Days began to blend as we shared beds and toothpaste and bottles of water. We existed outside of time, held together by old world measures: thrumming church bells and slanting golden hours, doles of sunscreen pressed from palm to back.
By week two we were in Valencia. On long walks through the city’s narrow streets, I’d take photos of myself in dark windows framed by candy-colored tilework—the resilient earthenware historically used to protect facades from eroding in salty air. The incongruity of it all was anesthetizing. An American in a sundress, strolling through Europe, barreling towards the end. The day after our return to America, X would pack up his things and move out. He’d serendipitously secured a new job requiring his relocation to another state. A clean break, one could say.
I began to fixate on the faces of other women, immortalized within Spain’s ornate museums: a girl by Francisco Pons Arnau biting into a peach with an unflinching gaze. A figure in a surreal Dalí landscape, her arm held high, piercing the scene’s alien atmosphere like a spire. An aristocrat by Sorolla with proud, obsidian eyes in somber lace—leaning towards a tangle of scarlet roses.
These women, across so many snapshots of life, seemed to reassure me that I was in but a snapshot of my own. Each sat through a scene in all its edges and color, hyperreal to surreal, and walked on. I discovered the second Mona Lisa, at the Prado in Madrid, painted by Da Vinci’s apprentice and suspected lover. A woman I thought I knew, living an entirely different life. I stared at her knowing gaze and she smirked back, with the tranquility and mischief 500 years on earth will endow. Here, I thought, as tourists brushed past me, was proof of simultaneous truths. Like hating a trip whose end you dread. Like grieving someone who is yet living.
The interesting thing about decoupling is how partnership can still exist. Nothing demands this like foreign soil. We always worked well as a team when traveling. In fact, it was X who helped me manage my fear of flying. The moments of comaradery that stay with me most from our trip are X driving us through hairpin turns I never could have managed: through the bohemian mountain town Deía; down to a hauntingly empty cove called Playa Puerto des Canonge. Me, translating museum placards and menus with my mediocre Spanish so he might understand the art and food. Us adding spots to a shared Google Maps with equal tenderness. Or him, exhausted, yet staying by my side at a club I wanted to explore for an article, to keep unwanted advances at bay. We swayed in the pink light of Valencia’s gritty Fábrica de Hielo (an old ice factory), sipping local beer like bleary anthropologists. The image of him carrying my suitcases up the stairs of our Airbnb—sweating and dutiful—will haunt me, sweetly, until I am old and gray.
We hiked through Mallorca’s Tramuntana Mountains one morning, up to Galatzó Peak, the highest in the mountain’s northwest range. It’s a breathtaking climb, over sun-bleached limestone rocks and amid fragrant foliage, the Mediterranean shimmering miles below. From its peak, the world never looked so vast. Sun beams burst through cloud wisps, gilding everything in bright, sparkling light: cobalt water, white crags, kelly green moss. There was nothing to do but take in the panorama of nature’s divine, our sweat drying in the wind. X took a photo of me that day. It remains one of my favorite photos of myself. It reminds me of how the world, in its most unexpected moments, can leave you breathless.
As our nights abroad dwindled, I’d slide my hand across the sheets and touch my pinky to his, watching his chest rise and lower in sleep. More salt from the eyes. Our last dinner together was at Corral de la Morería, an old, iconic restaurant and flamenco stage in Madrid. We dined on tender lamb chops and cold glasses of hierbas, an anise-flavored Spanish liquor. And then the show began. The lights went dark. A cantaora came out singing a capella, a crystalline weep that poured through the room like sea water. Next: slanting notes of guitar, reverberating with an ache. Finally, a woman in red, barefoot. Lots more salt from the eyes. Not for us, or our last night together. For the bend of her arms, the rustling trail of her dress, the color of that silk—like a woman bleeding out. Then she gathered her skirts, and began to dance.
