The Constorium of Greater Minds

In Madrid he met an American girl. They stayed at the same hotel. It was on calle de canizares. Each morning they would walk down the narrow street and onto calle de antocha. Up calle de antocha one block was plaza de santa ana and a good café. He would start the day with an orange juice and they would share a plate of churos dipped in chocolate and he would finish with a coffee. In the center of the plaza was a statue commemorating the war. A single soldier, bronze, the rising sun casting a sharp light on the helmet upon which his left foot rested. At the base of the statue was a plaque that spoke of peace and the cessation of wars. On the opposite side of the plaza a street broke off and if you walked long enough you would eventually come to the shopping street calle montera. Walk due east for five blocks and you would find yourself exiting a small side street onto paseo del prado. Like the streets that gave it life, Madrid was a wonderful intricacy that summer.
This morning the two Americans found themselves sitting in the plaza de espana. The plaza was still quiet in the early morning. In front of them thirty feet away don Quixote sat regally upon his bronze mount, his right hand raised as if greeting the people of Madrid on the return from his fantastic journey and next to him his squire Sancho, steadfast and resolute. Towering above them Miguel de Cervantes sat majestically looking out over his creations. It was very hot in the morning.
“What do you think,” she asked.
He looked at her face. It was the end of the summer and she was tanned, she looked right at home in Madrid. Her skin was a smooth golden brown, her blonde hair was cut short and grew beautifully away from her forehead.
“About what?”
“About this, about Madrid? It’s lovely, isn’t it?”
“I’m in love,” he replied. “In love with the city and in love with a girl in the city. That is the perfect way to be in a city such as Madrid. Any other place and to not be in love is the fashion. Berlin and Copenhagen, these are places to be with friends or alone, not to be in love, but Madrid, this is a city where one must be in love with a girl. That’s what I think, anyway.”
“What is it like to leave a city like Madrid, then?”
“It is surely the most terrible fate a man can endure,” he replied.
“Why are you smiling, then? If it’s so terrible what is the smile that shows on the edge of your lips?”
“A thought, that’s all.”
The girl looked out across the plaza.
“A thought about what?”
“I am thinking of what it will be like to remember this day, here in the plaza with you, having this conversation. I can see that the thought will remind me of the beauty that was Madrid during this summer. I smile because I can see myself remembering this summer as one without equal. It is a sad smile, though, to be sure.”
“I cannot smile, I will never smile again.”
“Oh, you will, you will have the same thought and it will come with the same half smile and that half smile, given a month or so will turn into a full smile and later, eventually, it will become a complete grin that stretches at the corners of your lips– when you can grin at the thought, that’s when you know the worst is over.”
“No, I will never smile again,” she said.
Later that afternoon with the city full of life as it can only be at the height of the day they had lunch at a small café off calle Serrano. The sun was hot and they sat in the shade of an umbrella and drank sangria and were slightly drunk and they talked a lot about the last two months together and found things funny that they had not found funny before and the things they thought funny before were now funny in a different way. They also recalled the fights they had and these stung them each again and each in the same way and they agreed never to fight again and they made each other promise only to say nice things and not ever hurt the other as had happened early on in their time together, which was ironic, but they did not see the irony for the wine.
Then even later in the afternoon when he realized they were late to meet friends at the plaza mayor and they had to run, laughing, still drunk through the sun baked streets he understood – in one of those abstemious moments that only comes when you are careening through narrow, quiet streets hand in hand with a beautiful girl – that the day was just a memory he was collecting to keep him company during the first few weeks without her.

There were only two Americans staying at the hotel. They did not know any of the people they ate breakfast with in the mornings. Their room was on the top floor of the three-story building, facing the plaza. It also faced the public gardens and the fountain. There was a maze of waist high hedges lining the garden. There were five benches in a line at the center, facing out onto the plaza. An old lady sat in the center bench; she had a bag of breadcrumbs and was feeding the pigeons so they created a wild frenzy at her feet. Families from the surrounding neighborhood would fill the plaza on the weekends to let the children run while the parents sat at the café. The men would talk urgently about politics while their women discussed the latest society scandal. The fountain splashed coolly in the mid afternoon heat. It was early summer and the sun shimmered on the worn marble of the plaza. The old woman threw out her last handful of crumbs and watched as the birds pecked madly on the gravel path that ran between the bushes. Across the plaza in the doorway of the café a waiter stood looking out at the quiet square.
The American girl stood at the window the afternoon sun warming her bare arms and face. Behind her and across the room the man that was not her husband sat tying a shoe. When he was finished he stood up and walked to the dresser. Standing silently he inspected the collection of records that lay strewn on the floor beneath the stereo that sat atop the dresser. He chose one and placed it on the turntable where it began to spin silently. He studied it for a moment as it turned and then brought the needle to rest gently on the outer edge of the vinyl. The lazy base and carefree piano of Oscar Peterson’s ‘Easy To Love’ drifted idly from the speakers. At the window, the American girl sighed and looked down at the empty plaza below.
“Catherine has an exhibition opening at the Whitney on Monday,” George said, watching the LP bob and spin on the record player.
The American girl didn’t shift her gaze from the marble below.
“It’s really great for her. I mean it’s really great for her career,” he continued. “It’s set to run for a month.”
There was no response from the window. George turned away from the dresser and faced her. Her back was to him. He saw the back of her neck clipped close like a boy’s. He liked her the best with her hair like that he thought. She had always worn her hair like that during the summer.
“You know, I’m sure she’d love for you to see it. It being her first major show and all.”
“Shut up,” she whispered.
“What’s that?”
“I said shut up.”
She turned, her gaze still cast downward. Her back leaning against the edge of the open window, naked arms folded across her breast.
George moved to the bed and sat down on the corner. He could almost reach out and touch her but he refrained and placing his hands on the bed’s edge he shrugged forward gazing at her face and tightly cropped brown hair. She turned back around and leaning her head against the frame of the window resumed to gaze at the plaza below.
George pushed his weight off the bed and stood up strait. He stepped forward and placed his right hand on her waist, his left he rested against the spot where her neck met her shoulder. She didn’t move away as he expected her to, she only stood completely still as if nothing could break her concentration on Madrid and the baking marble below. He kissed her left temple and she looked up at him for the first time that morning. For a moment their eyes met and then suddenly it was his turn to look away. Releasing her from his embrace George walked to the door, picking up his sunglasses where they lay on the ottoman. She watched as he went.
He paused for a moment to look at the record spinning, the side finished and the speakers silent, the room silent, then he opened the door. With his body halfway through the threshold he stopped and looked back at her. She stood facing him in a pool of light that spilled through the window.
“I fly to New York tomorrow,” he said, and stepped into the hallway, leaving the door just slightly open behind him.
From the third floor of the hotel the American girl watched the man that was not her husband walk across the worn marble of the plaza. His shoes clipping with each step, he looked back once, at the window on the third floor and for a moment she was possessed with the urge to shout to him, but it passed as quickly as it came. When he had disappeared around the corner and on to calle de la esperanza she turned away from the window. She saw that the door was open just slightly; the American girl walked across the room and pressed her right hand and forehead against it until it clicked shut.