Roberta and the Piano Player

Friday night in Granada. I saw the worst performance (of any and every kind) of my life. My friends and I left in the middle of this "flamenco" show because I was on the verge of going up onto that stage myself and ripping the microphone from these peoples' hands. These performers were an embarrassment to art. After we bolted, we went on a hunt for a place that wouldn't make me want to throw anything at anyone. We came across this bar that required going down three dark, graffiti-ed ally ways. We walked in and heads turned. We were probably the first Americans to ever step foot in this place. We ran to a table, and I tried to make myself invisible. Flamenco playback music was blasting, and almost all the people in that bar clapped along. It was a dance party of hands.

Suddenly, a curious little man sat down at the piano a couple feet away from us. The bar staff silenced the speakers and this man began to jam. A girl came over and sat there watching him. My friends and I immediately began to create a storyline for them--whether they were together or not, what kind of lives they led...

We narrated their relationship for about an hour. There were moments of tension as, for example, when a man with a very bold mustache approached her and tried to steal attention from the curious little man. All this time, two other men had joined the curious little man at the piano and put on a great show.

We left this obscure bar that night not knowing what would become of this man and woman, but we were rooting for them.

Today, at five in the morning, my friend Elena and I walked up to the bus stop where we planned to catch the shuttle to the Granada airport. Our questions were answered in that moment. Out of all the people in Granada, standing at that bus stop at five in the morning were the curious little man and the cute girl intertwined in each others' arms! It turns out that they were very much in love. And mustache man, who showed up the bus station as well, was the third wheel. They weren't even Granada locals. They were Italian! And, even more coincidentally, on our flight back to Madrid.

So, we didn't even have to make up the end to that story. It played out right before our eyes. It's a crazy world we live in. We first saw these people in the darkest, most hidden bar in Granada and then found ourselves on the same flight days later.