"The Flamenco Academy" (14 page)

I pointed west and we set off down Central
Avenue. Pup y Taco was on the other side of the street. I thought
about telling him I worked there, but didn’t. Nothing I could think
of to say seemed right after what we’d just seen. We passed the
Winchester Ammunition Advisory Center, then the Leather Shoppe. The
guitar slung over his shoulder slapping his back with each long
stride was the only sound that broke the silence.

“Thank you.”

“For what?”

“For not letting me get arrested.”

In the parking lot of the Pussycat Video, a
skinny man in a porkpie hat and a woman in cheap heels stood beside
a battered old Chevy, pointing at something in the open trunk and
yelling at each other. Both of them were drunk and both of them had
spent too much time on the streets. As their curses reached us, the
stranger took my hand, tugged me in close, and cradled my hand
against his chest. We watched the couple as if they were part of a
movie being shown just for us. When we’d passed them and their
curses had faded in the distance, I asked, “Why is this the worst
night of your life?”

“Huh?”

“You said that this was, possibly, the worst
night of your life.”

“I did? I’m a melodramatic motherfucker,
aren’t I?”

“No, really, tell me.”

“Like I said, it’s complicated. More
complicated than calculus.” He smiled to show he remembered me
saying that. “This is an entire history class. Maybe a major. You
have time for the history of a few cultures, a thousand-year exile,
and some really fucked-up skeletons rattling around a really
crowded closet?”

“Sure. Seriously, I can research anything.
Just tell me what it is.”

He stopped and pivoted on the sidewalk so
that we were face-to-face. The De Anza Motor Lodge sign behind him
was a gigantic neon arrow shooting into the dark sky. The words
De Anza
were written in gold. At the point of the arrow the
portrait of a conquistador wearing a Moorish headdress shimmered
within a halo of white.

“Yeah, okay. Maybe if I can make you
understand, I can figure it out myself.” He ducked his head as he
slid the guitar off his shoulder and held it out to me. “This looks
like a guitar, right?”

I nodded.

“It’s a fucking monkey on my back.” The
conquistador on the sign above his head was in profile, staring off
into the sky. He stopped and threw his hands up in defeat. “Forget
it. You’re a good American girl. You were born yesterday like all
good American girls. You believe that anyone can be anything they
want. But in my world. In flamenco it’s...” He searched for words
but couldn’t find the right ones. “Forget it. Let’s just say that
flamenco isn’t like ordinary music.”

“No,” I said, desperate that he not give up
on me. The words burbled out before I could stop long enough to
figure out what cool, flirty thing Didi would have said. “It’s not
ordinary music. Anyone can hear that. Ordinary music is just that,
it’s ordinary. It’s disposable, it’s trivial, it’s optional. What
you were playing is...” I tried to think of a way to bottle up all
the emotion his playing had let flow but couldn’t. “It’s
essential.”

He blinked. “Wow. Are you into the scene
down here?”

“What scene?”

“Never mind. The less you know about it, the
better. So you don’t know anything about flamenco?”

“If that’s what you were playing, tonight
was the first time I heard it and knew what it was.” Then I
remembered. “But the Gipsy Kings? They play flamenco, right?”

He waved the question away. “Flamenco for
tourists. Not
el puro
, not the real thing. The real thing,
it’s like, it’s like...” His fingers twitched, clawing the air as
he plucked chords from a guitar that wasn’t there, trying to find a
way to express what he couldn’t express. Then, to himself, “Fuck.
Maybe they’re right. Maybe you do have to be born to it. It has to
be in your blood.” He caught himself and laughed. “You have no idea
what I’m talking about, do you?”

“Not really.”

He grabbed me in a hug and, laughing, swayed
back and forth. “I love that!” he yelled. “I love that you could
give a fuck about what kind of blood is running in my veins. Blood,
I’m so fucking sick of everyone being so concerned about my blood.
It’s like I’m surrounded by vampires, everyone fighting over my
blood.”

I had to know what he was so upset about. I
had to know so I could help him. So I could become indispensable. I
tried to figure out what all the blood talk was about and thought
of paternity suits, wills. “Is there an inheritance?” I asked.

“God, you are so cute. I should just marry
you tonight and leave all this shit behind.”

“So it’s not an inheritance?”

“Oh, it’s an inheritance all right. Just
nothing so simple as money. It’s all about whether I have the right
pedigree to play flamenco or not.”

“That’s ridiculous. What does pedigree
matter? It’s music, not a dog show.” This was like being with Didi,
protecting her from anyone who didn’t appreciate her genius.

“You’re so American. I love that you are so
American.”

I didn’t know what he meant. He tried to
explain. “Okay, it’s like the blues. Everyone knows that the only
people who can play the real blues are black and they’re from the
Mississippi Delta, right?”

“You know, they have all these amazing tests
now that they’ve used to find out stuff like whether Native
Americans came over the Bering Strait from Asia. You can get a
blood test that will pretty much tell who your ancestors were,
ethnic-wise, right back to Adam and Eve,” It was the wrong thing to
say.

“Fuck that. I am never taking a fucking
blood test. Tonight, this night, I am through caring about my
blood. Here’s where my talent is.” He held up his fingers. “If
anyone needs a blood test to decide if I’m good or not, fuck
them.”

I scrambled to assure him that I didn’t need
proof. “You’re good. Your music is the best music I’ve ever
heard.”

“The best?” he kidded, then stopped and
studied my face.

I wanted to tell him that his music was a
drug, a door, a path, an element like air and water, essential to
life, but all I said was, “Yes. The best.”

My answer was lost in the rumble of a car
coming up behind us. A lowrider car drove by, sapphire blue and
smooth as a shark. The thump of the bass pulsing from an open
window bumped against me like a wave. The car was barely moving as
the guy in the front passenger seat leaned a muscled arm inked with
smeary blue tattoos out the window and growled,
“Qué ruka tan
caliente!”

The guitarist laughed and yelled back at
them in Spanish.

The lowrider at the window stuck his fist
out and the guitarist tapped it. “Big ups to you, bro!” the
lowrider said. They cruised on, showering us with silver sparks
whenever the car scraped bottom.

“What did they say?”

He pulled me into the sheltered entrance to
an abandoned store whose windows were covered with paper with a FOR
LEASE sign on the door. “They said you’re a hot babe.”

“Me?”

“You know that. You know you’re hot.” He
pushed me into a dark corner and put his hands on either side of my
neck. I thought he was going to kiss me, but he didn’t. “You’re not
fifteen, are you? Because I know your friend isn’t. Are you a wild
girl too?”

So he knew that the girl in the alley was my
friend. I should have said no, I wasn’t a wild girl. But that
night, with him, I wanted it to be true. I wanted to be anything he
wanted me to be. In a voice tough and flirty like the one Didi used
to tease boys, I answered, “I’m legal.”

“Good.” He grabbed my hand again and pulled
me back onto Central, where we strolled like a couple from the
fifties out on a date.

I cut quick glances to the side just to see
how cool his guitar looked slung across his back. To check out the
way his dark hair flicked over the top of his shirt and how he kept
his free hand shoved into the pocket of his jeans so that his left
shoulder hunched up as if there were a cold wind pushing at him
that only he could feel. I tried to figure out how old he was. One
second he seemed my age, a boy just out of high school. The next,
he looked old in a way that precluded his ever having been young,
like one of the kids at school who went to the Al-Anon meetings
they held at lunch in the counselor’s office.

He dropped my hand and drifted ahead. The
current that had been charging through me went dead as the distance
between us grew.

I thought about Didi. But it wasn’t to worry
if she’d gotten home okay. All I thought about was what she would
do in my place. How would she intrigue and entrance him? I ran up
and took his arm. Then I pretended that I was the one who wanted to
run ahead, that he was the one who had to keep up, and I tugged him
to speed up his pace. “You’ve got to see this!” I hurried us past
the Town House Restaurant and the tiny diner across the street
where the Toddle House had been.

At the next cross street, I stopped, held my
arm out toward the crumbling building ahead of us, and announced,
“The Aztec Motel.” The Aztec was Didi’s favorite spot on her
favorite stretch of Route 66. The old motel tried for a Pueblo
style with flat roofs on the rows of one-room units and a ladder on
top of the first-floor roof of the two-story office. But the
structures were just the armature for the baffling, schizophrenic
jumble of junk that the owners had felt inspired to scatter about
the premises. Didi had taken me on the “Aztec Motel pilgrimage”
many times. She especially loved what she called the Gin Garden, a
collection of old green liquor bottles planted around discarded
tires.

I hurried ahead like a kid eager to be the
first on the playground, like Didi every single time she’d ever
dragged me to the Aztec.

“I like to start back here at the Gin
Garden,” I said, channeling Didi’s enthusiasm and affection for the
kitsch that had always seemed much more trash than treasure to me.
Arrayed along the base of the stucco wall at the back of the motel
were dozens, hundreds, of old tires, each one holding a bouquet of
fake flowers and empty, green liquor bottles.

“Next, we move on to the Aztec Motel Zoo.” I
led him around to the other side of the wall where dozens of teddy
bears peered down from an ancient cottonwood. Other trees held
collections of other stuffed species. I left him staring up at
hundreds of small, furry faces.

“Check this out,” I called from the side of
the motel. The pink stucco was covered with talavera tiles in blue
and white, an odd assortment of oil paintings, a gold velvet
headboard, and doors. Not doors leading into rooms, just doors. Old
brown doors covered in zigzagging patterns of tile and staked to
the side of the motel. An actual garden with rosebushes and irises
guarded by Saint Francis also hosted a melted fountain that cradled
a plastic Minnie Mouse and a child’s wading pool filled with old
gazing balls and more green bottles.

“This is where the really great stuff is,” I
said. “The full-on schizophrenia.” That was what Didi called it. I
raced off and gestured for him to join me beneath a yellow steel
overhang that shaded the front of the motel office. Lined up on the
overhang were dozens of Tonka trucks. Beside them a white ceramic
kitty with a pink tongue peered down. The wall beside the overhang
was covered with ads for Indian-brand motorcycles going back to
1914. Pottery, vases, statues, figures of the Buddha, many
Madonnas, Saints Joseph and Francis, all three wise men, a
Christmas wreath, scenes from a Mexican village in tile, a small
windmill, Daffy Duck, Sylvester, they were all up there, all
presided over by a mannequin in a blue dress.

“I call her the Virgin of Route Sixty-six,”
I said, repeating Didi’s name for the mannequin.

He stared at the incomprehensible jumble.
“This is great. This is so great! I’ve driven by this place
hundreds of times and never really noticed how incredible it is. I
love it. I love the kind of total insanity that makes a person do
all this. Not caring that the sun is gonna beat hell out of the oil
paintings and street trash is gonna walk off with half the shit and
most people are gonna walk by and think you’re psychotic. I love
it. I love that you love it. This”—he whirled around, his arm out
to take in the entire mess—“this makes me understand why you get
flamenco.”

A light of such pure happiness flooded me, I
worried I would start glowing. I had shown him the right thing. It
didn’t matter that it was Didi’s thing. It only mattered that it
was right.

“This place is
so
flamenco. If you
understand it, you understand flamenco.”

I nodded even though I had no idea on earth
what the connection was between a garden of gin bottles and
flamenco.

“I love that whoever created all this knows
that they’re never going to get rich or famous. They’re not going
to get anything. They’re doing it because they have to. Just like—”
He held his hands out and mimed a strum that flared all the fingers
of his right hand, then ended in a gesture that threw away all the
beauty he had just created.

I didn’t want him to even pretend to throw
it away. I snatched it back. “Your playing is unbelievable.”

“In the world I come from ‘unbelievable’ is
barely good enough.”

“The ‘world you come from’?”

He draped his hands over my shoulders and
studied my face. “Are you sure you want to know about the world I
come from?”

“I do,” I said and it was true. The truest
words I’d ever spoken. My tone was too solemn, though, like a bride
answering the question, “Do you take this man to be your lawfully
wedded husband.”

“
Yo también
,” he said. “I do
too.”

I didn’t know what he meant, what it was
about his world he wanted to know, but I fastened powerfully on the
absence, the hole that I could fill. Details. This is what I was
good at. This is what I could offer him. Whatever it took, I would
find and bring that knowledge to him.