Second Bloom의 모든 챕터: 챕터 11 - 챕터 20

Barcelona in September is a different city from the Barcelona in any other month.The tourists don't disappear — they never fully disappear — but they thin out enough that the city remembers what it is without an audience. The light changes too, the way Valentina told Ethan it would: longer in the late afternoon, coming in at a lower angle that turns the Eixample (the grid-planned district in central Barcelona, its name meaning 'expansion' in Catalan) facades the color of old honey. The ramblas (the tree-lined pedestrian boulevards that run through the city's center) fill up with locals again. The restaurants stop printing menus in four languages and go back to the chalkboard specials that the owners actually want to cook.Valentina has finished her ROTC summer exercise — two weeks in the field outside Zaragoza (a city in northeastern Spain, about two hundred miles west of Barcelona), the last significant training block before her service commitment begins post-graduation — and has co

His flight back to Washington is Friday at two p.m. They have coffee on Friday morning at a place near the hotel — a small café on Carrer del Consell de Cent (a street in the Eixample district, its name meaning 'Street of the Council of One Hundred,' a reference to Barcelona's medieval city council) that Valentina chose because it is quiet at nine a.m. and the coffee is good and she wanted one more hour that didn't feel like a countdown. It feels like a countdown anyway. She is aware of this and accepts it as the honest condition of the morning. "Tell me something about Barcelona I wouldn't find in a guidebook," Ethan says, wrapping both hands around his cortado (a coffee drink made with equal parts espresso and warm milk, slightly less milk than a latte — common across Spain and Latin America). Valentina thinks about this seriously, the way she thinks about questions that deserve

He texts the next morning at eight forty-five: Last night was the best three hours I've had in Barcelona. Or anywhere, recently. Thank you for the high ground. Valentina reads this at the kitchen table with her first coffee, still in the oversized t-shirt she sleeps in, hair not yet dealt with, and feels something she has been carefully not naming for six months settle into a shape she can no longer pretend is professional interest. She writes back: Barcelona rewards the people who look at it properly. You looked at it properly. His reply takes four minutes, which she does not time: Does that mean I get to see more of it? She sets the phone down. Picks it up. Types: You have two more days. I'll make them worth the trip. Sends it before she can edit it into something safer. The three dots appear immediately. Then: I was hoping you'd say that. 

The restaurant he chose for dinner is in La Latina (one of Madrid's oldest neighborhoods, known for its medieval streets, tapas bars, and the Sunday El Rastro flea market — rastro means 'trail' or 'trace' in Spanish), a place that has been open since 1725 and lists this fact on its menu not as a boast but as a statement of intent. Sobrino de Botín (officially the world's oldest restaurant according to the Guinness Book of World Records, famous for its roasted suckling pig — cochinillo asado — and lamb — cordero — cooked in wood-burning ovens). "You researched this," Valentina says, looking at the menu. "I research everything," Ethan says. "It's a problem." "It's not a problem," she says. "It means you take things seriously." "My brothers say it means I can't relax." "Can you?" He considers this with an honesty she has come

She graduates on a Friday in late June, in the Aula Magna (the main ceremonial hall of the Universitat de Barcelona — universitat means 'university' in Catalan — a grand nineteenth-century space with high ceilings and the particular solemnity of a room that has been used for important occasions for a hundred and fifty years) of the Universitat de Barcelona, in a gown that is slightly too long and shoes that are exactly right. Rosa is in the third row. Valentina sees her when she walks in with the procession — the graduates filing in two by two with the shuffling dignity of people who are not quite sure what to do with their hands — and finds her immediately, the way you find the one face you are specifically looking for in any room. Rosa is in her good coat, the navy one she wears for occasions, and she is sitting very straight and looking at the stage with an expression Valentina has never seen on her mother's face b