Her mother said, “This is excellent too. Would you like some?” He nodded and put his hands together like a prayer. Her mother ladled a mound of saffron rice on his plate, making sure to top it with mussels.

The man asked her mother, “You Americana, yes?”

“San Francisco,” she said.

“It’s beautiful?”

Mother told him it was mostly inconvenient. She described the hilly streets and windy roads, the traffic she deplored. He listened so hard crease marks formed on his brow. Finally, he shrugged his shoulders. “Perdón, I don’t follow.”

Her mother pursed her lips, paused, and then asked, “Parlezvous français?”

“Bien sûr,” he replied.

He looked older in the night but Michelle couldn’t decide how old. His hair looked darker because it was damp and combed off his face. He wore clean white trousers and a white shirt with wooden buttons.

The three of them sat in a row on the same side of the table with Michelle, then her mother, then the man at the very end of the corner. Her mother sat in the middle and was blocking him, so Michelle didn’t realize it when he spoke to her for the first time. He had to lean forward with his elbows on the table and he said, “I am Luis Garrigos. I see you at the playa, no?”

Michelle could think of nothing to say.

In English her mother said, “This is my daughter, Michelle.”

“Ah, beautiful girl,” he said.

Her mother brushed Michelle’s hair away from her mouth and said, “Oh, she’s okay.”

“You like swim?” he asked.

“She should stay out of the sun. Look how dark she is,” her mother replied.

“You enjoy Javea?” he asked.

Michelle blurted “I love it, I love the ocean!” She was sick of her mother answering for her. But she also feared her mother’s blabbing (as she had been throughout the ten days) about how it was her first all-girl vacation, or how she could barely afford it, or how she had picked the Costa Del Sol based on a tarot reading the day she filed for divorce.

He said to Michelle, “You love? Americans love too easy?” It made her blush.

Aunt Kim sat across from them as if she were an audience watching a scene unfold. Her aunt smiled with her teeth stained gray from the red wine and her face like a plum, flushed after a few sips of alcohol. Michelle was glad that Aunt Kim had joined them after what her mom described as, “a really bad year in a string of bad years.”