Space Between the Stars (16 page)

“How long have you been meditating?” I asked. We walked down the steep stairs to the hallway.

“Almost six months.” He put his arm around me, leading me through tiny halls into his bedroom. Slipping my coat off my shoulders, he motioned for me to sit down on the bed.

I hesitated. “Maybe we could talk in the kitchen?”

“There's no music in the kitchen.” He turned on a brass lamp on the nightstand. There were no chairs, just a stool by his amplifier and stacks and stacks of record albums—and the bed. I walked around the room, looking at his albums and the tall stacks of cassettes. In the corner, three guitars rested on metal stands: a turquoise guitar, a bright red one, and a walnut-stained one. I had grown up with the sound of Dad's fat, round Gibson guitars; their melodies were my universe. Dad's tunes were my nursery rhymes, a second language in our home. Carlos's guitars were skinny and tall, as he was. I turned and saw him watching me.
“My dad plays guitar,” I said.

“I know. He's Saunders King, right?”

I nodded.

“Jerry told me. I've read about him, but never really listened to his music. B. B. King worships your dad.”

“You're kidding. I didn't know that.” I walked to the only resting place and sat down on the bed. “So what are you doing with your new band?”

“We're rehearsing. When the old band broke up,” he said, leaning back against the headboard, “I wanted that. After Woodstock, our egos got inflated. My life became more and more synthetic: I felt like a fake. All I care about is music, but I got pulled into the drugs, the parties. It was painful to lose my friends. I started meditating, seeking a new way, new music—a new life.”

I crossed my ankles and leaned back against a pillow; very interested in this man and the direction he was taking his life.

“I've been fasting and praying for a teacher to help me,” he said.

I nodded, not wanting to talk about how false and sad my life had been. The lamp cast a soft glow across our outstretched bodies. “I've been praying a lot, too. I want Truth in my life. I feel like hope is out there, even though I got lost for a while.” I watched John Coltrane's record spin on the turntable beside the bed. An electric keyboard stood in front of two conga drums.

“Have you meditated before?” he asked.

“My Mom and I took hatha yoga when I was in high school. I just started classes again at Integral Yoga on Dolores Street.”
Carlos slid his palm along my arm as I talked. “I love the quiet of spirit touching my soul.”

He scooted closer to me on the bed, sliding his arm behind me. I lifted my head and sank back in the cradle of his shoulder, our faces an inch apart. The heat from his body pulled mine closer. We kissed, our lips a noon blaze, our tongues moist.

“You feel so strong,” Carlos told me. “But I know you've been through hell. I saw you once in L.A.”

“You did!” I sat back from him. “When? Where?” Any reminder of L.A. was a reminder of me on downers, out of control, with no connection to beauty or goodness. It was me at my lowest ebb. I was embarrassed.

“I was sitting on the fence outside Sly's house on Coldwa-ter, waiting for the guys in the band. They went in to see Sly. I didn't want any part of him.” He pulled me back into his arms. “You drove up in a car with another lady. I noticed you immediately. I even thought about going in when I saw you.”

I laughed. So, he knew about Sly. He knew, so I didn't have to tell. And he remembered me. I thought about destiny's touch in my life. Were Carlos and I connected in some special way? “Thank you for noticing me again,” I murmured softly. “That wasn't the best time in my life.”

“Nor mine,” he agreed. “But now we can start over together.”

I lay in Carlos's arms, “After the Rain” playing on the stereo. “This is my favorite Coltrane song right now,” Carlos murmured. I drifted on the notes gently blowing from the speakers and awoke later in quiet darkness. I remembered where I was as Carlos's hands skimmed my shoulders. His fin-
gertips lifted my sweater, and my senses flamed. We sought each other's bodies, peeling our clothing off, kicking them onto the floor. His skin was soft, especially his hands. My broken places opened.

In the morning, I awoke in Carlos's arms, amazed that I could begin over again. My body felt revived; I perceived an extraordinary possibility that love was not a phantom. I wanted to walk out onto Carlos's deck and scream to the trees, “I'm alive!” But I lay in his embrace, savoring the promise of our friendship, no matter what it became. We drove down the mountain into Mill Valley and ate breakfast at a corner café. Carlos held my hand, and we walked to Old Mill Park and sat above a creek twisting through the redwoods.

“Where did you go to high school?” I asked.

“Mission. I was a blues guitarist and a stone hippie. I didn't want to come to the United States when my family immigrated to San Francisco. I was playing in a band in strip joints in Tijuana, making my own money. I was twelve. They had to leave without me because I hid out and they had a special day and time to leave.”

I looked at Carlos's thin face, imagining his scrawny determination when he was younger. I was a Girl Scout when I was twelve, still reading novels about Freddy the pig. My memory of my own face was captured in a photograph of Karmen and me, before our orchestra performance, smiling proudly in our matching uniforms.

“My brother Tonio came back to get me. By the time I got to Mission High School I was playing blues with local guys, cutting school, and getting stoned. I moved out of my parents'
house. And when the band first got together, I lived on Hartford Street in the Castro with the bass player, David Brown; our manager, Stan Marcum; and the road manager, Ron. Ron's girlfriend, Diane, would come over and cook. We were always hungry.” Carlos laid his hand on his flat stomach. I trembled, remembering touching him in the night. “So when we got money from playing in the Panhandle in Golden Gate Park or at a wedding, Diane made big pots of spaghetti. One night we had enough money to buy a steak. We were sitting at the kitchen table salivating, waiting for the meat to be done. She opened the oven and turned away. Her dog, Troy, grabbed the steak from the hot pan and ran.” Carlos and I laughed.

“We took off after him, a trail of mad musicians, but he was out the front door in two seconds. As much as I loved that dog, that night I wanted to kill him.” Carlos shook his head.

“We were just kids out of high school trying to play music. We didn't have any guidance. Everybody smoked weed and hung out, even our manager.” Carlos laughed dryly. “Actually, he was the most stoned of everybody. When our music took off and we started getting gigs and touring, we were still street punks with no manners. The guys in the band would show up late, and I would be furious. We'd start fighting—real fistfights sometimes.”

A sports car zoomed down the park road, shifting gears and spouting exhaust.

“I remember bands playing in the Panhandle,” I said. “In high school my girlfriend Gloria and I wanted to be hippies. I wanted a Volkswagen bus so badly. When I went away to college in L.A., I forgot about that.”
“Where'd you go to high school?”

“Lowell.”

“Oh, the smart school.”

“Well, I was pretty social.”

I looked up at the redwoods—magnificent, giant creatures. I felt as though the branches were reaching for God, carrying me up with them.

“I'm reading Paramahansa Yogananda right now,” Carlos said. “He says the essence of everything is light, divine light. I can feel it here, in these trees.”

The sun's rays touched every treetop. “Me, too,” I said. “Since I've been practicing yoga again, my thoughts of where God lives have opened up. When I was little I thought God was just in heaven. But I have felt His presence inside me more and more.” We threw stones into the creek, Carlos picking flat ones that skimmed along the top of the water.

“I had better get home,” I said.

He stood up and dusted off the seat of his pants; he took my hand, and we walked through the park to his car. I was infatuated with this man and wanted Mom and Dad to meet him. Carlos was quiet as we climbed the stairs to my house. When we walked inside, Dad did not smile, but he shook Carlos's hand and invited him to sit down in our living room. Carlos's eyes were glued to Dad's blond Gibson guitar.

Mom said hello and turned the radio down. She began asking questions, as she always did with our friends. “Where does your family live?” she asked.

“We're all here in San Francisco,” Carlos said. “I have four sisters and two brothers. My parents live in Noe Valley.”
“Are you the oldest?” Mom pried.

“No. I'm right in the middle.”

Dad picked up his guitar and began playing scales. Carlos leaned forward, watching Dad's hands. When Dad looked up, he said, “What kind of guitar do you play?” The mood in the room lightened, and Carlos and Dad talked instruments and musicians. Mom interjected opinions and asked questions, too.

I walked Carlos to the door and stepped outside on the porch with him. “Your dad is the cat,” he said.

“He's a great musician.” I smiled. We kissed good-bye, and I waved as he drove away.

“He seems like a nice young man,” Mom said, walking toward the bedrooms.

Dad grunted. I didn't fault Dad's lack of enthusiasm, and knew he was remembering Sly as my boyfriend.

But Carlos was nothing like Sly. He was seeking God. His world was not drugs and deception. Carlos was filled with passion for music, especially the blues, which Dad had heard tonight. And I was different, too. If this unburned patch of my heart continued to pulse with love, I would not abandon the light within me. Dad's soft-spoken love for Kitsaun and me was unconditional. Grumpy and stiff sometimes, but always there. I walked to my father and put my arms around his waist. “I love you, Daddy.” He squeezed me back.

arlos called every night, and we talked for hours as I lay in the dark in my bedroom. I wanted to know what gave him the courage to leave the Santana Band at the peak of their success; he said spiritual progress was more important than gold records.

I explained how I had been betrayed by Sly, by his violence, and that I suspected he had been going out with other women when he left me home alone. I confessed how naive I had been and that I was trying to forgive myself because I had been only twenty. Carlos and I told each other our hopes and dreams. Carlos was one-pointed, determined to play music and only that.

Carlos picked me up from work, and we drove to Sausalito to eat and watch boats sail calmly on the bay. We meditated together and leaned on the railing of his mountaintop deck, watching birds swoop through the trees.

“What are you going to study in college?” he asked.

“I want to be a teacher—I love kids and learning.”
Carlos sighed. “I can't imagine being anything but a musician. Even when I played violin in my father's mariachi band, I thought about having my own band. When I started playing guitar, I joined a rock band as soon as I could.

“In high school, I worked with my brother Tonio at Tick Tock's on Third Street. That's how I bought my first amplifier. We kept the kitchen clean and cooked French fries and burgers. I hated the smell of the bleach we used to mop the floors. I'll never forget it.” He paused. “You'd make a great teacher. I've never met a woman who has goals like you.” I smiled at his compliment.

“I thought I was going to write poetry,” I said. “Remember the book Lynn and I were writing? We didn't receive enough interest from women, so we put it on hold. I sent one of my poems to a Sonoma magazine, but it was rejected.” Carlos looked disappointed for me. “The first time I read Rainer Maria Rilke's
Letters to a Young Poet
, I fell in love with poetry. I bought a long, flowered dress at a secondhand store and combed out my braid, letting my hair spread wildly in the air. But it's very difficult to compose something great.”

Some nights after work, I met Carlos on upper Fillmore Street, where he practiced with his new band. I waited outside until the band finished. I didn't want to intrude or distract the musicians. Michael Shrieve, the drummer, and Chepitó Areas, the timbales player, were from the original band. Michael grew up in the Bay Area and had introduced Carlos to the music of John Coltrane and Miles Davis. Chepitó was a jokester from Nicaragua. Sensitive about his height, he always wore high heels, and he panted strangely when he talked to women. Car-
los said Chepitó was talented and played flügelhorn and trumpet as well as percussion. Together, they had hired local musicians to expand the band's repertoire to an open, free-flowing jam of jazz and rock, at the edge of an undefined genre of music. Carlos did not want to perform the band's hits when they began touring. He created a three-hour set of music without “Black Magic Woman,” “Evil Ways,” or “Oye Como Va.” I admired his daring.