“Atta buddy,” Karl says.
Then, Isael turns his little head back to me and asks, “Tío?”
My head falls back with laughter. “No. He’s not yourtío.”
“That’s what Addy calls me,” Karl says. “I don’t mind if he calls me uncle too.”
I sigh, resigned. “Fine, Isa. You can call himTío.”
I settle Isael in his highchair as Ileana joins us, holding a large serving plate of Belgian waffles I know she made from scratch. My mouth waters.
“Karl, hi!” She smiles brightly, setting the plate down. Then she makes her way around the table to kiss Karl’s cheek. “It’s so nice to finally meet you. I won’t even bring up the fact that you moved Lola in with you before meeting me. I’m like an older sister to her, you know. Her only family.”
Karl laughs. “Well, thanks for not bringing it up.”
“Come on, are you hungry?”
We all sit, and I cut up Isael’s waffle into bite-sized pieces, then drizzle the cream Ileana has made and add small bits of the candied peaches.
“This looks amazing. Thank you for inviting me,” Karl says, and we all dig in.
“So, how are lessons going?” Ileana asks as she pours some of the mimosas.
“Great,” Karl says, then gives her a similar answer to the one he gave our interviewer Joanna not too long ago. Which makes me wonder when the interview will be released, if it hasn’t been already.
“Karl actually got me this awesome guitar for Christmas,” I say.
Ileana sets down her fork and raises an eyebrow at me. “Really?”
“Yeah. It’s too expensive, but I love it too much to decline.”
Karl laughs. “It’s not too expensive.”
“So, Karl. Tell me about yourself, and I mean beforeIndustrial November. I want to get to know the real you.”
“Well, let’s see, born and raised in Germany—”
“Really? I can’t really hear an accent.”
Karl laughs. “Oh, it’s there, though very faint. Fritz is kind of a hardass about how we all have to be fluent in English for interview purposes, so I had to shed as much of the accent as I could.”
“Did you always know you wanted to play guitar?” she asks.
“Not really. But when I was a teenager, I got a job at a petrol station run by a man named Ernest. He was the closest thing I ever had to family up until that point. I lived with foster parents at the time, but there were a lot of us, and it was crowded, so Ernest let me spend a lot of time at the station or at his place.”
I eye Karl, wondering why he hasn’t shared any of this with me before during the million and one conversations we’ve had about how he learned guitar. But I suppose he did always leave anything about his past kind of vague.
Karl continues his story for Ileana, who is listening intently. “Ernest was this old-school blues cat, you know? He could make an electric guitar weep like no other.” Karl pauses to snort-laugh at a memory. “And he had this guitar over the mantel at his place. He explained that it was a priceless guitar, not meant to be played or touched and that I wasn’t allowed to touch it—ever. I could do anything else I wanted at his place. Nothing was off-limits, except for the guitar—”
“Hey!” I whine, the forbidden guitar story hitting a little too close for comfort. “That’s what you did to me! You told me I couldn’t touch your guitars. Were you just using reverse psychology on me?” I ask, horrified he played me like that. And even more horrified it worked.
Both Ileana and Karl burst out laughing. “Sorry, Lola. It worked so well on me, I thought I’d try it on you.”
“It’s good you had a mentor who shared his love of music with you,” Ileana says, and Karl nods, a little sad now. “Do you still get to see Ernest?”
Karl shakes his head solemnly. “No. He was in his seventies when I met him as a teenager. He passed after my first year at college. But he left me his guitar.”
I gasp. “The blue dragon?”