That week a cold front blew down from the Arctic and broke records that had stood for a century. I lay awake all night beneath mountains of covers and watched my breath freeze into a halo above the round bed. Some of the oldest cottonwoods froze so hard that they cracked open, the explosions as loud as thunder. One giant fell on the power lines, cutting out the heat and light. I used all the firewood.
When I went to bed the only thing I was sick with was betrayal and longing so intense my entire body ached as if I had the flu. And then I did have the flu. It was a relief to slide into physical pain strong enough to blot out thought, to have a real reason to hurt as much as I did. The most I could handle in the way of taking care of myself was to fill a glass with water, drink part of it, then stagger back to bed. Soon, I couldn’t even manage that. Didn’t want to manage that.
I wouldn’t have actively done anything to cause myself to die, but I was no longer concerned about it happening on its own. Shortly after I stopped getting up for glasses of water, pulling the blankets up to cover myself became more than I could handle. The cold air felt good on my hot skin. Sleeping felt good. Dreaming felt good. The nights came and went. I lost track of them.
Then Tomás came back. He was banging on the door. Pounding and yelling. Didi was with him. I was sorry that they were too late, that I didn’t have the strength anymore to wake up and unlock the door. Somehow he got in and carried me into the living room where he had built a fire, not of piñon, but of branches splintered from the frozen cottonwoods. They burned quickly, warming the house. He and Didi pushed the couch where I lay close to the fire and tacked up blankets around the couch like mosquito netting to keep out the drafts. Didi put a cup against my lips and filled my mouth with apple juice. Tomás placed a tea kettle on the fire and it puffed clouds of steam scented with the eucalyptus smell of Vicks into the Arctic-dry air. The steam filled the tent around the couch with tropical air that made me dream about Austin. About diving into icy spring water that turned into air thick and dense enough to swim through until the moment when it evaporated and I was falling. I tried to scream, but my throat had rusted shut.
Then Tomás was holding me. Everything had been explained. He loved me, and Didi was my friend. Everything was fine.
“Rae, wake up! Wake up, mija, you’re having a bad dream! Come on, baby, open your eyes.”
Why, I wondered, was Alma holding me? Why was Blanca standing by with a cup of juice? Why was Will poking wood into the fire?
“Where’s Tomás and Didi?” My voice was a croak. It wasn’t a dream. My throat had rusted shut.
Alma and Blanca looked at each other. Alma answered, “They’re not here, mija. Nobody except Blanca and Will and me have been here. Didi called and told us to check on you.”
Blanca stepped forward. “Here, drink this.” She guided an accordion-pleated bendie straw into my mouth. I sipped apple juice, then closed my eyes and was asleep before the sweetness had left my mouth. When I woke again, I was back in the round bed. The sheets had been changed and the heat and lights were back on. The house was empty, but there was food in the refrigerator and a note that read: When you feel up to it, come and see me about a job. Alma.
Alma found a little apartment for me near Nob Hill and paid the first month’s rent. She deducted the loan from the job she gave me organizing the festival coming up that summer, then enrolled me for enough independent studies classes that I was able to finish my degree. As soon as I was registered as a student, I started seeing Leslie again. I took the pills she prescribed, and the clenched thing within my brain loosened enough. Just enough.
When my strength returned, Alma started using me as a substitute. I turned out to be a good teacher. My orderly mind, my tendency to see things in black and white, all the qualities that prevented me from being a reliably extraordinary performer, made me good in the classroom. I liked teaching. It kept me occupied, kept me from thinking. Not thinking became my major goal after I dragged myself off of the round bed. I taught as many classes as Alma would let mc. I volunteered to keep the festival’s books and reconciled them every day. I did what I could to repay her kindness to me. To Blanca, to Will, to the others who had helped me. Long after my health returned, I felt wobbly around them. Wobbly and obligated. Obligated to pull myself together.
I took up marathon running. The route I returned to again and again circled from my apartment near Nob Hill to Highland High School, on to the Disabled Veterans Thrift Shop, then over to Route 66. From there I took a right and charged past the Pup y Taco, the Ace High, the De Anza Coffee Shop, the Aztec Motel. I always ended up heading west, toward the future.
Spring came and the cottonwoods filled the air with ghostly seed puffs, haloed filaments that floated on breezes too gentle to be felt. Cottonwood fluff piled up in the gutters like drifts of diaphanous snow. In early summer the buds unfurled into apple green leaves that spangled hearts across the sky.
I believe that if, even for one spring in all those years, the cottonwoods had failed to bloom, had not filled the air with their promises, the sky with their hearts, that I could have learned to stop loving Tomás Montenegro. But did they? They did not. I ran, accelerating at increasing speeds past all the landmarks. I just never got fast enough to escape any of them entirely. I made a full recovery from my illness, but not from Tomás. He turned out to be a disease that had just gone into remission. As soon as I was strong enough, he flared up with a new virulence. This time, though, I knew that if I didn’t have him I would die. I needed another secret. And that is how I came to learn that flamenco was a giant tree with roots over a thousand years old, still sucking sustenance from India, Spain, Mexico, and New Mexico, and that my story was nothing but the tiniest heart-shaped leaf in a vast canopy.