‘Don’t you want me here any longer?’
‘I do, but I cannot always be here for you.’
‘Your career is more important than me?’
‘My career isasimportant as you,’ Meñique chided her. ‘Now, I must go, I have a meeting about the new recording. I will see you later.’
Lucía threw herself back on the pillows, furious that both her lover and her father were thwarting her plans. Since her triumph at the Teatro de Fontalba, she’d experienced her first taste of freedom, and she was not inclined to give it up without a fight. Especially considering the new delights she had discovered in the bedroom with Meñique.
‘I love him!’ she shouted at the empty apartment, slapping her hand down on the mattress. ‘Why is he leaving me here alone!’
She clambered out of bed, took her cigarettes and sat on the windowsill to light one. Below her was a wide tree-lined avenue swarming with people and cars. Four floors up, she could only hear the noise if she opened up the window, which she did, to let a plume of smoke filter gently out into the morning sunlight.
‘I love it here!’ she shouted down to the street. ‘And I don’t want to leave! How dare Meñique suggest I get another place?!’ Throwing her cigarette stub out of the window, she walked naked through the apartment to put some water on to boil for her normal strong coffee. Just like Meñique, the rooms were small, immaculate and organised. ‘He even cooks!’ she murmured as she took a cup down from a shelf. ‘I want him!’
Carrying her coffee into the sitting room, Lucía curled up in a chair to sip it, looking at his guitars neatly lined up along one wall. He was different from any othergitanoshe knew, having apayomother and being brought up in Pamplona in the very north of Spain. His family had lived in a house – a house! – and he had grown up amongst thepayos. Sometimes, Lucía felt like a wild animal in contrast to his calm sophistication. He did not see thepayosas the enemy, as she had been taught to, but merely as a different breed.
‘I am both, so I must embrace each culture, Lucía. And thepayosare the ones who will take both of us on to the success we crave,’ he’d said to her one night as she’d ridiculed him for reading apayonewspaper. ‘They have the power and the money.’
‘They killed my brother,’ she’d shouted at him. ‘How can I ever forgive them for that?’
‘Gitanosalso killgitanos,payoskillpayos,’ Meñique had reminded her with a resigned shrug. ‘I am sorry for your brother, it is a terrible thing that happened, but prejudice and bitterness get one nowhere in life, Lucía. You must forgive, as the Bible tells us to do.’
‘Now you are a priest?!’ she’d railed at him. ‘Telling me to read the Bible? Are you trying to patronise me? You know I never learnt to read.’
‘Then I will teach you.’
‘I have no need of it!’ She’d brushed off the arm that came around her. ‘My body and soul is all I need.’
Yet Lucía knew deep down that Meñique was right. The crowds that were buying tickets in advance to see her perform were notgitanos, butpayos, and it was their money that would pay the big weekly wage she had been offered.
Lucía stood up. ‘He treats me just as Papá does!’ she shouted to the guitars. ‘Like an ignorant littlegitanawho understands nothing. And yet, he takes me three times a night to satisfy his lust! Mamá is right, men are all the same. Well, I’ll show him!’
She drew back a foot and kicked out at a guitar. The strings twanged as it fell to one side. She looked at the ordered shelf of books and swiped at them with her hand, sending them tumbling to the floor. After walking back to the bedroom, she dressed for the first time in days in the flamenco gown that Meñique had stripped from her body. Picking up her shoes, she walked to the door of the apartment, opened it and left.
*
Having found the mess in the apartment when he’d returned home, Meñique sighed and headed for the Coliseum Theatre, where Lucía was due to have a rehearsal that afternoon.
Meñique found José smoking by the stage door, with the rest of thecuadroassembled inside.
‘Is Lucía in the theatre already?’ Meñique asked José.
‘No, I thought she was with you,’ José answered. ‘No one has seen her.’
‘Mierda,’ Meñique swore under his breath. ‘I left her in my apartment this morning . . . where would she have gone?’
‘You tell me,’ said José, barely keeping his anger under control. ‘You were meant to be her keeper.’
‘As you know, señor, no one can “keep” Lucía, especially if she is in a rage.’
‘She opens next week! We arrived here to rehearse! After all this, will she miss her big chance?’
Meñique’s brain was turning over the possibilities. ‘Come with me, I think I know where she might be.’
Half an hour later, they arrived at the Plaza de Olavide, a hub of cafés and bars. And there in the centre of the plaza was Lucía, in the midst of a crowd that had gathered around her. Two random guitarists had joined her and as Meñique pushed through the mass of bodies, he heard the ping of coins landing on the ground around her. He stood there, arms folded, watching her dance. When she had finished, he and José joined in with the huge applause she received.
He watched her as she went to pick up the coins and indicated to the crowd that her performance was over.
