They called my name, and I sashayed onto the stage as if I’d already triumphed over a hundred other competitors, Lina especially, to become the new opening act for Roberto Griego. I hoisted my guitar in the air, inviting the crowd’s raucous cheers, and then dazzled them with a solo. The song’s intro came nice and slow, and then the band sped up the tempo for the rest of “No Más Pensando,” my favorite. “Ándale, gente,” I said, after catching a glimpse of my stone-faced prima who’d auditioned before me. She didn’t budge, but others flew out of their seats, dancing in the aisles as I crisscrossed the stage in a sparkly minidress and patent leather boots. The judges’ faces were inscrutable, but afterward, in the lobby, I signed autographs until my hand ached.

         Lina stood to the side, waiting for the line to thin before approaching me. “Good luck, prima,” she said, pushing a program into my hands.

         I had no choice but to sign it. “Same to you.” Then I forgot myself and added, “Maybe we’ll both see our names in lights.”

         “Maybe,” she said, sauntering off, her final words thrown over her shoulder. “Either way, may the best singer win.”

         A bell rang, signaling that an announcement was forthcoming. I barreled into the auditorium and found a front row seat. All those years of playing every birthday party, every parish hall, every school gym, were about to pay off. Lifting my gaze toward the podium, I imagined a sea of flickering flames, how my signature sound would make concertgoers weep as Griego’s voice had done for me.

         Her name rolled off the announcer’s tongue. Cheers from her entourage went up behind me. It felt as if my heart had stopped beating, and it may as well have. My legs wobbled, but I forced myself to stand and clap until the cheering died down, and people began filing out. While I trekked up the aisle, I heard Lina’s soothing voice behind me. “Looks like the best singer won, chica.”

Lina and I had grown up together, our mothers were sisters, and like them, we were inseparable. So much so that an older primo Eddie christened us “Las Famosas,” granting us minor royalty status simply for roaming La Puente like a small if omnipresent pack. We were utterly loyal to each other then, girls willing to throw a chingaso or two at anyone who messed with us. Mostly, though, we rode bump-free through those years, taking everything for granted, until the night my cousin crashed her car into a deer on the highway west of town. Such collisions were commonplace in rural towns like ours, and hers was no exception save for one remarkable and wholly unexpected thing. The next morning, an angelic yet raspy voice sailed out of Lina where before there had been none, where before she had not shown the slightest aptitude for music.

         Familia expected me, the officially recognized singer of the family, to be celosa. It was no secret that I’d dreamt of fronting a ranchera band since first hearing Griego’s plaintive voice, the sound of loss that caught in the back of his throat or his yelp at the end of a note. At the time, I was coming into my own, about to make the leap from baby showers to bars. I put on a show of jealousy, huffing and puffing enough to satisfy everyone, but secretly, I was thrilled. Lina had been drifting away from me, from our shared pastimes of bingo and gardening, from being my number-one fan. She’d become obsessed with guys and dating, though it was obvious I had experience with neither. If singing together could tether us to each other once again, who was I to say no?

         Familia warned me not to get too invested. “Miracles aren’t always what they seem,” Eddie said.  

         “I’m cool,” I told him with a conviction that surprised me.

         A month later, Lina and I were onstage performing a ranchera at a wedding reception for a distant cousin in Cerro. Our vocals were strong and received equally strong applause. It hadn’t occurred to us while we were singing, but afterward everyone said we sounded like twins.

         Before the final song, she covered the mic and turned to me. “Hold on to your chonies, cousin. We’re goin’ bigger after tonight, right?”

         She winked, making it seem like we were in this together, and I lit up. We were standing side by side, our backs to the audience, the scent of her lilac perfume swirling around us.

         “The bigger the better, prima,” I said, grabbing her hand and lifting it in the air.

          On the drive home, we tripped over ourselves mapping out our lives as recording artists, the Grammys we’d receive, the trails we’d blaze for other women like us. We promised to rehearse the next day, and I tried reaching out, but days went by with no word. I replayed our conversations, worried I’d said or done something wrong. Until then, I knew little about grief or betrayal, how a person could start out one way and then become someone else entirely. It unmoored me, and I wrote Lina a letter rife with self-pity –Where are you? What about our promise? Why are you ignoring me? I stuffed the letter into an envelope and stamped it, hoping that once she received it, Lina would see my broken heart strewn across the page and change her mind.

         The auditions, I found out, had been announced a week earlier.

         I went straight home and tore up the letter, the envelope, the stamp, all of it.

While Lina was becoming La Famosa, I had no choice but to put my musical ambitions on hold and reopen Hair for All. The salon had a steady stream of customers, leaving me little time to dwell on the past, though clients were always quick to point out that my voice sounded like La Famosa’s. It happened again after doing hair and makeup for a large wedding party, and this time the comparison rankled me, leading me to make rookie mistakes. Too much curl or not enough, too-loud makeup. I found myself apologizing more than was customary and was ready to call it a week when the tiny bell rang and in walked Lina. The place was empty, and she towered in the doorway, making the studio seem that much smaller with her in it. The sight of her infuriated me.

         “May I help you?” I said, keeping it professional, just barely.

         “I’d like a bouffant.” She played along, which suited me just fine.

         I piled and puffed her hair while a radio show buzzed in our ears. A ballad came on, and we spontaneously broke out in song, our voices melding into a familiar melancholic harmonizing that left me near tears. Our notes hung there, while we eyed each other in the mirror, hairspray misting the air. It was almost enough to make me forgive all that’d happened. I was forming the words when Lina cleared her throat, indicating that the jam session was over.

         I twirled the beauty chair while she held the mirror, turning it this way and that, murmuring approval. “Please please please. Come and work for me,” she said.

         I could only laugh at the absurdity of her request while she studied my reflection in the mirror.

         “I’ll double your salary,” she said, undeterred, back to admiring her own reflection in the mirror. “Never mind, chica. I’ll triple it.”

            “Sin vergüenza. I don’t even know how to respond to that.”

She sighed. “Take it as a compliment. I need you. No one knows me better.”

         Lina was putting on her coat and pulled out a wad of cash thicker than my wrist from its pocket. “There’s room for us both. Think of it as your comeback tour, courtesy of your prima.”

         “I’ll think about it,” I said, just to get her out of the shop.

         She placed half the wad of bills in my hand and wrapped my fingers around it. The bell chimed as she exited in a leopard-spotted coat that shone in the dying rays of the sun.

I let myself in to her home on days Lina was scheduled to rehearse. This was a month out from her Roberto Griego gig, and two months after I’d shuttered the salon to work full time for her. I needed the pinche money, but the job didn’t just happen right after the audition. I took time to lick my wounds, even made a demo tape and played an occasional birthday party to keep my tattered singing career afloat. Nothing much came of these attempts, and so I humbled myself and went to BB’s to watch her perform. There was no denying her talent, her voice like a throaty goldfinch, at once gritty and lilting. I felt the familiar, consuming rush of being onstage and soaking up the crowd’s love. Only this time the spotlight was on Lina, looming larger than la luna, her opalescence allowing me to live vicariously through her, as if we were twins or mirrored images. While she sang, I could allow myself to forget about fading into shadow, could convince myself it would be enough to touch the hem of her cape, could remind myself that making others beautiful was its own artistry. I caught her during a break and said “Okay,” and left without waiting for her response.

         In my new position, we had to create La Famosa anew, and with my beautician skills, it fell to me to paint her face on each night. Each night, after the rumbling of trucks died down, before janitors swept away plastic cups and wet cigarette butts, once night had stilled into its nighttime shape, Lina perched on her queenly chair with her perfect posture, and I transformed her into the star everyone thought they knew. She wore a silky bathrobe splashed with large hibiscuses in bright reds and yellows and oranges, clicked across the kitchen tiles in glittery mules, and let her wet hair cascade down the robe’s appliquéd flowers. She would have just come from the bathtub, her skin sleek and glowing, her body relaxed, pores opened.

         The process was a detailed but familiar one. First, I pulled back her wet hair, shellacked it with hairspray, and then pinned it in curlicues above the nape of her neck. I tweezed her eyebrows to form an arch, plucking stray hairs while she winced. The wig came next, a red thing fitted onto her scalp and then brushed back to life. Next came face powder and pink rouge. Her favorite eye shadow was electric blue, and my eyeliner laid across each rim like a thick, black shawl. She adored the false eyelashes—“my tiny fans,” she called them. Each night I knelt before her, her lips parted while I traced the pencil around them, mine parting while shading in that ferocious red. After brushing makeup powder from her face, when the wig that reminded me of the actress Tina Louise had been adjusted, and her black formal with silver sequined bolero shimmered, Lina finally became La Famosa.

BB’s was her last hometown gig before opening for Griego. Our local watering hole was a place of comfort for Lina, her testing ground for new songs or upcoming gigs, a space where she could show up decked out in her finest and be admired. As someone used to being one of the most talked-about people in La Puente, even before the crash, she treated BB’s as another place where her name was on everyone’s lips. All through college, she’d been a phantom-like being about whom chismes floated like the cottony balls that drifted from cottonwood trees in late spring. Lina was pregnant. Lina had a married lover. Lina had an abortion. Lina was spreading VD.

Whatever they thought of Lina, everyone loved La Famosa. Patrons flocked to BB’s and other venues to see her. Maybe they saw something of themselves in her stage persona or recognized a mutual fragility when they spotted her alone and makeup free on Commerce Boulevard the next day, any vestiges of stardom wiped clean with tissue and cold cream. I spotted her once from a distance as well. She seemed smaller, timid, uncomfortable in her own skin, the ghost of a Lina she’d tried to erase. I raised my arm and called her name, perhaps too softly because she scurried into JC Penney. I felt instinctively protective but held myself back. This incident made me wary, with good reason, but was quickly forgotten when I saw her onstage at BB’s, bantering easily with the crowd. The bartender plied her with hot tea, and she reached for higher notes, tackled more intricate runs, tried out new arrangements. Though I was loathe to admit it, the event was sublime.

Then Lina’s voice cracked on a high note. This alone was nothing to write home about; it happened to almost every singer, including me. But it happened again, and it was bad. The band covered for her, and people were too busy getting plastered, playing pool, or putting the movidas on each other to notice. While this was going on, I stood to the side and listened. Having had no formal instruction, I’d had to teach myself to listen for pitch and tenor, words whose meanings were foreign to me then, making my ear sensitive to the slightest shift. By the end of the set, she’d regained control of her voice. It would’ve been best to close off my feelings, and I should have, but I felt a glimmer of hope that she might again falter, and I might finally get to live out my dreams.

La Famosa’s fame only grew in the weeks before her opening gig for Roberto Griego. She had transformed into our unofficial Mexican American diosa, someone who shone a light on us when other stars, both more and less famous, couldn’t be bothered. One Saturday morning, she was mobbed at Montgomery Ward where she’d promised to announce the winner of “Bust the Bank” and sing a shortened version of her favorite Roberto Griego song. Beyond the cash payout, this was simply another practice session. But she clutched my arm as the fans descended upon us, a move out of step with her stage persona, more like the Lina I saw on Commerce Boulevard that day. The store bulged with people, and I put her anxiety down to this. Still, I couldn’t help but feel a hint of superiority as I imagined myself replacing her as diosa if her fear escalated any higher or the notes continued their wobbling.

         After the drawing, La Famosa stood between refrigerators and stoves. Her guitarist played the opening chords to “No Vuelvas Jamás.” The thing about some of Griego’s songs, especially this one, was that there was only the guitar and the singer, no other buffer. Every note had to be pristine. Lina knew this; we’d listened to his album a hundred times. I wouldn’t have chosen this song for her. As she attempted those lyrical growls, trying to inhabit the resignation of the ballad’s speaker, the strain in her voice was unmistakable. She barely pulled it off the first time, and by the second, her voice had trailed away. The guitar twanged louder in response to her gaffe. Fans were backed up to children’s clothing, so only the first rows heard it. This wouldn’t have happened if I were performing, though I couldn’t help but feel a twinge of sympathy for her in that moment.

         I began clapping and whistling. “Let’s hear it for La Famosa.”

         Everyone joined me, the sour faces of those in front replaced with smiles. Even the band got some licks in to lift the mood. Afterward, the line for autographs stretched outside the store.

         “We pulled that off by the skin of our teeth,” I said on the way home. “Pero, how many more can we take?”

         Lina took a deep breath as if preparing to say something but instead stared out the car window.

         I cleared my throat. “Lina, the biggest night of your life, of our lives, is coming up. Don’t screw it up.”

         After a long pause, she said, “For you or for me?”

         “For both of us, Lina. I think you know that.”

         She cracked open the window. “What I know is that I’m living someone else’s life.” 

         I bit my tongue, keeping my bitter words at bay. “Of course, you’re living someone else’s life. You’re La Famosa. It’s what you wanted, isn’t it?”

         “Wanted. Past tense. That’s the problem.”

         “Okay, well, one of us has to make it in this business. My job is to make sure it’s you. Your job is to make sure it’s you, too.”

         “At any price?”

         “You know what, Lina? No. You don’t get to ask that question. Leaving me in the dust was a choice you made, cabrona. You don’t get to ask for absolution now.”

         “If you wanted it so bad, why didn’t you fight harder for it?”

         I careened the car into a parking lot at the local college. “What the hell is wrong with you?”

         A rent-a-cop car drove by, slowing down, but I ignored it.

         “Look, chica, this gift landed in my lap. I didn’t ask for it. What was I supposed to do?” Lina turned to face me, looking stricken. “What would you have done?”

         “I know what I wouldn’t have done. I wouldn’t have left my best friend hanging. And I wouldn’t have hidden behind that car crash forever.”

         “We both know I didn’t earn it, prima. Is that what you want me to say?”

         We were quiet for a while, and then Lina said, “I’ll quit.”

         “Jesus. No one is asking you to quit. Just be honest with me and with yourself.”

         “Just so you know, I didn’t ask for all this,” she said, waving her hands around and then adding, “If only that pinche deer.”

         I pulled out of the parking lot and headed home. Lina changed the radio channel to a local rock station, and a minute later, I turned the volume down. “Are you saying it’s the deer’s fault? Really, prima?”

         The car was stopped at the intersection of Commerce and Meridian. We looked at each other and burst into laughter.

We were minutes away from her opening act at the Kiva Auditorium in Albuquerque. Roberto Griego was a New Mexican by birth and had chosen this downtown site for a New Mexico music extravaganza. I was putting the finishing touches on her makeup, a flashy yellow eyelid with glittery eyebrows.

         It was quiet, and we could hear the muffled voices of the audience in the auditorium. Lina was fidgeting.

         “Por favor, sit still. Everyone out there has scrimped and saved to come and see you. Just be yourself.”

         I heard the sharp uptake of breath, felt her nails dig into my arm, urged her to calm down even as she pulled us backwards. A security guard caught us before we both tumbled to the ground.

         Afterward, I fixed her hairdo and offered her a chocolate from Candelaria Confections. “You’ll be great, Lina.”

         “Call me La Famosa. It’s the only way I’ll get through this.”

         “Cálmate, prima. This is your moment. Go out there and do what you do.”

         Lina smoothed her dress and then looked at me askance. “Mic yourself.”

         “What? What are you talking about?”

         She called over the security guard, and soon a cadre of people was moving toward us. One handed me a mic and assured me it would stay off unless needed.

         “This is crazy, La. It’ll never work.”

         “Do this for me,” she said. “Por favor. I need a backup.”

         The small group shepherded her toward the stage, leaving me in the wings, terrified that she might signal me but also craving the mic, the lights, the ovation.

         The emcee introduced her, and as she often did, La Famosa began her first song offstage. Those were the days before film montages filled widescreens on an empty stage, when a voice, even a middling one, had to carry the day. It allowed La Famosa to be, for those few minutes, a disembodied voice. When the curtains parted and the lights bore down on her, she stood center stage wearing a black cape, head bowed, body stilled, her back to the audience. The curtains closed behind her. The crowd remained silent until someone, usually a guy, began clapping, slowly at first, and soon the entire auditorium was chanting her name. La Famosa never moved, just let their vibrations ruffle her cape.

         I edged closer to the stage, clutching the mic. She untied the cape, and the audience howled as it slid from her shoulders. Her sequined silver gown shimmered like a disco ball, tiny rainbows of light bouncing across walls, faces, bodies. Her ballad was sad and misty, and it made us ache for love. When it ended, she turned around, standing larger than life on that stage. When she finally moved, her breasts and her long earrings swayed in harmony with her hips. The curtains parted to reveal the band, bathed in stage lights, a disco ball twirling above them. The band struck up a ranchera, the familiar bum-pa bum-pa of the drums and bass guitar, and the aisles filled with dancing couples and the scents of aftershave and floral perfumes. La Famosa’s body heaved with sequins, her hips as wide as her smile, and we were all mesmerized. I almost leapt onto the stage just to be near her, but kept mouthing the song, copying her breathing, matching her phrasing, waiting, and yes, hoping.

         The sequined gown flashed mirrored love in all directions, her face aglow beneath the hot, unsparing stage lights, her lips that vibrant shade of red lipstick. In the next song, La’s voice was reedy but far-reaching, and her pitch faltered at times. As the song went on, more notes turned flat, as if the world, devoid of air, was shrinking. She was laboring to carry a note into the next verse. As usual, the band covered for her with a splash of the cymbals, the twang of a guitar, some fancy snare drumming. Her phrasing was too rushed during the rancheras and too slow during the occasional rock song. Nowadays, she would never have made it without lip syncing and other pyrotechnics used to distract viewers from many singers’ own mediocrity. She was losing the signature voice that had made her La Famosa in the first place. What if it all slipped away before Lina could attain stardom? I was torn between wanting her to succeed and silently longing for her voice to go, hating myself either way.

         She began dancing her own ranchera, moving in a circle, body swaying. When she caught my eye, I almost looked away from her ragged face. She finished the rotation, and the pain was gone, replaced with her toothy smile. She pointed the mic at me and then turned to the band as they played the song’s instrumental interlude. I thought she might keep going, but she held up the mic and twirled it. My mic went live. Hers went silent, and she gave me that same haunted look. I belted out the next verse, rushed at first, but I kept watching her movements while trying to sound like her and take my cues from the band.

         I peeked from behind the curtain, certain we’d been busted. But the sold-out crowd was going for it. Overeager fans were waving photographs, wanna-be La Famosas were rolling in a sea of blonde wigs and glittery dresses. Lovestruck couples danced with each other, their bodies glued together. La Famosa was at her most ebullient onstage. Even while lip-syncing, she acted as if her heart was tied to theirs by a thousand strings. She looked at us as we had never been looked at, like we were beautiful and good, everything the world told us Mexican Americans weren’t. My heart tugged toward her. On that stage on that evening, we were witnessing the birth of a superstar. It was as if the mirrored disco balls had multiplied her image so many times over that, everywhere she turned, she saw herself smiling back. It appeared that La Famosa finally had come to embody her own name.

The evening could not have been more perfect. There was just the small matter of me having to pinch hit for her, not to mention digging the adrenaline rush of singing again to a live audience. As a precaution, we’d required everyone to sign nondisclosure agreements beforehand. Backstage, everyone, including La Famosa herself, was waiting for me to break ranks and trash her or her voice. It’s true that I could’ve mentioned our splintered friendship; its ghostly presence presided over everything we did or touched. But I simply couldn’t ruin one of the most joyous opening acts Albuquerque had ever seen. “You were fabulosa, La,” I said, hugging her tightly, and somehow meaning it as sequins transferred from her dress to mine. Even Roberto Griego said as much in interviews afterward, publicly mentioning her in the same breath as his upcoming tour.

Things started rolling for her after that night. BB’s made her Saturday gig official and gave her a pay bump to go with it. She continued making the rounds at “Bust the Bank.” Roberto Griego’s camp wanted to discuss further the option of a long-term stint as his opening act. There were faint rumblings about an album of duets in the distant future. Oddly, with every step La Famosa took on her path to iconicity, her vocal range and her sphere of movement became more circumscribed. She stayed home more, gave fewer interviews, wore sunglasses and rebozos in public, all of which only increased her allure. Had our argument changed her? Was her singing voice fading for good?

         My circle, on the other hand, was widening, and my voice had never been better. I went from singing one verse and a chorus to a whole song at BB’s, even if delivered from behind a curtain. My voice was supple, and I practiced at home with a joy I’d not felt since Lina’s accident. I’d tried my best but couldn’t stop craving that life, especially when on occasion the clapping was louder for my voice than for hers. I never did anything to dissuade or sabotage Lina. I did continue to carry a guilty hope in my heart, however, that her voice would disappear forever, and a life of stardom might be within my reach.

         If La Famosa was upset, she gave no indication. Whatever had passed between us before the Kiva gig was gone or perhaps repurposed. Rather than derail my singing, she encouraged it, as if her plan all along had been for me to replace her. “Go,” she often said, pushing me to take the stage at BB’s. She still had moving moments, when fans seemed genuinely humbled in her presence, when she caressed a cheek or hugged a beaming viejo. For me, being onstage was like oxygen, making me feel alive again, and I couldn’t help but want that life.

La Famosa’s 45 rpm record debuted before Christmas in anticipation of the sales her newly minted fame was expected to generate. In late January, however, a treacherous snowstorm forced us to cancel an appearance in Colorado Springs. By then, I’d been her assistant for a year, and I was miserable. I yearned for the stage, the tickle in my throat when I was about to sing, even the furtive thrill of singing in place of my cousin, of fooling everyone, of taking her place or striking out on my own. These possibilities tore at my mind daily.

         It seemed only right to announce my resignation after her gig at BB’s the next Saturday. She usually set me up to sing for her after the first couple songs, but she finished the first set. Ever the beautician, I noticed that lipstick had bled into her pores, and her eyeliner was streaking. I lived in daily fear that Lina’s newly wired brain would crumble, leaving me to wonder whether there might be room for two La Famosas in this world after all.

         She was singing her most popular ballad, another lament about lost love. When the guitar solo began, my eyes welled up, but my gaze stayed on La Famosa especially when her voice faltered. I moved toward her, ready to help. But she shooed me away with a flick of her wrist.

         That evening, I remained in the shadows, listening to her weakening voice, unwilling to rescue her. Not out of anger or spite; far from it. Hers wasn’t the usual ending for people with this rare condition, as I’d learned through research at the college library, but I had always feared that her voice would wear out. La Famosa hit a particularly flat note, and I moved into her line of sight, practically begging her to bring me on stage. Her voice choked up, but she kept singing. I edged closer to the stage, signaling to Lina who either didn’t notice me or didn’t want to notice me. Backstage during a break, she refused to see me.

We sat at a small table near the entrance, nursing cups of tea. Around us, staff cleaned tables and floors, and restocked the liquor.

         “What can I say?” Lina said.

         She was pale, and her cup trembled as she stared into it. I handed her a couple packets of sugar, which she held tentatively before opening them and letting the granules fall into the cup. She looked so tired that I stirred the sugared tea for her. We sat in silence while a few feet away the bartender stacked glasses on shelves above the bar.

         “Everyone has a bad night, Lina.”

         I heard these words come out of my mouth and silently cursed myself for saying them. There was no sugar coating that terrible performance, and we both knew that her gift, for all its beauty, was vanishing. All I knew was that I would willingly die a thousand deaths to feel an audience’s collective breath once more on my skin, to have one more evening as La Famosa, to get close enough to the starry light, even an artificial one, to let it singe my heart. Sitting across from my prima, I felt my throat constrict at the thought that her thrumming voice would be quieted. My heart would be doused in eternal sadness if La Famosa was lost to me, to all of us, forever.  

         I asked the bartender to bring me a cold one. The tea wasn’t cutting it.

         “Now what?” Lina said.

         She was waiting for me to let her know that she could sparkle again beneath the hot lights, that together we could deliver the songs to adoring fans. But when I imagined that scene, the glaring lights beckoned only to me. Sorrow came rushing to me, and I pulled stale air into my lungs. In this musty bar, where we’d spent many evenings, the stage seemed smaller. My heart cracked at what was and what could’ve been. I took a long swig from the bottle. “It’s time,” I said.

         She looked around. “Is it closing time already?”

         Lina looked at me, and I resisted the urge to turn away. It took a minute, but when she got my meaning, she lifted the teacup to her lips and took a sip. I got up and put a quarter in the jukebox, refusing to play a Roberto Griego song. What I’d said had been hard enough, much less what I hadn’t said. This was one time when my favorite crooner would be of no help.

         She placed the teacup on the table with a thud that seemed to reverberate throughout the quiet bar. “Good luck trying to take your place in the firmament of stars, next to Griego himself.”

         I took another swig from the bottle, and the cold beer felt good going down. “I’ll take my chances.”

         She snorted, glancing at me with a drowning look of hope that I might come back around.

         “Please don’t do this, Lina.”

         The bartender slipped a quarter in the jukebox, and a Robert Griego song came on. He lifted his own bottle as a toast, and we reluctantly reciprocated.

         “What if we kept singing together?” she said. “We could be Las Famosas for real. Eddie would love that.”

         I let out a long breath. “Yeah, he would. I don’t know what else to say.”

         “Just say yes, prima. We’ve done it before, we can do it again.”

         “Oh, mi’ja,” I said, reaching for her hand, which she pulled back.

         “It’s closing time,” the bartender said.

         We took one long look at each other before handing him our empties.

         “I’m sorry, Lina,” I said and meant it. But the apology was drowned out by the final instrumental flourishes of Griego’s song.

         She grabbed her coat and left. I thought she might look back, and I stifled the clawing urge to chase after her. After waving to the bartender, I walked into the night air.

It took time, but I was able to reclaim the mantle of La Famosa and become the opening act for Roberto Griego. I came clean about everything, he was impressed with my honesty, and his integrity convinced me even more that I’d chosen my idol well. Eventually, with his blessing, I went out on my own. Thousands shouted for encores, holding up those flames from Bic lighters, everyone swaying together at the state fairgrounds in Albuquerque. In Santa Fe, they showered the stage with roses while I serenaded them with a love ballad. Denver brought an avalanche of applause and a key to the city from the mayor. I’ll be featured on the Val De La O Show next month.

I tried calling her on occasion, but Lina never picked up. Earlier this year, I performed at the local college auditorium and looked for her in the crowd, as I did at every performance. I hoped we might speak of reconciliation, might see if we could find a way to grow older together, each reliant upon the other, each not quite a mirrored reflection—of woman to woman, of prima to prima—two whose vision of the other once was created anew each night, each night cupping a promise of the next and a homecoming as well. This time, I could’ve sworn I saw her peering from behind a velvet curtain on the edge of the same theater where we’d auditioned. She nodded to me, almost imperceptibly, or so it seemed, and I sang a ballad to her, arms outstretched, waiting.