They were sitting in Retiro Park. The stone wall they were on curved around a palatial courtyard full of pristine sand walkways, stone mounts for stone sculptures, person-height evergreen shrubs, the trees he said he loved with the long, low, pine branches that draped over you like thatched roofs, and the trees she said she loved because they looked like broccoli. He’d never heard of those trees before, but upon seeing them, he loved them as well. They really did look like broccoli.

Behind the courtyard and the pathways and the trees was the classic Madrid skyline, with those beautiful old charming buildings that matched the beautiful old charming Madrileño couples taking their Friday strolls. To the right of our two foreigners on the wall, a tan man kneeled behind a makeshift metal drum, playing it with the soft hammers of his palms. In front of him, a group of young men sat around a friend of theirs, who twirled a type of yo-yo device between two sticks. A master of his craft, just like the drummer man who she said she usually saw in other parts of the park, but was glad he was there today. They had sat near the music man, and the yo-yo boy, and he had looked at the courtyard and the fading light and listened to the music and the chatter of the birds.

“Tell me a story,” she said. “You’re a writer. You should be able to tell me a story.”

He held his hands out in front of him, over the edge of the wall, as if to hold up the whole courtyard for her.

“This is the story.”

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