Ben had tried to leave Bunol for three days leading up to La Tomatina before he heard that a massive volcano had erupted in Iceland, shutting down airports throughout the continent. He wondered if Violet had managed to make it as far as Madrid before discovering that she couldn't make it back to their flat in Williamsburg any faster than he could.
Resigned to spending Tomatina alone in a foreign suburb, Ben had pounded the sunbaked streets from shortly before dawn until long after sunset for three days, as though he could find some missing clue or remnant of the Violet he fell in love with down some flagstone alley or nestled in a shady alcove.
Ben ordered a carajillo from a gleaming white espresso bar on the north side of the city and joined the throngs heading towards the main Plaza. He sat on an old stone bench in the shade of drooping almond tree, sipping his fortified coffee, and watched officiants greasing the pole that would mark the beginning of the festival.
Most of the celebrants pouring into the Plaza were practically dressed. Men wore dark colored shorts and goggles with leather sandals and no shirt. Most women dressed as simply, with board shorts or skirts, or sometimes bikini bottoms to match their tops. Invariably the women bared their bellies and showcased their breasts in tight, patterned fabric that was already clinging to their skin with moisture from the August heat.
Ben grinned into his plastic coffee cup. He was dressed in white chinos and a loose white t-shirt with tennis shoes to match. The clothes were expensive and fit his body well, but yet he had passed by his hotel room to the Plaza, unable to bring himself back to the hotel room he'd booked for Violet to change into something more practical. Perhaps he wanted to ruin his clothes beyond all repair. The last few days felt as though his life was ruined beyond all repair.
The assembled crowd began to chant and sing. One mob towards the center had clearly been drinking even though it wasn't quite yet ten in the morning. Ben wondered if they'd stayed up all night drinking, frantic for a moment of half-naked liminality. Soon the chanting became shouting, which became screaming. Across the plaza a yellow fire truck blasted water into the air, which formed a gentle arc and misted Ben and the rest of the festival goers. La Tomatina had begun.
Men who looked to Ben like champion bullfighters began trying to scale the slippery pole at the center of the plaza to knock the ham hock from the top so the idling tomato trucks could throw open their beds and let the massive food fight begin. Ben saw a dozen men with dimpled backs and powerful shoulders attempt the pole before losing their purchase and sliding down into the crowd below.
Then a figure emerged from the seething masses below, obviously not male. She wore a short pink tennis skirt with biking shorts beneath and white tennis shoes that nearly matched Ben's. A thick curtain of dark hair obscured most of her white tank top. Ben grinned as he noted her knee and below pads. Her skin was glowing copper and Ben was mesmerized by the way the muscles in her shoulders and thighs tensed as she shimmied up the slippery pole.
She reached the top and wrapped her thighs around the head of it. She turned towards the crowd of officiants and press - towards Ben - to pose for a photo. A hundred shutters snapped behind Ben's head, capturing her heart shaped face and wide, white smile. She picked up the ham hock and threw it down to the crowd while a chorus of air horns blasted around the Plaza. Before he could catch a final glimpse of the woman who scaled the pole,the air was thick with laughter and sprays of crushed orange fruit.
A group of dark teenage girls in blue string bikini tops had been unable to resist pelting the tourist dressed all in white. Ben wiped the acidic residue off his face and laughed as he saw the girls giggle and wave, their pert breasts jiggling in their skimpy suits. He grabbed a handful of tomato from his lap and returned fire, but the girls turned in the last moment, so that the fruit spattered instead over their backs. The juices ran down the curve of their asses to coat the backs of their silky thighs.
The girls took off running and Ben slammed the dregs of his coffee and took off after them. A dozen or more tomatoes hit him as he ran towards an enormous red truck that read Bolinches, which was already full to bursting with clever strategists and eager combatants who knew the largest supply of crushed tomatoes was here. As Ben approached the truck, the vollies became a downpour of bright, stringing fruit.
A thick woman with onyx skin and heavy breasts that strained her tube top upended a bucket of pulverized fruit on top of Ben's head. She turned to leave and Ben felt his cock stiffen when he saw her thick ass wobble in her tiny red shorts. He grabbed a handful of tomato from his hair and grabbed her wrist with his other hand. When she turned to see who had touched her, he fired the soaking handful of tomato into her cleavage.
She gasped and began speaking very fast in a language Ben though might be Dutch. She was laughing though, and he wanted to touch her again, but her friend grabbed her other hand and pulled her away from him and deeper into the throng. And then Ben saw Violet.
Her porcelain face and almond shaped eyes stood out even more in Bunol than in Brooklyn. She looked so petite standing across the Plaza in her denim cutoffs and the purple silk bra he'd given her for their one year anniversary. Even without the straightener she'd left in their hotel room, her fine black hair hung in a perfect bob that framed her face. But she wasn't looking at him. She was standing on her toes to kiss a towering black man with a flat stomach and biceps the size of bowling balls.
The wind went out of Ben like a punch to the gut. Violet had left him. She said they were incompatible. That her libido was just naturally low. She was going to be on a plane to Madrid, wasn't she? Had she heard about the volcano ash and stayed in Bunol just as he had? Had she rented another hotel room? Had she seen him pacing the streets every day since she packed her suitcase, trying to figure out what went wrong?
As though she could hear his thoughts or feel herself being watched, Violet's black-brown eyes flashed from her mysterious paramour to Ben. They flew open, startled. She hadn't expected to be seen. Perhaps she was embarrassed, Ben thought, having played the prude for two years and then having found a suitable replacement for her fiance before she even left the city. She grabbed her lover's enormous hand and turned him towards the narrow streets away from Ben.
Ben turned at that moment, not wanting to watch her leave a second time when someone from the truck above upturned another pail of tomatoes over his head. Blinded and chaffing with longing to be anywhere but in Bunol, he took a quick step forward and collided headlong with someone.
Wiping the tomato from his face, Ben saw who he had hit. It was the woman who had scaled the pole. She was on her back in nearly five inches of crushed tomatoes, blinking as though blinded by the searing sun and the sour orange juice that covered her.
Ben knelt down beside her and pulled off his ruined shirt. He offered her the only clean spot and she wiped her face, leaving mascara lines on the clean patch of white.
"Sorry, sorry," she groaned, pushing herself up on her elbows. She had a broad forehead and pointed chin, a round, upturned nose and soft, pink lips. Her eyes were wide and brown brushed with topaz. Ben had to catch his breath when his eyes met hers.
"It's already ruined, it doesn't matter," Ben said. He had to shout over the crowd. He helped her to her feet and she paused, staring at his naked arms and chest.
"You are American?" she asked. God, Ben thought, even her voice made him crazy. It was sweet and heady like spiced rum. All he could do was nod.
"I like Americans," she said. "They ask for what they want."
She must have already dispensed with her knee and elbow pads, as well as the bike shorts, but the short tennis skirt still hugged the swell of her hips. On top she wore a now transparent white racerback tank top over a black bikini that barely covered a pair of perfect DDs. He knew her statement couldn't be construed as anything other than an invitation to look. She was perfection. He didn't know if he dared ask for more.
She saw him staring and smiled. "You could sit down a moment with me. I am dizzy still from our crash."
Ben nodded dumbly, but led the way through the festival crowd, this time avoiding the densest crowds. She hooked her finger over the waistband of his jeans so she wouldn't be separated. Ben was felted by a few more handfuls of tomatoes, but he wiped them away, focusing on the unoccupied little stone bench beneath the almond tree.
"My name is Camila. I am from Valencia," she said, crossing her legs and extending her hand.
