Page 73 of One Year Ago in Spain
To make surethat Matías wouldn’t try to walk up to the box office, Claire insisted on buying the tickets on her phone, claiming she could charge them to her client as a business expense. (A lie, but Matías wouldn’t know that.) She bought two tickets, of course, to make sure that someone wouldn’t try to sit in the seat next to her andon topof Matías. But it was a single QR code for both, and when they walked in the theater doors, the usher just scanned her phone and waved her in; Matías, being invisible, obviously didn’t register.
The theater was quite intimate in size, and they found their seats easily.
“What do you know about flamenco?” Matías said.
She thought of his painting of the dancer in the ruffled red gown, dancing on the beach with seashells as castanets.
“It’s a passionate art form,” Claire said, remembering the focus and ardor of the face of the dancer in the painting. “The dresses are beautiful and part of the performance because the movementof the fabric contributes as much to the dance as the movement of the body. And rhythm is very important.”
“Muy bien,” Matías said. “I’m impressed. Are you sure you have never seen flamenco before? You describe it like a Spaniard.”
It’s only because I’ve been in love with a Spaniard for eleven months and one week,she thought. But who was counting?
Claire was. Because with Matías in the hospital, she suddenly understood that every hour, every day, every week mattered.
“Flamenco,” he said, “has a long history and many forms, butthis kind, in the theater, is one of my favorites. It is like emotion rendered physically. The rhythm—from the castanets to the lightning-quick, stomping feet—is the beating heart. And each dance tells a story. Sometimes of strength, sometimes of love or sorrow, but always with deep spirit.”
Soon enough, the lights dimmed. For a minute, the stage was completely black and the audience silent.
Then a single guitar began to strum. The curtains parted. The spotlight turned on.
And a woman in a red dress swayed to the melody.
The audience breathed.
The next hour passed in a storm of swirling dresses, fiery footwork, and hot-blooded songs. There was a dance about jilted lovers and vengeance. A story about impoverished immigrants and the sacrifices they made for their children. A duet about a flower that fell in love with a fish, and the impossible rivers and mountains that separated them. Matías whispered the plots to her as they watched, and Claire sat on the edge of her seat the whole time.
For the final dance, a woman sauntered onstage in a dress designed to look like an hourglass, with grains of sand trailing from the bodice to the skirt and the train. “Soy La Señora del Tiempo,” she said.
“I am Lady Time,” Matías translated, his mouth so close to Claire’s ear that it sent goosebumps prickling across her skin.
“Y todos estáis a mi merced.”
“And everyone is at my mercy.”
Claire shivered again, but not from wanting. She noticed the dancer’s dark makeup and contouring, almost as if her face were meant to resemble a skull, or a mask of death.
“Please no,” Claire said to herself. But apparently, loudly enough because Matías asked, “Are you all right?”
“I…I don’t know if I can watch this one.”
“Okay. Do you want to go?” Matías, always willing to sacrifice himself for what Claire wanted, didn’t even ask her why.
She nodded and leaned down to gather the program, which she wanted to keep, and her purse, which she had set on the floor. But just as she was about to rise, a fog machine began to blanket the theater in mist, and all the other dancers from the troupe streamed onto the stage. A handful wore billowing black costumes and Xs painted over their eyes. The other half wore suits and dresses in all white.
The audience around them was rapt. And they completely surrounded Claire and Matías.
“We can’t leave now,” she said.
“Shh!” The man next to her scowled. The woman in front of her turned and glared.
Claire clutched her purse in her lap and hoped this wasn’t going to be a dance about dying.
But in the first few seconds, it became clear that it was. A projector cast a background of a cemetery on the left side of the stage, behind the black-clad dancers, shadows in the afterlife. Alternately, a colorful backdrop of nightlife in Madrid played behind the white-clad dancers, those who were still alive.
Claire expected the black shadows to chase the white souls, to grab them and tow them into the underworld. She wished she could reach over and hold Matías’s hand, his strong grip an assurance that as long as they were together, everything would be okay.
But they weren’t together, were they? Not really.
