From Barcelona, with Love (25 page)

All your life

All my life

All I tried was to be someone

To be someone else … not to be me …

I see I don't need you now,

I don't need you to come back.

I don't need you to take the ice from my eyes,

The ice from my heart

I can see

I can just be me

All my life, all your life …

Now I know all I need is just to be …

Just be

Just be, just be (me), just be (you)

I wish I had known, it was all so simple

I didn't need you to take the ice from my heart,

all I needed was just to be.

Just be (me), just be (you)

Remember, just be …

Jacinto picked it up instantly, singing behind her as she gave him the words. One of his musicians drifted over and began to play the chords on the piano, then, because the generator was working again, the bass player plugged in his electric bass guitar and Bibi's quiet song was suddenly given a hard driving beat.

Oh my God. Of course!
Bibi realized who Jacinto was now! She'd heard him a zillion times on the radio. How could she have been so dumb?

The shock of it ran through her, taking her back in time … she closed her eyes and went with the music … remembering how it had felt: her first gig at the House of Blues on Sunset in Hollywood, feeling the bass vibrate through her entire body, hearing the high whine of the guitar, trembling with excitement and fear, back in the fishnets and platforms, in silk and sequins, in love with life and music … she was the young Bibi just starting out …

When the music stopped it was like awakening from a dream, a dream she wanted so badly to live again.

Jacinto was standing by the piano talking to the bass guitarist, who was thunking out experimental chords. He seemed to have forgotten all about Bibi.

Unnoticed, Bibi took her guitar. She got up, and crept out of the room. The dog lumbered after her. She met no one as she walked through the hall and down the steps. Rain soaked her instantly. She opened the car door, threw the guitar into the back, helped Amigo onto the front seat, and drove quickly away.

Jacinto had
changed
her simple song, changed the rhythm, the emotion, made it sexy. It was no longer
her
song. It was
about
her, but now he'd made it his own. It was as though he had stolen it from her, and now probably she'd hear a slightly different version of it on the radio. She knew she should not have trusted him. She knew she should not have come tonight.

 

Chapter 37

Early the next morning,
Bibi was in her bedroom under the turrets, getting dressed. The water heater wasn't working and her shower had been cold, and she was freezing. She quickly dragged on her favorite old black cashmere sweater. It was pilled and droopy but by far the coziest garment she possessed. It had seen her through good times when it was new and worse times as it grew older. Amigo had even been known to sleep on it, which was why it was covered in a sprinkling of dog hairs. Sweaters come and sweaters go, but some sweaters go on forever. It was like Linus with his security blanket; it comforted her. And after last night's foolishness with her song Bibi felt in need of comfort.

She stepped into her black sweatpants, dried her hair off with a towel, then went and sat on the window seat, combing out the knots and looking out onto the valley. Every leaf, every blade of grass seemed to gleam more brightly, revived by the last night's storm. The tree at the bottom of the hill marking the entrance to her road had been struck by a lightning bolt and had split in two. One half was blackened and twisted like a witch's tree, the other still stood, green leaves fluttering in the breeze. The three goats munched their way steadily across the grass and a couple of chickens, let out earlier from their coop, tottered in the ditch, their favorite laying place. Amigo sprawled on the terrace, too old to give chase and too content to even care. A bee buzzed against the open window. There was only the sound of the birds and the steady crunch of the goats. Bibi could even hear herself breathe.

She closed her eyes, letting her hair dry in the sun. Most days she loved this silence, felt protected by it, safe, but today it seemed oppressive. Today it reminded her she was alone when she should have been with her daughter.

She wondered for the millionth time if she had done the right thing, leaving her child. Yet how could she not? The scandal would have followed Paloma from school to school, city to city, country to country. Anyhow, nobody wanted Bibi anymore. She was a fallen star. She was bad news.

She thought about last night and Jacinto, and how he had taken her little song, and turned it into something bigger, like Leonard Cohen's “Hallelujah,” repeating the refrain “
Just be (me), just be (you) I wish I had known, it was all so simple … and all I needed was just to be … Remember … just be…”

Something scratched at the window. The bee fluttered in protest then flew off as another spatter of tiny pebbles hit. Kneeling on the cushion, Bibi stuck her head out, scanning the terrace below.

“Who's there?” she called, speaking Spanish of course. It was habitual these days. “Whoever you are there's an iron bell pull at the side of the door. You can't miss it. Why don't you use that instead of scratching my windows?”

There was no response. Suddenly nervous, she remembered the unlocked door. After all, she was alone.

Then a voice said, “Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair…”

Jacinto! She stuck her head out farther. He was looking up at her, one hand shading his eyes, smiling. In skinny beat-up jeans and a white tee, he looked good enough to eat.

“You
are
Rapunzel,” he said. “I can tell by the long hair.”

She kind of liked being compared with the heroine of a fairy story. “I think Rapunzel was probably a blonde,” she said.

He laughed. “Okay, then I'd better leave, I'm not keen on blondes.” He waved and turned away.

“Wait,” she called.

He turned back and stood, legs apart, arms folded over his chest, looking up at her.

“Why did you come here?”

Frowning, he took a deep breath, appearing to think about it. He said, “I came because you ran away. You were upset and it was my fault. I came to say I'm sorry. I guess you didn't like what I did with your song.”

“It's still my song,” she said.

“And it will always be your song. I will not touch it again without your permission.” He put his hands together, as though he were praying, and bowing his head, said, “I'm begging your forgiveness, fair lady Rapunzel. And begging you to at least invite me into your haunted castle for a cup of coffee, so we can talk. I'm really quite good with ghosts.”

He looked so sexy standing there, and so apologetic … she could hear his voice,
“Just be me, just be you, just be.”
He'd turned it into an anthem for the world, for everyone, girl or boy, man or woman, who had ever wondered about themselves, about who they really were. And hadn't everyone at some time in their life?

“The door's open,” she told him, quickly pulling her still damp hair into a ponytail and smoothing down her sweater. She caught a glimpse of herself in the cheval mirror on her way out. Her face was scrubbed clean and the old black cashmere and sweatpants were covered in dog hairs. Too late to do anything about it now.

He was standing in her kitchen when she got downstairs, leaning nonchalantly against the sink, one leg crossed over the other, arms folded, completely relaxed.

He inspected her lazily. “You look wonderful like that,” he said. “Better than last night.”

She pulled a face. “Last night I looked like a fake Hungarian Gypsy girl. The real thing would have looked better, especially next to those smarty-boots French women.”

“They weren't French, they were ‘International,' which means they'd married rich men and showed up at a country-house party overdressed and in too many diamonds. French women would have been quietly chic. They always know how to dress for the occasion.”

She had fixed coffee earlier, intending to have breakfast after her shower. She could feel his eyes on her as she poured some into a couple of pottery mugs with jolly pictures of roosters on them. “Sugar? Milk? And how do you know so much about French women, anyway?”

He refused the sugar and she took his mug and set it on the kitchen counter next to him, careful not to get too close, not to accidentally touch. She took her own mug and went and sat at the table.

Jacinto looked at her as she walked away, as physically aware of her as she was of him. “I like that,” he said.

“What?” She put a hand up to her hair—was it falling down again?

“You put the hot mug right down on the table. Most women would have gotten a coaster.”

Bibi shrugged, waving an arm at the table. “Have you
looked
at this table? It's been here forever and has probably seen more mugs of hot coffee and bottles of spilled wine than you or I ever have. It's too late for this table.”

He walked across and ran his hand over the rough-hewn surface. “I love it, though. It's history. Like this place. Your castle.”

“The Castello Adivino.”

“The Fortune-Teller's Castle.” He brought his coffee over and sat next to her.

Bibi tried not to stare at his biceps with the tattoo. She could see another circling his wrist, and one on his finger. Another disappeared from his neck into his chest under the plain white tee he wore.

He said, “So, Vida, you are a fortune-teller?”

“
Me
?” She threw back her head and laughed.

He thought she looked beautiful when she laughed. Her face became animated and she had small, very pretty teeth, white and even. And a soft mouth that curved up at the corners.
And pale lake-green eyes …

“A fortune-teller?” Bibi said, amused. “I can't even predict my own fortune, never mind anyone else's. No, the castle was once owned by a woman said to have that ability, but that was long ago, lost in the mists of time.”

He was still looking at her eyes. Those pale green eyes that were so hauntingly familiar, and the clue to her true identity. “Ahh,
the mists of time,
” he said. “You have a way with words.”

“You know those are not
my
words.”

“But the ones I sang last night were.” He took a sip of his coffee, looking steadily at her. With her hair pulled back, her unmade-up face, without the contacts, the tinted glasses, she was who she was.

“They were Vida's words,” he said, putting down the mug. “And I am here to ask your permission to record them. I want to record ‘Just Be,' Vida.”

“You mean the way you played it last night?”

“Better,” he said simply. “I want to add strings and a wailing baritone sax and trumpets. I only wish you would agree to sing it with me.”

He waited for her reply but she turned her back, took her mug and carried it back to the sink, rinsed it under the tap and put it down on the draining board.

Bibi's heart was thundering under the dog-hairy sweater … how she
longed
to sing it with him, she could hear it now the way he'd done it, the way he would do it in the studio with strings, sax, and trumpets. Last night he had taken her little song and made it into something bigger, an anthem with the catchy hook.

The rooster outside the window cackled, no doubt after the hens again. “I don't sing,” she said. “If you ever heard me you wouldn't even want me, I'm worse than the rooster.”

“Rodolfo told me you'd sold other songs, I mean sold the performing rights, permission to record.”

“Just three others. But not like this one, not the way you make it sound.” She frowned as she thought about her previous songs. “My songs are small, intimate. I simply write the way I feel.”

“About yourself. As I do. And as you obviously were with ‘Just Be.'”

He went to stand next to her, catching her hands in both his.

“Vida, of the Castillo Adivino, I am going to tell your fortune. If you will not sing for me, at least give me permission to use what we did last night. We recorded it, you know, just casually, but it has a great basic sound, and there's your guitar solo in the middle, and a hint of you speaking the words in the background. I'd like to use that.”

She looked worried and he squeezed her hands tightly. “I promise, you will be just background. Please say yes. Vida Hernandez?”

She gripped his hands as though he was saving her from drowning. “Yes,” she said, simply. He pulled her to him. She thought he was going to kiss her hands but then his lips covered hers. Softly, slowly, he kissed her.

The sexual thud in the pit of her belly took her by surprise, the sexual awareness of him, his body next to hers. How long since she had felt this? She had never expected to again, and she
shouldn't
now … it was too dangerous … but oh she was melting into that delicious liquid sensual place she never wanted to leave …
This was a mistake, she was helpless with him, he was too strong for her, taking her over, she was ten years older than him …

He took his lips away and she opened her eyes …
Oh my God! She had not put in her contacts, she had just gotten out of the shower, hadn't expected him!
He had to have noticed … yet he hadn't said anything …

He was smiling at her, that easy charming smile. “And now I'm taking you out to lunch to celebrate,” he said.

“Where?” she asked.