But It’s Mine

Víctor got the notebook out one night at dinner.

Not Eva’s. One of his own, hardback, bought in Oviedo, open between the plates.

“Right. We need to get going on the titles.” He counted with his pen. “We’ve got nine recorded. And they’re really good, yeah? But the first thing they’re going to ask me is what it is. And I can’t say ‘well, it’s a girl who sings whatever comes out’.”

“It is a girl who sings whatever comes out.”

“Yeah.” He laughed. “Well, you can’t say that.”

Axel heard the whole thing from the doorway, keeping out of it. It went on for an hour.

“Because a song that changes every time isn’t a song, mate. It’s a moment.”

“Well, I like moments.”

“Yeah, yeah.” He turned a page. “And the third one needs recording again, because at minute two you go off somewhere else.”

“That’s because I went off there.”

“Yeah, but you can’t go off.”

And looking for a page, with the pen in his mouth and without any malice at all, Víctor said:

“And the bench one, you do it exactly like on Thursday. Here, like this. And that’s it.”

He tapped the paper twice.

Eva sat looking at the notebook.

Here. Like this.

She got up for water and was outside for four minutes, on the step, with the empty jug, looking at the sky.

Axel already had the tarp in his arms to cover the roof slope.

“Leave it, man,” said Eva as she came in. “It’s not going to rain today. The moon says so.”

Axel left the tarp on the step.

It rained at four.

In the morning there were two fingers of water in the kitchen and the rolls of roofing felt had gone soft as wet cardboard. Ninety euros. And a day without going up, because you don’t go up on a wet roof.

Eva didn’t say sorry. She wrote something in her notebook, under her line, and started bailing with the pan.

Two days later there was the thing with the glass.

The three of them were having lunch in the kitchen and Wamba walked across the table.

From one end to the other. Past the dish of potatoes. Walking the way he walked, hands behind his back and in no hurry at all. And when he got to the edge he stopped to look at Víctor’s glass.

Axel stopped chewing.

Víctor, who was forty centimetres away and looking right at it, kept on talking about a festival.

He didn’t dodge it. He didn’t look away. He was looking at the exact spot where Axel could see a creature the length of your hand with his hands behind his back. And what he saw was a glass.

He picked up the glass, with Wamba right in front of it, and drank.

Eva wasn’t looking at Wamba. She was looking at Víctor. At his face. Without blinking.

Wamba waited for him to put the glass down. Then he went off by way of the hearth, and as he passed the sugar plate he didn’t look at it.

On Monday, Víctor came out with it.

“We’re off on Wednesday. We need to be there before the trial.”

“We?” said Eva.

“Well, yeah.”

On Tuesday night, washing up, Axel could hear them on the step. Víctor talking and Eva saying “yeah” every now and then.

And suddenly:

“No.”

And louder:

“Víctor, no.”

Axel came out with the tea towel in his hand.

They were in the middle of the street, with the car behind them and the passenger door open. His bag, already on her seat. Eva had the broom in her hand, because she’d come out to sweep the step and hadn’t let go of it since.

“What do you mean, no?” Víctor was saying.

“I mean I’m not going.”

“But it’s all…”

“I know.”

“So what are you going to do? Stay here?”

“Yes.”

Víctor rubbed his hand over his face and laughed, just with his mouth.

“Okay. Okay, okay, okay. So you’re staying. With the roof bloke.”

“That’s got nothing to…”

“Yes it has, Eva.” He put his hands up. “I’ve spent a month and a half in a hotel with eleven rooms, in a village of twenty-six people, eating lentils in a kitchen with no electricity. Do you know what that is?”

“Nobody asked you to…”

“I know. Nobody asked me for anything. Do you know what I’m offering you?”

“Yes.”

“You don’t. Because if you knew you wouldn’t be standing here with a broom.” He pointed his chin at the door, at the order. “On the thirtieth this is a building plot, Eva, the folder guy showed me the plans. They pull it down, they send the lady the bill, the lady can’t pay and she sells. And you sweeping.” His face went red all at once. “I’m getting you off the street. You’ve spent two years singing for nobody. For nobody. And a bloke comes along and tells you this is worth something, that I’ll pay for it, that I’ll set it all up for you. And you tell me no because you like a village.”

“It’s not because of the village.”

“Well, because of whatever!” He was shouting now. “Your music’s shit if nobody hears it! Do you get that or not? It doesn’t exist!”

Inside they heard Kika get up.

“And in ten years you’ll still be here,” he said, quieter, “with the same four little songs nobody’s heard, singing them to the old tripe woman.”

Eva didn’t move.

“Maybe.”

“Maybe?”

“Maybe you’re right.”

And then she said the other thing, looking him in the face. Nothing in her shook.

“But it’s mine.”

Víctor looked at her for three long seconds.

“Okay.”

He stood there with his hand on the open door.

“The trial’s still on. Thursday the twenty-fifth. It’s paid for, and it’s going to stay paid for whether you go or not. So don’t do me the favour of staying away.”

He shut the passenger door with the bag inside and walked round the car. Before he got in he stopped with his hand on the roof and looked at Axel, who’d watched all of it from the step, with a tea towel.

“And you didn’t say anything either, did you?”

And he got in the car.

He went down the street too fast. On the bend at the bottom you could hear the underside scraping the stone.

And that was that.

Eva stood in the middle of the street with the broom. Then she carried on sweeping, the other way, like Trini had said.

At eleven, in the hammocks, she said in the dark:

“He’s left the mic.”

“I saw.”

It was on the table, with the case shut.

“Well, tomorrow you take it down to Trini and get her to send it back.”

“Okay.”

And after a while:

“Axel.”

“What?”

“Thank God you were here.”

Axel lay looking at the roof. The beam was one his dad had cut. She was a metre and a half away, in the dark, and couldn’t see his face.

He’d never had it so easy.

And he didn’t say anything.

In the morning the sugar plate was empty.

It had been full since the night of the birthday.