"The Flamenco Academy" (42 page)

“Oh, brilliant. A light and lively funeral
piece. Rae, come on, in a million years he’s not going to go for
that. The secret to winning anything is to play the game on your
field. You’ve got to control this deal or it’s going to get away
from you. So decide right now what you want to dance and we’ll work
on that. Period. End of discussion.”

“What? I just go in and tell him what I want
to dance?”

“Absolutely. Oh my God, Rae, the duet, that
is what you have to do. It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever
seen in my life.”

“Uh, Deeds, it’s a duet. He’s not hiring two
dancers.”

“Duet, right. My part is a joke. It’ll take,
what? Five minutes to remove it and, honest to God, Rae, you nail
that the way you did the other day and no one will be able to touch
you. Pick up the other end, there.” She was already moving the
table out of the way. I helped her haul it and the few other pieces
of furniture in the apartment to the alley. We pulled up the rug
and started reworking the duet.

She was right. It took barely five minutes
to turn the duet into the solo it always was. When we’d finished, I
started going over all the
cambios
again so I’d know exactly
where the changes were.

Shaking her head, Didi stopped me. “Rae, you
don’t need any more perfection. Perfection is your problem. Do it
half as good. Do it sloppy. Do it like this.” She gave an extremely
rough approximation of the last sequence. It was only a brief
passage, but it perfectly illustrated the differences between us.
Her timing and technique were for shit, but there was a
superhighway leading directly from her heart to her face, hands,
and feet. When I danced, my emotions took a donkey path. Didi tried
to share her charisma secrets with me, but attempting to
artificially inject the magic that came to her naturally was an
arduous exercise in reverse engineering.

The next day, Bijou appeared and whisked
Didi away. The last thing she said to me was, “Stop working. If you
spend the rest of the time smoking opium, you’ll be in better shape
than if you practice obsessively.” Then she left and I spent the
rest of that week practicing obsessively. Each time I danced the
solo, I improved. Still, I couldn’t help thinking how much more
alive it would be if Didi were doing it. Tomás would choose her in
a second. Thank God, she had no interest in playing second banana
to another
fenómeno
.

Bijou left, and Didi reappeared with a
contract to open for the singer’s next tour. That evening, I took
her over to the academy where we found a janitor to let us into
studio 110, and she helped me some more with the solo. A couple of
hours into the rehearsal, a loud booming sound jolted me out of a
concentration so deep that, for a moment, all I could say was, “Are
we under attack?”

Didi dragged me outside where golden
fountains of fireworks were exploding in the dark sky. “Happy New
Year,” she said. “Here’s to dreams coming true.” Didi held up the
panther bracelet I’d shoplifted for her on our last day of high
school, and I fished out the cross she’d shoplifted for me.

“To dreams coming true,” I agreed. We
clinked the cross and the panthers together as silver sparks rained
down above our heads.

Of course, I couldn’t sleep the night before
the audition. I watched the snow that began falling around three,
heavy, wet flakes that dampened sound and soil. That morning dawned
gray as cement. The few luminarias left over from Christmas had
been turned into sacks of wet sand by the damp snow. Didi insisted
that we trudge over to the academy far too early. The janitor who
had become my friend let us into studio 110, where the audition was
to be held. Once inside, Didi forbade me from practicing so much as
one
tacón
.

“Remind me again,” I said, “why we’re here
this early? Is it so I can get even more nervous than I already
am?”

“To get a sense of the room, pilgrim,” she
snapped, studying every corner of a space where I’d practically
lived the past three and a half years.

“Whew, cold.” Rubbing her upper arms, she
strode over to the thermostat and adjusted it until the heat
clicked on.

“Didi, I have a pretty good ‘sense’ of this
room.”

“As a classroom, yeah. But has it ever been
the place where you’re gonna get or lose the biggest dream in your
life?”

I stood in the glare of the fluorescent
lights, imagining Tomás sitting in the metal folding chair the
accompanist usually occupied, and I went cold. The glib answer I
was going to give froze somewhere beneath my sternum.

“See what I mean?” She glanced up at the
fluorescent lights. “Oh, those have got to go. The mood we’re
trying for is not State Bureaucrat with a Hangover. Be right back.”
The instant she left, the studio seemed to grow large as an
airplane hangar. I envisioned myself attempting to fill it with
motion and, more impossibly, emotion, and grew cold even as heat
blasted over me.

Didi came back, holding a roll of duct tape
and a Sharpie. She flipped off the bank of glaring lights, taped
the switches down, and wrote, DON’T TOUCH.
UNM
CUSTODIAL DEPT
. across the silver tape. Gray morning light,
overcast and moody, filtered in through the high windows.
“Better?”

I nodded. “Infinitely.”

She gave the studio one last check, then
announced, “Let’s get out of here.”

Outside, we holed up in the cross-shaped
concrete bunker where we could spy on whoever entered the gym. We
slouched in the shadows and smoked, trying to stay warm. I had
enough time to read all the graffiti chalked on the wall behind
Didi: STONER CHICKS UNITE. THE PEOPLE SMOKE POT.
WWW.HEMPCOALITION.ORG. WE NEED WEED!

“Wow,” Didi said, crushing a butt beneath
her heel. “This is a historic moment. Hard to believe, but this
will be the first time I actually get to see Mystery Man in
person?”

“What are you saying?” My tone warned Didi
not to make any further comment. Not to open that particular can of
worms at that particular moment.

“Nothing, it’s just that”—I stared hard at
her. She shook her head—“Nothing at all. You are here to kick butt,
and I’m here to take names. Speaking of which, wow, looks like your
boyfriend is a heavy hitter,” I peeked around the edge of the
bunker. Besides Alma and most of the dance and music faculty, every
great dancer who had gone through the program appeared. Didi ticked
the girls off as they hurried in, frozen breath trailing behind
them. She handicapped each one “Yolanda. No chance. Worse moves
than Vanilla Ice. Adriana. Oh, Driana, doll, you’ve packed on a few
elle bees. Blanca, sorry, babe, you’re not going to chew your way
into Tomás Montenegro’s heart with those big ole bucky beaver
teeth.”

I laughed, loving Didi for trying to lighten
my grim, fatalistic mood. And then she said the one name I least
wanted to hear.

“Liliana Montoya.”

“Liliana Montoya is here!” I pushed Didi
aside in time to see the former queen of the Flamenco Academy hurry
into the gym. Then I sank back against the cold concrete. “Shit,
that’s it.”

“Why? Just because she dances in María
Benitez’s company?”

“Uh, yes, being chosen for, arguably, the
most prestigious flamenco troupe in the country might do for
starters.”

“Liliana is certifiable. The woman is a
psychotic break waiting to happen.”

“I thought that was a prerequisite in
flamenco. Didi, I can’t beat Liliana Montoya.”

“Cyndi Rae Hrncir,” she said, putting on a
thick Texas accent. “You do everything she does except compete.
Story of your life in a nutshell.”

Odd how when you’re poised, ready to jump
off one cliff, jumping off another one doesn’t seem that bad. That
is probably why I said, “Story of us, too.” There it was, our
relationship in a nutshell, the noncompeting sidekick and the
action heroine. The air inside the bunker, deadened by half a foot
of concrete, seemed to grow even stiller as I waited for her
response. But her eyes flicked away toward a figure rounding the
soft corner of the old gym, and what she did say was, “It’s go
time. He’s here.”

A violent stroke wrenched my heart. I peeked
around the edge of the bunker. Illuminated by the flat light of a
distant winter sun, the world of snow and shadows outside the
bunker was the black and white of an old movie. Tomás sauntered
into the frame with the casual assurance of an actor hitting his
mark. He wore a rumpled, black-velvet jacket, collar turned up, a
muffler wound around his neck. His hair was black, the smoke from
his cigarette, white. The shadows etching his eyes, nose, mouth,
all black. His guitar case, black. He stopped at the front door,
drew deeply on his cigarette, flicked the butt, still smoking, into
a clump of snow, and went in.

“Breathe,” Didi ordered me.

I tried, but all the shallow inhalations
seemed to accomplish was to jerk my shoulders up to my ears. I felt
heavy as stone, leaden with an odd sense of finality and dread. “We
should go in,” I said, sounding as numb as I felt.

“Jeez, Rae, what is it? Lighten up.”

Everything bright and shiny had leaked out
of me.

“Hey, it’s just an audition. Besides, the
slut is going to love you. He’d be lucky to carry your bunion
pads.”

I snorted a thin, humorless attempt at a
laugh, made my feet carry me out of the bunker, and stepped into
Tomás’s black-and-white movie.

Inside the gym, the halls were empty until
Didi opened the carved wooden doors of Doña Carlota’s Flamenco
Academy. The sight of the old lady’s imperious portrait almost
undid me. More than ever she seemed to be scrutinizing and finding
me severely lacking. Half a dozen girls sat on the floor outside
the door to studio 110. Though I strained to hear the sound of
Tomás’s guitar, the hallway was entirely silent. Blanca waved and
gave me a cheery greeting. I started to sit down next to her, but
Didi yanked me back. “You’re not planning on waiting out here, are
you?”

She gestured for me to follow her into the
nearest bathroom, shut the door, shoved a metal trash can in front
of it, and dug a small bottle of Frangelico from her purse. “Here,
drink.” When I didn’t take the bottle, she shoved it in my face.
“Drink. You look all shocky and Goth. Worse, you look like you’re
ready to surrender.”

I took a slug of the hazelnut liqueur,
grateful for the spot of warmth it thawed in my solar plexus.

“Now, here’s the plan.”

I took another swallow, comforted as much by
her tone, which was the tone she used to use when taking charge of
a mission, as I was by the alcohol.

Didi unwrapped the muffler from around my
neck, slid the duffel bag off my shoulder, plopped it down on the
floor, unzipped it, and extracted my carefully selected outfit: the
black top of stretchy lace that Didi had loaned me, my new gored
skirt in the only other color acceptable to the true
flamenco
, wine-red, and a new pair of Menkes, also wine-red
and done up with a vampy cutout on the sides and seven-centimeter
heels. Didi had meticulously hammered three extra rows of tiny,
silver claves into the toes to give me the secret advantage of
louder
golpes
.

“We hang here until it’s time. We don’t
loiter in the hall sucking up loser anxiety vibes. We go last,
okay?”

“We?” I asked.

“We what?”

“You said ‘we’ go last. I’m going last. It’s
a solo.”

“That’s what I meant. What else would I
mean?”

I sucked up my courage. “Didi, I can take it
from here. In fact, I would probably be less nervous if you’d leave
now.”

She blinked several times and picked her
woven bag up off the bathroom floor where she’d dropped it. “Sure.
No, that’s fine.”

I had hurt her feelings. Guilt stabbed me.
She had completely thrown herself into helping me for the past
week. All she’d cared about was getting me to open up and be great.
What was my problem?

She started to leave, but someone pounded on
the blocked door. Didi yelled, “Janitor! Come back later!”

“Don’t leave. I need you. For shit like
that.”

“The details.” She grinned. “We all need
someone to take care of the details.”

I nodded. She helped me get dressed, taking
my discarded clothes, packing them away, and handing over my
outfit. When she passed me the new shoes, I balked. “Shoes too?” No
one ever put their shoes on until they got into the studio.

“How many chances do you get to make a first
impression?” It was one of her showbiz mantras.

“One.”

“And if you’re gonna hook the part, you
gotta...”

“Look the part.”

With that, Didi plucked an eyeliner from her
bag and held it up. “Thanks,” I said, waving it away. I’d been
doing and redoing my hair and makeup since four in the morning.
“I’m good.”

“ ‘Good,’ that’s exactly the problem. Come
on, no one in
flamenco
ever went wrong with too much liner.”
I let her pencil dark circles on my lids, then smudge them until my
eyes popped like a silent-movie heroine’s.

“Fullness, fullness.” Didi waved her hands
around my head, indicating that I should bend over so my hair would
fluff up. With my head between my legs, Didi directed hot air from
the hand dryer toward the spots where the damp air had flattened my
hair. When I straightened back up, my hair was twice as thick,
there was color in my cheeks, and my eyes looked like Lillian Gish
selling violets on a street corner. Confidence ebbed back. I was in
the hands of the master. Didi spritzed the air in front of me with
a little Must de Cartier, then made me walk forward so that the
perfume settled on me in an atomized cloud. She picked a few bits
of coat fuzz off my top, then pronounced, “Let’s go nail an
audition.”

By the time we reached the hall, the only
one left waiting outside the door was Liliana. Like Didi, she
understood the importance of going last. She glanced at me, then
looked away as if I hadn’t registered, which, I’m certain, in her
world, I hadn’t. Didi, however, registered in a big way. Like a
lioness defending her territory, Liliana stood and began doing the
sorts of impossible stretches that only professionals could
manage.