The Woman in Valencia by Annie Perreault (book recommendations website txt) 📗

threatens to drown her: a delayed reaction to a shock already several years old. She feels like she’s just been shot up with a thick, sticky liquid that’s turning her veins to ice and stopping up the walls of her throat, stomach and skull.

Claire takes a few steps forward in the street, up to her ankles in water, lungs filled with lead. Her body is rocked by a powerful wave, like her brain is a gas pump and the automatic shutoff valve has just malfunctioned. She’s caught off guard, doesn’t see it coming. Maybe it’s toxic fumes slithering down her airways or fuel gushing up from the huge underground tanks under her feet, cracking the pavement and creeping up her legs, coating her from head to toe. I’m a seagull trapped in a slick, black tide, in the wrong place at the wrong time again. She wants to scream: Watch out! But great bubbles of oil and tar, and a pocket of air under her tongue, prevent the words from escaping, transforming the scream into some otherworldly sound.

The woman turns to look at her and squints as though trying to place her. She walks toward Claire. The stilted gait, the uneven swaying of the hips, the wobbly head, the immeasurable solitude in the face of danger: It’s all identical. Claire is reliving the events of Valencia at top speed. But she shakes it off. This time, she’ll say something. Do something.

She motions to the woman to step back onto the sidewalk.

“What do you want from me?” the woman screams as she approaches.

“Come here, get on the sidewalk. No, not the street. Stay here with me.”

The woman gives her a withering look, but Claire insists.

“Please come here. You’ll be killed if you don’t get off the street.”

Muttering nonsense, the stranger pitches forward and reaches out an arm to Claire, who takes a step back, afraid the woman might hit or punch her. Claire doesn’t trust her; she’s acting unpredictably, ranting and waving her fist in the air, not to mention that she’s two heads taller than Claire is. But the woman veers away and sits down on a cement block.

Fingers trembling, Claire struggles to dial 911 on the wet screen of her mobile while never once taking her eyes off the woman, who gets up and staggers toward the busy street through the sheeting rain.

The 911 dispatcher assesses the emergency, notes down the intersection. The woman throws herself in front of a car—Oh, my god! Get back here!—which just barely avoids her. Claire gestures at her wildly and tries her best to attract her attention while the dispatcher repeats his question impatiently:

“Ma’am, ma’am, answer me: What is she wearing?”

“Sorry,” Claire begins flatly, “it’s just that I’m trying to—”

“Ma’am,” he cuts her off, “just answer the question. Describe her clothes for me.”

“Black skirt and tank top, tall, dark hair. And she’s carrying a purse… Do I think she’s dangerous?” she continues, still watching the woman, who’s now rubbing her face vigorously. “Well, she might cause an accident or be hit by a car. I think she’s high.”

“Someone else has already called this in. The police are on their way,” the dispatcher concludes, no less brusquely.

Soon after, a young man runs up to Claire and explains that he went to get a patrol car stationed a block away for the cycling event. With the confidence of someone swooping in to save the day, which frankly blows Claire’s mind, he walks up to the woman:

“Come sit down by the gas station, get out of the rain, the taxi’s on its way.”

He’s soon joined by two friends, and they surround the woman, who sits down on a concrete curb under the gas pump awning. Claire explains that she has to go and runs off into the rain, which is picking up again in intensity, like the burning feeling in her stomach.

When she arrives home, soaked to the bone, looking like a drowned rat, she notices that the kids have set the table, dished out the spaghetti, grated the parmesan, filled a pitcher with water. Claire isn’t hungry; she crawls into bed without even taking off her wet clothes and lies there trembling uncontrollably.

I’m a mess, she thinks, for the first time in her life. The shakes and wracking sobs last for two hours; in the midst of it all, she’s horrified to realize she hasn’t cried like this in years, not since room 714 in Valencia.

“Lucky Strikes,” she says a few hours later to the cashier at the gas station, after getting the kids to bed and slipping out. “You don’t have any? I don’t know then, the cheapest pack you’ve got. King size, with a lighter.”

She slides a twenty into the slot between the window and the counter. “So, did they finally call an ambulance for that woman this afternoon?” she asks, jutting her chin in the direction of the street out front. The man nods and hands her the cigarettes. Claire, who’s never been a smoker, caresses the pack, runs a finger gently over the lighter, which is bright pink like the colour of corned beef.

“It was you, on the sidewalk with her? I saw you. Good thing you were there. One less dead person today thanks to you.”

Claire grabs her change and walks out without so much as a goodbye.

2025 VALENCIA MARATHON:

STARTING LINE

All around me, the runners are jumping in place, double-knotting their shoelaces, sighing nervously, smiling at one another. According to the organizers, there are twenty-four thousand participants gathered at the starting line. They’re all just standing there, waiting; some are stamping their feet. They’re like a school of frenzied sardines, excited and anxious in their flashy, synthetic running gear. The Valencia Ciudad del Running banners flap in the wind. Off to one side, there’s the Palau de les Arts Reina Sofía, an ultramodern opera house that looks like it’s floating over the reflecting pools below. I think about my