They met Jack and Jenna on a stretch of Passeig de Gràcia bookended by Gaudís. Gaudí everywhere. Gaudí strung from buildings and balconies and trees like prayer flags.
The restaurant had no presence on the sidewalk. It was narrow inside and had a horseshoe bar. They served only jamón ibérico, but served it twenty different ways.
Jack and Jenna were already seated at the bar, always first somehow. They waved Will and Whitney over casually, without getting up for greetings this time. Jack was wearing khaki shorts that showed off his muscular legs. He wore a pair of high-top Jordans and a bull-red Toni Kukoč jersey. Jenna had on a tight black shirt tucked into jean shorts, and her hair was tied back in a ponytail. He looked baggy and she looked vacuum-sealed.
It was hot after the rains, and Will and Whitney were sweating now in their clothes. Whitney wore one of her heavy cotton peasant dresses that made her look like an extra in a Botticelli. She kept her credit card and passport in one of its loose pockets. Will wore jeans and one of the seemingly forty-five button-up J.Crew shirts he’d packed for their five-day trip. Correcting for the night before, they’d overdressed for the afternoon, and were all wrong again for the restaurant and the company.
Will sat next to Jack, Whitney and Jenna on either side of them at the bar. Will asked Jenna what she recommended and she raised both hands and an eyebrow at Jack because it was his choice, his place, it turned out.
“I used to come here after games if I didn’t want to go straight home,” he said. “It’s a little out of the way but I like it.”
“What’s your go-to, then?” Whitney said to Jack. She was eyeing Jenna’s defiantly clipped-on earrings and the skintight fabric of her top. As Jenna turned to the side, Whitney saw that it wasn’t a shirt at all, but a leotard. Snug to her chest and scooped in the back all the way down to the waistband of her shorts. Whitney’s eyes searched Jenna’s body for its flaws. For an unevenness of tan, for the fanny packs of fat Whitney had been sure she’d been concealing in her dresses the last two nights. But nothing. Jenna caught Whitney in the eyes, and Whitney knew she knew what she was looking for. They signaled their intentions to each other down the bar in ways that were obvious to them and invisible to Will and Jack.
“Get the sandwich,” Jack said. “The simple one. The classico. It’s ham and this tomato mush and crusty bread. I obviously don’t know anything about food, but this is real good.”
They ordered four. Five euros apiece. They each ordered two-euro beers in succession, too, and then, after Whitney ordered hers, Jenna changed her order to a sparkling water with lemon. Whitney laughed. Everything meant something.
They ate quickly. They savored the crunch and the salty tie-dye swirl of the cured ham. There was a slickness to the meat that the four wore in a glisten on their lips. They dabbed up crumbs with their fingers and carried them to the tips of their tongues. It was over before Jack had even finished describing the long night he and his teammates had spent there, the night they’d found it. How they had disappeared for an evening into a crack in the city where the people who spoke the language and understood its movements actually lived. It was, he said, as though he’d stepped into this place and ended up in a secret version of Barcelona where he could finally see everything that had been hiding in plain sight. That was maybe more like how things looked to everyone else, everyone who wasn’t an American here just to ball.
“That’s really cool,” Jenna said, impatiently tapping out a beat on the bar. “So we should probably head down there now unless you guys need an espresso or a dessert or something?”
She looked at Whitney and Whitney laughed again, and shook her head.
Will ordered an espresso and asked what she meant—where were they heading?
“I thought he mentioned in the text?” Jenna said. “We’re going to this festival thing down at the Fòrum.” She described the lineup of musicians. It sounded deadly to Whitney but featured acts she remembered Will mentioning Sunday night, stuff he’d been trying to describe to her after she’d accused him of not knowing any new music.
“How’d they all get here for the concert?” Will asked.
“They were supposed to play Sunday, but couldn’t get in. The tour’s moving on next weekend, but they decided to try to resurrect something. Half the lineup was in Lyon, and so they were able to drive here. Then they’re off to Italy next, I guess. But Volcano Fest today.”
“It’s just on for, what, this afternoon? A weekday afternoon?” Will said.
“You know how it is here,” Jenna said. “Weekend, weekday…”
“Where is this place?” Will seemed genuinely interested.
“The Fòrum’s, what?” Jenna said to Jack. “Forty-minute walk, twenty by metro?”
“Yeah, it’s closer to where I live, down on the water. It’s this big weird concrete park. Not far from that club we went to the other night, actually.”
Will received his espresso and drank it as he stood up.
“Is it the sort of thing where they maybe still have tickets?” Will said.
Whitney froze at the question, at the notion that he might want to tag along.
“Oh,” Jack said. “Probably? The tickets were all her. She bought a couple last night, but I’m sure there’ll be people selling more at the—”
“It’s sold out, but there’ll be scalpers,” Jenna said. “You coming?”
“I don’t want to, you know…” Will said, looking at Whitney. “We have some stuff we were trying to do, and I don’t want to butt in. It just sounds…”
Whitney held neutral-faced and steady. She didn’t want to overreact, and so forced herself to consider the alternative. Maybe this wasn’t such a big deal. Maybe
