You have to be a desperate artist to go out to a museum on a Monday, especially when most of them are closed. I guess that’s good in a sense that you can always count on their being closed that day and not on any other, but it also means that if you want to visit a museum on Monday you’ll have to wait until Tuesday. Unless your plane leaves before that. Or train. It’s a shame because yesterday was just about as perfect a summer afternoon as you can get in this city. Somewhere comfortably in the 80s. The sun warmed but kept from sizzling. I walked by the Thyssen and thought about going in but, that’s right, it was closed, and empty except for a handful of caterers straightening long white linen tablecloths and lining up wine glasses so closely you could hear them clink from the Paseo del Prado with all of its traffic right in back of you. The British hate that expression, I am told. Some have even told me. That’s why I use it whenever I can. So I let Monday be as lame as it wanted to be and retired fairly early for the evening. Some friends came over with their kids and we whipped up a meal in no time. Then they retired early to get the young ones into bed. They would be retiring too as young parents do. I swished around the idea of going out on the adventure afterwards, but it kind of helps to have even a very very vague idea, a very vague idea. I didn’t. I still don’t. So I went to bed. Late. But I went to bed.
Today just might be different. I might meat my friend Martín and go see some blues show in some blues show bar type. I might even go back to a museum, it being a Tuesday and all. But I hate having to return to the same place twice in such a short period of time. Especially since they didn’t give me much of a chance to do anything in the first place. I’ll have to see. My friend Scott called and asked if I would help a friend of his out because he has to do some exam for a bank job.
“You have to apply to rob a bank? Boy the employment market is getting tough in Spain.” I said.
“It’s for some bigwig job in a bank and they are testing his English. He needs to know just about everything and I thought of you. I haven’t taught in over fifteen years.”
“And because you don’t want to do it and don’t need to.”
“Possibly.”
Sure. I told him. I told him sure. But I would have t work it into my schedule somehow. My afternoons were supposed to be supremely mine these days. To begin with I had a lottery ticket to buy, and little time to waste.
