2.

BY THE NEXT DAY, Miles Townsend had tired of salt air and of sand working its way into the crack in his ass, and itched instead for city lights and people. The trains had started running again the night before, as Vikram said they would, and Miles thought about Barcelona. He didn’t know anyone in Madrid—he’d only chosen it in the first place because it was the first city in Spain he could think of. But maybe not knowing anyone there was a good thing. He’d spent six weeks traveling around Ireland and France without getting too close to anyone, and part of him clung to the freedom of it.

Yet something drew Miles to Vikram. Despite the crush he suspected Vikram had on him, he was easy to confide in. Maybe it was simply the fact he’d shown an interest in Miles, or that he managed to listen without judgment. Whatever the case, he had a way of making Miles feel like less of an idiot.

So that evening, after a short train ride down the coast and a long walk soaking up the charms of the Ramblas—which included dead-eyed, middle-aged prostitutes loitering down by the harbor and the legion of drug dealers who brushed past him every few seconds with offers of hash-coke-speed—Miles found himself in the bar of the Hotel Kashmir made idiotic by love.

He had fallen in love with the bartender. She was an older woman—at least twenty-two or twenty-three—tall but not too tall (that is, not taller than him), lithe and graceful, with dreadlocks that just brushed her eyelids. It wasn’t merely that she was pretty—Miles preferred to think he wasn’t that superficial—but she was quick to smile, had an easy laugh and a kind way of regarding people she talked to. He decided he had better calm down, find out her name, perhaps speak to her. She might turn out to be a moron.

Miles made his way across the small, crowded bar—a narrow galley off of the common room—and overheard her conversing in English, Spanish, and German with various patrons. The thought that she was probably out of his league now occurred to Miles. But he managed to squeeze in at the bar and catch her eye. She leaned across the bar to hear him over the din.

“Hi,” he said, “I’m looking for a man named Vikram. He said I might find him here. Do you know him?”

“Oh, I know him,” she said, her smile revealing faint dimples on her cheeks. “He’s my flatmate.”

“Oh.”

“I haven’t seen him since this morning, but he’s probably not far.” She spoke with a slight, hard-to-place accent. “How do you know Vikram?” she asked.

“I met him on the train coming down from Paris,” he said, and she nodded, picking up empties as he went on. “We ended up talking over a few drinks in the bar car. I told him I was going to go to Madrid, but he said I should come to Barcelona. So...I did.”

“Let me guess,” she said, leaning a hand on the bar, “you poured out your life story while he just sat there, chain-smoking and nodding his head.”

“Uh...yeah, pretty much,” he said, laughing. “How’d you know that?”

“It’s his M.O.,” she said. “I’m Anna, by the way.”

“Miles,” he said and shook her hand across the bar, the touch of her hand sending a tingle up his arm. “His M.O.?”

“Modus operandi.”

“Ah,” he said, pretending that helped.

“Vikram doesn’t always tell me where he’s going,” she said. “But he tends to stay in town for at least a few days after returning from one of his excursions—also part of his M.O.”

Miles nodded. “Isn’t an M.O. something a criminal has?”

“It is,” she said. “But Vikram’s crimes are, well...showing up late for drinks, making inappropriate small-talk with strangers, a tragic lack of awareness...that sort of thing.”

The man on the stool next to Miles, hearing their conversation, turned and squinted at Miles, unsure if they’d already met. With a shaggy mustache and goatee and prominent canines that flashed whenever he smiled, he had a slightly wolfish appearance.

“He just got in,” Anna explained. “He’s looking for Vikram, have you seen him?”

“I saw him down in the plaça a couple hours ago,” the man said. “I didn’t ask where he was headed, though.” Then, extending a hand to Miles, “I’m Tom.”

Miles introduced himself, and they shook hands as Tom downed the remains of his wine. “You staying here?” he asked.

Miles nodded.

Tom asked the two young women sitting on the other side of him if they’d seen Vikram, but they both shook their heads.

“Pour you a beer?” asked Anna.

“Yes, please.”

Anna drew Miles a pint of beer from the tap and refilled Tom’s glass from the giant box of red wine behind her. It was a no-frills bar—no rows of liquor bottles lining the wall, no array of tap handles emblazoned with colorful logos, no bowls filled with nuts or wedges of lime—just one generic beer on draft, and your choice of red or white wine. Still, it was a popular spot and was soon standing-room only, so Tom suggested they take their drinks and head into the common room to find a table. Miles would have liked to talk to Anna more, but she was now swamped by customers anyway, so he followed Tom and the two young women out.

The Hotel Kashmir’s common room looked down onto Plaça Reial through large half-moon windows that echoed the arcades ringing the square. Cracked open, they let in snatches of conversation from the people gathered around the fountain below, as well as the odors of roasting meat and smoldering hashish.

The hotel was in fact just a rather grungy hostel, without any of the customary youth hostel rules intended to maintain an aura of wholesomeness. It attracted a certain kind of young backpacker, as well as quite a few older travelers and transients in need of a bed and hot shower for three hundred pesetas, or about two bucks, a night. Its three-word description in Miles’s guidebook had read simply: “Watch your things.”

The Kashmir’s guests, along with a few stray cats, were gathered around the long wooden tables and benches of the common area, talking and drinking, or cleaning themselves, according to their wont.

Tom, Miles learned, was a New Zealander teaching English at the Escuela de Lengua, and had been in Barcelona for nearly a month. He seemed to know most everyone in the Kashmir and introduced Miles to more of the “regulars,” as he called them, despite the fact they were all just passing through. Krissy and Tawny, the two who’d been sitting with Tom, were on holiday from university in Brisbane and had arrived in Barcelona a few days earlier. Tawny, the taller and thinner of the two, was very blonde, tan, and pretty. Krissy, shorter, sturdier, sun-freckled, and sandy-haired, was not unattractive, just similar enough to her friend, it seemed to Miles, that she didn’t benefit from the comparison. Tawny was quieter, more aloof, whereas Krissy was more forward—quicker to laugh, quicker to take the piss out of someone.

“Tom, what the hell does that mean?” she asked him, pointing at the red circle-A symbol sewn onto the sleeve of his army-surplus jacket.

“It means I’m an anarchist,” he said.

“You’re an Antichrist?” she said. “Crikey, I thought there was only the one.”

“An anarchist, not the Antichrist,” he said, smiling. “I mean, I’d hardly advertise it if I were.”

“I would,” said Tawny, as if this were obvious, which made Krissy laugh.

Miles met a few other regulars. They all knew Vikram and seemed to regard him with a mixture of affection and curiosity. He was a figure of some mystery, it turned out, as nobody really knew what he did. Someone said he had been in academia once, but he seemed to be on permanent sabbatical. He’d just shown up one day at the Kashmir with his leather satchel and was now a fixture. A real regular.

Then a large blond head appeared, supported by a six-foot-four frame, broad shoulders, and the noble, neatly chiseled features of an Aryan Übermensch. The large head and body, Miles learned, belonged to a Dane named Anders.

Tawny perceptibly straightened when Anders sat down, unconsciously thrusting her chest out and blinking at him. He didn’t seem to notice, but his ears pricked up at the mention of Miles’s connection to Vikram. Miles told him about parting company after the short-lived rail strike.

“Ah, labor strikes,” said Anders, “the bane of these Mediterranean countries. There’s a definite disdain for authority here. I suppose it’s part of what attracts people like us.”

As Anders was dry and the glasses around the table nearing empty, he offered to buy a round, and Miles offered to help carry. Standing up next to Anders, he felt the contrast. Despite being just over six feet tall, Miles had yet to fill out his frame and compared to Anders looked like a sapling whose limbs might snap in a strong wind. Miles also had that distinctly adolescent combination of not enough meat on his bones and baby fat. Anders rubbed a hand over his square jaw, thick with manly stubble, and looked Miles over as they fell in step and walked toward the bar.

“Have you met Vikram’s roommate, Anna?” said Miles.

“I think so,” said Anders.

“She seems nice,” said Miles. “Pretty too.”

“I hadn’t noticed.”

When they got to the bar, Anders continued around and behind it, ducking in beside Anna and greeting her with a prolonged open-mouth kiss, pulling her body against his. Anna leaned her head back and laughed, her hands pushing gently on his broad chest. “Hola,” she said, as Miles looked for a trapdoor he could jump into.

As Anna filled two pitchers with beer, Anders asked her, “So you don’t know where Vikram is, either? He’s not in the apartment?”

Anna shook her head no. “You know Vikram. He comes and goes like a stray cat.”

“Well, if you’d stop feeding him,” he said.

The sweaty metal pitchers filled, Miles reached for one, but Anders simply wrapped his meathooks around their middles and hoisted them both. He gave Anna a peck on the cheek and proceeded toward the common room. With a backward glance and a wistful bye, Miles followed him out.

After another round of drinks—and still no sign of Vikram—Krissy, Tom, and the others adopted Miles’s mission of finding Vikram as their own and determined that they should head out to search for him.

Miles, recalling the reason he’d come to Barcelona in the first place, said, “Where should we go?”

“Wherever the four winds take us, Miles,” said Krissy. “Probably a bar.”

*