Postcards From Everywhere

The first postcard came from Lisbon: yellow tram, steep street, a few lines in quick slanted handwriting. Met you for twelve minutes in an airport delay. Still thinking about your terrible opinion on window seats. — I.

The second came from Marrakech. The third, from a lake in Patagonia so blue it looked painted. Every one has a question on it, and you’ve started answering them out loud to your empty kitchen like a fool.

Tonight, your phone lights up with a message instead.

“Postcard incoming from Kyoto. Before it arrives: if you could teleport anywhere for one dinner, where?”

You stare at it. You think of Inês as you met her: sitting cross-legged on the floor of gate 14 with a camera in her lap and three cups of coffee lined up beside her, typing furiously on a laptop with a cracked corner. She’d looked up and said, “You look like someone who has a strong opinion about airports,” and then for twelve minutes, until her boarding call, you had argued cheerfully about everything.

You type: A noodle stall I’ve never been to, somewhere I can’t pronounce, with you telling me what to order.

The reply comes back fast. Then a video call request.

Her face fills your screen, framed by a narrow street lit with paper lanterns, a wooden shop front behind her steamed up from the inside. She’s wearing a rain jacket and a grin. “You realize,” she says, “that is exactly where I am standing right now.”

She flips the camera around and walks you through it: the low doorway, the curtain she has to duck under, the counter with just eight stools, the cook who nods at her because she’s been here three nights running. She orders for both of you, one bowl for her and an imaginary one she places in front of an empty stool. She narrates everything, the smell of the broth, the pickled ginger, the way the cook taps the ladle twice on the pot for luck.

“I write about cities for a living,” she says, slurping a noodle, completely unbothered by the camera. “Food, streets, the sound a place makes at night. But my editor keeps telling me my pieces are missing something.” She props the phone against a napkin holder and looks right into it. “I think they’re missing someone to tell them to.”

You keep talking long after her bowl is empty. She tells you about getting lost in a bamboo forest and being rescued by a grandmother on a bicycle. You tell her about your small life in your small city, and she listens like it’s the most interesting place in the world. When she laughs, the cook glances over and smiles at whatever’s on the screen.

“It’s nearly morning here,” she says finally, stepping out into the lantern light. The street is empty, gleaming with rain. “I have a train in four hours and I haven’t packed.”

“Where to next?”

Inês is quiet for a moment, turning in a slow circle, letting you see the whole sleeping street. Then she turns the camera back to her face. Something in her expression has changed, a little nervous, a little brave.

“That’s the thing,” she says. “My next assignment is your city. Two weeks. I asked for it.” She bites her lip. “So I need a local who can tell me what the guidebooks get wrong. Know anyone?”