Linda Alvarez - The Mammoth Book of Threesomes and Moresomes

“I have absolutely nothing against him,” I said. “Really, I don’t ,” I said even slower, sounding like I was gurgling underwater. “I guess I just feel kind of uncomfortable, perhaps threatened is a better word. . with all the women and all your sexual liaisons together.” I took a long drag of my cigarette. “I’m not into being shared, you know. I just don’t need that sort of juvenile shit in my life.”

“He’s not going to try anything, Anna. That was the past. We’re adults now. Trust me. He knows that you’re special, and that I’m in love with you. We’re done with all that.”

David was visibly trying to pull himself together. I wanted our be ginning to go as smoothly as possible. I flashed him my big joker smile instead. I knew it looked natural, but it wasn’t. He laughed with a gullible relief.

“You’re so nutty, Anna. You’re a real paranoid case.” He caressed my cheek, then licked it, and with the other hand he took a piece of ham and placed it into my mouth. It was salty and warm from sitting in the sun. I think it was the best ham I’ve ever tasted.

“I’m taking you to a fancy party tonight.”

“Really?” A shiver of excitement raced down my spine.

“It’s Libros magazine’s kick-off party for Diada de Sant Jordi at the Ritz. Everyone will be there, including our friend Sergi. He’s giving a brief speech, which will probably be inappropriate and sarcastic. People love to hate him here.”

“Including you?” I asked.

He thought for a moment. “Yes, sometimes, including me. Don’t take this badly, but you re mind me of each other. You both can be charmingly arrogant on the exterior, but viciously insecure inside. Watch, you guys are going to become wicked pals.” He laughed, tears filling in his eyes.

I wanted to believe him. I wanted to believe we could all be friends.

Barcelona’s springtime literary love fest, Diada de Sant Jordi, is Cataluna’s take on St Valentine’s Day. The holiday takes place on 23 April, the anniversary of Cervantes’ and Shakespeare’s deaths. It spotlights love’s finer accompaniments: books, roses and playing hooky from work. I loved this take on the holiday; it was a welcome switch from America’s garish pink Hallmark cards, helium balloons, or the obligatory heart-shaped boxes of chocolates perfunctorily sent to one’s cubicle.

Way back in the dark Middle Ages, the legendary and valiant Saint George (Sant Jordi) was said to have rescued his Catalan city and his pouty princess from a fire-breathing dragon that plagued the people. He stabbed the beast in the heart with his long sword and killed it. Now in tribute to all that reptilian bloodshed, and the miraculous rosebush that blossomed from it, it is the custom that men give red roses to their ladies. In return, the ladies give books to their men.

Local booksellers and flower vendors cram the length of la Rambla and other streets, and everyone in Barcelona finds a good excuse not to do a stitch of work. Instead, people stroll the streets with their lovers, browse for books, crowd the plazas and eye the fashionable authors of the day.

It is also a big day for cultural critics and the literati to see who got invited that year to sign their books around town. The high-society Svengalis behind the Sant Jordi events had chosen Sergi as one of the honorary invitees, while David with a new book out, had been slighted in his own hometown.

David acted like it didn’t bother him. He pointed out that he and Sergi had been invited previous years during the height of Crack ’s popularity. I knew some part of him felt hurt. Could he be so above this kind of sibling rivalry? Was he already content with his literary credibility? I didn’t know whether I’d ever be.

Deep down I already knew I was a better literary critic than I was a writer. I had graduated with an MFA in creative writing from a top school only to see all my friends get offered immediate high-profile book deals with their theses. I reworked my thesis over and over until I killed it. When I finally published it with some trendy indie publisher based in Brooklyn, it was so overwrought, so self-conscious, that one critic labelled it “cold and overly stylized”. Somehow, this kind of criticism had never touched Sergi’s dense work. His new book on Hadrian, an impenetrable thicket of pompous jargon and historical assumptions, was oddly more popular than David’s last heartbreaking novel about alienation.

After David had caught me up on all the literary gossip on the terrace, we scurried into the bedroom. Talking about the book fair was our post-fight, verbal foreplay right before we finally sprang into bed and spread each other’s folds open — the tension had been so ripe. We then passed out in a sundrenched, red wine stupor, our sweaty bodies laid out naked above the sheets after a much-needed fuck.

The balcony doors were open to their full glory and I awoke to the soothing feeling of sunlight warming my bush. The sensation made me want him again, but I didn’t want to wake him.

I needed water. I grabbed David’s Chinese robe and straightened myself up before exiting the bedroom, thinking, perhaps hoping , I’d run into Sergi on my way to the kitchen. This time the room with the shoes’ door was practically closed. I assumed Sergi had been here while we were napping. I tapped softly on the door and called out hello. There was no answer, so I pushed the door open.

The shoes were gone. The suitcase was now an explosion of white dress shirts, sleek belts and identical pairs of dark denim jeans. Sergi was obviously in a rush to get in and get out fast. There were copies of his books strewn on the floor. I picked one up and stared at the black-and-white author photo. It was a more recent photo than the one I’d seen in David’s study, and he was still just as stunning, having grown more distinguished with age. He had grown facial hair, and I immediately thought it was a vain attempt to look smart, less pretty boy.

White sheets of paper with elegant and scripted writing were scattered hastily over the unmade bed. They looked like drafts of his short speech for Libros magazine’s Sant Jordi event that night. Maybe he wasn’t as spontaneous as David had suggested.

While I showered before the party, I imagined what my first words to Sergi could be. I chose my outfit carefully. I didn’t want to look like another literary social climber in a flowery minidress and pristine pumps. I decided to go for a black-fitted pants suit instead. I let my braless breasts hang free in their teardrop position, rounding out the edges of my jacket. Black pointed flats provided maximum comfort while walking Barcelona’s dark streets with the boys later that night.

I lined my eyes with black eyeliner and smoked them up with grey shadow. I skipped the lipstick. I wanted to be all eyes that night.

Surrounded by the unnaturally attractive Spanish publishing world, I was glad that I had fixed myself up. In the packed ballroom, the Ritz’s chandeliers cast a romantic light on the wiry women in dramatically draped scarves and the men impeccably dressed in dark jackets.

We were boxed into a room of wall-to-wall mirrors where violins played and enormous golden vases with long-stemmed roses for Diada de Sant Jordi lined the walls. A mighty mix of booze, nerves and jetlag kicked in as David and I made our first rounds. I felt like Rita Hayworth’s character trapped in the Hall of Mirrors in The Lady from Shanghai, where everything looks warped through the lens of paranoia.

I tried to spot Sergi or anybody I knew in the mirrors’ reflection, but a low-lying cloud of cigarette smoke hung over our heads like a rain cloud, fogging up my view. Suddenly, David was dragged off by a pack of faceless arms in one direction. I was pulled in the opposite direction, in the liver-spotted, red-nailed clench of Catalan literary agent Silvia Riera.