I went to Zaca's deathbed last night and gave him a rose. I told him that I brought the rose petals for him, because he ate them for me when I spread them over my cake plate, a reminiscence of the scene in Like Water for Chocolate.
The girl is in love with her lover, who married her sister just to be near her. He gives her roses, but her mother forces her to throw them out. Instead she makes quail in rose petal sauce, and he looks at her at the table and eats the petals, because he is eating her soul. Sean and I met Zaca and Mercedes when they were our neighbors in Queens. When they came over to our house, I had flowers in my salad. He couldn't get over that. He loved it. Then, I served chocolate cake on a white plate filled with red rose petals, and Zaca took one of the petals and looked at me and ate it, because he was an artist and he knew I had let him see the artist in me.
He was a ballet dancer, and he was Brazillian. The way he draped a coat scarf over his neck was regal. My father was a ballet conductor, and I spent my childhood watching 19th century ballet. We took our life's lessons from the same story source. He was my ballet prince.