DAY 1
Direct from YYZ to BCN. Easy flight. (Aren't they all?) Arrive 10:36am.
SIM card. Sandwich. Metro to the AirBnB in the Gracia neighborhood to drop off my bag and get my key.
Marble stairs, 3 flights. The door is huge + heavy. Mariano shakes my hand, shows me the room, explains the fussy shower.
Head back out. Fantastic bookstores with gorgeously designed and printed books. Pick up a copy of Good Morning, Midnight. Walk. Beautiful architecture everywhere.
The busiest streets I've ever seen. Street corners that somehow aren't. Genius. Scooters everywhere.
Walk to Restaurant Casa Delfin for lunch. So good.
Lots of walking.
715PM — Grab a cocktail at Solange. Read from the Rhys novel. Inspired by a particular passage, I jot in my notebook:
A woman. A nice woman A nice, beautiful woman. A very nice, beautiful woman. It's going to be different this time...
People-watch. Think about working on the novel. Grab the bill.
More walking. Dinner on the rooftop of the Hotel Casa Fuster.
Work a bit on LVGR. Tighten:
I'd tell you I paid good money for the boy, but that's not entirely true because the child wasn't expensive and the money wasn't earned by honest work. I killed a man for it and the cost didn't even eat up what remained after seven months of party and drink.
My wife had always wanted a child and I had always wanted a son so the purchase quelled both our longings. But things change when you swap money for blood. Your life gets harder. Your luck turns. Things fall apart.
For my wife, punishment came as a cancer. For my daughter, it came as a curse, though she wouldn't call it that. "Clarity of identity," she'd say. Something I can never claim for myself. As for me, punishment's still coming, a vision on the horizon I fear is not a mirage.
Unlike my kid, I've never felt I had an identity. I don't know who "I" am or what "me" means. So unaware of what I did not know, I didn't even know I didn't know it. She made me aware of what I lacked, Siobhan. It's an Irish name. Chose it herself. We'd named her Steven, April and I.
1130PM — Head down to the street.
Youth chill in the evening air:
Midnight — arrive back at Mariano's. Total distance walked, 17.8KM.
