Frankie was connected to me in the rarest of ways, from the inside out, so that he was no longer playing the notes of that song, he was playing its tears, the tears that fell from Tárrega’s eyes as he composed it, the tears that dripped down Carmencita’s cheeks as she hummed it, the tears that welled behind El Maestro’s dark glasses when he realized he had passed on my beauty to the son of a sardine maker.
