It’s 4 am, and the man across the street is watching a movie again. I’m not sure if it’s really a man, but that’s how I imagine him. He’s sitting in front of a big screen in a dark room, wide-eyed. There’s never much dialogue in his movies, only exaggerated sound effects, like big bangs and loud explosions. I detest these sounds—dread them even. They provide the soundtrack to my never-ending sleepless night. 

As a New York native, I am no stranger to noise. When I was a little girl, I would lie in bed in my father’s Tribeca apartment, listening to the world happening outside my shuttered curtains. The rhythm of the ambulance sirens, car radios, and whirring subway lulled me to sleep, bringing dreams of all that lay beyond my window. In Spain, the noise is different. It’s personal—intimate. These noises have become characters in my life, as vivid as the lecturers at the university and the man who sells me my cafe con leche each morning. 

In the flat adjacent to mine, I hear girls whispering. If I spoke their foreign language, I would be able to make out every hushed word. I can see them in my mind, sitting close together, gossiping about the latest Erasmus party. They could go to sleep, I tell myself, but it’s their first time away from home. They want to soak in the freedom while they have it. 

Soon their voices are drowned out by the clamor of the bar below me. The Spaniards are closing for the night, cleaning tables and getting rid of glass bottles. I imagine them having a couple of drinks themselves, perhaps the house-made vermouth they are so famous for. They’re wearing aprons, their stomachs bulging out beneath them. They have thin mustaches and tired eyes. If I peered over the balcony, I could see them for myself, walking in and out of the bar. But I have no desire to shatter my fantasy.  

Every so often, I am greeted by the voice of a busker who performs on the steps of the cathedral. It’s a few blocks away, but she uses a microphone, as if she’s putting on a concert for the whole city. I step out on my balcony with a beer or a cigarette, and listen to her renditions of Adele’s greatest hits. It feels so distinctly European—the yellow light on the buildings, the smell of cigarette smoke, the people sticking their heads out of their windows. Sometimes I can’t tell if I’m watching an Audrey Hepburn movie or actually living it, so I dig my feet into the balcony floor to know I’m really here.  

I, too, am part of the scenery. Surely my fellow insomniacs can hear the long phone calls home to my mother, the late-night reruns of Gilmore Girls, or the muffled laughter when I smoke with the French girls down the hall. Maybe they even catch the glow of my reading light as I trudge through another Jane Austen novel, or wonder where I am when I go out for a tinto de verano under the Alhambra. Most nights, though, they would just find me staring at the ceiling, waiting for morning. 

Eventually, the man across the street finishes his movie. The girls go to bed. The bar closes for the night and the busker takes her microphone home. I am still here. Neither asleep nor awake. I go on watching the world, and it goes on living without me.