9

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             The restaurant was just one room jwith tables on the right, an L shaped bar to the left, and a catwalk running around the four walls above. The place was just about empty and  the clients were all local folks  Chloe saw a table where you could see the esplanade and the shady river. and asked him if he liked it. They sat down across from one another. Looking him straight in the face she was struck by how, well, funny, the details of his face were, definitely puffier  than on the photographs. Yet when that face became animated, teased in an understated manner, offered her a menu with subtle warmth, the whole was greater than the sum of its parts. What you saw was a boyish, intelligent, reserved guy.. It struck her too how he was straight, not "on", full of the witty come backs and one liners as in their virtual-self communications where peeks of the straight man sometimes peeked through. Especially now, when they were so new to each other, he was discreetly attentive, kind of like being on a first date, when it wasn't that at all. Just two people who became friends online sitting down to eat a local dish  in Sarria.

             In time the one waiter approached their table with the air of a formidablel maitre d'. Listening to their garbled Spanish, he repeated their order with a poker face  she realized it was not Spanish, but Galician he was speaking. At any rate, he brought them water, home made bread,  over easy eggs, bacon, and chopped steak, with potatoes for him and a salad for her. This salad was so huge, served on an oblong platter with a white pickled asparagus on top and some fresh tuna within that seemed to be the way salads went around here.

            When the maitre d' came to clear away their plates, she asked  him to show them where  they were on the map.  At last!! She saw exactly where they were and everything fell into place. They were on Ferrerio Malcecon Campo do rio, along the banks of  Rio Sarria. And the old town was just around the esplanade where they had come down.

            Sean got up to look for the bathroom. Chloe got  her change purse nd pulled out 50 Euros to tally up the check while he was gone. She saw him lingering at the end of the bar, not realizing what that was about till he came back.

            "Where is the check?'" she asked.

            "The check is gone," he said without irony.

             Her first impulse was to insist paying her share But in the next second saw that they were dancing, and she was all for dancing..She accepted graciously Some ineffable energy settled upon them as they turned out the door into the cool twilight.

             Passing by the long steps they now knew led up to the old town, they strolled around to the left till they came upon the street that ran  below the old town sitting like a toy village on top of the hill above them, with the steeples of Santa Marin pointing high.. Off of this street was one of those paved ways for pedestrians, with steps running right and left up between gardens and houses. 
            The path was inviting and they started climbing at a brisk pace She paused to get a look at the view, and because her knees were throbbing. The panorama was awesome. But he was plowing ahead without a glance. She called out to him and he stopped for a second to look but quickly turned back to climb.. There was something else though, when she he stared without a smile or look of camaraderie. Like he was not  with her, maybe found her wanting..But she had to be careful of her own projections and issues. He could also be afraid of something he wasn't sure he could handle.Though he would never admit it to himself. Not often a girl of this caliber came along his way. But what did she see in him? What would the old ladies at the church think, (not that he'd been to mass since he had to attend in school), if they knew he was doing this charity walk for his son's school not solo, but with this American woman..He would really fly them to the moon then..He had told Chloe in jest to tell people she was from Budapest, where she was born, rather than the States.
            They went on silently, breathing heavily, and suddenly unawares stepped back in time...they had entered the medieval stone paved streets of the old  town.