Dancing with the Tiger (28 page)

—

Salvador massaged her temples,
and the sound muffled his voice saying he was sorry.

Anna said, “I saw then how a family could disappear in an instant. The more you have, the more you can lose.”

“Children at a distance.”

“Everything at a distance. That's my problem.” Her head was hot and achy. “I don't even like masks. I helped write that book and I don't like them. I like one or two, the plain ones, but the Ramsey Collection can go to hell.”

“Now you are blaming the masks.”

“Okay, should I blame Mexico? This country made my family and destroyed it. I said I was never coming back here, and here I am.”

“Where was the accident?”

“The highway to La Esperanza. My father put a cross in the ground there, the kind Thomas Malone likes to collect.”

—

That night,
she borrowed a green T-shirt to sleep in. Its boyishness pleased her. How cool it would be to wake up and find a note inside its pocket. Someday, she would do that for him. Put a note in the pocket over his heart. He tucked her in with great care, like she was another artifact he wanted to save.

—

Anna woke first,
made coffee, crawled back into bed. Salvador pulled her close. His body felt tense. A church bell tolled, one, then another. “The plan is no good,” he whispered into her scalp. “Why is he inviting you to his house? He's going to kill us all and dump us in the chapel.”

“You just don't want to wave the American flag again.”

“Go U-S-A. Go Disneylandia. Go bomb—”

“If you hate the U.S., then screwing over the American should cheer you up.”

“I don't like your country, but I like some of its people.” He kissed the part in her hair. “But he will be suspicious. Why go see a man who attacked you?”

“He's so crazy he probably thinks I liked it.”

Her phone bleeped. She reached for it. David.
So the wedding is off?

She hesitated, her stomach tightened with dread. She hated to cut strings.
Never commit to anything you can't take back, never reject someone you might want later.

Salvador pulled her arm. “What?”

Anna passed him the phone.

“May I write him back?”

“If you let me see it first.”

“He asked you a question. A stupid question, but a question. ‘The wedding is off?' So you write back. ‘Yes.' What's his name? David. ‘Yes, David, the wedding is off.' Because he is a
burro
and may not understand, you add this.” He passed her the phone. “This is what you say to a liar.”

Te he visto la cara.

I have seen your face.

“He doesn't speak Spanish.”

Salvador nodded. “Good.”

They drove back to San Juan del Monte to see Emilio Luna. The second mask was not
idéntica
, but was convincing enough, they hoped, to fool a tiger. And just in case it wasn't, Salvador borrowed his cousin's gun.

Monte Albán looked majestic in the moonlight, the stone platforms, the ball court, the palace, each rock a gravestone of a fallen culture. He dug and gazed down at the two valleys of Oaxaca—Tlacolula, Zimatlán. He dug and the night spoke to him, murmuring in Spanish, in Nahuatl, rattling prognostications of doom. When he slept, he dreamt he was awake. Awake, he dreamt of the Aztecs. He did not feel safe—at home, in bed, on the street. Trees pointed their branches. Squirrels smelled his stink. He'd killed Pedro, the old woman. (Accidents, or were they?) The girl, he feared, was next.
Mexico, Mother Mexico. Take me in your arms.
His breath against his mask warmed his face.

The grass rustled. He spun around with a cry. A strange creature with four legs and two heads was sauntering toward him. Llama or mythical beast. A two-headed creature. He gave a stifled cry of fear.
The seventh
omen.
The demons had followed him here. As the beast approached, it pulled apart, morphing into a man and a woman. The American and a Mexican, though he had told the girl to come alone. The Tiger touched his machete. They stopped ten meters from him, uncertain.

The Mexican called out, “
Trajimos la máscara.
We trade it for the ashes.”

“Have the girl bring it to me.”

The man stepped forward. “We don't want problems.”

“Her, not you.”

She walked forward, set down a bundle before him. He caught her arm, threw her down, pressed his machete against her bare neck.

“Don't touch her,” the Mexican yelled.

The Tiger swung the knife, marking time. “I am keeping her until I see it.”

The Mexican produced a gun.

The Aztec voices grew louder, interrupting, overlapping. The Tiger cut a lock of the girl's hair, let it float to the ground. The Mexican widened his stance, gun nippy in his hand. The Tiger squeezed the girl's wrist. She was sobbing. “
Déjame.
Let me go. I am close to Reyes. We have relations.”

This was either a lie that sounded true or a truth that sounded like a lie. It was true Reyes had no taste. He bedded the daughters of the Mexican elite. He bedded transsexuals from Tepito. If stranded in the desert, he'd put his dick down a snake hole.

“Estás mintiendo.”
You are lying.

“Look at me.” The girl pushed forward her ruined face. “If you hurt me, he will kill you.”

“¿Es verdad?”
the Tiger called back to the Mexican, who held still for a moment, then lowered his gun.

The girl bit the air, doglike, feral. “Part of his right ear is missing.”

The eyeholes of his tiger mask let in two fallen moons of light. It was hard to breathe with the heat and the voices. Only one omen remained—the burning temple. He was a sick animal. He had not understood this before. Did the papershop girl love him, or was he simply the evil she preferred? He lifted the machete over his chest. To die in sacrifice to the gods was the highest honor, the Aztecs believed—a guarantee you would be reborn and live in the house of the Sun. The sins of this life mattered little. What mattered was how you died.

“Don't do that.”

The girl rose, yanked his arm. The machete fell. She grabbed the urn, ran to her boyfriend. The Tiger slashed the plastic. Turquoise. Shell eye. Warts. Looter to Reyes to Pedro to crone to girl to Tiger.

“Vete derechito a la chingada.”
The Mexican's voice cracked. He was propping up the girl. “Stay away from us.”

The pair retreated with the gun and the urn, morphing back into a shuffling, two-headed, primordial creature. Hugo wished he could ride that animal all the way to Veracruz. He dropped to his knees, offered Montezuma's mask to the moon. His father looked down with his scythe and empty belly. A fox blinked. A lynx peeked around a rock. He laid the mask in the hole.

He was betraying Reyes as Pedro had betrayed Reyes. The drug lord would put a contract on his head. So be it. Only by resistance would the bloody reign of the
narcos
end. It would not be the United States or the Mexican army and certainly not the Mexican puppet president who set things right in the country he loved. It would be a million hearts refusing to obey orders. The gardener bowed his head.
God will save a man who has done one brave thing.

The man who had pressed a machete to her throat now looked downright pious as he hoisted the death mask to the moon. How small, yet how large. Small as man, large as man's loneliness on a night when he speaks to God and wonders if anyone hears him. For a moment, Anna forgot that the mask was a forgery.

The Tiger picked up his shovel. Dirt flew in graceful arcs. “Who
is
that?” Anna hissed. She hugged the urn against her chest. They were hiding behind a bluff, peering out. “Why's he digging? Is that for the mask? He's supposed to give it to Reyes.”

“Not our problem.”

“Why bury the thing you've been trying to find? It makes no sense. Maybe he's Indian.”

Salvador looked at her like she was nuts. “So what if he's Indian? We're all Indian. He's a murderer.”

Anna shut up. What she'd meant was, maybe he's spiritual, or he had a purpose beyond money or drugs, a purpose higher than her own. The Tiger laid down his shovel, laid the mask in the hole. Anna pointed. Salvador made a face she couldn't read. She didn't know him that well, really. They were just beginning. Setting out in the evening. Travelers. Traveling together.

The Tiger stomped the ground, made the sign of the cross, and walked off toward the ball court. Anna and Salvador waited to be sure he was gone. Anna surveyed the grounds. The South Platform. The North Platform. The tombs. If the dead were alive, they were here tonight. And she thought:
Clouds fly higher during the day than at night.

“We need to dig up that mask.”

“No, we don't.
No vale.
”

“
Sí, vale.
I need two masks. One for me, one for the looter.”

“You can't give the fake. He will know you cheated him. He is the one who dug it up.”

“He was crackers on meth when he dug up that mask. He didn't even recognize me. He's not a mask guy. He's a drug guy.”

“He's a very famous twigger.”
He was mocking her, quoting her to herself. “I thought you were friends.
We talked all night long.
You would feel bad tricking him.” Part statement, part question.

“It's a victimless crime.” Bogus expression. Something guilty politicians said. “He wants the mask for a shrine. For decoration. In church, people pray to figures of Jesus. You don't need Christ's
real
body. They use
representations
.” That sounded better. “Besides, what he doesn't know won't hurt him.”

The double negative lost Salvador. It reminded Anna of the cryptic
Mexican expression
No hay mal que por bien no venga,
a grab bag of negatives that roughly translated to
Nothing bad happens without creating some good.

Salvador rested his hands on his hips, as if he needed support to stay vertical. She liked looking at him. Every single time.

“Will you help me?” she said.

“No tenemos una
pala.”

Anna wiggled her fingers.

“Hijo de puta, qué mujer.”

“Give me a boost.”

Anna secured the urn against a tree trunk, then hoisted herself up the bluff. She saw no one, and the quiet filled her with relief and dread. The patch of broken dirt was easy to find. She knelt and dug with her hands. Salvador used his foot. The irony of the moment did not escape her: She'd come to Mexico to bury her mother and instead was robbing a grave. Her father had several burial artifacts, but it was different to dig up something yourself, like killing a chicken instead of buying it at the store. Here was the really crazy part: Even though the mask was a copy, she felt a rush of excitement. A treasure hunt. Dog after bone. She wanted to be the one to find it. So this was the high, the tantalizing elixir that had mesmerized her father all those years, that kept him plunging into the countryside to find a certain Señor Martínez Gómez Hernández Rodríguez who made Grasshopper masks. Anna crawled over the dirt to kiss Salvador. His lips were cool. His mouth, warm.

“I dig you.”

He looked confused. There would always be this gap. Nuances of language and culture.
But you get more, dummy. You get everything he can teach you.
She kissed him again. She was good at beginnings, so-so at middles, terrible at the end.
We won't end, then. Every day, we'll walk
to the train station with our suitcases and travel someplace new. Every day, we'll leave. Start over. It is a pleasure to meet you. My name is Anna. I am good at beginnings.

Their toil warmed them. Anna imagined the looter digging alone in a dark cave. That required real courage, real drugs. She struck something hard. A lost bit of shell saw the moon and smiled.

—

They drove down
from Monte Albán in silence, the urn snug at her feet. She held the mask in her lap, wondering whether Salvador now thought less of her or more. As they took the third bend, Anna gasped and sank. “It's him.” The Tiger's sedan was parked on the road's edge. A man bent over the open hood with a flashlight. Salvador kept driving, face rigid.

“We need to follow him,” Anna said.

“You have the mask.”

“But I want to know who he is.”

“No importa.”

“
Sí, importa.
I want to see him.”

“Forget him.”

“Right. I want to see him so I can forget him.”

They pulled off the road. Three minutes later, the car streamed past. The place the Tiger led them could not have surprised them more. Not a slum on the edge of the city or the gilded palace of Óscar Reyes Carrillo. No, the Tiger's car stopped someplace utterly familiar. Salvador shook his head, incredulous. “You Americans all come to Mexico to lose your minds.”

They parked as close as they dared, lowered their windows. The
Tiger was preoccupied with the lockbox, punching in the numeric code. The wrought-iron gates swung open. He climbed back in his car, pulled in a yard or two, changed his mind, turned off the ignition, his car poised just inside the gate. Anna heard the front door open, the familiar cursing as Thomas shuffled the dogs out of the way. Footsteps. Spanish.

“Where have you been?” It was Thomas. Their voices were faint but audible.

“Visiting my uncle.”

“I got a postcard from Reyes today. He says you work for him now.”

“No, señor.”

“All this time I hired and housed you and Soledad, you were running for Reyes. You brought him the death mask. You knew my show was coming up and you brought the mask to that—”

Eyes wide, Anna mouthed to Salvador,
Hugo.

“
Señor
, it wasn't that way. I never gave a mask to Reyes.”

“My own gardener is working for a drug lord. Do you take me for an idiot? Were you going to kill us? Murder us in our sleep? Rob us and run away?”

“He said he would kill me. Take pity.
No me—
”

A gunshot rang out. Anna buried her head in Salvador's chest. Every bad thing kept getting worse.

“Thomas!” Constance yelled from the second floor. “Was that fireworks?”

Which man had been shot? Anna didn't know what to hope for.

“No worries, puppet,” Thomas called up. “I shot a squirrel that was brazenly, shamelessly, eating your basil. I'll be right back. Let me dump it next door and we'll have a drink.”

Hugo's car backed up, drove down the road, then disappeared into
the abandoned lot at the end of the block. A minute later, Thomas emerged, strolled past their car, not hearing the two slumped people breathing inside.

“Puppet, come sit with me,” Thomas called up, closing the gate behind him. “I've got a lead on a mask from this Canadian tribe. The Wild Woman of the Woods. Can you hear me?”

“What? I can't hear you.”

“I feel like a Shakespearean actor calling my lover through an open window.”

“Talk louder. I'm doing my face. I've got this cream on. Ungodly mess.”

“My new mask, it's is called the Wild Woman of the Woods. She's got a beard, and a mouth like a bullet hole, and goes
wuu, wuu
like an owl. They say she kidnaps children and eats them.”

“Eats the children?”

“But she's got a good side. Every so often, Dzonoqua, that's her name, picks a few lucky souls and makes them rich as Croesus.
And
she can bring back the dead.” Thomas cackled. “I'd better hope that trick doesn't work.”

The screen door slammed. The sounds of the night rose around them—the fizz of the mosquito zapper, the discordant stew of ranchero music, the barking of hungry dogs.

—

Salvador drove three blocks
to a neighborhood church. Anna could not remember feeling so awake or so tired. Thomas had killed Hugo. It was hard to feel too bad, and yet in the battle between the American
collector and the proud Indian—rightly, wrongly, that's how she thought of him now—she sided with the Indian.

“We need to check on Hugo,” she said.

“Someone will find him in the morning.”

“We should call the police.”

“They are the last people to call.”

“We can't leave him there like roadkill.”

“What's that?”

“A dead squirrel.”

“He could shoot us.”

“You said he's dead.”

Salvador tensed. “We need to go.”

“What if he's alive? We could call the hospital.”

“We are going to save the man who tried to kill us?”

“Yes,” Anna said. “We are.”

They crossed Amapolas and crept into the empty field, stepping around bombed-out appliances, knots of barbed wire, an upended bathtub. The Tiger's car formed a vague shape in the distance.
All over Mexico, there are fields like this where bodies have been dumped.
Anna couldn't fathom that the Tiger was dead, and she braced for him to leap out of the darkness, machete in hand. Salvador reached the car first. He peered through the back window, holding up a hand to stop her. She waited. She hated waiting, but she waited. He checked the driver's seat, hand still raised.

“You won't believe it,” he said.

“He's dead?” A sudden sadness struck her. A tingle of emotion.

“I don't know if he's dead,” Salvador replied. He looked uneasy. “There's blood everywhere, but the car is empty.”