Not the Sangria
The waiter slips me another sangria. I haven't asked for it; it's a gift.
The first has gone to my head. I shouldn't drink another.
I should go.
I close my hand around it. He's right; I'll stay longer in this clean, well-lit place, this outdoor cafe near Madrid's Plaza de Colon.
A baby grand piano is inches from my table. A slim man in black is playing it.
Badly.
He is playing a Spanish tune I don't know, and an old, old woman with faded lipstick and a sienna wash in her hair is singing along.
A young couple marches in, holding long skateboards, ordering coca-colas.
The piano player is now playing "Feelings." It seems so wrong. The air is filled with words I do not understand, a Spanish ensalada of alphabet sounds, and all I hear in my head are the lyrics of this lounge lizard standard.
My waiter swishes by on his way to the table of ladies at my elbow, twirling his full serving platter, a balancing act.
Take one beer off. Turn to keep the others from falling.
Take another.
Turn.
Another.
He twirls, sometimes it seems, just because he wants to. Then suddenly, he stops.
His free hand whisks a woman's purse off her chair's back and places it in her lap with a rush of words and a sweeping gesture toward the dark. We have been cautioned that pickpockets are among us.
Gypsies, they say. Or Russians.
I saw one just an hour ago. Diversion, screams, running urchins, police.
So I take another sangria sip, checking my bag, leaning back in my chair.
I feel a breeze. A table of women have all opened their hand fans with a flick of their wrists, and are fanning the warm breeze in time with the piano player's new tune: "Guantanamero":
Yo soy un hombre sincero...
It is the only Spanish I have understood all day, perhaps because I don't want to. The world is big; I am small; I am unknown here, oddly free and easy.
The piano player, dear god, is now playing Billy Joel. "The Piano Man":
Man, what are you doing here?
Tonight, I know. I am here because I need it. Here outside words, outside language, outside myself.
Back home, back in the world of words, I'll have tales to tell of pickpockets and palaces. And when mine aren't dazzling enough, I'll tell other people's tales, running with the bulls, street brawls with streetwalkers. The expected. The exciting.
But this moment, this will be for me.
Is it the sangria?