Zapateado
by Sam North
Chapter Two
 

JOE

Joe impatiently sat on the tarmac in the hot aircraft at the airport. He reflected on the vagaries of life. He’d been on his way to see Chelsea play, got tickets in a private box with some pretty respectable businessmen he’d been angling to get close to for some time and they’d pulled him out. Sent him to Holland Park. He’d had to sidestep the tabloid boys who’d been dogging the place for a couple of days. It was still a big story for them.. Millionaire husband and father -in- law murdered by the wife. Plain, meek as a mouse wife, who disappeared right after. The papers were full of the handgun in the freezer with her prints on it. No one seemed to have noticed the gun wasn’t the weapon of use. Then there was the big house in Hook Heath, both of the men worth millions . She’d not see any of that if caught and convicted. Of course there was speculation that she’d already collected the money.

He’d visited the apartment. Found it had been ransacked. Everywhere he looked he could see heavy handed stupidity. The local force no doubt. He cursed Jim, who normally covered Europe and had connections in Costa Brava. He was off sick. Joe could speak a little Spanish, Joe could go. Joe’s Spanish amounted to ordering a ‘cafe con leche por favor’, but that didn’t seem to matter to Bryan. Bryan wanted the matter sorted and Joe got results. Joe was senior to Jim and he had a track record for finding people. Joe hated his job and he knew Bryan knew that. That is why Bryan kept offering more money. Joe had a conscience and a seriously old fashioned notion of keeping one’s word. Something Bryan would have great difficulty with. Bryan was confident that Joe would find her and bring her back to face justice. It seemed everyone and his dog was sure she’d topped her husband and his Dad and Bryan wasn’t going to disabuse them.

There was one snag, as far as Joe was concerned. He knew very little about this woman. One photograph, nothing recent. She didn’t seem to have any bad habits, no sign of any hobbies. Did she travel light? Or did she take as much as she could? He had someone working on her bank details. She owed nothing. No riches, no debts.

There were a lot of unanswered questions. He instinctively knew she hadn’t rubbed her old man out. It was a classic contract killing. The tabloids were just trying to tart it all up to sell papers. Runaway housewife was better story for them. Particularly with that psychic woman claiming she’d seen it all beforehand and warned the wrong party. The Mirror had gone to town on her. Served her right for going public with it. Still, he’d made a mental note to talk to her first chance he got.

The thing was, was it just luck she wasn’t with her husband when he was rubbed out? Bryan told him she was supposed to have been with her husband according to his diary.(conveniently filched by an enterprising copper who’d needed a ‘bit of cash for his hoiday’.). Lunch with him and her father-in-law at his Hook Heath house. Yet this time, this very particular time, she’d gone to Gatwick and flown to Spain using her maiden name. Had they had a row? Something planned? The psychic woman said that they had a row about a tree, but he’d not seen one in the apartment. Had she known that her husband was about to get hit? Had the contractor made contact? Done a little side deal perhaps? That kind of thing happened if the money wasn’t big enough.

There were a lot of angles to explore. Spain was a very big country. He’d need a month, or a lot of luck.
It wasn’t so bad. Spain agreed with him. Just wish he’d seen the match, that’s all. Lucky shot in the first half apparently and an own goal in the second at that. Nothing worse than an own goal.

‘We have clearance for take-off...at last", the Pilot told them, unable to disguise the frustration in his voice. ‘We’re third in line, so we will be on our way in a few minutes.’
Joe settled into his seat. Outside the plane it began to rain. Probably rain for the next four months. He’d try to spin this one out. Spain wasn’t such a bad deal after all.

Strangers on a Train

She stood in a basin of pine needles steeped in hot water, there was some other extremely pungent oils in there as well and she stared down at her swollen feet. She’d never really been overtly enthused by her feet, her big toes were too large, her little toes awkward, all were now scarred, swollen and blistered. Her feet ached, she was in genuine agony and not just her feet, her limbs all the way to her thighs. She stared at her bruised naked body in the broken wall mirror and was not impressed. Her knees had scabs, her veins stood raised, she had black-blue welts all over her and stabbing pains whichever way she moved.
At night it was torture when the cramps came. During the first attack she had screamed out in agony and Frannie, whose house it was, had burst into the room with a large stick expecting intruders, but she had soon understood the situation and was yelling at her to ‘pull up your toes, pull up your toes’. Incredibly this had worked. Now she knew to drink plenty of fluids and work her toes at the slightest sign of cramp and never to stretch. Stretching would just start it all over again.

She felt utterly foolish standing in this small room, her feet firmly planted in the white tin basin. She bent down and added more hot water from the steaming jug, so that it came right up to her calves. She added aniseed as well, inhaling the eye-watering fumes. None of this might do anything for her feet, but by god she could breathe now.

Flamenco might be in her heart, but her feet were literally dying from it. The constant pressure, the incessant thumping of her shoes against the wooden floors of the rehearsal studio. She’d learned to hate Senorita Garcia, the dance instructor, who barked at them relentlessly. Everyone seemed to have ‘compacion’ except her. Deportment was apparently everything, but if you are crippled, it was nigh on impossible to stand, never mind think about deportment and be constantly criticised‘where is the passion in your eyes, your eyes are dead’. Senorita Garcia hated Jan, almost as much as Jan hated the leather shoes she had bought that crushed her toes. She wasn’t built for this kind of mediaeval torture.

Three weeks now and it wasn’t getting any better. She’d bought costumes, two pairs of the shoes she hated, sweated so much she’d lost 25 pounds since she’d arrived and she’d met Frannie. Frannie and Anthea to be exact.

She’d met Anthea on the AVE express train from Madrid. She’d been astonished by the train, so fast and clean, it was better than flying and it was so efficient. They had told her that if the train was more than three minutes late she could have her money back. This kind of business approach would bankrupt English railroad companies in a week. Better yet, her train arrived a minute early.

Anthea was having trouble with her food on the train, understanding what it was she wanted. She knew she didn’t want the local practically raw and leathery ham. Jan ordered her something more suitable, but it was disappointing and the service in the on-board restaurant car bordering on utter indifference. It was quite a contrast to the rest of the train. Still it gave her an opportunity to find out why this American woman was travelling alone.

Anthea quickly corrected her. ‘I’m Canadian, from Vancouver.’ She had run away from her husband to find a new life, find some excitement. The small town of Jerez didn’t seem like a likely spot to find excitement in Jan’s book, but she completely understood the need. She appreciated the coincidence that both of them had run away from their men and that they should meet. Of course, anywhere was more exciting than being with someone you no longer loved. Anthea had taken up dancing to widen her circle of friends. Her husband, an office furniture dealer and Rotarian was not in the least bit interested in ‘friends’ outside of business and pretty much ignored her. Anthea had met Frannie at the Latin Festival on Victoria Island. It had been love at first sight. ‘My god, I didn’t even know I was gay until Frannie entered my life’. Frannie had been giving Flamenco exhibitions and tutoring at the dance school there. She had once been Professor of Dance at a small Californian University, but now she had moved to the epicentre of Flamenco – Jerez.

It was a bit disconcerting. Jan was not so used to strangers blurting out their sexual preferences but Anthea seemed oblivious to any sense of decorum, besides, she liked to shock. Her friends in Vancouver had been discouraging. Of course they were all straight and they were worried she had gone off the rails, what with how sudden it all had been. Her husband had been disgusted and couldn’t have agreed a divorce fast enough. He’d tried a few tricks to avoid paying out, but in the end she got the house, his BMW and all her teeth done, so she didn’t feel so bad. She’d rented the house out to a gay couple working on the ‘Smallville’ TV series. Anthea was forty, two metres tall and in a certain light, Jan discovered, looked disconcertingly like the movie star Matt Damon.

Jan told her practically nothing about herself, but Anthea just assumed that since they both love dFlamenco they would be friends in Jerez. She was sure Jan would love Frannie (‘hands off she’s mine’) and she was just sure Jan would be a wonderful dancer.

Jan looked at her feet again, something in the pit of her stomach told her that the chances of her becoming a wonderful dancer were so remote it was laughable. Senorita Garcia had made it plain. ‘You start at the age of six. If you are lucky by the time you are twenty you will understand and by thirty you will master it.’ Runaway housewives would be forever clumsy amateurs, cattle fodder for dancing instructors to abuse and heckle, but dancers? Real Flamenco dancers, never! She almost, but not quite, hated taking their money.

When the Madrid train arrived at Jerez station Jan had been delighted to see the wonderful blue and white ceramic tiling that covered all the walls. She knew at once she would love this place. When Anthea had run the length of the platform into the sturdy arms of Frannie, Jan had been completely astonished. Frannie was a thickset, white haired but bonny woman of sixty or more, solid, with a very North American ass, as wide as Texas, clad in very tight purple lycra. Jan had been expecting something else perhaps, nor had she been prepared for Frannie’s high squeaky little girl voice or her tiny, childish laugh. Clearly, trapped in this big woman was an easily amused young girl who was as astonished as Jan to find herself loved and adored again. Jan quickly sussed that she was grabbing it and luxuriating in it whilst it lasted.

The annoying voice aside, Jan came to realise that Frannie was very level-headed, practical and mature, infinitely patient and a quite utterly stubborn human being.

Jan had moved to a cheap hotel at first and hated it. Frannie and Anthea had disappeared for a week of constant passion, so she didn’t see them until the end of her second week. Frannie had been so concerned at Jan’s sudden loss of weight and the condition of her feet that she insisted upon renting one of her rooms to her for a very reasonable £250 a month. It came with a tiny kitchenette come shower room, ‘so you can wash your body and dishes at the same time’ Frannie joked.

From her room she could hear Anthea and Frannie argue. They did this a lot. Anthea had discovered that ‘a’ Jerez is very ‘small’ and that ‘b’ Frannie took Flamenco very seriously and ‘c’ liked her wine at night, as well as a good cigar. Anthea, who grew bored very quickly anyway, didn’t drink and true to her Vancouverite roots, loathed smoking with a passion. She’d sit and fume in the courtyard when Frannie lit up, then go up and switch electric fans on everywhere to clear the air. Speaking no Spanish she felt she could not go out and mingle and so felt quite cut off from the rest of the town.

Jan sat down on her bed, took her feet out of the water and placed them against the cold white-washed wall to cool them. Her legs needed waxing she noted, her knees boasted new purple veins and her calves throbbed from the heat of the water. Somewhere in the house someone was playing classical guitar.

She looked to her right and her eyes fastened upon the bougainvillea in the courtyard. She loved the plant and its tenacity. She wanted to have a home just like this and all kinds, not just purple, but orange and pink.
The house was in the barrio, up a narrow passage away from the police station. Once the very poor of Jerez had lived here, many crowded into these homes on rents fixed so low that landlords could not afford to do them up and almost all fell into utter disrepair. Now, people like Frannie were moving in, fixing up, restoring and the neighbourhood was looking up. Outside they looked like nothing much, but inside they were huge. Frannie’s dwelling centred around two courtyards. The upstairs front of the house being the living quarters for Frannie and Anthea, the downstairs guests and rooms to rent. There were more rooms along the sides yet to be restored and further along, another courtyard where Frannie’s studio opened out onto the stone yard. It was a former machine shop with a cold concrete floor. It still needed work but it would do. The neighbours, an architect from Chile, were busy demolishing theirs, proposing to erect a huge family home on the lot. They had three sons, but she had not seen the wife as of yet.

Jan adored the quiet calm of the inner courtyards and reflected that this was what was missing from English homes. She loved the warmth and the shade of the mimosa tree, but she hated beyond reason the deafening roar of the motor scooters that constantly drove up and down the narrow streets, most of them seemingly without silencers. No one seemed to notice or care if they revved up outside windows in an alley at three in the morning or shouted out to their friends. She had quickly discovered that no one in Spain ever seemed to go to bed and they thought nothing of going to dinner at midnight. She found it impossible to adjust.

‘Jan?’ Anthea was calling. ‘We’re eating tapas, join us.’
Jan shouted a quick ‘give me five minutes,’ and sighed. She wasn’t as enamoured with tapas as she had thought she’d be, although she quite liked the little crispy pancakes she had tried with tiny shrimps inside them. She found it hard to cope with the tiny amounts of coffee they served and was annoyed at the inflexibility of the cafes when she wanted, but couldn’t get, her usual latte in the afternoon. Worst of all was discovering there was a TV channel entirely devoted to Tarot readings. She had at first been fascinated, then appalled. All part of the Spanish experience she told herself, but a 24 hour Tarot channel seemed unnecessarily excessive and of limited value to anyone whose fortune it wasn’t.
She swung her feet off the bed and placed them on the straw matting. She could just about bear to walk to the courtyard.
‘Jan? You alright dear?’ Frannie was calling.
‘Coming,’ Jan answered, pulling on a pretty pink cotton blouse. She could just about bear to wear a cream pleated skirt she’d found in Zara. (She was having to buy for a thinner woman now). To hell with what her legs looked like she told herself. She took a deep breath and went out into the courtyard for lunch.

‘Ah, here you are. How are your feet honey? Didn’t I tell you low backs, short sturdy heels. If you want to tap you got to wear what they wear.’
Jan looked at Frannie and drew breath for her, she knew there would be more advice.
‘Of course, they work you hard like this, shakes out the chaff, most women quit after two weeks and the way they see it, you’ve paid for a month, the more who quit the less they have to do.’
‘I’m not going to quit,’ Jan replied quietly, but with more force than she’d intended. "Of course I might die before I quit, but I won’t quit voluntarily.’
Anthea arrived – the light of Frannie’s life. Jan noticed the woman’s ugly feet on the stone stairs, the elongated big toes, the hard split skin. She was sweating, walking down the stairs wrapped in a cerise sarong. ‘God it’s hot, the air doesn’t fucking move here. How can they stand it?’
Frannie beamed – it seemed to Jan that every word uttered by Anthea was gilded with pearlescence. ‘That’s why they use fans dearest.’
Anthea pulled a face, ignored the delicate fan that lay on her chair and went over to the electric fan she’d bought the day before. She stood before it opening her sarong to get the best of the air and both Jan and Frannie got an eye-stinging blast of ‘Opium’, Anthea’s scent of choice.
Jan muffled a laugh as Frannie did her best to rise above this breach of decorum. Frannie was not fond of scents, certainly did not like the electric fan and was possibly wondering who this display of Anthea’s sweaty torso was for. Jan picked up on the fans topic to distract.
‘They do seem obsessed with the fan here. Senora keeps going on about making the fan ‘talk’. We had a whole day on it on Tuesday.’
Frannie turned to her, pursing her lips. Jan knew that ‘fans’ were a major issue with her too.
‘The fan is the most useful device in the dancers repertory. It is the other character, it’s a sword, a cloak, a dagger, your confessor, your friend, it reveals so much, yet conceals the truth, it is articulate, it’s never decorative, it’s...’
‘Not used as it was intended,’ Anthea chipped in. ‘I’d just like it to make me cool.’
Anthea joined them, taking up her fan and pointing it very delicately at Frannie’s nose.
‘You know a lot about fans, Frannie.’ She laughed, suddenly opening her fan and blinking innocently behind it like a little girl.
Jan smiled, but Frannie did not like to be mocked. ‘One never admits that one needs to be ‘cooled’ my dear, it is an admission that you sweat and women do not sweat.’
Jan sat down beside Frannie. ‘ Don’t stir, Anthea, Frannie knows more about fans than anyone else in all of Spain, you won’t win.’ She turned towards the breeze flowing from the electric fan.
‘That was a nice idea, it keeps the flies away too.’
‘You see, all it takes it a little American ingenuity. You would think everyone would have air conditioning.’
Frannie looked at Anthea and shook her head. ‘Electricity costs more here and what would you have everyone do, live indoors like they do in Texas. I love the warmth of the courtyards, I love it that no one has air-conditioning. The Spanish are more in touch with life than we are.’
Anthea lay back in her chair and crossed her legs. ‘So you say honey, but the fan stays on.’
Frannie turned to Jan to avoid saying more on this subject. ‘ Some wine Jan? It’s a chablis, I’m afraid someone drank the rioja.’
‘Hey, it was in the fridge, I was thirsty. I thought it was cranberry.’
Frannie gave Anthea another ‘look’, but Anthea ignored it. Besides they were still ‘in love’, neither one of them was going to let the other spoil it.
‘My muscles ache,’ Jan declared. ‘I thought I’d feel more accustomed to it by now. We must do hours of bloody taps. Sometimes I feel like a machine gun. The noise in the studio is horrendous. The senora’s voice is like sharp steel, it could shatter glass.’
‘She’s hard,’ Frannie agreed, fixing Jan with a hard stare, ‘ but she’s either going to make you, or cripple you, Jan. She’s the best. People come down from Sevilla to observe her techniques.’
Jan wasn’t so sure, but she did think that perhaps people came down from Sevilla to watch her pupils die.
Frannie reached for the English newspaper lying on the sofa. Jan could see part of a headline:
‘Double Gangland Killing in Lotusland – Wife Disappears’. Anthea followed Jan’s eyes.
‘Now they’re shooting at each other on English golf courses.’ She laughed. ‘Bet that shocked their little asses. Didn’t you tell me England was so dull?’

Jan reached for the paper just as Anthea shifted in her seat and spilled her wine. ‘Oh shit.’ Instinctively she grabbed the newspaper to mop up the wine, only belatedly catching Jan’s expression of annoyance. "Shit, sorry honey, but it’s old, three weeks old. I’ll get you a new paper tomorrow.’
Jan just sighed. ‘It doesn’t matter. Probably a drug deal gone wrong. Happens all the time now.’
Frannie poured Anthea another glass of wine. ‘You’re lucky you can’t read the Spanish papers Jan. The things that go on here. There’s a crimewave. Spain’s got a real problem.’
‘Looks pretty calm to me."
‘Well appearances can be deceptive. A man was murdered last week in the next street.’
Jan found it hard to believe, but made a mental note to keep her eyes open next time she was wandering around. Assuming she ever had the energy to wander anywhere.
Anthea raised her glass and slugged half its contents in one go. ‘ It’s always the same in these little places. Everything looks cute, but when you look close, it’s seething with tension. Don’t read the papers Jan, you’ll feel a whole lot happier.’
‘The town is corrupt,’ Frannie acknowledged. ‘The amount of people I had to pay off to get a permit to do the tiniest things here. Everyone has got their hand out. You have to pay or they’ll stop you. It’s so blatant.’
‘Well I love it here, it looks so peaceful to me.’
Frannie nodded. "I love it too Jan dear, but there is a price for everything.’
Anthea held her wine glass out for more. ‘It’s so tiny. I already walked everywhere. Say Jan did you see the dancing horses yet? I really want to go to Avda to see them. What is it called Frannie?’
‘The Royal Andalucian School of Equestrian Art. The best time to go is when they rehearse. The actual show is on Thursday’s – we could all go.’
Jan wasn’t so sure. ‘I was never one for circuses.’
Frannie passed her a plate of gambas al pil pil. ‘It’s world famous y’know. They have a three-day international eventing thing here every year. People come from all over. The King, everyone. It’s so precise, so elegant.’
Jan shook her head. ‘I’m sure they are cruel to them. Have you seen any happy animals here? People just don’t seem to love their pets.’
Anthea laughed. ‘Don’t even go there honey. It just sickens me. I want to adopt everything and ship them home, poor things. How’s the prawns?’
‘Very garlicky.’
‘We’ve got arroz con pollo to follow,’ Frannie announced.
‘Something with chicken?’ Jan surmised, wishing her Spanish was better.
Frannie got up out of her chair to fetch it. ‘ Rice with chicken, prawn and peas. Marina came by and prepared it,’ Frannie confessed. ‘ We have pescardo con lima rebozadas as well.’
Jan didn’t ask. She was getting used to the Spanish food, but found it quite indigestible half the time, no matter how tasty it was. All that oil.
‘Are you coming to Stephano’s party?’ Anthea asked.
Jan shook her head. ‘I just can’t move.’
Anthea pulled a face. ‘Too bad. It’s going to be good. The Flamenco school from Sevilla is visiting and Leon will also be there. Frannie says you like him.’
Jan sighed. She had seen him dancing the week before and he was gorgeous but arrogant and she’d have enough of arrogant men. ‘I just love the way he moves. He looks so sensitive.’
Anthea smirked. Leon had his pick of the women and Jan, she sensed, would not be the type of women he’d choose. ‘Shame you’ll miss him.’

Frannie returned laden with food. Jan reflected there was enough to feed around six hungry people. Frannie would plough through it all, then leave a morsel on her plate declaring ‘ I just eat like a bird these days.’
‘Did I tell you that Goya painted the street behind us?’ Frannie announced suddenly. ‘There was a whorehouse there.’
Jan shook her head and tried some of the limed fish. ‘Really?
Anthea laughed. "I bet he did more than paint the whores.’
Jan sipped her wine. ‘I suppose the whores were more entertaining. It would make a change from all those aristocratic bores he painted.’
Frannie snatched a look at Jan ‘You know something about Goya?’
‘I studied Spanish culture for one semester. I thought I might want to teach out here.’ Jan shrugged. ‘It was just a whim. One module when I couldn’t make up my mind. Velasquez, was a court sycophant. Goya is more interesting because he rebelled and went into exile and eventually faced up to the truth. He went deaf, he had visions. He painted his nightmares.’
Frannie nibbled on some fish, looking at Jan with more interest than before. ‘You know, I’m kind of in exile too. Of course I choose to be here, but he was in Bordeaux living with the enemy, trying to survive. I kind of know how he must have felt.’
Anthea looked at Frannie with uncertainty, but something in her voice didn’t invite comment.
‘How’s the fish?’ Frannie asked.
‘Excellent,’ Jan acknowledged.
‘You must learn how to do this. I’ll have Marina teach you.’
Jan smiled, it seemed the right thing to do. She didn’t notice Anthea looking at her with sudden loathing.
They fell into silence as they ate. Jan could hear a dog howling somewhere. She would have loved to have gone for a walk after tapas, but she knew she’d collapse back onto her single bed. It was stupid to put herself through this, but she wasn’t going to quit; she was absolutely not ready to quit.

Chapter Three Continued here

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