We were driving on a nice mountainous road of only one lane in each direction but in good condition and even with shoulders. The five of us, all adult size people, were comfortably seated inside a red Fiat 500 while the car was threading the curbs of the mountain. On the downward slopes, the driver speed and that made me nervous.
The view was breathtaking and we were enjoining it. The reason for that trip? We, the family of 4, were taking our lady friend to a small town in the mountain.
When we were approaching the entrance to the town the driver said:
– There is a small possibility for us to stop in the town just to see it.
The town was a touristic one, with small shops, coffee places and small well keep restaurants. The shops, like in many touristic towns, were one next to the other. The first place we entered was a bakery/cafe, the kind that has small square tables and the guy brings to your table whatever you ordered on the counter. It was a nice, clean and comfy place.
This bakery/cafe shared the street entrance with two other places that were farther inside and had the doors opened. The one to the left had a glass wall through which you could see the dresses on display. Inside there was a fair lady fixing them. The other door was to a patio. The dress shop also looked inviting and homey and the patio was as of a home, not a store.
We noticed that at the main display on the counter there was a nice looking cake color royal blue with decorations in baby blue made especially for president Barack Obama. The cake was very well done and dedicated to the president.
We sat on one table and our lady friend asked for a strawberry cake. She kept saying that she was on a diet but the portion she got was some 5x4x3 inches and she was enjoying it with a lot of pleasure. I ate one strawberry filled cookie.
Our lady friend also entered into a transaction with the man at the counter and he brought to her a glass container of about 2 gallons that contained a crystalline thick liquid that was supposed to be made of agave and was the base to make a very healthy drink.
After finishing the cake she wanted to see some dresses so I escorted her to the dress shop. At the dress shop, they also had a cake for the president. A bit less beautiful one but still nice and appealing; this was colored pastel yellow with white, less tall but wider than the blue one. Supposedly, the situation was that the president and his motorcade was going to pass by the town that same day and in case he decided to stop by and enter any of the shops, each one was ready to offer him a birthday cake to celebrate his birthday so he will see the appreciation that the people of the town had for him.
I returned to my chair and from there, because I was with my back to the entrance, I could see the patio. Paying more attention, I noticed that it was ample space and the sun shined over it. It was a comfortable clean patio, with clothes lanes crossing it from different points. On the clotheslines there were hanging white bed shits that were been moved by the wind and were doing that flapping sound that the flags make when the sea breeze moves them. They were just washed but they were already dry and that sound was just perfect, inviting like to fall asleep on the beach, and they had that typical smell of clean sun-dried clothes.
Assuming that the restroom was there, I decided to go to the patio. I stud up and said: I’ll be right back. And left. It was so good to walk between the shits, been immerse into the white and the smell and the flapping sound. I felt fantastic and I succumbed to the enjoinment of the senses imagining that I was on the terrace of a beach house.
The patio was a closed space, with plants on planters. It looked like those central patios on Spaniard’s houses. It was painted mainly blue, the same blue the cake was, but also had white on the high part of the walls. Then I saw the bathroom, at the end of the space toward the left. There were three doors. The right one was marked “hombres” and I did not bother to pick inside. The one to the left was marked “familias” and it was a huge room of some 30×30 feet. It was very clean with a polished floor of a mustard color. Inside were toilets, sinks and changing tables. The middle door was marked “F” and immediately I assumed it meant female, funny assumption because the other doors were marked in Spanish.
I turned around to see the patio again and entered the bathroom marked as “F”. It was a tiny bathroom with only one toilet. The sink was in the wall in front of the door, and the toilet was perpendicular to the sink. Everything was in different shades of mustard color; the floor also had an arabesque design of a darker reddish-brown on the ceramics that covered it. As soon I entered I closed the door and pulled down my pants, and contrary to my auto imposed “law” of not seating on any toilet that I had not cleaned myself, I sat on the toilet because it looked like it was so clean and smelled so good. At that moment a grown lady entered the bathroom. She was fair of skin and hair, which she wore shorts, and carried some pounds accumulated with the years. She looked like that Italian nonas you see in movies. She was surprised to see me seated there but both took it naturally. She grabbed something from the top of the sink and without saying a single word she made some gestures towards the door handle as to explain her presence, I said that I did not lock the door, she smiled understandingly and left.
I stayed seated doing my business but I suddenly woke up with a strong urgency to go to the bathroom.
(The night I had this dream actually was the day when President Obama had his 52nd birthday)
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