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

a big ball of pain, my whole body hurts, I’m thirsty but I’m not thirsty, I feel like I might throw up any second now, I just want it to stop, the movement, the absurdly repetitive movement, the fatigue, the hard ground, the stiffness in my calves and quads, it’s radiating, shooting straight to my nerves, why is everything so heavy? I look to my left, there’s a man worse off than I am, he’s not even running anymore, he’s staggering, he’s about to collapse, go on, buck up, I toss him a smile like a life preserver that he fails to catch, each stride is like a jackhammer to my body, each slap of my soles against the pavement like I’m slowly drowning, sinking in quicksand, I need to keep going, keep going, keep going, moving forward, seven kilometres to go, seven times six, forty-odd minutes, I can’t even count anymore, oh well, just keep running…

HAIR CARE

I want a new hairstyle, Claire explains to the hairdresser. No, there was no breakup. No, not Venetian blonde. Something else. I don’t know the Spanish word for that shade of blonde. Something cooler, classic, but a little retro. You know, like Eva Marie Saint in North by Northwest? Or Tippi Hedren in The Birds? No? What about Kim Novak in Vertigo? Wait. Naomi Watts in Mulholland Drive? But really short, a pixie cut à la Jean Seberg. Hmm, not recommended on a woman with a strong jaw? Okay. A layered bob, yes, I see, alright, let’s go with a layered bob, in a frosted blonde.

VALENCIA PALACE HOTEL

Late in the day, Claire returns to her room, even though she doesn’t feel like it. It’s evening, in a bed nothing like her own, permeated with the strangeness of her return to Valencia. Her brain is addled by fatigue. Her skin is stinging—she’s skimping on the sunscreen—and her muscles are twitching from all the walking. She stares at the walls and ceiling, lets herself sink into the dense hotel silence. She eyes the big mauve purse that she’d set down between the TV and the single-serve coffeemaker, not yet ready to abandon it in a deserted corner of the hotel or a public place.

Lying there in the dull room, taking in the ordinary ugliness of the furniture, she’s struck by a sense of loneliness. It occurs to her how these temporary spaces all end up looking the same, a revolving door of rooms for interchangeable travellers. Claire wonders who slept in this bed before her, how many bodies have been stretched out on this mattress, and what their nights were like. She thinks about the guests who have preceded her and ponders whether any trace still lingers in the air, in this room, of their dreams, their insomnia, their love affairs, their solitude, their loneliness, their bouts of misery or terror.

She wonders if it was a smart move to accept the invitation from that Manuel guy, whom she knows absolutely nothing about, and who’s messaged her to confirm their meeting spot for the next day, adding: “I’ll bring some poems by García Lorca, we can read them together.” Claire sometimes thinks she’s become blasé, that time has turned her bourgeois. How else to explain how she ended up on the rooftop terrace of a four-star hotel next to a congress centre, in a half-dead neighbourhood, and looked on with indifference as a stranger, wrist dripping with blood, hurled herself into the void on a summer afternoon? When Manuel inevitably asks her, in Benicalap Park, if she’s been many places, if she often travels alone like this, she won’t have the slightest desire to get into details.

THE LOCALS

They’ve agreed to meet two blocks away from the hotel. She’s waiting for him, sitting on a concrete block, her rolling suitcase squeezed between her thighs, balanced precariously. Twice, the heavy case tips over on the sidewalk with a thud. The bottles of perfume she bought in Barcelona remain intact. She scrutinizes all the single men walking by. None of them smile at her, none seem like they’re looking for her. There’s a dour-looking man seated on a restaurant patio, chewing angrily on a mostly rare steak. With his black hair and bushy eyebrows, he bears a vague resemblance to the Manuel she’s waiting for, although she’s only seen one blurry photo of him, and he was wearing sunglasses. She’s wavering back and forth about approaching him, hoping it’s not him. There’s something disagreeable—impatience and sternness—radiating off his body and from his harsh expression.

Eventually, an old Mercedes pulls up. The driver looks in her direction, worried, then reassured. It’s definitely her, that woman with the suitcase, legs crossed nonchalantly.

He parks quickly, in a few deft moves, then gets out of his car, slamming the door behind him. Looking every inch the Javier Bardem, she thinks, watching him cross the street. He’s wearing black jeans despite the heat, Ray-Bans, and has a weird haircut with long strands growing down the back of his neck like pointy rattails, which he musses with one hand as he strides toward her.

“My English is not too good. I’m Anna from Russia. Hablo español,” she offers by way of an introduction.

He smells like cigarette smoke. Before long, he’ll confess that he’s had nothing to eat since that morning, since leaving Madrid, apart from black coffee to stay alert at the wheel, too nervous at the thought of meeting her.

Claire tells herself it’s been a long time since she’s made a man too flustered to eat. She studies his face. His expression belies a certain gentleness, despite his bad boy appearance. She instantly feels like she can trust him. It’s hard to explain, you can’t always put your finger on it—the tone of voice or the tentative gaze—and suddenly you’re hoisting your suitcase into the trunk of a stranger’s car. They walk side by side toward Benicalap Park, and she points