Category: Feet – Body

Maddie and I blew into San Vicente along with the rainstorm. We had walked from Cobreces through a beautiful sunny day, taking our time. 

We arrived late and tired. No albergue in town. We spent maybe two hours searching and had found nothing. 

The office of tourism was closed. The only albergue was permanently closed. We both agreed not to panic.

A cafe provided us with a base so we could think straight. After some web-surfing I left Maddie at the cafe to scout out a pension down the road. It was raining fiercely and I jogged through the street dodging city folk on my way to our last option. Finally I found a black door in a small alley. 

I entered and stood in a dim, greasy hallway. Stairs to my left, wall to my right, another door directly in front of me. 

I knocked. 

Nothing.

I knocked again.

I heard shuffling behind the doorway, as if someone was coming down a hall. Fumbling at the peephole. Then nothing. 

Weird. 

I waited a few moments then knocked again. More shuffling. More fumbling. Nothing.

It occurred to me that this might not be the pension. I decided to go up the stairs.

I found myself standing in front of another black door. A light hung directly above it. A purple potted plant next to the door stretched it’s tendrils into the air giving the space an alien feel. I knocked. Shuffling.

A squat, plump man opened the door. He wore a plain grey shirt and was balding. 

“Do you have a room?” I asked in Spanish.

“Yes.”

“How much?”

“30.”

“Can I see?”

The man turned without a word and walked back into a crooked and narrow hallway. I followed and was surprised as the floor rose and fell at unusual inclines and descents down the corridor. I turned to my right and was face to face with a teen pop star. 

The poster was tacked to a door and life size. The model was posing with a hand on one hip and the other behind his head. His eyes were dark and alluring and his tight shirt was pulled up to show his stomach hair. It was a little gross. 

I followed the owner down the slanted hallway hoping he had a daughter.

The man walked straight into a dark room to his computer to log me in. I was so tired I just accepted that this was where I was staying. As I walked around his desk for him to take my passport I happened to glance at his computer screen. An arcade game was open on the screen. A cartoon princess in a frilly pink dress stood on the screen surrounded by hearts and more pink. A high score showed in the background. 

I averted my eyes quickly and then snapped a quick picture while the man’s back was turned. I hurried out of the building to fetch Maddie. I suspect that the man had no daughter.

Maddie and I returned to the pension. The man showed us to our room. Maddie, having seen the poster in the hall for herself, avoided eye-contact with the man altogether. I thanked him and shut the door. The two of us turned to find a room that seemed to be entirely filled with doily. 

The walls of our bedroom were pink, the ceiling was pink, the beds were pink, and the whole room was covered with doily. 

“What the heck?” Was the only thing Maddie and I could say to each other for about a full minute. We sank onto our beds and decided to embrace where the day had lead us. I looked out the window through the doily curtains and fell asleep below a painting of cupids in a soft pink bed.

Two ladies stood side by side in the doorway. The first wore a white cape, white pants, and a paisely scarf popping out from her white jacket. Trendy turquoise slippers graced her tiny feet and matching paisely earrings rested on her cheeks. 

The second, about 12 inches the taller of the two, stood poised behind the first. Her skin was brown and wrinkled, falling from her jaw bone across her neck in thick jowls. Her hair rose up from her head like a wave, white with a purple stripe across the bangs. Two rings were on every single one of her fingers, and bracelets lead all the way up her arms into the folds of her ornately embroidered jacket. Beady eyes poked out from under false eyelashes and purple mascara, scanning the room. She oozed the distinctive fragrance of the bourgeois.

The first flashed into the room like a young girl would, smiling tightly with a practiced crinkling of the eyes. Maddie, Jacquelyn, Annie Landis, and I stood in the lobby of the albergue, credenciales half-stamped, gaping a little. 

The hospitalario desk boy, although seemingly acquainted, also gaped a little.

The first woman slithered up to Maddie’s side and rubbed her shoulders, exclaiming in flamboyant Spanish how tan Maddie was. Lifting up a strap of Maddie’s tank top the woman examined the tan line and giggled patting Maddie’s shoulder lightly and bringing her face in very close. Maddie looked back at me with “what the heck?” written clearly on her face.

The second strutted in, smiling with lips pouted dramatically and asked Annie where we were from. When Annie told her both women became very excited, and the short one seemed to vibrate in place still grinning.

They hung around as we finished checking in. As I hoisted my pack upon my shoulder the shaky desk boy stabbed a bony finger at me and said, “You four?”

“Huh?”

“You four in group?”

“Oh. Uh, yeah.”

“Want room?”

This conversation was confusing me because I couldn’t see why we would be here at all if not to get a room. It became clear that the wispy hospitalero was offering us a private room.

The short zippy woman was the owner and had apparently taken a liking to us. She escorted us to our private, 8-bunk bedroom. She flounced from bed to bed picking up pillows and beaming at us, asking us if we liked it. The gang nodded shyly and we waited till she had flitted away to collapse onto our bunks.

I glanced outside. The tall woman and a staunch Spanish gentleman in a blue suit jacket followed the owner around chortling as she waved her arms showing them her facilities. The desk boy lurched a bit in the doorway, looking to make a good impression. I stepped back into our private bathroom to take a shower. Sometimes it pays just to be yourself, and to know someone with a good tan.