CHAPTER ONE #2
“Hence the grapes. Got it.” Alex remembered his first New Year in Madrid and a valiant attempt to stuff all twelve grapes into his mouth for luck before the bells stopped tolling midnight.
It had been the first year he’d failed, but it had also been his first year trying to do it with cava being poured down his throat. “Are they English?”
“I don’t think so, darling.”
Vicente grunted. “So, the theatre won’t allow popcorn, but grapes mashed into the carpet are okay?”
Joanna turned to Vicente and squeezed his hand. “Corazon, I love you, but stop sulking.”
One of the drag queens rounded the row and dropped into the seat in front of Joanna, who tapped her on the shoulder. “Excuse me, but your wig?”
With a dismissive sniff, the queen lifted the towering follicle construct off her head in one clean movement, revealing a smooth head of dark, slicked-back hair.
Joanna leaned into Vicente. “Amor, I still can’t see. Can we change places?”
With a shrug, Vicente changed seats with Joanna and settled into the centre seat behind the drag queen, whose height posed him no challenge.
Alex thought he caught a knowing glance from Joanna, but he couldn’t be sure.
She seemed to be nodding at something over his left shoulder.
He turned to see a number of people surrounding a man with a frizzy shock of thick, dark hair who looked to be thanking them through obvious nerves.
Just behind him, sat Plaid Shirt, who caught Alex’s eye and smiled.
The lights dimmed. The crowd’s enthusiasm rose into a deafening thunder of cheers and applause as the man Bardot had been trying to chat up, took the stage.
He invited up the man with the frizzy hairdo, introducing him as the director, then a couple of other cast members—not including the White Rabbit—before they ceded the stage to someone called Alaska, who also appeared in the film.
She powered through several numbers with a Siouxie Sioux look and a Patti Smith confidence Alex admired.
Onscreen, they later watched Alaska urinate on her co-star and love interest while Carmen Maura—who Alex had seen in several movies and who must have been quite a get for the young director—watched with excitement like she’d found the spring of Lourdes.
When they came to the White Rabbit’s promised phallic debut, he felt Vicente’s fingers brush the edge of his hand.
He glanced over to see Joanna leaning against Vicente’s chest with his arm wrapped around her.
But Vicente’s other hand remained next to his.
Something in him jolted as Vicente slid a little finger around his and left it there.
Vicente grinned at the screen as the camera followed Maura and an emcee played by the director down a line of stiffies.
In what the screenplay called a ‘General Erection,’ Maura measured the length and girth of each before declaring a winner.
Alex had missed the White Rabbit entirely.
He made a haphazard attempt to follow the rest of the plot; something about a housewife who’d spurned the affections of Alaska’s punk-rocker in favour of an abusive…
he’d decided early in the film not to overanalyse it.
Every so often, he would feel the brush of Vicente’s finger against his, and less often, a glance from Plaid Shirt, whose face he would catch across the aisle as the screen filled with light.
As Pepi—Maura—led Bom—Alaska—to a presumably happy ending without the complication of noncommittal, masochistic housewife lovers, the crowd erupted in raucous cheers.
Joanna and Vicente leapt to their feet and joined them.
Meanwhile, Alex tracked the departure of Plaid Shirt, who looked back with a mischievous smile before disappearing into the lobby.
The director returned to the stage for bows, along with Alaska and the actor who’d played the housewife. After what felt like more than five minutes of applause, the crowd was on the move again, some meandering to the exit half-drunk, others mobbing the director and stars with praise.
“Come on, let’s say hello!” Joanna said, nodding at the director and hauling Vicente into the aisle.
“Wait, you know him?” Vicente asked.
“Does that matter?” She turned to Alex. “Are you coming?”
Alex shook his head. The growing crowd around the director was the last thing he felt like dealing with. “Congratulate him for me?”
He watched Joanna and Vicente join the growing throng before following the stragglers out into the warm night.
For whatever hellish heat Madrid endured through each of its August days, there was something magical about it after dark—not just because Plaid Shirt now stood there smoking on the pavement, giving Alex a shy smile as he approached.
“Wild movie, huh? The critics will hate it.”
“Probably,” Alex agreed, refusing his offer of a cigarette. “Do you think the guy who made it cares?”
Plaid Shirt smiled again. “I’ve his band, so I don’t think he does.”
“He has a band too?” Alex stepped out of the way of a six-foot five transvestite who tottered by on precarious heels.
Plaid Shirt nodded. “How about you?”
“I don’t… Oh, I’m a director too. Theatre, though. Well, I’m trying to be.”
“God, another one?” Plaid Shirt blew a puff of smoke out toward the street. His face fell as he turned back to Alex. “I’m sorry, that sounded dismissive. I’m sure you’re very good.”
Alex flirted with the idea of mining their evening’s rehearsal drama for an anecdote, but it seemed a sure way to drive the stranger away. “I’m Alex.”
“Jago.” The man’s grip belied his small frame.
“Like in Othello?”
“Oof!”
“I’m sorry. That sounded—”
“No, I deserved it.” Jago smirked. “Actually, Iago is a form of ‘James.’ My full name is Jacobo, but please, Jago. Just Jago.”
Alex watched Jago stamp out his cigarette. “Sounds like you’ve had this conversation before.”
“I was wondering if I wanted to have it with you, or if you would want to talk with me at all. While I was considering this, out you came like a cuckoo clock. Some would call that fate.”
Alex felt what a cliched romance novel might have called butterflies. He called it regretting so much vermouth.
“Was that your boyfriend sitting next to you?” Jago asked.
“Oh. No. Actually he’s… My friends have been together almost a year now.”
“Ah, the girl? A most handsome couple.”
Alex’s mind reached for an appropriate follow-up question.
Was Jago seeing anyone? Too intrusive. What did Jago do?
Too obvious, and what if the poor guy worked at a bank or a café like Alex did when he wasn’t being a director?
If this had been the movie, it would have been the perfect time for Vicente and Joanna to join them and save Alex from the pregnant silence.
Not that Jago couldn’t have ended it any time he chose.
In fact, Alex was starting to think he’d deliberately chosen not to, until at last he lit another cigarette.
“What play are you doing?” asked Jago. “I’d like to come see it.”
“It’s umm… an homage to… well, more of a retelling, really… you know Lorca’s Blood Wedding?”
Jago’s eyes darkened, casting Alex a side glance thick with scepticism. “Everyone. Knows. Blood. Wedding.”
The response had been so stilted and unreal, Alex was unsure how to respond, until Joanna and Vicente burst through the Alphaville’s doors.
“So much fun!” Joanna beamed at Alex. “Didn’t you have fun, darling? You should have joined us. Everyone’s quite friendly.”
“I had fun. It was just stuffy in there. Oh, this is…” Alex turned to the empty space where Jago had been. He looked around for any sign of a plaid shirt, only to see it vanish around the next corner.
* * *
“They’ll hate it.”
“You might be surprised.”
“No, they’re going to hate it,” Vicente insisted, a cigarette wedged between his lips as he emptied the last of the vermouth into two glasses.
“They’re going to hate it because they’re obsessed with this strange pre-Fascist golden age that never existed, like every artist who came out of that age didn’t fuck off to Paris or Mexico or stay to be murdered by Franco.
That’s the fantasy they want to see. Not housewives pissing on lesbian punk rockers. Alex? Alex!”
“Eh? Oh!” Alex took the glass from Vicente’s hand, watching in silence as Vicente sat down opposite him. “No more ice?”
“No, and you’re too drunk to care.” Joanna leaned into Vicente’s chest as he took a sip of warm vermouth. “So, did you have an actual conversation this time?”
Vicente and Alex frowned at her.
“With that boy who disappeared on you after you got him into the movie.”
“Oh, umm…” Alex held up his glass. “You’re not having more?”
“There’s no more to have. Also, you’re dodging the question. Did you talk to that boy or not?”
“I did. We did. Talk, that is, with Jago.”
“What?”
“His name. His name’s Jago.”
“I heard you. Like Othello?” Vicente put out his cigarette in a brown glass ashtray on the table.
“No, E-yay-go, not Ee-ah-go. Look, it doesn’t matter.”
“And what did you and Jago talk about?”
A cool pre-dawn breeze from the open window of their apartment stirred Alex from his exhaustion. In truth, he’d paid less attention to Jago’s words than to his tone, his lips, and the playful cadence of his voice, at least until the deadly seriousness of that last statement.
Everyone. Knows. Blood. Wedding. Man, Alex thought, chill out.
“The movie,” he murmured at last. “He liked it.”
Joanna winced as the first rays of dawn warmed the windows. “If you say so. I’m going to bed.”
Vicente caught her hand as she rose from the couch. “I’ll be there soon.”
“Nonsense. You’re wired,” she said, kissing him on the cheek. She reached a playful hand inside his shirt to brush his chest, then turned to Alex. “Stay as long as you like, darling. Our couch is yours.”
“Thanks,” Alex lifted his glass again, as if Joanna had not made this exact offer after a dozen drunken nights before. She was gone before he could say goodnight.
Vicente undid another button on his shirt and slumped further into the couch. “We never go out dancing anymore.”
“Sorry?”
“I just mean…” Vicente leaned forward, fingers cradling the glass until he downed the last of his vermouth and set it down on the stained coffee table.
Alex always thought it was curious Vicente and Joanna could afford a one-bedroom apartment with its own bathroom and kitchen this close to Gran Via, while luxuries like ice, spare liquor and well-kept furniture seemed to elude them.
Not that he could criticise from his tiny studio, where on a clear night, one could hear the sound of scooters carrying customers in need of a fix roaring into Plaza de Chueca, until the disco beats from Black and White drowned them out.
Alex started as Vicente patted the couch where Joanna had been. His face darkened.
“Sorry,” they both said at once. Vicente grinned as Alex accepted his invitation, not just to the opposite couch, but to lay his head in Vicente’s lap, as they’d done countless times before.
Vicente brushed a wayward lock of Alex’s fringe off his face. “You’re worried about the play?”
Alex gave as close to a shrug as he was able, lying down. “I suppose? We don’t have long.”
“We’ve got long enough. Relax. You’re good at this, you know?”
“Do you know?” Alex laughed. “It’s my first play.”
“Shhhh. Don’t wake Joanna.”
“Joanna never wakes up.”
This much was true. Once Joanna crashed in the early hours, there would be no return until sunset. In fact, Alex seldom remembered seeing her in daylight, and on the two occasions he had, she’d dressed top to toe in black like a mourning widow during Holy Week.
“So, what did you think of this guy?” Vicente said, casually draping an arm over Alex’s chest. “I’m exercising ex-boyfriend privilege here. Tell me everything.”
Alex wrapped both hands around Vicente’s forearm, pushing his fingers through the blanket of light hairs that covered it. The scent of Vicente’s cigarette burned his nose. “How do you want me to answer that? We had one conversation. He left. I don’t think he likes me much.”
Only Vicente could squeeze his shoulder like that and not make it feel patronising.
“What?” Alex laughed. “I’m not invested.”
“I know that, man. I just… you’re still a catch, that’s all.”
“Still?” Alex turned his shoulders, reaching up to stroke his fingertips against the uneven hairs of Vicente’s struggling beard.
He’d never known a man to be quite so hairy below the neck, only to have his face denied.
In the few short months they’d dated, Alex had found it endearing.
He closed his eyes, letting his touch slip down Vicente’s throat to the trimmed hairs of his chest.
“I’m not growing it out.”
Alex laughed. “That’s not what I was—”
“Liar. You absolutely were thinking that.”
Alex shifted his weight again, resting his cheek against Vicente’s body, the scent of tobacco, vermouth, and the curious citrus soap he’d used as long as Alex had known him, all too familiar. “We’re not wasting our time, are we?”
Vicente shrugged, giving Alex’s hand a squeeze. “I don’t regret what we’re doing, if that’s what you mean.”
He eased himself off Vicente’s lap and kissed his cheek. “I should go.”
“Are you sure, man? The couch is yours if you want it.”
Alex smiled, rehearsing the lie in his head. “Yeah, I’m sure.”