even closer, right?”
“It’s a happening neighborhood,” I say dryly.
Luckily he has chosen a tiny Italian restaurant two blocks away. He holds open the door for me, and I cross under the small walkway of sparkle lights the owner has attached overhead. Normally when I’m here, it feels like any other Italian restaurant in the neighborhood. Tonight, it feels a little bit like we’ve entered a fairy’s cave.
Do fairies live in caves?
We’re seated by the door, and Gael looks with concern at the table. “I’m worried my date will be cold,” he admits to the waitress, as if this were one of the many things worrying him before the date. Possible floods, tornadoes, door drafts. She motions to a table towards the back of the restaurant, as if she doesn’t mind that she is giving up a table in her section and the tip money that accompanies that. Or perhaps she remembers me as being someone who sticks firmly to the fifteen-to-eighteen-percent range.
“Let’s order wine,” Gael suggests. “We have to toast everything.”
“Toast?” I ask, handing him the wine list which was placed inside my menu. He scans down the list.
“The ideas I have for your future career as a traveling, juggling, cooking writer. We need to toast my grand ideas.”
He picks a bottle of red and asks me if this is okay. I notice that the skin around his eyes crinkles when he smiles his lopsided smile. He picks at the small bowl of olives the waitress placed on our table in lieu of the usual bread basket.
“I like this place because they have olives,” Gael admits. “That is very Spanish, serving olives instead of bread. A small bowl of marinated olives, right?”
“What else is Spanish?” I ask. “Besides ham.”
“Besides jamon?” he laughs. “Late dinners. No one goes out before eight or nine in Madrid .”
“And then where do you go?” I question. I am still freezing, but I don’t want to cross my arms over my chest to keep warm because it pushes my boobs into a strange position. I try to increase my body heat by jiggling my leg under the table.
“You get a small meal somewhere. And then you go to a club. Like a music club? A dance club. And then you’ll go to a bar for a drink. What did you do when you were in Barcelona ?”
I like that he remembers the small details. “Well, I was only seventeen. I was there on a school trip. So no bars.”
“No bars at all?”
“No bars. Not even any restaurants. I think we ate in the hotel most nights. It was a place that catered to large school groups. They made this awful vegetable soup every night we were there. It was this pureed vegetable mixture. We called it culo .”
Gael almost chokes on his olive and starts laughing. “You say that very well. Are you sure you don’t know Spanish?”
“Only the curse words,” I admit. “And gracias . And, strangely enough, cacahuete .”
“Peanut?”
“Yeah, I don’t know why, but I remember cacahuete .”
“You know hola ,” Gael prods. “And bueno .”
“But those are words that everyone knows. That’s not knowing Spanish. I’d like to learn Spanish. It has always been on my to-do list.”
“To-do list?” Gael questions.
“Like a list of things you want to accomplish.”
“Aaaah, a to-do list,” Gael repeats as if he’s trying to commit this phrase to memory.
“I’m just impressed by how well you know English,” I tell him. “I’ve always been jealous of people who can speak more than one language. And you know so many. Three?”
“Well, English, you have to learn in school. It was a requirement for graduation. And you learn it for a long time. Many years. But my mother speaks French; she is from France , so we spoke French in the house too. French and Spanish, depending on who was winning the fight.”
I imagine Gael’s parents, an older male and female version of himself, yelling at each other in their respective languages over the breakfast table. Our bottle of wine arrives, and the
“It’s a happening neighborhood,” I say dryly.
Luckily he has chosen a tiny Italian restaurant two blocks away. He holds open the door for me, and I cross under the small walkway of sparkle lights the owner has attached overhead. Normally when I’m here, it feels like any other Italian restaurant in the neighborhood. Tonight, it feels a little bit like we’ve entered a fairy’s cave.
Do fairies live in caves?
We’re seated by the door, and Gael looks with concern at the table. “I’m worried my date will be cold,” he admits to the waitress, as if this were one of the many things worrying him before the date. Possible floods, tornadoes, door drafts. She motions to a table towards the back of the restaurant, as if she doesn’t mind that she is giving up a table in her section and the tip money that accompanies that. Or perhaps she remembers me as being someone who sticks firmly to the fifteen-to-eighteen-percent range.
“Let’s order wine,” Gael suggests. “We have to toast everything.”
“Toast?” I ask, handing him the wine list which was placed inside my menu. He scans down the list.
“The ideas I have for your future career as a traveling, juggling, cooking writer. We need to toast my grand ideas.”
He picks a bottle of red and asks me if this is okay. I notice that the skin around his eyes crinkles when he smiles his lopsided smile. He picks at the small bowl of olives the waitress placed on our table in lieu of the usual bread basket.
“I like this place because they have olives,” Gael admits. “That is very Spanish, serving olives instead of bread. A small bowl of marinated olives, right?”
“What else is Spanish?” I ask. “Besides ham.”
“Besides jamon?” he laughs. “Late dinners. No one goes out before eight or nine in Madrid .”
“And then where do you go?” I question. I am still freezing, but I don’t want to cross my arms over my chest to keep warm because it pushes my boobs into a strange position. I try to increase my body heat by jiggling my leg under the table.
“You get a small meal somewhere. And then you go to a club. Like a music club? A dance club. And then you’ll go to a bar for a drink. What did you do when you were in Barcelona ?”
I like that he remembers the small details. “Well, I was only seventeen. I was there on a school trip. So no bars.”
“No bars at all?”
“No bars. Not even any restaurants. I think we ate in the hotel most nights. It was a place that catered to large school groups. They made this awful vegetable soup every night we were there. It was this pureed vegetable mixture. We called it culo .”
Gael almost chokes on his olive and starts laughing. “You say that very well. Are you sure you don’t know Spanish?”
“Only the curse words,” I admit. “And gracias . And, strangely enough, cacahuete .”
“Peanut?”
“Yeah, I don’t know why, but I remember cacahuete .”
“You know hola ,” Gael prods. “And bueno .”
“But those are words that everyone knows. That’s not knowing Spanish. I’d like to learn Spanish. It has always been on my to-do list.”
“To-do list?” Gael questions.
“Like a list of things you want to accomplish.”
“Aaaah, a to-do list,” Gael repeats as if he’s trying to commit this phrase to memory.
“I’m just impressed by how well you know English,” I tell him. “I’ve always been jealous of people who can speak more than one language. And you know so many. Three?”
“Well, English, you have to learn in school. It was a requirement for graduation. And you learn it for a long time. Many years. But my mother speaks French; she is from France , so we spoke French in the house too. French and Spanish, depending on who was winning the fight.”
I imagine Gael’s parents, an older male and female version of himself, yelling at each other in their respective languages over the breakfast table. Our bottle of wine arrives, and the
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