The Magic Strings of Frankie Presto (11 page)

“Can I try?” the girl asked.

They squatted together. This time she didn’t tell him, “Not so close.” They made five more string flowers and spread them around the dirt that covered the bodies. Then they stood and rubbed the dirt away. The sun lowered in the sky. The girl mumbled a small prayer and Frankie repeated her words, even though he didn’t comprehend them.

As they gazed at the grave, she hooked her fingers in Frankie’s. He squeezed hers in return. There are moments on earth when the Lord smiles at the unexpected sweetness of His creation. This was one of those moments.

“What’s your name?”

“Francisco.”

“What’s your last name?”

“Rubio.”

“Does it mean something? Francisco?”

“It is the name of a famous guitarist.”

“Oh.”

“What’s your name?”

“Aurora.”

“What’s your last name?”

“York.”

“Does it mean something? Aurora?”

“It means ‘dawn.’ ”

“What’s dawn?”

“When the sun comes up. Everybody knows that.”

Frankie looked away. He would have to ask El Maestro to teach him more English.

“You play very well, Francisco.”

Frankie blushed.

“I think you are the best guitar player in the world.”

“Really?”

“I wouldn’t lie to you.”

The hairless dog whimpered.

“Have you ever been kissed by a girl?”

“Once.”

“Where?”

“In school.”

She laughed. “No.
Where?
On your cheek?”

“On my ear.”

“Which ear?”

He pointed.

“I’ll kiss the other one,” she said.

And she did. Softly. Quickly. And then, as if quite happy with herself, she leaned over and patted the hairless dog’s head.

Frankie blinked.

“Aurora,” he said, as if practicing. “Au-ro-ra.”

She smiled as he said her name, and he smiled back, and without even knowing it, he had joined another band. From that moment on, Aurora York was in Frankie’s music. That day. That night. And forever.

13

NOW, UNDERSTAND, IN MY WORLD, THINGS SHIFT QUICKLY FROM MAJOR TO MINOR.
It’s a simple chord change, a flatting of the third; you move one finger, and it’s done. Frankie left the woods that day in a dreamy state, the hairless dog walking beside him. But when he returned to the factory, he knew something was wrong. There were police trucks outside. Men in gray uniforms were leaning against the front wall. The hairless dog growled.

“What do you want, boy?” a policeman asked.

Frankie swallowed.

“My papa.”

“Where is your papa?”

“Inside there.”

“Yes? Inside here? Really?” The policeman stood up straight. Another truck pulled up. Frankie recognized it as the one he had seen in the woods. The soldiers who had earlier been burying bodies stepped out and lit cigarettes. Frankie’s heart was racing.

“Who is your papa?” the officer asked.

The hairless dog began to bark.

“Shut up, beast!”

The man pulled his gun.

“No!” Frankie screamed.

The man fired and missed, the bullet raising smoke from the dirt. The dog raced away.

“Now,” the policeman continued, “who is your papa?”

Just then the front door of the factory swung open, and one of Baffa’s workers came stumbling out with his arms tied at the wrists. Two policemen stepped out behind him.

“Luis!” Frankie yelled. “Luis! Where is—”

Luis glared hard and shook his head. Frankie went silent.

“Is this man your father?” the policeman said.

“His father isn’t here!” Luis yelled. “He’s out sick.”

“Quiet!” shouted the officer holding him. He jammed a stick into his ribs, then pulled Luis toward the truck and shoved him inside. Frankie saw two other workers already in the backseat. They looked terrified.

“Is that true, music boy?”

Frankie felt tears running down his face.

“Speak, boy! Is that true? Is your father sick at home?”

“
Sí
,” Frankie finally whispered.

“Then why did you say he was inside?”

Frankie stared straight ahead. “I wanted . . . water.”

“Get water somewhere else. And give me that guitar. I’ll show you how a Spaniard plays.”

Without waiting, the officer yanked the instrument from Frankie’s back. He flipped it over.

“What is this? There are no strings.”

He spat.

“You need strings to play a guitar, boy. Has your papa not taught you that?”

He flung the guitar, and it landed in the dirt. The others laughed.

“Francisco, go home!” Luis yelled from the truck.

The officers laughed again.

“Yes, Francisco, go home. Tell your father there won’t be any work tomorrow. Or the next day.”

Frankie turned and ran, his feet making a crunching sound on the gravel as he broke away. He ran nine or ten paces, then stopped, ran back, and scooped up his guitar. The policemen laughed again.

“Better find some strings!” one of them yelled, but Frankie was already disappearing, his breath filling his chest so deeply he felt as if he’d swallowed all the air in his country.

He ran a long way. When his legs gave out, he walked. Then he ran again. A truck of gypsies pulled alongside him. They offered to take Frankie to Villareal for all the coins in his pocket—and his guitar. He reluctantly handed it over. He crawled in the back, the gypsies’ eyes upon him, and wedged between a sack of potatoes and a snoring woman in a black shawl.

As the truck headed west, it was passed by a military vehicle that would stop at the sardine factory and unload an officer who, upon hearing that a boy had been there and had run away, slapped the face of a soldier and yelled, “That was the bastard! The Rubio boy!”

But by that point Frankie was bouncing in the back of a flatbed, trying not to cry. It seems cruel to say that he never saw Baffa again. But it is true. On the same day Frankie Presto found love, he lost his home.

Major to minor.

Abby Cruz

Songwriter, producer

I MET FRANKIE PRESTO IN A CUBICLE.

It’s true. I was twenty years old, and had just started working for Aldon Music in New York City, in an office building on Broadway. They put songwriters like me in cubicles, one next to the other. Neil Sedaka was there. Carole King. Gerry Goffin. Cynthia Weill. Barry Mann. Our job was to write hits. You had your piano and your little table and your ashtray—everyone smoked back then—and you pounded away. It sounds strange now, because we could hear each other working through the walls. But that actually inspired us. It was a competition. An awful lot of famous music came out of those cubicles. “On Broadway,” “Breaking Up Is Hard to Do,” “Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow.”

I never had any hits that big. I was struggling, hoping they wouldn’t fire me. They paid fifty dollars a week, and they expected you to make them money in return.

I was the only Latino writer working there, so there was never any call for speaking Spanish. But one day, in 1961, I was pregnant with my first child—so I was really hoping they wouldn’t fire me—and everyone was out to lunch except me. I was desperate to write something big. I was playing the piano, this one hook that I thought was good, and all of a sudden I hear a guitar. It caught my ear because, for one thing, there weren’t a lot of guitars around—and this one was playing a solo
over my piano chords
.

I stopped. And it stopped.

So I started again. And sure enough, the guitar starts playing again, a fast little solo. So I tried something tricky. I played a song my Colombian grandmother had taught me. “La Malagueña.” And I heard that guitar take off on it, playing like crazy.

So I stopped and said in Spanish, “Okay, who’s doing that?” And from the next cubicle out pops the most handsome man I’ve ever seen—black hair, blue eyes, wearing a pink shirt and black slacks. And he says, “
Hola, me llamo Frankie
.” I knew him right away. He’d been on
The Ed Sullivan Show—
twice—and
American Bandstand.
“I Want To Love You” had been the number one record in the country. I mean, everyone in the business knew Frankie Presto. But I had no idea he spoke Spanish. We all thought he was from California.

Anyhow, there I am, pregnant out to here, and I say, “Hi, I’m Abby.” And he says, “How do you know ‘La Malagueña’?” And I say, “What are you doing here?” And he says, “Hiding.” He points to the window, and I walk across and look down and there’s a mob of young girls holding his records, crowding around the front entrance.

It turns out he was there with his manager, Tappy Fishman, who was meeting with our company about songs for Frankie’s next album. I got excited because I thought maybe I could write for him, but he told me he didn’t really want to record other people’s material. He was just going along to be polite.

“I think an artist should sing his own songs,” he said.

“You wrote ‘I Want To Love You,’ right?”

“Yeah.”

“For a girl?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Did she like it?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “She disappeared.”

I couldn’t believe I was alone with him. I asked what it was like to be that famous—he was in
LIFE
magazine, was friends with Sinatra and Bobby Darin, all that kind of stuff—and he laughed and said it was usually fun, except when he had to run from screaming women. He’d actually hurt his ankle once jumping from a fire escape.

Only when he was leaving did he ask, “When’s your baby coming?” I appreciated that, since with most men, it was the first thing they mentioned. I told him six weeks, and I was just hoping they wouldn’t fire me before then. He said, “They won’t fire you. You write good hooks.” And then he said, “One day, I want to teach my kids music.”

So my daughter was born, and I took a few months off. When I returned to work I discovered, in my cubicle, a basket of toys and a note that read, “Congratulations!” signed “The Guitar Player Next Door.” Inside the basket was a piece of sheet music for a song called “No, No, Honey.” Under the title it said, “Written by Frankie Presto and Abby Cruz.”

Well, I must’ve stared at it forever. Then I slapped it on the piano and played it. The hook was the chorus I’d been playing the day he came in. I don’t know how he remembered it! But he gave me cowriting credit for the whole piece. And as you probably know, “No, No, Honey” became a top-ten song. My first gold record. And I promise you, it kept me from being fired. Carole and Gerry had written major hits for the Shirelles and the Drifters, Neil Sedaka had done it for Connie Francis, Barry and Cynthia had done it for the Crystals. But I had a hit with Frankie Presto. That was huge!

Over the next few years he’d send me little notes at the office, congratulating me on writing this or that. He always added, “Sing your own songs!” and he always signed it, “The Guitar Player Next Door.” And then the notes stopped. I didn’t hear from him for years. I know he went through a lot, and he stopped making music for a long time.

Still, when I heard how he died, I was shocked. I wanted to come. Pay my respects. He was so kind to me early on. Without him, I might have been out of the music business altogether. “No, No, Honey” put my daughter through college. I do find it strange, him being buried in Spain, because I remember him saying something very harsh about this country once.

It was the last time I saw him, in New York, 1964, an industry thing at a big hotel. By that point, he’d had all those other hits, like “Shake, Shake” and “Our Secret,” but he seemed a little less happy-go-lucky. He was wearing a yellow suit and sunglasses, and was standing with his manager and his fiancée, the actress, I forget her name. I had my little girl, so I didn’t want to bother him. But as soon as he saw us, he raced over.

“This is the baby?” he asked.

“This is her,” I said.

“How old?”

“Three.”

“Wow.”

“Your fiancée is beautiful, by the way.”

“Thanks.”

“Is she the one you wrote ‘I Want To Love You’ for?”

“Nah.”

He bent down to talk to my daughter and sang her “Do Re Mi.” When he finished, she hugged him.

“Where are you getting married?” I asked.

“Hawaii.”

“Really?”

“Tappy is taking care of everything.”

“Do you have family in Hawaii?”

“I’m from Spain, remember?”

“Then why not get married in Spain?”

His face tightened up.

“I’m never going back there again,” he said.

14