A triangle. The staple of opera, melodrama, romance novels, of flamenco. Odd how knowing something is a cliché actually makes it slightly more painful rather than less.
When I was a girl with hair turned white blond in the Texas sun, I used to squat beside tiny funnels of dust created by ant lions. I would carefully feed captured ants into the funnels. The ants would scrabble frantically, trying to escape, but all their clawing accomplished was to create microscopic avalanches that swept them inexorably down toward the predator that waited, hidden beneath the dry dirt.
A hot wind blew through the truck. The smoke drifting down from the north seemed to have sealed the day’s heat in. Still my fingers on the steering wheel were stiff and I trembled with cold.
She was coming back. Which meant that he was coming back as well. I had to be ready. Before I ever faced Didi again, long before I ever faced Tomás, I had to decode the secret I’d been given, the long history that explained so much.
I started the truck, drove to Central Avenue, and turned right, heading east. I could have turned left and gone west, but the future lay that way. East to West. Old to new. That was the direction Americans took to move away from the past. I needed to move toward the past that night. My answers were back there, back in my history with Didi. With Tomás. Back before any of us, any of our parents, were even born.
I passed the old Lobo Theater. It had been converted into a Christian meeting place. I kept driving. Past Nob Hill Shopping Center. Past the Aztec Motel. I drove Route 66 back to where it all started. Back almost a decade to when I was still Cyndi Rae Hrncir from Houdek, Texas. Back to when all flamenco was to me was a big pink bird and the most exciting person ever to step into my life was Didi Steinberg.