Jack hated this night of the year.
Every year, year in and year out for the past fifteen of them, it was always the same.
“Play me song, Chaaaack,” Fiona whispered in his ear.
Fiona.
The cause of Jack’s misery. The reason for his distress. The bane of his existence, year in and year out for the last fifteen years.
Silently and with a wave of nausea, Jack picked up the old guitar from the Technicolor tablecloth. His stomach acid at the back of his throat, he placed his slender, weary fingers around the guitar’s neck, finding the frets.
“Play song, make me love you,” she cooed, her gravelly voice grinding in his ear, her explosion of orange hair scratching his cheek as she lay her head on his shoulder. “Play me dat song . . .”
Dat song.
The song that no matter how sweet the melody, Jack now loathed. The tune that would spontaneously afflict his fingers with arthritis at the mere thought of strumming it. The song that, fifteen years earlier, as a young GI wandering the streets of a poor Spanish town for tail or ass or at least a beej, Jack played in a back-alley bar after his buddy knocked out the maestro with a jug of port.
The Flamdamadango.
Dat song.
“Chaaaaack,” Fiona whispered insistently, nudging her cheek into his neck, sucking in smoke from her foot-long Bakelite cigarette holder and blowing it in his face.
That stupid, easy-to-learn-because-it’s-really-only-four-chords-repeated, song. The song that, fifteen years earlier, had danced into the heart of Fiona, the then fourteen-year-old daughter of Don Pablo, the head of the local muscle.
Fifteen years ago he played that song in the very bar he sat at now, which had closed some years back but was purchased by Don Pablo as a keepsake for his precious daughter. Fifteen years ago he played the Flamdamadango and then seven months later, on the cusp of his twenty-ninth birthday, Fiona’s dress tight around the bump of her then almost fifteen-year-old stomach, with Don Pablo and his larger and hairier friends behind, beside and all around Jack, he got married there as well.
“Chaaaaaaaaack . . .” Her whiny voice squealed like microphone feedback.
Jack hated this night of the year.
Every year, year in and year out, it was always the same. Jack would throw on the old blue suede suit he had borrowed from his port-jug-swinging friend fifteen years earlier. And as he looked in the bathroom mirror while getting dressed, he would vacillate between either hanging himself with his tie or drowning himself in the toilet.
And then, with his hair still wet and the skin around his collar still red and irritated, he would stagger into the bar, pick up that old guitar and serenade Fiona with his four-chords-repeated ballad. He would play, she would smoke, and Don Pablo would sit at the bar, smiling as he watched, his larger and hairier friends beside him and stationed at the front and rear exits.
“Plaaaaaay,” Fiona whispered. “Play me for . . .”
Jack hit the first note.
The Flamdamadango.
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