To Selena, With Love (26 page)

After Selena had opened the boutique in Corpus Christi, she decided that it would make sense to have a second salon and shop in San Antonio, the other city where we spent most of our time, and where she had another great fan base. In addition, my sister and other friends of ours would be able to staff the San Antonio boutique.

About eight months after we opened the Corpus boutique, Selena opened the second one on Broadway in San Antonio—coincidentally, about a block and a half from the apartment where I had lived with my dad while Selena and I were dating. Because we were already so busy, this venture was more businesslike than a labor of love; we hired people to complete the work we needed done inside and out, rather than trying to take that on ourselves.

At the same time that Selena’s boutiques began gaining traction, her career as an entertainer was moving at an even faster clip. She was busier than ever in 1994. Now her obligations included making music videos—the new industry standard—as well as recording vocals.

For instance, the music video for “La Llamada,” one of Selena’s biggest hits from the
Selena Live!
album, was shot on the rooftop of a beach house in Malibu, California, which meant that we all had to fly out there for two days.

Many of the scenes in that video are of Selena singing with a crowd of people dancing around her, as if she’s at a big party; shooting them was fairly uneventful. We just had to spend a day playing through the songs over and over again, and then Los Dinos got to leave. Selena, however, had to stay for several more hours, because they were also shooting her singing the song against a blue curtain.

At one point, I went back up to the roof to see how she was
doing. I was worried because the sun was going down. The darker it got, the colder and windier it got, and Selena was wearing only a slim-fitting black dress that couldn’t be very warm.

I found her with a blanket around her shoulders between shots. Still, Selena’s teeth were starting to chatter and she was shivering. I put my arms around her, rubbing her shoulders to try to warm her up a little.

“How are you doing?” I asked.

“I’m freezing,” she said.

“Yeah, I can tell. I don’t think we have any jackets.”

“I know,” she said miserably.

“Want me to stay up here with you?”

“No, no, I’m almost done,” she said.

“Let me get you some coffee at least,” I said, and went off to find one of the assistants.

They started shooting the video again as I made my way down from the roof. When I turned to watch, I saw that the blanket had come off Selena’s shoulders and, as she sang her heart out, she looked totally happy and warm. Selena was a natural actress who was professional enough to slip into a new mood as easily as most people put on a new outfit.

Having so many obligations like that pulling at her made Selena start depending even more on Yolanda Saldivar. Yolanda had done nothing to cause us to mistrust her at this point. In fact, in her unpaid position as Selena’s San Antonio fan club president, Yolanda had worked hard to impress everyone in the family with her work ethic and commitment to Selena and the Quintanilla family.

Yolanda had even moved to Corpus Christi in 1993 and rented an apartment with a roommate in order to live closer to the
Quintanillas; little did we know that her roommate had moved out within a few months as Yolanda proceeded to turn the apartment into a shrine to Selena. All I saw was that Yolanda had become a close friend to both Suzette and Selena. She had also become Selena’s personal assistant, doing everything from helping her out with costume changes backstage to running interference between Selena and overzealous fans.

The more trustworthy Yolanda seemed, the more trusting we all were with her. It was only natural, then, for Selena to offer Yolanda an official, paid position as a manager who would oversee both the clothing boutique in Corpus and the store in San Antonio. The stores had local managers on-site—in fact, my sister, Tricia, was managing the San Antonio boutique—“… but, if I can’t be there to do something, I’ll feel better knowing that Yolanda will take care of it,” Selena told me.

I agreed with her decision. Selena was trying to juggle too much in her life and Yolanda had proven her loyalty. Abraham, too, thought the idea made sense; he was relieved to have any amount of stress lifted off his daughter’s shoulders. Yolanda was put on salary, and Selena gave her a credit card and a cell phone she could use for business purposes. The more support Selena got for her new venture, the better, I thought. I was already out of my depth with the business and I just wanted my wife to be happy.

Everything went smoothly at first. If something needed to be done at one of the boutiques, Yolanda would either handle it or call us while we were on the road. Or, if Selena was in Corpus, Yolanda would help with her calendar. She seemed to diminish the intense pressure that Selena had been feeling since opening the boutiques, and for that we were all grateful.

As the months went by, Selena increasingly relied on Yolanda for assistance, especially once she started thinking seriously about opening up a third boutique where most of her fan base was, in Monterrey, Mexico. We didn’t know anything about managing a business. Yolanda didn’t either, but she acted like she knew, and we started leaning on her more and more. We were eager to be independent of Abraham, and besides, Yolanda had personal connections in Monterrey and was always willing to drive down there with Selena to explore business prospects.

I didn’t really see Yolanda much. If I happened to drop Selena off at the boutique in Corpus for her to get her hair and nails done, I’d chat with Yolanda for a few minutes. That was pretty much the extent of my interactions with her, other than occasional lunches with Yolanda and Selena, where they would talk about business or people they knew and I’d crack a joke here and there.

I never saw Yolanda as a threat. She was like all of those girls in high school I used to feel sorry for because they seemed to have no lives of their own. There was no reason to ever suspect that she was dangerous. In a weird way, I think that all of us were probably even more accepting of her than we might have been if Yolanda had been another kind of woman—pretty or ambitious or clever—because we were so determined to judge her not by her looks or talents, but by where her heart was.

I will regret every day I live that I was so blind. In my defense, I was young. I was in love. I had friends and a wife I adored. I was making music in a band that was increasingly successful and I was making plenty of money. The way I saw things, Selena and I had a bright future ahead of us. My main concern was that Selena was as happy as I was, and that seemed to be true.

There was just one small thing that, looking back on it, probably should have been a red flag. It happened at one of our annual band parties.

Soon after I became involved with Selena, Yolanda started arranging annual parties for the band members, their families, and close friends every year. Selena and I loved those parties. We thought it was cool to hang out in a restaurant or some other regular place with everybody together; ironically, because our band was always working, it was difficult for us to find much time to socialize together.

Gradually, as the years passed, however, I started to sense a growing distance and even a weird vibe between Yolanda and some of the other people at the parties. I didn’t know it at the time, but Yolanda had started taking her role as Selena’s personal assistant to the next level; people who wanted to reach Selena would increasingly have to get around Yolanda first. Suzette would stand up for Yolanda if anyone complained about her, though, and Selena herself would say, “Send them to Yolanda,” if someone wanted to see her and Selena was too busy, which was often the case.

Anyway, at one of these band parties, the restaurant bathroom was vandalized, and Selena heard from Yolanda that I had been involved in it with some other guys.

Remembering the way I had gotten drunk and trashed that hotel room the year before our marriage no doubt made Selena even more suspicious. “Did you trash that bathroom, Chris?” she asked. “Yolanda says you did.”

“No,” I said. “You know I couldn’t have done that. Selena, you know where I was. We were together the whole time.”

“Oh. Okay,” Selena said, and we moved on to talk about something else.

The conversation didn’t really register with me at the time. Because of the band’s success, Selena and I were always swatting away silly rumors. Maybe that’s why I didn’t see this conversation for what it really was: a warning sign that Yolanda was trying to come between Selena and me, the same way that she was trying to make sure that Selena didn’t get too close to anyone else.

Despite Yolanda’s attempts to make trouble between us and the increased pressure that came with being more successful, Selena and I were more in love than ever. We worked as a team whether we were taking care of our dogs or our house. In everything we did, I tried to follow the advice a friend gave me before I got married.

“I don’t think a relationship can ever work if each person gives just fifty percent,” he had said.

“Why not?” I asked, puzzled. “That sounds fair to me.”

He shook his head. “No, the real way to think about marriage is that you have to each give one hundred percent.”

Selena and I both gave one hundred percent to each other. We never kept score the way some couples we knew did, with a “you did that, so I’m going to do this,” kind of tally. We had no pet peeves with each other. We were best friends.

For instance, in the same way that Selena had always dreamed about opening her own fashion boutiques, she knew that my goal since high school had been to become a songwriter who produced music on my own. Even though Selena had been adamant about me staying with Los Dinos so that I could be on the road with her, she did everything she could to support me in reaching this goal.

By the time Selena opened her boutiques, Abraham had started to manage different bands through Q Productions. When he found a rock band in Corpus that he wanted to take on, he asked if I’d like to write some songs for them. The idea didn’t sound appealing to me—if I’d wanted to form a rock band or even write music for one, it wouldn’t have been with these particular musicians. But I decided to do it because I wanted to help Abraham, and maybe I would learn something in the process.

One day, the singer of this band came over to work on a song I’d written, with lyrics by Ricky. Selena was there, wearing one of the bandannas she always used to tie up her hair when she was dusting and vacuuming at home. She cleaned the house while this singer and I worked for hours on a song in our home studio. I had no idea that Selena was actively listening as I kept trying to teach the guy to do the song a certain way, putting emphasis here or there on the lyrics and hitting certain notes. But he just couldn’t get it; he never really understood what I meant. Finally, frustrated, I told him we were through for the day.

“Let’s just pick this up tomorrow,” I said.

The second I had walked him out the door, Selena was standing right beside me. “Babe, how did you not lose your mind with that guy, going over and over that song?” she asked.

I laughed. “Not every singer is as good as you are,” I said. “I wish they were. But your dad really wants me to do this.”

“I can sing it,” she said. “Let me sing it for you.”

I thought she was joking. “Why would you want to do that?”

“I know what you want,” she said. “I was listening to you this whole time.”

“The whole time?” I asked in disbelief.

“Yes, the whole time. And I want to sing that song. I like what you wrote,” she said. “Please can I sing it?”

I felt awkward, truthfully. Here was the superstar Selena, who just happened to be my wife, and she wanted to sing my demo! On the other hand, I couldn’t resist hearing what she could do with my song.

“You know what?” I said. “Let’s go.”

We both put on headphones and I turned my back as I started up the machines on the mixing board. As soon as the music started, she said, “Okay, I’m going to sing it,” and she did.