A band was playing South American folk music, a breeze quivering trees, birds flying between branches, white clouds drifting across blue, flowers wobbling in greenery, white umbrellas shading green tables, inflatable plastic horses and dolphins, attached by strings to a chair, trying to float away.

Bubbles, blown by a child through a plastic ring, were floating away, plastic inflated creatures trying to float away.

A Gypsy wandered between the tables, offering magic leaves; sparrows pecked at crumbs; breeze-blown serviettes wafted in red dispensers, the sky forever changing.

“Something happened to me today with my father,” Sandra said.

“What?” Brian asked.

Her eyes became slits covered by fallen eyelids.

“What?” he persisted.

“He wanted me to take notes in the museum,” she said. “He can’t relax and let people have fun. He forces you to observe what he wants you to see; you aren’t able to make your own observations.”

“Best way to avoid feelings.”

“He wanted me to note things down in a notebook.”

Tears soaked her cheeks. She breathed in and expunged air, her throat contracting and expanding.

A smiling child was pointing at bouncing sparrows.

“It must have been when I was writing something down,” Sandra said, “that they robbed me.”

“Someone robbed you?”

“150 euros from my purse.”

“You had 150 euros in your purse?”

“I left the zip open. It happened in the museum!”

“Your father didn’t see anything?”

“We were too busy observing to look. We argued. I blamed him and he left.”

She looked down. Plastic horses and dolphins clashed as a gust shook the flowers. Bubbles exploded.

“Do you believe in luck?” she asked.

“Not really,” he replied.

She’d been robbed before.

“Women,” he said, “hang everything on their shoulders. It’s a disaster waiting to happen.”

She blew her nose. He looked at the woman who was by herself at the table next to theirs. More bubbles drifted away, the woman reading a book, a studious, composed reader who appealed to Brian’s aesthetic and intellectual instincts.

“Woman after woman,” he said, “gets robbed. Unfortunately, vanity dominates common sense.”

Unfortunately, I don’t learn much either, he thought.

The waiter took their order, his face gentle with humility.

“What would you like?” he asked.

“Un vaso de vino…no, un tinto de verano,” Brian said.

“Un vaso de vino tinto?” the waiter asked.

“No,” Brian replied. “I’d like un tinto de verano; gracias.”

“Why don’t you listen?” Sandra wailed, glaring at the waiter.

Moral turmoil churned in Brian’s mind.

“Why are you so angry with me?” the waiter asked, without raising his voice.

“Can’t you understand your own language?” she seethed.

“I’m Brazilian,” the waiter replied.

“Sorry,” Brian said. “Don’t worry. There’s no problem.”

My God this is complicated, he thought.

The waiter stopped at the next table, the woman looking up from her book and smiling, charmed by the Brazilian’s manners, her brown eyes shining appreciatively, Brian thinking: Why aren’t I on that table instead of this one? From now on, I’m going to learn. At least now, I know exactly what I should be looking for. She said she didn’t know where Plaza de Santa Ana was! And she’s lived in Madrid all her life! She must have known where it was! That’d be like a Londoner not knowing where Leicester Square is! For some unfathomable reason she didn’t want to go there.

He envied the graceful flight of disappearing bubbles.

Half an hour before she had been screaming down the phone: “Where the hell are you?”

“In Plaza de Santa Ana,” he’d replied, “where I said I’d be.”

“I don’t know where that is. I’ve asked several people and no one knows.”

No one knows where Plaza de Santa Ana is! The dry indifference he’d already begun to feel hardened into a permanent crust.

“Tell me the name of a café, then,” she had said. “I’ll ask for that.”

“Let’s just meet in Retiro,” he had replied. “It’ll be less complicated.”

“I couldn’t meet in Plaza de Santa Ana,” she told him in Retiro. “I had a bad experience there once.”

A boy smashed the bubbles that his mother was blowing out, most bubbles escaping, Brian thinking: I’ve got to float away as well.

The wind’s gentleness made the unhurried clouds move with an easy grace that mocked Brian’s uncomfortable stillness.

Even a simple arrangement with her, he thought, is an ordeal. There have been too many negative experiences in too short a time, too many unnerving episodes.

“You’re distant,” she said.

He glanced at the woman at the table next to theirs as the waiter placed wine on her table. The smiling woman’s mouth widened as the waiter said: “A glass of white wine for the lady.”

“Yes,” Brian replied, “I am. I think it’s not going to work for me.”

“Okay,” she said. “There’s no need for explanations. I wasn’t sure myself.”

The waiter placed their drinks on the table, saying: “A tinto de verano for the gentleman and a coke for the lady.”

“Thanks,” Brian said.

A pigeon, bouncing under his chair, was pursuing fallen morsels. The stupid bird knew what it wanted.

Intelligence, Brian thought, is wasted on us.

“You’re a little strange,” she said, “but I decided to ignore this, concentrating on the positive things. But I’m glad I met you.”

They touched glasses.

“Me too,” he said.

Giggling children, holding plastic swords, were engaging in sword fighting, a boy driving his sword into his little sister’s chest, her face screwing up with delight.

Brian now felt happy to face the coming moments. Before, he would have been glad to have been able to have leapt over the turf of the immediate future.

“I’m going to go back to my husband,” she said.

“Do you think he’ll take you back?”

“Yes.”

“Why did you leave him?”

“Lack of passion.”

Pleasure, without restrictions, had stopped being a privilege.

She waved a hand: “I’m going back to a man,” she said, “who has had to fight to get what he’s got; someone going up — a fighter — and I’m leaving someone who’s going down, who’ll never have children; who’ll never have a woman; who’ll die lonely; someone who should get psychiatric help for whatever it is they’re suffering from. My husband has struggled to improve — he’s always improving –he knows what he wants…”

Each word dried even further the ambivalence that her anger had created.

“You’ll never know happiness,” she said. “You have no idea of what’s good for you. You’re not intelligent enough to know what’s good for you. You could have had a woman who gives you security and love; but you’re too stupid to appreciate that. Lawrence is far more intelligent than you. He realizes that Isabel is good for him; but you haven’t got a clue of what’s good for you. I’m so relieved to escape from this.”

He sipped his drink, thinking: Isabel doesn’t insult polite waiters or claim that she doesn’t know where one of the city’s most popular places is.

“Don’t forget my words,” she said. “Remember them to the day you die.”

Her hands thrashed; a wild, distant glint filled her eyes, like someone addressing an invisible ghost.

Criticism, Brian thought, has never felt so welcome.

She left, snatching her scarf off the back of her chair. He didn’t bother to look at her. Reality and hope were now back in parallel orbits, her behavior vindicating his attitude, re-enforcing his decision.

He could now step happily onto the turf of the immediate future.

—

Kim Farleigh has worked for aid agencies in three conflicts: Kosovo, Iraq and Palestine. He takes risks to get the experience required for writing. He likes fine wine, art, photography and bullfighting, which probably explains why this Australian lives in Madrid. Seventy of his stories have been accepted by 65 different magazines.