Chapter 18
I T ISN’T STALKING WHEN KEEPING TABS ON SOMEONE IS PART of your job. Just a part of the gig. Besides, I’m only peeking anytime I walk past my balcony. What? I’m supposed to never look outside? It’s not my fault I have a clear unobstructed view of René, Santiago, and Camila as they have dinner on the long wooden table on his deck and later when they lounge for a while with their drinks on the comfy hanging chairs and the plush hammock suspended between two palms.
René has had most dinners out there with his friends while James and I have joined the technicians at the small tables in the dining room. While we’re all living in the same compound, when it comes to meals, there’s this unspoken upstairs-downstairs situation. Or people who really know him versus people who don’t.
When Santiago and Camila have gone to bed, René settles on the outdoor couch with his notebook. My dad used to say the world can be divided into people who are content nibbling and those who want to swallow the world whole. Comerse el mundo. René is definitely the latter. He’s intensely alive no matter what he’s doing or who he’s with.
Earlier, when he was surrounded by his close friends, he was up and telling stories with fervor. When they spoke, he laughed, gasped, and even listened actively. Now he’s alone, and every move is somehow artful. He crosses his legs, rubs his temple, and scribbles into a notebook. He’s intense when he’s still too.
I wish he’d let us film these intimate writing sessions and some of these meals. And not just because I’d love to hear what he has to say when he actually opens up. Seeing him unwind with his friends would be great for the behind-the-scenes of the album.
This morning I’m convinced things will improve. Different birds’ songs overlap, and in the distance, a rooster crows. It doesn’t hurt that I’m in one of my favorite outfits: tight black jeans, extra-long black blazer over a white button-down, with a thin black ribbon tied into a neat bow around the collar. René will not be getting to me today.
“I need to go check on some equipment I ordered,” James says, stacking his dirty dishes methodically.
“Don’t rush. I don’t think René will be up anytime soon.”
He finishes his coffee and stands. “What makes you say that?”
Because I was spying on him as he wrote late into the night. “Wild guess.”
An hour later, when the studio door opens and René walks in, my heartbeat speeds up. He’s wearing an unbuttoned Hawaiian shirt, orange shorts, and thick, white-framed sunglasses that wrap entirely around his head. He greets James and me with a “ buenos días ” that somehow sounds naughty.
After two hours, the back-and-forth improvisation between Santiago and René feels like unfulfilled foreplay. They start a track, creating loose guitar melodies and interesting snared-out beats, but after a certain point, they abandon it and move on to something else.
They seem to be having fun. Things get brainstormed, built up, talked about, grooved to, but then scrapped or put aside for another day.
I can make the footage we’ve captured work if René tells us about the lack of progress and how he’s feeling about it. We only have access for another few minutes, so when Santiago steps outside, I take my chance. “Come on.” I tap James on the shoulder and walk over to the booth. Gently, I push the door open and René lifts his head. “Can we ask you a few questions?” I lay on a super-sweet tone that I hope conveys, “I come in peace.”
“Sure.” Today he’s wearing amber-tinted sunglasses and I wonder if he’ll take them off the moment James and I leave the studio.
I take a seat on a speaker so I can be at René’s eye level for the interview. It’s a small room, so we’re only a few feet apart. “How do you feel things are going today?”
“You look hot,” he says, ignoring my question.
Is he seriously hitting on me? I scoff, adjusting myself and nearly fall off the speaker.
“Aren’t you hot in all that?” he asks, gesturing at my outfit.
“Oh, no,” I shriek, relieved, and then repeat in a regular voice, “No, I’m fine.” I try but I’m unable to suppress a smile. Amused to have thought he was complimenting me. Keep on keeping on. “A lot of Latinx artists are crossing over these days. Is that something you think about?”
“Such a funny phrase. Sounds like you’re dying. Like, you’re crossing over to the next life or something.”
“Doesn’t that excite you?”
“I’m not going to cross over.”
“Why not? Wouldn’t it be a good thing?” I ask confidently, crossing my legs. I feel soothed by this quiet, muffled room. The puffy cushions on the walls zero out the sound completely. I feel like we could curse at each other in here and the room would swallow the words up as soon as they were spoken.
“I’m staying right here. All those people over there can come over here if they want to hear my music.”
I nod, impressed. “Well, your real fans would follow you anywhere.” I twirl the ribbon around my collar and glance at the composition notebook on the table. “Is that where you work on your lyrics?”
“Yeah, or on my phone,” he says casually, extending his legs long out in front of him so his shoes are touching mine.
“When will we get to hear some?”
“Soon. I was up late working on something new, actually.”
“Oh, were you?” I pretend I’m not fully aware what he was up to last night. “What’s it about?”
He looks away, then back at me. It’s quick, but I catch a flicker of something in his eyes. Is he hiding something? “It’s… a work in progress.” He looks away, I presume checking the studio for Santiago’s return.
“I just want us to have a conversation.” I need to keep things moving. “I know you don’t like to give interviews, but let’s just, you know, like, flow. I’ll say something, you say—”
“When was the last time you flowed?” he asks, interrupting me.
I’m too shocked to speak. He leans forward slightly, waiting for my response.
“I don’t know, like, what do you mean? I flow.”
René scoffs. “When? When was a time you flowed?” The words come out of lazy, barely moving lips.
The first example that comes to mind is actually the other night, when I was taking my portrait on the balcony. The ideas were flowing as I adjusted the lighting and the composition. But there’s no way in hell I’m bringing that up. I cough as though I’ve swallowed some unseen dust in the air. “Well, I’ve had so many great, flowing conversations with artists.”
“How do you know?”
“Sorry?” I ask, needing clarification.
“How do you know they were flowing conversations?”
I stare at him, willing the sweat I sense forming to stay inside my skin at least until I’m out of this booth. “I could tell. I could feel it was flowing.”
“Like with who?”
I huff, then swallow hard. “Stills Towers, the jazz pianist,” I say at last. “We had an amazing conversation about improvisation and that really flowed.” I sit taller, enjoying my mini mic drop moment.
“That sounds cool. I’d love to see that.” René moves his lips over to one side, as though curious.
“I can get you a copy,” I say cheerily. “The collabs you’ve participated in have been hugely successful.” I tug at the ribbon around my collar again, and the bow comes undone. René’s eyes drop to my now exposed collarbone as I tie it back up. “You’re finally getting the chance to make your own music, to be the only voice for the length of a song. Do you worry it won’t have the same kind of commercial success when it’s just you? Is that why you’re struggling today?”
René pulls his legs back toward him. “What do you mean?”
“Oh. It just seems like you’ve been blocked in here today.”
“I’m not blocked.” He sounds offended. Have we not been in the same room for the past two hours?
I nod and look down at the monitor on my lap, checking James’s shot as I think of how to fix this. The close-up of René is gorgeous. His skin is splashed with the blues and yellows of the neon lights that wrap around the walls and door of the recording booth.
“A song is like magic. It just happens. Something channels through you and you’re just a vessel. You feel these magnets pull you, and you go wherever they take you. You can’t fight them.”
Well, maybe you could fight them just a little.
“Do you know what reggaeton is?” He sounds unsettled.
“Yes,” I say assuredly.
He grins and I feel the room get toastier. “What is it?”
This can’t be happening. I literally can’t handle another charged-up quizzing session. He waves a hand, motioning for me to respond. I gather myself, sit up taller, and try to look as comfortable as I can on this speaker. “It’s… a style of music. A fusion of Latin and hip hop.”
He shrugs dismissively as soon as I’m done. It was clearly not the answer he was looking for.
“Reggaeton is improvisation. It’s whatever you want it to be. It’s a blending of worlds and ideas. It can go wherever the hell it wants to go. It’s a completely free genre.”
“Lucky genre,” I spit out, without thinking.
The slightest of frowns appears on his face. “What do you mean?”
James clears his throat and I use the distraction to check his shot in the monitor. “I don’t know why I just said that.” I return my gaze to René. “It’s just, you know, something people say.”
He scratches his scruffy beard, and the look in his eyes changes from raging rivers to something more swimmable.
As James and I walk back to our cottage, I pull off my blazer sullenly. We got some footage of the creative process and even some decent responses from René to go along with it, but at what cost? I feel like I’m going to pass out from the exertion.
“He’s so difficult. And shut down. Why couldn’t I have gotten Bad Bunny? He’s super open in his interviews.”
James nods patiently, then walks ahead of me, up the flight of stairs to our cottage.
“It’s like he’s getting to know me better than I’m, than we’re ,” I correct myself, “than we’re getting to know him.”