Tuesday

by Beau Cadiyo

On Tuesday I had a long, leisurely lunch with Marta and Franco, and then walked around the city, and met up with Francesca outside of the Fontana station after she worked and took her tests and remembered how the station was shaped with the long, snaking stairways that bring you up to the street, and how there were back passageways if you didn’t want to wait behind everyone on the escalator, and how I used to run up them and see if I beat the people who took the weak, passive way up, and I did it here, but I was a little out of shape and very out of breath when I burst out of the doors onto the street where the benches are lined up and people wait, and Francesca was talking to another girl about something and I remembered how she was always surrounded by people, and she introduced me and we said goodbye to her friend and started walking around and I thought about how it is good to walk around Barcelona with someone, especially when you have your bearings and sort of know where you are, and I saw some leather wine skins hanging down which reminded me of "The Sun Also Rises," and I wanted to blow one up and then jump on it as a test and pay for it in pesetas, and she pointed out how, inside the store, there were casks of wine and you could buy it by the liter and if you didn’t have your own bottle they would give you a used plastic water bottle from the proprietor, and suddenly it made sense that I always saw people walking around with wine in plastic water bottles, so I bought some, and up the street a ways we made a right into The Portuguese Bar and even though it was packed she got us two seats immediately, with wine and food, and we sat below two giant pictures of a woman dressed as Little Red Riding Hood with a caption that read, in English, “You are a slut if you eat the flesh and drink the blood of granny,” and she ordered croquettes and a selection of savories and sweets, and we drank wine and ports and caught up with each other, but this time with more sleep, and when I bit into the croquettes they were brown and tasted saltier so I asked, “Do they put beef in these?” and she said “Yes, these are beef,” and I felt my brow furrowing and I pursed my lips and said, “The normal ones are potato?” and she looked confused and asked back, “The chicken ones?” and I realized that I’d been a vegetarian five years before, and loved croquettes, but always thought that they were made from potatoes, and she laughed so hard that she almost fell off of her chair, and we agreed that the green port wasn’t very good so we got two more, and then she went behind me and paid for everything, then dropped me off at Laura's apartment while she went to study for another test, and I got drunk on the evening and on incredible wine out of a plastic bottle, and then I went to the Harlem Jazz Club to watch Francisco’s band play, and then he and Marta brought me back to his amazing apartment and I slept on a fold-out mattress which was the most comfortable thing I’d slept on in days, but because I didn’t eat a sandwich I have nothing to report before this illustrious Board.