by Sarah Bird
Third, I had to learn everything I could about Tomás.
Only after I had accomplished all three things would I even attempt to find him. Maybe most people, certainly Didi, would have moved the last element up. But like most people, Didi would have missed the point. I did not want to see Tomás, did not want him to see me again, until I was ready, until I had transformed myself into the person he would fall in love with. There would simply be no point in ever seeing him again if I wasn’t that person.
I bought a set of Spanish-language tapes and managed to tear myself away from Santuario long enough to play them. The teacher would say, “El libro,” and I would imagine handing Tomás a book so dazzling it would change his life and make him swoon at my feet. I said, “La pluma,” and imagined saving Tomás’s life with the click of a Bic.
I sought out Didi’s mom for help with pronunciation. She was delighted that I was learning Spanish. As a teacher, speaking in her native language, Mrs. Steinberg was a different person, a surprisingly chatty person. She laughed in a good-natured way at my pronunciation, then chattered away at me in Spanish. I couldn’t understand most of what she was saying. But since she was usually blasted, it didn’t really matter. We were both blotto, really, she on frozen margaritas, me on Tomás. It was enough to build a friendship on. That and we both missed Didi.
Flamenco wasn’t like anything I had ever studied before. Through Interlibrary Loan, I borrowed all of Carlos Saura’s flamenco movies on videotape. Flamenco dance was a revelation. All the wild, inexplicable, irrational, undeniable emotions roiling inside me were there, splashed across the screen as vivid as a painting of my interior landscape. Carmen was my favorite. Platoons of dancers surged through it, stampeding ferociously across wooden floors, driven by flamenco’s beat. It was like seeing my heart choreographed. I watched Carmen so many times that streaks began to appear where the tape became demagnetized.
Over and over, I listened to Antonio Gades, the ravishing dancer who played the director of the dance company staging a flamenco version of Bizet’s opera, as he coached his student, the succulent Laura del Sol. “Your arm should rise smoothly and meaningfully. The hips must be detached from the waist. The breasts are like a bull’s horns, warm yet soft. Heads up... a princely posture.” I put Tomás in Antonio’s place, molding my arms, my hips, my breasts into the perfect receptacle for his art. For him.
Everything I learned showed me how much I didn’t know. All of flamenco was written in code, secret rhythms that could be read only by Gypsies and Spaniards. What I didn’t learn in all my research was how a blond, blue-eyed Texan Czech living in Albuquerque, New Mexico, could ever break into this secret world. I perused the Yellow Pages under DANCE STUDIOS and found one that offered flamenco lessons. But when I called, the instructor had a Southern accent and two names just like me: she could never guide me into any world Tomás inhabited. I knew I would never get any farther in my quest in New Mexico. I was calculating how many years I’d need to put in at Puppy Taco to save enough to study in Spain when the Mustang died and I had to have it towed to a service station. While I waited for a new battery to be installed, I picked up a week-old copy of the Albuquerque Journal. Of course, Catwoman didn’t have a subscription to the local paper. If she had, I might have already known that the answer to my prayer was in my own backyard. I found that answer in an article that read:
In a sun-drenched studio in a gymnasium on the UNM campus an instructor’s dark ringlets bounce tempestuously as she stamps her feet in front of two dozen students. No, she’s not throwing a temper tantrum. Alma Hernandez-Luna is demonstrating flamenco footwork, or zapateado.
“Bodies up, eyes forward,” the energetic Albuquerque native commands, clapping her hands rhythmically. “Heel! Heel!” she commands. “Heel! Heel!” again, like some mantra. Finally, the magic words: “Muy bien! Muy bien! Olé! Olé!”
Though Hernandez-Luna, 38, is the energetic director of the only university-level flamenco program in the world, she is quick to divert all credit to Carlota Anaya, who founded the program eighteen years ago. Though Anaya, contacted at her Santa Fe home, was unavailable for comment due to poor health, Hernandez-Luna maintains that “Doña Carlota is our goddess. She is the real thing. Born in Andalusia—some say seventy, some say eighty years ago, who knows? With someone of her vitality age is irrelevant. What is relevant is that both her parents were full-blooded Gypsies immersed in el arte, in the art and lifestyle of flamenco. Sadly, a lifetime of dancing has taken its toll and she was forced to retire and stop teaching ten years ago. But her true Gypsy spirit lives on here. In the program she established.” The lithe and vibrant Hernandez-Luna stretches her arms out to encompass the studio filled with dancers stamping furiously.
Although the program is widely known in the world of flamenco, enrolling students from all over the country and around the world, it has been a well-kept secret in its hometown. That is all about to change.
“Doña Carlota’s modesty has always prevented her from granting interviews and allowing us to do any sort of publicity. She has recently had a change of heart and has agreed to our christening the dance hall the Doña Carlota Anaya Flamenco Academy and doing more promotion outside of the flamenco community. So from now on, the rest of the world will know what we’ve always known, that the University of New Mexico has a world-class flamenco program and we owe it all to the amazing Doña Carlota Anaya.”
When Didi came home a week later, she had crabs, borderline malnutrition, and a demo of her songs. I had a plan. “I’m going to study flamenco at the university.”
“Oh yeah, right,” she mumbled, struggling against exhaustion to remember. “Flamingo. Mystery Man. Cool.” She dragged her eyelids up one last time and took me in. “You got buff. You look hot.” Then her eyes dropped shut and she slept for three days straight.
Chapter Fourteen
Didi could barely raise herself to chug down the smoothies I brought before plunging back into a state that resembled a coma. I was seriously worried. Worried that she was sick or that something traumatic had happened in New York. When she finally woke up, she wasn’t sick, but that didn’t stop me from treating her as if she were. I bought actual groceries and made scrambled eggs and toast that I put on a tray with a flower and brought to her in bed. I imagined the heinous things that might have happened in New York and kicked myself for ever letting her leave in the first place. Obviously, Paco had broken her heart. I tried, in very subtle ways, to bring him up by asking variations of the question, “So, how was New York?”
Didi didn’t have much to say about New York. Not that it was good or bad. The most she would say was, “New York was useful and, for the moment, New York is over.”
I thought that falling in love would have matured me, made me closer to Didi’s equal. But switching from obsessing about famous people to obsessing about becoming one herself had changed Didi even more than meeting Tomás had changed me, so she was still quantum leaps ahead of me. While she lolled around in bed, getting her strength back, she plotted out how to merchandise the CD Paco had helped her make. It had great cover art. The title, CD-DiDi, was printed over a blurry close-up of her mouth. There was never a moment when she slipped the disc into the player for the first time, stepped back, and asked me what I thought. She was playing it when she walked back in the door and never stopped. Maybe it was just assumed that I’d think it was phenomenal, amazing. Maybe the CD was like Didi herself, and it didn’t matter what anyone thought—she was going to be who she was going to be and do what she needed to do, whether you liked it or not, so why bother asking?
Was it good? I guess I would say that her songs, her voice, were, like Didi, an acquired taste. Who knew if her voice was good or bad? Did Courtney Love have a good voice? Did Bob Dylan? It didn’t matter; the CD stood out, made an impact. It was Didi, it was unforgettable, and her life was now devoted to making it a success.
“Celebrity blurbs,” she announced, grabbing a clipboard to make notes in bed. “I’
ve got to get the CD to the ultimate killer celebs so they can give great quotes to use in the press release I send to radio stations.” She started scribbling names furiously. The first on the list was Julian Casablancas.
Maybe because I was so in love, I just couldn’t give up the idea that Didi had had her heart broken and was burying the pain. I was Didi’s support person, that was my job, and I wasn’t doing it. Which is why I asked, in as casual a way as possible, “What about Paco?”
She looked up from circling and underlining Alanis Morissette and gave me a blank stare as if she didn’t recognize the name I’d just spoken.
“Paco?” I repeated. “What about him?”
“Oh, Paco.” It took her a second to remember who I was talking about. “He’s not a celebrity,” she answered, thinking I was suggesting him for her blurb list. Her attention shifted to scribbling Natalie Merchant!!
I studied her face for signs of buried heartbreak. “Yeah, but I just thought—”
Didi slapped her pen down against the clipboard and peered up at me. “You just thought, for the one hundredth time, that you’d bring up Paco or New York, which is the same thing as bringing up Paco.”
“Not the hundredth.” Was it that many? “I’m just curious.”
“You think I’m all hiding a deep, dark secret or something. Why do people always think there has to be some deep, dark, hidden secret? I got exactly what I could from New York and exactly what I could from Paco and now it’s”—she swooped her hand across her face as if she were brushing away a bad smell—“next.”
“Oh. Okay.”
For a second, she teetered on the edge of being truly annoyed, then backed away. She sighed and said, “Thanks, Rae. Thanks for being the one person in the whole goddamn world who gives a shit.”
“Deeds, Catwoman actually—”
“Catwoman is actually who she is. Catwoman gives exactly what she can.”
“Didi, she really loves you. We talked a lot while you were gone.”
“You talked to Catwoman?” She said it as if I’d betrayed her.
“She was helping me learn Spanish.”
“Learning Spanish with Catwoman?” She winced at the impossibility of the concept, started to say something, stopped, and said instead, “You want to know my deep, dark secret?” She patted the edge of the bed and I sat down next to her.
I nodded. “Sure, Deeds. Of course. You know you can tell me anything. Everything.”
Tears welled up in her eyes. She dropped her gaze. I scooted closer to her and took her hand. It was icy cold. I couldn’t breathe. This was worse than I’d feared. Nothing cowed Didi Steinberg. Nothing made her cry. Whatever it was, I’d help her. It was my fault. Somehow I should have stopped her from leaving.
“Okay.” Her voice trembled. “Okay, here’s my deep, dark secret.” I examined the veins above the icy hand I held, trying to warm it with mine. “My deep, dark secret is...”
As I was trying to think of one single adult I could call to ask for help when this turned out to be worse than even I could handle, Didi jerked her hand away, and snapped, “There is no deep, dark secret. A total lack of secrets is my secret. Okay? So, can we, please, just drop it?”
That was the last time we talked about New York. I assumed that it wasn’t the crowning triumph she’d dreamed it might be, but whatever happened had only fueled her ambition and done a surprising thing: she returned open to the idea of going to the university with me. All she would say on the subject was, “Even Madonna did a few semesters.”
I handled all the paperwork so she could register late. Naturally, the first course I enrolled in was Beginning Flamenco Dance. I was pleased that the instructor listed in the course catalog was going to be Alma Hernandez-Luna, the young and vibrant director of the program I’d read about in the paper. Then, since we both knew that the downfall of most great stars was corrupt or inept management, I signed on as a business major and added Intro to Financial Accounting to my course load so I could keep Didi’s books when she was a star. Didi’s schedule for the first three semesters included Movement for Actors, Voice for Actors, Speech and Diction, and Acting for the Camera. “Important for the videos,” she explained.
“No music classes?” I asked. “Voice? Composition? Stuff like that?”
“Uh, how many music courses did Madonna ever take?”
“None?”
“Correctomundo.”
I didn’t remind her that Madonna had been a dance major. Dance, that was going to be my thing.
A week later, on the morning of our first day of classes, I was so nervous about going to the flamenco class I could barely breathe. “Is this better?” I asked Didi, holding a baby tee against my chest. “Or this?” I held up the camisole I’d worn when I’d met him. “Except, he’s already seen me in it.”
“Shit, you’ve got it bad. You actually think he’s going to be there, don’t you?” She shook her head hard as if it were an Etch A Sketch with a bad picture on it. “He’s not going to be in a beginning flamingo dance class.” She always said “flamingo” or “the big pink bird.” Half the time, she was teasing me to keep me from being so intense. The other half, she just forgot. That was fine with me. Flamenco was the one part of Tomás I could possess and I wanted to keep it all to myself.
Didi studied me as I sorted through the pile of tops I was trying on and discarding, then trying on again. “Do you spend all day imagining he’s watching you? In spite of the fact that he doesn’t know your name or where you live, every time you step out of the house, do you think he’ll be there? Every time the phone rings, do you think it’s him?”
I didn’t have to say anything. Just from the look on my face, she knew she was right.
“Wow. Okay, it’s official. You’re obsessed.”
It was like hearing a doctor say you had measles when your body was covered with a red rash. The evidence was so obvious, there was no point in denying it.
“Don’t worry. I was exactly the same with Julie. Back when I was into that. You probably feel like Mystery Man’s here right now, invisibly watching and hearing everything you say.”
I tugged off the camisole, letting it hide my face. I would never wash it. It had his smell on it mingled with mine. Together they made a new odor, sharp and feral. I didn’t want to talk to her about Tomás, didn’t want her to put him on the same level with any of her groupie conquests.
“Hey, aren’t you supposed to wear a polka-dotted dress or something?”
“No, you’re not supposed to wear a polka-dotted dress.” My irritated tone objected to her mockery.
“Rae-rae, come on. Sit down. Let’s make you beautiful.” She dragged out the tackle box she used to hold her makeup, stair-stepped it open, and, holding up a lip brush, waited for me to sit. It had been a long time since we’d done makeovers on each other. She patted the bed and I plopped down.
“Do like this,” she ordered, stretching her lips over her teeth. I mimicked the posture and Didi leaned forward, breathing coffee and Pop Tart breath into my face as she outlined my lips with a brush, then painted them the color of garnets.
“Sorry. I didn’t think you were still so crushed out.”
“Didi, I do know that he’s not going to see me.”
“That is so not the point, is it?”
She picked up her mascara wand and ordered, “Up.”
I rolled my eyeballs heavenward so she could brush mascara on my bottom lashes.
“Keep looking up. I’m gonna put some white on the lower lid. Opens the eye up and makes the whites really pop.”
Didi’s ministrations calmed me. She spangled my cheeks with pink comet’s tails glittering with crushed mother-of-pearl, my lips with the sparkle of a metallic bronze, and my eyes with glimmering lilac shadow. She burnished and glossed me until my face was a reflective surface, a mirror, in which Tomás Montenegro could see whatever he liked.
Didi stepped back and studied me, tilting her head from side to side, closing one ey
e then the other. She finally shrugged, said, “What can say? I’m a genius,” and handed me a mirror. In it I saw that Didi had transformed me into what I most desired to become: an offering.
Chapter Fifteen
The drive to campus was stiflingly hot. The once-regal ’Stang was a battered wreck, its AC a memory. Didi cracked the windows enough to let a little air stream in but not enough to mess with hair or makeup.
By the time we found a parking spot at the edge of campus on Central and Girard, we were late. We ran across the soccer fields outside Johnson Gym, hurrying to the student mall shaded by locust trees in giant planters, their dark, spiraling seedpods drying in the sun.
“Slow down!” Didi ordered as we reached the mall. “You’re sweating. You’re gonna ruin my cosmetic masterpiece.”
We rushed by the student union building. Students sat outside at concrete tables sipping coffee and reading the college paper, the Daily Lobo. We were sweating by the time we passed Zimmerman Library. At the pond in front of the old library, a little boy in a yellow T-shirt shrieked. His mother scooped him up as a squad of ducks waddled menacingly toward him and the plastic bag of old bread he clutched in his chubby hand.
“Cut through Hitler and Eva Together Forever!” Didi yelled out her name for the fifty-foot-long, intersecting concrete tunnels that had been fobbed off on the university as art. No one liked the monolithic structure except the stoners who hid out inside the tunnels to sell dope and get high. We stopped at our traditional spot, right in the center where the two main tunnels met. The concrete was thick as a bunker. It was tomblike in the center; sound was deadened and the air was always damp. Didi sniffed. “Smells like we’re too late.” As usual, the tunnels reeked of pot.
“Okay.” She pointed one index finger toward one of the four openings at the end of a tunnel and the other toward another opening. “You go to your flamenco class and I’ll go check out”—she perused her schedule until she found her first class—“Acting for the Camera.” She shook her hair back, flared her nostrils, then froze in a dramatic pose and said, “Mr. DeMille, I’m ready for my close-up.” She unfroze. “We’ll meet back here at burrito-thirty and grab some lunch at Frontier.”
