The guy they had hired to direct the low-budget music video in Miami declared he \u201chad it\u201d now, finally, and we all applauded.<\/p>\n
Adelaida and Roxy, the backup singers, made an exaggerated bow as if thanking an applauding audience of millions when, including the cameraman and the director, we were barely ten people in that sweltering rental warehouse turned recording set.<\/p>\n
Minutes later, we were picking up batteries, lights, instruments. We were tired. We wanted to go home.<\/p>\n
Everyone except Johnny, the band’s vocalist, he of the faux-sexy syrupy voice, springy curls, and two-day beard. The one responsible for the drunk students and hipsters who filled the places in which we were lucky to play.<\/p>\n
And he knew that. It\u2019s why, while the others helped me roll up cables, dismantle stands, pack microphones into padded cases, Johnny laid more than sat on the only good seat in the room: the Danish Dux armchair that Luquis, his partner in the band, called his \u201cfirstborn,\u201d his most precious possession, bought on eBay and lugged from city to city and from location to location across three states.<\/p>\n
Johnny knew that too. That’s why he rubbed himself against the armchair, placing the lower part of his sweaty back almost on the edge of the seat, his legs spread as if he were about to take a photo of the warehouse with his damn dick, but needed to frame everything with his thighs first.<\/p>\n
That’s how it was with everything. Take the music video for example: even though it was low budget, it had cost more than the band could afford, which is the same as saying more than Luquis could afford. Because even though he and Johnny were partners and co-owned the group, I was sure Luquis was the one who took care of things and kept them flowing, while Johnny just placed his pretty face in front of the microphone and bleated.<\/p>\n
Luquis would have told you \u201cthey\u201d had made the extra effort of producing the video because they believed in \u201cSecret Strokes,\u201d a reggaetonish rock piece inspired by Soda Stereo\u2019s \u201cDe m\u00fasica ligera.\u201d But I wasn\u2019t fooled: Luquis financed it to please Johnny. I was sure because that was Luquis: a truly good person, a forty-something man married to music, whose only other obsession, as far as I knew, was a second-hand midcentury modern armchair upholstered in the red velvet of old-time theater seats.<\/p>\n
\u201cDude, I\u2019m telling you, this went on for over forty- two hours! The asshole would go up two dollars, and I\u2019d go up three dollars and five cents\u2014the five cents being the key\u2014until I won it, heh, heh, heh. But look at it and tell me it\u2019s not a beauty. Comfy, too.\u201d<\/p>\n
We\u2019d all heard the story. If Luquis had been a superhero, the damn chair would\u2019ve been the throne of his origin story.<\/p>\n
But Johnny was, well, let’s just say Johnny took his bad boy role seriously. He was a talented loser, but a loser, nonetheless. His favorite game? Hoarding chairs he had no interest in, just so the person who really wanted them wouldn\u2019t be able to sit on them. With them. Rubbing himself against what others loved, that was what it was about for him.<\/p>\n
Me? Oh, I was nobody. The roadie. Another loser, but more so because I was a loser without talent. My only admirable quality, being aware of how much of a loser I was. The super loser-assistant-pipe-slave who\u2019d never be a musician.<\/p>\n
The job paid the rent and bought me beers, okay? That\u2019s all. Unless you want to add that it kept me close to Adelaida, the backup singer, yes, the same, and the other reason I was such a super loser. A loser crazy in love with the woman Johnny treated worse than he treated<\/p>\n
Luquis’armchair.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
That afternoon, I was making sure we didn’t leave anything behind because anything that went missing came out of my salary. When the microphone, or battery, or cable count reached the number I had brought down to Miami, I\u2019d load the counted items into the old van whose sides read \u201cI.O.U, Laura,\u201d the band’s name. (Apparently, it was Luquis\u2019 mother’s favorite phrase, and also, Laura was the name of his father’s current wife. You can connect your own dots.)<\/p>\n
The temperature was a thousand degrees, but Miami was too expensive for a local band like ours, and the plan was to finish loading the damn van and return to Orlando that same night, to rest in our own beds after weeks of playing in cheap venues all along Interstate 95 heading south.<\/p>\n
Everyone in the band was Caribbean\u2014born and raised in Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, or Cuba, except for Luquis and me. Luquis was a gringo Boricua, born on the island and raised in the States. And I was a Dominican gringo, born in New York to Dominican parents who\u2019d been undocumented until \u201cjust the other day,\u201d a lifetime of living under the radar, ya t\u00fa sabes.<\/p>\n
Adelaida reappeared a few steps from me.\u00a0 She was no longer a songstress, black and seductive, of heavy lashes and platinum blonde braids (a wig). She had changed into her own clothes and now looked like a schoolgirl: without makeup, in a white t-shirt and jeans.<\/p>\n
But Johnny was too busy with the half-empty beer bottle in his hand to pay attention to her. He\u2019d been sweeping his cloudy gaze from one end of the warehouse to the other every couple minute, while the rest of us, including Luquis, worked, even swept the polished cement floors, him lying there, purposely languid in his phony lax displeasure with life until Adelaida got tired of being ignored and went and sat on his lap, and I\u2019m telling you, I didn\u2019t know how much longer I\u2019d be able to take it.<\/p>\n
The problem wasn’t her not seeing me, or not knowing I was alive. (I\u2019d been invisible my whole life. I was used to it.) The problem was that she was wasting herself on him. That she was so blind to her own beauty, to her talent. You won’t believe me, but if Adelaida had fallen in love with Luquis, I wouldn’t have minded. Seriously, there were nights I prayed he\u2019d fall for her, save her from Johnny. Luquis would have loved her well, treated her like the queen she was. Like he treated his mother. His sisters too, even though they were beyond fugly. Even me, he always treated with affection, but\u00a0 also\u00a0 with\u00a0 respect,\u00a0 you\u00a0 know what I mean? But no. Of the large number of preeminent assholes roaming the streets of Florida, Adelaida had had to go and fall for Johnny.<\/p>\n
Someone had opened the warehouse loft\u2019s tall steel casement windows, but it was Miami, and they didn\u2019t seem to have a breeze worth living for down there.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe be ready to go in fifteen, Johnny,” said a sweaty, stressed-out Luquis, not waiting for a response. Not getting one either. But that was Luquis. \u00bfDidn\u2019t I tell you he was someone who respected everyone? It didn’t matter if he wasn\u2019t respected in return.<\/p>\n
I was just a couple of meters away, kneeling in front of a series of metal trunks that I had lined up in an effort to be efficient, but Johnny had thrown me off with his bullshit and I pretended to count batteries and camera chargers, unable to concentrate because Adelaida was still on his damn lap, while he took his time making her feel unimportant, like she was nothing.<\/p>\n
He didn’t care that her beautiful cinnamon-colored arms were around his neck, her slightly crooked-toothed smile searching his face for a kiss. \u201cPapi, please,” she was saying. “Don’t drink anymore tonight. Let’s go home already.”<\/p>\n
But of course, the supreme asshole had to make her beg. Took his damn time, too, bestowing his pardon, sliding his empty paw down Adelaida’s ass before saying to her: “You’re such a pain, woman. Jeez, all right already. Find your jacket and we\u2019ll go. Hurry up.”<\/p>\n
She smiled then, leapt off his lap, gave him a kiss that meant to be quick and playful but, of course,\u00a0 he had to take her wrist and turn it into a spectacle while I briefly imagined what it would be like to shoot someone. Myself, mostly. To destroy my still pockmarked face at speeds I wouldn\u2019t be able to stop, but see the bullet in slow motion, like that guy in the only short story I ever liked from all they force-fed me in school.<\/p>\n
It was obvious, wasn\u2019t it? I had to quit. The notion had been circling me in, quarantining, jailing me, and now I thought about it again because there was Adelaida, still kissing Johnny as if they were trying to break the Guinness World Record for sloppy kissing, me, now fully convinced that things just flew right over her. That she didn’t realize, or didn’t want to realize, anything: the triumph in Johnny’s voice when he ordered her to find her jacket, while searching for me with his eyes to make sure I had seen it all.<\/p>\n
She\u2019d missed it, or was unable to see it, just like she was unable to see him now, looking at her walk away, measuring her like he measured groupie meat from the stage wherever we played. Like she always just missed seeing me, unable to stop looking when she dropped from the waist at the slightest bead of sweat, gathered her long tangled brown hair between both long-nailed hands, twisting it all into a wobbly bun that she\u2019d let hang loosely from the side of her head like a big solitary earring.<\/p>\n
It was time to go was all. I\u2019d find another job even though I liked this one because it allowed for sleeping in, more than paid the bills, and left enough for sending money to mami, who\u2019d divorced my father and gone back to Dominicana. (All that swimming just to die on the beach, as they say. But. That\u2019s life, as mami herself would say.)<\/p>\n
The worst was nobody would miss me. Not when you could kick any corner you liked and out would pop a roadie, and, since I hadn\u2019t been much good with all my wound-licking the last couple of months, anyone Luquis hired would be an improvement over me. Band wouldn\u2019t miss me either, least of all Adelaida, for all her tousling of my hair whenever she walked past me.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou know I\u2019d kill for that thick curly mane of yours, don\u2019t you, Petey?\u201d she\u2019d say.<\/p>\n
\u201cWell, yeah, you know, um, I\u2019d kill for yours,\u201d I\u2019d shot back the last time she\u2019d said it, that\u2019s how lame I was around her. That\u2019s how pathetic of a fucking super-looser I became whenever she was near me. I\u2019d kill for yours. Seriously?<\/p>\n
Nah, I had to go. Period. It was the best thing I could do because Adelaida was just going to keep missing it all, forever, blind to realities until the ends of time like my mother, maybe like Luquis\u2019 mother, and I couldn\u2019t handle it anymore. Couldn\u2019t keep promising to give her everything every time I looked at her: in the rehearsal room at Luquis,\u2019 on stage, in the band\u2019s bus when she\u2019d sing a cappella to distract us during the long tedious trips through turnpikes of nothing but pine trees, tar, and rest stops. Yep, I know, you don\u2019t have to bother telling me: wanting the wife of the guy who controlled the guy who paid my salary was not the dumbest thing in the long list of dumb things I had done with my life, but it was in the top five, maybe in the top three.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Adelaida\u2019s back now, coat in hand, but now Johnny\u2019s faking being asleep, or drunk, one of the two. He\u2019s being a dick. A pendejo huelestaca (a favorite compound term of Luquis\u2019 meaning something akin to imbecile loser, but dirtier).<\/p>\n
She pulls on his arm, impatient, wanting to go, and I kick the trunk shut without<\/p>\n
any idea of how many batteries are in there, snap the locks, bend a little in order to lift it onto my left shoulder. I\u2019m thinking it\u2019s settled, right? I\u2019m going. First thing tomorrow, I tell Luquis, and I\u2019m gone.<\/p>\n
But when I raise my head, the trunk now easily breaking my clavicle, I see her: hands turned into fists, one on each side of her waist. She\u2019s doing that tap tap tap thing women do with the tip of her left boot. Except it\u2019s not her I\u2019m seeing, not really. The woman I\u2019m looking at is a goddess. A La Lupe, a Frida, a Julia de Burgos. A woman too magnificent for Johnny. For me, too. A saint of golden wings stitched in loneliness. A strong angel, destined to have to pick itself up from the floor after love that was just too bad, too devastating.<\/p>\n
And damn me to hell, can you believe I start to cry? And I’m not even drunk, I swear. But I cry because I don’t want what I\u2019m seeing for her. I don’t want it. And I don’t know what to do or what to say.<\/p>\n
Suddenly, I hear a voice like an ancestral echo saying, \u201cno hay peor ciego que el que no quiere ver\u201d and I see the most obstinate of those who, blinded, refused to see: my mother. Another devastated angel, one who left without needing to emigrate, now back in her homeland, but when you visit, she greets you sadly, somehow diminished, as if she were a package returned unopened to the store because she wasn\u2019t enough to satisfy the customer’s needs. Like a gambler who risked her life to get to the casino with a single coin and is back with a tired thumb and nothing in her pockets. And no, no way can that be Adelaida’s destiny, co\u00f1o. Not with that voice and that smile and, well, other things of hers.<\/p>\n
But what am I talking about? Who do I think I am? Spiderman? No, it\u2019s a done deal. I\u2019m leaving, finding another gig, starting over. What the hell? I\u2019m young. Haven\u2019t even turned thirty yet, and that\u2019s still young, right?<\/p>\n
\u201cYou all right, there?\u201d Luquis asks. I have no idea how long he\u2019s been watching me, but he looks worried.<\/p>\n
\u201cYep. All good,\u201d I say, watching Johnny get up, finally, and give Adelaida a slap on the butt with a little too much force before turning to say something to the ass-kissers and boot lickers who adulate him nonstop (Payco, the drummer, and Junito, who plays the synthesizer.)<\/p>\n
And there, right there, in that moment, I see it. I mean, I think I see it: Adelaida\u2019s expression changing as soon as Johnny turns to his in-house\u00a0 groupies.\u00a0 Putting away that smile of hers and raising her pupils way high before letting it all come down into a scowl framed by her furrowed brow, she, hartita de odio (like saying chock full of hatred) against Johnny, just like me. Lucid, finally, a self-saved angel.<\/p>\n
She\u2019s waking up. That\u2019s what I see. She won\u2019t be wasting herself on Johnny for long. Nor with me, though, who knows, insists my stupid heart daring to want, to wish for something for itself.<\/p>\n
But, nah. Damn angels must have been working overtime that day because the instant I even contemplate the possibility of Adelaida, a light turns on a mere few feet from me, probably one of the warehouse lights on a timer.<\/p>\n
But listen, that it turned on isn\u2019t the thing. The thing is what it tells me in neon blue letters on a sign I hadn\u2019t noticed before. One that now reads, \u201cThe exit is this way, asshole.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Suddenly, I hear a voice like an ancestral echo saying, \u201cno hay peor ciego que el que no quiere ver\u201d and I see the most obstinate of those who, blinded, refused to see: my mother. Another devastated angel, one who left without needing to emigrate, now back in her homeland. Like a gambler who risked her life to get to the casino with a single coin and is back with a tired thumb and nothing in her pockets.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":182,"featured_media":20623,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[3627,3628,1347,3630,267,3626,3629],"class_list":["post-20200","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fiction","tag-anjanette-delgado","tag-feminist-fiction","tag-florida","tag-indie-band-stories","tag-longing","tag-roadie","tag-unrequited-love-stories","writer-anjanette-delgado"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20200","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/182"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20200"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20200\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20624,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20200\/revisions\/20624"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20623"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20200"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20200"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20200"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}