The first morning in Barcelona was bitter, the sun breaking when it should, and the air vibrant, clean and warm, the morning light striking the worn cobblestone streets, the squares, glinting off the sea and giving the city the look of a newly wed who believes all the compliments paid to her.  The day, by all accounts, was brilliant. The tourists were exuberant for Spain, Barcelona, the liveliness and the noise, the bad wine and cathedrals, the history. The sounds of the morning, the vendors, the greetings, activity on the street, reached me through my second story window.  That was the problem. Jet lagged and hung over, I had the curtains pulled, the windows open for a breeze.   I passed the day in a stupor, drinking iced drinks, eating aspirin, taking a hot shower then watching television programs I didn’t understand, napping.  Finally, evening, and I was feeling slightly better after a bottle of Pepto Bismol and two shots of whiskey.

 “Barcelona is not a city to see by sunlight,” Thomas said thickly, walking into my room uninvited.   It had been years, nearly two decades, and Thomas, fatter now, moved through my darkened room like an obese shadow.   He spoke with flourish, as though arguing over a parking space rightfully his.  Barcelona is a city of night, he informed me.  It is a city of people and collusion, liquor, imbroglio. It was a city of dark success, a city of grand mistakes.  A city seeking truth over functionality, a city concerned with establishing a story of structure, continuity. 

            “Up, up,” he said, ripping the sheets from the bed. “Go, go.”

I took a shower, shaved, then shared a bottle of wine with Thomas.   The reunion had begun.

            They were all there when Thomas and I arrived.  It was a lifetime since all seven of us were in one room.  But finally, all seven of us together again, old friends, the times, the time we had, nearly twenty years ago. 

            The tavern we met at was nothing, an embarrassment of a place, small and dark and hidden in the alleys near the cathedral.  It was a place only those in the know knew of, or people knowing nothing somehow found. 

            A group again, years, years it was, and all of us having already started drinking.  The seven of us were led to a table by the proprietor, a short, lean man with a demeanor of buttered leather. His hair was smoothly combed straight back and his eyes had the color of calm waters.  We all instantly disliked him.

 “No, no!” we said in unison, seeing the table he had for us, a table set for dinner, for food.   We were in no mood for food.  “Drinks only, no food!  My God, we’re watching our weight!”  Vangelis patted the large belly that hung over his belt.  Henri massaged his jowls.  We all had changed, been weathered by seasons and life, aged.  “Drinks only!” we said.

            The table, crowded with wine and water glasses, sat only four. We guided Bulent, the largest and oldest of us, to a chair.  I seated myself next to him. Emmanuel sat to my right with Henri to his. Fredrik, Vangelis, and Thomas stood, mused Henri’s hair, lovingly patted Bulent’s heavy shoulders. 

With an empty glass, Henri made a toast.  “To that summer!” he toasted, his voice being drowned by the shouting.  “And Bulent, that devil, that goddamn sweet devil!”  Bulent smiled his wan smile, saying nothing.  He was one of little words, speaking rarely, but when speaking, speaking with words of great import.

            Vangelis, thick bearded and two sizes smaller than the rest of us--excepting his stomach, which was two sizes larger than the rest of ours--jabbed me twice in the ribs and demanded the tie I wore.  “Blow your nose elsewhere,” I said. 

“No!” he said.  “It is my tie, I lent it to you.  But with that ugly face, those red eyes, you’ve insulted my tie!  You’ve insulted me!  Take it off!”   The proprietor was out on the floor.  “Wine?” he asked in a controlled tone.  “Beer?” he said.  “You are Greek, yes?” he asked.  “German?”  

            “White,” Vangelis and Fredrik said. 

            “Mother of Jesus, no!”  Emmanuel shouted, as though warning us of impeding disaster.  Emmanuel was a man who woke too early for all of us, ate raw carrots, garlic, dandelions, greens, and drank flax seed oil; he looked the best of us but had been the least successful.  Three marriages and two failed businesses, Emmanuel always graced God for his health.  It was all he had.  “Spanish white wine has been known to kill!” he said.  “I myself was on death’s bed once due to the vile poison.”

            “Red wine!” we all demanded. “Yes, red.  And beer!  Whiskey, and bring the menu!” we said. “Food, my God, bring food,” all but Bulent, opulent, old and quiet, said.  “We need nutriment!” Weddings, children, divorce, women, children, businesses,

bankruptcy.  At thirty, life is an open door; fifty, the welcome mat is worn.  It had been some time, but together, we were ourselves again.

“Yes! Yes! Here, please, our specials,” the proprietor commandingly called out, somehow collecting the menus before anyone had a chance to look at them. “Soup for everyone, right away!”

            “No soup!” the table unanimously responded. “No food!  Drinks!” We were happy.  The city was with us, its triumphs, its tragedies, its memories of others, histories, Franco, Gaude, Orwell being shot in the neck and living to speak of it, memories of those punished for having awaken before noon.  With a few drinks under our belts, our poor Spanish, and pockets of cash, all problems were solved. The plan was to sleep the day and then drink the night, the city, my God, Spain! 

            “What has brought us here?” Thomas asked. 

            “More importantly,” I countered, “how do the Spanish manage to fit those quails in the can?” It was a feat I had yet to comprehend. 

            The conversation at the table died with my question, then Vangelis asked if anyone had witnessed the eating of one such quail.

No one had.

A toast was made to the phenomenon, the bird in the can.  Arguments erupted over how the Spanish managed to squeeze the whole bird into such a small can.

“They capture the birds by getting them drunk on bread crumbs soaked in vodka,” Emmanuel said. 

            “A bird so dumb needs to be canned,” Henri proclaimed.  “How can a bird be so dumb?”

            With the sea and all of us together again, the first time in years, the first time since Famagusta, the only time since Famagusta, we were happy.  Famagusta. That time, the short period, days really, that we had spent together. The Greeks, Cyprus, the island, swimming and our Bulent, our patron saint, struck by a motorcycle and sent head over heels, sent cartwheeling nearly ten feet! Huge, sweet Bulent struck by a motorcycle and sent reaching toward the sun, flying! A fat Icarus minus the wax wings! A sight like no other sight, mythology, a fairytale, a flying Bulent!  Huge and sailing through the dry, radiant air! Landing fifteen feet away, a strange, soft thump as he hit the ditch, the ground, and all of us, stunned silent, the motorcycle broken in half, hissing, the rider, magically, unscratched.  Christ, it could have been me! each of us was privately thinking, completely sober and wishing a drink, unbelieving the accident. 

            Emmanuel said, “Remember that summer in Crete--”

            “We were in Cyprus,” Fredrik corrected.

            “--remember how I carried Bulent from the ditch after he learned to fly?”  

            “No, no, no,” Vangelis countered, standing for the occasion and wagging a bread stick at Emmanuel. “No, no.  You are remembering with a memory of that bottle of yours, with a pickled mind.   You may be thin, but it was I who carried Bulent.  You went for the doctor, recall?  You said, ‘Should I go for a doctor?’ and I said, ‘Yes. You get a doctor while I carry Bulent from the ditch.’  There is no debate on this.  It was I who carried Bulent.”

            Tempers flared, conflicting recollections, everyone but Bulent standing.   A plate was broken, chairs overturned.  

            “Here, here!” the proprietor yelled at us, pointing toward a table he’d set, a new, larger table.

            “What is this?” Thomas asked.

             “Move, move!” Henri commanded, but he had found an open bottle of wine, the first for the table. He drank, we drank.  Another bottle appeared. 

            “Here!” the proprietor called again.  “The new table is ready. The food, please, come sit.”

            “What?” Thomas, Vangelis, and I cried.  “What is this?”

            “Sit,” the proprietor said.  “Food.”

            “No food!” we demanded, but the new table had the wine poured, the soup placed, and yes, the table, it was larger, better.

            We helped Bulent up from his chair, the silent ark, helped him move from table to table, placed him at the head, the oracle, the wisdom of quiet fortitude, Bulent, that sweet devil!

            Vangelis, downing an entire glass of wine, crossed himself and said:   “The motorcycle, who would have seen it the way it was racing, and the fact that Bulent didn’t kill the thing. Kill the entire island.  The Turks have everything to fear once Bulent is angered.”

            “The Turks had yet to come. The island,” I said, “it was its own then.  The Turks were later.”

            “Even so,” Vangelis said, with a dismissive wave of his hand. 

            “Ah, but I remember,” Emmanuel said, starting on his third bottle of wine.  He was dark skinned, pleased by the fact he never had to tan. He lifted his hand.  “Listen,” he said, but we didn’t.  We spoke over him, shouting about our marriages, business, children and the unhappiness common to all who live.  Emmanuel was a man who would wait when waiting was necessary.  But with us, the benefit was not served.  To force an issue brought nothing either, and so he waited, waited till his moment was ripe, the promise of being understood.

            We drank and talked and drank and ate the soup.  It was bouillabaisse and we all agreed it was terrible then asked for more and finally Emmanuel stood up and said:  “I remember Bulent getting hit by the car and, as history will attest, no, none of you were there. None of you.  You might have wished you were, but that is not how things happened.”

            A war broke out, Emmanuel against the world.

            “What has happened,” Fredrik said, attempting to command the stage by pounding his fist on the table.  Plates, glasses, jumped. 

            Henri asked me, “I ordered steak, didn’t I?” 

            Thomas’ attention was on the table next to us; he was trying to charm a Spanish girl thirty years his younger with his Spanish of Mexican dialect.  The girl kept correcting him.

            “What has happened,” Fredrik loudly repeated,  “is that you’ve assumed the facts without evidence.   Did you all see Bulent get hit by the car?”

            “Yes!” we all cried.

            “No,” Fredrik, always the lawyer, always the one with perfect teeth, said.  “Henri, you were at the hotel with heat stroke.  Vangelis was still on the beach.  Emmanuel, you were at the doctor being treated for the case of crabs you received from the South African schoolteacher.  And you two,” he said, pointing to Thomas and myself, “your attention was on getting the wine bottle uncorked.  Yes, you heard Bulent get hit, perhaps you two saw him flying through the air--though I sincerely doubt it--and maybe, just maybe, you were quick enough to turn and see him land some forty feet away in the ditch.  But you did not see him get hit by the truck.” A cry went up, indignation.  Vangelis was to his feet. The table tipped, wine spilt.  Henri launched into a tirade.  The salads came, causing yet another roar. 

            “Who ordered this?” I cried.  “Send it back.  Lettuce, any greens, cause cancer, send it back.” But we’d already started eating it.  “That was the worst salad I’ve ever eaten,” Henri said, taking my salad from me and eating it.  “I can’t allow you to eat this.”

            “That summer,” Vangelis said.

            “To Famagusta!” I cried, raising my glass in a toast.   “To Cyprus!”

Thomas smiled at all this, the stories, the noise, the drink, the group together, he smiled with the corners of his eyes wrinkling, laughed a corrupt and inviting laugh like one reminding another of the hilarious time so-and-so’s half-brother was pushed from a window.

            “What is important is that Bulent was OK,” Vangelis, the talker, said.  Once he

began, the words seemed never to stop.  “Not a scratch, can you believe.  The flying Bulent kills a truck and comes away with not a scratch.”

            “But the driver,” Emmanuel said, tsk, tsking.  “The driver, he was in bad shape.”

            “It was a woman,” I said.  “And she was killed.  Remember, we were all down at the police station right after the accident to give an account. I saw her body laid out on the gurney, her neck broken like a chicken bone.”

            “No, no,” Fredrik said.  “Yes.  Yes, we all were at the police station, but that was for something else, some other crime.  We spent that night there.  In jail.  But that was not for the accident.  The driver of the truck was a boy, fourteen, fifteen, and he was OK.  Recall?  The truck, the truck was still able to run.  He even offered to drive Bulent to the hospital, but Bulent refused any help!  A gentle tank, my Bulent!”

            “Then why were we at police station?” Thomas asked.  “In jail?”

            Much talk and more drinking and we all remember being at the police station but  couldn’t remember why we’d been at the police station and been jailed for the night.

            “But you all are forgetting!” Vangelis cried, excited that his memory was what it was.  “You are forgetting.  That night, remember?  At the hotel?   Bulent coming into the bar and jumping up onto the bar and shouting, ‘I am the man who learned to fly!’”

            “No, no, no,” Henri said, standing then quickly sitting, too drunk to stand. “It was Thomas.  Thomas stood on the bar and said, ‘Here comes the man who learned to fly!’ when Bulent entered.  Remember?”

            “Was that the night the bartender--”

            “Yes, no, no it was the next night.”

            “--what was his name? That man he pointed out--”

            “Yes, yes!” Fredrik cried.  “That’s right, that man, he was--”

            “A French actor,” Emmanuel said, “famous, at least at the time.  Have you seen anything he’s been in?”

            “But that woman,” I said.  “The one he was with, what was she, Venezuelan?”

            Then Bulent, silent, wise Bulent, placed his hands firmly on the table as if to steady himself, leaned his old large face forward and said in his clear, heavy voice:

            “That woman,” he said, his voice sharp and cutting the room’s noise as wind cuts smoke.  His voice commanded the room.  Attention was to be paid.  “My God,” he said. “That woman,” he said, speaking slowly, carefully enunciating each word. His large face was somber, sincere.  “Understand, I have seen women.  But never, never in my life have I seen beauty of that kind.”

            Fredrik and Vangelis, both standing, sat.  In amazement, we had all turned to Bulent, this mountain, this man of great, heavy shoulders and smoky brown eyes, this man who was speaking to us of a beauty he had never witnessed before, a beauty he hadn’t witnessed since.

            “That summer, the entire time, she was there,” Bulent said, his eyes a heavy sand, deep and knowing.  He turned his hands on the table, his palms facing up as if to hold something of great weight, something that had yet to be placed there.  “She had lived, true.  Her days were past,” he said. “But this woman, still.  To think of her.  What beauty she had even then. What beauty she must have had,” he said.  “Never in my life.”

            With his words, it was present, that moment, Famagusta, that summer, the sea, the bright water reflecting the sun, flashing with the rise of a wave, then leveling, dulling, then flashing again, the sun cutting the currents, and that Venezuelan woman moving confidently through the hotel bar, knowing what she knew, the island, the history and what was to come, the Greek houses that lined the hills and sharp, sweet smells of growth, of fruit, the rocks and the sand against bare feet, and the warm, clear nights with an air of dry, soft velvet.  I recall all this, so many years ago, a time, a youth. A time when we were others, not as we were now.

            We were captivated, torn, as one is on hearing the death of someone somewhat near to you.

Then it was over.  Bulent was silent again.

Finished, he leaned back in his chair, and the image his words had brought forth slowly faded, a time now lost. 

            The moment broke; a plate was dropped, the kitchen door kicked open.   We were in the present again.  “Here, here!” the proprietor said, bring our food, more wine. He placed the food and drink on the table before us. 

            “What is this?” Henri shouted when a steak was placed in front of him.  “I did not order steak.  I don’t eat meat!” he cried.  “Take it away!”  But he was already eating it and it was good.  He said it was good. “That was the worst steak I’ve ever eaten,” Henri said, once he’d finished.  He took my steak from me and started eating it.  “I can’t allow you to eat this,” he said.

            More wine arrived, red.  Noise and food surrounded us. 

            “We asked for white,” Emmanuel said.  “Take it away.  No, leave it here and bring some more red as well.”

            “To our time here, to Barcelona,” Vangelis said, standing unsteadily for the toast. His voice was breaking, emotional.  He was near tears, happy to be together again.

We had committed no great action, shown no heroism; we had never needed to.  Our lives had never called for it, never warranted anything beyond surviving the mundane treachery of the day to day.  With the noise of the moment engulfing us, the laughter, the clanking of plates being stacked one upon another, the tavern’s dim, warm air and the choking smell of close spaces, crowded bodies, and cooked food, I stood, raised my glass to Vangelis, to the others.   Outside awaited the night with its city of dark coolness, its deep, moving waters ending where the land began, its fountains dedicated to issues and heroes once relevant, its half completed cathedral, buildings, its boulevards sloping toward the sea, its alleys, and its youth making statements, vows, they didn’t fully understand.

I toasted.  “To Barcelona,” I said.   There is the life we aspire to, strive for.  Then there is our life.  “To us,” I said, saluting these people, my closest friends.  These total strangers.