Leaving the Atocha Station - Ben Lerner [68]
“I’m not going back to the United States,” I heard myself say.
Her eyes widened and I thought her smile diminished. “Really?”
“I mean I’m not going back in June,” I said. “I will probably go back eventually,” I said. I was waiting for her to be excited.
“Good,” she said, but my stomach sank at her lack of emotion. Or was it my heart.
“I’ll write and teach English and travel,” I said to say something.
“Good,” she repeated, with more, but insufficient, emotion, as the smile returned fully to her face. “You can come with me to Córdoba in June and meet my family,” she said. I was reassured; she was thinking long term. She did not, however, seem to be thinking of the long term with excitement.
“I would like to,” I said, careful not to sound excited myself. “And I would like to spend more time in Barcelona,” I said, inviting her with my eyebrows to consider whether Isabel or another woman might be awaiting me there. “And to go back to Granada,” I added, to make sure Isabel was evoked. “I never saw the Alhambra.”
“You went to Granada but didn’t see the Alhambra,” she confirmed, squinting.
“Yes,” I said. I hoped she thought I was too busy making passionate love to Isabel to see the sights. “Arturo and Rafa said I could stay at Rafa’s,” I said, and stared at her hard, gauging her response.
“Yes, I know,” she said, implying they had discussed it, but not revealing which side of the discussion she was on.
“But I’ll probably just keep my apartment,” I said.
“Yes, stay in the city,” she said. Then, “Stay here, where I am.” Now she sounded excited. She kissed me with unusual intensity and boundless, if blurry, prospects opened up.
Only an hour or two later, when we were leaving the apartment to get dinner, did the fact that I did not in reality know if I was staying in Madrid begin to bother me, and the fact that it took so long for it to bother me also began to bother me. What would Teresa say if I told her I had changed my mind, that I had decided, after all, to return to the States? As we walked back into Chueca, the plaza bustling now in late spring weather, and stood in line for a table at the restaurant, Bazaar, I decided I didn’t care what she’d think; all of this, all of Spain, would cease to be real if I went back; it would be my year abroad, a year cast out of the line of years, a last or nearly last hurrah of juvenility, but it would not, in any serious sense, form part of my life. I would not stay in touch with Teresa or Arturo, not to mention Isabel; I would compose a one- or two-sentence summary of my time in Spain for those who queried me about my experience abroad, but I would otherwise recall a blur of hash and sun and maybe that kid with blood streaming down his face; everything else would be excised. If this didn’t strike me as a ruthless or stupid way to think, that was because I could not believe Teresa would ultimately mind; we would have the chapbook as a memento and she would begin her next project, thinking of me no more and probably less than she thought of Carlos, Abel, whoever that guy was at Rafa’s party, et al. Eventually we were seated, ate things draped in various oils, drank two or three bottles of dry cava, and discussed Gaudí, Topeka, Lorca, New York, Córdoba, Orson Welles. I believed I contributed intelligent things, speaking and understanding effortlessly. We were