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.
“How long have you been meditating?” I asked. We walked down the steep stairs to the hallway.
“Almost six months.” He put his arm around me, leading me through tiny halls into his bedroom. Slipping my coat off my shoulders, he motioned for me to sit down on the bed.
I hesitated. “Maybe we could talk in the kitchen?”
“There's no music in the kitchen.” He turned on a brass lamp on the nightstand. There were no chairs, just a stool by his amplifier and stacks and stacks of record albums—and the bed. I walked around the room, looking at his albums and the tall stacks of cassettes. In the corner, three guitars rested on metal stands: a turquoise guitar, a bright red one, and a walnut-stained one. I had grown up with the sound of Dad's fat, round Gibson guitars; their melodies were my universe. Dad's tunes were my nursery rhymes, a second language in our home. Carlos's guitars were skinny and tall, as he was. I turned and saw him watching me. “My dad plays guitar,” I said.
&nb
sp; “I know. He's Saunders King, right?”
I nodded.
“Jerry told me. I've read about him, but never really listened to his music. B. B. King worships your dad.”
“You're kidding. I didn't know that.” I walked to the only resting place and sat down on the bed. “So what are you doing with your new band?”
“We're rehearsing. When the old band broke up,” he said, leaning back against the headboard, “I wanted that. After Woodstock, our egos got inflated. My life became more and more synthetic: I felt like a fake. All I care about is music, but I got pulled into the drugs, the parties. It was painful to lose my friends. I started meditating, seeking a new way, new music—a new life.”
I crossed my ankles and leaned back against a pillow; very interested in this man and the direction he was taking his life.
“I've been fasting and praying for a teacher to help me,” he said.
I nodded, not wanting to talk about how false and sad my life had been. The lamp cast a soft glow across our outstretched bodies. “I've been praying a lot, too. I want Truth in my life. I feel like hope is out there, even though I got lost for a while.” I watched John Coltrane's record spin on the turntable beside the bed. An electric keyboard stood in front of two conga drums.
“Have you meditated before?” he asked.
“My Mom and I took hatha yoga when I was in high school. I just started classes again at Integral Yoga on Dolores Street.” Carlos slid his palm along my arm as I talked. “I love the quiet of spirit touching my soul.”
He scooted closer to me on the bed, sliding his arm behind me. I lifted my head and sank back in the cradle of his shoulder, our faces an inch apart. The heat from his body pulled mine closer. We kissed, our lips a noon blaze, our tongues moist.
“You feel so strong,” Carlos told me. “But I know you've been through hell. I saw you once in L.A.”
“You did!” I sat back from him. “When? Where?” Any reminder of L.A. was a reminder of me on downers, out of control, with no connection to beauty or goodness. It was me at my lowest ebb. I was embarrassed.
“I was sitting on the fence outside Sly's house on Coldwa-ter, waiting for the guys in the band. They went in to see Sly. I didn't want any part of him.” He pulled me back into his arms. “You drove up in a car with another lady. I noticed you immediately. I even thought about going in when I saw you.”
I laughed. So, he knew about Sly. He knew, so I didn't have to tell. And he remembered me. I thought about destiny's touch in my life. Were Carlos and I connected in some special way? “Thank you for noticing me again,” I murmured softly. “That wasn't the best time in my life.”
“Nor mine,” he agreed. “But now we can start over together.”
I lay in Carlos's arms, “After the Rain” playing on the stereo. “This is my favorite Coltrane song right now,” Carlos murmured. I drifted on the notes gently blowing from the speakers and awoke later in quiet darkness. I remembered where I was as Carlos's hands skimmed my shoulders. His fin- gertips lifted my sweater, and my senses flamed. We sought each other's bodies, peeling our clothing off, kicking them onto the floor. His skin was soft, especially his hands. My broken places opened.
In the morning, I awoke in Carlos's arms, amazed that I could begin over again. My body felt revived; I perceived an extraordinary possibility that love was not a phantom. I wanted to walk out onto Carlos's deck and scream to the trees, “I'm alive!” But I lay in his embrace, savoring the promise of our friendship, no matter what it became. We drove down the mountain into Mill Valley and ate breakfast at a corner café. Carlos held my hand, and we walked to Old Mill Park and sat above a creek twisting through the redwoods.
“Where did you go to high school?” I asked.
“Mission. I was a blues guitarist and a stone hippie. I didn't want to come to the United States when my family immigrated to San Francisco. I was playing in a band in strip joints in Tijuana, making my own money. I was twelve. They had to leave without me because I hid out and they had a special day and time to leave.”
I looked at Carlos's thin face, imagining his scrawny determination when he was younger. I was a Girl Scout when I was twelve, still reading novels about Freddy the pig. My memory of my own face was captured in a photograph of Karmen and me, before our orchestra performance, smiling proudly in our matching uniforms.
“My brother Tonio came back to get me. By the time I got to Mission High School I was playing blues with local guys, cutting school, and getting stoned. I moved out of my parents' house. And when the band first got together, I lived on Hartford Street in the Castro with the bass player, David Brown; our manager, Stan Marcum; and the road manager, Ron. Ron's girlfriend, Diane, would come over and cook. We were always hungry.” Carlos laid his hand on his flat stomach. I trembled, remembering touching him in the night. “So when we got money from playing in the Panhandle in Golden Gate Park or at a wedding, Diane made big pots of spaghetti. One night we had enough money to buy a steak. We were sitting at the kitchen table salivating, waiting for the meat to be done. She opened the oven and turned away. Her dog, Troy, grabbed the steak from the hot pan and ran.” Carlos and I laughed.
“We took off after him, a trail of mad musicians, but he was out the front door in two seconds. As much as I loved that dog, that night I wanted to kill him.” Carlos shook his head.
“We were just kids out of high school trying to play music. We didn't have any guidance. Everybody smoked weed and hung out, even our manager.” Carlos laughed dryly. “Actually, he was the most stoned of everybody. When our music took off and we started getting gigs and touring, we were still street punks with no manners. The guys in the band would show up late, and I would be furious. We'd start fighting—real fistfights sometimes.”
A sports car zoomed down the park road, shifting gears and spouting exhaust.
“I remember bands playing in the Panhandle,” I said. “In high school my girlfriend Gloria and I wanted to be hippies. I wanted a Volkswagen bus so badly. When I went away to college in L.A., I forgot about that.” “Where'd you go to high school?”
“Lowell.”
“Oh, the smart school.”
“Well, I was pretty social.”
I looked up at the redwoods—magnificent, giant creatures. I felt as though the branches were reaching for God, carrying me up with them.
“I'm reading Paramahansa Yogananda right now,” Carlos said. “He says the essence of everything is light, divine light. I can feel it here, in these trees.”
The sun's rays touched every treetop. “Me, too,” I said. “Since I've been practicing yoga again, my thoughts of where God lives have opened up. When I was little I thought God was just in heaven. But I have felt His presence inside me more and more.” We threw stones into the creek, Carlos picking flat ones that skimmed along the top of the water.
“I had better get home,” I said.
He stood up and dusted off the seat of his pants; he took my hand, and we walked through the park to his car. I was infatuated with this man and wanted Mom and Dad to meet him. Carlos was quiet as we climbed the stairs to my house. When we walked inside, Dad did not smile, but he shook Carlos's hand and invited him to sit down in our living room. Carlos's eyes were glued to Dad's blond Gibson guitar.
Mom said hello and turned the radio down. She began asking questions, as she always did with our friends. “Where does your family live?” she asked.
“We're all here in San Francisco,” Carlos said. “I have four sisters and two brothers. My parents live in Noe Valley.” “Are you the oldest?” Mom pried.
“No. I'm right in the middle.”
Dad picked up his guitar and began playing scales. Carlos leaned forward, watching Dad's hands. When Dad looked up, he said, “What kind of guitar do you play?” The mood in the room lightened, and Carlos and Dad talked instruments and musicians. Mom interjected opinions and asked questions, too.
I walked Carlos to the door and stepped outside on the porch with hi
m. “Your dad is the cat,” he said.
“He's a great musician.” I smiled. We kissed good-bye, and I waved as he drove away.
“He seems like a nice young man,” Mom said, walking toward the bedrooms.
Dad grunted. I didn't fault Dad's lack of enthusiasm, and knew he was remembering Sly as my boyfriend.
But Carlos was nothing like Sly. He was seeking God. His world was not drugs and deception. Carlos was filled with passion for music, especially the blues, which Dad had heard tonight. And I was different, too. If this unburned patch of my heart continued to pulse with love, I would not abandon the light within me. Dad's soft-spoken love for Kitsaun and me was unconditional. Grumpy and stiff sometimes, but always there. I walked to my father and put my arms around his waist. “I love you, Daddy.” He squeezed me back.
arlos called every night, and we talked for hours as I lay in the dark in my bedroom. I wanted to know what gave him the courage to leave the Santana Band at the peak of their success; he said spiritual progress was more important than gold records.
I explained how I had been betrayed by Sly, by his violence, and that I suspected he had been going out with other women when he left me home alone. I confessed how naive I had been and that I was trying to forgive myself because I had been only twenty. Carlos and I told each other our hopes and dreams. Carlos was one-pointed, determined to play music and only that.
Carlos picked me up from work, and we drove to Sausalito to eat and watch boats sail calmly on the bay. We meditated together and leaned on the railing of his mountaintop deck, watching birds swoop through the trees.
“What are you going to study in college?” he asked.
“I want to be a teacher—I love kids and learning.” Carlos sighed. “I can't imagine being anything but a musician. Even when I played violin in my father's mariachi band, I thought about having my own band. When I started playing guitar, I joined a rock band as soon as I could.
“In high school, I worked with my brother Tonio at Tick Tock's on Third Street. That's how I bought my first amplifier. We kept the kitchen clean and cooked French fries and burgers. I hated the smell of the bleach we used to mop the floors. I'll never forget it.” He paused. “You'd make a great teacher. I've never met a woman who has goals like you.” I smiled at his compliment.
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