US OL' obrigadas                                                     

(Tripping along our way, us ol ¡olé!;

how was it before some ¿virus?,

oh yes: less-expensive!)

_“Above the window!_

The tile with the chip.”

Sherrie speaking after sherry, not port. And too much. Mucho. Muito. Demais. I couldn't look up which word—correct. My mental state aflutter (in every language, diagnosed a same), and I promised myself March 2020 with the world all shuttering: I would learn 5 five! Languages and never catch a cold. HA!

            Like that helps.

            Said to myself. And here we are some years later, and barely English me.

            “The Blue tile.”

            What the hell-- (I'm still laughing at my pre-Covid lessons, hope or out-of-touch?)

Every house, no every single building hanging onto the next and held together by the ancient ceramics all the bright colors of nature: blue, green, red. Red is a color of nature, right? Fire.

Porto, Portugal. Medieval and unlike Lisboa, thanks to some earthquake many a século ago.

            “Blue is the color of sky,” I said to my “cousin.” We were trying to play it cool, our ages notwithstanding. We read all the popular magazines' digital editions, mind you, all during the last few years. We were hip! (one transplant done, my own to be determined or m-i-a- or) Or so we thought, or so-- we-- thought--.

            My app froze on the ten-year-old phone I'd dropped in the loo the night before, drunk. A part town not to miss, Sherrie and I had stumbled up-up-up and over Rua das Flores, she would falter peering at the fabled coats-of-arms affixed into? against the stones, set into and all those global brands afoot down under, the city in need of a good rain. SOO many tourists!

“Didn't it say 1561?”

            “It's too hot after late-spring skiing for this. Why did you want me to go to Andorra with you? Why did I agree to go for one last drink, with you?”

The year, she said, the year the street opened, she was reading more off my poor phone, hers she had flushed (don't ask me how, the ancient plumbing of Europe somehow works).

            “Cleaner water here than in most cities of America,” she was reading once more, agitating me with a differing view of realities without my meds. Drunk but reading. Her fedora, late of my head balding, made her look like her grandmother, my grandfather's second wife who had visited Portugal with some step-relation what, “when was Granny here?” I asked, confusing myself. Sherrie tripping along her way, saying she loved the exercise, who knew they had such hills, the vistas, the Middle-Age streets and narrow-fine corridors....

She continued reading, draped upon my arm, me dragging her and us not sliding like last night on the greasy stones, last night into morning:

            “1. The year the street opened. 1521. But who says a street opens? In the States, as they like to say over here, the States, do we say a bridge opens, blue-ribbon what-not, flash-flash for the politicians, papers, do people back home still read papers, don't just we click?”

            “Click-click,” with my tongue. “Please continue,” my voice. I did my part of the calisthenics. As did she:

            “2. Cream or custard? they all love cream all up in every pastry as soon as we boarded that train from the capital. And that hot steward on the rail, sorry I'm posting our yesterday photos now, with comments, about to run out of characters this comment box tight, pushing poking me, lovely man, so sexy, but”  

            'he had kids to feed at home too,' I said I saw the ring;

                                                                                                            “I know I know, me too.

But do you see cows anywhere?” She was talking now about GMO stuff before she let fly again.

You knew this was coming. You've traveled with me. You know I can't take the heat, I don't do well with the maps on phone, the cell phone service, no need to go on. She was ruining my phone. I didn't have the heart to tell her, I'd watched them scour these streets, well this particular one in fact when I could not sleep in between the R. da Galeria de Paris party-hearty nonsense 'til 4 and her, Sherrie's snoring that ceased only after two espressos por favor. I tried to tell her they didn't say it like that here. Whaaaat? “Another round,” she ordered. More that afternoon. Poor Sheerie, her torn-up tummy. She ran out of more than characters.

            “I think you like their food too much, don't blame the port or cream!”

“Pasteis de nata.” Slaughtered the pronunciation, not that I did much better, but I had downloaded-- on that phone she was um holding, some app. She continued, “they don't serve water here like in Vienna.”

            “As Vienna,” I said. “No one anywhere does things as they do in Vienna, nowhere else. Let's not get into comparison shopping with so many locals milling about, you know what the heat can do to me. I'm speaking of myself. Not you as of this very minute.”

z. “Weird my smartwatch never reset itself automatically, Portugal's on London time you know.”

y. “Not no longer Madrid's loco lackey, ha, and in the EU to boot!”

x. “Did you read that line on the app too?”

a. “As I was saying.”

b. “Were.”

“Whatever. Sometimes I don't know about you. You've just been so negative, I almost feel like we should go our separate ways, think I could call this place home, maybe I should stay,” said the person holding my phone, the one who could not speak a moo of Portuguese about to pull me down my mountaintop, puking on my phone all the top-Euro-quality port this side of the Douro from all the lovely vineyards how many vineyards did you line us to sample??? I did not say that, the day before. If I were staying simply for my phone at this point, FORGET IT.

“          .”

That's right, I said nothing. Classic old-world response, don't you watch any foreign-language flicks from years back. Didn't say that neither. Any way, I had my droopy eye on that meat dish, caçoila? chouriço? I was lost in the veggie toss of languages, my head slowing, my empty stomach wanting meat, yum. The letters of memory, difficult to decipher-- Careen,

                                                                                                Falter,

                                                                        Flounder.

Seafood. Not me-- “With their coffees,” Sherrie carrying on and on and on, “like in Vienna, does anywhere else other than that little Austrian coffeehouse off of Gramercy, Man'attan, you know the one that closed in the Seventies, maybe I'm thinking of Boston, but don't you remember?” I was not older enough to remember the Seventies, sober or in any state of mind to figure, said nothing a little longer. I counted for pocket change, found only metro stubs. A lovely subway here, straight to the airport varoom. Vienna's landlocked, girl. Wouldn't eat their seafood!

“Well, I appreciate you holding my hand through all of this. Since the Pandemic, I wasn't certain I could travel again, outside the States I mean. Ever again. Outside the States. So there, thanks. Obrigado.”

            “Obrigada,” I said and I smiled.

“Right. Thanks.” She wanted to believe I was correcting her.

            “Obrigada,” then together: “-da.” We said in unison and sought out more delicacies sweet and savory our last day in town, tired and needing another fix, we told ourselves over and over.

“I still don't see how they keep these ruas so clean,” she said. “Maybe it has something to do with the blue piles. I mean, tiles, yes. Stuff slides right off, down to the river? Can't ya see it. When we're all asleep--”

            “Snoring,” I said softer than the first or last of her own sore-throat warning.

            “What's that?”

“Nothing, glad you're feeling so much better, Sherrie, did you see the date on that one?” She released my hand, offering me back my sorry phone. No thanks, I said, switching back to English. “Are you feeling well enough for sweets, Sherrie, sweetie?” She laughed, she was feeling so—much—better, the incline had ceased beneath our dusty hikers, and we were on our hotel stretch. “I heard there's good port ice cream around this corner here. Maybe you: e-nough pastry. Port ice cream in Porto, ohhh Porto, O-porto.” She ran ahead to the next little curio, my last attempt at witty banter lost in the hi crowd high atop that summer-felt hill before I crashed once more too familiar, the two years of pandemic I'd forgot what? I no springtime chick long before these words all lined up unlike all the above or the start of summer season, and now not at all me a what, with all the tourist-walking teaching me? Nor no, no-- I could not remember what travel like before? as tried to stay hip today? My new angular metal, piece a waistline just below what keeps me in my seat ¡!without a belt¡!, unafraid to rock 'n' roll? to buy another doctor's Mercedes--“old people” whatever your number tallied; we be cool; even but if, in the shade: a wheelchair holding these-here picture books, thx.#

R.P. Singletary is a rural native of America. Writer across genres. Fiction, poetry, drama, hybrid. Dabbler in other media. Affiliations: Dramatists Guild & Authors Guild. Support rec'd from Institute for Humane Studies, Institute of European Studies, Iowa Summer Writing Festival, The Literary Consultancy (U.K.), Looking Glass Rock Writers' Conference, Hub City Writers Project, Kenyon Review Summer Residential Writers Workshop: Fiction, and others.