Queens of All the Earth by Hannah Sternberg Page A

of the couches, listening to Lenny describe Lima to him after having asked him what it was like.
    “Lenny works for the magazine Lonely Planisphere ,” Miranda said as she tugged away at Olivia’s hair with a wide-toothed, but still unforgiving, comb. “She knows exactly how to visit places. It’s her job.”
    “What does she do on her vacations?” Olivia asked. “Stay at home?”
    “Lenny is a very experienced traveler,” Miranda said. “You should listen to what she says. Except when she invites you to do something unsafe. Did you use conditioner?”
    “I couldn’t take it with me on the plane.”
    “Well, at least you don’t have to wash this pile every day. Put it up and no one will notice what a mess it is.”
    Olivia did so obediently, fingers finding their places on the back of her head. She concentrated fiercely on mentally cataloguing all she knew about Gaudí, and was so absorbed that they reached the bottom step, and were out the door before she even thought to ask what they’d see first.
    “We’ll start far and work our way in,” Lenny said. “It saves time and you feel more energized by the end. That was in my first column. So we’ll hit the Sagrada Familia, then head to the Casa Milá, and end on the Casa Batlló, since it’s right around the corner.”
    “If you don’t mind, I might stay behind to visit some of the museums inside,” Marc said. “But if it holds you back, you can go ahead without me.”
    “Oh, we’ll be visiting the museums too,” Lenny said. “We’ll have time for everything.”
    They turned left and headed north into Barcelona’s calm, orderly nineteenth-century district. Olivia thought it was pacific, to be swept along with others’ plans.
    They marched along in unacknowledged and uncomfortable silence until it became gradually evident that, in a city sector renowned for its orderly grid, they had managed to lose their way. It wasn’t really a surprise, considering that the more they pretended to be watching for important turns, the less attention they were actually paying to anything they saw.
    Miranda pulled out a map. “Oh no,” Lenny said, snatching it away. “How do you think you’re ever going to learn a city if you’re always resorting to a map? You have to wander a little. You have to get lost! You drift until you find your way again.”
    They chewed on this for another half hour until Marc unobtrusively pulled his own map out of his pocket and, unfolding it inconspicuously, pinpointed the Sagrada Familia, and then their current location, and—most impressive of all—connected the two with an easily discernable route. Even Lenny couldn’t argue with that logic, especially because she was also adhering to her rule of never stopping at a café until her destination was in sight, and breakfast was wearing off a little.
    But past the orderly blocks of homes with shops built into the bottoms, past the large buildings cut clean with precise filigree details and bulging iron balconies, and past the color patterns of flowers and women, delicate and regular as if they were papered on the outside, the spires rose. If yesterday’s cathedral had melted and stretched itself more gelatinously toward the sky, Olivia would have been looking at these towers instead,and she would not have been in the Gothic Quarter at all, and the accordion player would have played without her.
    Antoni Gaudí’s buildings were Art Nouveau, constructed in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Many of his most famous works were scattered throughout Barcelona. They resembled not homes and churches, but sandcastles brought to full size and mosaics taken to the third dimension. Olivia knew this from all she’d read the evening before, and as they gazed upon the towering work of art, Olivia saw it was true. Lenny ran into the nearby gas station for a sandwich, and Miranda followed to use the bathroom. Marc tried to make the case that they might as well get an early