Sombra
Leslie McAdam
Photograph of Taylor Lotre, copyright Cory Stierley, used with permission.
Cover design by Michele Catalano Creative.
Editing and ebook formatting by L Woods LLC.
Paperback formatting by Shanoff Designs.
Copyright © 2018 by Leslie McAdam.
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review. This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual living or dead persons, businesses, events, or locales is purely coincidental.
Contents
Quote
GLOSSARY
Prologue
1. Tavo - Los Rolling Stones
2. Kim - Name card
3. Tavo - Puta madre
4. Kim - Dreams
5. Tavo - Guía de viajes
6. Kim - Front-facing camera
7. Tavo - Vino
8. Kim - Decadence
9. Tavo - Caliente
10. Kim - Not bad
11. Tavo - Desayuno con Diamantes
12. Kim - Peppers
13. Tavo - Cuevas
14. Kim - This is man
15. Tavo - Algo para tomar
16. Kim - Lessons
17. Tavo - Vainilla
18. Kim - Secrets
19. Tavo - Flores
20. Kim - Surprise
21. Tavo - Presión
22. Kim - Coloring
23. Tavo - Cosecha
24. Kim - Instagram
25. Tavo - Sueño
Epilogue - A wedding
Acknowledgments
Bonus
EXTRA BONUS!
Other books by Leslie McAdam
Mary told me that I should dedicate this book to myself, because I became the dragonfly while writing it. But I think I’ll dedicate it to all of you who are or who will become dragonflies.
Everything in moderation. Including virtue.
* * *
“We have said that the duende loves the edge, the wound, and draws close to places where forms fuse in a yearning beyond visible expression.” — Federico García Lorca, translated by A. S. Kline.
GLOSSARY
Selected Spanish obscenities and other useful words
Culo (pronounced cool-o) - Ass
Cojones (pronounced co-hone-nays) - testicles/balls.
Estadounidense (pronounced es-tah-doh-oo-nee-den-say) - There’s no English equivalent, but it means a person from the United States—a “Unitedstatesian” compared to an American, which includes “the Americas,” i.e. Canada and Mexico. EE. UU. is the abbreviation in Spanish for U.S.A.
Guiri (pronounced gid-dy) - slightly derogatory term for foreigner, especially one from northern Europe.
Hostia - Literally Host (as in Catholic mass), but can be translated to “I’m shocked.”
Huevos - Literally eggs, but means testicles/balls.
Joder (pronounced ho-der) - Fuck.
Mierda - Shit.
Me cago en la leche - Translates literally to “I shit in the milk.” Infinite varieties. One can me cago en just about anything. Sometimes shortened to just leche (milk) or qué mala leche, (what bad milk). Don’t ask me, I just heard it when I lived in Spain.
Puta madre - Literally “whore mother,” but can be translated to motherfucker.
Qué coño - Literally pussy, but used like “what the hell” or damn.
Qué guay - (pronounced kay-why) - “How cool” (or similar).
Vale (pronounced bah-lay) - Okay.
Author’s note: If a Spanish phrase or word is not included in this glossary, the meaning is either relatively easy for a non-Spanish speaker to understand or it’s not necessary that the reader understand it.
Prologue
From the shadows, he emerges. The small pool of olive oil on his hands glistens in the candlelight and drips on the tile floor through his fingers.
Decadent.
Hedonistic.
Dark.
I glimpse his face as he approaches the bed, and he’s grinning wickedly, his hair messy and wild. Bare feet on a cold floor. Shirt off. Jeans unbuttoned, with a thatch of groomed pubic hair peeking out, his root showing.
My body tingles and gooseflesh erupts on my arms and legs.
His appraising eyes slowly, languidly, take in my form.
And I love it. I absolutely love the way he looks at me, like he’s appreciating every freckle, every hair follicle, every curve. My painted toes. My voluptuous calves. My ample thighs. And on up.
Another drip of olive oil plops on the floor. Part of me thinks it’s a waste. The other part of me loves this game.
The wait, the watching, makes me pant, and I breathe faster and faster as he comes closer. My skin’s glowing in his dim room.
What surprise does he have for me this time?
The mystery. I love the mystery and anticipation. I don’t know what’s coming next. I don’t know the plan.
I have no idea what pleasures are in store for me tonight, but I’m sure they’re coming.
He knows what he does to me. He knows I’m resisting writhing on the crisp, rough sheets, which are crackly from drying on a line out back in the cold, wintry Andalusian sun. We’ll soften them soon enough when our bodies join together, but right now they’re almost like brittle sandpaper, chafing my skin.
With a bite of his lip, trying to control his smile, he rubs his hands together, making a suction sound from the lubrication. The oil smells fruity, green—if you could smell a color—and bitter.
I’ve licked it on his skin enough times to know its taste. The complexity of the flavors. How just a drop on the tongue can make me want so much.
I love it.
Even though I shouldn’t.
My eyes stay on his hands. I’m obsessed with them, especially his callouses. Over time, they’ve built up on the pads of his palms, right next to where his fingers begin. The telltale sign of a life lived working outside, although it’s not what he wants. Sometimes his rough patches crack and bleed, a hazard of using a rake to beat the olives out of the trees.
A hazard of using his hands.
Those hands, those scratchy callouses now skim down my naked body, half-lit in the dark room, leaving a trail of oil. My hair splays across the pillow. His light touch makes my nipples point up. My pulse pound. My body ache.
I arch up into his fingers, wanting more. Needing more.
Needing him.
We shouldn’t be doing this. This isn’t how my life is supposed to be.
But nothing can stop our desire.
One
Tavo - Los Rolling Stones
A few months earlier
As if a hungry dragonfly perches on my index finger, I suspend the stylus over the vinyl on my grandfather’s record player, allowing it to hover until the album spins up to speed. I inhale, position the tone arm, and place it at the beginning of the song. The needle scrapes, then catches in the groove. The speakers pop and crackle as the album rotates for part of a turn before the song plays.
While I wait for the music, I push my damp hair off my forehead and rub my jaw, scratching the dirt out of my two-day-old stubble. I’ve gotta get out of this sweat-soaked T-shirt as soon as possible. My hand digs in my pants, rearranging my cojones, which stick to my thigh. Going commando in forty degree Celsius weather messes with the huevos.
Before I’m adjusted, the music starts, and a choir’s trilling the teeth-clenching opening of “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” by the Rolling Stones.
My sentiments exactly.
Not to be ungrateful, but it’s the anthem of my life. Once the song finishes, I won’t comp
lain again. But right now I’m pissed off, I smell like horse shit, and I’m sick of the fallout from my latest blunder. So I allow myself to indulge in some self-pity—at least for the duration of the last track on side two.
Huffing, I sit on my bed and unlace my boots, perspiration pouring down my brow as the music plays. After a dismal morning spent spreading horse manure in the huerta—the olive orchard—while fending off the “help” of my annoying youngest brother, the “attention” of the fucking stalker girl next door, and an afternoon “discussing” my future with my mother (she’s not fond of my go-to-America plan), then back in the orchard for more work, I’m beat. Back sore. Feet tired. All my muscles used. I would’ve rather exhausted my body in a different way.
Nope. No such luck.
I’ve got to shower before dinner and clean off the stench of the fertilizer, so I strip off my T-shirt. But after shoving off my boots and socks, I flop on my back and can’t help but hum the Rolling Stones song.
Pretty soon I’m feeling better, singing the verses and thinking about my kindly grandfather, who’s likely taking a nap at the moment. My abuelo has a great collection of music, mostly on vinyl, which I’ve pretty much co-opted. While it’s unusual that we still have this old thing, it’s not if you know my grandfather. He didn’t buy a television until 1991. He’s the type of old-school Spaniard who insists that life was better when Franco was in power.
“Less crime,” he says.
Less freedom, too. I definitely disagree with him, but he assembled a fantastic collection of music during that time.
Aww yeah, I sing. I prop my feet up on the iron footboard of my bed and put my hands behind my head. Harvest time will come soon, and I really don’t have time to rest, but I’m taking it anyway.
Normally, I’m upbeat, but I haven’t been lately. Most of summer I’ve been worn out and pissed off. Now, the familiar song lulls me like an advertisement for Prozac. Got discontent? Take a half hour of los Rolling Stones.
My angry muscles loosen as I sing, but not my mind.
Will I ever get a break? Not if I keep beating myself up for what happened last month.
It was a fucking mistake.
Literally.
I fucked a mistake.
I gave in to years of flirty glances and alluring smiles, but it lead to … a nutty devotee who’s increased her concentration on me fifty-fold. She just won’t leave me alone.
Today, even though she was wearing a tiny crop top and shorts that showed the bottom of her culo, she followed me around in the orchard asking if she could help. Wearing so much makeup you’d need a sandblaster to take it off and barely-there sandals that made her first get a blister and then a thorn.
And then she wanted me to carry her.
Rolling my eyes to the ceiling, I exhale, trying to get all of the air out of my body as if that would expel her memory from it.
Nope.
I roll onto my side and fumble in the bedside table for my sketchpad and pencil. Where is the woman who comes alive when she’s with me, the one who’s an explosion of flavor on my tongue? Who gives herself to me so that I can give myself to her?
Nowhere. That’s where this woman is. She doesn’t exist. Not here. Not now.
And the way it’s going, maybe not ever. Taking my pencil, I start capturing the way the white egret I saw earlier looked standing on a rock at the base of the creek with a dead fish lodged in its throat. How the hell would it get that down?
I got ya, buddy. I know just how you feel. Life’s hard to swallow sometimes.
As I draw, I think about the dead fish. I’ve fucked too many of them. Not literally. I mean, potential partners who just lie there, with no sparkle or pasión. It’s almost as bad as the jaded ones using you to maneuver out of their positions in life. I don’t blame them. I’m doing it myself. But it doesn’t make for a deep connection.
I apologize for being callous.
But it’ll be a relief to go back to school for fall semester next week, because the less time I spend around here, the fewer chances I have at run-ins like today. And thankfully, I’m just about done until harvest.
While caring for olive trees most of the year is rather low maintenance—similar to the laid-back people of Andalucía—I needed to get things prepped, so I’ve been spending hours and hours out among the wide-spaced trees in the blistering heat of summer, mowing weeds, clearing away dead branches, and irrigating. The manual labor in the early morning combined with the generous time I’ve frittered in the bars of Granada—some of which don’t open until two a.m.—mean I’m one tired and querulous motherfucker.
I need some time off.
I need a fucking siesta.
I watch the record player spin.
Most of the time I stream music on my phone. But on days like today, I want—need—to zone out and play records. There’s something soothing about watching music playing. Watching sound. A contradiction.
And this song? Joder. One of the first English tunes I ever heard, it’s still one of the greatest. After listening to it hundreds of times and searching for the lyrics online, I know every word, like I know the Lord’s Prayer I repeat by rote at the cathedral of Granada. But unlike that prayer, every word of this song hits me behind my belt.
Maybe someday I’ll just find that I get what I need.
Unlikely.
There’s a knock on my door.
At least they know to knock now.
I haul myself off the bed and answer it. My older sister, Mari Carmen, holds her hand up to knock again, and before I can say hola, she’s nattering away.
“¿Tavo, me haces un favor?”
What else is new? She’s twenty-four. I’m twenty-two. So it’s been roughly twenty years of her asking me for favors.
I yawn and scratch my belly. “¿Qué te hace falta?”
She eyes my bare sweaty chest with disgust, her long hair flouncing over her shoulder, and asks in Spanish, “Can you pick up la estadounidense from the airport?”
Mi madre decided that since I moved into the casita, this little cabin, we have an empty room in the main house, so we might as well rent it out. Tomorrow, Kim Brown from Iowa, EE.UU. is coming to stay.
While I’m intrigued to meet someone from the United States, judging by my quick take of her Instagram, we have nothing in common. I’m not into oversize coffee drinks and fast food.
“Why can’t you get her?” I ask her in Spanish.
“Because Jorge and I have an appointment with the priest tomorrow.” Jorge’s her fiancé, a policeman. It’s at the point where we call him novio, not amigo. That means it’s serious and exclusive, although even an amigo is a boyfriend. My mother approves.
It’s all right for Mari Carmen, but marriage isn’t for me, at least not now. There’s too much I want to do first.
Still, a drive to Madrid? That will take most of the day. Lately, I’ve found myself needing to get away more and more. A practice run for when I finally move to America. Maybe I can grill Kim Brown about what it’s really like.
Evaluating my sister’s pleading eyes, I nod. While I could give her a hard time, I won’t. “Sure. I’ll go. Give me her flight information.”
“I’ll text it to you.” Mari Carmen pauses, finger on her lip. “Can you make sure to set her up on the Wi-Fi once she gets here?”
Farmhand, chauffeur, and now, information technology specialist.
At your service.
She looks behind me and gestures at my sketchpad. “Did you draw that bird just now?”
Most of my family thinks my creative work is a waste of time, so I’ve stopped showing them any of it. “Yeah.”
“It looks pretty good.” Her smile is genuine, and it makes me feel better helping her out.
“Thanks.”
Mari Carmen turns on her heel and prances back to the main house.
I stretch out my fingers and take them in. So I get callouses on my hands, and I have bitterness in my heart. Es nada.
Clos
ing the door behind my sister, I drop my pants and head to the shower.
The song has ended. I’m done with my complaints. Now it’s time to suck it up.
I can’t get what I want. And even if I try, I can’t get what I need, either.
Goddammit, my mother invited Sonia Molinero for dinner again.
The fucking mistake who I’ve seen twice today.
The fucking mistake who still doesn’t realize she was a fucking mistake, much to my regret. I know this because while we sit outside at the picnic table, she’s pressing up next to me so close she’s practically crawling into my skin.
“Tavo,” she purrs in my ear, as my mother sets down the white asparagus drizzled with olive oil and parsley. “That night was amazing. On so many levels. When can we do it again?”
I try not to make my cringe visible because I don’t want her to think I’m an asshole for several reasons. The main one is that her family owns the neighboring property. Even if I never wanted to see her again, I would. They’re the press for our olives. Our families have worked together for generations, and she comes to dinner all the time.
Yet another reason not to mix pleasure with property lines.
And on paper, I should like her. We’ve grown up together, and in the past few years Sonia’s changed from the brat next door to a very attractive woman, with long, slender legs, small breasts, petite hands, and narrow hips. Glossy, sooty black hair frames her reddish-brown eyes, which are spiked with anthracite. Those sharp eyes don’t miss a trick.
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