Space Between the Stars (15 page)

Lynn and Jerry picked us up two blocks from the ferry launch at the Trident Restaurant. Lynn squeezed me tight. “You've put on some weight, Deb. You look great.”

“Thanks. Mom's been stuffing me with macaroni and cheese, meat loaf, fresh orange juice with brewer's yeast—I'm eating three meals a day.” I actually had bulges in my eyelet sweater, and my hips were round again.

Jerry sped up Highway 101, bringing the Jeep to a bucking halt in the Marin Civic Center theater parking lot. Donning dark glasses, we hopped onto the pavement and sauntered to the round box-office window where tickets and backstage passes were waiting in Jerry's name. The sun, just beginning to slide behind Mount Tamalpais, cast a peach-hued glow over the hills around us. Ripples of heat shimmied skyward from the turquoise-tiled dome of the crouching buildings. Jerry led the way through corridors, stopping to slap hands with musicians he knew. Kitsaun saw someone she knew and bid us farewell. Lynn and I walked through dressing rooms, where musicians and their lady friends looked up from conversations, and trumpeters and sax men were running their fingers up scales. We sat together on a couch and talked about our idea to compile a book of poetry written by the girlfriends and wives of musicians. We were going to ask women to submit poetry written while their boyfriends or husbands were on the road. I had written at least twenty poems while Sly was gone and I was waiting for him.
Lynn raised her hands, excited by her thoughts. “We could call the book
Road Widows.
I'll get a list of people to call from Jerry's phone book.”

“I'll ask Stevie to help me get names and phone numbers. She knows everybody.”

A man's voice, muffled from below, announced Tower of Power. The music blared through the floor, and the bass vibrated the cushions in the couch. We strained to hear each other over Tower of Power's horn section. “Let's go listen to the band from the stage,” I shouted.

I trailed Lynn downstairs, weaving between men and women who were swaying to the music on the side of the stage. We passed a man with dark hair curling down the back of his off-white suit, standing with a black guitar case against his leg. Long-waisted and skinny, he was a head taller than the two blondes who stood next to him. His shoulders curved forward, and his head bent shyly. I stared, caught by a bewitching energy. He returned my glance, cocking his head inquisitively at me, his dark eyes claiming the distance between us.

Lynn and I walked closer to the stage. He followed, standing right behind us. Tower hit the opening notes to “You're Still a Young Man,” and I got lost in the keyboard solos and the vocals of the song. The band started “You've Got to Funkifize,” with the bass amplified to ten. The long-haired guitarist walked out, lifted his guitar strap over his head, and played a blistering solo. The audience roared. I asked Lynn, “Who is that?”

She turned to Jerry and asked him. “Carlos Santana,” he said.
The music stopped, and the house lights were raised. Lynn and I were pushing through the crowd toward the dressing rooms. I stopped at a water fountain near the stairs for a drink. When I lifted my head, Carlos stood next to me, his gaze washing over me slowly, gently.

I turned and walked back to Lynn. We went upstairs, my heart pounding. His handsome, mysterious face stayed in my mind. Without speaking a word, Carlos had imprinted a desire inside me to know him. On the drive back to Lynn and Jerry's, my mind lurched and my stomach rolled.
How can I be attracted to another famous musician?
Santana's songs “Black Magic Woman” and “Oye Como Va” were constantly on the radio.

When we reached their cabin, Jerry went outside to smoke on the deck.

Kitsaun, Lynn, and I stretched sheets across the daybed where we would sleep. “I saw Carlos staring at you,” Lynn said. We tucked in the blanket. “Jerry says he's a real gentleman.”

“I noticed him, too. But musicians are off my radar screen.”

“Well, we could call him and ask if his girlfriend writes poetry.”

“Fine. You can do that. After I'm gone.”

The next day, after Kitsaun and I left, Lynn called Carlos. She then called to tell me that he'd asked for my phone number—and she'd given it to him.

“Lynn! I'm hardly over Sly! Oh well, I'm sure he won't call.”

A few weeks went by. I called women on my list who had been involved with musicians or were dating them at the time, asking for a literary submission. I was so busy working, I forgot
all about Carlos Santana. Then one night, Mom called me to the phone.

“Hello?”

“Hi,” he said. “I saw you in Marin a few weeks ago. I'm Carlos. Carlos Santana. I would like to meet you.” His voice was soft. His words sounded moist as though each one rested awhile on his lips before coming out.

“Oh, I remember.” I saw his mustache above his full lips, his dark eyes piercing mine.

“Would you like to meet me next Friday at the Carousel Ballroom? Azteca's playing.”

“I don't know.” I liked Azteca's music, but I didn't know whether I wanted to take a chance on seeing Carlos.

What was it that pulled me to him?

Carlos said he would leave my name on the guest list, and hoped I would come. I hung up and lay against the pillow in my room. It had been merely three months since I had left L.A. I was starting college again. I had definitely moved beyond believing Sly and I would ever be together again, or even that we should have been together in the first place. He was never seriously in love with me, but he had been my first real love.

I wrestled with myself all week. Between phone calls at Black Expo, I felt excited to see Carlos, and fearful, all mixed together. Wanting to see Carlos again and talk with him overrode my trepidation about his being a musician. On the drive downtown to the Carousel, I was nervous. I got my pass and found my way backstage. The cramped dressing room was smoky. Carlos stood surrounded by a circle of men and women in front of an old red velvet couch. I recognized a few people
from my days with Sly and nodded hello, making my way to a chair across the room, my eyes on Carlos's face, waiting for him to notice me. He looked handsome, his eyes black, his mustache rising and falling on his full, pink lips. When he looked my way, I curved my index finger, beckoning him to leave the crowd and come to me. He excused himself and walked toward me with a smile. He took my hand and bent forward to kiss my cheek. We moved into a corner.

“How are you?” he asked. “When I saw you, I couldn't forget you.”

His dark mustache was bushy like Dad's. “Thank you. I'm fine.”

“Do you live in the city?”

“Yes. I live out by City College.” His eyes were smoky lanterns in his pale skin.

“What are you doing now?” I asked. “Are you touring?”

Carlos rubbed his thumb and index finger down his mustache. “My band just broke up. I'm starting to rehearse with some new musicians. Two of the original band members stayed with me.”

“Why did you break up?”

“People change.” He looked from my eyes to his hands. “I want something different in my music. I want to play Miles and Coltrane. Some of the guys were into drugs more than music.”

Don Weir, the owner of Don Weir's Music City, approached us, begging Carlos to go out and jam. Carlos shook his head. “Maybe later, man. I'm busy right now.” His mouth was a waterfall of words and tenderness. I watched it move, wanting to swallow every word. “Let's go listen on the stage,” he said.
I recognized too many musicians who eyed me with a methodical scan. I could feel them thinking, “If Sly's not around, why not spend a night with me?” I had no intention of sleeping with any of those men or lingering in the lust-filled environment. Carlos asked me to stay until he played, but I had work in the morning and was still questioning the sanity of being attracted to another musician.

“Can I walk you to your car?” Carlos held my arm.

“Sure.”

He stood close enough to melt all the fears I had had, then kissed my lips like a brush of fire.

I drove home without remembering what streets I had taken and called Lynn to give her every detail of my time with Carlos.

“Jerry said Carlos is the nicest man in the music business,” she said.

Carlos called the next evening and invited me out.

I sat in the living room looking across housetops to the bay. Telephone lines disappeared in the large sky that covered San Francisco, Berkeley, and beyond. Was I rushing by saying I would go out with him again? Nureyev looked up at me and wagged his tail.
Yes
, I told him silently,
it's nice to feel a thrill again, but my heart is not strong enough to be hurt another time.
I petted his smooth fur.

Friday, Carlos picked me up from work. He seemed taller than I'd remembered, stepping out of his low, hatchback Volvo, casting a smile to me as I waved from the doorway of the Black Expo office. He wore snakeskin boots under jeans, and a tat-tered T-shirt. He wrapped his arm around me as we left the Oak
Street Victorian. We ate veggie burgers and drank fruit smoothies at Shandygaff, a dimly lit health food restaurant on Polk Street.

“Would you like to drive over to Mill Valley with me to see where I live?”

I wiped my mouth with my napkin and thought for a few moments.
If I go, what will I find? Does he do drugs? I can't be around them anymore. It's only a drive.
He watched me as I thought. My inner knowing told me to go slowly. I had been home only three months. Peace and patience with myself were just beginning to surface again.

“I don't do drugs, if you're worried about that. I'd like to get to know you,” Carlos said.

I smiled. “I'm on a search for myself, Carlos. It's important that I think my actions through. God has to be in my life.”

“Mine, too. My band broke up because I started meditating.”

“Then I would love to see where you live.” I was impressed that Carlos was not afraid to talk about God.

Carlos drove north across the Golden Gate Bridge. The sound of Coltrane's sax slid smoothly from the car speakers. His Volvo moved easily around the curves of Mount Tam. Dense thickets of trees crowded the roadside, parting now and then for driveways leading to secluded homes. I had been here only once before when Kitsaun and I went to Stinson Beach.

Carlos's profile was soft in the dusk. His long hair was topped by a bright rainbow-knit cap. The creamy skin on his face was stark beneath his thick, black mustache and spiky goatee. His nose was broad, his eyes hooded with heavy lids.
When he turned to me, he said, “I moved up here about a year ago. It was so quiet, I couldn't sleep when I first left the city.”

“It's beautiful here,” I said.

He turned off Shoreline Highway onto a gravel driveway. The car bumped along, past small, wooden houses. Carlos turned into a parking spot in front of a tower-like house. We had not spoken much. I was absorbed in imagining living so far away from the city—there weren't even streetlights. He turned off the car engine, pulled the key from the ignition, and turned to face me. In the moonless night, I could barely make out his features. “Welcome to my home,” he said.

Three small spotlights lit the house. Shutters framed the windows, and the house was painted like a Bavarian chalet rising in the treetops. “It looks like a castle in a fairy tale,” I said.

“Let's go in.” He opened his car door and walked around the front of the car.

I swung my door open and stepped up, right into his arms. He pulled me close. I felt the light of a million stars. “You're like an angel with a broken wing,” he whispered.

A soundless cry caught in my throat. I burrowed deep in his embrace, spiraling in the scent of the soft leather jacket on his long, lean frame. His arms around me eclipsed the pain that had overwrought me and clothed me in tender hope that my heart would heal. Not today or tomorrow, but sometime soon.

We walked across the driveway, beneath a trellis covered with climbing roses. Crickets trilled ceaselessly; moths flitted beneath the lights along the path to his front door. He turned the key and walked in quickly. “Hold on—I have to turn off the alarm.” When he came back, he turned on a lamp. The living
room came alive: wood-paneled walls, a tiled fireplace with 1936 painted in gold beneath the mantel, and red tulips hand-drawn on ceiling beams. There was nothing in the room except a rust-colored couch.

“Come on,” he said. “I want to show you the meditation room. It's outside. Keep your coat on.”

He led me through the living room to a steep staircase in the hall near the dark kitchen, where cat eyes peered from the shadows. “That's Gingi,” he said. “I have two cats.” At the top of the stairs, we walked through a small bedroom with windows on three walls. I could make out the shapes of trees, their dark outlines swaying in the light wind.

Carlos opened a glass-paned door, and we were outside on a deck. My eyes adjusted to the dark, and I could see the velvety mountain sweep into San Francisco Bay. The Richmond–San Rafael Bridge, draped in hanging lights, sparkled over the water.

One more flight of stairs led to the tower room I had seen from the car. Carlos opened the door—and silence engulfed us. “Would you like to meditate?” He held my eyes and my hands in his grasp.

At the end of each yoga class Mom and I took, the instructor led us in silent meditation. I enjoyed sitting still and calming my mind. “Sure,” I said, glad for a chance to slow my heart.

“We leave our shoes outside,” he said.

We sat down, folding our legs beneath us. Carlos struck a match, lighting a candle and a long stick of incense. We faced a small table covered with a white cloth, a painted likeness of Christ centered in a gold frame. The simple room had nothing else in it.
Carlos bowed his head to his hands, so I did the same. Then he rested both hands in his lap and stared straight ahead. I closed my eyes, the sweet incense becoming a part of me. I struggled to feel light coming in through my heart, but my awareness of Carlos's body made my senses yearn to close the space between us.

When I opened my eyes, the candle flame shivered. Shadows of our bodies flickered on the wall nearest me.

Carlos bowed, and I followed. He stood and then reached down for my hands and lifted me. His touch tripped off all my alarms. He blew out the candle and we started our descent, carrying our shoes in our arms.