We rent an apartment in Gràcia, ten minutes walk to Fontana through Plaça de la Virreina, or a five minutes to Joanic, and the most direct route down to the Arc de triomf. On the first night, we eat noodles on Plaça del Diamant, or Plaça de La Mercè Rodoreda, where Rodoreda set The Pigeon Girl in the Thirties, and where the skateboarders skate and the activists under forties drink their digestives. I've been reading I love You When I'm Drunk by Empar Moliner, and lines like, 'my wife has put lipstick on and sits with her legs tightly pressed together'; which makes me think Empar is a man, but she isn't. She is wry and smart and I read three of her stories, 'The Invention of Aspirin', 'Getting Rid of Pests', 'The Great Wall', on the sidewalk outside that Gaudi must-see, La Pedrera, and feel a partisan. Then, on Monday, it pours and we are caught without jackets or umbrellas. We have to hang our drenched clothes all over the furniture and jump in the shower and boil up some water for tea. But only after jiggling the key in the lock for five minutes, or is it ten, and satisfying the passing Gràcians that we're breaking-in for a quick squat.
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