The doors to the apartment building were enormous—fifteen feet tall and ten feet across. But in one of them was cut a miniature door, through which their key permitted entry after-hours and on weekends and holidays, which maybe this was, at least for the superintendent of the building. It was Memorial Day back home, and a local holiday for at least some here. A volcano holiday. Catalan flags were hung proudly from every other balcony across the street.
They took the stairs, the four flights, and Whitney was in bed, facedown, before Will had locked up behind them. She flipped onto her side and opened her laptop and let out a resigned “Fuck…” A conference call had been scheduled for late morning, East Coast. She had an hour to sleep things off and sober up before dialing in.
It was an intrusion from the outside. A sign that the volcano wasn’t cause for concern at home. And neither, apparently, was Memorial Day. She checked her personal email too, and sat up when she saw it.
“They want to know if we want to get dinner tonight.”
The words disappeared into the living room and Will didn’t reply. Whitney couldn’t see him from the bed, couldn’t see if he’d heard, couldn’t read the reaction in his face. There was more silence. Will wanted her to stake out the first position.
“Did you hear me?” she said.
“What do you want to do?” he said, from what sounded to Whitney like the farthest corner of the apartment.
She was rereading the email. “One night and it’s already this we and us bullshit…”
He emerged in the doorway and waited still for her to show her hand.
“I need to take a nap and then take this call and then we don’t have plans,” she said.
“Right. But do you even want to see them again?”
They were good to each other. They were often happy to shift to new positions to meet the other where they were. But Will had been mystified by Whitney’s meltdown outside the museum, couldn’t have articulated whether the ultimate thing she was asking for was more or less of Jack and Leonard in their volcano days.
“We just ate,” he said, drifting back to the living room. “I feel disgusting. I can’t even think about dinner. But if you—”
“I’m getting so gross,” she said. “I got so soft this winter. These extra meals are only making things worse.”
He let it linger, then tried again: “But we probably won’t be mad about going, right? Isn’t that the point you were making earlier? That you wish you and I wouldn’t be so old and lame?”
He’d turned the television on and Spanish-language news suddenly filled the apartment at high volume.
“Jesus. Turn it down.”
“What—you don’t want to listen on full blast?”
“I didn’t hear what you said.”
He used it as an opportunity to soften the explanation. “It’s totally up to you. But I feel like what you were just saying is that you might want to fill the rest of our time here with some things you might not ordinarily…”
“So what do you want me to say, then?”
“Why don’t you decide if you want to—”
“I just can’t believe they’re still together,” Whitney said.
“If she bugs you so much, maybe that’s a reason to definitely not go?”
Will appeared in the doorway again.
“I could care less about her,” she said. “The only thing that bugs me is your inability to say the words yes or no.”
“Yes or no.”
“The place they suggested is about a thirty-minute walk from here. I just looked it up. It’s in the email guide, too. It’s one of the places we talked about going the other night. We might want to try it before we leave, anyway, with or without them.”
“Then let’s just go, okay?” he said. “If it’s a place we should try, what’s an hour or two?”
“So, yes?”
“If you’re not gonna be super fucking weird about things again.”
“I’m asking them when,” she said, typing on her laptop.
“If you’re gonna sleep, I’m gonna read out here.”
“Can you turn the TV off, or turn it down at least? It’s not like you can follow what they’re saying.”
“Check this out,” he said. “I found a station that’s solely coverage of the soccer club. Like, 24-7. They have one of the kids’ teams on now. I can’t believe they televise the Under-11s!”
“You’re just gonna watch little-kid soccer?”
“They all have haircuts like the players on the big team.”
“Close the door, please,” she said. “I’m fucking dead.”
He did as he was told, then started for the kitchen to grab a glass of water. On the way, he noodled out a few notes on the acoustic guitar in a corner of the living room, then returned to the couch and put his feet up. He reached for the book he’d brought along on the trip. A copy of Homage to Catalonia he’d picked up at The Strand. He cracked it in half and made it two pages deeper before he heard an excitable pitch on the TV and lifted his eyes to watch a shot go wide.
He was exhausted. His eyes burned. He butterflied the book on his chest and flipped the channel and found the news. There was an auto accident in the hills above the city. There were eyewitness interviews. There was white-and-yellow police tape and officers who looked confused by the paths in life that had led them to this horrific crime scene under this morbid sky. There was a teaser for updates on the volcano—the promise of photos out of Iceland. Will sat through the commercials and, resting there in the lapping pool of language, felt himself almost comprehending. The coffee ads. The cars. The food processor. It was either fluency by immersion or the onset of delirium. The photos of the volcano
