Or you’re getting to be too soft!
CARMEN
Maybe, Frasquita. Maybe I’m too soft and he’s too romantic. I know.
MERCEDES
Your head knows, but your heart is too crazy to listen.
FRASQUITA
You got to be careful, homegirl. You open your heart, and it’s more dangerous than opening your legs.
CARMEN
What don’t I know?
MERCEDES
(resigned)
It’s wonderful, Carmen. Good luck with this dude.
FRASQUITA
Yeah, it’s wonderful.
The three girls, knowing what a momentous decision CARMEN is making, embrace one another.
On the small stage, a guitarist picks up his instrument and slowly plucks the same “Destiny Theme” we heard earlier.
MERCEDES
Whoa! What is that tune? Is there a funeral? Play something with life to it!
The guitarist quickly switches to something much livelier. Several patrons enter, including GERALDO, OFFICER SHEA, and SERGEANT ZUNIGA.
GERALDO
Cold drinks for the ladies over there.
BARTENDER
Six dollars!
GERALDO
Six dollars? You selling blood? What do you mean, robbing people like that?
ZUNIGA
I can afford it. Three drinks for the lovely ladies.
FRASQUITA
Keep your drinks! I’m not thirsty.
ZUNIGA
They’ll keep you cool. You look like a hot mama to me.
FRASQUITA
And you look old and cold to me.
ZUNIGA
You’d be surprised, chica!
MERCEDES
Chica? Now you’re acting Latino? I don’t think so.
OFFICER SHEA
What would you like us to be?
CARMEN
Gone! That’s what we would like you to be.
OFFICER SHEA
She’s longing for José. He makes her blood boil. He’s good with these locals.
MERCEDES
Local? I don’t go local, but I will go loca on your skinny butt!
ZUNIGA
José’s a loser. We’ve got him sucking fumes on traffic duty.
OFFICER SHEA
He’s back on the beat today. Maybe he can find somebody else to turn loose.
CARMEN
(perking up)
He’s back? Today?
ZUNIGA
(edging closer to CARMEN)
Look, you can do better than that guy.
FRASQUITA
Man, you really think you’re hot stuff, don’t you?
ZUNIGA
I’ve been around. I know how to make a girl like Carmen happy. Maybe I’ll take her shopping. Bet you would like that, eh, Carmen?
CARMEN
Cierra el pico, man, because ain’t nothing coming out that I want to hear.
ZUNIGA
I know what I have to know. You’re straight street, and I know how to take care of you.
FRASQUITA
Go home and take care of your wife.
MERCEDES
(looking at her watch)
He can’t go home yet. His wife’s boyfriend is still there having dinner.
The girls all laugh.
Suddenly we hear a commotion. A PATRON gets off his stool, shrugs to the crowd, and goes to the door. He looks out.
PATRON
It’s Escamillo!
MERCEDES
Here?
FRASQUITA
He’s going to shoot a video in the neighborhood. It was in the papers.
ESCAMILLO enters. The one-time street rapper turned entrepreneur and film producer fits the description often ascribed to him as the richest man ever to come out of Spanish Harlem. Tall and broad-shouldered, he’s wearing a light-gray tailored Italian suit with a sky-blue shirt. Over his shoulders is a satin silver-gray cape that shimmers as he walks. As he enters, he hands his assistant, GORDITO, his walking stick and hesitates just inside the doorway as one of his bodyguards removes the cape.
GORDITO takes center stage and begins framing film shots with his hands as ESCAMILLO leans casually against the bar.
GORDITO
(raps)
Hey, Escamillo can lift this place from its obscurity
And bring it to a place of peace and security
With a slam bam jam that opens the dam of go and flow,
But he needs something real to express how he feels
As a master blaster lifting his fate above the disaster
Of free-floating hate, and if your brain has the uplift
To master the hard drift from grime to sublime,
He might give you some time and… who knows?
He puts his hand to his ear.
MERCEDES
Who knows?
GORDITO
Even a 3-D flick! Let me step aside for the pride of San Juan, Santo Domingo, México, Bogotá, and El Bronx Remembered! Escamillo!
ESCAMILLO
I said what? I said what? I said WHAT’S HAPPENING?
FRASQUITA
Yo, Escamillo! Put me in a movie. The world needs to see me.
In the background, we hear the strains of “The Toreador Song”, rhythmic and upbeat, which continue as Escamillo speaks.
ESCAMILLO
(begins rapping)
The world needs to see all of us, mis amigos. That’s what Escamillo is all about. Fighting against the invisibility of being poor, being a nobody. They don’t kill us! They don’t lynch us! They make us invisible, as if we don’t really exist! They take away our identity. At first we think it’s harmless; we just don’t see ourselves anywhere. We see shells where men should be standing; we see cartoons where our women should be. But then one day you wake up and look in the mirror, and there’s no one there looking back at you. All the dreams that held you together are gone, and all the hope you could feel is gone. You know your brain is fading fast and you feel a sense of panic.
Invisibility sees your panic, smells your despair as it paws the ground waiting to charge across the arena, waiting to destroy you. But now ESCAMILLO has given you the warning, and you are ready to fight back. The cold steel of truth is in your hand and you get ready. Across from you, invisibility trots proudly, snorting its contempt for you.
Okay, my people. Show me what you got!
The club suddenly comes alive as the patrons begin to dance. The dancing ranges from salsa to a kind of street flamenco. ESCAMILLO nods approvingly as he sees the vibrant life of the community. But throughout the dancing, CARMEN sits at the far end of the bar, looking on with apparent disinterest.
ESCAMILLO
Yo, I see the happenings! I feel the beat! I see the beauty and feel the heat! But where are the stars in this tiny universe? Where are the sisters and brothers gonna shoot across the sky? Who’s gonna light up the firmament? Where are the heart stoppers? The hammer droppers? Yo, mamacita, I see you glowing like you knowing something spelled truth. What’s the word, little bird?
CARMEN
I’m not interested in your moves or your movies, Escamillo. And Hollywood is not on my to-do list.
ESCAMILLO
I thought you were special, and I definitely got an eye for fly.