The Good Girl's Guide to Getting Lost by Rachel Friedman Page A

mom, first unconsciously but then knowingly making one of a series of choices between my parents.
    My mother has boxes of recipes, entire shelves of cookbooks organized by cuisine, then cross-referenced by chef and publication date. Each ingredient is precisely measured. She is skeptical about substitutions, while adding something new makes her positively dizzy with apprehension. Once when I suggested throwing in an uncalled-for handful of walnuts, she looked like she might faint. She grasped the edge of the marble countertop to steady herself. “I don’t think that’s a good idea,” she whispered in a tone that really meant “Hell no, you maniac—go spread your anarchy in some other kitchen where they don’t laminate their index cards.” For my mother, cooking is like classical music—beautifully predictable—while what Patchi is currently doing—tossingin a wide variety of vegetables and spices with no written guide to tell him when or how much—has the improvisational quality of jazz.
    Patchi himself looks as frenetic as his cooking. He is tall with wild, shaggy brown curls and could pass equally well as an eccentric Russian scientist or a prep-school misfit. Like Portu, Patchi is ostensibly in Galway to study English, but he has made little progress. Nor does he seem all that interested. While Portu constantly tries out new phrases and asks me to define certain words, Patchi speaks English only when absolutely necessary, using Portu as his translator whenever possible.
    The nights I work at the club, I don’t get home until four or five in the morning, just the time of day someone without a job strolls in, too. So Patchi and I spend a lot of time together in front of the television in the early hours of the morning, mostly watching Ireland’s version of
Big Brother
on one of our three staticky channels. Unlike the U.S.’s weekly edited hour of
Big Brother,
Ireland keeps cameras on the housemates twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. It’s boring but addictive. Usually, I fondle an open jar of Nutella. Every few minutes I absentmindedly spoon a fudgy glob directly into my mouth, forgoing a utensil for my finger when the idea of opening and closing the silverware drawer is simply too exhausting. One time around four-thirty A.M. we were knocked out of our trance when one of the contestants jumped into bed with his housemate for what he must have imagined (though, really, how could he?) was a discreet encounter. But mostly we just watch them sleep, half asleep ourselves.
    Portu works in construction and keeps a much more regular schedule. He kissed me lightly on the cheek when we first met, then, as Carly predicted, immediately informed me that Spanish men are the world’s best lovers. He thinks this is something I should be aware of, since I’m about to move in with an eligibleSpanish bachelor. He is engaged in a constant conversation of seduction with our pretty Spanish neighbors, three luminescent women who spend hours with him and Patchi in the kitchen, cooking and yelling, although Portu would say they are simply talking. At all hours of the day and night, I walk into a boisterous kitchen, five chairs smashed around our scuffed table. Spanish flies in all directions like misfired arrows, making it impossible for me to understand who is talking to whom. The conversation grows in volume and enthusiasm until everyone is out of breath. Once I asked Portu how he understands what anyone is saying, but he just gave me a sympathetic look like I was, sadly, not very bright.
    Since Portu’s English is decent, Patchi’s is virtually nonexistent, and my and Carly’s Spanish is barely coherent, we spend a lot of our time together nodding and gesturing wildly while attempting to reconcile who owes how much money for what and who left his toenail clippings all over the couch again. By the end of each conversation, we always believe we’ve