by Nicole Brogdon
The bed here was firm, like R’s body, when he was mine. The comforter, pristine white. I don’t usually sit on hotel room blankets. I imagine strangers’ organisms squirming in the fibers. But these linens smelled of soft lavender. All night, my arms moved like helicopter blades, trying to settle on the spacious mattress. Still, I’d give the Coziest Hotel in Barcelona, an art deco structure signaling both elegance and home, four stars.
Yellow jasmine perfumed the room. So long, since anyone gave me flowers! The electric kettle, the Nescafé tubes, were thoughtful morning touches. You’ll enjoy these amenities, if you reserve here.
All of that was nothing, compared to the thick Turkish coffee we sipped in Istanbul last fall. Where R watched the Turks at the next table puddling tobacco brown tea from their cups onto saucers, slurping. He grinned, “I used to drink it that way when I was a child, I’d forgotten.” Tilting the saucer below his sharp chin, sipping the coffee till it was gone.
In Barcelona, there was no room for midnight pacing around the bed. They do advertise themselves as “cozy”, “coziest.” But that’s a lot to claim, right? Hotel rooms were made mainly for sleeping and lovemaking, R used to say. I did neither, in Barcelona. For hours, I walked up and down Las Ramblas, all the faces resembling his. Even the policemen, the policewomen, were swarthy and muy guapo. Americans always say they love tapas, but I never knew which ones to order at those outdoor cafes. Creamy salads, or meat croquettes? That first night, my waiter—who passed for Spanish, but was Pakistani, and said he speaks four languages—ordered for me. He brought me a circle of paella, large shrimp resting face down on rice, mooning me.
On any menu in the world, R could choose the best dish. If I’d been more sophisticated, would he be with me in Spain, while I drank my fishbowl of sangria? R with his sleek, hard-bodied European carry-on, me with my oversized paisley suitcase, dragging them all over Turkey last year. R bumping me, teasing me, “Two pairs of your big American shoes fill that bag.”
Normally, I sip white wine, dry—dry like my body crevices are becoming. But in Barcelona, I drank fruity sangria, my fingers fishing out orange and apple slices, sucking their sweetness.
Initially I admired the old-fashioned crank windows in my room. Sorry to say, I broke the metal handle when it was raining, trying to open the glass wide to see sunlight through clouds. I enjoyed the hotel’s musky bath gel. It smelled like R. The older reception lady had a distracting silver beard, full on Billygoat whiskers, which was not her fault. She wore a lovely dress, as Spanish ladies do, printed with vines and roses blooming over her breasts.
I wanted to become a Spanish Dona, a striking, singular expat far from R, my foreigner ex in America—the man who appeared to belong to every country we visited.
The bathroom provided ample room for two, which I didn’t need. Lucky you, if you’re traveling with a partner. One can shower, steamy wet behind glass, while the other shaves before the mirror, whistling at the naked form behind him.
After 9/11, our friends encouraged R to shave his beard so strangers wouldn’t suspect his birth country. “No!” I pleaded to my woolly bear.
The fleece blanket was indeed cozy, azure blue.
Blue, like the Blue Mosque in Istanbul. There, we wrapped our arms round each other outside the masjid, the large dogs of Istanbul and the hijabi women watching us hold ourselves up before such beauty. Because travel made us hopeful, R promised to be faithful. We promised to do better for each other.
The two chilled water bottles in the mini fridge quenched my thirst. Free water. A basic kindness, sometimes missing. Some complementary snacks would’ve been wonderful. Is protein too much to ask for? A seed bar, single-serving pistachios? For my constant hunger now.
R used to crack the shells open between his white teeth.
Couldn’t this hotel provide cinnamon wafers the color of R’s skin? European airlines give them gratis. If you reserve here, stop first at La Boqueria for savory snacks.
On the shower wall, unfortunately, a short black hair stuck against the tile, like a strand of R’s curl, taunting me. Disgusting. I snapped a photo I won’t post. The simple breakfast was adequate: ripe bananas, for regulating the bowels; croissants, flaky and fresh, but not that fresh, not like in Paris. In America, I prefer whole-grain breads to pastries. But I suggest you breakfast at the coffee shop next to the hotel.
We flew to Paris years ago, surprisingly cold, even with all those cafe au laits. My trench coat pulled tight over my tight pregnant belly, my smooth face smiling, standing before L’Arc de Triomphe. My arms reaching for my photographer, R. Back when I believed he was all mine. But we were never really a family, were we? The baby never emerged—not at the right time, not whole.
In the hotel, I was a lonely singleton bumping my baggage in and out of the elevator. “No, thank you,” I said, when the bellboy offered to help. He should have insisted. Ascending, two lovers stood beside me in the quaint Otis, clutching each other‘s small bottoms. So European.
I wanted then to ask an exotic busboy to carry my suitcase up. To run me a bubble bath, lift the plush white robe from its hanger, drape it over my damp body, inhaling steam from my hair. But likely I’d need a different kind of hotel for service like that.
Last day of my stay, the concierge Fatima explained how to walk to the urban beach, La Barceloneta. Go there. Polished pebbles, clear water awakening the skin. Families, lovers, wading then reclining on towels, some exposing their private parts. That was just cruel.
On our travels, R was always looking for “a swimmable beach”. Nothing and no one was ever good enough for him. At the Barceloneta Beach, I saw R, twenty yards away. His easy laugh stopped my breath. It was R, or it was not R. I called his name, but the wind threw the sounds back. Those caramel sloping shoulders, leaning over a younger woman, somewhere. Smearing her back with creamed fingers, licking her neck once.
I turned away, napping on my short hotel towel, my old female body stretched out alarming children, greying locks strung about me like snakes. I don’t let myself take up space. R told me that. At the end. “You’re fading, you’re not animated. You make me feel old.”
I dreamed I was drowning, sinking to the ocean floor. I startled awake, no one to save me. Swimming alone is dangerous, even in dreams. I woke to find my exposed flat feet—cartoon feet—sunburnt. And R gone, with that younger woman. Coming into my sleep, repeatedly, leaving me again, sandy and burnt, sun falling facedown into the sea. I didn’t fight for him, R said, I didn’t want him enough. But I wanted him plenty, I wanted him like I want meat.
So bring your own large towel from home.
In summary, four stars, not five. Not the hotel’s fault. Travel with someone you love, and you’ll like it better here. Anywhere. So much of life is who you’re with. The first day I arrived at this Coziest Hotel, a divorcee with high hopes for beginnings, for flamenco dancing and the deep sleep of forgetting, I entered my jasmine scented room then the bathroom. Looking for the reassurance of that printed paper strip across the toilet bowl. The path, suspended like a bridge over water, as if a couple could walk over it, together. How fragile it was really. How easily I broke it with my own two fingers.
Nicole Brogdon is an Austin TX trauma therapist interested in strugglers and stories, with fiction in Vestal Review, Cincinnati Rev, Cleaver, Flash Frontier, Bending Genres, Centaur, SoFloPoJo, Cafe Irreal, etc. Best Microfiction 2024, Best Microfiction 2025. Twitter NBrogdonWrites! nbrogdonwrites.bsky.social.
Featured image Sasha Kaunas on Unsplash
