Choices. Chapter 7, part II: 2003.

This world is half the Devil’s and my own,
Daft with the drug that’s smoking in a girl
And curling round the bud that forks her eye.
-Dylan Thomas.

II.

The next morning, against all expectations dictated by my previous evening and my penchant for living during the night and spending half of every day oblivious to everything and anything, I was up by nine a.m. and not a bit sleepy.

Maybe because I was hung-over, maybe because it was the first day that I woke up all alone in the city. Regardless, I was forced to spend the morning in the hostel because, strangely enough in that country, it was raining. And I, having come from a semi-arid land, have never been completely comfortable with the idea of walking in the pouring rain. I guess it’s true what they say: you can take the boy out of the rancho, but you can’t take the rancho out of the boy.

So I spent my morning having breakfast, reading, and writing a few postcards for family and friends. Then I watched TV in the common room for a while but, since the programming was local and I couldn’t seem to make heads or tails out of it, and I felt too anxious to remain indoors, I went out for a walk in the neighborhood taking advantage of the fact that the rain’s intensity had diminished a bit.

Of course, I wanted to keep busy so as not to remember the girl from the night before. Of course, it didn’t work at all. Or it worked for short periods only. I tried to do things that were guaranteed to block me out from the outside world, so I went to a record store, a music shop and a bookstore.

Needless to say, I didn’t buy anything, thought I saw several things I would’ve loved to get, like the Fender Telecaster, just like the one Keith Richard plays, in honor of whom I used it to fool around with the intro riff for “Angie.” The clerks started to give me the evil eye, so I decided it was the perfect time to go somewhere else to do something else, and just to finish annoying them, I played the intro to “Stairway to Heaven” as my encore. Boredom tends to bring your mental age down to fifteen if you’re a guy.

After walking aimlessly for about forty minutes, I came upon a curiosity shop and went in to kill some time. The woman behind the counter turned out to be this fat redhead with very curly hair and an awesome sense of humor. She was a living stereotype and I could almost imagine her as a medieval innkeeper, serving warm beer in wooden tankards along with wedges of cheese and hard bread.

I had such a great conversation with her that I ended up buying a silver ring embossed with the Tree of Life of celtic mythology.

It kind of looked Hal Jordan’s ring, though it displayed a tree whose branches and roots entwined together outlining a circle instead of a lantern. The lines of the engraving stood out in age-darkened silver, so it gave the impression of being drawn rather than carved. I liked the design, and I liked the woman’s explanation that the tree symbolized the cyclic nature of life and death, as well as the universe and everything in it.

Then, since the cyclic nature of my digestive system demanded it, I went into the first place that sold food I saw and bought a roast beef and cheese sandwich with fries and a coke, abusing the fact that I’d been doing a lot of walking and didn’t really need to watch my caloric intake too strictly.

Afterwards I ducked into a cyber café to check my e-mail, since keeping in touch with family and the rest seemed so much easier that way. Postcards I sent later were more like souvenirs in advance, I think. Especially since, taking into consideration Mexico’s postal service, some of them were sure to arrive long after I got back, or never at all. Snail mail’s another endangered species.

I walked for a while longer but the previous night started to catch up with me, and all the wandering around made me tired, so I decided to go back to the hostel and take a nap.

I guess it should come as no surprise that, immediately after sunset, I was back at the Red Lion in hopes of bumping into the girl again but telling myself that the only thing I wanted there was to have a couple of beers and listen to a little music. And like a second-class sorcerer that seeks to conjure up some spirit just to see if he can do it, but without the foggiest idea of what to do if it does answer the summons, I walked up to the jukebox and paid for D-37, A-12 and F-14.

It goes without saying that the girl wasn’t in last night’s table, now occupied by a trio of thirty year-olds with the looks of construction workers or something of the sort that were having a very lively argument about some football match and downing glass after glass between laughs. I got a bit nostalgic for my friends and thought that Alejandro would surely be having a ball with his Italian chick, so I drank what was left of my pint in a single pull and ordered another along with a bowl of peanuts or something to pick at.

After a while I looked at my watch. Eleven seventeen at night. I decided to go back to the hostel after finishing the pint that stood before me and to seal the deal with myself I said “fuck this shit” out loud.

- If you don’t like that shit, perhaps you shouldn’t be drinking it.

I turned to my left, where the voice came from, and went mute with surprise. Like in a bad movie, there stood the girl from the night before, our eyes level despite the fact that I was sitting and she stretched to her full height. She wasn’t that tall, as I said.

- No, er, I didn’t mean it like that. Wasn’t talking about the beer, which I happen to think is pretty good. I, ah, I was thinking out loud about something else.

That was all I managed to stammer in my surprise of having run into her, and not only that, but having her come up to me before I’d noticed she was there. In my head I could only hear “idiot, you’re acting like a schoolkid,” but the truth is that I’ve always been like that. When I really like a woman, I get all nervous and clumsy and end up looking like a moron. She didn’t seem to mind my lame answer and sat in the bench next to me.

- Are you under medication?

- No. Why?

I guess sounded kind of defensive because, for some reason, that woman that must have weighted about a hundred and ten pounds, intimidated me. Inside my head: “Classy. Now, that did sound stupid.” I had reacted to the implication that I sounded dumb enough to be on drugs.

- What? Oh! I’m so sorry! — she laughed, realizing how our dialogue must have sounded from my point of view — I didn’t mean that, at all. It’s just that I noticed you’ve been checking your watch every once in a while and I thought that maybe you were keeping track of some medicine you had to take. Actually, I kind of meant it as a joke.

And she smiled at me like the night before, a little smile that was almost more in her eyes than in her mouth. Then I realized that her eyes were blue and not green. Second time I made a mistake about the color or her eyes in the same number of days.

- Oh, Okay. — I laughed too. — Actually, I was joking too. No harm done.

- So what’s your name, then?

She asked the question somewhat brusquely, but smiling to take a bit of the edge off. I answered in Spanish, of course, but our conversation went back to English immediately.

- Gabriel Hidalgo.

- What’s that, Portuguese or something?

- Spanish, actually.

- And what does it mean? Or it has no translation? Some things don’t translate, or if they do, they lose something and end up being different things.

- Well, it so happens that my name does translate.

- Alright. So, what is it?

I looked her in the eyes and paused for a few seconds, in order to make myself seem a bit mysterious, and honestly failing by all accounts.

- I’ll tell you if you tell me your name. Fair’s fair, don’t you think? As things stand, you have the advantage of me.

She considered the question for a moment, twirling a lock of hair around the index finger of her left hand, which gave me the opportunity to take a closer look of her silver bracelet. It was shaped like a snake that coiled twice around the girl’s wrist. The clasp that kept it fast was incorporated into the design so it looked like the snake clamped its jaws on its tail. It was fairly thick, which made me think that, considering how expensive silver was in Europe, it was probably pewter or some such material.

- Mmmmmmm. Well, alright. My name is Siobhan.

She pronounced it Sho-Bann with a Gaelic accent completely alien to any tongue with which I had even a passing familiarity. She waited for me to speak but, as I did not, she went on.

- Right, my part of the bargain is fulfilled. Now you have to tell me what yours means, else it wouldn’t be very chivalrous.

She emphasized the last four words pointing at me and I could see her nails were painted some shade of green, though flaking.

- It’s funny you should say that, ‘cause it so happens that my name in English would be Gabriel Knight.

This time, obviously, I pronounced my first name in its Anglo version, the name of the archangel, with the softened consonants. She seemed to find the translation and the play on words very amusing. Some personality quirk, I thought.

- That’s a laugh. At first glance, I thought you were Welsh or something, you have the look. But now I guess you are from Galicia or Asturias, right?

- Well, no. In truth, I’m Mexican.

- American? That’s something I did not expect, I’ll tell you that much.

I liked the fact that she took American to mean someone coming from the continent of America, not like it happens back home, where American is synonymous with gringo.

- But your family is from Asturias or Galicia, innit?

- No, at least I don’t think so. As far as I know, my family lived in Madrid before migrating to America.

That left her a little thoughtful. She clicked the nail of her index finger against her teeth several times.

- Then I was completely mistaken about you, which doesn’t happen often. I was sure there was something of the Gael in you, to put it that way. And you wear the Tree of Life on your finger.

That elicited a laugh from me. A ring I had bought by chance barely a few hours before had created for her an image that wasn’t so far from the truth, though not for the reasons she thought.

- Well, you’re not as wrong as you think. Look, to be totally honest, my full name is Gabriel Benjamín Hidalgo O’Halloran. My mother’s family, the O’Hallorans, come from Downpatrick. So you sensed that, I guess, which still strikes me as remarkable. You must be some kind of witch.

Again she laughed like before and offered her hand for me to shake.

- Nice to meet you, then, mate. Very rare to meet a true knight nowadays, although perhaps I should say a fenian, in this context. Because knights and witches usually ended up killing each other, whereas fenians and wise women did not.

I shook her hand and smiled back at her. It was very small and fit almost completely inside mine, and I’m not a particularly big guy. Her allusion to old Irish folklore, King Fionn and his warriors, in counterposition with the folklore of Europe’s mainland and its knights was very interesting to me.

- No, not at all. The pleasure of meeting a wise woman is always entirely mine. Especially if, in addition to being wise, she’s as pretty as you are.

She gave me an odd look, her head a bit cocked to the side.

- They say flattery will open any door. I hope you’re not thinking talk like that will open certain doors for you.

But she said it with a crooked smile, so I knew I hadn’t offended her or anything. She ordered a shot of whiskey and lit up a cigarette. As she smoked with her eyes half-closed and taking her time to inhale and exhale long plumes of smoke that spiraled wildly before dissipating, I took the chance to take a more detailed look and burn her image on my memory like a snapshot in one of those “Kodak moments” commercial. I’m an idiot and corny, I know.

This time her hair was loose, like the night before, but I could see a few thin braids disseminated without apparent order in her mane. I could see she didn’t wear much make up and one of her ears was pierced many times, whereas the other bore a single silver stud in the shape of a star. Besides the same black Docs she had worn the previous night, she wore another long dress like the one with the vine print, only unadorned burgundy this time, and rather faded denim jacket with a frayed neck and a hole in the right elbow. A silver choker with a yellow stone completed the picture.

The necklace itself, a complex filigree imitating some plant, possibly a vine or something similar. I thought that maybe it was mistletoe, but I had never seen that plant in my life, so I couldn’t be sure. The stone set in the middle was amber, I guessed, since I didn’t know many stones that were colored, well, amber. Although amber is really a resin, isn’t it? Not a stone. But I digress.

Looking at her like that I thought that I couldn’t remember ever seeing a girl as beautiful as her, without more adornments than those she wore, though I know many people would say she looked kinda like a homeless person, among them most of my friends and family.

The itch behind my sternum came back en force and my left leg wouldn’t stop shaking due to my nerves, almost like a dog that’s having his ear scratched.

She opened her eyes and looked at me as she let out a huge cloud of bluish smoke.

- Why are looking at me like that? Is there something on my face?

Her comment took me by surprise and I got a bit embarrassed, so I tried to make up some excuse.

- I wasn’t looking at you. I was looking at your necklace. Interesting design.

She stuck her tongue out at me like a little girl and I could see that she wore a small silver dumb-bell through it.

- That’s funny. I thought that look meant that you were too chicken to ask me something you want to ask me.

- Really? And what would I be too chicken to ask you, pray tell me?

- To come back to your flat with you, idiot. What else?

This girl sure didn’t play games. And of course, the first thing I thought was “today’s my lucky day,” although the thought went more along the lines of “I’m gonna get laid!”

Immediately after, I thought “my luck can’t be that good, this girl must be easier than hitting the water falling from the side of a boat,” but I was half-drunk and on the other side of the world, not to mention alone. All of which meant that there was, in effect, no choice to be made. From the moment that she spoke to me, it was already decided that I would take her home if the opportunity arose, though it seemed that she would end up taking me home.

I downed the rest of my pint in one gulp, jumped to my feet and offered my hand to Siobhan with the best smile I could produce, hoping to emulate, even if just for a little bit, Han Solo and his lopsided grin.

- Shall we go?

She gave me her hand with a predatory smile and sparkles in her green eyes (weren’t they blue?), put out her cigarette and, taking me up on my clichéd performance, answered as she smoothed the wrinkles in her dress with her other hand as if it were a costly exclusive design.

- I thought you’d never ask, dear.