The Corner Table

The street air slipped like a clean slash between the thick heat of the kitchen and the smell of black tobacco still clinging to the wooden ceiling beams. Roi didn't let go of the wooden spoon. He stayed motionless, the stew's steam clinging to his eyebrows and that drop of warm oil shining on the back of his right hand, exactly between his index finger and thumb.

"Close up, lass, we're losing the little hot broth left in town," Antón said from the stool, without looking her straight in the face but pushing his soaked sleeve away from the bar.

Lidia didn't close it right away. She pushed the door with her hip, slowly, letting the latch click into that dry snap Roi knew by heart: old iron against a chestnut frame warped by moisture. Her dark hair was plastered to her temples by the fine drizzle from the dock and a rough wool scarf, the kind that scratch just looking at them, wrapped around her neck in two clumsy turns.

She took off her gloves finger by finger. One was ripped at the pinky seam.

"Good evening, Antón. Fontán," she said.

Her voice was lower than in Roi's memories. Or maybe it was the same and he was the one who had gone deaf from listening to the roar of industrial burners for ten years. No. It wasn't lower; it was tired. It had that roughness left by intercity bus air conditioning when you spend four hours swallowing upholstery dust and tight curves among pine trees.

"You've got water in your shoes," Roi blurted out, and it was the stupidest thing he could think to say.

Lidia ignored him. She walked right past the bar, ignoring the deck of laminated cards resting on the tapa glass case—yellowish sheets with prices in pesetas crossed out with a blue ballpoint pen—and went straight to the back, weaving through the row of stools with a fluid movement, as if not a single day had passed since the last time she measured the distances of that uneven floor.

"Number six," she said, resting her knuckles on the chestnut backrest.

"That one wobbles," Antón warned, finishing off his glass of cheap red wine. "I already told this one to wedge an oak block under it, but there's no way. He insists on cork."

"I know it wobbles. And I know it has a cider wedge whittled with a pocketknife on the back leg."

She sat down without unbuttoning her coat.

She is twenty-three years old and she is sitting on that very same stool, with her legs crossed and an open spiral notebook over the checkered oilcloth while he cleans blue whiting at six in the morning. There is no light outside, just the sodium-vapor streetlamp glow slipping through the glass and the sound of the first boat leaving the harbor. She writes without looking up and he passes her a piece of bread spread with tomato and warm fat from fried pork, and she opens her mouth without taking her eyes off the notebook and chews slowly. She doesn't say thank you. She doesn't need to say it because the kitchen smells of dry firewood and low tide, and the entire world seems to end exactly where the edge of his cutting board stops.

Roi rubbed the old burn on his left forearm with his thumb. That pearlescent, half-moon scar always flared up whenever the barometer dropped suddenly.

"I don't have a night menu," Roi said, coming out from behind the counter with a harsh linen rag over his shoulder. "There's what's in the big pot. And if you don't like it, down at the station guesthouse they still serve you a tough steak with frozen fries."

"Bring me the stew," she replied, fixing her brown, steady eyes on him without a blink. "Whatever there is. But you bring it, don't send the fisherman."

"I'll be getting on, Rosa will read me the riot act if I get back after the rosary," Antón muttered, climbing down from the stool with calculated clumsiness. He left two coins on the pewter that clinked against the damp wood. "I'll bring you the pouting tomorrow if a heavy gale doesn't blow in, Roi."

"Bring them early or I don't want them," the bartender replied without turning around.

The door opened and closed again behind the fisherman. The entire dock seemed to shrink outside, plunged into that violet darkness of November low tides, where boat diesel and rotting mud form a thick crust over the breakwater stones.

Silence.

Roi went into the kitchen without turning on the extractor hood so as not to drown out the creaking of the beams. The skate and new potato stew bubbled over a gentle heat in the large enameled iron pot. The sofrito of sweet paprika, red onion, and cured pancetta had thickened the broth until it turned a dark orange, almost blood-red. He lifted the heavy lid with a three-fold rag; the steam fogged his glasses in a second, blinding him completely.

He took them off, cleaned the lenses on the front of his apron, and stood staring at the simmer.

Cooking for someone who knows your past is a trap: no amount of salt can cover up a broken promise.

He placed a deep glazed earthenware casserole on the work table. He served two heaped ladles of broken potatoes, a generous piece of skate with the meat opening into white fan-like flakes, and a solitary bay leaf floating on the shimmering grease. He cut three thick slices of loaf bread with a hard, ash-colored crust. He picked up the plate with both hands, feeling the excessive heat burn his fingertips through the rustic ceramic.

He walked toward table six.

Lidia had her hands resting on the wood, still, waiting. She had placed her worn leather briefcase on the empty stool opposite.

"You haven't changed the spoons," she remarked when he planted the steaming plate in front of her chest. "They're still nickel silver. They leave a metal taste on the tip."

"They're the ones my grandfather left. If you don't like them, eat with your fingers."

"Always so hospitable, Fontán."

"People come here having already had dinner at home to avoid nonsense, Lidia. What did you come on the four-thirty car for? Antón brought your magazine. He says you're sniffing around the Sisargas."

Lidia picked up the nickel-silver spoon, wiped it with the paper napkin that crinkled like sandpaper, and plunged the metal into the thick broth. She blew twice, barely a brief sigh that deflected the copper-colored steam.

"The article is published. Whatever is printed no longer needs anyone to sniff around it," she said, before putting the first potato into her mouth.

She closed her eyes for a second. She chewed with the left side, always with the left, thinking about something else.

"It lacks cumin," she murmured, swallowing slowly.

"It lacks nothing. It has bay leaf from the back garden and smoked paprika."

"It lacks cumin. Your grandfather used to put three crushed grains in the mortar right before taking the pot off the fire. He said skate without cumin tastes like an old port."

"My grandfather is buried up in San Amaro and I make the stew however the hell I please."

"I can tell. More bitter."

"It's the paprika."

"No. It's not the paprika."

Lidia kept eating in silence, with methodical calm, teasing the meat from the cartilage with the tip of the spoon and mopping up the bread until not a single drop of sauce remained at the edges of the casserole. Roi didn't move from her side. He remained standing, hands tucked into his apron pockets, listening to the friction of metal against fired clay and the distant murmur of waves crashing against the concrete breakwater defenses.

A diesel boat coughed in the distance, three dull thumps that vibrated against the salt-splashed windows, and then nothing.

Patience.

"Are you going to stand there watching me as if I were going to steal your silverware?" she asked, leaving the spoon resting across the empty plate.

"I'm waiting to wash the dishes and go to sleep. Tomorrow I'm down at the fish market at five."

"Liar. You never go down to the first auction unless they bring rock spider crab."

It hit him straight in the stomach, without warning or defense.

"Hurry up," he said, extending his right hand toward the plate.

Lidia didn't pull back. She leaned back against the chestnut backrest, put her hands into her coat pockets, and stared at him while he picked up the still-warm earthenware pot. The plate was heavy.

underneath, stuck to the edge of the plate over the worn checkered tablecloth, was a piece of paper folded into four uneven parts. It was a sheet torn from an old ledger, with the blue lines blurred by the folds and a faint stain of moisture in the upper corner.

Roi recognized it instantly: straight, dry strokes, with that faded blue ink only one person used.

His grandfather's handwriting.

Roi pulled the casserole back a few inches and kept his gaze fixed on the fold of the paper, while Lidia stood up slowly, adjusting the leather briefcase over her shoulder without taking her eyes off him.

"I'll sleep at the station guesthouse," she said in a low voice. "Save me a spot for tomorrow at noon, Fontán. We aren't done talking about the Sisargas yet."