Page 47 of One Year Ago in Spain
Matías tried to school his face into something resembling neutral. “I used to date a sculptor.”
Claire tripped on her own feet. “Oh. Um, you did?”
He shrugged. “Yes, but it’s in the past. Anyway, I had my eye on the exhibit on costumes. What do you think?”
Claire’s fingers fluttered, and Matías was pretty sure she was debating whether to ask more about his ex or not. He hoped she decided onnot. At the end of each of his dates with Claire when he askedWhen can I see you again?she always seemed surprised that Matías was still interested. So he didn’t want to talk about his previous relationship right now, because he knew Claire well enough to know that she would immediately compare herself to his ex, and he wouldn’t be able to convince her that he was somuch better off with down-to-earth Claire than another free-spirited artist like himself.
Maybe what Claire needed was to see herself more clearly—that she wasn’t only a buttoned-up attorney, but also a woman who could let loose and have unstructured fun sometimes.
“Forget the costume exhibit,” he said. “I have a better idea.”
—
They left thecity and drove the windy roads out into the forests. Matías checked the address on his phone one more time and asked Claire to pull over in a small patch of dirt.
“Where are we?” she asked as they got out and he led them toward the trees, their red and gold leaves rippling in the breeze.
Matías pointed to a painted wooden sign: Welcome to Anything You Want.
“A professor in my department inherited acres and acres out here,” he said. “But instead of building on it, he decided to make it an art collaboration. Any artist is welcome to come onto his land, anytime, to create. The only restriction is you can’t harm the plants or wildlife. I’ve been meaning to come out here but hadn’t had the chance.”
They found a narrow, worn footpath from the dirt pullout that led deeper into the property.
“So this place is called Anything You Want? What does that mean?” Claire asked as they walked through the thicket of trees—some with delicate, pale orange leaves, and others broad, in crimson hues.
“Literally anything you want to make here, you can,” Matías said. “Like that.”
He gestured into the woods to the left. There, bristly squaredoormats made of coconut fibers had been dyed black and something close to white, and they were laid up and down the hilly ground like an uneven chess board. Three- to six-foot-tall chess pieces made of copper wire stood on some of the squares—stumpy pawns, regal knights on horseback, bishops with hollow bodies except a solid cross at the heart.
“Oh my gosh, look!” Claire laughed, pointing at a wire figure behind a particularly stout tree trunk. “There’s the king!”
Matías laughed, too. Because the king was cowering behind the tree, only his crowned head sticking out, and just a few yards away from him, a queen stood on her coir doormat square, her wire body mounted on a pole so she spun around and around in circles, as if searching for him.
“Checkmate,” Matías said.
“Definitely.” Claire grinned and linked her arm through his as they continued down the path.
They passed a long wooden shed with a sign over the doorway that read: Tools of Imagination.
Farther down the path, there was more: A dragon made entirely of bicycle gears, suspended on a zip line in the canopy above.
A single platform with a glass-covered plate—inside was a marble apple, waiting for Snow White. Little fairy houses nestled in fields of wildflowers, and colorful glass wind chimes in the tree branches. A gold statue of Aslan the lion. A topiary of a dancing couple. A fallen, lightning-struck trunk carved into a totem pole in repose.
When they came upon a low stone bridge over a creek that had dried up, Matías’s chest swelled in the same way as when inspiration struck him for a new painting.
“There,” he said.
“There what?” Claire looked at the bridge and all around it.
“Stay right here. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”
He ran through the woods, along the twists and turns of the various dirt paths, until he found the wooden shed with the Tools of Imagination. The door was unlocked, and inside, Matías found what he’d been hoping for—paint and brushes and tarps—as well as all sorts of art supplies he didn’t need now but might use another day.
“What is all that for?” Claire asked when he returned with several canisters of spray paint.
“We’re going to decorate the stone bridge,” he said.
Her eyes grew wide. “Like, graffiti?”
