Gaudi Afternoon Read Online Free PDF Page A

panic about death, her own or those near to her like Raoul first and then Eduardo, she would begin to eat as if possessed: ordering enormous meals of corn and potatoes dripping with butter, whole pigs wrapped in leaves, thick fruit drinks and entire bakeries of bread and pies. I, who was never to outgrow my childhood appellation, the Miniature, was revolted and strangely moved by stories of my mother’s gross appetite.
    I began to get hungry myself and rather bored. I found myself wondering if the man on the phone had said the first address that came into his head. If so, I was in for a tedious afternoon.
    Still, it was Frankie’s money, and if she wanted to waste my hundred-dollar-a-day fee stationing me outside La Pedrera, it was up to her. It wasn’t as if I hadn’t had many slow afternoons in my life: waiting for a ride in Afghanistan with two teaspoons of water in my canteen; waiting at the Romanian border while the police went through every single article I owned; waiting in a dusty jail in Tucson when I was sixteen for my mother to show up and claim me as a runaway.
    I took photos for two hours and then I ran out of film. I saw mothers with children, well-dressed Spanish secretaries and bosses, workmen in blue and lots of students. I saw couples and families but mostly individuals just going about their business. Almost everyone who went in came out again, until around two when the businesses closed for the siesta and some of the residents of La Pedrera came home for lunch.
    I didn’t see a “regular” American-looking man in jeans, though I saw plenty of teenagers in pre-washed Levis and more than a few tee-shirts and sweatshirts with words in English.
    Finally, about three, when traffic in and out of the building seemed to slow to almost nothing, I decided I could risk a short break. I paid my bill and put away María the Miniature and her mother and then I dashed up Gràcia a few blocks, across the Avinguda Diagonal, to a quiet street off the Carrer Major. Carmen tended to work through the closing hours of the siesta because that was the only time many women could come to her hairdressing salon. If I were lucky she would not only cut my hair but offer me some refreshments and some gossip.
    She was shampooing an older woman when I came in, but rushed over nevertheless and, with wet, sudsy hands, embraced me.
    â€œCassandra, you’re so inconvenient,” she said happily. “And that turban tells me you’re long overdue for my scissors. Sit down, right away. My hands itch when I look at you.”
    She’d said that the first time we’d met a year or so before, and I’d taken her at her word. We’d had two weeks together that neither of us would ever forget, but that neither was tempted to think was any more than a fling. Carmen’s main mission in life was, after all, to cut hair. She had her mother to think about. And the pope.
    She handed over her shampooed customer to an assistant and ran her long manicured fingers through my gray-brown frizz which, liberated from its turban, flowed out like a cloud of fog over my shoulders. “I think I’m changing my mind about gray,” she announced. “When it’s under control [she emphasized control with a vicious snip of her scissors], it can be very elegant.”
    â€œYou know best, querida,’ I said. “But I don’t have much time. I’m staking out a building.”
    She sent an apprentice out for coffee and attacked my head with relish, talking non-stop. Under her hands my hair took on different fantastic shapes, like Gaudí buildings under construction. I watched her in the mirror: big-hipped and big-breasted, in high heels and stretch pants with a leopardskin print top, Carmen wore more make-up than Frankie or than any of my London friends would believe could look good on a face. Brown and gold eyeshadow matched her frosted bronze hair; her lips were a luscious peachy