"The Flamenco Academy" by Sarah Bird Page B

the intense
Casablancas scrumphood.
    “Times, like, a thousand in person.”
    I was too engrossed to pay any attention to
the pinging that signaled the arrival of our first customer of the
day. Didi was singing a song about the dimples at the top of Julian
Casablancas’s butt in what she told me was the Strokes’ New
York/Velvet Underground style when Alejandro strolled in, fresh
from Mass at Our Lady of Fatima.
    “You gonna open anytime soon?” he asked,
nodding toward the car waiting at the take-out window as he
carefully hung up his brown suit jacket.
    The reason Alejandro was so casual about us
not working was that he knew Didi was our star. Her hours during
the week were sporadic, but she was guaranteed to be there on
Sunday. Over the months Didi had been in his employ, she’d built up
a following until Sunday was the busiest day of the week for Puppy
Taco. And Alejandro knew it wasn’t all because of his enchiladas
verdes . That day was no exception. I peeked out the window. The
cars were already lined up around the store and spilling out onto
Central. There was some form of male behind the wheel of every
vehicle. Old geezer males getting lunch burgers for wifey back at
home; young horny males yucking it up in Dad’s borrowed Explorer;
sad, lonely males who told themselves there was something special
about Pup y Taco’s tater tots and that was why they had to make a
special trip there every Sunday, only to be reminded that Sunday
was the one day we didn’t sell tots. Just sopaipillas.
    I spun around and pushed up the big,
old-fashioned take-out window. I wished that Alejandro would
install a high-tech speaker system so that customers could order
into a scratchy box. But, if Pup y Taco had that instead of a
window, Didi wouldn’t have had a stage and Sunday morning was all
about Didi being onstage.
    The fryer dinged.
    “Uh, Cyndi Rae...”
    “Rae,” I corrected him.
    Alejandro still called me by the name he’d
copied off my driver’s license when he’d first hired us. My old
name. The name I used to go by before Didi dubbed me Rae and I
stopped answering to anything else. Even Daddy called me Rae. Mom
was the only one who called me Cyndi Rae anymore. I liked it that
she identified me as someone I had stopped being. That she was
still calling a number that had been disconnected.
    “Right, Rae, sorry. Listen, would you
mind...?” Alejandro’s question trailed off as he nodded toward the
fryer. What he didn’t have to say was Rae, you wanna get the
fryer so Didi’s fans can catch a glimpse of their queen and we can
sell more hot dogs and chile cheeseburgers on Sunday morning than
we do any other three days put together?
    “Didi? You ready?” he asked, sounding like a
celebrity handler coaxing a star onstage.
    Didi heaved herself to her feet, then paused
a second, turning away from the window. When she turned back
around, she’d done that thing she did where one second she looks
completely beat to shit; then she gathers herself and uncorks some
mysterious inner light and she’s beaming a thousand watts. That was
the face the males making their Sunday pilgrimage saw. The face of
a girl who had something they only glimpsed on television, in
movies. Not beauty, exactly, but something more exciting, more
alive. Something that made them want to keep looking, keep coming
back to a not-so-great taco place every Sunday morning.
    “Hey, Key Biscayne,” Didi greeted her first
regular, an old guy still in his Sunday suit, smelling of Old
Spice, ear hairs all nicely clipped, getting the lunch burgers.
“Three number sevens, hold the green chile, right?”
    “That’s right, Didi,” he chirped back.
    “Hey, come on, man, what’s a Fiesta Burger
without the green chile? Live a little, try the green chile. My
boss’s mom makes it herself. You look like you could use a little
spice in your life.”
    “Twist my arm,” he said, holding a spindly
limb out, which Didi pretended to wring. And so, Key Biscayne