We'd been talking about Guernica.  We'd both been there, but not together.  Together we had gone to see the painting in Madrid.

And Picasso, how, during World War II, as he was living in Paris, Nazi soldiers came to his home; one of the soldiers pointed to a photo of his painting, of Guernica, (the painting had been removed to the United States for safekeeping, but he had a photo of it there).  The soldier asked him if he did that.  "No," Picasso said, "you did."

In Donosti, we used to eat pizza with tuna and green olives.  Here, we usually order anchovy pizza with onion and extra sauce.  We were discussing the pizza.  I'd come back into our apartment after paying the delivery driver and I'd set the pizza down on the table, using the pizza-box to push away bottles of wine and glasses and a small poinsettia.  "They put fish on your pizza," one of our friends said. 

Later, about the pizza, Amaia'd said, "It's good for the price." 

I laughed.

Amaia did not do as I do, did not fawn over things.  Things were good or bad.  If something was good, then the cost of that thing was worth the price – was worthy - was good for the price.  If the thing was not good, or, not as good as it should have been, it was not good for the price.

Not long ago, I'd bought tickets to the theater.  "Is it good?" she had asked me.  "How do I know?" I had said, "It's a new show."  I was washing the radishes that had been soaking in the sink of water.  The water was so cold, and I had the hot water running, and I was trying to keep my hands in this place, the place where the hot water plunged into the cold water.  I was in the kitchen and Amaia was sitting in the living room.  The silence bothered me.  I turned off the faucet and started drying my hands with a dishtowel.  I leaned my upper body into the doorway.  "Is something wrong?" I asked.  "Don't you want to see a new show? Opening night?" 

"If it's good," she'd said. 

I'm wrong.  Amaia was enthused – full of expectation about dinners, about movies, about books and trips.  But, she did not greet the unknown with stupid enthusiasm.  She did not close her eyes and expect everything to be nice, to taste good, to look good.  If things were not good – she did not pretend it was ok.  Did not shrug her shoulders and smile.  For Amaia, it was ok to be disappointed. 

Sometimes, I think, we'd both feel guilty.  We were both convinced in our belief that there is never only one person for anyone. 

I read an interview with a woman who, years before, after quitting smoking, grieved for her missing self.  "I miss her terribly still," she had said.

I find myself hovering around our apartment.  There are drawers with photos in them.  In the garage are boxes of photos I think about emptying on the floor.  So many photos, and, it's funny because we always said we never took any pictures, always said that we'd have nothing to remember.

Who was I before Amaia?  I was in a momentum of change.  I cannot pin it down.  I was swimming to the island.  I was liking things and disliking things.

In the newspaper, the Diariovasco Amaia and I read online, was a photo of a man who'd been assassinated.  The story did not make sense.  He was dirty looking, unkempt.  Once, years ago, he'd been some sort of councilman, in Mondragon.  I have two friends who are from Mondragon.  He was never very relevant; but politically, today, he was irrelevant.  "It doesn't make any sense," Amaia'd been saying.  "Why him?"  A photo of the Prime Minister, giving a speech about terror was above the photo of this man.  It was in the Diariovasco, which, when I lived in Donosti, in San Sebastián, I used to read every day in cafes, and which Amaia always read every day online.  She surely reads her father's copy now. 

Another photo showed blood on the street.  He'd been shot by three men.  "I'm tired of this," Amaia said.  "Nobody is willing to solve this."  There was an injustice about this murder that she felt.  "The politicians will use it, the media will use it.  And who was he? He was nobody.  Why would ETA even do this?  It doesn't make any sense."

The first article I'd read stated that the man's wife and daughter were in the car with him.  Later, we found out they had heard the gunshots.  The man had parked outside of his house.  He had, perhaps, stepped out of the car, turned to lock his car door.  He must have turned around, heard the sound of three men running toward him.

The photo of the man looked like a mug shot.  Was it that the snapshot was blurred? Or was it too sharp?  His eyes were red were tired, focused on the camera, looking through it, through us.  "It's not fair," Amaia was saying.  We were on our way out of town.  We were driving toward the Presidio, toward Golden Gate Bridge.  "Nobody wants to solve the problem."  Maybe if I would have felt his picture, if I'd have had the Diariovasco, printed, before me, I would have felt differently.  Maybe Amaia would have too.  It strikes me now that the picture was too clear – too sharp maybe.  Today I tried to find the picture in the online paper again, but it is gone.

I wish I could find the picture.  I'd like to stop thinking about it.  I'd like to see it again, so that it could disappear.  If I see it again, I would realize in how many ways it is different from my memory of it.  In how many ways I am off.

With Amaia it's the same.  If I could see her again, perhaps the memories I have would be changed.

Years ago, when we mostly spoke Spanish, we were mad at each other about something and Amaia'd said, she'd yelled, really, "You're a shellfish!"

"Sorry?" I said.

"A shellfish . . . a shellfish! . . ."

She was becoming more and more frustrated, and I was lost.

And then I knew: "Ah!" I'd said.  "Selfish! . . . that I'm selfish!"  And we both laughed.  There's no photo of that moment.  The memory I have is not perfect.  But where is it?  Before I began thinking of it now, it had been gone.  I hadn't thought of it in years.  Perhaps it was away for safekeeping? 

"Who did that?"

"You did."