He tried to not laugh at her remark, taking the time to chew, swallow and then sip his wine before trying to clarify for her. He was used to explaining things, though usually in painful detail and to someone much younger. He didn't want to sound at all patronizing while speaking to Addy. "They are Hispanic. Hispanic is a very broad term. This," he held up the tortilla on his plate. "Is a Mexican tortilla. Still Hispanic because Hispania is another way to call the Iberian peninsula and Spain once ruled that and conquered Mexico, parts of South America...much of the world was Hispanic at a time." That said, he ate the tortilla, chewing thoughtfully as he tried to remember the Italian version of the Spanish tortilla. "I think you maybe call tortillas frittata?"
Adrián pushed his plate aside for the time being, though he was by no means finished eating, but he wanted to talk and with in front of him he would keep stopping to pick at it. "My day was...eventful?" He was being a bit evasive because he never really had explained to her why he was in New York. He spoke often about his career as a performer, never as that as a medium. Too, there was the issue of confidentiality involved here. He was working with an authoritative body and they didn't like it advertised that they took the word of a 'mumbo jumbo guy' seriously. "Sometimes I am still surprised at the things human beings will do to each other."
"Oooh." She turned a bit pink when he told her that. "Oh. Don't I feel silly. I knew about the whole Spain taking over the world thing. Though I'll point out, you nor the Romans ever got the Irish. We're too crazy. However the British did, and that's a completely different subject."
Addy sipped at her wine and started picking at the vegetables. She was starting to get full and so leisurely ate the rest. "There's a saying in English that I think aptly fits. Hurt people hurt people. Not that I am making excuses. We're a flawed group. But it doesn't mean everything is bad. It can be grim and it can hurt, but there's always more out there. And this is coming from a so called cynic." She grinned. Truth was Addy was a hidden optimist. She just hid it really well. The world could be beautiful if one saw it that way. Sure, she kept herself guarded, but that didn't mean she was jaded or didn't live.
He shrugged a bit at her misunderstanding. It wasn't unusual for people to think the umbrella term of 'Hispanic' referred to a singular cultural experience when it was, in fact, made up of many different cultures. "It is the weather." He joked about the reason for not wanting the Emerald Isle.
And while he agreed with her assessment that misery loved company, so to speak, he also knew of things that simply were evil. The seemingly soulless. Those that hurt because they could and for no other reason. There were always exceptions, the true monsters that walked amongst the innocent. He wasn't willing to enlighten her to that however, not only because they were having a pleasant dinner but because he felt a need to protect her from specific truths. If she was already a cynic and someone who didn't believe in romance and love, he didn't want to be responsible for giving her more reasons to harden her heart. "You are right, of course, nena."
"I've actually never been to Ireland. France, several times, but my mother didn't have a reason and while I'm curious, I've always followed her lead. It's not like it isn't blatantly obvious which ethnic group I belong in." She grinned and picked up some of her hair to exaggerate the point.
Addy only knew about the physical world around her. She was a good Catholic, and tried to keep an open outlook, but there was a lot she was guarded from. He was just like a typical man, telling her she was right. Which made her smirk a bit.
"Particularly troubling day?" She asked returning to the conversation at hand with a bit of a leveled attitude.
He reached over and brushed his fingertips over the dusting of freckles on her face as well. They certainly weren't solely an Irish trait, there were plenty of fair complexioned Spaniards around, for example, covered in freckles, but they went along with the point she was making anyhow. "Si. You look very typical Irish."
Whereas he looked a little atypical for the Spanish Romani. His hair was dark brown and not black belying the fact that one side of his parentage wasn't wholly of one ethnic group. He never made excuses or offered explanations for this. It didn't matter. He was as gitano as they came and proud of it. It wasn't just in his blood, it was how he lived his life. What he believed in and the way he felt.
With a nod and a momentary resting of his hand on the side of her neck, her shoulder, he looked at the table, gaze a bit troubled though he didn't go into gross detail. "You are not the only one looking for things more uplifting tonight." Because if he had to be left alone with the thoughts in his head tonight, with the words that had been whispered to him as he stood for hours in a dark, damp cellar in a very bad part of town, he'd want to crawl out of his skin. "Days like today...they make me want very much to be home."
"I didn't get any French in me. Though I do love how beautifully depressing they can be. Maybe some of my passion can be attributed to it, but I'm a bit more impulsive, crazy, and not at all elegant. My mother so wished for me to be good in art. She is proud of me, don't get me wrong, but my Grandpapa is an artist and so is his son and so is his grandson. Black sheep of the family is a scientist." She shrugged, proud at that. It was usually the opposite in most families.
When his hand touched her neck and shoulder, Addy put her hand on his and took it. Placing his palm up, she kissed the inside of his hand lightly. "Well you have me, your roja nena, si?" Her eyes looked up at his, hoping her speaking Spanish would make him smile. Addy didn't like seeing him like this. "And you'll get to dance tonight. Which means I'll be stepping on your toes a lot. Won't that be fun, mm?"
He kept his comments about the French being crazy to himself. He certainly didn't always find his nearby neighbors to be elegant. More arrogant, perhaps. Still, no need to offer insults to someone he called friend and infrequent lover.
As she spoke the mangled Spanish, he did smile and didn't bother to correct her. "Si, claro. It will be a little like dancing with Olalla." His daughter. So small, she would sometimes stand on his feet as he held her hands over her head, moving in simple steps to teach her the rhythm, the motion. One day, he hoped, she would dance as her mother did. "It will mean the people below us will wonder what you do up here." His was a dance of foot stomping, toe tapping and heel stamping. Jumping and intensity. Not exactly the sort of dance meant for apartment dwellings. A tango would be more appropriate and that was what he intended to do with her, maybe some improvised variations, after perhaps demonstrating a bit of a buleria for her. "I think, like her, you should dance with your feet bare to spare my boots."
She still held the French in high regard, always something she'll never be. It was one of the reasons why she never went looking for her family. She was friendly enough with her mother's side, but always felt like the odd one out. A part of the man who left Jeanette. But she wasn't exactly Irish either, never having met anyone on her father's side. It was like not having a home.
Plaything lightly at that, she nodded. "At least it'll give me some height. I'm sure you used to model like dancers. I'm a foot shorter and probably a lot more clumsy." Adelayde said finishing her wine and sitting back comfortably.
"You know, if you're ever feeling lonely, you can come over. It doesn't have to be as extravagant as tonight. We can watch a movie or go for a walk or just ride the subway. I should take you to Montauk some night. Or up on my roof. I'm generally home by seven or seven thirty." She said, offering him some company if he'd like.
It was true she wasn't built like a dancer, at least not the tall, lean-muscled sort he usually held as a partner, but that was only the physical. While it might make technical aspects of dancing professionally difficult, Adrián was of the belief that with enough heart anyone could dance and dance well. "My favorite dance partner is about this tall." He held his hand up indicating a child's height. His daughter's rather tall stature for one so young. Olalla was all legs and would likely be very tall. "She is clumsy also. And very sweet. Beautiful. Makes me happy." At that, he was speaking about Addy just as much as he was his own child.
Her offer was a kind one and even if it wasn't loneliness that he felt and more a desire to not be left alone with the dead, it was one he was grateful for. "Maybe you will start being tired of my face after a time."
She watched him talk about his daughter and smiled genuinely. Half of her wondered if her father ever spoke of her like that, but that thought was a bit too painful. She'd rather think of Adrián and Olalla. She could see how much he loved her by the way he talked about her. "I'll try my best to fill those shoes." Addy replied softly.
Though his next words had her shaking her head. "Never. We're friends. You'll have me for as long as you want me."
Sometimes he wondered if he loved his daughter so fiercely because she was what he had left of his wife or if it was just that paternal pull all on its own. There was no denying that he'd fallen wholly in love with the child the first time he held her, loved the concept of her before she was even born--the life force he'd felt tickling his mind at times during those months his wife had been pregnant were one of the very few times he didn't despise his abilities--but how much closer did he keep her, how much dearer did he hold her once her mother was gone from them? He understood painful thoughts and bittersweet pondering all too well.
"Siempre." Always. Reaching into his pants pocket, he pulled out the slender iPod of his and handed it to her. They could continue eating of course, but he thought he'd offer up the music as well. It was filled with everything from his own guitar playing (pieces he was tweaking and refining and therefore listening to often), classical flamenco, modern fusions with pop, rock, oldies, and things in between. He might make his living with one genre of music but he certainly enjoyed an eclectic variety. "You really are very talented in the kitchen," and he was picking at his food again, not caring that the pasta had gone cold.
Addy only understand the one side of a child/ parent relationship. She wasn't even sure if she wanted to be a mother. It'd be nice. But she'd resolved herself on being alone. And she'd never want her past to be repeated on her child. It was best not to think about those 'what if's. No matter how often Addy lived in the future.
She took his iPod and began scrolling. At his words, she paused. Her lips curled into a bashful smile before continuing to browse his music collection. Addy understood eclectic tastes. Her own ranged from obscure Indie to classical to pop and electronic to her own cello recordings, mostly a group recording. "Thanks. I used to do a lot of cooking with my mom as a kid. And I took that class on Italian cuisine. That was fun. My favorite was the tiramisu."
"Y you made a rice...thing instead." He couldn't think of the word for pudding in English and went with the favorite generic term as a cop-out. Someone just might have an over-fondness for tiramisu and his name might be Adrián Montoya. "Por que?"
After taking another bite or two from his plate, he put the fork down again and as he chewed on the food he mulled over what to say next. It was easier, in a way, to have the excuse of eating to spin words from one language to the next before having to spit them out. It let him come across a little more comfortable with English than he truly was. "Mi abuelita, she used to teach me how things are in the kitchen. Then she decided I am more trouble than help." He smirked and then, sotto voce, made a small confession. "I am a bit of a thief around food. Take this, eat that, test taste the other thing. She would yell at me a lot." He waited a beat. "My mother still yells at me a lot for this. Sometimes she hits me." And another pause. "My wife, she always laughed instead. Cooking with her was more fun."
"Rice pudding takes a half hour to make. If you want good tiramisu, it takes all day, soaking the lady fingers. You don't have to eat the pudding if you don't want to." She explained. Addy also had a love for the dessert. She'd stopped having birthday cake when she was sixteen and has had birthday tiramisu ever since.
"So that's why you stole the tomato." Addy laughed lightly. "I'm a taste tester myself. How are you supposed to know what's good if you don't taste it. But I'm probably very much a novice compared to your mother. I like cooking for the fun of it as well."
It wasn't that his mother and grandmother didn't taste what they cooked, as they cooked it, it was more that a certain lanky dancer would take spoons and forks out of their hands, elbow them away from pots and dishes, and generally make a nuisance of himself in the kitchen. He did it for the attention and he did it because they'd let him get away with a great deal of it before the fussing started. He also did it because riling up the women was a permissible reason for the man to be in the kitchen and not the truth of it being that he actually like to cook. "Perhaps my dessert will be something a little more...Americano." He was also a complete imp at times, the look he was giving her plainly said he was thinking about later plans for the evening that included her.
That had her turning red and a big smirk plastered across her face. It certainly caused a few memories to come to the forefront of her mind. Her nose crinkled a bit. "You shall never change, Adrián, and I definitely wouldn't want you to." She said as she got up and started putting the food away. She didn't answer him, but she certainly implied what he wanted.
Adrián pushed his plate aside for the time being, though he was by no means finished eating, but he wanted to talk and with in front of him he would keep stopping to pick at it. "My day was...eventful?" He was being a bit evasive because he never really had explained to her why he was in New York. He spoke often about his career as a performer, never as that as a medium. Too, there was the issue of confidentiality involved here. He was working with an authoritative body and they didn't like it advertised that they took the word of a 'mumbo jumbo guy' seriously. "Sometimes I am still surprised at the things human beings will do to each other."
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Addy sipped at her wine and started picking at the vegetables. She was starting to get full and so leisurely ate the rest. "There's a saying in English that I think aptly fits. Hurt people hurt people. Not that I am making excuses. We're a flawed group. But it doesn't mean everything is bad. It can be grim and it can hurt, but there's always more out there. And this is coming from a so called cynic." She grinned. Truth was Addy was a hidden optimist. She just hid it really well. The world could be beautiful if one saw it that way. Sure, she kept herself guarded, but that didn't mean she was jaded or didn't live.
Reply
And while he agreed with her assessment that misery loved company, so to speak, he also knew of things that simply were evil. The seemingly soulless. Those that hurt because they could and for no other reason. There were always exceptions, the true monsters that walked amongst the innocent. He wasn't willing to enlighten her to that however, not only because they were having a pleasant dinner but because he felt a need to protect her from specific truths. If she was already a cynic and someone who didn't believe in romance and love, he didn't want to be responsible for giving her more reasons to harden her heart. "You are right, of course, nena."
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Addy only knew about the physical world around her. She was a good Catholic, and tried to keep an open outlook, but there was a lot she was guarded from. He was just like a typical man, telling her she was right. Which made her smirk a bit.
"Particularly troubling day?" She asked returning to the conversation at hand with a bit of a leveled attitude.
Reply
Whereas he looked a little atypical for the Spanish Romani. His hair was dark brown and not black belying the fact that one side of his parentage wasn't wholly of one ethnic group. He never made excuses or offered explanations for this. It didn't matter. He was as gitano as they came and proud of it. It wasn't just in his blood, it was how he lived his life. What he believed in and the way he felt.
With a nod and a momentary resting of his hand on the side of her neck, her shoulder, he looked at the table, gaze a bit troubled though he didn't go into gross detail. "You are not the only one looking for things more uplifting tonight." Because if he had to be left alone with the thoughts in his head tonight, with the words that had been whispered to him as he stood for hours in a dark, damp cellar in a very bad part of town, he'd want to crawl out of his skin. "Days like today...they make me want very much to be home."
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When his hand touched her neck and shoulder, Addy put her hand on his and took it. Placing his palm up, she kissed the inside of his hand lightly. "Well you have me, your roja nena, si?" Her eyes looked up at his, hoping her speaking Spanish would make him smile. Addy didn't like seeing him like this. "And you'll get to dance tonight. Which means I'll be stepping on your toes a lot. Won't that be fun, mm?"
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As she spoke the mangled Spanish, he did smile and didn't bother to correct her. "Si, claro. It will be a little like dancing with Olalla." His daughter. So small, she would sometimes stand on his feet as he held her hands over her head, moving in simple steps to teach her the rhythm, the motion. One day, he hoped, she would dance as her mother did. "It will mean the people below us will wonder what you do up here." His was a dance of foot stomping, toe tapping and heel stamping. Jumping and intensity. Not exactly the sort of dance meant for apartment dwellings. A tango would be more appropriate and that was what he intended to do with her, maybe some improvised variations, after perhaps demonstrating a bit of a buleria for her. "I think, like her, you should dance with your feet bare to spare my boots."
Reply
Plaything lightly at that, she nodded. "At least it'll give me some height. I'm sure you used to model like dancers. I'm a foot shorter and probably a lot more clumsy." Adelayde said finishing her wine and sitting back comfortably.
"You know, if you're ever feeling lonely, you can come over. It doesn't have to be as extravagant as tonight. We can watch a movie or go for a walk or just ride the subway. I should take you to Montauk some night. Or up on my roof. I'm generally home by seven or seven thirty." She said, offering him some company if he'd like.
Reply
Her offer was a kind one and even if it wasn't loneliness that he felt and more a desire to not be left alone with the dead, it was one he was grateful for. "Maybe you will start being tired of my face after a time."
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Though his next words had her shaking her head. "Never. We're friends. You'll have me for as long as you want me."
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"Siempre." Always. Reaching into his pants pocket, he pulled out the slender iPod of his and handed it to her. They could continue eating of course, but he thought he'd offer up the music as well. It was filled with everything from his own guitar playing (pieces he was tweaking and refining and therefore listening to often), classical flamenco, modern fusions with pop, rock, oldies, and things in between. He might make his living with one genre of music but he certainly enjoyed an eclectic variety. "You really are very talented in the kitchen," and he was picking at his food again, not caring that the pasta had gone cold.
Reply
She took his iPod and began scrolling. At his words, she paused. Her lips curled into a bashful smile before continuing to browse his music collection. Addy understood eclectic tastes. Her own ranged from obscure Indie to classical to pop and electronic to her own cello recordings, mostly a group recording. "Thanks. I used to do a lot of cooking with my mom as a kid. And I took that class on Italian cuisine. That was fun. My favorite was the tiramisu."
Reply
After taking another bite or two from his plate, he put the fork down again and as he chewed on the food he mulled over what to say next. It was easier, in a way, to have the excuse of eating to spin words from one language to the next before having to spit them out. It let him come across a little more comfortable with English than he truly was. "Mi abuelita, she used to teach me how things are in the kitchen. Then she decided I am more trouble than help." He smirked and then, sotto voce, made a small confession. "I am a bit of a thief around food. Take this, eat that, test taste the other thing. She would yell at me a lot." He waited a beat. "My mother still yells at me a lot for this. Sometimes she hits me." And another pause. "My wife, she always laughed instead. Cooking with her was more fun."
Reply
"So that's why you stole the tomato." Addy laughed lightly. "I'm a taste tester myself. How are you supposed to know what's good if you don't taste it. But I'm probably very much a novice compared to your mother. I like cooking for the fun of it as well."
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