Barcelona, Spain

He lived in Barcelona, with a gay philosopher, and they threw parties together once a week or once every two weeks.

Sometimes someone, an older woman, a man in a tie, a long-faced adolescent, would open a window and look out at the grid of Barcelona at dusk.

Not me, said Imma, and she turned the page. I knew him, said Lola, we were friends a few years ago, in Barcelona, when he lived in Barcelona.

In those days, Amalfitano was living in Sant Cugat and teaching philosophy classes at Barcelona’s Universidad Autónoma, not far away.

He believed (or liked to think he believed) that when a person was in Barcelona, the people living and present in Buenos Aires and Mexico City didn’t exist.

The mention of Trakl made Amalfitano think, as he went through the motions of teaching a class, about a drugstore near where he lived in Barcelona, a place he used to go when he needed medicine for Rosa.