I’m feeling feeble. Even though Susan’s brain is struggling to remember her semester abroad, trying to remember the Spanish word for happiness, and the way it felt to kiss Juan in an olive grove in the moonlight overlooking the twinkling lights of Granada, her Midwesternism is overwhelming both of us — like the signal from a stronger radio station (to use one of her own similes), images of snow shovels, ice backing up under the roof, brisk walks around Lake Harriet in the fall, backyard cookouts on the gas grill, Christmas shopping at the Mall of America, freeway backups, Friskies cat food, and a strong desire to buy some new patio furniture from Target when she gets home are beginning to dominate the dreamy flickers from winding staircases, cedar ceilings, and alabaster balconies.

…for a quick, surprising moment I see someone else looking out of his eyes, someone I recognize from the early years of my enchantment, a handsome warrior who used to parade by me on a fine black horse…

Then, suddenly, because he’s sitting in the shade now, Paul takes off his sunglasses, and for a quick, surprising moment I see someone else looking out of his eyes, someone I recognize from the early years of my enchantment, a handsome warrior who used to parade by me on a fine black horse, his visor raised. Though we could never speak to one another, by the end of the first century of enchantment we used to look for one another on those midnights when the enchanted horde emerged into the moonlight. I think we both realized by then that our true loves back in the world of time — my Prince Ahmed, his lady-what-ever-she-was-called — had already grown old and perished, and that it might be wise to select a new object of affection. But when you only see someone once a year, and cannot speak to them, it’s hard to build a romance, and as the centuries passed we both grew discouraged.

Why, he must have been released from his enchantment, too, at the same moment as me, and taken refuge in this two legged mammal, Susan’s husband Paul. I yearn up out of Susan’s eyes, trying to communicate with him, wishing there were some way I could give him a sign that I exist.

“I wish I had a bangle bracelet,” Susan says.

“What?” Paul squints at her. “A bangle bracelet? What for?”

Susan looks at her arm, frowning. “I don’t know why I said that.”

“They sell jewelry at that tourist shop near the Baths. You might as well get a souvenir. I’d like something myself. A scimitar with a jeweled hilt.”

“A scimitar! What would you do with a scimitar? How would you get it home on the airplane?”

“You’re right.” He looks puzzled. “Well, how about a sandwich then? I’m starving.”

They get up off the bench together, heading for a snack bar, and I feel myself gagging as Susan begins to think about food. The word “sandwich” has conjured up all kinds of memories from Midwestern lunches — pizza slices gooey with cheese, potato chips, brownies, bananas, hamburgers with sesame buns, dill pickles, frosty glasses of iced tea. I’m hungry, too — I haven’t eaten in centuries — but I long for sherbets and dates and pomegranates. We pass other tourists on the way to the snack bar, and occasionally, from the bemused face of a young women in Capri pants or a grey-haired man in shorts frowning over his new digital camera or a sunburned teenager in a halter top dragging behind her parents, I catch a glimmer of another enchantment survivor looking out in shock and amazement at this new millennium. There must have been hundreds of us released from spells today, and we lucky ones found a mammal to enter, a German businessman on holiday, a French travel agent, an insurance adjuster from Prague, a rabbit, or even a mole. Maybe those of us residing in rabbits and feral cats are the lucky ones after all, for animals will stay here in this garden in Spain for the rest of their short lives, while the rest of us travel to countries where it snows, where people live in gloom and darkness most of the year.