[continued from previous entry]
Somewhere in there my bladder decided it had reached capacity, began signaling urgently for relief. Result: much bouncing and jiggling (discretely, I hoped), me warning María that we were going to need to stop sometime soon, her refusing to pull over, saying it was too dangerous (the roadside having no shoulder, giving immediately off onto grassy earth). Got me remembering a cold, late autumn night years back, driving along Alewife Parkway on the Cambridge/Arlington, Mass. line. Me in the driver's seat, the woman I was then involved with next to me, her 6 or 7 year old boy in the back seat. Without warning, the little guy's bladder hit capacity, he began calling for relief, wild squirming about quickly escalating to writhing/squealing. Me reluctant to pull off, the road having no shoulder, just a low curb and grassy earth.
It became apparent real damn quick that if the car didn't come to a halt, the levee would burst with big consequences. I slowed (as cars behind, in the finest Boston area tradition, hit their horns), got the wheels over the curb and up onto the grass. My sweetie and her progeny were immediately outside, opening up the little guy's far too abundant cold weather clothing, cries of distress subsiding as the greenery got watered.
A memory that got me wondering if María was going to force me to disgrace myself instead of allowing me a shot at relative dignity and quick weight-loss.
At which time, the car's headlights picked out a roadsign indicating the pueblo loomed ahead. We soon arrived at the outskirts, at a crossroads with nonexistent signage, forcing us to guess which turn to take. Found ourselves heading up an incline, through a tight archway into ancient, narrow stone streets. In Pedraza, the road immediately forking, neither of us with any idea which way to go, me urging María to make a decision as I needed relief pretty damn quickly. A minute later, the car nosed its way into a small plaza -- one of the ancient buildings contained a restaurant, I was out the door and moving toward the entrance in no time flat. Miraculously, the other four members of the group appeared from the door I hurtled toward -- I said hello as I shot by, was gone before they could reply, hit a restroom seconds later where internal pressure was released, balance restored.
Post-restroom bliss: the restaurant had a small darkwood bar tucked away in the foyer with two lovely young woman waiting to cater to us. We indulged them, stood around sipping cañas, trying out the complimentary finger food -- pork rinds powdered with what tasted like a combination of nutmeg and pimentón dulce. Works better than it sounds, trust me. And even so, I didn't want more than two or three bite-sized bits. Everyone else in the group was all over them, inhaling three small platesful -- platefuls? platesfuls? I can never remember -- in rapid succession. If the expressions on the faces of the two young women were any gauge, we were an entertaining group. And after amusing them for a while, we finished up, walked out into the night, found our way through an ancient passageway into the pueblo's plaza. Which turned out to be hauntingly beautiful, the night sky above shining with stars, a strong autumn wind whipping through it all.
The others had talked about stopping briefly in at another joint before finding a place for a genuine meal. We wandered into a small, ancient watering hole off the plaza, everyone ordered a glass of something, a couple of plates of meat 'n' cheese got hoovered down. Then out back into the night for a walk outside the medieval town's walls to gaze at the nighttime countryside, Juan Carlos filling me in on some of the area's history, me learning that his parents were natives of the town where we'd be spending the night, a pueblo whose population had shrunk to, he said, about seven. Then we were back inside Pedraza, wandering old stone streets, past old stone walls (Jorge stopping to climb as many as he could manage), finally heading into a lovely, comfortable-looking restaurant with its own small plaza, a place one or two of the others called 'pijo' -- an unflattering term meaning 'yuppy,' 'overpriced,' 'pretentious.' Which should have given me a clue, so that I wouldn't have been so surprised when they all headed into the bar instead of the restaurant. I mentioned that I was looking for an actual, substantial meal, not more nibbling. They initially ignored that, then made the mistake of handing me a tapas menu, telling me to order whatever I wanted. Three big plates of excellent food showed up soon after, everyone at the table lay waste to them in short order (complaining only when the bill arrived).
[continued in following entry]
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This evening: standing in a crowded rush-hour bus near la Plaza de España, traffic not moving. The sound of distant, impatient horns, the sound of streetside construction work in progress, the sound of voices around me speaking Castellano. And buried amid all that, the faint sound of Sonny & Cher singing 'I Got You, Babe' coming from the bus driver's transistor radio.
Office building/November sky -- la Plaza de España, Madrid:
Madrid, te quiero.
rws 7:46 AM [+]
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