"Well, yeah. Obviously."
"Whew. That's good." It's to Mitsuwa then! Once more, to all-you-can-eat Mediterranean seafood and raging out in the city. The best ten euros I could possibly ever spend, those crab legs, the clams, the oysters, the lobster tails, the ocean snails, the fried things, the raw things, and water by the jarra. Crustaceans by the plateful(s). Our stomachs are bottomless garbage disposals sure, but they still know the grace of it. Remembering all too painfully the days of the south of France, and those nights outside living for just the simple things. For the dancing and the booze and the high of it all or the trying to get there. And then the food, and in that order. Floating around seventy kilograms on the scale at Elsabeth's place. I'll eat my face off now while I have the chance, and treasure every moment of it. We all do. We take our time with it though, and after two hours of the slow grind, euphoric at times, that now satiable feeling of stomach stretching's creeping up, and it's time for a few desserts. There's always time for desserts, especially when the night is so young and the everything is so compris. Fresh fruit slices and ice creams scoops. And then cigarettes in the front lounge and we walk a familiar fast traveler-walk down to La Rambla in the warm twelve o'clock night and the orange street glow. Beer's cheap at the liquor store, so is the carton-ed wine, and we all drink tall cans on the go. The fast walk feels like a lazy jog, something short of a skip, from the darting across streets past every block without stopping, only slowing for small Spanish cars that fly by. The cramping's worth it, I think. My sides don't think so though, and when we get to the top of La Rambla, to the cool stone Plaza Catalonia by the metro, they pinch hard. Looking down it's length to the marina, my breaths are sharp and short, and I smile at the give and take of our feasting rampage. After this long, we've maybe turned to wild, traveling pack animals, always on the move, and the feeling's short-lived. And the cross-town jaunts are nothing for these sets of paws worn to pay.
The nights are always perfect in summer Barcelona. The kind that almost feel too hot in the one nice button down I have with me. Almost. Almost because it's perfect, which is lucky because we were looking to have one of those crazy, wild, nice button down nights tonight. And we really don't clean up half bad, which is to mean we look good. Bueno. Muy bueno. And we're strolling down La Rambla, still not stumbling. Our tolerance is sailorly, so there's always another beer to be had, or bottle or carton of wine to be cracked, and before we know it we're at the other end, legs dangling off the edge over the marina, drinking with a bunch of East Coast Americans, relaxing in the assumed English. We get smashed by the docks as Christopher Columbus looks on, pointing us back to our country disapprovingly. But who cares? No one else surely does, the whole place is bustling and comfortably spread out so you just see people from afar mostly.
Shoot the shit with these other Americans, do it. "Where you guys from?" they ask.
"California." Again. It's starting to roll off the tongue even before the question's finished. "What about you guys?"
"We'll I'm from Boston, but they're all from Jersey," one of them said. "We all met at the hostel. Which one you guys staying at?"
"Fuck hostels, bro," Max. "We're stayin' in the suburbs. San Cugat, mang." He ends on a high note and we all laugh and tell them about couch-surfing and all the places we've been and the thangs we've seen. On the breeze for a month, and shootin' it with the best of them. We talk college and traveling, and both coasts (but we both know what's the best coast), and then all the booze is gone and they head out to the bars on the beach.
"We'll meet you there," says Grant.
"We got a few things to pick up first," says Max. Muahaha. He says it with a sly grin, and Mike and I grin too. Maybe Grant's a little hesitant.
"Okay, well! We'll be at Opium!" One of them yells as we split and slide back up La Rambla until we see a little nothing alley to the right that's overflowing, choked thick and spilling out with like-minded individuals, dressed sleekish and party-faced. Max puts his needy, far-off scanning look on and we don't even make it off the main drag.
"Hey. Hey, where you from, bro?" It's a slick-looking, smiley Spanish guy and his slick, smiley friend.
"California."
"Ah. Yes, California," he says with an understanding nod. "You are looking for something, yes?"
"Well look at that, how'd you know, my man?"
"I just had a feeling you'd might." Drug deals are the best when they're between the good-hearted and the smiling, and it all goes so smoothly. He's got a line on what we want, and he's actually got it right now. It's our old friend Molly.
Max gets weary though with memories of south France and the being had by shadowy, scheming bastards in French projects, "I don't know guys... Should we do it? We can get thirty grams for thirty euros and just dip it all night."
"Right. Sounds good."
"But first we need to try it," it's business Max, his money had come in. "You gotta understand," he says to them, "we got fucked last time. Let me and my friend Mike just try it first." With business Max it's usually a proposition in the works.
They're a little put off by the proposal, understandably I think, but still surprisingly cool and Max and Mike get a little bump, and it's brown stuff. A good sign, but it somehow ends up going sour over the question of payment. Grant's not having none, and hell, I'm still broke so I can't really say anything. The purchase power's on Max and Mike, and there's a fumble and we almost end up loosing the drugs and the money. They walk away in disgust refusing to sell us anything, and Max and Mike jog after them in cautious desperation down another alley way, this one empty. They come back with the money; safe, but drug-less. So we get some more booze before the liquor stores close and head back to the marina's edge to drink by the Rambla del Mar. It's not opening periodically for boats like it was earlier, sitting still with it's concrete waves floating silently. All the mass of people's thinned a bit as well, it's more strictly night owls now. The wide-eyed Spanish underground, the youthful club crowd and the street vagabonds playing fast acoustic guitar and bongo drums and dancing and clapping on the boardwalk as all the night strolls excitedly north towards the beach or's already started stumbling back.
It's a shame too, because Max and Mike are finally feeling the bump of the stash they were previously so suspicious about. Not sure of the taste maybe. Thought we'd been duped yet again, but now they're only slightly tickled in the balls, and Grant and I are running out of things to drink so we take north, chain-smoking hand-rolled cigarettes. The boardwalks much longer than it looks from either end though, and at the other one we're winded and starting to tire from the day, and we pause for a spell on the grass sloping up towards the old wooden submarine. Maybe it was all that living, or the eating and the drinking, or the cigarettes, or just everything, but the spell's turned to siesta, and the cool grass makes a light snooze too soft and pleasant to resist. I make sure my I've got everything deep in my pockets, the ones on the ground when I lay down, and I close my eyes with my head resting on my hands above the grass. A distant guitar and far-off bongo cradle me through the dark. I can't even hear the clapping, and as the sea breathes salty, I remember oyster. And crab legs.
[stop]
I wake up groggy to a panging in my stomach, a hungry grumble, and a dry feeling at the back of my throat that slakes for water. There's a tingly piss feeling in my loins that brings the breaths coming deep, and my vision's clear after quick blinks. Maybe the mind's a little slow though as I scan the early morning marina because for a minute or so I feel the pee ready and waiting, but I can't figure out where to go. There's no bathrooms so I piss by the old submarine, pretending I'm just really interested in it. It's superfluous really. There's hardly anyone about at all. The boardwalk's deserted, save for some other snoozers in the grass and a lone, drunk alley cat still strummin' Spanish drunk alley songs on the guitar. His tempo's slowed a bit from the feverish dancing beat of the night, and the dark starred sky's turned bright now to that early soft blue of a sun's light before that sun's even risen yet. Mike and Max and Grant are up before long, and peeing too, and then we play the waiting game. The metros don't start up until 5:30 and hell, I don't know what time it is exactly but we've got a little ways until 5:30 so we sit down at the edge of the docks again with our feets dangling off the edge over the water, my mind slowly beginning to see only the end, the part where we all stumble into Irene's kitchen and make a big bowl of cereal with chocolate whatevers in it.
[stop]
The sun comes up from the east, to the left over the hotel in the distance and the field of sail masts, but before it does, it paints the whole sky and the all the bottoms of the clouds a bright, warm pink and orange-y hue that reflects off the still marina water. The fire's above us and below us now, but it's all so beautiful and silent and the short quick breaths go slower now, and I smile through my sagging eyes, past my rusted throat and think of our dear friend Drew and hope he's doing all right, hope the man upstairs gave him some stellar day and had a good laugh at the shitter of a one we'd went through. And thinking back, I've got a good feeling suddenly and we stroll off down an empty La Rambla, past seagulls sleeping on lonely old statues and the tired morning riff-raff. To the metro and San Cugat. We sleep the whole way and miss our stop by one station.
