"The Flamenco Academy" (43 page)

Didi leaned over and whispered, “I’m
intimidated, aren’t you?” Her cocky smile said she wasn’t, but I
was. Liliana
was
a professional. María Benitez had picked
her out of all the dancers in the world. This was pointless. The
past four years of my life were pointless. I wondered what the hell
I thought I was doing.

The door of the studio opened, Blanca
scampered out, and the door shut again. Blanca, the only dance
major I knew who wasn’t obsessed, anorexic, and cutthroat, made me
wish for a moment that I could trade it all in and be exactly like
her: goofy, cheerful, nice, normal. Instead, I was doubly obsessed.
Blanca caught my eye and slapped her hands against her chubby
cheeks, her mouth open wide like the
Home Alone
kid and
whispered, “Oh. My. God. He is the hottest guy in this or any other
galaxy. I mean,
en fuego
to the max.”

I blinked twice as if I had no idea whom she
was referring to, afraid she was going to utter his name aloud.

She bounced her eyebrows lasciviously. “I
think I’m gonna go back and audition a few more times just for some
more of that eye candy.”

The door opened again, and Alma poked her
head out. “Liliana, you next?”

Liliana stared at Didi, clearly revealing
who she thought her competition was, then she bent over to massage
her foot and answered, “No, I got a little cramp. It’ll be fine in
a minute.” She waved toward Didi. “She can go first.”

“Me?” Didi laughed. “Did you think I was
auditioning? No, my girl, Rae is the star today. You are just her
warm-up act.”

Liliana was not amused by Didi’s trash
talk.

“If you were smart you’d go on before her,
because anyone who follows her is going to look like shit. But if
you want her to go first, that’s fine too. Rae?” She gestured
toward the door, directing me to enter.

I panicked. I believed in Didi’s directive
never to be a warm-up, to always go last.

Before I had time to stress even further,
Didi glanced down at my feet and pretended to stop me even though I
hadn’t moved. “Shit, Rae, you wore the wrong shoes. I told you the
heel is about to come off those.”

“They look brand-new to me,” Liliana
said.

“Funny how deceptive looks can be. No,
there’s no way she can dance in those. Don’t worry, though, Lil,
we’re parked close. It’ll only take a few minutes to run out and
get the ones I told you to wear. Give you enough time to work out
your cramp
and
get your audition over with.”

Didi pulled me away before Liliana could
protest. As we left, Didi twiddled her fingers in a fake-friendly
wave and over her shoulder chirped, “
Mierda!
” the flamenco
version of “Break a leg.”

We retreated to the bathroom to sip
Frangelico and wait Liliana out. “Okay,” Didi said, checking her
watch. “They’ll give Liliana what? Eight minutes, max. Then she’ll
hang and flirt with Tomás for, what? Three, four minutes, until
Alma kicks her out. Twelve minutes at the outside. Here.” She
passed me the bottle. “And quit looking so grim. I’ve got your
back.”

Didi had my back.
I smiled and tipped
the bottle up.

Twelve minutes later, we were back in the
hallway when Alma opened the door for Liliana to leave. The star
backed out, babbling, “Tomás, I can’t tell you what an honor it was
to work with an artist of your caliber. Even this briefly. I
actually didn’t really get a chance to warm up and, you know, like
I said, I had that cramp in my foot. Anyway, you have my card. I’m
available at any time for a callback. Any time at all.”

Didi and I exchanged glances.
Groveling?
The great Liliana Montoya was groveling?
My dry mouth went
drier.

Alma pushed the door open farther. “Thank
you, Liliana. Someone will let you know.”

On Liliana’s face was a dazzled expression.
Tomás had dazzled a flamenco queen. I was a flamenco commoner. Did
I even have the right to be dazzled? I wondered. I stiffened my
spine and answered,
Hell, yes. I’d earned the right with every
blister and callus on my feet.

Alma looked at us. “Ah, the Bobbsey Twins.
Ofelia, we haven’t seen much of you lately. Who’s going first?”

“I’m just a member of Rae’s entourage.” Didi
waved her hand in front of her face and stepped away from the
door.

In that instant, I caught sight of him. His
dark head was bent over the guitar, his ear nuzzled against the
neck of his instrument as he tuned it. He glanced up at the sound
of scuffling at the door and, for the first time in nearly four
years, looked at me. In that second of delusion, I believed that
Tomás had spent every day of the past few years yearning for me
just as deeply as I had yearned for him. I smiled. He returned my
smile with the polite, distant smile he’d give any stranger. Of
course he didn’t remember me. How could I have ever thought
otherwise? Leslie was right. I was an erotomaniac. I had stalked
Tomás for four years. My mother was crazy, had been crazy my whole
life, and so was I.
That
was what was in my blood.

“
Pásele
, Rae,” Alma said, waving
impatiently for me to enter.

Inside, sitting behind Tomás, was most of
the dance faculty along with the entire guitar wing of the music
faculty, all gathered as if auditing a master class. All waiting.
Waiting with Tomás. What did blisters and calluses mean? They were
bumps on my skin, minor modifications to an exterior. Nothing had
changed the interior since I’d been too frightened to walk into my
first flamenco class. I was born Cyndi Rae Hrncir and would die
Cyndi Rae Hrncir. I would have left then, but my legs had turned to
lumber. Didi jabbed a knuckle into my spine, but I still couldn’t
move until I grabbed her hand and pulled her in with me. Alma
shrugged, waved us both inside, then closed the door.

The light filtering through the high windows
inside the studio was blue and spectral. A trickle of sweat like
melted ice ran down from my armpit.

Tomás stood. Holding the guitar in his left
hand, he came forward with his right outstretched. Alma made the
introductions.

“This is Ofelia.”

She took his hand.
“Muy encantado conocer
a un tocaor tan dotado.”

“You speak Spanish.”

“Not as well as my friend,” Didi said,
smiling in my direction.

He looked at me and Alma supplied the name.
“This is Rae Hrncir.”

Never had I hated the soulless grind of
Slavic consonants that was my name more than I did at that moment.
Then, for one instant, as Tomás took my hand, he looked from me to
Didi and a dim recognition flickered across his eyes. He
remembered. He shook my hand, staring at me like a man trying to
identify a distant sound. His hand was warm against my cold one. In
the next instant, he decided he was imagining things and dropped my
hand. He waved a questioning finger from me to Didi. “Both of you
are auditioning?”

“No,” Didi answered. “I’m just here for
moral support.”

“
Bueno
. Friends. That’s cute. I like
that.” He held his hand out, palm up, inviting us with a gesture
formal and very European to step into the open area encircled by
folding chairs. There was no chair for Didi. She stepped off to one
side.

He sat down, settled his guitar, and looked
at me. “What do you want me to play?”

He had spoken to me. Everything I’d studied
for three and a half years was for this moment. To know the
language, the flamenco code, well enough that I could utter the
password that would allow me to enter his world. I opened my mouth.
My vocal cords were dry and tense. I croaked out, “
Soleá por
bulerías
.” I had spoken to him.

“
Bien, soleá por bulerías
.” He nodded
at Alma, who was
cantaora
. Yes, she sang, and, yes,
el
cante
is the wellspring of flamenco. But not that day. That day
Alma’s singing was inconsequential. It was all about his playing
and my dancing. Tomás plucked out notes that rippled through the
studio, his guitar a paddle pulling water in concentric swirls that
drew us all toward him. He played the warm-up chords a guitarist
always plays for new dancers as a way to synchronize style and
tempo. But even with those throwaway chords, it was clear why some
of the best guitar teachers in the country had chosen to sit in on
an audition.

Behind me, Didi began doing
palmas
,
softly clapping muted
sordas
, picking up the beat. I tried
to force the sway of the familiar twelve counts into my body, but
my nerves were logjammed.

“Something like that?” he asked me.

“
Sí. Perfecto,”
I answered.

“Okay, then.” He gave me a practiced smile.
“De principio. Y...”

Where the warm-up chords had been a paddle
rippling notes, Tomás’s
soleá
was a deluge. His left hand
made the timeless journey from the A chord to B-flat and back while
the long nails of his right hand plucked a torrent of notes that
flooded the large studio with waves of precisely one dozen beats
each. His ring finger struck
golpes
on the guitar, a surge
on the three, the six, the eight, the ten, pulling against the
rhythm I knew and loved. I usually found the six-beats-up and
six-beats-back sway of a
bulerías
as easy as rocking in a
hammock. Not that day. He played the
entrada
once, twice,
three times. Each time his eyes locked on me, the dancer, the one
who was supposed to conduct that performance.

Didi marked time, clapping, then stamping
the heels of her boots. She was keeping time just as I had for her
so often in the past. When I didn’t enter the second time Tomás
played the
entrada
, Didi’s stamping grew louder, urged me
forward more insistently. Still I didn’t move. The waves of notes
kept coming. Any other time, I would have exulted in having an
ocean of music to dance in. But that day, the
golpes
seemed
dangerous, a riptide that would pull me under. I couldn’t find a
safe place to dive in. The waves broke and receded, leaving me
standing on the shore, terrified of drowning.

I tried to remember Doña Carlota’s story, to
lose myself in the tale of the Gypsy girl dancing in the caves, but
all I could recall was Guitos telling me that there had never been
a pale girl like that on Sacromonte.

When Tomás played the
entrada
for the
fourth time and I still did not move, Didi began doing the solo I’d
choreographed. At first, she was inconspicuous, standing on the
sidelines, performing in a subdued way, just to encourage me. But
the faculty, who knew her so well, interpreted her modest
hesitancy, her reluctance to embrace the spotlight as a joke, a
clever comment on her renowned divahood. So, with a few laughs, a
smattering of applause, the spotlight turned decisively toward
Didi. And she flowered. I’d never
not
known this about Didi:
she was a slave to attention.

Clapping, she picked up the tempo. Her
months on the road, years of experience in front of audiences, had
turned her natural charisma into a force of nature. It was
impossible
not
to stare at her. Tomás stared. He looked away
from me to her. Then, thumping out the
golpes
like a
shepherd herding a scattered flock, he corralled Didi back onto the
beat. He played for her. She danced for him. Her
brazeo
, her
taconeo
even flashier than usual, she took center stage
beside me. Tomás smiled, pleased by the routine he assumed we were
acting out, the shy wallflower being coaxed out of her shell.

I forced myself to move forward, to show
some signs of life and retake the dance that was supposed to be
mine. I picked up the tempo, energy returning to my legs with each
stamp of my foot, and moved forward until Didi and I were dancing
side by side. I caught her eye and nodded to signal to her that I
could take over. But Didi and Tomás had formed the closed circuit
that is essential between guitarist and dancer. He was doing for
her what good accompanists do for dancers, supplying strong, steady
rhythm and covering up when she made a mistake. Didi was so intent
upon Tomás and he upon her that they both looked straight through
me. With the stunned feel of an accident victim having trouble
believing the catastrophe happening right in front of her, I
wobbled out of beat and backed away.

After marking time long enough to gather
myself, I moved forward more strongly. Attempting to take the lead,
I reached out my arms, the universal signal for a
llamada
,
my warning to Tomás that I was going to come in on the twelve. At
the same instant, Didi surged back and brought her hands down on
the ten, a clear call for a
desplante
that would come in on
the one. Tomás flicked his eyes from Didi to me, trying to
interpret the conflicting signals. He could only take direction
from one of us.

Tomás had exactly the amount of time it
takes to lift one finger to decide which one of us to follow. He
hit a
golpe
on the one Didi had called for with a metallic
clarity that rang like a bell signaling the end of a round. I was
the fighter who went to the corner. I was out. Completely
fuera
de compás
, more off the beat than I’d been on my first day in
Doña’s class, I stumbled along, dancing as if I were wearing casts
on both feet.

While Didi performed the sweeping
desplante
I’d choreographed, I withdrew. As I executed
simple marking steps, Didi hiked up her skirt, calling for what she
loved the best, an
escobilla
. As Didi initiated the driving
footwork that characterizes an
escobilla
, Tomás accelerated
his playing to keep pace. Didi hammered the floor, her feet
stirring the dust left by years of students.

Didi’s frantic footwork had the hollow echo
of a porn star, hydroponic breasts being trampolined by some gym
stallion. Tomás urged her on with a hectic cascade of notes as they
both struggled toward a theatrical climax. It came in a machine-gun
burst, Didi jackhammering her feet, Tomás fanning triplets so
furiously his hand blurred, a frenzy of motion that built higher
and higher like a wedding cake with ever-more-elaborate garlands of
sweet icing piped on over a tasteless base. Didi signaled and Tomás
magically managed to crash down on a final chord exactly as Didi
stamped to a resounding finale. The elite audience applauded. Didi
had gotten it, the money shot.