The Spaniards, his friends, made omelets for them the night she left.  They didn't know that she would leave that night and she didn't know it either but all week had felt uneasy and uncertain and now she was in Madrid with him, Pablo, and his friends were making Spanish omelets and talking loudly.  They sat in the cramped and warm kitchen while his friends diced onions and ham and talked loudly and quickly in Spanish.  She did not understand much of what they said, but smiled whenever one of them glanced over at her.

Pablo rested his hand on her knee and said to them in Spanish, “Slower, slower…for the girl, for Mary.”

They laughed and apologized in broken English and spoke slower but within minutes they were speaking just as quickly and Pablo smiled and shrugged at Mary and Mary smiled back to let him know that it didn’t bother her.  She didn’t mind because outside it was raining in wind-blown diagonals and when she rested her head on Pablo’s shoulder the rain straightened and she watched the rain like that, with her head on his shoulder.

She knew certain things.  She knew she’d met Pablo in Paris, where she’d been living for several months.  She knew that things had happened quickly.  Too quickly, she thought to herself, then recanted it.  They had been together two months and now he’d brought her to Madrid to meet his friends who were making them omelets while it rained outside and that was that, she thought.  That was that and nothing more.  Only this wasn’t entirely true, and she knew this as well.

She lifted her head off his shoulder and the rain was diagonal again and this seemed more appropriate.  The Spaniards were singing now and preparing to make the omelets, stirring and beating the eggs, singing, and throwing the shells at each other and at Pablo.  When she looked at him, he smiled and squeezed her leg and when he did she closed her eyes. 

Pablo was three years older than her, but did not look his age.  Twenty-seven.  She wondered what she’d look like at twenty-seven.  She felt so young still.  Tonight he’d helped put her hair up, telling her this is how girls in Spain wear it.  It was a bun, messy, with a red ribbon and she’d felt exotic running through the narrow streets in the rain, holding his hand, running and feeling the rain infiltrate their intertwined fingers and suction in between them.  That was nice, she thought.  But there were so many things on her mind.  It was all too present, too immediate.

She was looking out the window when she realized that his friends were speaking to her in slow Spanish.  They were saying something to her and laughing.  Pablo squeezed her leg and smiled at her and his smile told her that it was something pleasant they were saying and that their laughter was not cruel but friendly and that she didn’t need to worry, that his friends liked her and wanted to tell her something and very suddenly she felt queasy. 

She tried to concentrate as the Spaniards spoke but kept thinking that the rain was like strangers.  All the way over to the house it had rained.  He gave her his shirt to wear over her dress and she still wore it though the kitchen was warm.  She thumbed the fabric between her fingers and tried to understand the words being spoken to her.

They passed her a bottle of red wine and waited for her to say something.  She tried to drink some to get rid of the anxious feeling in her stomach.  She drank and the wine was sweet and she handed it to Pablo.  Pablo took the bottle and leaned in to tell her what his friends were saying and she noticed the reflection of their faces on the window and behind it the rain, diagonal, and then she turned to face him and saw the reflection of herself in his eyes.

“They say, ‘She is one of us…she could be one of us, with the red ribbon in her hair.’”  As he told her he reached up and touched the ribbon, which he had tied himself.  “They like you, Mary, my friends…they do.”

She stood up quickly and ran to the bathroom to be sick only once inside she felt better and wondered at how embarrassing it must have been for Pablo that she’d left the room so abruptly.  The bathroom was green and small and made her think of home.  She sat on the toilet.  Then she stood up and opened the window.  Then she stuck her head out so that the rain touched her face and now it reminded her of hurried kisses. 

The windowsill, concave with age, began to fill with rainwater and she wondered how long before it would overflow and spill inside.  The Spaniards were talking again and she tried to hear what they were saying but the rain picked up. 

She remembered when Pablo would whisper to her in Spanish and it was clichéd and romantic and the only foreign thing she truly allowed herself.  He would whisper with warm breath so that tiny hairs on her neck rose up to meet his softly moving lips. 

He was at the bathroom door.  She knew because the door caught against the frame because he was leaning against it.  She remembered him even though he was only outside the door, and she could look at him and talk to him if she wanted.  The rain hit the half-open window like reinforcements.  Or maybe the rain, she thought, is like reminders of something, like tying a knot around your finger. 

The rain beat louder.  It was so many things.  The omelets were ready.  She could smell them.  And the thick cut ham and onions and peppers.  Pablo was speaking now, at the door.  The omelets are ready, he said, but this was not what he wanted to say.  She didn’t respond.  Then he told her it’s okay.  Then he said it’s okay in Spanish.  Then she cried, but only a little.  He would understand.  So nice.  Pablo.  She allowed herself to compare the last syllable of his name to a released kiss, the way her lips pursed when she said it.

She looked out the window, no longer crying.  There was a street outside and a car drove by.  It should have been familiar but wasn’t.  It should have been exciting and new but wasn’t.  Then for a moment she felt like she was back home, not in Madrid or Paris, but home, and that the green bathroom was her bathroom and outside were familiar things. 

She heard him at the door.  He was no longer leaning against it.  In a soft voice, he asked her if outside the window she could see the tall building, the blue one.  Then he told her the train station was directly behind it.  She said nothing.  Her hands were on her chest.  He said he was not angry.  That he understood.  His friends, he told her, would understand.  They would have more omelets to divide between them, he said, and then he laughed and it was forced but not bitter.  He would tell them something, he told her.  They would understand.  Then he told her he understood.  Then he was gone.

Facing the open window, she clinched and unclenched her hands.  She felt the windowpane beneath her palms and the pooled water spilled inside the bathroom as her weight displaced it.  The rain began to hit her face and soon she was on the street running so that her dress began to collect the rain and felt heavy and dark and caught against her thighs as she ran.  This reminded her of his hands on them, but she didn’t let herself continue that line of thought. 

Instead she ran, seeing herself as someone else might: a solitary girl running somewhere, not stopping, towards something half-comprehended.  She was at the train station before she realized she was still wearing his shirt.