"The Flamenco Academy" (58 page)

The guitars chimed and pealed with a silvery
clarity, rhythms piling on top of one another, frilled and accented
by the loveliest
falsetas
imaginable. And then Didi entered.
In an instant, I saw that she had become who she’d been
transforming herself into from long before the day we’d met. All
the tiny homages and lifts from all the one-name goddesses were
there, Madonna’s overamped physicality, Cher’s no-shit
subversiveness, Marilyn’s vulnerability: they had all come together
in the persona she presented. Even her dancing had gelled. It was
flamenco, but mixed with enough hip-hop, African, and belly dancing
to be something else entirely. Something that couldn’t be graded on
flamenco’s merciless scale where she was destined to fall short.
She had shattered flamenco time, she was operating outside of
el
compás
even as she made every flamenco fantasy work for her.
She was Hispanic, Jewish, Gypsy. Mostly, though, she was what all
the legends aspired to: she was life on the edge. She was the worst
bad girl going. She would shoot heroin, drown in
aguardiente
; she would kill herself. And she would do it all
to present her lucky audience with one moment of eternity. Out of
time, off the beat, it didn’t matter, she had the quality she’d had
from the first moment I saw her in the oncologist’s office: you
couldn’t take your eyes off of her. Even if she had ruined your
life, stolen the one person you’d ever loved, chewed you up and
spit you out, even then, you could not take your eyes off of
her.

A long, susurrous “O!” sighed through the
theater like a mammoth exhalation. Ofelia was in the house. She was
magnificent in a long dress of red lace worthy of Bob Mackie that
had the right heft for dancing, yet turned diaphanous when lighted
from the back. Onto her short hair, she’d woven a hairdo of braids
and spit curls with a black lace mantilla floating down from the
high stake of a carved tortoise-shell comb driven into the crown of
braids. She
was
the flamenco poet.

Diego watched Didi’s every move. Clearly
from the old school, he was there to serve Ofelia. Leading the
others, he softened his playing until his thumbnail stroked a deep,
rich major chord that became a buzz caressing the audience’s
collective frontal lobe, preparing them to hear the flamenco poet
speak.

“Hello, New Mexico,
mi Tierra del
Encanto
, land of my birth, land of my heart, land of my
enchantment.” She punctuated her greeting with a fiery
zapateado
. The footwork elicited a wave of applause and
óles
. She clapped a rhythm that the initiates in the crowd
were delighted to pick up and turn into an
alegrías
that
became a roar of applause. A deep cannonade of thunder from outside
the theater interrupted the clapping. Didi raised her arms to
silence the audience and we all heard the staccato patter of a
heavy rain. Didi turned her palms up and grinned as if she had
ordered the downpour to accompany her.

Then, snapping out a valley of
pitos
syncopated with the sound of the deluge, she wondered in a way that
almost seemed idle, “What is the right poem for you tonight?” A
great settling swept through the hall as audience members snuggled,
satisfied, into their seats, the rain we had prayed for was
falling, and Ofelia was searching for exactly the right piece for
exactly this night for exactly us. Even I, who knew, forgot that
her shows were as canned as Wayne Newton’s, that she’d been making
set lists for years, just like one of the bands she’d spent her
teens groupieing.

In spite of my resolution not to allow Didi
to dictate one more second of my life, I scooted forward to the
edge of my seat, ready to leave if she performed any of the pieces
that had come from our shared history. Nothing about fathers dying,
young girls yearning. I wasn’t ready for that, though I wasn’t
ready for what she eventually did read either.

“In flamenco the holiest of the many song
forms is one called the
saeta
, the arrow.
Saetas
are
sung during Holy Week in Sevilla to celebrate the passion of
Christ.”

I hated the way she pronounced Sevilla,
Sah-BEE-ya. Hated hearing a girl who had once devoted her life to
the Strokes, whose father was Mort Steinberg, Jewish hipster, speak
so rapturously about the passion of Christ. I glanced down the
aisle. It was clotted with the rapt figures of acolytes hunched
forward, waiting like baby birds to be fed from the mouth of
experience.

Reading the cues like the master accompanist
he was, Diego matched Didi’s tricked-up theatrics with a showy
arpeggio, a gaudy gush of notes. He squinted up into the
spotlights, his eyes watery, vulnerable.

“I call this poem ‘Secret Park.”

I had to leave, but Didi had already shot
the arrow. It found its mark and staked me to my seat. As Didi
read, my perception of her fractured into black spit curls, red
lips, tent of black mantilla all melted away into the smell of
summer and the hunger of waiting.

My kiss is summer

Your kiss is cut watermelon

Sprinklers click

A shower every seventeen seconds.

Seventeen years.

Waiting for night.

Waiting for the moon.

Waiting for the breeze.

Waiting for owl screech.

Waiting for earth warmth.

Below.

I am waiting for heaven cool.

Above.

Waiting for your whisper.

Waiting for your touch.

Waiting for a breeze.

Waiting for a moon.

Waiting for night.

Waiting for her

Her? Did I really hear Didi whisper “Cyndi
Rae” into the microphone, a lapping of syllables so gentle they
were lost in the wild applause? Was she really searching the crowd
trying to find me?

Onstage, Didi raised her arms like a
charismatic Christian. A gleam caught the spotlight and I noticed
the silver bracelet made of two panthers twining together that had
been hidden beneath the sleeve of her dress. The sight of the
blood-sister bracelet caught me off guard for just one moment. But
one moment was all Didi ever needed.

“I dedicate that poem to my pale twin, the
light I shadowed, the ray I darkened. I’ve come home to you,
Rae-rae. Are you here? Is she here? You all know who I mean. Cyndi
Rae Hrncir, is my blood sister here tonight?”

Why did it take me one frozen moment before
I could believe that Didi would do the unbelievable? When had she
ever done anything else? I lurched from my seat. The backpacks were
boulders blocking my path. Not everyone in the theater knew our
story. But everyone wasn’t required, just the handful of students,
of devotees, of fans who spotted me and started up a jungle
telegram of
pitos
, fingers snapping as loud as the crack of
a bullwhip. Loud enough to call Didi’s attention to the
balcony.

“She’s here? You’re here, my pale twin?” She
visored her eyes with her hand, squinted up into the balcony, and
implored. “Please, just for one moment, could we have the
houselights?”

The lights came up. Didi followed the wave
of heads turning in my direction and caught me as I stumbled into
the aisle. She was already heading to the edge of the stage as I
hurtled down the stairs, four centuries of New Mexican history
whizzing past as I raced for escape. The unexpected downpour had
turned the water-sheeted glass doors at the front of the theater
into an aquarium. In the second I paused before shoving the doors
open, a frantic rap of
claves
hammered my way.

The rain, smelling of ash, of doused fires,
drenched me. I ran for the truck, plucking keys from my pocket even
as I trampled past gutters rushing with muddy water. In my haste
and agitation, I fumbled the rain-slicked keys and dropped them
into a puddle half a block from the truck. I bent to fish them out
and when I straightened up, Didi stood in front of me. Rain beaded
up and rolled off her pancake makeup in streams. Mascara coursed
down her face as if she’d been crying. Up close, without the stage
lights, she was haggard and hollow-eyed. Her irises were a sapphire
thread around the black fish egg of her dilated pupil.

“Rae-rae.” She held her arms open to me and
said my name as if it were a benediction that only she could offer.
“You came! I knew you’d come! Oh, Rae, my Rae.” Every sob and
blubber outraged me. She lunged forward and draped herself on me.
“Rae, I am so sorry. I fucked up. I am so sorry. I want to spend
the rest of our lives making it up to you. Rae, I miss you so much.
Nothing in my life is—”

“You’re dripping on me.” My voice was frozen
acid, cold and caustic enough to momentarily dry her up.

She detached herself. “Rae, please, you’re
all I have. We’re all each other has. It was you that I loved.
You’re the one I wanted. I’m sorry. I made a mistake.”

Though I’d sworn I wouldn’t, wouldn’t ever
speak to her again, the words flew out of my mouth. “ ‘Mistake’? A
‘mistake’ is using the wrong fork at dinner. Stealing your best
friend’s lover goes way beyond ‘mistake.’ ”

“Rae. Please.” Didi grabbed my arm and made
me look at her. Beneath the makeup, she was destroyed. It had
started long ago, but not being around her for more than a year
forced me to really see Didi. Her teeth were decalcifying, turning
the twilight gray that only decades of bulimia can bring on. I
tried to focus on her teeth, but my gaze was drawn to her
omnivorous eyes. “I am killing myself, I’m so eaten up with guilt
at what I’ve done. Literally, I want to die. I’m sorry, Rae, I will
do anything to show you how sorry I am.”

“You think confession redeems everything.
You think you can get up onstage and parade your destroyed life and
the lives around you that you destroyed and be granted absolution
on account of your ‘honesty.’ Fuck honesty, bitch. Try being a
decent human being.”

“Rae, we have to talk.”

“Not in this lifetime. Could you, please,
just get out of my life.”

“Rae, it’s
our
life. You have to know
that. Rae, I never wanted him.”

Him
. Suddenly, I wasn’t angry, wasn’t
hurt, wasn’t jealous, I was just tired. Tired because that
ridiculous three-letter pronoun had only one antecedent in my life.
Tired because it still had the power to bleed me white, to make me
stop and listen.

“It was you I wanted, Rae. It’s always been
you, my pale angel twin.”

“Jesus, Didi, save the dark, tortured
sexuality horseshit for your fans. I watched you invent that
crap.”

“Okay, okay, Rae.” Stunned to hear me, her
doormat, talking back, Didi cooed in a hostage negotiator voice. It
pleased me that she recognized what an unstable compound, what a
vial of nitroglycerin, I had become. For once, I was the
high-strung one who had to be catered to.

“Just, just, do me a favor. Do one thing for
me?” She waited to see if I would blow. I allowed her to continue.
“Come to where I’m staying. You know the place on the golf course?
Come tonight. I’ve got an early flight to D.C. tomorrow, big deal
at the Kennedy Center with Joaquín Cortes and that whole—”

I squinted in irritation, astonished at the
limitless depths of her narcissism, even now dropping names,
expecting me to cheer her success. “I don’t care,” I said, amazed
that I was telling the truth. My new, imperious manner worked
miracles.

“You’re right. You’re right. Just come,
okay? Please? You saved me, Rae. From the very first, from that day
in the doctor’s office, you were what pulled me through. I... I’m
lost without you.” A sob as theatrical as her statement caught in
her throat and I shook my head in disgust. The handmaiden didn’t
live here anymore.

She switched off the dramatics and added
dryly, “I know you don’t owe me anything anymore, but—”

“ ‘Anymore’? Didi, I
never
owed you
anything.”

“You have a right to feel that way.”

“I have to leave.”

“No!” She clawed at my sleeve as I opened
the door of the truck. “You have to come, Rae, please. We have to
talk. Please, oh God, please. I can’t do this without you.”

“Do what?” I let a homicidal level of
irritation curdle my voice.

“Any of this. Rae, I’m not kidding. If you
don’t come tonight—” She stopped abruptly. When she next spoke, her
voice was utterly scrubbed of emotion and she stated plain as if
she were explaining gravity, “You have to come tonight.”

I jerked my arm out of her grasp. “You will
never tell me what I have to do again.”

Didi stood in the red glow of my back-up
lights, a smeared palette of red and black. Someone from the
entourage ran up holding out a poncho and wrapped the little diva
in it. It was clear from the acolyte’s frantic gestures toward the
theater that Didi’s adoring public clamored for her. Didi remained
immobile, the poncho draped over her like the Madonna playing out a
pietà moment. Rain trickled down her sorrowing face, her arms held
out in front as if the crucified Christ had just been removed from
them.

The acolyte led Didi back to the theater. I
was certain that a froth of whispers was already whipping through
the auditorium, each worshipful fan concocting another morsel to
add to the cocktail of the most intoxicating performance any of
them had ever consumed. The myth of their drenched idol, the
sodden, suffering Madonna, would grow. The wire services might pick
up whatever item the local reviewer wrote about Didi’s dramatic
disappearance. In the end, she would probably get some national ink
out of it.

Didi had won again.

My windshield was spangled with cottonwood
leaves blown across it by the rainstorm. Each tender green leaf was
a heart pressing against the glass. I flipped on the wipers. The
blades shoved the leaves aside, then beat them to a chartreuse
pulp.

I don’t know how long I sat drinking on the
West Mesa. Long enough to watch several carloads of teens get
drunk, throw up, and leave me alone with the end of an extremely
bad night. Long enough to wish I could claw out every single chip
Didi had embedded in my brain. Long enough to realize that the
peach daiquiris in a can that I was pouring down my throat as fast
as I could tasted like hair conditioner and weren’t fuzzing the
hideous evening out. They were bringing it into sharper focus. The
memory I most wanted to derail, yet returned to obsessively, was
her saying
If you don’t come tonight
—