Along the Way by Jacqueline Kolosov

Author:Jacqueline Kolosov
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Luminis Books, Inc.
Published: 2015-09-15T00:00:00+00:00

Piper

AFTER THE BINGE in Pamplona, it was heaven to get back on the road. With each step, my pores seemed to let go of some new toxin: alcohol, caffeine; all those rich meals. It was like shedding dead skin.

Not that getting out of Pamplona was the easiest thing in the world. The Spanish loved their siestas, but the traffic on a Monday morning was as bad as it was in Chicago, and then there were Tessa’s hangdog backward glances as we made our way through the Old City. “I’m really going to miss that masseuse,” she kept saying, jostling her rucksack. “I wonder if there’ll be someone as good in Burgos. That’s the next major town, isn’t it?”

“Burgos is still days away,” I told her. “Besides, don’t you think you should get with the moment? I mean, you were the one who told us all to live in the now, right?

“I did say that, didn’t I?” she said, her pink fingernail polish glinting in the light.

If someone had told me, back in Paris, that I’d be spending a week solo with Tessa, I might have bolted. Tessa was my friend, yes; I loved her, sure; but not until a few days ago had I been really comfortable with her. Maybe Tessa was right about miracles then. And maybe this was Milagro Number One unless Dirk’s pony had been that, though like I told Tessa, ponies were native to the Pyrenees.

ABOUT FOUR HOURS into our walk, after belting out “Girls Just Want to Have Fun” (in honor of Dirk), “After the Ball,” in honor of Tessa’s Gran, and teaching Tessa the words to “Beast of Burden,” a far more fitting song given the situation—‘I’ll never be your beast of burden/My back is broad but it’s a hurting’—we made our way over yet another hillside dotted with windmills, their vapor trails rising into the blue sky. After the uphill came a sloping downhill which landed us in a plot of fenced-in ground containing what must have once been a small, pink house. Its walkway had crumbled, but the stone walls still held firm, and the roof, of some sort of clay tile, was now overgrown with moss and vines.

“It’s like a secret garden,” Tessa said, beckoning me towards the faded green door. “Look: daisies, bellflowers, primroses; and over here, gooseberries.” We slid the fruit from its green stem. The berries were both sweet and sour, the pips bitter, the juice warm.

Here, the air was heavy with the scent of flowers and overripe fruit and something less pleasant, a dead animal or some rotting plants. I photographed the vines laden with pink flowers twining around the disintegrating fence, a bicycle rusting beside a woodpile, and the hundred shades of green moss along a tree trunk, then turned towards the house, walked closer, determined to get a close-up of the inside seen through the cracked windows.

“It’s all so beautiful and sad,” Tessa said dreamily. “I wonder what happened to the owners, why the house was abandoned.

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