Holy Guacamole! (4 page)

“I heard him say that he doesn’t like zarzuela,” I told them. I didn’t like it that much myself. The one I saw was a sort of Spanish operetta without subtitles or program notes. I had no idea what was going on.

“He won’t even be able to ruin that program,” said Brockman. “I’m sure you’re aware, Carolyn, being connected by marriage with the university, that state budget cuts are hurting spending on education. I’m told the music department took a severe hit.”

“Scientific research funding too,” I agreed. Jason had been complaining, although a lot of his funding comes from outside sources, thank goodness. Otherwise, I’d never hear the end of the blow to science dealt by short-sighted state legislators and a penny-pinching Republican governor.

“Let’s hope the music critic from the
Times
is still sick,” said Frank Escobar. “I’d just as soon not have this production reviewed.”

“Yes, I was very upset when I initially heard there’d be no review of the Friday night performance, but it turned out to be a blessing that the critic is the first reported flu case in the city,” Brockman agreed.

I murmured my excuses, having spotted Vladik with a group of university people. He’d only managed to finish half the guacamole. I accepted another margarita from a passing waiter and joined the new circle. My husband was trying to convince Vladik that the administration wasn’t singling him out for unwarranted budget cuts.

“President hate me,” said Vladik stubbornly.

I thought he looked rather sickly, but then who wouldn’t after eating a half-vat of guacamole. I helped myself to some in the interest of his health.

“Vice president for Academic Affairs hate me,” he persisted. “Music chairman hate me. All jealous of Vladik. My
Macbeth
make them give money. They see many Hispanics come. Many applaud loud and shout, ‘Bravo’.”

I personally thought that if the upper administration had been in attendance—I hadn’t seen any—that they’d take away his budget entirely.

Melanie Collins, who is married to a geology professor, said, “I thought it was wonderful. My first opera, and I was absolutely enthralled. I think the university is treating you dreadfully, Vladik. It’s shameful.” She laid a sympathetic hand on his arm and smiled at him like a girl with a teenage crush.

“You would say that,” snapped her newly arrived husband, who, instead of a tuxedo, was wearing dusty khakis and heavy hiking boots.

“Why Brandon, I thought you were still on a field trip,” said his wife. “Couldn’t you have changed your clothes before you came to the party?”

“And give you time to trot off with this Russian puke? You think I don’t know you’ve been sleeping with him?” Brandon Collins turned on Vladik and snarled, “I ought to break your scrawny neck, you communist son of a bitch.” He actually put his hand on a pointed hammer that was holstered on his heavy leather belt—some geological tool, no doubt, but it did look dangerous.

Those of us in the circle were, needless to say, both embarrassed and alarmed at this turn of events. The opera’s artistic director, who had turned a sickly shade of green, said, “Vladik sick. Very sick.” He thrust the guacamole bowl into my hands and stumbled away before Professor Collins could smack his head as if it were a rock of scientific interest.

“Some lover you picked,” Collins said to his pink-faced wife. “He didn’t even have the guts to stay and fight for you, did he?”

“It might have been the guacamole,” I murmured, “or even the margaritas.”

“Our Cultural Establishment Has Suffered A Great Loss”

J
ason and I
were ensconced comfortably in the padded lounges on our patio, drinking coffee and reading the Sunday papers. Last month we discovered that we could have the Sunday
New York Times
delivered right to our door, so Jason was reading that while I browsed through the
El Paso Times
before going into the kitchen to fix brunch—
eggs ranchero
. Sometimes we have mimosas with them, but after the margaritas last night, I didn’t feel like drinking alcohol. The truth is, I’d been sick during the night, a rare event for me, and I didn’t think I’d had
that
many cocktails.

Ah well, I felt fine in the morning, and it was such a beautiful day. Blue skies, sunshine, temperatures in the 60s. El Paso can be quite lovely in the winter—at least when there’s no inversion layer to trap toxic air in the river valley. Today the air was so clear that the city below us and the mountains across the border in Juarez stood out in sharp delineation. A house with a view. I felt extremely contented and picked up the newspaper again.

There was no review of the opera—I’d looked—but there was an article on the editorial page, of all things. “Listen to this, Jason.” And I read him the editorial, which was titled “Insult Shrouded in Beauty.”

 

“What do you think of that?” I asked my husband.

“I think Vladik’s going to be upset. He was pretty proud of that staging.”

“I know, but did you like it?”

“Macbeth and Lady Macbeth were excellent,” said Jason. “Never heard of either of them, but we were lucky to get voices like that, and I kind of liked the trio of witches, but the drug-dealer theme was over the top. I can’t say it worked for me. Still, I doubt that Vladik meant to insult anyone.”

He leaned over to rustle through sections of the
New York Times,
probably looking for the sports pages, or possibly the travel section. Personally, I like the wedding section. It’s so different from wedding descriptions in my youth. The New York paper offers us strange brides and grooms, too old to have stayed single so long, and avant-garde weddings. It’s very entertaining. Still, I wish Jason wouldn’t drop the paper on the cement. By the time I get to it, I often find ants scurrying over the news item I want to read.

“Weren’t you going to fix eggs ranchero this morning?” Jason asked hopefully.

I glanced at my watch and got up. “Ten minutes,” I promised and went into the kitchen. Eggs ranchero aren’t hard to make, and they are delicious. To think I’d never tasted them before we moved here. Obviously I was getting acclimated, which is not all that easy for a lifelong Midwesterner transplanted to the border. I turned the radio to KTEP, National Public Radio in El Paso, or so I thought, and poured vegetable oil into a large frying pan. Instead of classical music, I got a news bulletin:

“We interrupt our programming for this local news item just in. Vladislav Gubenko, artistic director of Opera at the Pass and Professor of Music at the university, was found dead in his condo at Casitas del Paso this morning by a neighbor walking her dog. Retired El Paso Police Lieutenant Luz Vallejo discovered the opera director in his bedroom after following an unpleasant trail from her front yard through the open front door of his house.

“A preliminary statement from the coroner indicates that Gubenko may have aspirated his own vomit during a violent attack of stomach flu. Sergeant Arthur Guevara of Crimes Against Persons suggested that the deceased overindulged in alcohol the night before, as there was a distinctive odor of tequila at the scene.

“Gubenko’s innovative staging of Verdi’s
Macbeth
received its second and final performance last night at the Abraham Chavez Theater. Dr. Peter Brockman, president of Opera at the Pass said, during a telephone interview, “In the death of Professor Gubenko, our cultural establishment has suffered a great loss.” I was so shocked that I broke the yolk of the third egg into the frying pan and had to scrape it out of the oil I had used to soften the tortillas.

Adela Distraught

M
y huevos rancheros
were very tasty. With the sun high in the sky and the temperature hovering at 70, we raised the green and white striped umbrella on the patio table and ate there, discussing the news report I’d heard on the radio. Jason had liked Vladik, mostly because of their mutual interest in opera, but also because Vladik had as little patience with long academic committee meetings as my husband. Therefore, Jason was understandably upset to hear of Vladik’s death.