Twilight Breakout

  At a wedding she introduced me to her family and I felt as if I had arrived. One of those days when every-one wants to talk to you; all the women want you and the men want to be your friends, so they don’t have to be your enemies. I was twenty- two, a few months away from finishing college, feeling unstoppable.

  The receptionist had a sharp face and dark thin arms that fell lightly out of a yellow short-sleeve shirt tight on her small biceps. The short dark hair full of mousse. I looked hard into her eyes, to see if I was on. She held it.

  “Could I see Begoña, Begoña Eguren please.” Her short smile comforted my tentative voice, she hit a but-ton and we waited. The beginning of a word from her voice before it was cruelly funneled into a quickly lifted phone.

  “Your name, please.” The eyes bigger and stronger now.

  “Johnny, Johnny Lynch.” I noted the faint accent as she repeated my name. I braced myself for a bad answer, used to them from receptionists.

  “Please sit down, she’ll be out in a moment.” The chair was soft and I wondered how long she would take, no matter. I had called her a few times in the last years, usually after too many drinks, but always pleas-antly. Since the look I never tried to be more than her friend and I had succeeded, without her and my pride I would have been finished. They were difficult years, long years fighting with my job, with drinking, fighting the look and not getting anywhere. All important things have to eventually be overcome if they are ever to mean anything and I had been able to overcome almost everything else.

  I felt the sweat on my palms and tried to discreetly wipe them on my trousers, the seat was low and I arched my head up to look at a painting, an abstraction that somehow managed to look like something your grandmother would have in her parlor. The years after her now seemed almost ideal, strange and lonely years full of new and peculiar habits; it was a time when I learned to enjoy being alone.

  An invisible hand grabbed my head and flung it right, she seemed taller, the eyes more pronounced, a counterpoint to the affectionate smile. A kiss and a hug, her chin then sunk into my shoulder and she pushed her hand into my back.

  Protected behind dark glasses we walked along the dock toward a popular nightclub that also served lunch, the movement of her body coming back to me like an old forgotten song. She had all the accouterments of her class, the filthy rich class, and they bounced and hung as only quality does. I felt like I had taken a drop of acid, the bright light above us, the unspoken desire and easiness moving through the silence. Her small hand took mine, the thumb into my palm. “Johnny, you’re getting old.” I laughed hard and well.

  The place was little too hip for me, she looked at me from behind a menu with a grin that said, “I know, but it’s where everyone goes.” A large gay waiter ar-rived. “Can I bring you a cocktail before lunch?” Her dark eyes danced from above the bags, with the caste came vice and she was going to indulge. He quickly returned, a vodka martini for her. I went for a gin and tonic. She watched me look at her lips, red staining the glass.

  “Johnny, I’m getting married.” A long, violent, sad and sentimental laugh that we shared for a long time, the waiter arrived only to send us off into another fit, unable to speak. And then a tear from the laughter became something else, only for a moment, disguised in a swift wipe of the eye, a blessed tear that will surely fill my final thoughts. “Where have you been?”

  “I called you when I got back from Spain, right, sure, since then I’m working as a salesman. I’ve got a big territory, Florida, the Caribbean, Mexico and they let me do some buying in Spain.”

  “We’re getting old, Johnny, I don’t like it.”

  “It hit me at twenty-nine, like a two-by-four, for the first time there was no going back. I had to live with what was done. Who is he?”

  “A Peruvian banker, very handsome.”

  “You look great, congratulations; I hope you have many sons.” The cheeseburger went down in a few deep breaths, more drinks to round off the meal. We returned as we had come, a long empty space, the bright white sea wall beside us. The silence was now weigh-ing. A sidewalk split from the one we were on, leading to the garage. I put my hand on her shoulder. She lifted the glasses putting them into her hair.

  “Do you think I’ll be happy Johnny?”

  “I hope so.” I wrapped her head in my arm and kissed her forehead.

  Someone wrote that our lives seem random while we live them but when we look back with perspective there appears to have been an order and a reason. If this is a story it probably begins here and as I look back on that day it was a beginning, an end, and the begin-ning of an end.

  AUTUMN

  CHAPTER 7

  A dark orange light fell on the cold miles and miles of vineyards and tractors pulling carts full of grapes. I had the relax of a good meal and plenty to drink, the comfort of a renewed relationship. We knew each other well enough to not ask too many questions.

  Almagro is one of the prettiest villages in La Man-cha. A Dutch style square, the streets lined with palaces and family shields. The pre-bullfight bustle of a town in fiestas, one bullfight a year, always good bulls and bullfighters, or at least the most popular ones. It was the first comforting chill after a long summer. We went to a pub which occupied the restored patio of a Andalusian-style home, the faces hard and Iberian; a strong contrast to the sensual lines of the Mediterrane-an. The booze had given me the moment of ecstasy before the onset of drunkenness, a stillness and peace that announced its brevity upon arrival.

  I didn’t like Irene, but I always wound up calling her, and usually spending few days with her before she would begin annoying me again. The boots and seven-ties style blue shirt with a large ring to pull up the zipper emphasized the years on her more than they should have. The exaggerated words and expression made me distrust her. “I’ve always done what I’ve wanted to, my mother has always tried to make me become part of her social class but I went to France when I was 18 and didn’t come back for a year.” The first time I heard that story it sounded good, but now I doubt it was a year and I’m sure it was financed in large part by the evil mother. “I worked in the fields, the vindemia, strawberries.”

  “Haven’t worked too much since then, have you?”

  “And so what, what you call work I think is ridicu-lous, my art is my work, and I work very hard at it.”

  “You’re right, I was only kidding, anyway, when are you going to give me one of your paintings?” An acquiescent smile which quickly froze. She believed that her work was priceless and the thought of giving it away made her sick, as did giving anything away. The strength, and much of the money in her family came down through the women, the genius of her character was the combination of a progressive ideas with a feu-dal ferocity toward protecting all her possessions.

  “I have some things in Murcia. I’ll let you have one when we go back to the farm.”

  The smell of old men, cheap cologne and cigar smoke enveloped the entrance to the bullring, a minor scent compared to the odor of the beasts waiting in the truck outside the plaza. It’s the first thing that comes to you when you arrive and marks all you see. Lots of black shoes with white socks and plastic bags with sandwiches and 1.5 liter water bottles full of wine.

  The horseman in black held out his hat to catch the key from the president, then galloped out triumphantly. The first bull always catches me off guard, out of the fanfare and color the lonely sound of a single bugle an-nounces his entrance into the suddenly empty ring.

  The most elegant symmetry between torero and bull is created with the cape, and after an emotionless faena from a washed up bullfighter, the second bull came out roaring from the corral. Small, well armed, his coat was a dark, shiny black and he had what in bullfighting terminology is called caste. All his instincts and strength to kill bravely what he considered a threat combined with the necessary physique to present the bullfighter with the possibility of triumph.

 
After a destructive tour of the ring the second tore-ro came out for his first pass with the cape, the bull ignored him and continued his violent circling, sudden-ly stopping and eyeing the bullfighter then charging him without provocation. The man throwing the cape out and backing away. With the second pass the man came closer without committing, the bull making a long turn back toward him. The bullfighter planted his right leg, his right hand swinging the cape out, the left knotting it to his waist, the head down and arrogant. The mans body tensed as the bull passed close. I quickly remembered why I loved the bull fights as the first cho-rus of “oles” began, more passes and more “oles”.

  “Joder, what elegance.” Few are the Spaniards who can see something like that and not get emotional, even progressive artistic types. The faena lost emotion as it continued, ending with three failed attempts with the sword. No matter how well things go, the torero must kill well.

  With the fifth bull returned the handsome young bullfighter from Malaga, the boyfriend of an attractive actress. He strode to the center of the ring to dedicate the bull that had demonstrated good qualities in the first two parts of the fight, the battle with the horse and the banderillas. Left hand on his chest, he held his cap out and slowly spun around, and throwing it behind him, a cheer when it landed upright. The public had been cold and unreceptive to the unconvincing encounters between man and beast, and the young man from Malaga was determined to change the mood.

  Quick and nervous movements with his head, arms and legs trembling as he approached the bull which he had brought to the center of the ring, the intensity of his body increasing the emotion and making the bull appear more dangerous. The muleta in his left hand, the wood-en sword in his right keeping the cloth firm. The tall figure hovering over the bull, pass after pass, the “paso dobles” setting the rhythm, the emotion grew and the crowd, and I, were finally enjoying ourselves. The mu-leta wrapped in his hand, without protection he stood in front of the bull and swiped the sword down his head, twisting on his toes as he ended the faena while the crowd rose to a climax.

  He returned with the steel sword, a few more pass-es to bring back the emotion, with a solid bang of the drum the music stopped, the bull squared in front of him. His feet were perpendicular to the bull, the muleta moved up and down to assure the animals reaction. With the shiny steel aimed at a point between the shoulders, the handsome torero turned his feet and bent his knee toward the bull, the horns hidden in the muleta, he placed the sword safely into a lung. The bull coughing up a river off blood and falling quickly. The crowd, eager for triumph, waved white handkerchiefs in approval, a reluctant president conferring the two ears.

  A shame to see brave animal killed cowardly. He would never have done it in Madrid but they know they can get away with it in the villages and I suppose you can’t blame them; he might have well just taken out a rifle and shot it.

  The sixth bull was for the youngest bullfighter, something of a revelation that year. Known for his artis-tic interludes with the animal, his young face and curly hair offered an eerie contrast to the ferocious beast. He brought the bull capriciously and delicately across the ring towards the waiting horse, the picador ready, pique in hand, horse waiting for the bull. An arrogant and compact animal, one look at the horse and he was off, his head down, lunging into the lower part of the horse and pushing it back to the railing. The picador leaning into the bull, his pique directly in between the shoul-ders. The subalterns finally distracted the bull away from the horse, a constant stream of blood dripping down his black coat onto the orange sand.

  In the last, now almost red light of La Mancha, the young torero performed the ‘quite’, testing the bull be-fore punishing it again with the horse. The bull’s chest rose and fell heavily, breathing deeply with his mouth closed, the young man silent and still before him, the cape resting on his right leg. By lifting it slowly and firmly the bull began a very long pass by his side, catching sight of the horse again then charging violently from almost fifteen yards towards the horse. The pica-dor quickly setting himself, the horse faltered under the blow, falling sideways, the large picador protected by flowing capes; the bullfighter brought the bull back to the center of the ring.

  Four more long and slow passes, the torero was growing with an exceptional animal, the “oles” filling the lingering moments between light and dark. The second horse stood at attention, the torero lifted his cap to change “tercios” when the bull took off at a full gal-lop toward the second horse, the picador leaning with his pique, the horse holding back the bull at a sharp an-gle.

  The beast had managed to capture the crowd and terrify it, the fury of nature unleashed unto this delicate boy whose curls and small frame seemed a lure to dis-aster. With the muleta and sword in his left hand, he wrapped his right arm with his cap in his hand around his father, dedicating the bull to him. The last forebod-ing tug on his fathers back while the bull stood breathing heavy and eying one of the subalterns. The blood continuing to drip off the long hairs on his neck onto the sand.

  He put the muleta close to his snout and elegantly brought him to the center of the ring in silence with quick coordinated motions only to leave him there and back off. He arranged the muleta then approached from twenty yards, the bull following the red cloth, the left hand securely on his hip, waist bent out toward the cloth. From ten yards the bullfighter jigged the cloth, the bull racing forward toward the still figure, head up and body turning as the bull passed him, three passes to the right, finishing with the left, the music began and the tension grew.

  Once again from a distance he approached the bull but now to the other horn, the bull passing, making a last second lunge toward the bullfighter, almost nicking him. The young boy was too ecstatic to see it, but the crowd ‘ohhed’ in fear, another pass on the left, very close, the third lifting him up by the thigh and bouncing him on top of the horn. As he was thrown into the air a deep nausea curled my body, my arms trembled. The music stopped. The subalterns kept the bull away as the boy got up. He looked like a dazed fighter anxious for more combat. He was handed his muleta and he waved off his assistants as he approached the animal again, covered in his blood, a drip of his own running down his leg. He leaned back arrogantly and dropped the cloth by his side, completely still as the bull passed close, he didn’t move while the bulled turned and ap-proached with the left horn, reaching with it but not arriving to the leg. The boy now turned and planted a leg and made a long, slow pass that was pure art. The music returned and the crowd was completed given over.

  The man dominated the animal with art, as if they were one. The exhausted creature looking up, the faena had reached its end and the boy walked to the railing, pulling a shiny sword out of its sheath. His father eye-ing the president along with one of the older, slightly overweight subalterns. In spite of the art, the “suerte supreme” of a bullfight is to kill. One must pass over the horns and place the sword between the shoulders, mortally wounding the animal and bringing on its rapid death.

  In his first bull the boy had lost two trophies by not being able to place the sword, having it bounce back after hitting bone. Four attempts and he finally killed by descabello, a sword with a “T” at the end which is placed in the medulla causing instant death. The father and the subaltern were instigating the crowd, and trying to manipulate the president to pardon the life of the bull, which is done very rarely for a bull that has shown extraordinary bravery battling the horses with repeated valiant attacks and performing bravely with the bull-fighter. While this bull had been special, the faena needed to be finished. It was the orgasm after a won-derful few hours of sex, if the beast escaped alive we would have been left unclear and confused. The presi-dent had given into the crowds desire for triumph in the fifth bull, and in a village that has one corrida a year people want to see everything, including a bull being pardoned.

  It was the last light, red turning brown, a warning sounded from a bugle announcing that the torero onl
y had five minutes to kill the animal or be fined. The crowd waved white handkerchiefs and jeered the presi-dent. The boy moving slowly waiting for the president to drop his white handkerchief signaling the pardoning of the bull. There was no choice but to kill, a final stiff shake of the head let the boy know there was no avoid-ing his obligation. The crowd resigned, the boy ma-neuvered the bull until it was squared, both front legs together. It followed him almost obediently towards his death, his horns once again becoming prominent, a counter puncher following the boxer, waiting for his moment.

  The tension grew, the whole corrida, maybe the whole night stood in the balance. I was at the perfect angle, when he lifted the sword to aim, it pointed at me from between the horns. The crowd was tense and si-lent, a collective deep breath, the boy turned on his feet, brought the muleta back with his left hand, the horn passing inches from his chest, he put the sword all the way threw, ‘hasta la bola’. His eyes wide, with both hands he violently waved off all his subalterns, scream-ing at them to leave him alone with the animal.

  The bull stumbled backwards, turned toward the rail than collapsed with a slam that shook the ground, feet up, dead. The hysteria rose and I became part of it, we cheered and screamed and gave him both ears and the tail.

  *

  La Mancha is the land of wide, flat, treeless miles of vineyards and wheat. The excitement and rush mixed with alcohol for a high that I knew would last till late in the night. The rich red wines; dark reds and heavy aromas, always with free tapas.