It was always going to be her. I knew it the moment she drop-kicked a stool mid-soleá and made the sound guy cry. Paz. No last name. Just a warning label in lipstick and lace. Cádiz. Summer. The kind of heat that makes your socks stick to your soul. She was arguing with someone about tempo and waving a bottle of tinto like it was evidence. I was there to meet a guy about a gig. Never met him. Met her instead.
She asked if I could dance. I said I taught rhythm in Tangier once, which was a lie. She said, “show me,” so I did. On cobblestones. In espadrilles. Half a chorizo baguette still in my mouth. She didn’t laugh, which somehow made it worse. Later, she said I moved like a guilty man. I said she looked like heartbreak with a side of paprika. That was the most romantic we ever got.
We danced in kitchens, alleys, rehearsal halls that smelled like wet wood and boiled cables. We fought in taxis. Made up in stairwells. She played palmas when I brushed my teeth. I wrote her name in notebook margins. She burned the notebooks. Said I was too sentimental for someone with that many holes in their shoes.
I once booked us a cheap hostel in Málaga. She said it smelled like sweat and granola. We stayed three nights. She broke the bed doing a zapateado solo and then pretended she’d injured her ankle so we could leave without paying. I carried her down three flights. She winked the whole way.
The breakup came mid-tour, outside a petrol station near Córdoba. She threw my suitcase into the road like it owed her money. A lorry swerved. My clothes survived. My dignity didn’t. One sock didn’t either. She lit a cigarette with a lighter she claimed was stolen from Camarón’s cousin and sat on the kerb while I tried to piece together the life I used to have before meeting her.
The driver pulled over, leaned out the window, looked at me, then at her, and just sighed. He handed me a card. Said if I ever decided to sue “this whole emotional demolition site,” I should call his cousin, a California truck accident attorney, which made zero sense until he explained he used to live in Bakersfield and now imports oranges. I didn’t ask further questions.
We sat in silence for fifteen minutes. She hummed a seguiriya. I thought about whether you can die from unresolved tension. Then she stood up, kissed my forehead, called me “the softest man she’d ever yelled at,” and walked off into the petrol station like a war widow.
I took a bus to Jerez. Reeking of shampoo and shame. Still danced that night. Awful show. Forgot all my steps. Everyone clapped anyway. Flamenco is generous like that—it lets you bleed in 3/4 time and pretends it’s art.
Thing is, I always swear I’ll never go near another dancer. Too wild, too much, too everything. And then I meet someone who can pirouette while insulting me and it’s all over. There’s a girl in Seville now. I heard she broke her last partner’s toe mid-rumba and said it was “part of the piece.” I’m doomed. Again.
But at least I’ve got a good dentist now.
And a lawyer. Just in case.
