Soul

Julia clicked the doors open. ‘Get in, brat!’

‘Only if you promise to stop off for a drink with me in this really cool bar I know.’

‘Absolutely not.’

A Mexican flag was draped above the bar, framed by photographs of famous footballers—Oscar Perez, Rafael Garcia and Manuel Vidrio. At the apex of this rainbow of athletic celebrity hung a garish painting of Jesus Christ with the traditional bleeding heart and crown of thorns; beneath him the Gaudalupe Madonna hovered in crimson and blue, faintly reminiscent of the reproductive organs of some bizarre fruit.

A small TV to the left played a football game, the commentary in Spanish, while on the other side of the bar, surrounded by tables and chairs, a guitarist was busy setting up for the night on a tiny stage which was really a glorified corner.

‘He’s the best,’ Gabriel said, ‘you should hear him. Angels speak from his fingers.’

‘I hadn’t figured you for a poet.’

‘Yeah well, babe, I’m full of surprises. What would you like?’

‘Listen, I’m buying okay? I figure the chances of being arrested will be considerably less that way.’

‘In that case I’ll have a vodka martini, no olives and as dry as the desert.’

Julia ordered the drinks. Behind them the guitarist started to play—an exquisite flamenco that spun in cool flurries around the snatches of Spanish he murmured into the microphone.

The bar, about the size of an average lounge room, began to fill with patrons: a group of labourers, boots still dusty; afternoon office workers in suits; a couple of art students. There was even a fire fighter, still in uniform, who sat quietly down, placing his helmet below the small glass-topped table. Most of the crowd were Latino.

‘How do you know about this place?’ Julia said.

‘My father brought me here once. He taught me the art of listening, whereas Mom taught me the art of not listening.’

She laughed, trying not to react to how handsome he looked in the half-light. He nodded to a pretty young barmaid who smiled back seductively. Noticing the flirtation, Julia wondered how much experience he’d actually had with women.

‘Naomi does talk a lot,’ she said.

‘Most of it rubbish. I love my mother but I don’t think she’s the most emotionally evolved creature.’

‘That’s harsh. How is José?’

‘You remember him?’

‘Sure. I knew your parents when they were first married. He was real fiery back then. Actually he was a little scary.’

‘He just believes in principles. He’s had to fight for everything he has. Everything. That generation had to. It’s different now. Now it’s cool to be Latino. Mom hates him. She thinks he sold her out; did the usual male thing, traded up for a younger woman.’

‘And didn’t he?’

‘Mom let herself go. She gave up on herself and the marriage long before José left her. Anyhow, if that’s true, how come younger men like older women?’

‘They do? That’s news to me.’

‘I do.’

Julia laughed, then wondered if he was flirting with her.

‘Gabriel, you’re nineteen. A twenty-two year old would be an older woman to you.’

Again, he felt his fingers itching for a cigarette. He glanced away. She really had no idea how condescending she was, or who he was. He decided to take a risk.

‘Age is irrelevant,’ he said. ‘What’s important is the intensity with which we experience life. So many of my older friends have switched off that intensity. It’s like their expectations of their environment, their relationships, their jobs, even the way they see, has begun to limit their actual experience of those things. They stop seeing, stop becoming excited. So they stop learning. Does this make them more adult than me? Look at Einstein—he was as curious and as excited as a child until he died.’

Julia searched his face thoughtfully, wondering if the intensity he was talking about was youth or an imaginative zest for knowledge that, in most people, got blunted by caution. Did it matter? Just hearing him made her nostalgic for her younger self.