Hiro drops back into his seat. “I will not teach,” he says. “If I cannot make employment as solo performer, then I give up guitar forever.”
His statement silences the group, and Hiro never takes his eyes off the television monitor.
Seventeen
How many generations of students have worn down the furniture in the lobby of the Fine Arts Building? Trace heaves herself onto one of the sturdy tables, hitches her pants, and sits cross-legged, so lithe and flexible that one can only remember what it was like to have a body without joints. The box office is closed for the day — no performance tonight. The girl who runs the café is swabbing down the counter, switching off the espresso machine, all animation sucked from her face after an eight-hour shift. Trace thinks, I’ll never have to do a job like that. She watches the staircase at the north end of the lobby. She is waiting for someone and trying to look as if this isn’t so, running a hand over her bristly head. With her long neck and fine features, she manages to appear both street urchin and feminine.
There is the sound of a door shutting on the floor above, and she jerks to attention, hearing a pause followed by the clip-clop of shoes while a man hums to himself. She recognizes the tune: “Amor de mis amores” by Veracruz composer Agustín Lara. There’s the snap of a briefcase closing, then Manuel Juerta appears at the top of the staircase. He’s wearing a Cuban shirt, the kind you don’t tuck in, and he dances down the stairs.
Of course, Manuel sees her sitting there; he may be tired, but he isn’t blind. The empty foyer belongs to a world that will return to its clamour in a few hours, before there’s a chance for a proper airing out. He notes Trace, her naked head vulnerable as a newborn’s, her scruffy feet jammed into flip-flops.
“You,” Juerta says, pointing with a hand clutching a can of beer. He glides like a skater across the tile floor.
Trace pretends to look surprised.
“Where are your colleagues?” Juerta asks.
“At some bar.”
He nods sympathetically, then heads for the front door, hesitates, and turns around. “So you are alone.”
She doesn’t reply. He’s working it out.
“Come,” he beckons.
She dangles one foot.
“Come here.”
She slips off the table, shrugging, as if she might or might not obey, then traipses toward him, aggressively tomboy, so attractive in a natural beauty. He slings an arm over her shoulder and directs her outside into the Montreal night. Juerta doesn’t give a damn who sees them. There are implied rules about fraternizing with competitors, but rules are meant to be broken, and this little girl was waiting for him.
“We will go and visit my good friend Ernesto,” Juerta says, guiding Trace toward the intersection. “You know Ernesto?”
Trace doesn’t.
“Then you will have an adventure.” His arm droops from her shoulder, and they canter across the busy street. Trace wonders if Ernesto is a famous guitarist who lives in Montreal. This city is pandemonium compared to her quiet island village — horns toot, tires squeal, everyone trying to run you down. She peers into open doorways and sees the press of people and cigarette smoke, hears throaty laughter and thudding bass beats. Trace tells herself she’ll find a way to move here or to some other big city. Not a chance she’ll turn into one of those island women growing organic vegetables, selling handcrafted yoga mat sleeves at the fall fair.
Juerta flags a taxi, they jump into the back seat, and Trace thinks, I have no idea where we’re going. The idea excites her. As the cab darts in and out of traffic, Juerta touches her cheek with the back of his hand.
“How old are you?”
“Eighteen,” she lies.
Ninety minutes later Trace yawns, glances at the wall clock, and yawns again. There’s no water left in the cooler — she checked — and she’s studied the framed anatomy chart a dozen times and flipped through copies of Body Mind Magazine with its weird articles on animals as healers and liquid fasts. She gets up, bottom sucking away from the vinyl chair, and walks over yet again to the closed door and listens, ear pressed to the wood. She hears a soft moaning inside followed by a whimper, then another moan. In the background shimmers a soundtrack of fake rain forest, electronic howler monkeys, and digital squawking parrots. She wonders if she should leave, that maybe it’s what he expects. Could be he’s forgotten all about her as he sinks into his treatment.
A burst of laughter erupts from the room, and she pulls back from the door, stuffing hands in her pockets. Should she call him Manuel or Mr. Juerta or even Señor Juerta? Some of the other competitors call him Maestro, a term that thrills her, but she can’t imagine uttering the word.
Are they going to head out to dinner once this is over? Will he pay? She checks her wallet — twenty bucks and it has to last through tomorrow. Maybe he expects her to pony up, he being from a third world country. Don’t think too hard about the naked man on the other side of the door getting his puffy ass kneaded by the muscular Ernesto. What if something creepier is going on in there? Maybe this clinical setting is a front, part of an international operation where they pull in naive girls and it’s the last you hear of them. Trace paces the waiting room pausing only to gaze out the window, fourteen floors above busy St. Catherine Street. This office building must be empty so late in the day. Even if she let out a scream, would anyone hear above the street noise? What if they drop a black hood over her head? She’d hate that.
By the time Juerta pushes open the door, patting his bits of hair down and buttoning his shirt, Trace is in a full-blown panic.
“Señorita,” he says, ignoring her nervous state, “the mighty Ernesto has rearranged my anatomy and now we must eat. Have you had supper?”
How could she have? She’s been hanging out here all this time. Without waiting for a reply, he picks up his briefcase and leads the way down the gloomy corridor toward the elevator. Once inside, he rests his cheek against her shoulder.
“We have survived another day,” he says, and she feels the weight of his head as the elevator lurches down to the lobby.
Dinner is in a Mexican restaurant run by a woman from Durango who keeps bringing on courses of spicy food. No one asks what Trace might like. Juerta helps himself, then urges her to do the same. “In my country it is not easy to eat this well.”
All she knows about Cuba is that Castro is on the brink of death. Maybe he’s dead already. She’d like to ask but doesn’t want to appear stupid. Don’t they drive old cars down there while ancient men sing on street corners and play marimbas?
Manuel seems to be having the time of his life chattering in Spanish to the waitress. The decor of the tiny restaurant consists of a three-dimensional scorpion gripping the stucco wall, its deadly tail pronged upward.
“Do you know what we are talking about?” Manuel asks suddenly.
She reddens. “Not a clue.”
“We are discussing how Lucia, my wife, who is perhaps no longer my wife, says I should stay in this country. Defect.”
“Well you should,” says Trace.
He laughs too heartily, the way people do when something is the opposite of funny.
“Only if you want to,” Trace adds quickly.
The laughter stops, and he leans forward, seizing her hands. “Tell me, young Canadian friend, why I should eliminate my life, my friends, my family, in order to wash onto these shores like a piece of driftwood.”
“You wouldn’t be driftwood,” she protests. “Just about anyone