Everything All Right
If there’s one thing I love about travel, it’s having a “day without schedule”. After getting up, I took a walk around the Argüelles neighborhood and in the Parque del Oeste. I only heard about Spain as a “beach destination” before. There are no beaches in Madrid, of course — the nearest one is about 200 miles away. But just one walk in the morning in an ordinary (not spectacular) neighborhood gave me an impression of “the exotic”. Much more so than Paris, Vienna, Rome or Helsinki.
I ended up my walk in Mur Cafe, a small, cozy place in Plaza Cristino Martos. I wanted to go just for a coffee and croissant, but the barista convinced me to try their carrot cake.
After I ordered, my mind cleared up — and I felt that strange cloud of anxiety I tried to disperse with my morning walk started descending again. Still no message from Niki. It’s five minutes after 10am. If she fell asleep early, she must be awake by now. Could something have happened to her? I catch myself thinking that it could ever have been better if something had happened to her, rather than having spent the night with someone else… But spend the night with someone else? Why am I even thinking about this; it never happened before. I have no reason to doubt. And yet, I can’t help it.
“Everything all right,” the barista asks has he approaches my table with the carrot cake and coffee. I remember the Toni guy’s comment about watching my face. My table is just a few meters away from the counter and I’m facing it, so he must have had quite a good view of my morning melodrama. I’m wondering if he too was trying to read my thoughts.
“Yes, thank you,” I answer. The phone in front of me vibrates and a message appears. It’s Niki.
“Good morning, honey.” I turn it the display side down. It keeps vibrating as more messages start coming in.
“Everything all right,” I repeat. Perhaps more for myself than for anyone else.
