The Rain in Spain Read Online Free PDF Page A

and shook his head. “ I’m in deep shit if I don’t bring you home soon for a visit, but you? I was her last unmarried son. She loves you already.”
    Magda wished that could be true, but then why was there such a heavy weight of words unspoken when she came home to him? She wiped her plate clean with the last of the fries, scraping up the dregs of the sweet and sour tomato ketchup that echoed like home in her mouth.
    The old man in the cap next to Javi asked if they wanted to smoke hash with him and they laughed and shook their heads no . She nodded at the bartender for the tab. He laid it in front of them and she looked at Javi.
    He lifted an eyebrow. “You got that?” His grin invited her in on the joke.
    Yes, he’d learned. And changed. She forgot that sometimes, how much he’d changed for her. She smiled at him, and when his hand brushed her cheek, she leaned into it for a moment. Then paid for them both and grabbed Javi by the hand, pulling him from the bar.
    There was so much more she still wanted to show him.
    She had a place in mind, though she wasn’t entirely sure where she’d been when she’d spotted it that morning. The narrow alleys of the barrio twisted and turned and cut through residential blocks between the more major streets, hiding places only the locals knew about. She held Javi’s hand in hers, thick warm fingers wrapped around her smaller ones, and squeezed it when he got impatient, wondering aloud if she knew where they were going.
    “Nope.” And kept walking. She felt every muscle in his body tense next to her, a tightening in the atmosphere around a man who did not wander . But he kept walking with her.
    The alleys were quieter than the main roads, frequently leaving them the only pedestrians in sight as they passed arched gateways that led to hidden courtyard gardens. They passed one where the music of falling water escaped past thick walls, and she stopped to look.
    “C’mon, don’t. That’s private.” Javi tugged at her as she wrapped a hand around one of the wrought iron rails. The white marble fountain inside the courtyard was small, two bowls in a pyramid with water trickling from the smaller to the larger. Plain white benches and large planters bursting with riots of green surrounded the fountain, covering parts of the intricately-tiled mosaic floor.
    “If they wanted it to be private, this would be a door, not a gate.”
    She stayed at the courtyard gate for another minute, just to prove her point, but felt like a jerk the entire time. Javi’s good manners and politeness and preference for knowing how to behave properly at all times were character traits she loved but couldn’t match. Her emotions flashed like a disco ball against the steady glow of Javi’s calm. When she stepped away from the gate, he fell into matching strides with her, letting her lead although she bet the urge to Google-map their stroll was eating at him.
    She knew their intended destination was close. Something about the curve of the buildings, second story balconies nearly kissing across the alley above their heads. A knock and the grating slide of metal on metal caught her ear. A door opened and closed twenty feet ahead of them.
    A detour from her end goal, but what was the point of travel if you couldn’t step off the beaten path when a mysterious door beckoned? That was the heart of her passion, the lure of the unknown-but-real. The dirty, battered real world of people she didn’t understand, but would try to, when they let her catch a glimpse of their lives beyond the polished surface.
    She grinned at Javi, who pulled his eyebrows together, giving himself two tiny vertical lines that she always wanted to soothe away with her thumbs. He leaned back against her hands, reluctant but still following her lead as she walked right up to the sheet metal door with the tiny riveted shutter at eye level and knocked hard.
    When the little shutter opened and eyes peered out at them, she plastered her most