The Empanada Brotherhood by John Nichols

which still felt like winter. A pretty mist was lifting off the cold water. Seagulls made a racket around us. Roldán was bundled up like an enormous walrus wearing galoshes and wool-lined leather mittens in addition to his raccoon coat. Luigi had on two ratty sweaters, gloves, and a funny ski cap. But Alfonso had donned only his silly thin serape and the purple scarf. Not only had he lost Renata’s obnoxious hat, but he had misplaced Sofía’s gloves as well. His teeth chattered all the way over and back.
    Afterward, stepping off the ferryboat onto Manhattan, Roldán slipped and crashed to the pavement. Grimacing, he clutched his wrist. “
Ouch!
”
    We grappled him onto his feet and a taxi rushed us up to St. Vincent’s Hospital where X-rays revealed that the wrist had been fractured. Two hours later we hit the sidewalk as darkness fell and it began to snow once more in the winter without end. Roldán was wearing a cast.
    We aimed east along Greenwich, crossed Sixth Avenue onto Eighth Street, and stopped at the Orange Julius stand. Invited by the fat man, each of us ordered a Julius with an egg and a hot dog that we gobbled hungrily as we moseyed south past the Jungle Tap Room and crossed to Washington Square. Streetlamps in the empty park cast circles of harsh light interrupted by falling snowflakes.
    We halted. Roldán, Alfonso, and Luigi lit cheap cigars to honor El Coco, exhaling clouds of stinky smoke that evaporated among the snowflakes.
    â€œWho’s next?” the cocinero asked.
    â€œNot me,” Luigi and I answered simultaneously.
    â€œGather ye rosebuds while ye may,” Alfonso joked in English.

33. Duende
    Aurelio Porta told me that Cathy Escudero had duende. “It’s not something you can teach a person,” he whispered into my ear at the dance studio. “You have to be born with it. And this girl is brimming over with duende. She’s not conscious of it herself, she is so busy concentrating on the technical aspects of her craft. But the way she moves is like a gitana from Spain a thousand years old in her gypsy culture. She is like a ravishing murderess who loves to lick the blood off the knife afterwards. That is the magic of her art.”
    Aurelio had to lean very close to me when he said these things because Cathy’s heels were battering the floorboards and Jorge was attacking the guitar in a controlled frenzy. They were electrifying. The dancer grabbed her skirt and swished it back and forth; she frowned and glowered and bit her tongue and grimaced. Her T-shirt was drenched under the armpits. Sometimes she yanked her dress up and down and we caught a flash of her cotton panties.
    Aurelio never changed his tone of voice: “A champion race-horse has duende,” he continued. “And Pelé possesses it, of course. Fangio had duende, and Manolete, too. And especially Gardel. Carlos Gardel had so much duende it caused his plane to hit another plane on the runway when he was only forty-eight. Gardel makes Frank Sinatra look like an amateur choirboy.”
    Jorge’s fingers were a blur and Cathy was fast-stamping at the end of her alegrías. I was riveted by her performance, but Aurelio Porta never quit talking.
    â€œCertain Americans have duende,” he said. “Marlon Brando has it, and the late James Dean. Duende is an aberration inthe soul. It is like a fire out of control. You don’t see many old folks with duende—the force kills you early and you can’t even stop yourself. You’re not supposed to. All great artists are doomed. This chica is going to burn brightly for a short time and then the lightning inside will electrocute her. She will burst apart in flames. I hope I have a ticket to the performance because it will be horrible but exciting to watch. Duende is tragic, and when you see somebody who has it you must make the sign of the cross and spit in your palm. Duende is a curse. It makes people