Esmé went to sleep but I woke up around 5 or 6 AM feeling poorly. The night before I'd decided to delay a bath when I saw the colour of the water, but now that it was morning I went ahead and even washed my hair.
Despite the circumstances, being up and about in a strange land when everyone else was sleeping was appealing, so I left the room to do a little exploring in the still-black morning. It was tricky not to wake Esmé since our door was obscured behind a folding red curtain which also covered the window, leading to a lot of wall groping.
Sitting outside, I could now hear the ocean. It sounded like it was next to the other side of the hotel. Since we came in at night, I wasn't really sure where it was. The sky was dark blue and I suspected a full moon. I got up to check and, as I walked around, I discovered I could hear the ocean everywhere, but I couldn't see a thing. It was still too dark.
I expected to walk off the sidewalk and into the Atlantic at any moment. So, I sat back down and tried to make my grouchy body comfortable. I wrote in my notebook and mused on why Esmé's Crest toothpaste tasted a little like fish. I described the hotel room as smelling like hard water, cheap soap, air anesthetic, and dirty laundry. I vowed to do laundry in the morning and nap the rest of the day. To me, our timing was perfect; Esmé could go see her friends while I was incapacitated. I definitely didn't feel like seeing anyone or doing anything.
The fresh air was helping, though. A foghorn sounded like a dome of thunder. I couldn't tell where it came from.
Even if I could find the beach, I felt unusual caution about being on it at night. Aside from being in the more crowded and unemployed area of Spain now, I didn't want to risk becoming prey while walking the Beach of Many Servicemen.
Just knowing the ocean was very, very near was enough. I sat at a little white table in a wide, scooped plastic chair, also white, and listened to the voices grow with the receding night. I've often wondered how far one could hear if everyone was asleep and every machine was turned off. Do we hear better for having to sort through the distracting noises or worse?
Some more cautious walking under my belt (whereupon I discovered a fence from where I was sure I could hear the ocean just beyond), I went back to bed, ostensibly to sleep, just when the phone rang with the C******s (the friends, pronounced C*** T**) wanting to know when D*****, whom Esmé had known (and known) in high school, could come by and pick us up.
Everything had to be plotted carefully around the children, of which there was J***** at age three and R***** at almost exactly age one. I fell into a stupor at last and was asleep by the time Esmé left after very considerately putting a tray of breakfast on the desk.
The next time I woke up it was Esmé calling from a payphone near D***** and T****'s apartment (getting a phone was proving difficult for them but they would soon be moving to a different area of town) and wanting to know if they should come and get me. In some half-morphesiastic fashion I declined but stayed awake so I could get out and let the maid tidy the room while I stayed fragile nearby. After sleeping all day I was particularly keen on new sheets.
Although people were always coming and going, the hotel itself seemed uncrowded. Perhaps it would be full soon for the Easter holidays. I found the beach -- I was right in my original guess that it was on the other side of the rooms across from ours. I put one of Ellen's crystals in the seawall steps. The water was cold and the sand was sandy. I was a little hungry but didn't feel like messing with the restaurant. I kept an eye out for the maid and after she was gone (having left us extra toilet paper, how kind) I hung some wet clothes outside to dry and began several cutthroat games of solitaire.
That's about when Esmé showed up alone and we went for a meal. During our substandard french onion soup, Esmé told me T*** could drive us to Jerez where we could then take a plane to Madrid. Spending our last days relaxing in Madrid would be all the better if we didn't waste a day riding on the smoky train.
The hotel had a little tourist office, so we talked to the man there who told us that the bus for Jerez left at 8:00 and the later flight left around 15:00. Admittedly, I wasn't fond of either option, early morning bus then waiting or being driven after a day with other people, but Esmé assured me we that wouldn't have to spend the whole morning being social and could go over in the afternoon instead. There was an earlier flight I would have preferred (I've never been a loll-at-the-beach person for very long), but we had T***'s schedule to work around.
Not that I was ungrateful for the lift; I just didn't know what I was in for, only what I was into. (Keeping myself company in pretty Spain. The one thing Esmé and I agreed we had going for ourselves, at least in the beginning of knowing each other, was that being together was like "enhanced solitude.")
We were lazy until it was time for her to go back to her friends for dinner. I again chose to stay behind, the cumulative effects of illness having meshed with the lack of interest in being sociable, or the lack of interest in the messy social situation of confronting a well-intentioned but non-vegetarian entrée as innocently prepared by the hostess. Truthfully, I preferred the rest and being able to stay in a non-American reverie as long as possible.
So, off Esmé went and I had a grand time watching television. (Yes, not American at all.) The German version of "Wheel of Fortune" was a prime hoot. Talk about Deutsch stereotypes-- the set was austere and the announcer as stern as a headmistress. After some international CNN, I went to the restaurant and requested the whiskey ice cream cake I had seen on the menu earlier that day.
While I waited (I began to think they were preparing it from scratch when 20 minutes passed), I saw two young children dining with an older man who was probably their grandfather. Suddenly the little girl stood up and looked very embarrassed. Obviously unable to control herself, she began coughing hard while her brother and grandfather watched with hard expressions that seemed to say they were willing to endure this inconvenience for only so long. Soon she threw up a little on the floor and nearly started to cry with humiliation. The grandfather put his napkin on the table, spoke to the young boy, signed the check, and started to walk off. The girl followed. Before she got very far, a waiter walked past her with a plate of bread held just at the level of her nose. And she sneezed, The waiter glanced down, used two-thirds of second to come to a decision, and took the bread over to the table which had ordered it.
My cake arrived and I took it back to the room. It was absolutely excellent.
Notes
- Photos from the trip (temporarily unavailable - need to move them to Flickr)
- Trip report started April 1994, finished 10 January 1995, with minor revisions (spellcheck, privacy considerations) 9 July 2004
- Regarding those privacy considerations, "Esmé" was not the name nor the implied gender of the person traveling with me.
- I was 24 when I wrote this trip report and my writing style was going through an especially stuffy phase. Forgive me. I'd edit it, but I can't stand to read it.
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