I Was Waiting For You by Maxim Jakubowski

Author:Maxim Jakubowski
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Accent Press
Published: 2010-03-24T16:00:00+00:00

LIFT ME UP

JACK AND ELEONORA CHECKED out of the Barcelona hotel just off Diagonal and hailed a cab which took them to the principal railway station where they boarded the local train going down the coast.

Forty minutes later they had arrived in Sitges. A popular beach resort which they both associated, albeit for somewhat different reasons, with Giulia. The tourist season was coming to an end, and already many of the restaurants facing the promenade were closed, shutters up for the winter, and the main stand which sold ice-creams, waffles, sweets in all colours and churroswas boarded up. The locals and visitors from the city paraded up and down the long walk until midnight. The first thing they noticed was the sheer number of pregnant women around. By next summer, there would be a logjam of prams and buggies joining the late night ramblers here.

Jack’s gaze was distant as they walked towards the gothic promontory formed by the old town fortifications from Napoleonic times, which separated the main shore from the San Sebastian area and, a stone’s throw beyond, the new leisureport. Between the cemetery on the hill and the port stood a rocky area where new apartments were being built all over the hills all the way to the railway line which bisected the town. Further up a succession of small beaches lay, a trio of narrow coves harbouring one of the town’s gay beaches as well as an unpoliced one where nudity was tolerated.

“You are very pensive,” Eleonora remarked.

“I know,” he answered, emerging from his private thoughts.

She looked up at him. Guessed.

“It’s here you came with her, isn’t it?” she asked even as she knew the answer. “That’s why she kept on mentioning Sitges in her letters to me.”

Jack nodded.

“She’s like an invisible third person in our relationship, isn’t she?” Eleonora pointed out. They were now descending the narrow stone steps separating the beach area from the recentlydeveloped pleasure harbour which was self-enclosed, and where the hotel they had booked into was situated.

“Same hotel?” she asked.

“Actually, no. We stayed in a small place in the town itself. All the places overlooking the sea were full. It was a very short notice trip for both of us.”

“How you say, it’s a small mercy,” Eleonora remarked.

They silently took the lift to the second floor, both too tired to walk up the stairs after walking miles that day. The windows of the long corridor at the back of the hotel looked onto a wall of rocks, where the cliff had been carved into to create space for the construction of the hotel, loose stones held back by a curtain of barbed wire.

After boiling some water for coffee, they settled on the balcony overlooking the marina port where a geometrical jungle of small boats spread out, some already mothballed for the coming colder season. Further out on the jetty wall, wild cats roamed. Muzak crept through the air as the parade of restaurants below their balcony came to life.

“Where do you want to eat?” Jack asked.

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