Page 37 of Cava with My Colleague

“Keep it,” I say.

I put it in the inside pocket of my bag, beside the one he took of me in the cathedral, and we walk the last half block to the hotel without speaking.

The presentation goes fine. Not as good as Vienna but not as bad as Berlin. I linger so long afterward with five people who are on the board of a local patient advocacy nonprofit that Carlos leaves before me, giving me an approving nod. I shouldn’t enjoy that approval so much, but it helps, and I suggest the six of us go out to dinner.

Our train is early the next morning, so we meet at the station with our luggage and our coffee and a comfortable silence.

The AVE takes less than two hours. I sleep for most of it, which I don’t intend to do but the exhaustion of the week pulls me under. When I wake up, the landscape outside has shifted from Valencia’s orange groves to the dry plateau of central Spain—flat and pale and bleached by the sun.

Carlos is frowning at his phone. He’s probably still working, answering emails, but I’m already mentally calculating the time it’ll take to get home, how long until I can shower, whether I have anything to eat.

I watch him for a moment before he notices. He’s turned slightly toward the window, one ankle crossed over his knee, a look of concentration on his face.

He looks up and catches me watching.

“We’re almost there,” he says.

At Chamartín, we collect our bags from the overhead rack and join the stream of passengers. We are transferring to the commuter rail; the same line that goes to my neighborhood goes through Carlos’s. This station is newer than Atocha, the regional station closer to my apartment, and has a little less character. But it’s more convenient.

When I mention this to Carlos he studies my face. “I like Atocha better, too,” he admits.

Our bags trail behind us. “Well, it has a jungle in it. Automatic cool points.”

The Atocha station has an old and a new part. The old station opens up under a great arched roof of iron and glass, and underneath it—impossibly, as if the building swallowed a piece of the tropics and never let it go—a jungle. Thousands of plants fill the giant space; palms reaching toward the glass ceiling, flower beds dense with things I don’t have names for. It’s amazing.

Carlos gives me a small smile. “I was wondering if you found that.”

“Madrid is full of things like this,” I say. “Isn’t it? Things you wouldn’t expect.”

Carlos considers this. “You just have to know where to look.”

We board the train and take seats.

I think about the photographs in my bag. About the afternoon walking around Valencia. About the way he told me to keep the pictures.

And after the train has arrived at Carlos’s station and he’s disembarked, I reach into the inside pocket of my bag and check that the photographs are still there.

They are.

14

Carlos

* * *

I don’t like most people. I’m good at my job, social enough to be respected without seeming rude. Until a few weeks ago, I would have said that was how I liked it.

What is it about Jade?

She’s told me so much, and yet I somehow want to know more. Jade so smoothly moved the conversation away from her stage fright in Zurich that I didn’t even realize it until later. And then today in Valencia, she told me about her family and clearly it was a sore subject, but I want to know more.

I want to pry open her thoughts and swim in them. It feels like there’s more to the story—more to her—that I’m hungry for.

I’m on my way home from the train station on Saturday. The presentation in Valencia went mildly better than Zurich, and thinking over this entire week leaves me with an unsettled feeling in my stomach.

That feeling sits along with another worry. Fernando texted me to let me know he’s waiting for me at my place. He took care of Izan while I was away, and normally he will leave my dog at my house a few hours before I get home so he can get back to his family, but he says he needs to talk to me. It feels ominous.

When I open my door, Izan is thrilled to see me, bouncing on his front legs and making happy growling noises. He spins once and then launches himself down the hallway. He’s going to grab a toy to show me, all while leaving a trail of flatulence behind him.