We'll Always Have Paris (20 page)

“I feel terrific, Matt. I think I’m going to beat this thing.” The car door slammed shut.

Katie’s post-fever bounce lasted through our two-and-a-half-hour trip from Madrid to Seville. As we began our journey south to the Andalusia region of Spain, my daughter burst into laughter when the waiter on the train informed us that one of our choices for lunch was bull. I’ve always found the upside of having a short illness is that once I recover, I am euphoric with gratitude over the absence of discomfort. The unremarkable is suddenly the sublime. Apparently I passed along this trait to Katie.

“Every time you take a bite of your lunch, I’m going to tell you that you’re full of bull,” she informed me, laughing. A half hour later, we watched
Burlesque
, a movie we had dismissed as a fun dance musical when we saw it months ago in San Diego. Now we were captivated and wondered why Christina Aguilera hadn’t won an Oscar for her performance.

Our spirits escalated even higher when we reached the hotel, Las Casas de la Juderia, a sprawling sixteenth-century palace in the historic Santa Cruz district. Seville was hot as a sauna; nonetheless Katie and I fell in love with it for its quaintness. The city was straight out of a storybook: labyrinthine cobblestone roads leading to a cathedral that was, according to our tour book, the largest Gothic building in the world and the third largest church in Europe. Each little shop looked as though it might have a secret room within, complete with a princess toiling away on a spinning wheel. Not far from our hotel was a river dotted with small turrets flying regal flags.

A concierge from the hotel showed us to our room, through two courtyards, past an uneven staircase and a broken column, and across an alley. The room looked as if it had been lifted off the set of a Harry Potter movie. Katie squealed with joy when she saw where we would be sleeping for the next four nights. She ran to the four-poster bed and lifted the burgundy quilt. Looking under the bed, she said, “I feel like there should be a book of Latin spells hidden in this room!” She then ran to the cushioned picture-box window and claimed it as her reading nook. The room was beyond charming with hardwood floors, an armoire, and black desk. The lamp was covered by a heavy beaded shade; its bulb was no more than thirty watts. The only part of the room that looked as if were designed in the current century was the bathroom, which belonged in a spa. I ran my hand across the marble surfaces and smiled at the sight of a shower large enough to wash a baby elephant.

Our first evening, Katie and I returned from a brief walking tour of the city and sat at an outdoor café across the street from the hotel. A man wearing an apron introduced himself as David and took our drink orders, water for me and chocolate milk for Katie. When he returned with our drinks, he asked if he could sit down. I agreed. I always love when waiters kneel beside the table as if they are about to share some intimate secrets of the kitchen, but sitting at the table was even cozier. David began asking what kind of meal we were in the mood for and offered a few recommendations. Katie and I were surprised to see him flag down one of his coworkers and give him the order. I hoped he intended to share the tip because he was the laziest waiter I’d ever seen.

“Where you from in America?”

“San Diego,” I answered, thinking nothing of the idle chatter. He told us about the Corpus Christi Festival happening later in the week, how bells from the Giralda Tower would fill the city and all of the townspeople would march through the streets, many carrying six-foot crosses on their backs. Men would sport three-piece suits and the women would wear dresses and pantyhose despite the heat. Some would carry giant flames of incense.

“Not me,” he said, lighting a cigarette. “I am no martyr. Get it?” He laughed at his joke. Twenty minutes later, he hadn’t moved from his seat.

When our food arrived, David thanked the waiter and ordered a glass of wine for himself. Katie and I shot each other a look of confusion. “Aren’t
you
our waiter?” I asked.

David laughed as if the suggestion were absurd. “I’m friends with the owner. I help a little by greeting guests,” he explained. “What hotel do you stay with?”

Immediately my mind raced back to my mother’s persistent warnings about Katie and I being kidnapped. Flashing before my eyes was a ten-second clip of the movie
Taken
I’d accidentally absorbed while channel flipping a few weeks earlier. Liam Neeson sat across a table from his daughter’s kidnapper, desperately begging, “Let her go!”

“I cannot do that,” the smarmy man replied. “It is not how my business works.” Liam cried out in agonizing pain. I switched the channel.

Back in reality, I grabbed my shrimp fork, ready to kill David and dip him in cocktail sauce if he looked at Katie the wrong way. “I don’t know where we’re staying,” I said coldly.

“Would you like help finding a hotel?”

“No,” I returned with a tight jaw.

Throughout Europe, people had been friendly to Katie and me: feeding us, striking up conversations, and sharing local tips. But there was something off about David. He had a definite creep factor.

“Why are you angry, Jennifer?” David asked. “I know
Sevilla
and can get you a good price at a hotel. Tomorrow, you come to my house and we will have a traditional Spanish breakfast.”

“We are not coming to your house,” I told David.

He was taken aback. “Why no?”

I was silent. Katie followed my lead and ate her dinner quietly as David asked us a series of probing questions.

“What is this about?” I said bluntly.

“I do not understand.”

“What’s your angle?”

“I am just being friends. You are too suspicious,” David told me.

“My husband will be down to meet us in a few minutes and he’s a very jealous man, so you should probably go,” I said.

“He’s at the hotel cleaning his gun,” Katie added.

“’Cause he’s a police officer,” I said.

David smoothly replied that he would like to meet William. “He will enjoy my mama’s
tortilla
at breakfast tomorrow. Of course he is invited too.”

“Oh,” I said, deflated.

“But I thought you have not yet found a hotel,” David said with a smile.

“We need to go,” I said. Then, dumbly, I asked David if he could get our check.

“Don’t use your credit card,” Katie whispered when David left the table. “Now he only knows our first names.”

After we left, David perched himself on a stool on the sidewalk in front of the restaurant, which was problematic because our hotel was located directly across the street. We circled the block several times until we saw that he’d found another tourist to chat with. Heads down, Katie and I scurried into our hotel where we relayed the events of the evening to our concierge. “Is this normal?” I asked. “Do people just sit down at your table and join you for dinner here?”

“No, this is not at all customary,” the hotel clerk said, shaking his head with concern. “This is very strange behavior.”

“If anyone comes around looking for us, please tell them we are not at this hotel,” I asked.

“Absolutely,
Señora
.”

“You’ve never heard of us.”

The concierge nodded. He said he had also seen
Taken
and assured me that he would safeguard us. He buzzed for a bellboy to escort us back to our room.

Katie looked worried. “Remember how you always tell me that I shouldn’t leave my drink unattended?” I confirmed. “David brought my chocolate milk to the table. What if he put a roofie in it?!”

This was crazy. He had served Katie her chocolate milk more than an hour ago and she didn’t seem even the slightest bit sleepy. I assured her she had nothing to worry about. We sat on our bed in silence for a minute. “Maybe I should drink some water, just to be safe,” Katie suggested.

“Maybe you should,” I shot back too quickly. Before long, Katie had consumed a gallon of water. She slammed her glass on the bedside table and pronounced herself flushed.

I realized I should call William and let him know we had arrived in Seville safely. He heard my voice and sighed audibly with relief. “Where are you? Did you change hotels? I’ve been so worried.”

“Worried, why?” I asked, wondering if he telepathically sensed my panic over David.

“I called the hotel and when I asked for you, the guy said no one by that name had checked in and hung up on me. I called back and he said he’s never heard of you.”

***

The following morning, I asked Katie if she remembered our bizarre dinner guest. “Too Friendly David?” she asked. I was relieved that she had total recall. Her fears of her chocolate milk being drugged were unfounded. “Let’s get some breakfast.”

The dining room of Las Casas de la Juderia was like a greenhouse, light pouring in from every angle. Breakfast was fresh fruit, assorted meats and cheeses, pastries, breads, lox, wine, juice, and champagne. We agreed that this hotel was now the gold standard by which all others would be compared.

The hotel’s status was cemented when we were shown the tidy rooftop swimming pool where we decided to lounge until the temperature dipped below a hundred degrees. As it turned out, this never happened.

When the clock near the cathedral struck noon, the pool was filled with fellow guests lazily floating in the cool water, the streets below us barren. No one actually swam. We simply stood, steam practically rising from our bodies as we submerged ourselves.

Katie parked herself in the shallow end with a book and a bottle of chilled water. The pool deck was made of long planks of light wood that supported white canvas lounge chairs. In a shaded area, shelves displayed fluffy white towels; a cooler offered a variety of complimentary drinks. I got out of the pool and pretended to sleep on a lounger while quietly observing an Italian cougar wearing a gold bikini. She lay on her stomach reading a magazine while her twentysomething boy toy spread oil across her back. The two cuddled close on a single lounge chair, which proved difficult because of the wide rim of her hat. She laughed and planted a red lipstick print near her playmate’s lips. Part of my fascination with the woman was that she was the spitting image of one of the moms from our neighborhood back home. Lauren was certainly no prude, but it was bizarre to see her doppelganger canoodling with a man half her age, the two smoking cigarettes and becoming increasingly physical. It was the same jarring sensation I have every Halloween when I realize that the Grim Reaper is actually the peewee soccer coach. An hour later, the Italian couple was asleep in each other’s arms as Katie approached my chair to reapply sunscreen. I pointed at the woman and whispered, “Doesn’t that look like Bradley’s mom?” Katie’s eyes popped with recognition.

“Is it?” Katie leaned in for a closer look.

“I certainly hope not, or her husband is going to be pretty upset.”

Katie knit her brow. “It can’t be her,” she said squinting. “Unless they have a long-lost son that no one knows about.”

“Long-lost…?” I trailed off, realizing Katie’s take on the situation.

A blustering Frenchman jumped into the small pool like a cannonball, much to the chagrin of the Englishwomen in sunhats clustered in the corner. Cannonball’s wife scolded him in French; his response was to pick her up and throw her in.

“I do hope this
idjit
will tire soon,” a Margaret Thatcheresque woman told her cohorts. Hats nodded in agreement.

The Prime Minister of the pool got her wish; the man lifted himself out of the pool, glancing to see if anyone was watching his sinewy arms flexing. He promptly poured himself a generous glass of red wine, drank it, then fell asleep.

At eight that evening, a clerk from the hotel told everyone the pool was closing. Sighs of disappointment and muttering in different languages filled the thick air.

Katie and I dried off and walked to the Guadalquivir River where we passed several off-duty horse-drawn carriages, their drivers asleep, the horses lethargic from the heat.

The pink sky scrolled past us on an hour-long boat ride down the river. I stood at the front of the boat and held out my arms to feel the breeze. All I needed was William to stand behind me like Leonardo DiCaprio did for Kate Winslet and we could have been the middle-aged version of
Titanic
. Remembering the ending of that cruise, superstitiously, I lowered my arms and stopped humming the Céline Dion song.

At ten, the city was blanketed in gentle periwinkle, the evening air finally cooling. We found a restaurant and sat outside for dinner.

Katie and I returned to the hotel at midnight, disappointed that we had missed the lobby’s resident pianist. The lounge was an eclectic blend of cozy chairs in disparate patterns. Set against Spanish tile was an assortment of lamps ranging from
Little
House
on
the
Prairie
to
Best
Little
Whorehouse
in
Texas
. A black grand piano sat in the corner.

“I’m going to play,” Katie informed me.

She sat on the bench, gave me a little smile, then filled the room with a jazz improvisation. Six years of lessons had paid off.