked it into his mouth disregarding the squeeze into a mound lesson our host gave us. Most went into his mouth, some tumbled to the ground. "It's really good."

We dug in. Small portions at first. I made a point to squeeze but I still lost some in transit. The host leaned in again to improve our technique. It's all in angled fist and wrist pop to really pack it down. After we all took a token handful, we sat back. Our host looked around. "Eat!"

The Canadian a seat over from me leaned in and muttered, "I guarantee you we're not leaving until it's all gone." 

One by one we let go. We dug in, we packed our rice pods to mouth sized portions. We began to laugh and filled our bellies. The cauliflower was one of those things I may never taste again, perfect on the tooth and imbued with flavor to the center stem. The host beamed with pride and scraped the pot doling chard bits onto the platter. Without question, the best part.

"This is very typical African," Saad keyed in, "you cook for four and then you feed eight." He spoke to the owner and pulled some coins from his pocket. The owner tried to shake his head, but Saad insisted. The owner found a small dish and Saad dropped in his coins. "Come on guys, this is not cheap. This never happens. I lead this tour every night, this never happens." I'm a proud cynic, but I believed him. We all put in.

The man in brightly colored clothes returned with a small tub filled with soapy water. He washed his hands in the makeshift basin and we all followed suit. He then produced a dustpan and broom, but Saad cleaned up after his guests who left the floor littered with grains of rice. Afterward Saad produced a pouch of tobacco and rolled a smoke wider at the tip and said, "You guys ready to go?"

We followed him out as we had followed him in. The other men were gathered outside planting a pole in the ground. I wanted to believe it was to fly the Senegalese flag, but maybe it was a laundry line. I don't know. As we walked away and turned down the snaking dirt trail back to the bottom of the hill I turned to the the toe gloved American. "So that was surreal, right?"

Without breaking stride he replied, "Incredible."

Mirador San Miguel Alto

"I'll buy one for a dollar." His American South drawl tripped and chuckled all over itself.

"A dollar?!" she replied, her accent, the vision, the perfect conception of an English speaking French woman. Star patterns punched in her leather shoes--scuffed at the toes--bounced against the wall overlooking Granada. She pulled a pouch of rolling tobacco out of her pocket. "I'll give you one."

"That was a very American thing for me to do." He stroked his wispy rat beard and slumped into his gut. His T-shirt, obscured by his fleece zip up, read only "ALKING." Walking Dead? Talking Heads? I was set adrift on furious internal debate.

She knocked excess tobacco off her thumb and forefinger onto her skinny red denim. As she handed him the rollie, she shifted inside her jacket, "It's a gift."

"It was actually my birthday just two days ago."

"Congratulations!" she replied with the warm enthusiasm young men love to break their hearts against.

"Congratulations? Okay. I didn't have much to do with..."

She immediately shot in, "Is that not what you say, 'congratulations'?"

"No, in America we just say 'Happy Birthday'," his tone flatlined with sarcasm.

"In my translations, it translates from my language to 'Very big congratulations on your birthday.'"

"I guess it's for still being alive."

They both laughed a little. 

"How old are you?" she asked sipping beer from a tumbler she brought from home. There was a woman in dreadlocks prowling the scenic overlook and selling Alhambra beers for one Euro a piece. If you took her up on her offer, she'd take your money, disappear to a stash bag hidden in a bush, and return with a cold beer. The tumblers were a sophisticated  touch, an elegant extension of her brown, short cropped curls and slender cigarette holding fingers.

"25," he said with the weight of double the years. "I'm almost 30." The case was terminal.

"30! I haven't even begun to think what it's like to be 30. I can't even feel what it's like to be 30."

"What should 30 feel like?" He could feel the three and the zero staring over his shoulder.

"Feelings of wanting to start a family and have career." Her friend next to her interjected, adding something in French to the woeful list. They both laughed. "Oui, oui. But there is no rule book to live your life," she quipped and threw back her head with full throated laughter.

It's a comfort to know token phrases have a place in all cultures, or maybe English is only taught in idioms and weightless slogans.

They chatted and found out they were both part of the exchange program at the University of Granada. She highly recommended the orientation. He wouldn't want to come hang at their apartment, though. As she pointed out, it was a one bedroom with the two of them and an Italian girl. Talk of school became talk of being in Spain. How long. How many stops. Barcelona. Sevilla. Bull fights.

"I just don't...I don't think I'd be in to that," he offered, rubbing his hand down the seams of his bluejeans as though he had to clean the idea from his hands.

"Will it make you cry?" she shot back.

"No, I just think it's mean." It was hard to tell if he meant it. 25 is a good age to still tell the women you want what you think they might want to hear. 

"You won't cry."

"I'm not saying..."

"If we go and you cry, you buy me a frozen ice cream treat and you buy her a..." she turned to her friend who just smiled through her cigarette hand. "You buy her a cake."

"You want to make a bet?"

"A what?"

"Make a bet, like..."

"Yes! Make a bet," she chirped.

As dusk light refracted through the belt of haze hanging fat above the rooftops of Granada, the quieting world filled their mouths. Clouds rolled over the hills edging the city, a cannon boomed on a hilltop, night birds bent their voices on the tangerines and rose water pinks and lavenders spilled over the fiery cup descending behind the Sierra Nevadas.

"Do you have siblings?" he asked trying to wedge the silence open.

"Yes, I have two brothers," she replied into the twilight.

"I have two brothers and one sister. I'm gonna have to get my sister something. What should I get her?"

"Shoes?" She shared a look with her friend and they laughed.

"I was thinking about getting her a flamenco dress."

"Oh no, those are very expensive. Maybe more than €100."

"Dang, maybe shoes? Well, I'm going to need your help."