Temple of My Familiar Read Online Free PDF Page A

reverence.
    How do you tell someone you love that you are in love with her mother, as well? It was probably illegal, moreover. Arveyda thought and thought about the problem; his music, so mellow and rocking, became tortured and shrill. Sometimes in rehearsal and even in performance he played his guitar in a trance.
    Arveyda’s music was so beautiful no one minded how long he played. There he stood, his slim legs in soft jeans, his brown suede feathered boots glowing in the strobe lights, a sliver of his narrow chest revealed; his face, the face of a deeply spiritual person, intense behind guitar or flute. It was not without cause that he was rich and famous: Arveyda and his music were medicine, and, seeing or hearing him, people knew it. They flocked to him as once they might have to priests. He did not disappoint them. Each time he played, he did so with his heart and soul. Always, though he might be very tired, he played earnestly and prayerfully. Even if the music was about fucking—and because he loved fucking, a lot of it was—it was about the fucking the universe does through us as it joyfully fucks itself. Audiences felt this so much that there was a joke about how many Arveyda babies were conceived on full-moon concert nights.
    He played for his dead mother and for the father he’d hardly known; the longing for both came out of the guitar as wails and sobs. There was a blue range in his music that he played when he was missing them. Carlotta was yellow. The young, hopeful immigrant color, the color of balance, the color of autumn leaves, half the planet’s flowers, the color of endurance and optimism. Green was his own color, soothing green, the best color for the eyes and the heart. And Zedé—Zedé’s color was peach or pink or coral. The womb colors, the woman colors. When he played for her he closed his eyes and stroked and entered her body, which he imagined translucent as a shell. He remembered making love to her and imagined himself the light within the translucent pink shell. He often wept while he played.
    Carlotta could not believe the beauty of the new music, discordant as it sometimes was, and wailing. She would sit in the audience watching him play and, though she lived with him, it was as if he were a stranger, far from her, far from anyone. If she had managed to drag Zedé to a performance, she would turn to her in her excitement over a new riff. But Zedé inevitably held her head down. Carlotta could never recall later how she first became aware.
    For months Arveyda and Zedé barely saw each other. This, Carlotta knew. Arveyda was traveling; often Carlotta went with him. Zedé remained in her house and cared for the children. Every night while they were away, Carlotta called to check on them. Was Cedrico eating? Was Angelita wetting the bed? Were she and Arveyda missed? Zedé answered her questions with energy and enthusiasm. Yes, Cedrico missed them, but he was “un niño muy grande.” Sure, Angelita wet the bed, but there was luck in this (some superstition from the old country, Carlotta assumed, and Zedé never explained), and they were both eating like crazy. And so on. After a rundown of her own activities in whatever town they were staying, and after Zedé had mentioned any small news she had, there was an awkward silence.
    “Don’t you want to know about Arveyda?” Carlotta would have to ask.
    “Oh, yes, very much,” her mother would say. But then Carlotta had the distinct impression that her mother was not listening. She could not know that every word about Arveyda was a dagger.
    Each night she reported to Arveyda about the children. He never asked a word about Zedé. “Don’t you want to know about my mother?” she’d once said angrily, scorning his indifference to the sacrifice her mother made in keeping the children.
    “Sure I do, sure I do,” he’d mumbled absently and then looked distractedly and moodily at the door.
    At first she thought it was hatred. But how could