Dancing with the Tiger (29 page)

Hugo awoke to his wife's face. Maybe he was dreaming, but this wasn't like his Aztec nightmares. This dream felt three-dimensional, alive. Through tree branches, stars winked and the night air cooled his nostrils. Soledad opened his shirt, laid her hands over his shoulders. She shook him gently.

“Wake up. What has that bastard done? Speak to me.”

He could not speak, but he could smell: iron and apples, perfume and flies. His gut was torn and his arm was bleeding. He was lying in a wheelbarrow in a thicket near his house. His pain was as big as the sky, and blacker.

Soledad untied the tiger mask roped to his belt, spat in its wooden hull, threw it in the bushes. She kissed his forehead. Hugo knew he was the only man his wife had ever loved, yet he had treated her like a dog. She had repaid his cruelty by saving his life.

She helped him sit up. The tendons in her neck strained with the effort. Her hair was matted to her face with his blood. She wrapped her apron around his side to slow the bleeding, muttering something about a doctor.

“I brought you this far,” she whispered. “Can you walk a little? Lean on me, my love. I will carry you home.”

Daniel Ramsey walked out of jail into a new day. Tree limbs silhouetted the pale sky. The morning sun shyly asserted itself. This cab was going to cost a mint, but what did it matter? Nothing mattered except what did. February was behind him. The snow had nearly melted. The air smelled like mud, something green growing. When the taxi swerved into the lot, he opened the door and collapsed inside, his body wracked with stiffness, his knees a confusion of grousing cartilage. He was thirsty for comfort he knew only one way to find. The driver asked where he was going. Daniel told him, then urged him to hurry. “Is it Friday?” he asked the driver. “March second?” The driver confirmed it was. They pulled onto Route 1, passed big-box stores, fast food, then out to the country. He admired the landscape, the colors, distinguishing gray from beige from ecru.

The looter sat by a fountain, waiting for Chelo to get her hair cut. Ever since his trip in Chapultepec Park, he'd been mesmerized by fountains. The way water rose and fell and rose again. The swirl of rainbows and bubbles. The spare change tossed in the basin. The currency of wishes. The sound of running water reminded him of Mari's garden, a place that had changed him, a place he might have to revisit, now and then, for that change to stick.

His phone rang. Force of habit, he answered it, before the long name on caller ID—Fernando Regalado Manuel—registered and he realized his mistake. He listened. Just breathing. The looter's heart ached as he wondered if the three-letter word on the other end could deduce his location from the ambient noise.

“Feo?”

“Señor arqueólogo. ¿Dónde estás?”

“Here. I am here.”

“And where is that?”

The looter looked around, getting his bearings. “I don't know, but I'm starting over. Clearing house.
Cleaning
house.” Language poured out of him. Explanation. The miracle of it all. He wanted Feo to understand, be happy for him. “I found a nice girl. She's religious. I'm going to find a real job.”

Feo laughed. “Altar boy?”

“Tell Reyes to find a new digger. Tell Gonzáles, too.”

“Gonzáles may take a bath.”

“Okay, well . . .”

“I have to kill you.”

“No, you don't. I'm nobody. No body. No face. Forget me.”

“Ya es demasiado tarde para olvidar.”

“No,” the looter argued. “It's not too late to forget. There's lots of fucking time left.” Was he pleading? The bushes. The branches. The spaces between them.

“You make a life and then you don't want to live it anymore. Doesn't work that way.”

The looter was pacing, making circles. “This is a clean break.”

“
No, arqueólogo
. We see you soon. I'm tracking your cell. Is that water I hear?”

The looter dropped the phone, stomped on it, hurled the cracked plastic into the fountain. He jumped up, feet together, a human pogo stick.
Alive. Alive. Alive.
The smartphone was his last tie to Reyes and it was underwater now, a black box surrounded by pesos.

He stared at it and made a wish. Or maybe a prayer.

One of those ugly hairless Mexican dogs jogged toward him. Its torso was solid flank muscle, dirt-brown and gleaming. The dog made eye contact, if you could call it that, fixed its gaze on him. Its cigar tail wagged impatiently, like it had an appointment, like it was already late.

Her mother dragged her to a Frida Kahlo show. Lola scowled the entire way there, huddled in the backseat as Esmeralda drove. Since moving to Veracruz, her mother had become good friends with the plastic surgeon's wife, who sparkled just like her name, all starry nails and Styrofoam hair. They liked museums. Clutching each other, the two women teetered along, uttering stupidities, like which painting would look good over the couch and which they could have done better themselves.

Lola had no interest in Frida Kahlo. Her hideous mustache and unibrow were silkscreened on every tourist tote, as if she was the only Mexican woman who mattered, as if all the rest were peasants or underpaid undersecretaries to undersecretaries to Señor Nada. The most famous women in Mexican history were:

The Virgin Mary

La Malinche

Frida Kahlo

Selena

Salma Hayek

A virgin, a traitor, a freak, a murdered singer, and Salma Hayek, who was smart and sexy, but, of course, had to play Frida Kahlo in the movie. She would play the Virgin Mary someday, too. Work her way down the list.

Lola called out: “Regina says Frida Kahlo was a drug addict.”

Her mother said, “Nobody's perfect.”

Esmeralda regripped the leather steering wheel. “Who's Regina?”

Her mother murmured something under her breath.

Lola tried again. “Regina says Frida Kahlo hated the United States.”

“Who could blame her?”

“Diego Rivera slept with Frida Kahlo's younger sister.”

Her mother sighed. “Men have no self-control.”

“Frida Kahlo had an abortion.”

Her mother crossed herself.

“Frida Kahlo had surgery just to get Diego Rivera's attention.”

“If you dress better, you won't have to do that.”

The show was crowded. Paintings, of course, but also photographs and drawings. Quotes in calligraphy swooped across the walls.
“Surrealism is the magical surprise of finding a lion in the closet when you were sure of finding shirts.”

And Lola thought:
Surrealism is the magical surprise of finding your father in your bedroom when you were planning to masturbate.

Her anger felt fresh and vivid. So did her sadness. She wanted to tell her mother about her father's visits. She wanted to tell her mother she had a lover. An older man, like the
cabrona
Frida Kahlo. But she kept her mouth shut, knowing her mother would blame her. One way or another, she'd lose even more.

Frida Kahlo's biography was printed on the wall. Polio as a child. When she was eighteen, the bus she was riding was hit by a tram. Her spine and pelvis were crushed. She wore a cast, endured endless rounds of surgery. She had planned to be a doctor, but became an artist instead. Diego Rivera was twice her age. They married. He slept around. They divorced. They remarried.
“There have been two grave accidents in my life. One was the trolley, and the other was Diego. Diego was by far the worst.”

Frida Kahlo spent her life painting Frida Kahlo. Frida with monkeys. Frida with Diego like a bullet in her brain. Frida Kahlo could not have children. She slept with women. She slammed tequila. She arrived at her first solo exhibit in an ambulance, sirens blaring. She had a leg amputated. She died at forty-seven. She may have killed herself. She had to share her husband with every woman who turned up in Coyoacán. Her husband's prick was part of the Grand Tour. Who wanted to have sex with a three-hundred-pound, frog-faced
cabrón
? The last words in her journal were:
“I hope the exit is joyful—and I hope never to return.”

Rebellion rose in Lola's throat. Frida Kahlo was not scared to show the places that hurt. This is my aborted child. This is my pregnancy of death. This is the man I love, who does not want me. This is my divorce. This is my friend's suicide. Her final directive: Cremation.
“I don't want to be buried. I have spent too much time lying down.”

“Let's go.”

Lola jumped. She had forgotten her mother. “We just got here.”

Irritation cut a wedge between her mother's eyes. “Who wants to see such ugliness? We're leaving. Esmeralda is in the gift shop buying chocolate.”

“But Frida Kahlo is the most important female artist in the world.”

“I've changed my mind. Frida Kahlo was a communist, a slut, and a lesbian. We should not have come.”

“I've changed my mind, too.” The girl set her chin. “I like her.”

Her mother pointed her index finger like a dart. “Watch out or you'll end up like her.”

“Famous?”

“Miserable.”

“I already am.”

A lion in the closet.
There was always a fucking lion in the closet. A lion, or a tiger.

At six p.m. sharp, Anna dressed for dinner at the Malones'. She slipped on a little black dress, zipped up the back, dabbed perfume, brushed her wrists, making heat. She plucked her eyebrows, scrubbed grit from under her nails. She painted her toes, blew her hair dry.
I will go to the party. Christopher Maddox will break through the chapel floor and steal the death mask of Montezuma. We will meet back at the hotel. No one will be shot or killed. Like that. It will all happen just like that.

She sat down at the typewriter, punching keys.
Dear Dad, I am writing this letter in case anything happens to me . . .

This was the other extreme, should the night go terribly wrong. She would type the complete story and give the letter to Rafi, with her father's name on the envelope, should he call, or even arrive at some later date, should he ever emerge from the coddled cocoon of vodka.
Just in case, she would leave a record. At the front desk, she explained to Rafi what she wanted, but most of it was lost in translation. “If” clauses were a bear in Spanish. Hypothetical circumstances demanded high-tech verb constructions.
Hubiera.
The introduction to regrets.

“Para su padre,”
Rafi confirmed.
“Cuando venga.”

“No, my
padre
doesn't
venga
.” Anna shook her head. “But if I don't come back, read him the letter over the phone.” She mimicked this, holding her hand to her ear.

“The letter is in Spanish?”

“English.”

Rafi shrugged helplessly.

Anna sighed. “Just keep the envelope for a few weeks and then throw it away.”

Rafi slid the letter into his soap opera magazine. “I understand,” he said, though this was impossible. Mexicans told you what you wanted to hear. Americans heard what they wanted to hear. A perfect marriage.

That evening, the looter lay on his bunk and tried not to think about Feo. The scene felt pleasantly animal with the chicken coop out back and the white cat curled at his feet and the faraway dogs barking their heads off about nothing. He regretted killing his phone. He was supposed to text Anna, but the plan was set: He'd leave in an hour, take a cab across town, break through the chapel floor, steal the mask before eight. He liked having a purpose, like back in the cave, only now that he wasn't cranked, things moved slowly, sort of boring but not really, because he was jacked about screwing over this joker Malone.

Mari was right: His life was worth more than a stick of incense. He was going to honor the Virgin. He was going to honor himself.
Hey, Reyes. My life is as valuable as that blue mask.
Shit, every life was. Life
was a treasure, every stone of it. He liked the way that sounded. Profound, churchy. He could have been a preacher. The Sermon of Montezuma's Death Mask
.
He pictured himself in the pulpit, explaining life in the cave, how you had to go for it—whatever “it” was. They might have heard that before, but
it bore repeating
, twice, a million times, because people forgot, they watched too much TV—

Chelo appeared in the doorway with a soft
“Hola.”

She was bigger than yesterday. Belly big as Saturn now. Her amazing solar system. The best churches let you have pussy and God.

“Ven aquí, nena. Quédate conmigo.”

The girl dropped the blinds. He liked watching her move. She cozied up, pulled needlepoint from her basket. He leaned in. The Virgin of Guadalupe. Of course. This girl was seriously religious. He was a little put off by this particular threesome. She'd finished Mary and was working on her halo. Two shades of yellow. Or maybe gold.

“How do you do that?”

“It's easy,” she said. “You should try.”

He meant, How do you have the patience to do that, but he let this misunderstanding pass. “It's what? A pillow?”

The girl laughed. “No, you frame it. Hang it on the wall.”

Virgin art. No home could have too much. Each time the needle went into the hole, the strand got shorter. Each stitch, more color, less yarn. He could turn that into a sermon, too. He laughed. The girl laughed to keep him company.

“Tómalo.”
She pushed the canvas at him. “A man should know how to sew. If you become a pirate, you'll have to mend your socks.”

The only needle he'd navigated was the other kind, but he wasn't going to bring up that bliss. “Where do I go?”

“That little square. Go up.”

He stabbed the Virgin in the eye, pushed the canvas back to Chelo. “Forget it. I'll mess it up.”

“We'll do it together.” She guided his needle into the correct hole. “Now pick up the needle on the other side. Slowly. Don't pull too hard. Now go down over there.”

This direction was easier. From the top, you could see where you were headed. He reached underneath to tug the golden yarn.

“There.” She beamed. “Your first stitch.”

The second was easier. The third, easier still. His aim improved, her hand on his, her belly warming his side. Needlepoint. Well, all right. Anything could be interesting, if you let it. They sewed until his hard-on got the best of him. He pulled her horizontal.

“You feel good.”

She curled into him.

“You know, this baby is going to need a daddy,” the looter murmured in her ear. “What if it's a boy?”

Their heads lay on the same pillow and he felt sleep coming on. Here in the fat aunt's backyard, surrounded by dumb chickens, lying on a lumpy cot with a pregnant girl in braces, the looter was content.
So this is happiness. So little. So much.
He touched her full breasts. She pressed his hands to her stomach. It was tight. Something freaky was happening. Little eruptions bubbled under her taut skin. Then he knew. He and this baby had something in common. They'd both been buried alive.