Day 214 - Barcelona Story

Barcelona Story

Matthew Ryan Fischer

The girl at the counter was laughing as she talked about her summer in Spain. She said she had studied Spanish but didn’t really speak any when she and her friends had decided to visit Spain the previous summer during a break from school. She expected to learn. She thought being surrounded and inundated would force her to learn. Instead, they spoke too fast. The accent got to her. She couldn’t follow the conversations. She had been to Mexico and thought she had heard Spanish before, but the Spanish that was spoken in Spain was very different from the Spanish that was spoken in Mexico.

“’S’s are pronounced like ‘th’s. It was always ‘Barthelona’ not ‘Barselona.’”

One of her friends had come back and spoke near perfect Spanish afterwards, but that was a different story.

The girl at the counter sounded like such an American. And she laughed about it. Oh, how she laughed about it. She didn’t care. She didn’t realize how ignorant she sounded or how innocent and young she really was. Being innocent and young was so beautiful sometimes. It was hard not to be charmed by innocence and youth. And the fact that she was beautiful in that childishly young way didn’t hurt either.

Randy knew she was young. He knew she was way too young for him. And usually he preferred a woman to a girl. She was definitely still a girl, even if she was old enough to be a woman. She just sounded so young with everything she said.

Randy never approached her. Never made advances. Never tried anything openly inappropriate. But he was listening in on her conversations. That was probably pretty inappropriate just by itself.

Randy didn’t know her name. She served him coffee and occasionally a bit of food, but for the most part he tried to order from the other employees. He didn’t want to speak to her. He didn’t want to come across as creepy or weird or as a dirty old man. He was sure every time he looked at her that she knew what he was thinking and looking at. He was embarrassed the proper amount. But more important than his inappropriate attraction to a girl at least fifteen years his junior was the fact that he didn’t want to destroy his inappropriate attraction to her. He knew the more he spoke directly to her, the more likely he was to have it destroyed. He didn’t want to ruin what was magic about her. If he knew who she actually was, then the youth and beauty would probably be too far outweighed by the youth and ignorance. Randy was far too old to be legitimately interested in youth and ignorance. There was no way she’d have anything of real note to say. There was no way she could actually relate to him. That he was sure of. Or pretty sure of anyway.

She stood by the counter with a coworker and some customers that must have been friends of hers. One had a child with her. The girl at the counter made silly faces and played with the little boy. Randy decided that someday the girl at the counter would make a great mother. That was all it took, seeing her take part in one simple conversation, and he could write a whole life story for her. Randy was like that.

She laughed and laughed as they all talked about their travels and troubles with foreign languages and foreign lands. Her laugh was so bright and uninhibited and full of life. It was hard not to fall in love with her with a laugh like that. Someone said “Kendra” and she replied. Randy didn’t need to know that. He would have preferred not to have heard that. He decided to pretend that he hadn’t heard it. But after that, hearing the rest of the conversation was a little bit harder, and hearing her laugh had lost a little bit of magic as well. It was all a little too real. She was just a little too loud. A little too young. A little too obnoxious. Still, he liked to hear her. It was a lovely voice. If he closed his eyes and just focused on the voice, he could almost fool himself into believing she was still just the girl at the counter that had trouble pronouncing words in Spanish.