Gringa (15 page)

She had been glad to see him! She had hoped for tenderness. What she wanted was love; what a fool she was.

Tonio reached down to touch her breasts through her shirt. He touched her belly, and slid his hand toward her thighs, and then off of her, with a show of mild disgust. The money on her belly fell to the floor. He stood above her and spoke in his most neutral voice, as if he were reading a label. “Stay out of trouble.”

It made her sick to think how she looked.

“Don't stumble in your new shoes,” he said.

She jumped up as he shut the door behind him. She opened the door and shouted to him as he was stepping onto the elevator. “I'll make my own life you sonofabitch! I'll come and go how I want. Nobody would come to your stinking ranch! My friend has her own boyfriend! She's going back to California! She wouldn't like you!” She took a deep breath. “She'd never fuck you in a million years.”

He held the elevator door long enough to tell her: “You're red as an apple, chica. See you soon.”

She wandered for most of an hour along the streets of the neighborhood, looking at meticulously kept houses, at dogs on leather leashes led by well-dressed women. She stopped in front of a large building of apartments. Through the window on the second floor she could see a pink light from under curly curtains. Someone was pacing back and forth, a small figure, gesturing grandly. She tried to think what might be happening. Someone telling a story. A woman arguing. An American had gotten in her way.

She walked around, reciting the names of the streets: Mississippi (where Tonio's apartment was), Danube, Eufrates, Tiber, Tamesis. She supposed Tonio chose his apartment to be close to his Niza Zone office and still be quietly residential. Abilene liked the river names, the suggestion of escape by water. Mickey had told her that there were small houses in the colonia owned by wealthy men with families in Lomas or Pedregal or Polanco, homes kept for beloved mistresses, for love children. Abilene saw no signs of such dramas, except for the single woman in the light of the lamp. If you loved me, she imagined the woman saying. If you loved me, you would come more. In Tonio's apartment there was no drama. There was no drama in Tonio's life. Drama came from conflict and uncertainty; like play it demanded tension and a suspension of control. Perhaps there was that between Tonio and the good bull. Perhaps that was why he fought, season after season, and not because the crowds adored him, their blond god. He cared nothing for the adulation of other people.

On the Paseo de la Reforma, Abilene took a taxi to the Zócalo and got out. She sat on a curb and watched people moving around on the huge square. Across the way the National Palace stared down on her. It was a presence, like Tonio, making order, giving warnings, speaking of unity and the common good. She moved to a bench and watched the cars as they turned into streaks of light in the darkening dusk. The streets were wet, and the light made the water sparkle. It must have rained while she was with Tonio. It rained every day now.

The students were talking of great demonstrations. Hallie said they could fill this square. Abilene's eyes gleamed, thinking of it. She saw the excitement that was ahead: the square teeming with shouting people. Banners rippling above their heads.

Hallie had said, “When the people come out, it is the most wonderful thing in the world to be there. To be where it is happening. Life.”

Abilene tried to imagine it.

She thought of the police with their guns drawn, billy clubs swung high and down. She thought of the weak trampled. Women thrown about, touched brutishly.

Tonio was right. It was none of her business. She stuck her neck out as if it yearned for the hanging.

He would not make her leave now.

There was a moment, sharp and vivid and painful, when she saw that for her, connection was always an act of violence. The thought choked her with revulsion; she acknowledged a place in her where everything happened in the dark. She saw men in army clothes; she was on her back. They were coming for her, their clothes undone.

Adele said that revolution is what happens inside you. She said Daniel was a documentor, that she, Adele, was an eye. She said, “Remember the cave men drew on stones. Someone always writes it down.”

Abilene had thought of revolution as something in the hills. Glinty-eyed fanatics in fatigue pants. A real revolution would mean guns and blood, like a movie by Yannis. Even when she had seen the bulls go down, blood spurting, the distance had made the animals' death unreal, a phantasmagoria, a dance. If the avenue were to run with blood, she would float on it like a flower at Xochimilco.

She knew she was tired and depressed. She knew Tonio had taunted her to tease and not to threaten. She knew, but on a bench, in a square, in a city, she was so far from anything! She closed her eyes, she gave in to the longing she felt to shut out what was real.

A child's voice woke her. It was a boy of nine or ten standing in front of her.

“Señorita, señorita!” he begged. He was holding a tiny gilded bird cage with a blue plastic bird inside. It dangled on a string from his hand. “A bird sings of love,” he said, already learned in his trade. She reached into her bag for the wadded bills Tonio had given her. She gave him the money and took the cage, then got up and walked away, toward the avenue. The boy held the money in front of his face and swore. He could not believe his luck. The crazy lady had given him a handful of paper money, a fortune for a bird.

IT WAS ABILENE'S idea to try an Arab restaurant. She had heard of a place just off the Zócalo, in a neighborhood where cheap yard goods were sold. Isabel's sister Ceci and her voluble student friends went along, knowing that Isabel would pay for everything. The students talked all through the meal, especially some boys majoring in geology. The girls were smarter, Isabel whispered to Abilene, and in better colleges than the boys, but now they posed and mewed. Like Ceci, the other girls dressed as North American as they could. One wore her kinky hair in a wild Afro style. Isabel and Abilene exchanged indulgent looks. They talked about the Olympics. The girls speculated on what they could make working as hostesses; they all spoke English and some spoke French, too. They dipped their fingers in couscous and flirted. Ceci was pouting. She would rather have talked politics, but her friends were less serious. She had asked them out to please Isabel. She knew what Isabel wanted: to divert her attention. It was a waste of time.

It was also Abilene's idea to go some place and dance. The students laughed and shouted and showed the way to a mariachi cantina. Girls in cheap bright clothes stood on the side, bouncing to the loud music, smoothing their rayon skirts and tortured hair, waiting on boys to ask them to dance. The boys, who all seemed very young, walked around like buyers at a livestock show. “Are they whores?” Abilene whispered to Isabel. Isabel whispered back, “Not yet.”

One of the geology boys asked Abilene to dance. The student, whose name was Jorge, was lithe. He danced from the crotch, and when he saw Abilene looking at him, he rolled his hips even more. They danced until perspiration ran down Abilene's face and arms. Then the musicians stopped, suddenly, and left the room. Jorge led Abilene back to their table and the boys there said, “Hey! you're a good dancer, man.” The girls looked at her with narrow secretive eyes. Business at the bar picked up, and all around the room people yelled for more music. Another band appeared. As soon as it began to play, Abilene looked to Jorge, expecting to be asked to dance again. Jorge asked Ceci instead. He stayed near the table, so Abilene could watch, she thought, but he never looked at her. He kept his undulating hips in her line of vision. The music was Afro-Cuban, great for dancing; it drove its beat hard, and throbbed. So did Jorge. He paid no attention to Ceci, his dance partner. He was just showing off.

Abilene knew the show was for her, and she waited with suppressed eagerness for Jorge to come back to her. A familiar hum had begun in her. When she got up to dance she and Jorge were the center of attention. His teasing had worked; they danced like lovers sparring, a teasing sequence of approaches and retreats, and long moments dancing in place, eyes locked. When they went back to the table, Jorge put his arm across Abilene's shoulders. His thumb slid along her back, a thumb that burned. “American girls really know how to dance,” he said slinkily. She walked out from under his arm, smarting from his categorical praise. He probably meant what he said, and probably meant to please her, but when he next asked her to dance, she said coldly that her feet were tired. He was confused for a moment, and then he collected himself enough to sneer. “Not mine!” he said.

She moved her hunter's eyes around the room, looking at the preening boys, their pencil moustaches, slick hair and compact bodies. One boy had an attractive Zapata moustache, but his pants hung too low on his hips; when he raised his arm, his shirt rode up and hung sloppily. These weren't poor boys, everything could not be forgiven them, but they weren't the rich ones, either. The ones with money went to clubs with cover charges, to hotel bars. The Mexican boys liked color, and wore their pants like skin. Like peacocks they loved their own looks. They expected the girls to love them too. They didn't often get to strut for gringas, not in a place like this. She would be a nice surprise for one of them.

Across the floor she saw a gorgeous Indian, all sinew and bones, with black shaggy hair. He was vain; he was smoothing his hair. He glanced around for approval, and Abilene thought: I know him! She thought for a moment and then, of course! it was the waiter who had brought food to the apartment with Constanzia, wasn't it? He was standing near the toilets. Between songs, she walked across the floor, conscious of her hips, her stride, the slope of her back. At first she angled away from him, and then at the last moment changed her course and walked right by him. She knew her hair was shiny in the light, that her small breasts jutted out. She knew he had watched her dancing with Jorge. At the last possible moment, she looked at him boldly and stopped. He had been watching her all along; when she realized that, a gush of pleasure shot up her body.

And then she saw that he was the young man who had met with Adele at the Piñeda's hotel, not the waiter.

“I see your dance,” he said in English.

“What did you think?” She felt a sudden amazement at the ease, the predictability of this encounter. She felt like an expert fisherman. He was a strutter now, his hand in his belt, his chin up. He wasn't begging now. He was beautiful, with dark eyes and a well-formed mouth. “I think a good dancer like you needs to dance with me,” he said cockily.

She thought he was right. The dance: she needed it very much.

She danced without shifting her gaze from him except when she turned expertly. They were the same height, and this made her conscious of their hips as they came toward one another, their thighs brushing, their hands touching. The music buoyed her up, she floated out of herself. She knew what her dancing told this Indian boy, and she knew it was not a lie.

He took her arm and moved her to the bar where he bought her beer. She asked his name. He said it was Angel. He was an artisan.

“You don't remember me, do you?” she asked.

He was now guarded, waiting.

“I met you at the hotel,” she said. “I was with the friend who asked you about the dead gringa.”

He looked very young, and skittish. Perhaps he thought she had somehow followed him, looked for him?

“That's not important,” she said. She was afraid he was going to take off. “What's important is dancing.” She waited a long moment, while he considered this. She was excited. She glanced around and saw Isabel watching her. Isabel knew exactly what was going on. She had talked about what the rules were in Mexico, but she broke them, too. One of these days, she warned, you will find out what macho means.

“I'm going to tell my friends I ran into you—that I know you, understand? Then we can get out of here.”

He waited for her. He said he knew a better place, the disco with American rocky roll. But it cost more. “I'd like to go,” he said, “but I only have the admission.” He took his money out of his pocket for her to see.

“I'll buy drinks,” she said. She opened her bag and showed him her money. When their eyes met again, they both laughed.

At the disco they danced close together. He pressed his ample genitals against her thigh. She thought: Mexican boys are never embarrassed! When a Rolling Stones record came on, they pulled apart to dance. It was serious now; they were spelling things out for one another. I know you danced with a girl who's dead, she was saying. I know you wonder if I hurt her, he was saying. His dark eyes did not frighten her; they were curious and greedy, that was all. Yet she was astonished to feel that she was afraid. It was in her neck: a tight feeling, someone's hands, squeezing. She pushed the feeling away with her dancing.

Then she said, “I'll pay for the taxi.”

He had two spare decent rooms in an old house that had been divided into apartments in an old quarter not far from the disco. She had stopped being surprised at the way the shabby apartments sat among finer buildings. Deterioration was borne on the air like pollen, landing anywhere. At the end of Angel's street there was a dead end. It was cluttered with cardboard boxes and sheets of metal piled against one another. She saw someone moving among the boxes, and a glow, not quite a light, maybe charcoal in a can. “Who are they?” she whispered. Angel said they were squatters. “They appear, they disappear. Maybe the officials come to run them out, maybe not.” He shrugged. “Sometimes hundreds of them appear on vacant lots, or on the street. They live in caves, on the hills below the Lomas neighborhood. They come in the night. You get up in the morning and there they are. They are called parachutists. They fall from the sky to make lost cities.” He ushered her up to his rooms.