Barcelona Days

all the way back. A late night in the hammock on the porch of his house. A bus ride to a formal at a farm with dairy cows. The big bright afternoon of the last day of classes, when they’d been swimming in the buzz of a long morning of shotgunned beers, and wound up fucking in the public shower of a freshman dorm neither of them had lived in. They were clear memories, crisp incidents, because there were photographs commemorating so many of the moments. Photographs taken by his housemates who knew that what they were witnessing was dangerous. A futile pairing-off during the home stretch, right before it was all meant to end. They took those pictures without faith that it could last. But they saw the way Will and Whitney’s eyes locked amid crowds, as though they were the only ones alive at a party, the way their hands found each other’s cheeks on overstuffed dance floors, as though the hourglass was draining down a little bit slower for the two of them than it was for everybody else. It was a joke that every last classmate at the bars on Sweetgum Street those last few weeks could share in—watching the ill-advised enterprise lift off. But not even they were there to witness Will and Whitney sitting alone together in a parking lot outside a bar on one of the earliest nights, as she held the back of his head in the crook of her elbow, petting his feathery hair, whispering “Can I keep you?” into his ear.

The end of that long first night together, seven years ago. A bar closing down. His friends winking as they left them together to order one final drink. A cab, even though his house was walking distance. A cab, even though she didn’t have any cash left. A kiss in the back of the cab. A hot spring night that began in a garden—a denim skirt for her and cotton shorts for him. A pair of hammered twenty-two-year-olds. One hand each on the other’s face. Eyes sealed shut. She crept her free hand to the fabric in his lap and felt his smile through her lips. He moved his free hand from her knee to the hem of her skirt and felt her legs part microscopically. His fingers traced the inside of both sticky thighs. She was dripping wet, heat radiating from the thatch of hair. The driver braked abruptly in front of the house and Will opened his eyes to peek out the window. He pulled his hand and reached for his wallet and then looked at Whitney’s face in the sallow streetlight to ask her if she wanted to come see that DVD collection he had been talking about all night.

And then finally, at last: a garden. The campus gardens in early spring. A boy playing catch with a friend who’d brought two baseball mitts to school all four years. A girl reading a 1970s movie script in the shade of a dogwood tree. A boy with gym shorts and a Dodgers hat and a T-shirt printed with a pun on the name of his freshman dorm. A girl with a green camisole and faded blue boyfriend jeans frayed at the knees, a revealing window on a gnarled scar from an athletic injury. Both without shoes. It was a shoeless kind of day, during a shoeless time of their lives. A boy who spotted the cover of the hardbound script, the poster for a movie he knew better than any other. A cover on a book in the hands of a girl he maybe recognized but whose name he didn’t know, a girl with a body stretched out like a leaf in the grass, a body with a head that was still, and legitimately reading, unconcerned with anything swirling around her. A boy who’d just handed back the mitt and the ball, telling his friend he’d see him downtown in a few hours to watch the game, to watch JJ Pickle play in the Sweet Sixteen of the tournament. A boy, therefore, with nothing in the world requiring his attention at that very instant. A boy who thought: At worst she’ll politely acknowledge that it is indeed the movie script the cover says it is, and maybe roll her eyes at him for making a move in the gardens, of all places. A boy who thought: At best she’ll politely acknowledge that it is indeed the movie script the cover says it is, and maybe smile and sort of applaud him for making a move in the gardens, of all places. A boy taking a chance, out of character for him, truly. A boy just feeling lifted by the green and the breeze, and killing time before the big game. A boy who noticed her freckles come into focus on her yogurt-smooth skin and couldn’t help but say something. A boy who noticed her plump pink lips and her thick black brows and the blue blackness of her hair, and then the flush of her throat, the roundnesses beneath her shirt, the narrow slot of skin between the bottom of her top and the top of her jeans, the brass button there catching the sun like a gold coin. A boy whose head inadvertently cast a shadow across the face of a girl, dirty-blondly knocking the sun out of the sky. A girl who felt the shadow and lowered her book and, coaxed by some force beyond her comprehension, decided to look up into a stranger’s face and start things off with a spring-sweet smile.

Smiður

The carpenter’s home had been saved. It was a good joke. He’d returned to find it musty and worn as ever, but still standing, impervious. The fire had split at his gate—he’d raised his foundation to ward off flooding—and the lava had flowed like a forked tongue around his property. The flames had licked his iron fence but left the rest intact.

For all the