Crazy in Love (7 page)

“Yeah, I know what you mean. Although those songs about how great somebody else is can get to sound the same, too. How about a theme of a love affair that’s just
getting started, so everybody’s hopeful, but there are
enough complications that the couple has to overcome some
obstacles?”

“That sounds perfect. Then we could make it kind of
fast. Not heavy rock, but something that moves along.”
Saul picked up his guitar and took it out of its canvas case.
“Something like this, maybe.” He plucked out a few chords, using a beat that was zippy, but not
too
zippy.

“I love it. That’s the mood we should look for.” I could
feel myself growing excited. “And it should have some
catchy harmony, too,” -

“Sallie, when we enter this contest, who’s going to
perform the song? I mean, that’s how you enter, right?
There’s a live, onstage competition and not just tapes?”

“That’s right. Why? Do you get stage fright?” I joked.

“Not at all. In fact, I’m a real ham when -it comes to
playing in front of an audience. Just give me one listener,
voluntary or otherwise, and there’s no stopping me.”

“Well, then, maybe we should decide right now who’s
going to perform the song at the competition.”

“I think we both should, don’t you? Especially if we’re
going to build in all that catchy harmony you were just
talking about.”

“Good,” I said, relieved. “I was afraid we might end up
disagreeing on that.”

Saul grew very serious. “Hey, look, Sallie, we’re an
equal partnership, right? We split everything- fifty-fifty,
including both the work and the rewards. That’s the deal as I understood it, and that’s how I intend to do this whole
thing.”

He returned to his fooling around on the guitar.

“Saul,” I began, pulling my guitar out from under the
bed, its official residence, so that I, too, could plunk
around, trying to fall upon a melody, “how did you get started writing songs?”

He shrugged, and without even stopping his distracted
picking at the strings, said, “I don’t really know. I’ve been
into music for as long as I can remember. A lot of the guys in my neighborhood are.” He paused as he concentrated on
a particular chord progression, his head bobbing in time to the beat. “Maybe I always kind of considered it a way out,
too.”

“A way out of what?”

“The whole thing of living in Brooklyn in a neighbor
hood that is about as far away from this neighborhood”—he
glanced around my room—”as you can get. This guy, Juan,
who’s my best friend, has an older brother who just went on tour as a backup musician for Yes. And then this other guy I
know, Luis, has a job as a studio musician. He’s a
drummer.” He stopped talking for a minute, then ^started
playing “Here Comes the Sun” again.

“At least he
was
a drummer. He got cut up pretty bad in a
fight last weekend. His hand is all bandaged up now. I don’t
know how long it’ll be before he can go back to work
again.”

“What happened?” I tried not to look too shocked.
Fortunately Saul’s eyes were on his fingers as they darted from fret to fret, from string to string, and not on old Sallie
Spooner’s round, staring eyes.

“Nothing, really. He was just hanging out with some of
his friends last Saturday night, drinking beer and smoking a couple of joints, around the corner from where I live. Some
guys came by, and the next thing you know, Luis ends up
with a sliver of glass from a broken bottle in the palm of his
right hand.”

“But who
were
they?” I couldn’t get over how matter-of-
fact Saul sounded about the whole thing.

“I don’t know. Just some guys.”

“Guys they knew, you mean, or strangers?”

At that point he turned his full attention toward me.
“Sallie, surely you’ve been on the subways. Surely you’ve
read the papers. I expect that you know there is more to the
world than the Upper East Side of Manhattan, with its poodles and limousines and ladies in fur coats.” He didn’t sound nasty at all; he just sounded surprised that I was
asking so many questions and acting so appalled.

“It must be a rough neighborhood,” was all I could think
of to say.

“Yeah, but I don’t expect to stay there forever. Which
brings us back to your original question of how I got started
writing songs.”

“But surely there’s more to it than that! It’s not just a way
to get you away from Brooklyn, is it?”

“No, of course not. I love music, and I happen to be
lucky enough to be pretty good at it. I can hardly think of a
time when there wasn’t a radio playing somewhere in the
background. Music’s been a part of my life for as long as I
can remember. All kinds, too: rock, jazz, salsa
...”

I started getting restless. “Saul, are you always so
serious?” I asked in a teasing voice.

“About music, I am,” he answered earnestly. “But there
are other times ...” He grabbed my foot and pulled it up
into the air, then started making noises like a monkey. I
immediately convulsed with giggles.

“Stop! Stop!” I screeched between my hyena-like
screams. “I was only kidding!”

With a fake Spanish accent. Saul cried, “I weel show you
no mercy until you agree to marry my seester!”

When I couldn’t breathe anymore and I was just about
ready to faint from laughing so hard, he finally let go of my
foot.

“You’re a nut!” I told him, still laughing.

“That’s nothing. You haven’t seen my Al Pacino imita
tion yet.”

“Saul, tell me something. I probably sound ridiculously
sheltered and naive, but you’ve got to understand
...”

“That you
are
sheltered and naive. What do you want to
ask me?”

I lowered my voice and narrowed my eyes into tiny slits.
“Do you carry a knife to school?”

“Why, do you think all Puerto Ricans have knives in their
pointed black shoes?”

“I didn’t mean ...” My voice faltered.

“Hey, look, I was only kidding,” Saul said quickly.
“You know, I don’t mind making jokes about being Puerto
Rican. There is such a thing as taking yourself too seriously,
you know. I think everybody should be able to fool around
about themselves and their background. I mean, I could
very easily make jokes about your orange hair, right?”

I gripped a strand of hair self-consciously and wrapped it
around my finger.

“Just as long as it’s all meant in fun, and not malicious
ly,” he went on. “I know what people think about Puerto
Ricans in this day and age. Especially people who live in
New York. There are stereotypes about them, just as there
are about every other ethnic group, not to mention any other
kind of group you can think of, All I have to do is say ‘Save the whale,’ and immediately a certain type of person comes
to mind, right? Well, it’s the same thing. Everybody has
preconceived notions about everything, especially other
people. Some are based on fact, and some on fantasy.
What’s important is keeping an open mind.”

“I can tell you’ve given this a lot of thought,” I ventured,
still unsure of how to react.

“Yup, the old boy is thinking all the time. But seriously,
Sallie, you can ask me anything want to know.”

“Okay.”

“And I would hope that I could feel free to do the same.”

“It’s only fair.”

Saul leaned forward and said, in a soft, conspiratorial
voice, “So, tell me, where’s the bathroom in this joint?”

After that, the ice between Saul and me was completely
broken. It was amazing how comfortable I felt with him,
and how quickly. Besides, we had so much in common.
Despite our noble intentions, we ended up talking away the
rest of the afternoon. We talked about different rock groups;
we talked about writing songs; we listened to a few of my
new record albums. The chemistry was definitely there.

The only negative was that we never did get started on a
song. I guess the inspiration simply wasn’t there. We agreed
to stick to our original plan of an upbeat love song, but
neither of us seemed to have any ideas.

“It’ll come,” Saul assured me.

When there was a knock at the door, I called “Come in!”
I turned to look over in that direction, and as I did, I got a
glimpse of the clock on my dresser. Five o’clock!
I
couldn’t
believe it was so late; the afternoon had flown right by.
Again. A weird trend seemed to be emerging: Whenever I
was with Saul, I lost all track of time. Did this mean
something?

It was Jenny who was standing in the doorway. “Hi,
Sallie. Hi, Saul. How’s it going?”

Saul and I glanced at each other.

“We’re getting there,” he assured her, winking at me.

“Do I get a preview?”

“Not yet,” I said. “Not until it’s perfect.”

“Well, just as long as I’m the very first person who gets
to hear your creation. Mom wants to know if Saul’s staying
for dinner.”

I looked over at him, but he was shaking his head and
putting his guitar back into its case.

“Thanks a lot, but I’m afraid I can’t. I have to get
going.”

“Maybe some other time?” I said hastily.

“Yeah, that’d be great.”

“Okay. I’ll tell Mom.” Jenny ran off.

As Saul got his stuff together to leave, I started feeling all
shy and weak-kneed again. “So when can we get together
again? I mean, to work on this song.”

“I guess we didn’t get very far today, did we?” Saul grinned at me, and I knew I was going to have another night
full of dreams about that beautiful, honest face. “When do
you want to get together?”

Anytime. I was tempted to say, “Take me—I’m yours.”
But instead, I cleared my throat and said, “How about
Tuesday night?”

“That sounds fine. Only next time,
we work!”

“Okay,” I agreed, smiling. “Why don’t you come over
around seven-thirty?”

“Right. See you then. And if you come up with anything
inspired, be sure to write it down. We’ve still got a lot to get
done on this prize-winning song that’s going to guarantee us
both a Grammy Award!”

On the way out Saul had to pass through the living room, where my parents had discreetly placed themselves. He met them both, and I got the impression that they approved.
Jenny, too, continued hanging around him as if he were
some movie star or something.

When he had gone, I started back to my bedroom. I could
hear Jenny saying to my parents, in a voice that was
intentionally loud enough for me to hear, “Well, I don’t
know if Sallie is falling in love with Saul Rodriguez, but I
can assure you that
I
am!”

I was glad I was safely inside my bedroom by then, so
that no one could see me blush.

Because Rachel and I are best friends—as well as soul
mates, blood sisters, and spiritual twins—I usually tell her
everything I do, think, say, and feel. Even though we see
each other at least once a day in school, we generally end up spending an hour or so on the phone together every night.
Sometimes it seems that the best part about having
something exciting happen to me is telling Rachel about it later on. When I found out that I was going to win the Most
Musical Award at the end of my sophomore year, when
Mike Ferguson, an old crush from a million years ago, asked me to the junior prom, when I finally got permission from my mom to get my ears pierced, my thoughts were
always the same: “I can’t wait to tell Rachel!”

For some reason this was not the case with one Saul
Rodriguez. It’s not that I was hiding anything from her; it’s just that there was something so sacred,
so fragile,
about
having discovered Saul so unexpectedly in the middle of
Sharon Burke’s duller-than-dull party that I was afraid to
talk about it. Even to Rachel. It was like betraying a confidence, in some strange way.

Ordinarily I would have felt guilty about holding out on
Rachel, especially about something as important as budding
love. But as it turned out, the next few days were pretty busy ones for both of us, and the only conversations we had were hasty and superficial.

“How was Sharon’s party?” she called to me on Monday
morning as I was running to music theory and she was
trekking over to the language lab.

“It was okay.”

“Good. I’ll call you later.”

But she never did, because of some last-minute quiz that
was scheduled for Tuesday. I was relieved, in a way, that things were ending up that way. I preferred to be left on my
own, to daydream, to plan, and to moon over this new
stranger who had wandered into my life from Brooklyn, of
all places.