(Day 7)

Marielle and I are sitting on a bench in a fashionable part of Barcelona. Our trip is on the verge of coming to an end, and we have that feeling, the wanting-to-see-everything-while-it's-still-near feeling. We are sitting on a bench with our guidebook, planning for everything that remains to be seen. It is around eight thirty am, and we have been here for a few minutes.

Marielle is eating a ham and cheese sandwich, and we are both drinking cortos. Someone is playing opera. We can hear it in the distance, softly at first. The voice announces that her mother is dead. She was killed at night. The woman recounts how she found the house of her birth burning. With her mother dead, the woman was completely alone and felt that she was surrounded by nothingness.

As the music builds in passion and volume, we find the window. It is stained glass and sun lit. When the woman's story ends, we have finished our cortos but not the planning. Marielle looks at me without saying anything. I say, "shall we?" Without a plan, we start walking.