The house was quiet as the night was still “in diapers” as they say now. Happily, I immediately got into my pj’s, thick socks and slippers, and warmed up some food. I got my space heater down from my bedroom and plugged it in behind my chair. I sat at the dining room table in front of my laptop, eager to post on Facebook some kind of memento of Martin Sexton’s show.

The lights dimmed and Martin Sexton moseyed onto the stage. “This is one of my favorite rooms anywhere,” he confessed, voice resonant with connecting tones. He really wanted to be here with us. There he was, right there, his feet about at the level of my chin. He started to play his guitar and we were all transported.

After off-the-chain Pita Pit, Taj drives us to the beach. We stand on a stretch of boardwalk, watching the sunbathers and the running children on the sand below, the swimmers in the waves. It is extremely humid, and drizzling. We haven’t been to the beach all weekend, but I don’t think either of us regrets this, because it left time for other things.

“Do you see that thing out there?” Taj points. “What is that? Do you see what I’m looking at?”

“Yeah,” I answer enthusiastically, following the direction of his finger out to the horizon, where a huge, crescent shaped boat rocks gently. It has a white tower, with red rods sticking horizontally out of it. The bars along the side of the craft look ragged and craggy, as though supporting clotheslines with someone’s wash hung out and flapping in the wind. Involuntarily I think of immigrants coming by boat to America, or to Israel.

“I’ll bet it has something to do with that,” Taj says, pointing to a rusty pipe, about the same diameter as a wheel on my car, running up out of the waves and extending perpendicularly onto the beach.

“Hmm, yeah,” I say, thinking he must be right because he always is, but I don’t really know what he’s talking about. A weird boat and a huge pipe? Well, they are both strange. My head is foggy. I look farther out to the Atlantic again. “Hey, there’s another one, exactly like it!”

“Another what?”

“Another boat like that. I can see the shadow of it, on the horizon. It has exactly the same shape.”

“Are you looking at what I’m looking at?” Taj asks. He sounds a touch impatient. “That black thing, with the yellow stripe.”

“Oh.” A big cylinder, made perhaps of vinyl, undulates with the waves about a third of the way to the horizon. Now it makes sense. Is someone pumping the ocean? “Oh, I see,” I say dumbly.

This morning, gallantly, Taj called the front desk as I directed him to ask for a late check-out of 1:00. It was granted. So after our shower, he tells me it’s 12:30, meaning we still have time for something before finishing to pack and leaving for the airport.

We are practically to the terminal when I suddenly say, “You’re coming in with me, right?”

“Um, I wasn’t thinking about it. I have to find parking. Oh, there it is.” He drives to the left toward the garage. Nervousness rises in my lungs and throat. I try not to say anything but know I must. He finds a spot and determines the path to the terminal door: over a bridge spanning the drop-off road below.

“Did you not want to come in with me?” I quaver.

“I was ready to drop you off and go,” he says.

“Wow.” The wheels of my mini-suitcase seem to scrape unnaturally loud against the cement of the walkway. I keep my head down.

“Liz. I have a two-hour ride home. And you don’t really have time. When I go to the airport, I get in there and go to my flight and that’s it. Your flight’s at three o’clock.”

“Three thirty-five,” I correct him. “I thought we could have a coffee or something. You know I like you to come in with me. It’s not even two.”

“OK, so I’m coming in with you.” The temperature drops about thirty degrees when we enter the building. We walk past a guy singing “I Believe I Can Fly” with a karaoke machine. He’s wearing a horrible patchwork vest, a black shirt and sunglasses, and he’s singing to three or four people seated in a dark green wooden rocking chairs. The other rockers are empty. “Starbucks?” Taj says.

We sit down with his double espresso and my tea. “I’m so embarrassed now I asked you to come in,” I persist.

“Well, I’m here so don’t dwell on it. I mean, I have a headache and I really want to go home and lie down.”

“I’m sorry, baby. I guess I just see it differently. I always want to spend as much time with you as I can. We have so little time together.” I’m trying hard not to cry. “But I didn’t know you didn’t feel well.”

“It’s OK.” I try to forget it, ask him questions about the wedding he’s supposed to go to next week. Apparently, he’d tried like hell to get his friend to let him bring me as his date, but this request was refused. “I never get to bring a date,” Taj explains. “Not even to my cousin’s wedding. I don’t know why.”

So many things seem to come between us. Yet we’re still together, even though maybe he’s annoyed with me right now, even though maybe I wish he could be a little more sensitive sometimes.

As human beings we come as a package. That’s what people tell me anyway, in particular Willow. If you’re the type of guy who knows how to kill a wild boar when you’re in the woods and hungry, maybe you do have to be specifically asked to come into the airport with your gf. Maybe being in a relationship means honoring all the different parts of someone that make them whole, the ones that are easy for me and the ones that are not. It all comes down to love.

At Starbucks, Taj suggests visiting Willow and her guy in Asheville on Labor Day weekend. This delights me. “She’ll be ecstatic,” I say, drinking the last of my tea. “OK baby, I’ll let you go. Where’s my gate?”

“That way,” he says, pointing; the security line is practically on top of us. Mr. Karaoke is singing “On The Wings of Love” as Taj walks me to it. “I’ll probably be driving through the woods when you get to Charlotte, but call me when you are about to take off from there.”

“OK.”

He hugs me tight, kisses me sweetly. “Bye, baby.”

Last night, the first thing Dale said when he saw me was that his company was transferring him to D.C., September 1^st. I was so happy for him that he’d be with Danielle finally. He gave me a big bear hug outside that Jacksonville Beach bar. I remembered Taj protesting to me, after he’d moved back to Florida, that if he got a job somewhere in that state things would still be better, we’d visit each other more often. “We’ll be like Dale and Danielle,” he’d said, which had lifted my mood considerably. Taj never says how solid he thinks we are, that we’ll be together a long time. He just says things every once in a while that indicate he feels that way. It has been hard to learn it, to know it in my heart, so tenacious has he been in his own personal male quest that excludes me.

His frat brothers: why were they all so tall? Maybe it was just my drunken perception coupled with my choice of shoes. Taj thought I looked good in my ballet flats and a black one-shoulder dress that did not leave much to the imagination. “Anyway, it used to be,” I said, just before we left the hotel room, “one would never wear a short dress with heels. It pretty much meant you were a hooker. These days things are different. I saw these girls on U Street the other night, all in little tight dresses and huge platform heels.”

“How old were they?” Taj asked.

“Oh well, barely of age, I guess. And they were pretty. But they looked so, I don’t know, uninteresting to me. All the same.”

The frat brothers – I don’t remember any of their names, except for Dale – all shook hands with me, and some even hugged me, and screamed over the bar noise at me. “That Taj,” one of them said, “he’s a sexy bitch.”

“I know,” I giggled.

“And he’s hung too. I know these things.”

They asked very specific, very inappropriate questions about what I planned to do with Taj later that night. I confirmed their suspicions. It was exhilarating; I think I took their comments as acceptance of me, as love of Taj. Everybody loves Taj. He is wary, though, of my political leanings when it comes to his friends. He thinks I’m too sensitive and will get hurt. He could be right about this.

Earlier, over a seafood dinner and second drinks (fancy beer for him, Cabarnet for me), I asked him what he thought about the space program ending. He let loose a rant of anti-Obama-ism that I am by now used to hearing from him. I have to tell all of you honestly that I pretty much distrust politicians no matter what their stripe – who doesn’t – but also like many of us, I have a few cherished positions from which no one can dissuade me. The space program is not one of them.

But since we were talking about politics, I ventured that the Republicans would probably have to mount someone with more appeal and savvy than Romney, who at the moment seemed to be the frontrunner, to beat Obama. Taj agreed, and allowed – as he usually does – that Obama is a hell of a speaker.

“When is somebody going to come along,” I lamented, “who is fiscally conservative and socially liberal?”

Taj looked up from a bite of mahi-mahi (it was delectable: perfectly sauteed and tomato-glazed), regarded me with those lovely hazel eyes framed by curly lashes, and dared to raise his hand.

I sat back in my chair. “Darling, I love you. But you are not socially liberal. What do you think about gay marriage?”

Looking back, I might have to amend my stance. He was fine with everything except actually calling it “marriage.” Maybe that still counts as liberal. But my second glass in – and having finished the bottle of Alidis with our afternoon tapas, following Jack and Coke Zero in the hot tub – it didn’t pass my everyone-should-be-able-to-do-whatever-the-fuck-they-want litmus test. Not to mention I am a champion of love.

“Just don’t talk about gay marriage with my frat brothers,” he said equably.

“I definitely won’t. I’m not 23 anymore.”

“I’m glad you’re not 23,” he said, with more than a little force – as if he knew me all those years ago.

“I saw Lady Gaga on TV the other day,” Taj announces. It’s eleven thirty on Sunday morning, and we are having breakfast. “She’s not very attractive.”

“No, she’s not,” I agree.  ”But even though she copied a lot of her stuff from Madonna, some of it is good. This is the best song, that’s playing now.”

On the loudspeakers, piped in, Lady Gaga’s telling us that she’s caught in a bad romance. I reflect momentarily on how ingeniously those two melodies are woven together, I think about how it is she can pull off singing a few words in French, about how I especially like her holler, “I don’t wanna be friends!” On the other hand, that line about someone’s “leather-studded kiss in the sand” just doesn’t work. It’s supposed to mean something but means absolutely nothing.

I continue, “She’s like, ridiculously skinny, right?” I scarf the last bites of my breakfast pita, grilled tomatoes with scrambled eggs and no cheese, extra artichoke hearts and spinach. Need to be careful. Don’t want to get sick, after last night.

“Actually,” Taj says, “I thought she was a little overweight.” He’s already finished his chicken Caesar, with bacon, and my side of hashbrowns.

“Oh. Well, what do I know.” We are both babies when it comes to current pop culture. I’ve heard a few more songs than he has, because I listen to bad radio stations in my little 2000 VW bug back in Virginia. His Jeep Grand Cherokee lacks an antenna, but he’s ripped Brad’s entire music collection onto his iTouch and while he drives me around various Florida towns we always listen to his mix of blues, reggae, techno, and southern rock. “Katie Perry, on the other hand, is horrible,” I continue. “She can’t sing and her songs suck.” I say this despite the fact that I have, on more than one occasion, slid open the sunroof and shouted along, “Baby you’re a firework! Come on let your colors burst!” It’s still a bad song.

I realize Taj hasn’t heard of Katie Perry and does not care about her, cares even less about my explanation that her face is on the cover of half the music and fashion magazines and looks even more airbrushed than recent shots of Diane Sawyer. I stop talking.

We get up from our fast food table, crumpling our waxy pita wrappers and pitching them in the trash next to the soda dispensing machine. The place pretty much looks like a pizza joint, except for the array of pita fixings and sauces behind a glassed-in counter. In that way it’s a little bit like a Subway. A small army of teenagers stands over the hot grill and before the various tubs of veggies and condiments, asking the patrons what they want in their pitas. In front of the register sits a gallon-size plastic jar bearing the homemade label, “What’s PITA backwards?… A TIP.”

Taj and I make our way past the substantial line that has formed, populated with many people in shorts and tanktops revealing all manner of ink. “Did you notice that a lot of people here have tattoos?” he asked earlier, as we were eating.

“I guess so,” I said. “I mean, the places where I used to hang out, in Boston … a lot of people had them. I had a waxer once who was getting a whole landscape done on one arm, with flocks of birds.”

I probably think too much about our differences, where we are from, when we were born. While we were driving along Jacksonville Beach Boulevard, I said, “Hey, there’s the Pita Pit. I hear it’s ‘off the chain.’” He’d said that very thing yesterday, and I was ribbing him. In the next moment I wondered if I sounded like Courteney Cox trying to say “chillax” and “Rihanna,” convincingly. Well, who cares really. And Rihanna is way better than Katie Perry.

Engulfed by the Florida heat again, headed toward his car, I focus on any proprioreceptive messages from my stomach. Are we OK? The answer is a sort of numbness, pretty good on the scale of things.

“You were right, you’re always right,” I said, late that morning in bed. “I did drink way too much. But I had so much fun. I really did.”

“Good, me too,” he said.

“I liked meeting your frat brothers. They were hilarious,” I pictured them at the last bar we were at in Jacksonville Beach. I think it was the last bar. Taj and I walked up to the big glass door, strings of lights, music pounding and girls chattering . His friends were spilling onto the sidewalk, I don’t know how many, their white faces looming over me, like a forest.

“I’m sure they won’t remember you,” Taj says. “They were pretty hammered.”

“I know. Dale was.” About a year and a half ago, Taj’s frat brother Dale was entertaining some of his consulting clients at a horse race near D.C. when he fell in love at first sight with the whipsmart Danielle, leggy blonde Chicago native and D.C. denizen. So when Taj and I were both living in that area he’d sometimes say, “Dale’s in town,” and we’d go over to Danielle’s shared apartment in Dupont Circle, watch football, eat hummus and drink.

Marisol and I were working on getting The Big Apple Routine exactly right.  She was in love with that authentic jazz choreographed circle dance from the 1939 movie Keep Punching, wanted me to teach it to as many Madrid lindy hoppers as possible so we could get big groups to do it at social dances.  First, though, there had to be at least one person other than me who could perform the routine, so people could get a sense of how exciting, fast paced, adorable and fun it could be.  Marisol’s plan was for both of us to demo it at a La Industria, then recruit lots of people to join a Big Apple workshop taught by me.  She volunteered to do all the promotion herself.  Talk about a gift.

Unlike most Spaniards I had come across, Marisol spoke very good English.  Hers was a British version, practiced in Leeds where she had done some studying in her college major of pharmacology.  Out of charity to me I suppose, at the beginning of each of our rehearsals she would use Spanish, but her speech was so rapid I barely could catch anything.  In the name of accomplishing our dance goals, then, we communicated in English.

Famous clock tower at the exact center of Madrid, Puerta del Sol

There’s a knock.

“What,” says Taj.

“Open the door for a second.”  It’s Manny.

“Hold on.”  Taj gets up and throws on a pair of camouflage pants.  “Yeah.”

The door opens.  “Look at you with the little heater.”  Manny has noticed the black plastic unit I’d brought, on the floor next to the bed.  Neither my place nor Taj’s has built-in heat.

I peer at Manny from halfway under the covers.

He says to Taj, while looking at me, “Oh, you’ve got the little heater girl.”

I say, “If you have 30 euros you can get one at El Corte Inglés.  The heater, that is.”

Manny looks back at his roommate and continues,  “So I asked Merriweather what he wanted for breakfast this morning.  He said this was his only day to sleep in and I ruined his whole day by waking him up.  I was like, ‘Have yourself a cup of tea, and go back to bed, motherfucker.  It’s Saturday.’”

Taj says, “I’m thinkin’ bout a big breakfast:  cheese grits, scrambled eggs, sausage, all mixed together.”

“I think I can force myself to go to Carrefour,”  Manny says.  “I have some bacon - should we have bacon and sausage?”

Taj walks over to his desk for some reason.  It isn’t to get money.  He says, “Yes, and I have some eggs.”

“You have a promising future as a plumber, my friend,” says Manny, referring to the level of Taj’s waistband.

“You’ve told me that,” says Taj.

Manny, who has not come into the room and so cannot be said to be leaving, shuts the door.

Taj pulls his pants the rest of the way off.

I say, “That’s amazing how you just made Manny go to the supermarket for us.”

“I’m good at delegating,” says Taj, now next to me.  “It means I get to spend more time with you.”  He raises himself on one elbow.  With the other hand he traces my cheek and the outline of my mouth.

That night, at 9:42 pm, I text Taj:  “Where’s my cowboy?  I need to be rounded up.”

Mathilde is throwing a birthday party for herself, a masquerade.  All week I had been alluding to a certain lingerie shop and yesterday Taj grinned suggestively at me and asked whether I had gotten my costume.

“Um.  Not yet,” I said.

It came down to five minutes after returning from Saturday grits-bacon-eggs-sausage brunch at Taj’s and taking a shower.  I started for the shop, on this side of Plaza del Sol, at 2:35.

At 2:42 I arrived at Chico and Chica, the storefront with mannequins displaying corsetry, leather and feathers.  By 2:47 I had decided, and at 2:49 I handed over 50 Euros.

2:54 saw me up my building’s stairs and through my apartment door to drop off the costume and grab my dance shoes and speakers.

I made it to practice on time:  3:00.

“You should go,” they were all concluding, and of course they were right. During the Muslim empire, Toledo had been a hub of the Jewish population, and lots of people who weren’t Jewish found that fascinating. I suppose I should too.

“So how was dinner?” I asked.

“We finally got some real hamburgers and French fries,” said Brianna, opening her eyes wide.

“They’ve been eating at the McDonald’s next to our hotel,” said Taj’s mom, looking at the girls sidelong and giving them a half-smile.

“What about Sunday when we went to that place in Tirso de Molina?” Taj pointed out.

“Cafe el Mundo,” I said, shaking my head. It had been my choice. We’d all walked what had seemed like miles through El Rastro, the largest flea market I’d ever seen (this is saying a lot since my mom owned a junk shop for a while) in my old neighborhood of La Latina. Everyone was hungry. I thought of El Mundo because, unlike many of the tiny places in the middle of Madrid, we would probably find an open table big enough for the six of us.

I ordered the things I knew were good there, momentarily forgetting that Taj’s parents don’t drink alcohol. The rich, brandy-laced sangria was out for them. Also, as Taj had already told me, his dad had something against hummus: it was only for women, or gay people, I think.

The worst moment came when the paella arrived, in a big iron pan big enough for several portions. Three fat shrimp stared at us from the top of it, antennae splayed, legs intact. When I’d been to Cafe El Mundo (with Alexander), I’d probably asked for the paella without the shrimp, and this time forgot. Fortunately they were removable. Unfortunately the paella just didn’t taste as good as I remembered.

Taj’s mom was exceedingly nice about it, saying how it was authentic and they were having a cultural experience.

So deluxe burgers and fries for them it was, at one of the many Irish bars in my neighborhood, on Wednesday night. We were cramped at a four-seater, with me having pulled up a chair and squished into a corner. I wasn’t hungry, probably having eaten a couple of packages of Palitos on my way back from my last class near Cartagena metro.

Since Brianna was seated to my right, I suddenly noticed her ornamented left ring finger. “Hey,” I said, pointing to what I could have sworn was a lovely little diamond solitare, white gold band. Probably zirconia. “Pest control?” I asked. I could see why it made sense for beautiful young girls like Brianna and Katelyn to pretend they were engaged or married.

“No, my boyfriend gave it to me,” said Brianna, spreading out her fingers and looking at the ring.

“Oh wow, that’s – great,” I said lamely.

“Yeah, we’re probably gonna get married,” she said.

From the week-long family visit, it’s Brianna I remember the most vividly. Straightening her hair, hating chocolate-covered real eggs, wearing a diamond. I can see her dancing through Plaza del Sol taunting her dad with the Spanish Taj had taught her: “No me toques!” (Don’t touch me!)

The guys were both pretty impatient because the mom and sisters kept wanting to stop in stores as we walked through Sol. You could spend a good two weeks combing through just the merchandise in the souvenir and perfume shops immediately adjacent to the broad plaza, even without standing in line to buy a gelato or to stare at the enormous advertisement featuring Johnny Depp in the new Alice In Wonderland. It took up an entire side of the commercial building standing at the threshold of C/ Jeronimo.

Finally we went for cappuccinos at Cafe Yamala, just off c/ Mayor, a stone’s throw from Mercado de San Miguel of the pastries and strange Easter eggs. There was a cute bartender who worked at Yamala. Claire and I had flirted with him one day while she’d visited me the previous October. He drew us a map showing us all the clubs where we could go dancing after 3AM – the time his bar closed and he could go out.

When I saw the bartender this time we just did the two-kiss greeting and I ordered for my boyfriend and everyone in his family. It’s something, being in a relationship. It means a lot of things. I was about to learn some of them.

Taj’s family went back to Florida, and it was Saturday again: Claudia’s birthday party, Bruce Benneker’s arrival, lindy hop and salsa lessons … and that was just the beginning.

Madrid at night

It was a straight shot up San Bernardo to Taj, Brad, and Manny’s place.

The scene over there was getting increasingly international each weekend: people from Germany, Sweden, Morrocco; a rising number of Spanish and French; and even people from crazy places like Kansas and Oklahoma.

All this diversity did not, however, guarantee an evening of scintillating conversation.

“Where are you from?” I heard someone shout at me while I poured some 77-centimo Carrefour wine into Brianna’s plastic cup.

“Huh?” I turned toward the guy, stalling. 1. I do not like to talk about where I’m from, with strangers. 2. I was a little distracted by being at a party at my boyfriend’s place with his younger sisters, one of whom could not yet legally drink in the U.S. As both were stunningly beautiful, I knew it would be seconds before guys started hitting on them. It wasn’t that they couldn’t handle it. I just – kind of – didn’t want to be around it. I wanted to focus on impressing them without looking like I was focusing on impressing them.

So who was this short kid standing there in my face, black hair and stubble and purple button-down very distastefully unbuttoned?

Further, could I believe that four years ago, I was drinking $15 glasses of wine in Boston bistros, working in a luxury hotel and riding a Vespa through the crowded Cambridge streets – and somehow not happy? Sometimes life could feel a bit surreal.

“Where are you from?” purple shirt asked again, louder. Some of Manny’s friends had brought over their huge speaker.

“The U.S., whatever.”

“Oh. I am from Iran. It’s okay, don’t be scared.”

“OK,” I said neutrally.

“Everyone says they are scared of me because I am from an Arab country.”

“Oh,” I said.

“What are you doing here in Madrid?”

“Having a lot of fun. Speaking of which, excuse me.”

I went into Taj’s room to borrow his eyedrops. It’s an American brand, $10 for a little bottle. He gets his mom to send him some every once in a while – or, in this case, bring it while visiting. “You only need one drop per eye,” he is fond of saying, carefully. “Brad doesn’t get it. I try not to let him borrow it but whenever he does he puts like three in each eye and he’s wasting it.”

I put the bottle down and went for the roll of toilet paper in his bookshelf, tore off a precious square to dab my eyes. Taj usually kept an extra roll hidden for when it was Brad’s or Manny’s turn to buy the next pack; they took a long time to get around to it. I took my little tissue to the other side of Taj’s desk and peered into his full-length mirror to check my concealer.

Kind of nice being the girlfriend. I get to use the bedroom, take a break from the party if I need to, put stuff here like my purse and cell phone, if I want.

I straightened up and glanced at the wall hangings over the desk: a photograph of a surfer, a restaurant check with the words “Gentleman Superior” on it – the name of a band whose recorded music we’d heard in a restaurant; he’d looked them up later and sent me a YouTube link – a silvery CD with black permanent marker in my handwriting: “Blues Traveler, 1990.” He’d put a pushpin through the middle.

Whenever I looked at that CD I felt mildly embarrassed. I’d given it to Taj, stopped by one night on my way to book some dance space at La Industria. It was before we were dating. The CD turned out not to work in his computer. I’d burned it on my G4 iBook and actually was not sure the CD would work in anything. So there it was on his wall, a tribute to my inefficacy.

It didn’t occur to me till much later (namely now, as I write this) that it might have been simply a tribute to me.

As I was about to leave my little safe haven, Taj and his sisters came into the bedroom. Katelyn and Brianna entered first and moved in to make space for Taj: it’s a small room.

“So,” Taj announced, putting his large tumbler of wine on top of the bookshelf and turning to us, “people are thinking of going to some club called Supersonic.”

“Super SONic!” I chanted.  So did Brianna, in perfect time. Our eyes locked. Without thinking I held up my hand and she was nice enough to complete the high-five, briefly bisecting Katelyn and Taj’s line of sight to each other.

“Where is it?” I asked.

“Alonso Martinez,” answered Taj. “Everyone says it’s pretty sick.”

“Oh really?” I said. I still have not gotten used to that expression. “OK, well I’m ready whenever.”

“Wait,” said Taj. “It’s gonna be a little while.”

“Right. I’ll let you work your magic.”

Taj was pretty good at getting his distracted roommates and their friends in from the terrace, out of the living room, down the elevators (sometimes this part took the longest) and onto the street where we could hail a few cabs to the favorite club of the moment. This process required a combination of persistence, finesse and patience that are beyond me but second-nature to Taj. I congratulated myself when I simply succeeded in waiting long enough for the party to get going.

Sometimes, though, the mass was far too entrenched in its safe dirty environment of cheap wine and pounding music. Even Taj couldn’t pry them loose.

This was one of those nights.

So the four of us hit it for Supersonic.

“So you’re gonna go to the game with your dad,” I said. “That’s perfect.”

“I know – it’s gonna be awesome.”

“In the meantime, I’ll take the ladies to La Latina. You want to meet back at the hotel at what time?”

“Probably around midnight. Oh, by the way, I told my parents you’re thirty.”

“You – you what?” I stammered, stopping in my tracks. “Baby, you’re amazing.”

He shrugged. “That’s how old I thought you were. I didn’t know you were 37 until we booked our trip to Granada, when I saw your passport.”

Gradually, we resumed walking. I said, “You mean – we were dating for a month before you found out how old I really am?”

“You don’t look it, so what’s the difference?” he said.

I didn’t know which I liked better: the fact that he’d never thought it important enough to ask my age (unlike Spanish men who tended to ask as the second question after “What’s your name?”), or the fact that once he’d found out, he didn’t think it was important enough to mention.

I thought we’d covered everything during the series of interviews I gave him during our initial dates: “You know I’m a lot older than you, right?” He’d answered, “I’m OK with that.” We’d never actually talked numbers.

In the abstract, of course, age doesn’t matter. Just like race and nationality don’t matter. Just like everyone should follow their dreams.

Right. So Taj told his parents I was thirty, because in the abstract everyone is equal and should do whatever they want, but when those principals become applied to real situations, people may react in ways that are not convenient for everyone involved.

Hey, it’s tough enough meeting your boyfriend’s family for the first time.

Taj’s dad met us in the lobby. I was pretty nervous, but his huge smile and infinitely relaxed appearance put me at ease instantly.

I thought his demeanor pretty impressive, after enduring an overseas flight and less-than-ideal arrival. Taj had already told me that when he was taking his family on the metro, from the airport to their hotel, a crazy street person had threatened to attack his mom. Taj had to literally hold off the crazy woman.

“I did this to her,” Taj explained to me earlier that day. He put a strong forearm across my collarbones in demonstration, but I imagined this could be very effective if he’d used his arm to hold her back strongly. “I don’t hit women,” he explained, “but she was messing with my mom, and I really wanted to knock this bitch out.”

Fortunately at that point the train had stopped where Taj and his family were getting off to transfer. They were already going down the escalator, leaving behind the crazy woman. Apparently she had begun to shout for the police herself, presumably because Taj was trying to protect his family, so then some officers came and took care of the situation.

I found myself feeling very sad about this very unusual Spanish reception; I had not seen, experienced, or even heard about any kind of violence in the city. Okay, there were reports of things going on in certain shady places, but this was the metro in the middle of the city.

Taj’s family, though, seemed to have recovered without incident.

His mom immediately struck me as every bit the southern belle, slender and beautiful. “Hi Liz! It’s so nice to meet you!” she said, shaking my hand. She had a lovely music to her voice.

The hotel room was large, painted dark gray with black and stainless steel accents, and looked onto Gran Via from a height of three stories. A wall-mounted flat screen babbled cartoons in German over Spanish subtitles.

The younger girl, Brianna, needed an iron for her dress, so I offered to go downstairs to ask for una plancha. When I returned with it, Taj and his dad had to get going, to not be late for the futbol game.

While Brianna ironed her dress, Katelyn was ironing her hair with the straightener. This bewildered me, as her Katelyn’s voluminous coal-black mane was straight before she began applying heat to it. When she finished, Brianna took over the same spot beside the main bed (the girls had bunk beds along the wall) and began painstakingly to press her own long brown hair, despite the similar apparent lack of any previous curl or frizz.

After salads and wine at Artebar, we wandered the cobblestone streets. I concentrated hard on keeping my sense of direction through the spiraling, uphill paths and plazas strewn with outdoor tables. Finally we settled on a bar whose huge projection screen was visible from the outside. We thought it would be fun to watch the Real Madrid/ Barcelona game that Taj and his dad were seeing live at that very moment.

“So Liz, how long have you been in Madrid?” Katelyn asked, after she and Brianna and I had clinked glasses. I had passed their mom’s cappuccino to her from the bar.

“Eight months or so.”

“And you’re teaching English too, right?” Meaning, like her brother.

“Yup.” I knew she’d probably ask me why I’d come to Madrid and I wanted to head that off, because it’s easier for me to tell a half-truth when I volunteer it, than when I’m asked a question. “I was living in Boston and I had to get out of there.”

“What were you doing in Boston?”

“Teaching people to dance.”

“Oh, that’s cool. How old are you?”

Crap. “Thirty.” Change topics quick. “And you – you’re in school, right?”

“Yeah, hotel management.”

“Taj said you’ve been kicking ass on your exams. That’s awesome.”

“Yeah. I’ll be done in June.”

“Hey, it’s two to one. Barcelona is winning,” Brianna broke in. We all looked toward the screen.

“Really? Bastards,” I cried.

“How much of the game is left?” asked their mom.

“Looks like it’s almost half time,” I said.

“You know Taj played soccer for a long time,” said Katelyn.

“Yeah. He told me.”

“From when he was, like, five, till he was seventeen. He was good. I mean, he was really good.”

We were standing relatively close together in the crowded bar. Her eyes didn’t leave my face. I suddenly realized it was somehow very important that I understand her message.

“People would go to the games just to see him. He was the best. And he was so funny too.”

I looked at her expectantly.

“When the other team had a penalty kick, everyone else would stand with their hands on their head. But he would stand there like this.” She put one hand to her forehead and the other fist in front of her crotch, as though to protect it, while downcasting her eyes in an impervious expression. Her already-familiar features, now arranged to imitate the brother she had known all her life, startled me with the resemblance.

Real Madrid wound up winning, in a close and exciting game.

The bar crowd erupted in a whooping, jostling and dancing mass. Someone had turned up the techno music. A short, black-haired and stubbly Spaniard – shorter than all of us women – began to happily and drunklenly careen in our general direction.

I turned Taj’s mom and sisters. “There’s a great place I wanted to show you. Are you ready?”

Although it was about 11:30 on a Saturday night, El Mercado de San Miguel was still open. It’s a long building made completely of glass, with fruit stands and wine bars and juice bars scattered throughout. You can walk down the central aisle past tapas counters, little fish markets, baked goods stands, chocolate, nuts, flowers, you name it. In the center of the hall are a group of those high tables without chairs, where Spaniards stand and eat and drink and yell and laugh and curse.

Picture Whole Foods meets Quincy Market with plenty of alcohol. A true upscale Spanish experience.

Brianna and Katelyn loved the chocolate counter. It was getting close to Easter so the candy person was selling plenty of dark chocolate eggs and bunnies decorated with yellow and purple icing. There were also some actual eggs in cups of chocolate, sitting inside a refrigerated case.

“Euw,” said Brianna. “Are those real eggs?”

“Looks that way,” I said.

“That’s disgusting,” said Katelyn.

“Yeah. I really have no idea why somebody would do that,” I said.

As we were walking toward Opera metro – to which we were now closer than the La Latina stop – my phone rang. It was 12:15 already. “We’re on our way,” I told Taj, “and we’re bringing snacks.”

“We were like four rows back from the field,” he said when we’d returned to the hotel.

“It was awesome,” his dad agreed.

I looked at their shining faces. They hadn’t seen each other in over a year. I was glad Real Madrid had had the courtesy to win the game.

“Well,” said Taj’s dad, looking at his son, then across to his daughters, then me. “We’re gonna be turning in.  You kids have fun.”

“Yeah, I’m pooped!” said Taj’s mom.

“You guys have had quite a day,” I said.

“Let’s go,” Taj said to me and his sisters.

“Wait!” cried Brianna.

“What?” said Taj.

“I have to re-straighten my hair,” she said, plugging in the flat-iron and then looking at Taj.

I failed to suppress a laugh of surprise.

“I do too,” Katelyn warned.

“Well hurry up,” Taj shouted, as one can only shout at siblings.